Blah-ging

During my vast stretches of free time — between working full time, raising a 1-year-old, keeping my family in clean clothes, and remaining married — I like to catch up on my reading. For me, that means books, but I know that many parents like to read the blogs of other parents (and keep their own). Because I spend all day in front of a computer, the idea of sitting in front of my laptop in the evening sounds repugnant, but the few such blogs I've checked out at the recommendation of friends are funny, wise, and instructive. Not so the new "baby blog" offered by the Chronicle — just one of 17 blogs on the paper's Web site — launched on July 5.

While I commend any parent (the Poopsters are four Chron reporters with little kids) who gets moms and pops talking, I'm afraid this blog isn't all that.

Let's start with the title: "The Poop." I feel about this name the way I feel about picking up spiders with my bare hands. Why, when I have such an unwelcomely intimate relationship with my son's excretions, would I want to be reminded of shit? I don't subscribe to the theory that once you have children you become inured to conversations about crap.

Next, relevance: I just don't see how this blog adds to the lives of everyday moms and dads in the city. The first entry, for example, included a disturbingly straight-faced item about buying calling cards for your children, a minirant about the sad polar bears at the zoo, and a lineup of the five "Best Places to Shop for Baby in San Francisco" — nothing new or insightful. Later columns have included bits about whether to use dog-poop bags to dispose of dirty diapers (why?), recommendations for sites on which you can buy yoga pants that say "MILF" (that's "Mom I'd Like to Fuck"), and a new column by a fake doctor. So handy!

Finally, there's the overload issue. Given all the advice Web sites (like S.F.'s own BabyCenter.com) and books (many written by locals) and e-mail lists out there — not to mention the "helpful" counsel we get from our families, friends, co-workers, and random passersby — we parents are already bombarded with information about how best to raise our kids. The last thing we need is another source. Especially one that's not any funnier than, say, poop.