How Much I Hate Milk

One of the great advantages of being a blogger who writes a personal blog, apart from all the paid writing gigs,* is that I never need to be stuck for an answer again, when  filling out a survey, updating my CV, or just making polite small talk, as to what my interests and hobbies are. Of course, I can readily answer that blogging is one of my hobbies, but I don’t need to stop there, the way that a non-blogger might have to if they can’t remember any other interests right at that moment – and let’s face it, that has happened to all of us in a job interview.

If I draw a momentary blank at the phrase “so Blathering, tell us a bit about yourself,” I don’t end up creating a long and awkward pause in the conversation while I rack my brain to try and think of something, just to prove that I am, in fact, a well-rounded person with lots of varied interests.

In a matter of seconds, I can whip out my phone or iPad, pull up my blog, and, barely missing a beat in the conversation, reel off a wide range of interests. Hah! That’s because all I need to do is glance over at the Tag Cloud at the right-hand side of my blog. Displayed there for all the world to see, are the topics that have interested me the most, in the six years (where did all that time go??) that I’ve been writing this blog for.

 

A super quick guide to my interests, if not so much my hobbies, on August 16 this year.

Instantly, I impress my aquaintances with my broad range of interests. “Music!” I announce confidently. Great – everybody in the world says they like music, whether they do or not, so I can’t go wrong there. “Cats.” Seems worth a go, with the slight risk that they may be a cat hater, or have a cat allergy.  I scan the list of other topics frequently written about. Insomnia? My brother died? These may send the wrong message in a job interview. Time? The Universe? These may make me sound too much of an abstract thinker for this executive role in the Pest Control industry. Hmmm. “Yoga….mats?” *grins weakly*

The Tag Cloud is a constantly morphing thing; a ‘real-time’ guide to your latest passions, if you like, since Tags, and their relative sizes (in this particular style of Tag Cloud), are based on how often a topic is written about and tagged. Readers can click a tag and be taken to posts about that topic.

In the beginning, the major topics on this blog, and therefore reflected in the Tag Cloud, were moustaches, eyeballs, rhinos, avocados, and Samuel Beckett, which I felt nicely captured my enjoyment of the absurd. In order to present a more rounded picture of myself,  I naturally progressed to writing a few posts about Nietzsche, and existentialism, just to add an appearance of high-brow intelligence to the blog, and show that I could write about more than just a few common nouns (and Beckett.) Nietzsche pops up every now and again since he is such a funny guy to write about.

Oh alright, in all honesty, the prominence of Nietzsche on this blog only began because of his utterly ridiculous moustache, and from there it developed a life of its own, which I feel barely responsible for. As Kierkgaard once commented, when you combine a dour philosopher and a massive comical moustache, the material just writes itself!

This is where the Tag Cloud can be misleading, because it would make me seem a tad more intellectual than I really am. You could, for example, see his name there and assumed that I’ve written a doctorate on Nietzsche. (I have actually sent an application to the University of Melbourne to write a post-graduate thesis on his moustache, but they have so far not allocated a supervisor for this project.)

Similarly, Air Supply (an Australian band, big in the 1970s-80s) is not really a particular interest of mine, but was for a short while a few years ago, when I read a strange line about them on their Wikipedia page (since removed), and wrote a post about it. As I am a student of post-modernism (thank you to Art School), I then made the self-referential move of referring to that post in other posts, which had the end result of causing Air supply to be a highly searched term on this blog for a while, and I guess must be how they are still retaining their status on the Tag Cloud.

Based on this Tag Cloud, Technology also appears to be an interest of mine, however I’m far from a “tech-head.” I’m not anti-technology, and it can be interesting, but I’ve probably written more about old technology or, even better, imaginary technology, my favourite kind. These are probably what that tag refers to. Although forced to deal with it on a daily basis in my job, my ability to understand current technology is not high, for example I don’t really even understand what a server is or does. So that is another misleading Tag.

Of all the things still popping up in that Tag Cloud, it is probably most strange that rhinos maintain a position there, when I can’t recall having written about those cuddly critters for quite some time now, possibly since this attempt to describe myself for readers, and that was written a few years ago.

But the reason for this post today is because I feel there has recently been a gaping absence in the Tag Cloud. A topic that was there for some time has dropped right off, and it’s something I feel is an integral aspect of my identity. It’s clear that I have not written enough about it lately. That is, my hatred of milk, or, as it was previously spelled out in the Tag Cloud, How Much I Hate Milk. My hatred of milk stems right back to my childhood, and I’ve written about it in detail here.

Let’s just say that when, as a child, your introduction to milk is the freshly frothy, still warm stuff that has just been squirted out of a cow’s udders, into a bucket, and then tipped into some old sherry bottles (of dubious sterilisation) that still retained a smell, or taste of sherry, it’s a wonder if you can hold your Weeties down in the morning.

Of course, I realise that I am able to manipulate the Tag Cloud by writing posts about, and tagging, specific topics, but what blogger would let their Tag Cloud guide what they choose to write about? If I was going to do that, I’d write a whole post based around the concept of how much I hate milk, just to see if I can get that tag to appear on there again.

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*Paid writing gigs: 0 so far. If you need someone to write about rhinos, eyeballs, moustaches or any other common nouns for your newsletter or website, please indicate your interest and rate of renumeration in the comments. All offers considered.