Greetings from the internet (or, how I learned to continuously worry about the name of this blog)

Hi hypothetical reader! I'm saying you're hypothetical right now because there is no way of knowing if you - exactly you - is going to be reading this blog at the time I think you're reading it. Because, from a philosophical perspective, how is it even possible to guarantee even the existence of this blog without seeing and reading it? Furthermore, can items on the internet even be considered "real" or "tangible", as one is not able to physically hold it in your hand; nor does it take up any physical space in the world as we know it. For the purposes of this blog, however, I'm gonna consider you real.

Welcome to the internet

So if you haven't already guessed, this is about movies.

I've been wanting to do a film blog for about a year, ever since I found out that that's what a lot of my fellow film students are doing and figuring I might as well leave some sort of "internet footprint" (I'm coining that phrase) beyond a narcissistic, look-at-me-I'm-so-funny, please-love-me Facebook profile.

The main problem for me was coming up with the perfect blog name. That didn't work so I settled on Talking Pictures, a name I came up with while desperately, hungover, looking for food in a neighbourhood I had been in for barely 12 hours. My previous night was spent at a friends place who had recently graduated and moved to Toronto, getting intoxicated and binge-watching the fantastic Rick and Morty for the first time, so my brain was a little out of whack. It managed to shit out the name Talking Pictures, which I admit has a nice ring to it, but I instantly realized how it might cause some confusion.

You try sleeping well after watching this on drugs

The most obvious point of confusion is that the reader might mistake it for being a blog about pictures, aka photography. But its not - most of the blogs will at least try to be about movies. The name, obviously, comes from the term that people used to refer to new sound films that emerged in the late 20s. After time, all movies became sound so they were just called "movies" (which is itself an old-timey slang for moving pictures). I guess I could have called it "Talking Talking Pictures", but that sounds like a Dr. Seuss film blog. Worse, if my blog had been about screenshots from films, I would have to call it "Talking Pictures of Talking Pictures". Meta.

Any other alternative names didn't seem to work either. If I would have called it "Moving Pictures", people might assume it was about guys moving pictures from, say one museum to another, or a tribute to that RUSH album (which itself has a cover that is a pun on moving pictures, with guys moving pictures). Those are both niche markets.

Pictured: Meta

More problems arose with trying to come up with a URL name. Since "talkingpictures.blogsopt" was taken, I decided to try and personify it, calling it "joecraibstalkingpictures.blogspot". Literate readers will notice that, because the brain is a twisted psychopath, that doesn't read as "Joe Craibs Talking Pictures" but more like "Joe Craib Stalking Pictures", which doesn't have the family-friendly appeal I was going for. Worse, if you're brain does that thing where it decides to fuck around and add extra letters to stuff you read, it could come out as "Joe Craib's Stalking Pictures" - which is inherently a lot worse than "Joe Craib Stalking Pictures". Stalking pictures is how most of social media works these days, so basically everyone does it. But it they're MY stalking pictures, then that's a whole other can of worms ("can of worms" being street slang for "prison").

Colloquialisms are a cruel mistress.  

Nevertheless, I feel [hope(pray)] that people will soon figure out that "pictures" means "movies". Also, the Oscar category for best film is called "Best Picture", and they've never awarded that to a Monet (though it would have been far better than Argo), so that's helpful.

Overall, I hope to see some of you along this journey down the information superhighway. Of course, I can't actually see you (it isn't one of those talking pictures sites), nor even sense your presence. Furthermore, I'm not actually sure in which direction one can travel on the internet. Is there even a sense of direction? Is the web bound by the laws of physics? Or time? How does time even work, anyway? Maybe I should save those ideas for my metaphysics blog.

So, in the words of Matthew McConaughey's Rustin Cohle on HBO's True Detective, maybe "time is a flat circle". Or, in the words of unsuspecting viewers watching that for the first time: "what the fuck was that?".