#82: Writing Posts In Advance

So I have discovered that Blogger allows you to schedule posts in advance. So that's what I'm doing. And it makes me happy. Oh so happy. Because now I won't have any excuses (at all, mind you) for not doing one on time (or at least having it look like I didn't do one on time).

In fact, this post was written and ready for publication to the general public on January 29, even though it was published February ??. I find that extremely awesome. And I believe I have that right.

In other news, J.D. Salinger died last Wednesday (it feels so weird to be writing this two days after his death, in the same week). And for those of you who have read some of my previous posts (or the select and special few who will go back and read every single on of my posts after you finish reading this one), the serial that I wrote on Monday, The Man Bartók, is somewhat inspired by J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye (of course). So yeah. It's almost kind of personal for me now that he's died. I almost care. Not that I knew the man, or was aware that he was alive until the announcements of his death came out. But now that he's dead, I feel some slight feeling of what might be the beginnings of sadness if made ten times stronger.

I wonder what he's doing. Probably up (or down) there looking down (or up) at us and just laughing (or crying) at us (or for us).

#80: World Set Afire

So there's this book, American Mischief, by Alan Lelchuk, that I finished reading about two weeks ago. Even after having this time to reflect upon it, I still don't feel up to the task of reflecting upon it. It was entertaining, I feel equipped to say. But despite my belief that most writers don't insert hidden messages into their books, I feel as if Mr. Lelchuk did and I missed it.
Perhaps it was something along the lines of "No matter how much a person shakes the world, once he is gone, it will eventually return to it's normal state of inertia." This makes sense, and applies some sort of physics. But I don't like it. I know that the world will go on whether you've lived or not, and will probably not miss your passing (Apologies to Mr. Bailey, but I'm sure that some other man [possibly Harry] would have taken over the Building and Loan and saved it from Mr. Potter) or absence.

Anyway, this book inspired me. The scene about Norman Mailer's death (Oops, spoiler), in addition to other literature has inspired me to write a serial. I will not promise any regularity or consistency in publishing (since that always works out so well here), but it will come out at least three times before the end of the year. That reasonable? Ok then.

#78: Nanowrimo

Today is the first day of NaNoWriMo and I have signed up. For those of you who pay attention to this blog, NaNoWriMo is the thing I did last year that spawned the monstrosity known as Dogs of Wrath, The (yes, I have realized that it was horrible, but there is nothing that I can do about it now because I will not edit it now).

If you wish to participate in NaNoWriMo, (which stands for National Novel Writing Month, by the way) feel free to visit the website and create an account.

Wish me luck.

#76: (Formerly)Turbulent Thursdays. Now Adjective Beginning With "T" Thursdays: Transitive

As you can tell, not all of the posts have the same tags, which means that I did not complete my mission. What did you expect? Probably as much (It was 75 posts! I did at least a third. And then stopped for a rest). But I will continue.

Meanwhile, like I said before, I'm trying to be a bit more regular with posting on this thing, so I've begun Turbulent Thursdays. I will post anything that I feel is indicative of the fact that we live in a moving world (I don't know, I couldn't think of any other adjectives. Maybe it will just be "Adjective Beginning With 'T' Thursdays." That works. I could replace the whole adjcetive beginning with T thing with an appropriate adjective.), or just anything interesting.

Actually, you know, the parenthetical insert is right. I will do the ABWT thing (I like acronyms. Can you tell?). Anyway, I will post every Thursday. I promise. Unless I say why not beforehand. Okay?

Good. See you next Thursday.

#75: As You May Have Noticed

So, after finishing my last post, I decided, along with ceasing to self-reference, possibly reposting articles from Cracked.com, and some other third thing that I forget because I was distracted, that I was going to go back and do specific labels for all of the posts. All seventy-four of them. I hope that this probably unnecessary procedure will be done by Monday, but I will make no promises.

