saturday style and the birth of a blogger

i like to think i'm one of those people who reads the newspaper: wakes up saturday morning while it's still morning, walks across the hardwood in an oversized t-shirt and setlles in the sunny seat at the kitchen table with the weekend edition of the globe and mail beaming at them from between my knife and fork. i like turning the awkwardly sized pages and assigning to each article an ex-boyfriend or past lover. i select, for my own consumption, short and fluffy write-ups which require little investment.

truth be told, i read barely a tenth of the weekend paper alternating between the lighter stuff of the front section and the colourful dreamworld of stlye. the law student with whom i shared my mornings a few years ago introduced me to the ritual. and it's the ritual that i like, not the paper. i recognize the occaisional columnist, mostly because i've made a point of remembering them, having been embarassed in some previous conversation. leah mclaren is one of those. the law student and his partners in crime loved to hate her. leah mclaren this, leah mclaren that. she's such a bitch, i recall one of them saying. i've since had tried, not all that successfully, to nurture an interest in her column. i love a good bitch.

this morning, after having stumbled quite inelegantly into the red room with my current love interest and my copy of the weekend edition, i was particularly excited about getting to the mclaren column. i delayed a bit, occupying myself with a story about a recently canadian child who's spelling talent was worthy of the cover and cursing the french public school system for having deprived me of spelling bees. after a few minutes of slightly offputting jealousy and a brief forray into the world of cross-border organ transplants it was time for style. i was a bit disappointed, at first, to see that i was going to be subjected to talk of blogs and bloggers, since i find those words to be spectacularly irritating. but after a few paragraphs, my reluctance gave way. i'd never really given much thought to the "blogosphere", so to speak. never really properly appreciated the fact that paul wells' postings, among others, were the stuff of "blogs."

i like to think i'm the kind of person who reads the newspaper. however, as previously confessed, i'm mostly around for the coffee and the sun. the article i read this morning over grease at college and spadina didn't encourage blogging as a passtime, quite the opposite actually. but having read it and having contemplated the prospect on a crowded spadina streetcar, i was happy to realized that i'd gone beyond the ritual a little. somewhere between the eggs and the hashbrowns i'd taken in a little content and changed my afternoon plans. believe it or not, and think less of me for it, it was a bit of a first.

maybe mclaren would be mortified to know that her article contributed in some way to the expansion of the ego-filled quiltwork of mediocre, diary-style essays that is the blogosphere. or more likely she wouldn't care. either way, i thought it was fun, that in the midst of coffee i listened to leah and felt like a legitimate reader. maybe i'll graduate to things more substantial next time saturday rolls around. or maybe not.