What's a mackerel wrapper?

"My work is being destroyed almost as soon as it is printed. One day it is being read; the next day someone's wrapping fish in it." -- Al Capp, syndicated cartoonist

"All newspaper writers have heard that the stuff they compose today has an excellent chance of being used to wrap tomorrow's mackerel." -- Ira Berkow, New York Times

It's hard to believe ... I've been blogging nearly a month now. Over Christmas, I started reading up on blogs over latte at Springfield's big box bookstore, carefully taking notes on paper napkins, wondering if I could do one of those things too. What it'd look like if I did. So I was planning, planning, planning ... focusing. Then, with a week to go before spring semester, I started filling in a trial blog template, hit the wrong key and posted the darn thing to the World Wide Web ... and I got hooked.

So, anyway, that's my introduction. I guess it's as good as any.

I'm calling my blog "The Mackerel Wrapper." Newspapers used to be called fish-wrappers because they're highly perishable. (Remember newspapers? Back before talk radio and the Internet?) I like it as a name for the blog, because any commentary I indulge myself in is highly perishable, too.

So are mackerels, as it turns out. Here's what Wikipedia says about them:

Mackerel is a common name applied to a number of different species of fish, mostly, but not exclusively, from the family Scombridae. They occur in all tropical and temperate seas. ... The meat can spoil quickly, especially in the tropics, causing scombroid food poisoning - it must be eaten on the day of capture, unless cured. For this reason, mackerel is the only fish traditionally sold on a Sunday in London, and is the only common salt-cured sushi.

So now we know.

I like the name, too, because there's a lot of variety on the blog. Probably too much. Media analysis, literature, writers writing about writing, a few links on Native American themes and music. And doesn't the name Scombridae roll trippingly off the tongue? Think of the blog as focusing on scromboid media content.

Mostly I see the blog's purpose as a way of quoting some of the more provocative stories I read on the 'net, and preserving links to archives where I can find them again if I need them. (Most newspapers don't archive on the website past seven days, but they're more than happy to sell acess to their data bases. So dead links usually take you to a form where you can register to use their archives.) There's some commentary on my part. But I'm more interested in preserving the links, so I can go back and find archived stories. Somebody once classified blogs as being written by "thinkers" and "linkers," and I want to be counted with the linkers.

But I honestly don't know how the blog's going to turn out. Already, in the three weeks since I started posting, it's evolving differently than what I'd expected. I'm willing to roll with that, see what happens. In fact, when you get down to it, it's why I started blogging.