Amidst discoursing on cold winters and Superman, Lileks coins a new word: bloggist (ah, I see that the spell checquer in Firefox doesn't recognize it--I'll have to add it to the dictionary...done):

Want to bet that his identity was safe at the end of the comic? Would you care to wager that the Girl of Tomorrow, who came from the future to use mind-reading powers to trap an alien into a loveless marriage – a proposition whose horrible prospect made Superman leap, as though his hindquarters had involuntarily loosed a gas-blast sufficient to lift him off his feet and billow his cape – did not succeed in telling the whole world his useless secret? Maybe that’s why I want to watch the movie; I want to see if they came up with a compelling reason for Superman to have a secret identity. It’s like the world’s longest-running metaphor for being in the closet, which I’m sure two thousand other bloggists have noted.

Bloggists? Where did that come from? I actually like it; better than blogger. Blogger sounds like someone carrying big wobbly Hefty bags of Jell-O; bloggist has a certain precision, as well as an old-world charm. It also lends itself to bloggista and bloggisto, which moves the emphasis from the dull O to the pert & vivacious i vowel.

My deep dark secret--I've always hated the word blog. It's so ugly: it sounds like something mucky you get stuck in, and I remain embarrassed to this day to admit that I have one. But the word caught fire five years or so ago, and I could no more hold it back than could Canute the tide. But I'll never call myself a blogger again. I'm a bloggist!

We may shortly expect to read disquisitions from Andrew Sullivan et al on the Christianist Bloggist menace. Or maybe the Bloggist Christianist menace. Or something. Just as long as it's a menace that eeeevil right-wingnuts are obviously so threatened by the exposure of, so in denial of, that they ineluctably and furiously oppose Sullivan et al.

When Lileks mused: Bloggists? Where did that come from? I suspected it was a psuedo response to Andrew Sullivans Christianist rants.

As God is my witness, I'll never be a blogger again!

If I were to start a blog would that make me a blogista?

'Bloggist' has another advantage, it sounds like 'shootist' as in the title of John Wayne's last movie. Someone absolutely sure of themselves and prepared to back up that opinion.

Of course the interesting thing about the -ist suffix is that it also can be attached to the meaning of someone who is prejudiced against a particular social grouping. So in fact the word blogist could apply to the MSM folks that have a prejudiced attitude towards bloggers. Perhaps 2 gg's would denote the one practicing the art of blogging while one g would be the prejudiced sort. For instance when they accuse all bloggists of sitting around in pajamas that would be a blogist attitude.

This suffix also opens up the realm of applying the next closest suffix of -istic; for instance all commenters to an original bloggists site would be bloggistic since they would would be in imitation of/or have some of the characteristics of a bloggist.

Now if you will excuse me....*goes back to punching small woodland creatures in the face*

This opens a whole plethora of possibilities. I read blogs for quite a while before I started my own, does that mean I was a bloggeur? Would a pastor who starts a blog be a b-logian? The process of setting up and maintaining a blog, blogistics? Would redesigning a crude blog into a popular good-looking blog make you Blogmalian? Threatening someone over the contents of their blog would mean blogmail?

I guess I'll slink away and go lie bloggo...