BloggingOn 6.3 – The Blog As “Literature”

While his buddies are clearly going for Colin’s jugular (don’t miss the comments), and while our worldviews clash in more quadrant than one (you people and you’re flying spaghetti monster!), I’d like to think this guy has the market cornered on “blog as litrerature.”

Check out this post.

His delivery alternates (rather delectably) from conversational informality to conspicuous formality (“it would be churlish to carp”). His humor is one of his more characteristic traits. I would imagine that it filters out a good portion of the audience that would wander into Nedsville by chance (“My effect on them must have been about like that of a Belgian kid in Manhattan who speaks with a proud Australian accent.”).

No college degree? Back to plastic for you. Never even heard of Ayn Rand? Shouldn’t you be perusing the double-boing?

That being said, I wouldn’t doubt that Neddie is equally familiar with Jean-Paul Sartre and John Paul Jones.

It is also to his credit that he persistently almost-but-not-quite officially refers to himself in third person (and convincingly, not creepily, I might ad). And then there’s this:

the Official Deputy Assistant Emergency Back-up to the Mechanical Lawn Sprinkler of the United States Ambassador Plenipotentiary to the Spanish Crown in the Year of Our Lord Nineteen Hundred and Seventy Nine

Douglas Adams meets... er... well, somebody else?

I think Neddie consistently produces content that is readable (and re-readable). He has a unique voice, and a well-honed yet unrestrained style (or perhaps it's restrained in-all-the-right-places).

P.S. Anyone who considers meeting Wallace Shawn a notable event is ok by me.