“I’m always surprised when someone tells me they read the essays I post up here. I don’t know why I do it. Oh well, here’s another one.”

So says the author at the web site, UH HUH HER. (On each article the author is listed as “by the girl.”)

When I started blogging my first concern was if anyone at all was reading my stuff. The first month I blogged I got 13 hits. I didn’t know how to use the administrative screen so most of those were probably just me looking at it. I’m doing much better these days and it feels good. But there is also that thought, “Why are people reading my stuff?” I’m careful not to ask. It deforms your feedback. People almost always want you to feel good often when they need to say, “Stop doing that.”

I am not surprised that people read her web site. The writing ranges from academic to humor and sometimes it is … Well look at this –

I miss the smell of dog on my hands. The last two years have been the first in twenty that I haven’t had a dog. I’m not that person who pats dogs in passing when they’re tied up outside the milk bar—I’m the person who chats to them intently for ten minutes , and then labours in the oily smell of fur on my hands for hours afterwards.

It’s pretty. But she is quite willing to hit you a little harder –

In my first blog entry I highlighted what I saw to be a huge irony belying the notion that in order to fix the problems caused by excessive consumption, we need to consume more (albeit differently). I now know that this irony is representative of the difference between ‘anti-consumerist’ and ‘anti-consumption’. However, prior to acquiring this knowledge, I dared to point out said irony to my eccentric, long-time greenie, sometimes-activist father. His response was to inform me that he was ‘baffled’ as to the point I was making, and that there is a premium to pay in order to foster the development of sustainable and humane businesses. Having subsequently raised this idea myself in class, I was dismayed to discover that the there was a strong view that such practices will not encourage actual development, but rather just increase ‘ethical’ marketing. While I agree that the contemporary fetishizing of everything ‘green’ (and red) has resulted in a marked increase in products that appeal to the conscious consumer’s sensibilities without actually offering them anything, this stance implies to me that we should do nothing. It’s been pointed out that ethical consumption is almost exclusively a middle-class phenomenon, and is inextricably tied to notions of neo-liberalism and moral selving. I do also agree with these ideas to an extent, but I think we risk throwing out the baby with the bathwater if we take them on exclusively. Maybe I’m an optimist (for which I make no apologies) but I like to think of the middle-class as having an opportunity, nay, a responsibility, to use their spending power to demand better of big-business for the long term benefit of the economically impoverished. We broke it, we ought to at least try to fix it.

It’s a fun web site, often thoughtful. Be very sure that I do not share some of the ideas and beliefs discussed. Nevertheless, an interesting site with good writing.

James Pilant