Why You Should Start a Blog: A Guide for Pseudo-Intellectual Bleeding Heart Left-Wingers

Hello. I’m Joel, I’m 21 years old, and I’m a procrastinator.

I am, if I do say so myself, rather good at it. In fact, I procrastinated for two weeks instead of writing this article, after promising a friend that I would write something (in exchange for him writing something, which he promptly did)

But there are some things you just can’t procrastinate from, such as waiting for the train, and so, alas, I must finally be productive for 5 minutes of my life.

I’ve been toying with the idea of starting a blog for a long time, but for some reason beyond my comprehension, blog fairies didn’t visit me during the night and helpfully pen multiple witty, insightful, slightly political posts for me to upload. Which is a shame, because I have a lot of ideas to share and a lot of funny cat videos to the distracted by, and I was really counting on those fairies (even after their pitiful failure to write my dissertation for me).

But I know what you’re thinking: “Shut up, Joel, and get to the point about bleeding heart lefties”.

First of all, it’s rude to interrupt. And I’m typing, not talking, so I can’t “shut up”. Now who’s the fool, eh?*

Secondly, good point, Angry Fictional Blog Reader. Allow me to do just that.

I began by admitting that I procrastinate often, and as a pseudo-intellectual bleeding heart left-winger, a lot of the procrastination takes the form of reading political news, social research, feminist/LGBT/animal rights/environmentalist blogs, etc. I like to tell myself that none of this is really procrastination, and that I’m (ready to cringe?) “expanding my mind”. That somehow I’m actively performing a social good. That the world is just a little better off now that I’ve read about sexism in the WWE.

That’s right, world. You’re welcome.

Of course, this is nothing more than the ultimate leftie fantasy; we can solve all of the world’s problems without exerting ourselves at all. We simply have to close our eyes and promise very hard that we will feel bad whenever we see war orphans on the news.

And I’m sure we both realise that this just isn’t the case.

But fear not! Our time what we spend doing all this here learnin’ can actually be of some benefit!

You see, a lot of problems in the world boil down to simple ignorance – if everyone knew that some of the language they used was offensive to people they didn’t mean to offend, they’d probably alter that language. If everyone knew that ‘harsher’ prisons tend to have a higher reoffending rate than prisons based on the softy-reform approach, they’re probably have a long hard think about how we should treat society’s criminals. And if everyone knew that homosexuality isn’t a choice, we’d have gay marriage coming out of the wazoo**.

So I am issuing a rallying cry to all my fellow pseudo-intellectual bleeding heart left-wingers! Let’s stop expanding our own minds, and start sharing the information we’re currently just storing in our own heads, of no benefit to anyone except ourselves. Write some articles! Cancel your subscription to the Daily Mail. And for the love of Jove and all that is secular, start a damn blog!***

Taking my own advice for once, I am going to start writing some blog-style-type-things in which I attempt to spread some of the wonderful knowledge that I have come across over the years. I don’t claim to be an expert, and I don’t claim that I’ll always be right, but mainly I just want to get people thinking and discussing these issues.

To start you off, here are some gems of wisdom that don’t need a full article. You can have them for free. You’re welcome:

1) When you’re handling raw onions, breathe through your mouth, not your nose. That way, your eyes won’t water.

2) Most fruit juices have a similar sugar content to cola, but the sugars in fruit juices tend to be naturally occurring, while sugar in cola is added.

3) The fictional word Ghoti can be pronounced as “fish” using regular English phonemes. (Such as: gh from enough, o from women, ti from nation.)

That about covers it for now. See you all again whenever the hell I decide to make another one of these.

So shall we say 2027?

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*It’s you.

** “Wazoo”, unlike most British words, is not slang for “penis”.

*** Alright. So I admit I’m a bit late to this party. Most of you probably already have blogs by this point. But at least consider using them to discuss politics and social issues every once in a while, instead of a ‘review’ of the new Superman film where you just link to Rotten Tomatoes.