Springfield is a Metaphor
There are many reasons why I love the show, “House.” Hugh Laurie plays a cranky doctor exceptionally well, but at this precise moment, I’m reminded of one of my favorite quotes: “Can you rephrase that in the form of a metaphor.” House, and his assistants, always wax metaphorical, partly because they have to. Much of that show deals with technical and baffling medical diagnostics, and if the show were poorly written, it would sound like Star Trek at it’s worst – filled with techno babble. A good comparative metaphor can put the scientific into layman’s terms.
That’s why I find a recent blog post over at Blogging Experiment fascinating. Ben Cook has chosen to talk about the ins and outs of blogging in an interesting way. He’s chosen to use The Simpsons as his metaphors to help make his points. For example, he mentions the fact that Homer has LOTS of hair-brained schemes, most of which fail spectacularly: gaining weight to go on disability, taking Flanders to Los Vegas, starting up a tow truck or snow plow business:
The first lesson of blogging that we get from this hilarious animated family is that not all of your plans are going to work like you expect them to. Hopefully your plans will be more thought out than Homer’s harebrained schemes but no matter how much planning and preparation you put in, things just don’t always work out like we think they should
The post is about blogging for money, or turning one’s blog into a profitable enterprise. Some of the topics covered is branding, involving a community, and paying close attention to detail. Of course, one the golden rules, when it comes to blogging, is this: create interesting content that a potential reader can’t get anywhere else. That certainly seems to be the case with that Simpsons related post. All too often, sites offering how-to advice regarding the internet get swamped with jargon, so it’s refreshing to see something else instead.
March 6th, 2008 at 7:25 am
[...] digest. For example, one can take the intricate and somewhat complicated aspects of computers and blogging, and, through a Simpsons metaphor, make the information a little more accessible to some. The key, however, is that a person needs to [...]