OK, I'm sufficiently vain to regularly do a google search on this blog. Since I deliberately gave it a fairly unique name, all hits (so far) on the name "demiorator" come back referring to mentions of the blog. What catches my eye is a listing for BlogsNow which lists blogs which reference a particular story on Alternet named Annals of Outrage. There were thirteen blogs which mentioned that story on 1/19/2005, including DemiOrator.

It feels like that scene in Monty Python's Life of Brian where Brian tells the crowd to be individuals and think for themselves. The crowd agrees in unison that they're all individuals. I'm feeling a bit like a member of the crowd right now.

Of course, I haven't looked at all the various blog entries. I suppose we're all saying different things in them. Still I'm left wondering what, if anything, is the point of this blog. Part of it the impulse to start DemiOrator was to cultivate regular writing on my part. In general, this has worked. I'm usually writing some every day. The days I'm not feeling so verbal I often quote more from articles than write my own commentary. That's OK to me.

Sometimes I get a little concerned that I'm quoting too much from other writers, essentially stealing their words. My justification is usually that I'm careful to 1) link to the original article where I got the quote, and 2) visually set the quoted words off from my own writing. Also, this is not a moneymaking enterprise, just notes on subjects I'm interested in. It's a pleasant way of writing for an audience without any pressure. I'm not quite sure where this falls on the "fair use" spectrum. When the first "cease and desist" letter comes in I'll find out.