Literary Love, Literally

If you were asked to choose between a romantic evening with a gorgeous (wo)man or a night alone with a good book, would you opt for a date with Nabokov Vladimirovich?

 

Are you too busy reading about love to find love?

 

Here’s an answer for bookworms worldwide.

 

Penguin Books has launched a dating website aimed at book readers.

 

According to Penguin said the site offers readers a place to meet and indulge in the art of writing love letters. Members will be asked to write a profile about the last book they read and will also be able to search through the site’s other profiles for mentions of their favorite book.

At Penguin we believe that the books we cherish and read over and over, those that we feel a deep emotional connection with, say something defining about us and the type of people we are.  What better way to find your life partner than over a shared love for Lawrence or a passion for Pynchon.

 

The dating service is free for all, but in order to contact other people on the site, you must subscribe.

 

I knew the answer to my dating woes was somewhere out there.

 

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On unrelated haha …

 

World Wide Woof

Considering Uganda’s intermittent electricity supply, the limited coverage of the national power grid and the expense of internet access and computer equipment, the country’s position in Africa’s top ten internet countries is quite impressive.  Even more extraordinary is the fact that Sudan is doing better than Rwanda, where there are reportedly more Internet Hot Spots than public toilets (thanks Kevo).

 

 

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A few thoughts on yesterday’s feature (using the term in the loosest possible way) in the Daily Monitor that caused a furor in the Ugandan blogosphere here, here, here, here, here, here and here …

 

I think that while the article contained a few truisms regarding the evolution of blogging in Uganda, it took a very narrow-minded and rigid view of an immensely nebulous phenomenon.  We all know that a blog is just what it says it is: a web log.  It can only be defined by where it is published, but never by what the ‘log’ is. 

 

Consider the graphic above.  If each of the two million Ugandan web users was to publish a blog, can you just imagine the diversity?  It is a diversity that is born from the fluidity of the internet and the room provided for us to debase ourselves or reach for excellence is immense.  The choice is ours.

 

The author of the article posed several questions regarding the limited number of Ugandan blogs dealing with ‘serious issues’.  I think the onus is on journalists like himself who have with 24-hour access to the internet through their offices, access to news sources and proclivity for political debate, to set the benchmark for the kind of blogs he claims the public so desires.

 

As for me, I’ll continue to be blog about banal, the bizarre, the reality and the myth, since …

• I blog because think I know everything of the world, but nothing at all
• I blog because it is cathartic and I can’t afford a shrink
• I blog because my family can only stand my ranting for so long
• I blog because there is beauty and tragedy in words
• I blog because in this world, there is always a reason to blog

Why do you blog?