blogging

It has come to pass that my friend Todd has seen fit to mock me in the comments section of my last post for my lack of new content. He is lucky enough (or unlucky enough, depending on one’s personal taste) to have caught me in a particularly sarcastic mood.  I might even call it a particularly snark-castic mood, but that would just be too fucking precious.  Anyway, the following is very likely going to sound much more surly than usual for me; rest assured that I mean it to be tongue-in-cheek.  I’m feeling a little Denis Learyish.

That’s correct, Todd, I haven’t posted in awhile - and my, aren’t you a keen observer of detail.  Wanna know why? Here’s why - I’ve been busting my ass building this site for the theatre company I’m in.  Don’t want to click through? Fine, here’s a couple of screenshots:

Not exactly a slapdash half-hour-with-FrontPage kind of a job.  Put it this way: in the last month alone, I’ve spent enough time building and administrating that site to fulfill my Theatre Neo volunteer hours requirements for the next three years.  That is, if we were allowed to carry over extra hours to the succeeding year, which we’re not.  But it doesn’t matter, because as long as I’m running the website I’ll never have to wonder if I’ve done enough volunteer hours.

So then Todd informs me that I’ve been “tagged in a meme,” and to find out the meaning of this memeing I need to visit his site.  Deciding to play along for the moment, I click over to his blog post and find the answer to be as follows (grammatical corrections are mine, and included for no good reason):

1. Link back to the person who tagged you
2. Mention the rules on your blog
3. Tell about 6 unspectacular quirks of yours
4. Tag 6 following bloggers by linking [to] them
5. Leave a comment on each of the tagged blogger’sbloggers’ blogs letting them know they’ve been tagged.

As I said in a comment to Todd’s post: oh, jaysus.

First of all - and I don’t fault Todd for not knowing this - here’s the thing about me: I don’t follow memes.  I start memes. I am the natural source from which memes flow; that’s why I call them MEmes. If somebody else came up with it, then by definition it is not a meme - it is a THEMe.

To be completely honest, I’m usually not even aware of it when I start a meme.  I never set out with the purpose of producing the latest Thing on the Web You Have To See, the internet-touchstone-du jour, the virtual face that launched a thousand forwarded emails. I don’t wake up in the morning going, “Let’s see… I think I’ll have some breakfast, feed the dogs, shower, and set the zeitgeist aflame.”  It just happens.  Such is the nature of being mightily influential.

That aside, I find this so-called meme’s question thoroughly mediocre. Six “unspectacular” quirks? It’s such a mediocre question that it specifically calls for mediocre answers!  And not just one, but SIX of them.  Well, be careful what you wish for.  After two or three of anyone’s unspectacular quirks, it’s a sure bet that the rest of the list is going to get more and more unspectacular.

One or two spectacular quirks - now that would at least be worth forwarding to your MySpace friends.  Who cares if you prefer crushed ice to ice cubes or whatever - I want to read about your quirkiest, weirdest foibles.  Like, say, if you perpetually emit static electricity, no matter where you are.  Or how you have one toenail that grows four times faster than normal.  Or perhaps, how you smashed your genitalia between two handheld freeweights while doing standing flys, and now the brand “Everlast” is permanently embossed on your penis.  You know, that kind of thing.

I know it’s the internet, but holy shit, people - aim at least a little higher.  So, I’m sorry, Todd. I won’t be tagging six other bloggers and perpetuating this chain-letter posting thing.  Whatever, call me Ebenezer.  I’m taking a principled stand for the cause of better content.  Demand more from your internet questionnaires! …Or, don’t. Seriously, do whatever you like. I like to agitate for a better internet, but, you know, that’s just me.

That’s it - I am through with dumbing it down for you people.

Well, sort of betraying them. I know, I know… you’re thinking, “Hold on, this blog has principles?” Don’t be alarmed. We can have fun anyway.

In this blog, I aim to avoid what used to be known as player hating (I’d spell it in the street dialect form, e.g., playa-hatin’, but who am I kidding). I say “used to,” because I suspect the term has passed out of fashion; unfortunately I don’t know what expression may have replaced it. The point is, a fundamental characteristic of our National Miscourse™ is the cheap, lazy rhetorical default of saying that everything sucks. For examples of this, I would reference the vast majority of the blogosphere. Therefore, I strive to remain solidly in the remaining minority of bloggers by devoting a large proportion of my writing to things I want to praise; and when I must indict, always including a thorough reasoning for my disapproval.

