the cheese stands alone

Made To Be Broken and Then Duct-taped To Within an Inch of Its Life

Da (or is it Der?) Commissar has released an edict on the Ten Rules of Blogging.
You all know what a vast and unceasing respect I have for rules, don't you?
Then let's begin.....

1. Do not apologize for light blogging.
I can't cop to this one, as I rarely apologize for anything. I'll admit my guilt, takes my lumps, and move on, but unless I drew blood or made you question my basic humanity (stop laughing), I don't often need to apologize.
In my case, some would say light blogging would be more of a blessing than something to be sorry for.

2. Do not link every word in sentence to a different post, like this.
Again, can't say I've done this either. Not out of any misplaced aesthetic, or respect for some arcane etiquette, but because I am too damn lazy. Linking is a lot of work, people! Don't I have enough to do cleaning up dead birds and watching crazy people?

3. One topic per post.
I am a big believer in efficiency and time-saving. If I can post about my mom, mad cow disease, and the democratic process as it applies to a thousand monkeys typing Shakespeare, I am damn well going to do it in one fell swoop.
I don't swoop fellishly nearly enough.
And a thousand monkeys... who can beat a thousand monkeys? Because, dammit, monkeys are cool.

4. Keep it short.
Sorry, but size does matter. If I can tell the tale in ten terse tones (and stop the alliteration before I alliterate again) then I will. But if it takes half a page of type and a fifth of Jack to do it properly, then short be damned and the editorial comments take the hindmost.
Yeah, babe, tell Shakespeare to keep it brief. Tell Tolkien putting it all in one book would have done nicely. Tell Mozart it has too many notes.
Sure.

5. No "Free Trackback posts."
To be honest, I have to say I don't have clue one what this means. But I don't like the sound of that "no" business anyway.

6. No false updating,
If this means writing a post and saving it in draft for later publication, then I've happily broken that rule a million times over. (For you anal-retentives keeping score, no, I don't have a million posts. It's a phrase. Don't make me come back there.) Sometimes we all get on a roll, the posts just come flying off our little fingers... but do you want to shoot your wad in one day, when you can have a nice little nest egg to milk if later on the Inspiration Fairy is out sick?
(That was a blenderful of mixed metaphor, wasn't it?).
Sometimes too, we write things in the heat of passionate pissed-offed-ness, and don't get our ducks all in the proverbial row. But after a couple days of research and rethinking, maybe it's best for the post, and the reader of such, that we let it gestate for a while in the draft womb.
I am running out of analogy, so I shall stop here.
(By the way, I wrote this last week... still love me?)

7. Identify your sex.
Sure, and would you like to know what color undies I have on? What my mom's middle name is? What time I go to work so you can case the joint and swipe my teakettle collection?
Good writing doesn't have to show you I.D. Do you read with your balls or your eyes?

8. Maybe give us more than "Hey, I am bright conservative/liberal guy/gal, with news and views of the world."
If a blog is judged by its tagline, then I am so screwed, huh?

9. No quizzes.
At the risk of being indelicate, let me just say: Bullshit.
(was that in keeping with #4 enough for you?)

10. Set Site Meter to "Ignore Own Visits."
I was always of the school of thought that Sitemeter and the like were for keeping your own track of who's come over to visit, not measures of how big one's dick is.

In short, I have broken most of these rules, and will continue to do so. Know why? Because the blogosphere is a big old place, growing bigger by the minute and I sincerely doubt anyone can rein in enough of it to state categorically and definitively that there is an Ultimate Set of Rules for Blogging.
Personal guidelines? Take a shot. Personal preferences? Knock yourself out. Personal choices? That's what it's all about, Bucky.

Rules? Where we're going, we don't need rules.