Well, does the Internet need another blog?  Of course not, but here I am anyway...  Back in the day, I used to clip articles & snippets from newspapers, magazines, & grab other weird ephemera, & stick them along with copies of pages from books & whatever else I found in folders for close friends & relatives...  Just stuff that caught my eye or my mind... things I thought (hoped) others would also find of interest, intriguing, or at least worth a glance & a thought...  as time & chance permitted I would pass these piles along...  Then came the digital world, & I started to expand & also do the same in a copy/paste/send mode... works OK, but becomes harder to know exactly to what permutation of friends I should/would/could send which of these bon-mots along to...  Blogs seem an interesting alternative approach... I can just throw stuff out over the transom & see what happens or whose fancy it hits...

Recently read a book on changing media & how to know assess sources...  Blur: How to Know What's True in the Age of Information Overload  (more about it sometime) ...  They were estimating over 150 million blogs (US origins, I guess)... have seen guesstimates of continuing exponential growth with number of English language blogs approaching 500 million... guess I won't worry about standing out in the crowd, wonder how the serendipity of finding a blog that strikes a resonant chord with you occurs...  Anyway, with over 300 million folk in US & maybe 250 million of us on the Internet, seems somewhat of a morass to me at best.  Liked their description of blogs... like muffins, they are all pretty much the same shape, but also like muffins, they can span the entire range from healthy well-made bran to haphazardly constructed sugary lumps...  

Not that I consider myself in the same sphere, but does seem that now that Andy Rooney has retired his typewriter, perhaps a little more room for folk like moi to do these "You know what I think? pieces...  did like what he said in his last appearance.. that he always tried to tell the truth, & was just a reporter & a guy who spoke what he wrote...  He also had the advantage of being unimpressed & probably more importantly, un-intimidated by just about anybody...  I think he was the perfect curmudgeon, who in my mind can be described as a "lovable grump"... he could also be quite pawky... (a word I've always liked, since seeing it as a kid in a Sherlock Holmes story...  someone who is shrewd, witty & humorously crafty...)...