Eric's really showing me up with his near-daily blog updates. I guess I should try and compensate by relating some humorous tale.
Hmmm...Um...Oh! Eric accidentally locked one of our cats in the closet all day yesterday. Poor Sebastian. He clearly had made the best of things by the time I got home, nesting in the "darks" half of the laundry hamper. But he was all disoriented and squinty-eyed when I opened the door. I guess we should be glad that he didn't take it personally and pee on our jeans. Because, ew.
Okay, that wasn't very humorous. But isn't it interesting how substituting "children" for "cats" in the above paragraph would have made it right at home on the front page of a small town newspaper or, at the very least, a social services client profile?
So, way back when I was on Blogger, I made my first friend in the blogosphere, bicyclemark. It was a simpler time. A time before he became Feedster's Feed of the Day, a time before he was bustin' out the podcasts on a regular basis, a time before he was averaging 10 comments on every post. We were wide-eyed pilgrims stepping off the virtual boat to Bloglandia. We were riders at the gates of dawn and we took no prisoners. Now bicyclemark is a well-respected blog journalist and I can barely manage two posts a month. If I take my lame immigrant saga analogy one step further (some might say too far), bicyclemark would now be running his own wildly successful FunCycle™ factory while I beg for change on the corner. On slow days, he might let me grease a chain or two, but we both know it's only out of pity. Eventually, in desperation, I turn to organized crime and am forced to sleep with the fishes after cheating Danny "the Hook" LaPerla in a low-stakes game of Texas Hold 'Em.
Uh, anyway, recently bicyclemark wrote this post apologizing for and considering the nature of revealing personal anecdotes on a publicly viewable blog. He also links to A Blogger's Code of Ethics, which is interesting if you've got a blog along the lines of bicyclemark's, but pretty much irrelevant if you have a diary blog like this one. (But hey, for the record, that "riders at the gates of dawn" thing? From an episode of The Young Ones. What can I say? I just love the way it rolls off my keyboard. I still have a crush on Rik Mayall. I feel quite certain I've seen "Drop Dead Fred" more times than can be considered healthy.)
What does this have to do with me, me, me? Well, I was just drafting up (Yes, I draft. What?!) a new entry and found myself deleting two threads because they either involved other people or revealed too much about my personal life. Nothing seedy, mind you (horrors!), but something just this side of too much information.
Since blogs are basically public diaries (take a look at this very amusing Mimi Smartypants entry on the subject), it makes sense that you would feel compelled to write about your personal life/friends/experiences while simultaneously feeling paranoid about writing about your personal life/friends/experiences. But I hate it when I think I've got something really juicy and bloggable and my stupid, boring conscience creeps up, taps me on the shoulder and makes that "tsk, tsk" noise with its disembodied tongue.
Okay, ew. Again. Sorry.
Basically, what I'm getting at is, when it comes to blogging, sometimes you gotta just kick your conscience in its perfectly straight teeth and say "I'm throwing caution to the wind and writing about this because I want to, but dear lord I hope nobody involved reads it and completely flips out!"
Jump with me onto the merry-go-round of rotating knives*, bloggers! It's fun, and you just might grab a brass ring! Or possibly have a limb whacked off!
bicyclemark, like one of those lizards with the growy-backy tails, you'll be just fine.
*Buffy the Vampire Slayer, "Storyteller"
See? I'm totally ethical.
I was going to post about the irony of the human search for meaning in the universe; you know, how that which presumably separates us from other animals is our constant search for the one answer we will never find.
Oh, also something about how time moves relentlessly on and that even if we someday manage to overcome the physical obstacles to traveling at the speed of light, we can only ever travel ahead in time, never back. Our youth and past triumphs remain prisoners of the memory.
Then I wondered why there is always some slowass holding up the fast lane on 280. I mean, seriously. When you look in front of you and see a ribbon of empty asphalt, then you glance in your rear-view mirror and see a menacing train of cars driven by angrily gesticulating people, I feel you should know enough to move into the right lane. But no.
Could it be that the slow driver in the fast lane is merely trying to recapture her youthful notion of seemingly endless time? Might he secretly yearn for those lost moments when the world appeared before him as an empty canvas, beckoning him to create! imagine! dream!?
Or is he just a big clueless jerkface?
Oh my god. This is the most boring Super Bowl ever, and I'm not just saying that because the Steelers aren't in it and I'm bitter. Paul "Old Man Hair" McCartney was boring, the commercials are boring and the football is just sloppy. What I'd give for an exposed boob about now! I even found myself inexplicably wishing Sir Paul would invite Jay-Z up for a raptastic version of "Hey Jude." (Which reminds me that "Beautiful Boy" came up on the iPod recently and I thought of how that song should be subtitled "Screw You, Julian, Sean Gets His Own Song and Some Guy Who Wasn't Even Your Dad Had to Write You One.") And now the stupid smelly Patriots are leading. The least my home state could do for me footballwise is to beat the crap out of those no-awesome-sandwich-having bastards.
Smirk-inducing inadvertent PMS reference update: Todd Pinkston apparently has a "case of the cramps."
Truck as penile compensation reference update: The new Ford F-150 (Uh, I think. I wasn't paying much attention, frankly.) is six inches longer.
Super Bowl-unrelated overuse of quotation marks ironically appearing in a corporate communications bulletin update: Colleen's Corner at Southwest Airlines. (It's a shame that Colleen's name doesn't start with a "K" because she looks exactly like the type of person who would love to call her column "Kolleen's Korner.")
Lameass clock management update: What the crap are the Eagles, down 24-14, doing huddling up with 2:49 and counting left in the fourth quarter?!
Chris Collinsworth irritates me like fingernails on a chalkboard update: If you're so in love with those "young corners," Chris, why don't you just MARRY THEM?!
Bronwyn's Super Bowl wrap-up: It's a sad day when Burt Reynolds getting kicked in the 'nads by a bear is the best thing about the NFL championship game. At least Ben got a trophy. I'm hungry.
Super Bowl postscript: Hey! Comic Book Guy's name is Jeff Albertson!
You can find more of the interesting word usements I structure on Apple.com.
Read my article, Better Writing Through Design, on No. 242 of A List Apart.