Suddenly I’m feeling all militant and radicalized. That’s because somebody thinks I’m worth organizing.

I mean “organizing,” of course, in the labor-union sense of the word. A proposal has been floated to unionize people like me — which is to say, people who think that sitting in their underwear in a spare bedroom for uncountable hours on end yammering about things they maybe, sort of, possibly have a tiny shred of knowledge about constitutes a valuable service to society. Maybe even a critically important service to mankind.

Arise, bloggers! Arise and unite! It’s time to throw off the shackles that keep you chained to your laptops and … uh, OK, here’s where I get a little confused about this idea.

So who are uniting against, exactly?

As best I can remember — and yeah, there’s been a lot of beer under the bridge, but I’m still a few million brain cells to the good — I started writing this daily online column a few months ago only because I wanted to. Also, because I thought it would be a great way to meet chicks. (Note to one reader, who knows who she is: I’m just kidding here, snookums. This is “comic exaggeration,” as we writers call it. No need to get all “Lorena” on me.) If I wanted an orderly and beneficial professional life, I would have stuck with the job I had until recently, which was pretty nice except for one unpleasant aspect. There was a boss involved.

I’m done with bosses, I tell you. Once you embrace workplace anarchy, you never want to go back.

The problem with this idea of a bloggers union is that words like “professionalism,” “credentials” and “guidelines” are getting thrown around carelessly. I don’t need no stinkin’ guidelines. It has become my life’s mission these days to violate good taste, good grammar and the good intentions of the majority. Being a credentialed nose-thumber would be the ultimate oxymoron. You undertake the life of a blogger precisely because there are no guidelines, credentials and professional standards involved. Those things are for people who have jobs that require pants.

Sure, I’d love for a fat monthly stipend and a sweet benefits deal to fall into my lap. But those goodies tend to come as a package with the aforementioned evilness of supervisory personages. So I’ll just do without.

It’s a good bet, then, that the only reason I’ll ever end up on a picket line is because somebody paid me.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 8th, 2007 at 1:01 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.