Saturday, April 14, 2012

Your first Blog Entry


I still prefer blogs to facebook or twitter. Blogs are like visiting someone at home. Facebook is like passing them on the sidewalk. And twitter is like yelling out your car window at them.

Speaking of blogs,


The first thing I blogged about under pattinase in mid 2006 was this:

John Mark Karr

Is it just me or are too many people getting their kicks from whaling on this guy? Chances are he's some nut but much of the criticism is about his looks. Have you ever seen anyone being hauled away in cuffs who didn't look off.
Since when is it acceptable to make fun of the mentally ill.

Today-I have no idea now who Karr is or what he did. This seems an abrupt beginning for a blog, but I had a blog under another URL first for about six months. Can't remember what happened, but it imploded and someone set this one up.

What was your first entry about--if you have a blog.

30 comments:

Deb said...

Without googling him, I think he's the person who claimed he killed Jon Benet Ramsey. He didn't. As you say, he was mentally unstable.

/Unless I'm thinking of someone else. In which case...never mind.

Heath Lowrance said...

Patti, your analogies for what blogs, FB and Twitter are like are just dead-on. Nicely said.

I try to avoid looking at my earliest blog entries because they're a little embarrassing now. I wasn't entirely sure what I was trying to do, and they were very self-conscious.

But I'm glad pattinase is still active, I enjoy the hell out of it!

pattinase (abbott) said...

Right back at you, Heath. I love visiting blogs. I like the voice of a person who comes through on them.
Deb-you are right, I think. I didn't look it up because I wanted to see if it would come to me--but it didn't.

Anonymous said...

Nice comment on Facebook and Twitter in particular.

According to Wiki, John Mark Karr is now a woman named Alexis Valoran Reich.

No, I don't think we need to know any more.

Jeff M.

J. Kingston Pierce said...

My first post in The Rap Sheet, dated May 17, 2006, was about two then-forthcoming crime novels--One from the Other, by Philip Kerr, and Spade & Archer, Joe Gores' prequel to Hammett's The Maltese Falcon.

Cheers,
Jeff

pattinase (abbott) said...

Wow, Jeff. I do need to know more
You knew what you wanted to do right away, Jeff. I did not.

Prashant C. Trikannad said...

Patti, well said! I am not on Facebook or Twitter and I have no plans to join either, unless I write a book and desperately want to market it. An acquaintance once likened Twitter to "verbal diarrhoea" which is unfair to those who use it with serious intent. I agree with Heath about early blog posts being embarrassing. I started out writing all sorts of things without a focus till I narrowed down my areas of interest to books and comics, music, and cinema. I have refined my blog posts over the past few months but you could say my first post, in November 2009, was about Asterix Comics turning 50.

pattinase (abbott) said...

What eventually came to me was my son's comment that I asked as many questions as a host on a talk show. So that was the way I went. I like to hear what people think. Originally I tried to have some political discussions, but too many cranks were attracted to that so after 2008, I gave that up.

Charles Gramlich said...

Guess he had his 15 minutes and the world has moved on.

George said...

My first blog entry was a review of the just published CHILD OF EARTH by E. C. Tubb. It was the final book in the long-running Dumerest series. So far, I've gotten 135 comments on it over the years.

pattinase (abbott) said...

Wow. That's amazing, George. I wonder what drew so many people to that book.
Charles- had it and then became a new person to have it again.

George said...

E. C. Tubb's Dumarest series attracted thousands of fans over the decades, Patti. The series ran 33 books. My blog review of CHILD OF EARTH drew many fans who wanted to connect with other Dumarest fans. Now, there are Dumarest web sites as well as E. C. Tubb web sites.

Anonymous said...

I'd been doing an in-print apazine named The Perp for years and finally decided to start a blog when that apa (DAPA-Em) closed. This was my first blog entry:

"I Guess Ya Gotta Start Somewhere
Posted on August 28, 2009

Welcome! Stick around for a while, come back a few times, before you decide about this (one of millions) blog. It’d be nice to think someone gives a hoot about what I think, and might even pick up something new or interesting – or both – in the way of books, music or some whatever it is.

Some people say I have too many opinions, voiced too frequently. My wife would certainly agree. Whether I have enough of value to say here to keep anyone coming back to see what I’m up to, I don’t know. I guess we’ll see."

Todd Mason said...

My first entry, one of six in the first year, to nearly no response:

"Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Paraphrase of a favorite description:
From The Science Fiction Encyclopedia, describing Captain Zero, the protagonist of a short-lived odd-hero pulp:

When invisible, he speaks in italics."

I found that mildly amusing at the time, and still do.

I started archiving my TV GUIDE blogposts and blogging in earnest on SWEET FREEDOM in 2007. 470 hastily-written posts later, and I'll probably get my 100,000th hit this week (though as with everything else about Blogger, their counters seem wonky...my Wilma Shore post keeps fluctuating up and down as to how many views around 400 it's gotten).

