Wondering

1. In preparation for the new phone system we're installing tomorrow, I'm going through the generic online training tutorial (I mean literally right now I'm doing this, it's droning in the background as I write from the reception desk). What's fascinating me now is of course not the content but the nice gentleman speaking and operating the phones in the first-person perspective presentation. He's got a nice clean voice, which is probably why he was chosen to do it. However, he's also got a little bit of a lisp, which is utterly consuming my attention. I don't mean like a homosexual lisp but more of an adolescent lisp, where many of the words are just sloppily or lazily pronounced. It's not regional, like a dialect. For example, he just used the word "regional," and he spoke it as "reguh-nool." This is a very slight example. "The" becomes "deh," "external" becomes "etsternal," "calls" becomes "cualls." But the biggest one is row. He says "rwow." It's like how Bobby Flay talks. It's a soothing voice, but I don't know why. I also for some reason associate it with Asian people, which I why I'm assuming this gentleman is Asian. I wonder if that association comes from the l/r problem they often have with English? I wonder if my assumption is a social stereotype or if Asian people just get used to pronouncing things slightly wrong because they've heard it so much from family?
Whatever the answers to those questions, this particular guide has got my sense of perception engaged, and I haven't got much to work with. His hands aren't model hands but instead a bit lumpy, and tanned. Other than that, so far I've only gotten a quick view of his upper right forehead and his button blue sleeves. Nonetheless, I feel acquainted with him, and my reaction to this is similar to any time you meet someone new or mysterious: I want to know more, and I want to project things onto him. Why do people do that? Why does a disembodied voice and two hands cause me to want to know about the rest of him? Why does his odd speaking spark that zest to know more? We are a curious species.

2. Something more generally interesting is this next thing. I was back in Columbus this past weekend and ran into some old college friends. One person (who was really more a friend-of-a-friend, meaning I haven't talked with him and never would have known him were it not for my friend, still this is someone with whom I effortlessly communicate) asked me if I was still writing my blog. Fairly mundane question and I answered that sure I was but not prolificly. The interesting thing is that he almost instantly added: "sorry if I'm not readng it regularly," as though some mention of his reading habits were necessary.
Now, nothing in the way this person acted was remotely out of the ordinary, and naturally neither of us made any notice of anything odd occurring. Nevertheless, I find his qualifying remark (sorry if I'm not reading) to be very interesting. Why did he (or would anyone) ever feel the need to apologize there? Has our blogging society become so (im)personal that people read by requisition? Is it a personal reflection on a person if an acquaintance of that person either does or doesn't read his blog?
This is a dangerous trend, I think. To borrow Descartes: "I write therefore I am read."
I think a requirement for a valuable friendship is to find the person interesting, so naturally it would follow that you would enjoy talking with him or--back to our example--reading something he has written. Now, when we talk to someone, we share in leading the conversation; we have a say in keeping things interesting to us; however, when a person writes something they are free to go off on their own without regard to someone else's interest level. There are people who do write solely with the intent of keeping people interested, but those people are not merely writing, they are entertaining, and only using written words as a medium.
I don't blog-write like that. I write what interests me and I let myself go with a thought. It's what I love about this form of writing: it's vaguely formal but simultaneously totally personal. I feel almost as though whoever may be reading I am engaging in one of those long thoughtful conversations that seem to occur around fireplaces and involve politics or religion (since most people aren't conditioned well enough to have serious intelligent and actual free-will opinions on anything else, but that's digressing too much for now). If someone out there doesn't find a topic as interesting as I do, then don't consider it a reflection on me I consider it a reflection on us as we relate to that topic. Nothing more. Some of my best friends really get into current music, but I get no interest from it so whenever they talk about it I either drift off or find someone else to talk about something different. It's nothing personal that I don't share their interest in music.
So I wonder if apologizing to someone for not reading their blog is more meaningful than that? I know that I think it shouldn't be, but probably it is. I guess an easy way to describe my general belief is that if you are a person who would be offended by someone not reading your blog, then you probably shouldn't be blogging, or you should get new friends.