Category: blogging

Do you read PhotoDude? He’s a photographer down in Atlanta, and since September, has been writing what he calls his “War Blog”. I visited his site before September for his beautiful photography. Now the photos don’t get updated as often, but the opinions flow like water. His frequent collections of quotes are especially worth reading as he finds opinions from all over. It’s been very interesting to me to watch as his writing has become more cynical and critical. It mirrors my own downward spiral from being 100% behind the administration to now wondering how much more our world can become like 1984. I’ve resisted writing about it because I’m not sure I can get everything out that I want to say in anything resembling a coherent form. Reid, I’m glad you’re out there and speaking your mind and spookily speaking mine as well, but man, can we get a little sunshine every once in a while?

I’ve been thinking a lot about Elise since she turned off her sites (opinebovine.com and elisetomek.com). I don’t know why she did. I didn’t get a special e-mail just for me explaining why she did. Why would I? I’m just a reader who sent her a couple e-mails telling her how much I enjoyed her sites and background images. It’s like she died. She’s just gone. No more blogging to share with everyone. No more funny wallpaper or Ask Lucy. There’s a void and ::poof:: she’s gone.

I’m sure a lot of personal sites disappear every day. I’m not sure why her’s makes me think about the idea of the death of online lives. I think it’s because I still have Opine Bovine in my bookmarks and try to get to the site every week or so, hoping she changed her mind and decided to set up shop again. The first digital life I saw snuffed out was This Girl. Her’s was actually the first blog I ever visited, long before the word was invented. After a while, the new posts stopped and I stopped visiting. I’d check back every couple months in the hope she’d posted something new, but she never did.

How does someone decide that it’s time to call it quits and ditch their sites that they’ve obviously put a lot of work and time into? Boredom? Privacy? They’ve discovered a new hobby? I’m not sure, and I’m not exactly sure why I’m writing this other than to say that it’s an odd mourning to experience.

I’ve been paired up with Charles from Six Different Ways for this round of Blogger Insider. The last two times, I’ve been paired up with Bloggy Heavyweights. Now, I just have to come up with some questions. Any ideas? What would you ask yourself if you were being interviewed?

It’s a strange day. I’ve been reading about the demise of a company I once respected, and a love story I’ve watched from afar (so far that I’ve only exchanged e-mails, but wow, it’s been a hell of a story – one I hope they never make into a movie because I don’t think anyone could get it right but the participants).

I’m thinking about moving my site to Hub.org. They provide AOLserver + Postgres hosting at reasonable prices, and well, I’ve realized that I want to start doing more with this site, and my current host just won’t allow me to do it. I’m not sure of the timing of everything, but expect to hear more in the coming weeks (maybe for my birthday).

I will be 27 on March 20th. How do I know this? My globe-trotting sister just turned 17. I don’t know, but that seems a little older than I feel. I still feel 22 and stupid some days. Others, I feel much much older: like I’m the old man at the party looking at everyone with the bemused wink of someone who’s done it all and knows what’s what. It’s an odd feeling considering that I haven’t left the country to go anywhere other than Mexico in almost 20 years (damn, that’s a long time). Now I know how Jen felt last year. Twenty-seven has a ring to it. It sounds like I should know something, something you learn somewhere between twenty-six and twenty-seven. What that something is though, I have no idea: Always cut away from yourself, never leave the oven on overnight, don’t play with matches, sit when you pee, what is it? Maybe I’ll learn it in the next month or so and be all ready to be a mature and with-it grown up.

Oh, now I know what I really wanted to tell you about today. I have a confession to make. I am comfortable enough with my masculinity and any ridicule that this might bring to tell you my deep dark secret. It’s a gigantic admission for a guy to say this: I pee sitting down. Yes, that’s right. I don’t do the stand-up-and-spray like every good man. I don’t leave pee drops on the seat or floor. I sit like a lady, do my business out of sight and then flush it away without so much as a look. I know you’re all horrified, but it gets worse. And why save more pain for later when I can let it all out now and not think of it again. For some reason, my wife sometimes leaves the seat up. I’m not sure what she’s doing that the seat needs to be up, and I’m a little afraid to ask. Nevertheless, I now know why women get so upset when the seat’s left up and they go to sit down. Sometimes, in the dead of night, when I make the trek to the bathroom, so tired I don’t bother to turn on the light, go into sitting mode, and then… there’s something missing. Ass touches porcelain and the relfexes kick in. There is a fumbled leap up, which is not so graceful with pants around ankles and bits flailing. If I’m lucky, I’m able to gather my wits, do my thing and go back to bed. If I’m not, it means sitting for a while, calming down, and taking 5 minutes to do a 30 second job.

I feel so much better now. Thanks for listening, and understanding.

It’s pretty. It’s not a fancy blog, but there’s something very stylish and neat-o about it. Plus, anyone who uses a grainy AstroBoy pic is cool, right?

Yours truly is sponsoring the Bad Hair Blog category of the Anti-Bloggies this year. Want to see what I’m offering as the prize? You have to go check out the contest to see.

I know these are late, but Mike from akacooties asked some great questions, and I really had to think about some of the answers. Here they are:

1. shouldn’t you on max’s case, and get him to update his blog more frequently?
   I really should. The kid’s two already and he should be able to type. You sound like my mother-in-law.
2. back (way back) in dec 2001, you seemed to feel badly that gore had lost the election. do you feel the same now, given 09.11.01? would gore have done a better job in the aftermath of the attack? (two questions, but i’llconsider it one).
   Part 1: I do still feel a little guilty about Gore losing. Even the appearance of partisanship in determining the outcome of an election is disgraceful. I almost feel like the US needs UN Inspectors to oversee the next one. It was an embarrassment to my country, and it has enough of those already.

