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Now With Nifty Gravatars!

January 3, 2008 | 2 comments

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.

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Anybody Order a List?

February 5, 2007

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:

My Favorite Pithy Quotations*

* Specifically, quotations of real people speaking as themselves, as opposed to characters in movies. Except possibly for things said in documentaries, lines from movies or other works of fiction will have to get their own list.

  • "I don’t want to belong to any club that would accept me as a member."
    Groucho Marx (1890-1977)

  • "There are two kinds of people in the world: those who divide the world into two kinds of people, and those who don’t."
    attributed to Robert Benchley (1889-1945)

  • "I have a higher and grander standard of principle than George Washington. He could not tell a lie; I can, but I won’t."
    Mark Twain (1835-1910)

  • "I got fired last year in Las Vegas, from the Frontier Hotel for saying ‘shit,’ in a town where the big game is called ‘crap.’ That’s some kind of a double standard, you know? I’m sure there was some Texan standing out in the casino yelling ‘Aw, shit, I crapped!’ And they fly those guys in free, you know? Fired me. Shit."
    George Carlin (1937-2008)

  • "As a nation, we began by declaring that ‘all men are created equal.’ We now practically read it ‘all men are created equal, except Negroes.’ When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read ‘all men are created equal, except Negroes and foreigners and Catholics.’ When it comes to this, I shall prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty &endash; to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure and without the base alloy of hypocrisy."
    Abraham Lincoln, letter to Joshua Speed, August 24, 1855

  • "At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it? Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined… could not by force take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years… If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide."
    Abraham Lincoln, addressing the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois, January 27, 1838

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