How It Works: Blogging

Hello readers!

We all enjoy reading blogs, don't we? But how many of us have stopped to wonder what actually goes into to producing the finely honed prose that you are reading right now?

There's nothing like a good blog. And this is nothing like a good blog...

It's not just a case of thinking up any old crap and sending it down the line to a website in the hope that someone might find it amusing. Oh no. It's much more complicated than that.

So as part of our obligation under the Public Service Remit clause of Spraying the Rays' funding agreement with the the Information Ministry, here are the basic principles of How Blogging Works.

Using a very expensive machine know as a blogwriter, the blogger invents some Words and joins them together in a special order. These are called sentences. Pictures may be stolen from the Interweb and added to the mix. At this stage the blog is known as blurg, or raw blog.

A blogger at work

The blurg is then fed into a another machine know as the Hingebonge Recalibrator, which is basically a series of reciprocating sprockets and regurgitating valves. At this point in the process the blurg has to be kept at a temperature below -2 degrees Celsius before being recalibrated, otherwise it becomes dull and uninteresting.

This is the stage at which wit and/or controversy can be added to the blurg depending on the settings selected on the recalibrator.

The Hingebonge Recalibrator

After this lengthy and dangerous process the blurg is converted to blarg and emerges as a noxious sickly yellow substance. Blarg needs to be extensively tested on poorly paid volunteers, often from the third world or Preston. Because of the risks involved the test subjects are not allowed to be subjected to more than 3 blargs in any 24 hour period. Many do not survive longer than a fortnight.

Testing blarg.

The blarg is then fed into large scintillation vessels to ferment for a period of up to a week, depending on how stodgy the final blog is to be. This process also ensures that no trace of new jokes or topical comment find their way into the finished product.

Blarg Scintillation Vessels, or BSVs

The BSVs can also be used out of hours for brewing beer. This is why sometimes when a beer tastes insipid or without character it is said to be a bit "bloggy". This occurs when the vessels are not propely cleaned with deblogging solution after a blog has been fermented.

When the blarg emerges from the BSVs it is a clear slightly sticky fluid smelling faintly of stale mouse droppings, and is called splurge. This is converted to a series of electrical impulses in a machine know as a splogger. Full stops and semi colons are added at this point by skilled staff, also known as sploggers or blog finishers.

Splogging in progress. Note protective hairstyle worn by the operator

Now then, we're almost there! It only remains for the processed splurge or unblog as it now known, to be delivered back to the bloggers who then beam it up to Blogstar, the blog transmission satellite.

Stray Photon (left) and Robert Swipe beam their latest blogs on to the Blogger satellite transmitter.

Well readers, you know the rest!

When you click on the interweb link for your favourite blog, this activates Blogstar which transmits the blog to your PC via your rising water main.

the Blogstar satellite

Hurrah! your latest blog entry has arrived! Enjoy!

See you!

Next week: How it works: the Wheelbarrow