Maeve Higgins’s ideal . . . blog

I was in my room the other day, attempting to control my friends and family with my thoughts. I sat quietly, deciding what was best for each one of them. As the hours passed, I grew tired from being so kind and thoughtful and decided instead to imagine the ideal blog.

A lot of my younger readers (-18 months) may not know what a blog is. The word itself is a portmanteau of “boring” and “log”. That’s right haters, I finally found out what the word “portmanteau” means.

A blog is, basically, a miniature space diary that goes from one human’s magic slab to another via the power of a million nerds. It’s different from an old-fashioned diary in two ways. It’s typed, rather than handwritten in pig’s blood, and, crucially, it’s not private. It’s actually super public because, just like those notorious photos of Leo Varadkar splashing around Trabolgan in a tankini, it’s all over the internet.

Imagine anything. You heard me . . . I'm wearing a pantsuit and a head mic as I stride around a huge stage and I just boomed "Imagine anything". Got something? Good, because there's a blog about that. Dogs working as scientists, seaweed alternatives to pasta, women with small eyes trying to make them look bigger, Ryan Gosling's shoulders, they're all there, waiting to distract us from our
mortality.

Blogs live out our dreams for us. If you’re thinking of moving to Barcelona, there’s no need. Save yourself the trouble, someone else already did that and they update their adventure daily so you can read about it, safe and sound in Banteer.

People’s blogs allow them to express themselves and excuse themselves. You can be as casually cruel as you like in a blog post, as long as you put a little kiss at the end. X marks the spot where passive aggression lives. I put kisses at the end of everything these days – emails to my bank, text messages to my electrician, tweets to Coolio. To be truly inclusive, I’ve begun to do the same with work calls. I say goodbye, leave a short pause, then I kiss my phone loudly. Smack! Nice working with you.

Blog can also be used as a verb, but the meaning changes. “To blog” means to wear dungarees and eat past the point of feeling full. So, to use it in a sentence, you might say to me, “Did you spend last night blogging by the light of the fridge?”, and I will avoid eye contact and adjust my shoulder straps.

My ideal blog changes with my moods. I bookmark them depending on how I’m feeling. Men think, you see, but women? We feel. (I’m a woman so it’s cool for me to say that. High five, sisters!)

My dream blog veers from robotic news to pure prose – from machinated information to strangers being truthful. The one constant is a few photos of kittens throughout, to amp up the cuteness. Other than that, anything goes. X.