a valentine

I’ve read (and heard) some comments about the NEO “blogosphere”, specifically about the behavior of some of our bloggers. Some say that a few of our bloggers are a little hard to handle. I say, suck it up and read. It’ll be good for you, and you may miss something important if you don’t.

Any community of bloggers is a little like a family. We’ve all got our drunk uncles, our snobby older sisters, moonbat hippy cousins and crazy aunts. I’m not going to start classifying anyone in the Cleveland blogosphere as “Creepy Uncle Harry” (but we all know who you are…), but we all have our little quirks and some of them just aren’t cute like showing the kids what a colostomy bag looks like or giving little Jimmy his first sip of homemade moonshine/engine degreaser (after all, he _did_ just get into that fancy preschool!). My point is that we need all sort of people around to balance out the decks, even the brother-in-law that voted for Bush twice, and then two more times this decade.

We may all be a little strange, smelly and more than a little offensive to each other, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. The sometimes tiresome navel-gazing is nothing but a kitchen table conversation — it twists and turns, sometimes it gets a little heated, but there’s usually no hard feelings by the time the coffee’s poured. After all, if I couldn’t disagree with Hitch’s and Jonathan’s conservative ramblings over at [Brewed Fresh Daily](http://wwwbrewedfreshdaily.com), read about the magical [coffee castle](http://writeslikeshetalks.blogspot.com/2006/01/coffee-castle.html) Jill’s daughter built (I swear I’m going to have one of those someday), and read Tim’s rants against Brown, I would feel like something is missing.

So here’s my little paper heart to Cleveland, with its pasted-on candy hearts and a doily background. Even with the shitstorms that occasionally swirl up around NEO, the blogosphere strides on. The bloggers in NEO are crazy, creative stars who want to make the world a better place and dream of ways to do it. The best part is, these dreamers aren’t asleep. Happy Valentine’s day NEO, you all deserve a big ol’ kiss.