Keyboard withdrawal.

My kingdom for a keyboard!

...They're probably worth about the same, anyhow.

Yes, done with serving my nation for this working year. It wasn't as bad as I'd feared, though not without just about all of the dysfunctionality inherent in the Singapore Army. Mild drama ensued, when something I wrote about a debrief and brought to camp got where it wasn't supposed to be. It requires one to have been there to fully appreciate, but if anyone wants a transcript, it's yours.

Very nice, to have a keyboard at my disposal again. I've mentioned briefly before that much of what I like about writing, is the therapeutic effect of banging away at the keyboard and watching things come out. Sure, in this electronic age, there are those who argue the sincerity, and the deeper bond between pen and paper when you actually hand-write something. But when your writing looks like a troop of worms wasted on too much beer, dancing to techno music...

For different reasons, it seems another group of people would give quite a bit for a keyboard. I found the Life! coverage of the first Bloggers' Convention here to be...a little sad. It's a little hypocritical, of course, and reeks of Aesop's-style sour grapes. But I think the whole blogging thing is getting out of hand. It was a concept that existed right from the start of the Internet, and I'm surprised it took as long as it did to take off. It did, though, and now we have idiot-proof interfaces that allow anybody to become, in a sense, a published writer.

Why the big deal, though? If you think about it, Blogging is little more than delayed-reaction IRC on a grand scale. Ah, the days of IRC. a/s/l and the sending of fake pictures. Much fun to be had. The Blogger's Convention showed itself up to be nothing more than a bigger IRC outing. It was all nervous smiles and guarded conversation, according to the article. For chrissakes, it took a projection screen of an IRC channel, with the people in the same room behind their laptops talking, for the kind of camaraderie and personality Blogging is supposed to be about in the first place, to manifest.

There's what it takes to be a celebrity blogger - the ability to be the same person upfront as you are online. The rest, and I'm quite fully aware of the flak I might get for this, are teenagers that never quite grew up, and bandwagon-hoppers who are in it because everyone else is. Then they realize that it's actually hard work, wording things to make for interesting reading. That's what the Xiaxues, Miyagis and Browns of the local 'sphere have: enough personality for an IRC channel's worth, each.

The exception, recent events have shown, is to be female and none-too-worried about taking a little something off. No dissing of women involved, here. I concur that the best writers are women. Do admit to yourselves, however, that breasts can be a hella advantage in a lot of things. Posting a picture of my chest here isn't going to do much, is it.

Hopefully, some of what I meant to say got across over the high-pitched whining noise in the background. An aspect of myself shelved for self-improvement in the distant future. If you can write, and have personality both online and off, you have my respect. No one likes an a/s/l-er.

In other news, is anyone else as tickled as I, that with circumstances the way they turned out, the main man's name is T.T Durai?

For the uninitiated, " T.T " is an emoticon of Japanese origin to denote a crying face. See, see: Eyes in lines with tears streaming down and a tiny dot for the mouth and and...

Bah, a joke's never fun when you have to explain it.