Perhaps I’m morbid…actually, scratch that, I know I’m morbid. At any rate, one of the symptoms thereof is that sometimes, I wonder what would happen to my blog if I were to die. One of its functions, after all, is to prove I was here, that I did something, even if it was silly…even if I never get a novel published, here’s my existential impression upon the world. If I die and stop paying domain fees, will anyone save the contents for posterity? Will they keep them on the web, or just make copies for my family and friends?

Yes, I have actually pondered these things. But stop backing away slowly, this is actually a point that should be pondered. All over the world, people pick up blogs and put them down, like children with fad toys. What if someone’s blog is really GOOD and they stop updating it? Don’t you wonder what happened to them? I know I’ve wondered sometimes, when Baghdad Burning goes a long while un-updated. I don’t know that girl’s real name (and even if I did, good luck finding reliable civilian casualty lists). How do I know whether there’s just even less electricity and telephone than usual in her suburb of Baghdad, or whether she’s part of a scrolling headline on CNN?

So here’s what I propose. All you folks with blogger blogs and diaryland blogs and so forth — choose someone you really trust (preferably someone you don’t think will be in the car if your car is struck by a meteor) and give them your blog password. Then, if you ever die, the untold millions that doubtless troop by and appreciate your humanity will be advised of your mortality. It’s like ‘porn buddies’ on Coupling. Except instead of moving your porn before your bereaved parents see it, they let the internet know that your comic book has become a graphic novel, that the intrinsically serial medium has stopped its series.

I don’t like to think about the vast waste of abandoned blogs frozen in time, proclaiming the sharpness and immediacy of thoughts and concerns long gone. It’s eery. Even I am not that morbid.