A lot of that traffic has been redirected from this blog, so thanks, as well as for your interesting work. (I'm a default interviewer as well, but rarely feel I have enough time to devote to the blog in a block to make too much of that practical.)

Todd Mason said...

Started blogging at least more often than once a month or so on SWEET FREEDOM in 2008, that is.

James Reasoner said...

My first blog post was on July 3, 2004. The first paragraph is:

"Following the example of my friends Bill Crider and Ed Gorman, I've decided to start a blog. I may not post every day, and what gets posted here may be pretty haphazard sometimes, but I intend to talk mostly about what I'm reading and sometimes writing, as well as the events in my life I don't deem too boring. (Whether the readers find it too boring is, of course, up to them.) Don't expect anything about politics or religion."

In that post, I go on to talk about the weather, burying a goat, an issue of a science-fiction magazine I had read recently, and the Max Brand novel I was currently reading. I mentioned that I was a writer and had finished my 165th novel the day before (working on #282, FWIW). Then I concluded by saying:

"That's enough to start this off. Feel free to comment if the mood strikes you."

It didn't. No one has ever commented on that post.

I get comments now, but other than that it doesn't seem like the blog has changed much.

pattinase (abbott) said...

There was so much less blog traffic then. In 2004, I never looked at blogs. (Oh, the time I must have had). And when they saw those numbers, it would have intimidated most folks.

pattinase (abbott) said...

Todd-it is interesting to see where people come from.
Rick-Dapa-em has populated my blog. I wish I had been a member.

Bryon Quertermous said...

I've recently rediscovered why I enjoyed blogging and for the same reasons you mention. My first blog post in 2004 was about why I was starting a blog and what the title meant. I've always been a self reflective and meta
blogger. Glad you and your blog are still around.

pattinase (abbott) said...

Anita-yes! Sort of like getting the right voice for a story.
Glad you're back, Bryon!

Anonymous said...

Patti, you would have fit right in on the apa. It was a huge part of my life for over 30 years and the friends I made there are still among my closest.

Jeff M.

Kent Morgan said...

I set up a blog a number of years ago, but never posted. I decided that I wasn't prepared to commit the time needed to post on a regular basis. Instead I would rather spend my time reading the very interesting daily postings of bloggers such as Bill Crider, James Reasoner, George Kelley, Paul Bishop, Vince Keenan and you, Patti, as well as some others I read regularly. I miss the regular posting on If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger. Reading blogs can be habit forming. I have stayed away from Twitter and only have a Facebook account so I can read postings about my old hometown as it celebrates its 100th anniversary this year.

pattinase (abbott) said...

I think facebook may be more of a time suck than blogs.
It is time consuming but I have more time than I did even two years ago.

Cullen Gallagher said...

First Pulp Serenade post was Dec 10, 2008, about Richard Prather's The Cockeyed Corpse. I laugh just thinking about that book, I really enjoyed it.

http://www.pulpserenade.com/2008/12/cockeyed-corpse-by-richard-s-prather.html

Cap'n Bob said...

Sep 2004. I talk about an old blog having to be destroyed and my usual inane banter. Some of the posts that followed were rather long and actually had some content, though.

pattinase (abbott) said...

Wow. We started blogs over quite a timeline.

Todd Mason said...

So, Patti and the assembled, have you been inspired to go look at other folks' first posts?

And, Patti, where I'd come from in this wise is more than a decade on listservs and discussion groups, before that participation in some AOL and other fora, and before that similar interaction on AOL's predecessor Q-Link and on BBSes. And I was a member of an APA briefly, though sadly for me not DAPA-M. And had published several fanzines and fanzinesque items over the decades. For me, it's simply a seamless transition, except the current setup is easier to distribute. Twitter, which I don't use, is a perfect forum for jokes and quips, but I'm not sure of its value otherwise except in crises. FaceBook certainly data-mines us at least as hard as Google does through Blogger and other tools, and the relative lack of control in FB versus blogs is somewhat annoying...and, indeed, prone to time-sucking. I've just so much time that isn't diluted by other concerns as it is....

Anonymous said...

You asked for it, Patti.

Jeff M.

Rob Kitchin said...

Started blogging in July 2009. I was cautious about doing so because I knew I'd be creating something that needed regular feeding and I was already committed to a load of other things. Reading the first post I'd obviously done a fair bit of thinking about exactly what I intended to write about and that's actually how it's turned out - book reviews, a bit of my writing, some thoughts on different things. I guess Pattinase is more of a community blog, people discussing your questions, where as mine is more of a service blog - providing mostly reviews. I do Facebook and Twitter as well, both from January this year (again I was cautious of starting as I didn't want to dedicate too much time to them). I get Twitter - basically odd observations and pointers to stuff. I'm ambivalent about Facebook and spend very little time on it.

Mike Dennis said...

My first blog was titled "Welcome". It was brief and to the point, expressing my hopes for the blogs and response that would follow.