   Part 2: I still feel the same. My feelings about the election have very little to do with my feelings about what happened from September eleventh until now.

   Part 3: I don’t know. I think he might have instilled more confidence at the outset, but I don’t think he’d have Colin Powell. I think Powell did an amazing job behind the scenes right after the attacks to play bad cop and get our neighbors and allies to fall into line. I doubt Gore would have anyone in his cabinet able to pull that kind of weight in the world community. But, what do I know?

3. my parents live in tucson. isn’t that exciting?
   That is exciting. Hopefully, they’re year-round residents. If not, they have the dubious label of “snowbird” and no one who lives there will like them much.
4. you’ve been on the internet for some time (7 years now). better, or worse? bigger, way bigger, isn’t necessarily better. (okay, ladies, i hear you giggling).
   I love this question. It made me go back and remember where the web has come from. We I started, it felt like there were a dozen of us in a huge stadium, sitting around on the floor playing with this toy we knew would be huge. We were just waiting for everyone else to figure it out and join us. The web was full of fan pages, scientific documents and a few of the first brave companies to venture out on the web (like SGI, does anyone else remember the SurfZone?). The cool thing was animated gifs and horrible background images. Then, we got frames, and everyone went nuts, then just about killed themselves with javascript and Shockwave. Today, we have the tools to create amazing sites, and I think some of the newness has worn off. Now that that everyone’s here, part of me wants them all to leave.

   Overall though, I think the web is a lot better than it was seven years ago. Bigger is better when it comes to audience and the amount of good content online. Bigger is worse when you look at ads, the consolidation of content and the attempt by the giant corporations of the world (like mine) to co-opt the web into a marketing and sales tool. Today we have some excellent personal websites and tools we couldn’t have dreamed of back then for personal expression, designers who are taking presentation to the next level and great technology available for building sites. On the other hand, we’re also in the middle of a huge consolidation of power and readership on the web, that I think will make the web look like an airport newstand in the not too distant future. To find the independant content, users will have to dig deeper and look harder to find it.

   So, the web is definitely better now. There is a wealth of almost any kind of site and information you could ever want. New voices are joining all the time. I love that.

5. a while ago, i joined a football pool – knowing zero about the sport (i bought stats books in the pre-season). i’m willing to try again: what is it about sport that does so much for you? what am i missing?
   You know, it’s ok that you only gave me twelve questions. With all these multi-parters, you’re up to almost twenty. Why do I love football? It’s the ultimate team game. When played right, it’s like the best band you’ve ever heard on their best night. You can pay attention to just one musician and have a great time, or take it all in and enjoy the entire presentation. I admit that football is a little hard to get into because it looks like a bunch of sweaty guys beating the hell out of each other for an hour. But, when you start to dissect what’s going on, it’s amazing the amount of training, coordination, skill and sheer physical talent it takes to play the game well. If you want to see great football (well, what I think will be great football), watch the Packers-Rams game this weekend. When the quarterbacks come up to the line before a play, watch his eyes. See how he sizes up the defense and how their lined up. In those two or three seconds before the snap, he has to make most of his decisions about what he’s going to do with the ball. After the snap, watch how he runs backwards while looking forward for rushers and his receivers. In the two seconds he has before the defensive lineman get through his offensive line, watch how he takes the whole field in and makes a decision.

   When it’s good, football has a certain violent grace to it. Offensive and defensive lines battering each other up front, running backs finding small creases in the battle to get free and run. Linebackers roaming like hungry animals behind the elephants, waiting for the rabbit to scamper through so they can pounce on it. I love me some football, can you tell?

6. the police… were they not, and haven’t they remained, simply one of themost enjoyable groups of the last 40 years?
   Amen! The Police was the first band I can remember other than the Beatles that my dad and I both liked and sang along with in the car.
7. while out taste in art is radically different, i enjoyed your descriptionof what you saw at the baltimore gallery. did you paint, as you wanted to,after your visit?
   (you went deep for that one, good job) I didn’t actually paint anything right then, but for Max’s birthday in October, my sister and I painted a mural in his room. I’m still toying with the idea of painting a huge canvas for our living room with Max. He does these amazing little drawings and I’m thinking of blowing them up on the canvas and seeing what happens.
8. jill, kelly, sabrina, kriss, tiffany or julie: which was the bitchenestangel? (i realise you were 6 when it went off the air).
   No idea, which ever one Cheryl Tiegs was. The first bikini I ever saw on anyone was a poster of Cheryl Tiegs in a friend’s older brother’s room.
9. you work for AOL, but do you use AOL for your connection?
   Unfortunately. We moved a little over a year ago, and I’m waiting for Dsl to make it to our neighborhood before I start paying for a connection.
10. ‘trading spaces’: alex or paige? do you also watch ‘changing rooms’?
    It’s so hard to pick. I definitely don’t watch Trading Spaces for the hosts, but I have to go with Alex. Paige is too perky and cheerleadery. You could tell no one really liked Alex, and that was entertaining. I like Changing Rooms a lot more than I do Trading Spaces. I think the designers are better, and I love the host. Plus, I think they show a lot more in 30 minutes than Trading Spaces does in an hour, which is cool.
11. ‘band of brothers’ or ‘saving private ryan’?
    Band of Brothers in a landslide. The acting was better. The story was true. I think it was a make-up for Tom Hanks and Spielberg for the movie. Band of Brothers was what Ryan should have been.
12. ‘yellow dog’ or ‘red dog’: which would win you more friends at a party?
    Since I get quizzical blank stares when I talk about Yellow Dog, I’ll have to go with the other one.
13. there is no 13. can i just end it here?
    Sure thing. Great questions.

Mike Brown did an excellent job answering my Blogger Insider questions. His questions are great, and I’ll be posting my answers tonight.