Also, I have uploaded another game that has been described, variously, as "awesome", "very goog(sic) game", "cool game !!", "lolol", and "It made me laugh." Play the game of the decade, Avoider With A Smile, available exclusively at the link provided. Go ahead and experience the "goog"!

No, I Have Not Forgotten

Ok, hello all. Apologies for the ridiculously long post before, as well as the gap in between postings, but the length of that post, as well as it's being written in my blogging notebook (bad idea. My handwriting is atrocious and the notebook seems to inspire me to write longer posts, so the Michael Jackson Memoriam was a two and a half page long illegible muddle. And every time I opened the notebook to try and complete the post, I grew a headache).

By the way, before I get into what I was going to write about, I wanted to say that I have not forgotten about Dogs of Wrath, The (I am going to change the title). I will continue to post sections, but my life is kind of busy right now. Got back from a two week vacation, where I was essentially cut off from the Internet, and on Saturday, I'm going out west for two weeks, so I don't know what the Internet status will be. Keeping my fingers crossed that I will be able to post, etc. And for those of you who have checked my profile recently, I have another blog, where I am going to be creating this sort of world. Hope to develop it into a novel eventually, and I might actually do that for NaNoWriMo.

Which brings me to what I wanted to write about. I am considering doing a two character novel about a world in which God disappears (idea came to me in the shower, so don't knock it) and I think it might actually be workable. It allows me to fix the sixth degree and another project I was working on, and helps me to actually have CHAPTERS! Instead of the two 35 page long blocks of text that is currently DOWT. (I like the sound of that. DOWT. And it's a homophone. It fits.)

So what do you guys think? Can I do it, the God thing? Comment or something, but I'm probably going to do it anyway, so whatever. Encourage me then, or offer ideas on what happens afterward, because THAT I don't have. Right now I have about five pages of exposition, a page or two of God's appearance, page of God speaking to the world and then he vanishes and a page of the world's reaction. How can I make this a book?

Public Transport

I'd like to first renounce certain of my statements in a previous post regarding environmentalism. In the post, Why Going Green is BAD (Yes, You Heard Me, BAD) For the Environment, the title contained a sweeping declaration against all environmentalism, when the article just addressed buying organic food from places like Whole Foods and Trader Joe's. The title of the post will be changed as soon as this post is completed.

The reason for this decision to change the title is not because someone brought this to my attention (you guys never comment on my posts), but because I am riding on a Bolt Bus to Baltimore and I've realized how much I care for public transport, or, more accurately, shared transport.

I took a train to get to the bus, which is very nicely equipped. It has actual seatbelts (like the ones that go across your chest and are usually found in cars, something that I have never seen on a bus before), electric outlets, and apparently wireless internet. I say apparently because this post was written in a notebook on the way down after I foolishly decided to leave my laptop at home because my bag didn't have enough space and I thought that I wouldn't be able to use it until I got to Baltimore and set up, because the bus shouldn't have Internet, which it did. I only found this out because when I get on the bus, I see all of these people with computers working on them and the woman across from me is checking her Facebook page, so I assume there was wi-fi.

The train was a New York City subway, so I can't really expound on this, since almost everyone has riden on some sort of subway.

By the way, every time I get on any sort of public transport (excluding buses), I always think of one of my favorite games, Locomotion by Chris Sawyer. By the way, I am part of the small cult following that they mention in the article. So, in the game, you are the CEO of a transportation company and you set up a transport network with buses, trucks, ships, trams, planes, trains, and boats. I haven't played it in about two years, so I'm going to look for it on eBay or BitTorrent as soon as I can.

Anyway, the bus is one of the coolest that I have ever been on. Unfortunately, it is just a bus. If it were a train, with actual cars and all of the amenities that this bus has, I would love it and figure out somewhere that I had to commute so that I could ride it everyday.

