I offer my apologies in advance for what follows...
I thought I heard a discussion of some weird new kind of "vook" on public radio the other day, and finally ran across a written account of video-book hybrids in this article in Salon.com. I can see the usefulness in such a monster if some kind of complicated process is being taught, but I am less enamoured of the idea if it is going to be a low-cost drama production. I get lots of that on the cable channels.
It reminded me of a discussion I had the other day with someone who doesn't want to be associated with the writing disaster that follows. We were talking about the nomenclature for the project I just finished on the Colorado Plateau. Over a year's time, the series of blogs had grown into a narrative with the length (if not the style) of a small book. What should such a thing be called?
We immediately thought of "blook" and congratulated ourselves on our creativity and originality but a quick google search confirmed the that term has existed since at least 2002. Oh well. Just the same we realized that people who write blooks would have to be called "blookers", and if the authors are German women, they would be "Frau Blookers" (frenzied neighing of horses breaks out*).
Our second choice for the name of a blog-book hybrid would be a "boog". I liked it, but a google search revealed that a boog had all kinds of dark and gross meanings related to nostrils and drugs. So that won't work so well, but so many things could have been right about the word. When we said we needed to "boogie", folks would think we were really cool and all, and not going home to chew on Cheetos and stare at a computer screen. The problem with "boogs", books written as a series of blog posts, is the lack of continuity and style. Such projects need the help of an editor or even an editorial board, a "boogie-board" as it were.
Maybe an interesting idea. It ultimately can't work though, because the authors of boogs would of course have to be called..."boogers".
Ok, back to geology...
*If you don't know this movie reference, you have to go study Mel Brooks and satires of old monster movies
boogie-board! ha!! funniest thing I've heard all week
ReplyDeleteNeigh....... I don't want to be a booger. ROFL! But I certainly do like the idea of publishing a blook. Which you can do thru blogspot, at a cost. Your CO geologic story would certainly turn into more than a trilogy.
ReplyDeleteYou must be a great teacher, so funny. Can I sign up for the CO geo class?
Is there something wrong with "blog series?"
ReplyDeleteBah, the youth of today, always making up these new fangled words...
To follow thru with the new name "Blog Series," you could write blogsies and aka: blogsters (not to be confused with the monsters known as trolls...ya, ya I know the title does fit). Blogsters bloging blogsies, don't try to say it three times fast, does have a ring to it...yes?
ReplyDeleteI think the follow-on to blog series is obviously "bleries," which is pronounced like "bleery" with an s at the end: "bleeries." Several blog series would have to be "bleers." And that's too close to beers, I think. (And the writers would be bleersters or bleerers?)
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