What is a “blog?”

Hopefully, it is not a “blob.” When analyzing a problem and defining a word, it can help to determine what a thing is not. So, let’s start with blob and see if we can get to blog.

In 1958, the musical group “The Five Blobs” released their hit to a scared, cowering, can’t-wait and screaming country. “Beware of the Blob” was a musical phenomenon in only 5 lines: “Beware of the Blob! /It creeps and leaps and glides and slides across the floor/Right through the door and all around the wall, /A splotch, a blotch, /Be careful of the Blob!” Burt Bacharach co-wrote the piece, so it had good genes.

The song was the theme song for the movie “The Blob” which featured a giant jelly-like gob of bubble gum that just kept growing and growing and growing devouring all and everything in its path. Steve McQueen made his debut in the film as the fast-thinking teenager who said, “Fly the thing to the frozen Arctic, it’s afraid of the cold.” It worked, Steve went on to be a star and The Blob is still up there somewhere under the snow, waiting.

The Blob was released as a double feature with “I Married a Monster from Outer Space.” They don’t make movies like that anymore. Actually, I kinda miss ‘em.

Now, we have blogs. Whooo, Whooo. Whooo. I know, it sounds scary, but they really aren’t — most of the time. You’re reading one. Sorry, no catchy song here about growing globs of gum oozing from your laptop or smart phone. Just a blog.

The word “blog” is a combination of the two words, “web” and “log.” Take the “b” from web and add it to the “log” from log and you have a “blog.”

Why did they do that?

Because a blog is a WEB site that allows the site owner to LOG into the web each day (really as often as the owner likes) where that person in charge can post a piece of brand new writing for others to read and those others can post their own responsive comments (if the site allows comments to be posted – this site doesn’t to ensure all materials are suitable for young readers). Each blog post is dated and timed on a searchable LOG, which is another reason for the “log” in blog. It’s all very ordered and bloggy

A traditional web site is static in its content and does not normally change daily. You go there to read about things, but what you are reading may only change when, for example, the product or pricing changes.

It may take a lot of work to change the content on a traditional web site. Not so with a blog. A blog is changing all the time as new material is logged into the web through the blog portal. So, an active blog is constantly growing. It is devouring new facts and ideas and expanding with the thoughts, stories and word wanderings of its host. In theory, an over-active blog could take over the Internet and become “The Blob of the World-Wide Web.” Don’t worry. Most bloggers don’t write that much, but in potentiality, a blog could become the blob.

Today, most new web sites have a blog page where new material can be posted daily and a part of the site where the material does not change. This site is like that. You have a “Blog Posts” tab where daily during the week I place new material for you to read, and you have tabs for “Uncle Joe Stories” and “Mary & Other Stories” where the content only changes when a new story is added.

So, on this web site, you have both a fun Blog with constantly changing blog posts and a fixed Web Site with stories that stay the same. There is no blob here, nothing to stick to your shoe and eat the family car. And, I will say today what has never been said before for Uncle Joe Stories — here you can have “All the fun of a Blog without the Blob.”

Enjoy the blog, but watch your step, just to be on the safe-side – they say it’s getting warmer up there in the Arctic (whooo, whooo), just kidding, no blob here, I hope,

Grandpa Jim