One morning this week, out with the White Prince for a walk, a guy on a bicycle passed me. We nodded or grunted at one another, it being too early for anything more. A few minutes later, he circled back and said, “Blatchford?”

I grunted again.

“Hey,” he said, “can I take your picture for my blog?”

I grunted assent: He could have taken the shot without my permission anyway and he wasn't unpleasant. Unbidden, he pledged to send me the link to his blog, and a couple of days later, he did, and sure enough, there was the picture of Obie and me, him looking fabulous as he always does, me looking crabby as I usually do.

It was innocuous enough, I suppose, but pointless and weird, part of the fabric of modern life I utterly don't get. I am not Madonna. I am not photogenic, although my dog is. Who on the planet gives a rat's arse that I was walking the dog in the Annex in the predawn of that morning, as the cutline to the picture accurately, if to no end, reported?

For the record, it is the last time I will read that particular blog, or any other. (And curious thing about that blog: The man who writes it uses only his first name and protects his identity, ostensibly, he says, because he means the blog to be about ideas. So what's the grand idea behind the picture he took of me and my dog?)

God knows, as a writer, I understand the need for self-expression. It's the same reason that people used to keep diaries. What I don't understand is the desire to make the diaries public. In the olden days, people had the wit to keep their diaries secret and, indeed, went to some lengths to protect their privacy. I once went into a teenaged rage when I discovered my mother was reading mine; the miracle, I know now, is that she stayed awake and was not made ill by all the angst. Now, people merrily post their diaries online and call them blogs. The writing hasn't noticeably improved.

Newspapers now have some of their writers writing blogs. Some of the writers actually like it, or say they do. So when the writers finish writing for the newspaper, they write for their blogs. At least, they say, you can write as long as you want, meaning there is no evil editor chopping out the best bits and asking dopey questions. Aye, that's the thing: What the deluded writer considers the best bit often isn't.

Now, no one is more impatient with editors than I am, as all of The Globe's could testify.

But they are necessary, and they as often as not save me from myself, although there are times even the best editor can't do that. But they try. If they stumble over a certain paragraph, they will say so, and point out that the innocent reader, too, might do the same.

“How can you not understand it?” I snarled recently at one of my best and longest-suffering editors, who was churlishly querying an incomprehensible sentence.

“Well,” she said mildly, “I don't.”

I fixed it.

But not so most blogs: They are the writer's unedited, uncensored, unexpurgated thoughts. It is akin to listening to Rick Wills, the frighteningly garrulous accused killer whose murder trial I have been covering (and for Mr. Wills's addicts, the case is slated to resume next week). Rick Wills needs, among other things, an editor. So do most people.

Writing, though, is one of those things that everyone believes they can do, sort of like breathing. Blogdom has only served to fuel that notion.

I remember running into a criminal lawyer I know named Steve Skurka, shortly before the Conrad Black trial began. I'd heard he was going to be in Chicago, acting as a reporter for CTV's The Verdict and writing a blog.

I congratulated him on landing the gig and then said, “I think I'll practise law next week.”

As it turns out, his blog was pretty good (although it could have used, Lord strike me down, an editor), and he's now writing a book about the trial. But the point stands: Not everyone can write. Or at least, not everyone can write without benefit of editor. Not every last thought of every single person in the world is worth “sharing,” as the lingo has it.

So I do not read blogs, and if the day comes that, after I write for the newspaper, I am asked to write a blog for the online edition, I will take up surgery instead, or law, or social work. You know, without any training or practice at all.

In a related vein, I do not have any Facebook friends. I do not respond to invitations to be anyone's Facebook friend. I get several of these a month, always from complete strangers.

See, that's the thing about friends: I know them already. We already are friends. As my late father used to say, and this was long before Facebook, “I don't want to meet anyone new. I have enough friends.” Me, too. And the great thing is, we're not online friends. We're real friends. They already know my Fave Things and What I'm Reading and What I'm Listening To Now.

They know that getting another unsolicited e-mail (“Dearest Beloved,” they always begin) from some purported banker offering me the chance to collect on millions if only I will briskly forward my net worth is not a Fave Thing, but that still I would prefer it to a Facebook invitation.

I am no one's beloved. I have no Facebook friends. I want no Facebook friends. I have no online community. I do not blog, I have not blogged, I will not blog and, furthermore, I do not care to read blogs.