Just realized that I hadn't been categorizing all of the humor entries -- updated them through about half of my archives. Will try to catch the other half soon. So if you're looking for something posted here you thought was funny and you don't see it immediately on the front page, check out the humor category on the right hand side and it may be there.
And everyone give a sad wave to my poor pitiful left side, who has been completely neglected for months. It threatened to pack up its knickers and runaway and I just caught it making PB&J sandwiches for a knapsack. I really need to pay it some attention. Er, soon.
If you're surfing in from Blog Explosion and you have (or know who has) the link on your site to the COPS-style video where the woman cop was giving a sobriety test to a tall, lanky drunk who could dance... it was hysterical. And I thought I blogmarked you, but apparently, I am a dunce, because I didn't and haven't been able to surf back.
Could you please post the address to your site and a link to that video in the comments section? Much appreciated.
In other news, thanks for all the well-wishes! I live. Was kinda debatable around six a.m. this morning, as I was pretty sure the gremlins with the pick-axes in my head were doing a fine job of demolition, but I live. God bless Zomig. Or however you spell it.
I know everyone in the whole world already reads dooce and she routinely cracks me up. But an entry that can include a rant about plastic mini skirts along with this sentence:
And I'm sorry, but I'd have a hard time washing my crotch with a soap that was molded to look like a polygamous religious prophet.
Totally brilliant. Go forth and doocify yourself.
Thanks everyone for the suggestions on website re-do. (Note to Corey: don't make me come over there and smack you.) (see comments below to see why, for the rest of you.)(I've known Corey for twelve years. I think I would be disappointed if he didn't leave comments like that.)
I got extremely lucky and found a couple of web designers who're trying to get their name out; they've offered to re-do this site for free! They've had a bunch of people write to them to ask for that opportunity and I'm not sure what their criteria is for choosing, but they choose me. They're reworking their own site and have a temp page up here. If you want to qualify for your own free site re-do, write to them: bella@twelveone.org You only have 8 days left to qualify.
I need your opinions...
I'm seriously tired of the way this site looks; it's too plain, I think. I'd like to make it more sophisticated. I've finally got a photoshop program back, (having lost the old program in a computer crash + lost original disk), so I'd like to start including photos. Not that this will ever be a photo blog, but I think some photos could be fun.
I need suggestions, though. Obviously, a really cool site (but way overkill for a blog) is something that looks like this. I don't want too much stuff that makes the download take forever. But I would like something hip.
(I have minimal skills as a designer; I intend to hire someone or find a template I can modify.)
What do YOU like to see when you visit a blog, separate from interesting entries? Photos? Stylish design? I'd love to have your suggestions on things you think would improve the way this site looks.
To everyone coming over from blog explosion, welcome. It's a pretty cool concept -- I've surfed and found several blogs I've already marked for return visits.
For those not sure what this blog's focus is -- it's writing (novels, scripts), family zaniness and the world of weird that I observe.
Tiny Coconut tagged me (which was very cool of her, by the way). So lessee.... who can I tag.... Oh, this one cracked me up. One of those rare moments when someone manages to retort just the right thing at the right time.
There's been discussion (and I've come a little late) about "The Future of Weblogging" where the author, Nico MacDonald says:
"Irrespective of its provenance, it is certainly a wonderful thing that many more people are able and have chosen to be self-publishers. However, we need to encourage more people to be journalists. Journalism involves actually interviewing people, doing thorough background research on a subject, presenting a rounded and dispassionate overview, and reasoning through substantive arguments."
To me, this is a bit like someone walking into a room where a bunch of cats have been lounging and chastising said critters for not having their band uniforms on and being in line for the parade. Not ever going to happen, was never the intention, and the person making the assumption needs to re-examine both their conclusions and their motives.
Several bloggers rebutted the point, from Apt. 11d, to Oxblog to Matthew Ygelsias, to my favorite description so far, Allison Kaplan Summers' funny description of blogging as casual sex.
The author of the article bases some of his suppositions on the fact that there was a BloggerCon at Harvard, where the "best and the brightest" of the Blog Community would "schlepp their WiFi-enabled laptops" and report on the con as it progressed -- something the author touts as being significant because so many people are doing it. He refers to "leaders" of the blogging movement as the "blogerati" and urges them to, essentially, herd those cats.
The problem here and elsewhere in this discussion (other news articles, not the other blog entries noted above) is that there seemed to have been some sort of a priori assumption that bloggers wanted to report on the world, or at least, on their small corner in some objective manner. And while that may be true of many and may have been a motivation for so many issue-based blogs to have sprung up, I think the discussion is running counter-intuitive to what's actually happening in the online world and how that is significantly changing society. Sociologists have got to be having a coronary trying to figure out ways to corral this emerging culture into any sort of study that would help them decipher just what the heck all these bloggers are up to and how it's affecting the world, and as MacDonald says later in the article, journalism has often been referred to as the first draft of history. The problem is, I think the a priori assumption is wrong. I don't believe many, if not most, bloggers want to report on their corner of the world objectively -- and, in fact, don't want to report per se, but want to connect... on their world with others... subjectively.
