First off, Joel responded to my blog from yesterday by creating this lovely little heading for me. Joel, you're swell!

Yesterday Chad told me about an article he'd read reviewing a website called ChicagoBloggers.com. The site, started by a DePaul student named Matt Weiler in September 2003, is an index of blogs in and around Chicago, the "hook" being that the blogs are organized by el stop; you can pick a train line and then look at the different blogs from people who live by each stop. For example, my blog is located at the Fullerton stop on the red and brown lines. ...Am I the only person geeky enough to think this is really cool? I wouldn't imagine so.

Kellie and I were looking through the stops last night and she commented that more often than not the blogs out there can be pretty bad. I agreed, adding that there are some really crappy writers in general, but up until now they just haven't had an outlet, or if they did they probably had an editor or something to smooth things out a bit. Kellie paused a second and then she said she felt kind of bad commenting on all these people's blogs when she didn't even have a blog of her own. "It's okay," I told her. "Besides, what do you think I had the 'comments' feature added on for?"

Perhaps Kel should take her sense of quality towards blogs and become a blog ombudsman. Maybe my blog ombudsman. Please! Anybody! I'm so understaffed.

...I think Jadedgyrl23 from the Morse stop on the red line sums up the blogging culture best when she says. "Let's be real: We're all attention whores. We don't keep online diaries and join message boards because we want to keep a low pro. We want people to laugh at our jokes, e-prop us for our rants, and XOXO us when we're low."