Kind of a lengthy preface for link-blogging Dickipedia, a site that made me laugh pretty hard when I found it this morning. It’s a funnier (IMO) offshoot of the comedic news site 23/6, and, it should be noted, not an actual wiki but a parody of one.

I’m not actually issuing the scorn, I’m just linking to it. I admit may be cutting it pretty fine, but Dickipedia is certainly a few cuts above mere player hating: it simultaneously parodies Wikipedia while identifying prominent individuals as the dicks they are with wit and verve. I don’t have a problem with the inclusion of anyone profiled on the site, but this may be because I apparently share the site owners’ politics. I’ll excerpt a non-partisan example just to be on the inclusive side:

William Roger Clemens (born August 4, 1962, in Dayton, Ohio), is a starting pitcher for the New York Yankees, one of the preeminent pitchers in Major League Baseball history, an alleged user of steroids and human growth hormone, and a dick.

Clemens has won seven Cy Young Awards. He has also won two World Series championships, one for each banned substance he is alleged to have taken during the same two years he “won” the rings.

Clemens throws and bats right-handed. It is unknown whether he banned-substance-abuses left-buttocked or right-buttocked. His nickname is “the Rocket,” though this is not thought to be connected to the fact that his personal strength coach Brian McNamee, as the Mitchell Report put it, “injected Clemens approximately four times in the buttocks”…

Enjoy the dicks, everyone!

As a new incentive for my readers to post comments, I have incorporated a gravatars plugin into my commenting interface. The comments from this old post of mine gives an idea of what it looks like.

A gravatar is an avatar - that is, a small picture you use to represent yourself - that appears next to your posts or comments on any site that uses the gravatar service. On the official site they say the term gravatar stands for “globally recognized avatar.” I suppose that makes sense, but I prefer to think of a gravatar as an avatar imbued with a particular aura of prestige and authority.

Now all I need to do is hope you guys sign up and make your own gravatars (it’s free). I personally get a kick out of how they have you assign an MPAA - style rating to your finished gravatar, i.e., G, PG, R, or X. Currently I have this blog configured to show gravatars rated G, PG, or R. So there it is, people - don’t bring your X-rated gravatars here, ’cause C&B ain’t havin’ it. There are plenty of places on the web to post dirty pictures without me providing another one, anyway.

What would a gravatar have to consist of to justify a PG rating as opposed to a G? If we’re really using the MPAA as a guide, then I guess Humphrey Bogart with a lit cigarette between his lips would get you a PG. As for an R, I for one can’t conceive of representing myself with an image that would require a web user under the age of 17 to be accompanied by a parent or guardian. But whatever floats your boat, I guess. An R gravatar would have to show… I don’t know, maybe the word “fuck?” According to the ridiculously arbitrary MPAA quasi-guidelines, I guess someone’s head getting blown off would be OK, but an animated GIF of two people having sex showing three or more thrusts would be an automatic X.

So enjoy your non-X-rated gravatars, good people. Mine is rated G; maybe it’ll make me as popular as Finding Nemo. I’m aware that many knowledgeable bloggers would say that if I want more comments I should forget about gravatars and, you know, post more frequently. Point taken, but with all due respect that’s “inside-the-box” thinking. What good is killer content without bells and whistles? …OK, on second thought, don’t answer that.

No, no, do. Do answer it. I like comments.

When I was a kid I would read and re-read the two or three volumes then in circulation of The Book of Lists, a repository of trivia compiled by the producers of The People’s Almanac. Thus began my career as a walking archive of mostly useless information. The books did, however, establish in me an early appreciation for lists which may now finally pay off: many respected authorities in the field of blogging have advised that lists are a device which tends to enhance blog readership.

I’ve started a new category here at C&B, cryptically titled “Lists.” Some of the lists will be ordered, some will be unordered, and some will be not what you ordered. Maybe at some point if I get really fancy with it, some of them may even have items AND sub-items! If you want to see all of the lists together on one page… well, for the moment just click on the “Lists” category (or tag, once I either get UTW to work again or switch plugins… if you have no idea what I’m talking about, just ignore this). My grand visions of this blog’s future will have a much cooler solution, but for now yadda yadda yadda. Without further ado, here’s my inaugural list: