Why keep the mundane details of your day a secret?

I’m getting long in the tooth, the frost is on the pumpkin, and the hour draws near. Not to mention that the cliches are pouring out faster than maple syrup at an overheated IHOP. So, the thought occurred: Why not start a blog? Why not turn myself loose?

Tell the truth, don’t you feel a little silly that you don’t have a blog? I do.

Are you at a coffeehouse right now? See that person next to you in the running gear? She has a blog. See that guy over in the corner with the laptop? He does too.

Some of you are asking, what the heck is a blog? You know it’s got something to do with the Internet, but you’re not sure what. Sounds like a defect, doesn’t it? Like, the Internet has a blog on it and someone should call a blogger to remove it.

Nope, that’s not it. A blog is your own personal view of things, a view you can make available to anyone who wants to read about it. You’re interesting, aren’t you? Of course you are. Why keep it to yourself?

All you need to do is take note of stuff you do and keep updating it, freshening it throughout the day or week.

Sounds pretty cool, huh?

I got the urge to blog the other night while out for a walk on a beautiful Southern California evening that made me feel like a man one-third my age. It’s the time of day when ideas start popping into my head like lottery balls on Saturday night. First I went to the library to return a video. Then over to an ATM to get some cash. From there, it was a short walk to a restaurant for dinner. I ordered the pot roast and read the paper while eating. Then I went home and watched the Dodger-Padre game while doing a crossword puzzle before going to bed.

That all struck me as fascinating stuff -- slices of everyday life that other people surely would find interesting. For example, the newspaper I found inside the restaurant had two giant holes in the sports page. Wonder how that happened. What was the person cutting out? The front section was slightly moist and somewhat icky to hold, as if the previous reader had left it in some water that had spilled on the table.

If only I had a blog....

Another reason for blogging is to inform others of your opinions or philosophies. Again, a bingo for me. I have many philosophies, some in direct conflict with others. For example, I strongly believe in being nice to people, but what if being nice doesn’t result in any extra cash in my pocket? Is it still worth it to be nice? See what I mean about conflicts?

Technorati is a San Francisco company that tracks blogs. It puts the current number at 85 million and growing by the millions each year.

The most popular ones tend to be about celebrities or politics, a Technorati spokesman said. But, he said, there are plenty of personal journals “of mundane, day-to-day activities. Like ‘4 p.m. I went to the movies and came back and had a hot dog.’ ”

I told him that sounded like my blog idea. He fell silent for a moment.

“There are also a lot of blogs about blogging itself,” the spokesman said. “People are fascinated about how the Internet and society and culture are changing, because all of a sudden there’s this situation where the audience is able to dictate what’s news and what’s interesting.”

As a newspaper guy, I hear from a lot of other people’s blogs. One of the more recent came from Jack and Susan Simpson of Cerritos. It is a site devoted to city managers and seems like such a narrow niche that I called Jack, a former city manager, to see how they came up with it.

“It’s not a blog,” said Simpson, gently correcting me and calling it more of a newsletter. Apologizing in advance for his prose, Simpson said the site “provides a thread that helps stitch together the fabric of the city manager community.”

Ah, I said, so you and I are the only guys without blogs.

“I don’t have one,” Simpson said, “but I’ve got a daughter who’s a country singer in Nashville. She’s got a blog.”

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at dana.parsons@latimes.com. An archive of his recent columns is at www.latimes.com/parsons.