"Blog": Genealogy of a Word

blog - What are the origins of this word? What does it mean? The obvious answer, of course, is that a blog is really quite like a log, the only difference being that a blog is a log with a 'b'. This is to be differentiated from a hive-carrying log which may contain MANY bees. So unless you empty your honey bear into a blog, the only thing sweet you'll find in one will be some nice crunchy termites or perhaps a bit of maple syrup (of course, you'll have to open the bottle to get the syrup out). The word 'blog' of course comes from the Anglo-Saxon word 'Kerblog' which is in turn derived from the Old German 'Kerbloggen' which is in turn, as everyone knows, derived from the Indo-European 'blech'. Since the Romans were the first ones to use the word, it is not very important to see how or why they pronounced it the way they did or where they got it from. Many philologists speculate that the Romans were attempting to describe the sound that a 'b' infested log makes when it hits the ground. Other philologists say the first philologists are idiots and that everyone knows that logs make the sound 'kerPLOP' NOT 'kerBLOG' when they hit the ground. In response, many theorists have proposed that in Roman society, such logs did not in fact make a 'kerplop' sound as they do nowadays but that in fact, since Roman physics were perhaps different, it made a 'kerblog' sound instead. Many experiments with togas, vomiting during meals, and woship of pagan gods have been attempted in an effort to recreate the correct setting in laboratory situations in order to simulate the Roman context. Unfortunately, all such experiments have failed to yield any 'kerblog' sounds. As research volunteer Jamey Bob Lee Thornhill says, 'It durn done went 'kerplop'. I didn' hear no 'kerblog', no siree nohow.' This merely reinforced critics of the theory in their denunciations of such theorists as complete idiots, to which some researchers have replied that it is not THEY who are idiots, but the Romans who were idiots (THEY were the ones who thought that logs went 'kerblog', after all). As noted German scientist Adolf Heinrich Von Schwartzenntumelhofferheim III has so eloquently put it, 'The Romans are old and old things and old people aren't cool. They're stupid. We are obviously much superior to those people from other races, er...I mean, times.' As reasonable as such a position is, the origins of the word 'blog' still remain a subject for debate. As for those detractors of this entry who will insist on carrying on the fabricated story that 'blog' is simply short for 'web log', I point out to them the incontrovertible evidence to the contrary that I have tried many times to insert a log into the web, but unfortunately the severed pieces of tree body only succeeded in breaking the screen of my monitor. Clearly, logs can be in your computer monitor, but certainly not in the web!