every day I entertain several dozen people around the world who seem to have nothing better to do

RSS has RFUML. Translation for non-geeks: Really Simple Syndication has Really F’d Up My Life. (I don’t know if RFUML is an officially sanctioned Internet acronym or not. Better trademark it before NTP sues me.) I’ve got no time to listen to music or watch movies; I’m too busy reading blogs.

I’ve read there are around 150 million blogs right now, with a new one started every second. That’s more than 86,000 new blogs every day. Somewhere hidden in that lot are two I write and every day I entertain several dozen people around the world who seem to have nothing better to do.

See, I’ve become a blog addict. A blogaholic, if you will. I came a bit late to the game but I’ve been captured by the blogosphere for more than two years. It started as a way to kill some time but, like all addictions, seems to be taking over my life.

This was all relatively manageable when I was just using a browser. If I had some spare time, I’d flip over to Gizmodo or Gridskipper to see what was going on. But the list of blogs I started checking daily just kept growing and so did my frustration when I’d blurf (that’s blogspeak for blog surf) over to some site repeatedly only to find nothing new.

So I figured I’d better get off my butt and get into RSS. RSS is a way of subscribing to blogs (or ‘news feeds’). That way new blog updates (blupdates in the jargon) are pushed to you when they’re published. Really simple! Of the dozens of RSS readers out there, most are free. Some are distinct pieces of software you run on your computer (and now, even on smartphones); others are web sites that manage it for you. My choice was a program called Great News (which you can download for free from www.curiostudio.com).

With Great News mastered, my addiction moved to an entirely new plane. I posted the blogs I visit daily in the reader – but that wasn’t enough. I discovered lots of other stuff available to RSS feeds, and started filling up my reader with it. And became unreasonably angry when finding some site I previously liked didn’t offer an RSS option.

Some of this stuff is useful for my job or for my other ‘hobbies’, even for writing this column. The blogs I subscribe to from HK and China make me appear much more knowledgeable than I really am about the region to people in my company’s headquarters, most of whom think Hong Kong is part of
Japan and can’t tell the difference between West Texas and West China.

I’ve got 16 subscriptions for music news. Aquarium Drunkard has a piece on “rising indie-folk duo” Travel By Sea and another on “the formidable songwriting talents” of Elephant Micah.
Copy, Right? has a round-up of 15 different Adam & the Ants covers. Said the Gramophone has a piece from “genius” Zac Pennington on how much he likes Sparks. How did I ever live without this stuff?

Movies, TV and DVDs? 25 subscriptions. Alex Rider: Operation Stormbreaker grossed $4,010 in the US yesterday. Tittybangbang – The Complete First Series has just been released on DVD in the UK. And there’s a new animated series starting on Adult Swim in the US about a crime-fighting ass named, what else, Assy McGee. See, if I didn’t read blogs, how would I know all this?

Well, okay, some useful information does come my way. I get headlines from various newspapers around the world (would you be shocked to learn that the SCMP doesn’t offer RSS but The Standard does?), movie news from Variety and Billboard, political coverage, tips on how to be a better photographer, restaurant tips, CD release dates...

Information overload has become a part of my life but I can’t figure out how to cut back. Each morning I wake up, look at my computer screen and find 1,487 updates to my 232 subscribed feeds. But I can’t skip anything…

Is there any hope for me? Is there any cure for this horrendous addiction? For the answer, I turned to the Internet, as I always do. Yes, there’s a blog for The Central Vermont Blog Addiction Treatment Center. And another called Blogaholics Anonymous. I don’t know which gets me more upset – that these are jokes or that both sites haven’t been updated in two years.

Well, I’m not giving up. The answer must be out there. First I’m going to check IDontLikeYouInThatWay.Com because maybe Tom Cruise has said something about Scientology offering a way out. Then I’ll look at Asian Flickr Babes, just because. And maybe think about what Brian Boitano would do.

I need to get out more.