This is a fragmented world, and for the first time in history, I think we have achieved something unique -- we are both global and completely isolated. We live in a time when we can not only drop bombs on another country, but we can read what the people who are hearing the bombs being dropped think and feel. There no longer needs to be spokespeople for a disenfranchised group because that group can now find like-minded others and form a loose community online and speak for themselves. (I'm thinking in the specific about moms who blog, but I have seen numerous other "categories" of blogs which would fall into the "disenfranchised" description.)
What the blogging world is doing currently is forming communities, global villages. And the future of that movement will profoundly change everything from politics to how laws are made to what's for dinner, because of access. I don't just want to know what someone thinks of Bush or Kerry; I want to know how what Bush has done has affected their lives. I also don't just want to know how politics has affected them, but parenting issues and love and loss and humor... because it's a form of communication that we crave far beyond journalism... and we get it in fiction. Books and movies. Welcome to the new world entertainment, the quasi short film, the blog.
Think about it... why do you go into that dark room to watch a film with dozens / hundreds of strangers? Why experience TV in a group? Why read and discuss the book? Connection to other lives, other ways of being, other choices and consequences. It's a way of sampling what others think and do and feel, safely, vicariously, and with rich detail. It's a way of getting to know the human experience more profoundly and taking away from that act knowledge not only about the other, but about oneself. It's the joy of being able to live one's own choices and lives and simultaneously, hyper-living through others... it's a way of having more than just one experience of the world. It's probably as close to making each of us as omnipotent as we're ever going to be.
MacDonald calls for a few improvements to the blogging software in order to solve what he feels are the drawbacks for blogs -- he wants better categorizing, better keyword searching, better ways to prioritize the credibility of the blogger, or maybe their "importance" in the blogging world (which again, just misses the point because if the disenfranchised are blogging, who the hell gets to say who's more important?)... and I'm sure software techs are already on top of this wish list. And like Laura in Apt. 11d or Allison in Isreal, I think the expectations of what the blogs actually are should be kept less pompous -- they are what they are -- commentary. But I do think it's commentary that's going to change the world, and rapidly. We can debunk myths faster, find out salient details faster, connect with people in other countries, faster, report on relevant political maneuverings, and so on. We can also share cultures more (from recipes to hobbies to stories) and be changed by those interactions. I think the ultimate blogging changes aren't going to be to the software per se, but to the portals, the hubs, that we all join or link to -- the global villages we form. The gestalt of these are the new journalism. I predict that there will be a near future where we will have the video blog -- the easy-to-download / view picture of the world and we'll all be so accustomed to the video intrusion into our world, that having our images online will be the norm -- the mini movie / short blog of life. (Much like the cell phone is today, and its innovations of the video messaging.) And we will want to see the others we've connected with online; we'll want to watch them bake that cake or show us the pollution or point out just how much taller their baby has grown. We will be neighbors from across the world; and neighbors look out for neighbors.
If you really REALLY want to have a bucket o' fun, here's what you do:
1) decide to finally set aside some time to create a little mini-blog for the left-hand column because that would be MUCH easier than changing the template each time.
2) do it when it's late, you're tired, and preferably when your youngest son is in a very bad mood for all sorts of things, and is certain the universe is conspiring completely against him
3) answer the phone in the middle of all of this, talk to husband about grumpy son while you're still setting up the file paths
4) have the grumpy son come in the room to gripe on the phone (with husband) about the crushing universe and then
5) look back at that file path and think, you know, maybe I'm doing this wrong, I'd better delete it and wait until I can ask someone tomorrow
6) select "delete blog" and when the little warning box pops up, think, geez, like who would be stupid enough to do this if they weren't intending on deleting it anyway?
7) press the "okay to delete" button
8) watch the wrong blog -- the MAIN blog -- disappear while the skimpy little not-even-set-up-properly blog remains, quite proudly, as the only blog on your site.
9) shriek. Scare son and husband (who's on the phone). Cry. Consider heavy drugs.
10) Kick something.
11) Consider the swelling foot a reminder to wear shoes next time you blog.
12) Drink. Good wine, beer, liquor, draino... it's all the same.
13) Call Tamar, trying to freak out quietly because son is still on the phone with his dad (who's on a trip), and hear Tamar's sharp intake of breath and know that yes, you really did fuck this up beautifully.
14) Drink some more. Think about running into traffic. Realize there's no traffic outside and know that the universe isn't against your son because it's busy screwing with you right now.
13) IM with Tamar and Diane for an hour to confirm that yes, the blog is really gone.
14) Cry. Drink. Rinse. Repeat.
15) Set up blog all over again and cut and paste each entry back into the blog, fixing the dates, blowing off fixing the times, and realizing that by 3:00 a.m., the old comments may never make it back onto the site.
I've got my own domain! Just a putting up a short note to say if you've bookmarked this site, you might want to change it to this
http://electricmist.net
(I'm assuming most of you are just going to bookmark it with a right-click thing, but in case some of you want to cut and paste into your bookmark manager, I thought I'd type it out. I'm not sure if that previous sentence made sense -- I am way tired.)
This means I am definitely going to stick around a while and I'll probably continue updating daily.
Two people to thank here -- Diane for having hosted more than one site for me for a while, for offering to do so and encouraging me to continue to write, and for making it all possible. Tamar for the encouragement as well, for doing all the hard work of setting up the new digs and hosting it (because I'm adding more domains later). Terrific friends, both.