Well, maybe that's a little drastic, but I f*cking loved that bus. But in my opinion, no matter how awesome a bus is, it will never be as fast, cool or dependable as a train (excluding Amtrak). I mean, trains pretty much trump every other mode of transport. They are not hindered overmuch by the weather. They don't usually crash. They don't have to deal with much traffic. They don't induce seasickness. They're realatively quiet. They don't produce much pollution. And best of all, they usually stay at ground level.

Unfortunately, trains are not as common as buses, highways, or planes. Planes do have the advantage if large bodies of water need to be crossed, beause they can travel a more direct route than trains. And highways had a lot of potential, but due to poor administration and overpopulation by cars, they became the nightmare that we now know as the American superhighway system (You notice I am only addressing the United States. I don't know enough about, nor do I have the inclination to research other countries' transport modes). However, now others are realizing the potential of trains. In California, there are plans to build a high-speed train down the length of that state.

The bus is stopping. I'll try to muster the resolve to finish this post later, but I highly doubt I will. And for those who care, I'll post the next installment of Dogs of Wrath tomorrow. Just so you know, I didn't figure out how to install the proper code.

Extended Addendum

Oh, and by the way, I am very close to getting Dogs of Wrath, The (I should delete the "The" when referencing the work, it's annoying me [Oh, little parenthetical asides, how I have missed you! What fun we shall have again! {I love Deadpool, and am not so keen on the fourth wall, by the way. Just in case anyone was wondering where the "parenthetical asides" thing came from} Oh, yes we will! Yes we will!] But I like it as a pun) up for sale on the blog. I know that I said if I didn't get it up by the 2nd, I would just continue with the installment posts, but I feel that it would be a bad idea to offer the entire thing for free. I swear this time. If it's not up for sale by Monday, the 22nd, I will put up some more posts.

If anyone out there is reading this thing (I know you're there. I know you visit the site. [ Statcounter dot f*cking com tells me that] Read the damn blog!), please take the time to comment telling me whether you think this is a good idea.

And in case you guys think I can't follow through on anything, suck it. I just deleted my Twitter account.

The Saturation Point

If you guys followed me on Twitter, you would have seen the series of tweets I wrote last night about the world being oversaturated with people. It's not that these people lack talent. Not at all; however, any field that contains even the slightest appeal, writing, for instance, is now overflowing with aspiring authors, journalists, poets, songwriters, etc., which makes it harder for any of these talented people to rise to the top.

At first, one would argue, "Well, hey, doesn't that mean that the absolutely most talented are gonna get famous due to survival of the fittest?"

Oops, no, so sorry, wrong answer. First, let's all reflect on the fact that Thien Thanh Thi Nguyen (a.k.a. Tila Tequila) got a television show. As far as I know, she has no marketable talents, besides being extremely hot (she is) and having over 1 million MySpace friends, neither of which can truly be considered talents. Essentially, she's a whore. Her show just took up time that could have been given to someone who actually had talent.

Now for the second part. If you've read Malcolm Gladwell's newest book Outliers, you will understand how success is influenced not only by the person's talent, but also by many arbitrary factors. He uses the example of birthdays in Canadian hockey influencing success, with those who have earlier birthdays being more likely to become pros in hockey, due to the setup of the Canadian youth hockey league. His proposal is that a player, Ned, born closer to January 1 (which is the cut-off date for the league) will have had more time to grow and mature than a player named Ian, who was born December 31st of the previous year, so their birthdays are only a day apart. Because hockey apparently favors larger players, the January 1 birthday will be seen as more talented and pushed to attend special hockey programs that will result in his becoming genuinely better at hockey than the player born on December 31st who was not drafted into the special hockey programs. Because January 1 is better, he will be sorted into the A-1 league, Canada's top youth hockey league, where he will compete against the best youth hockey players, gaining experience. December 31st probably didn't get into the A-1 league because he wasn't sent to the advance hockey program, a result of him not being seen as talented at hockey.

The end result? Ned eventually becomes a pro hockey player. Ian does not. And this could have been reversed, or happened a totally different way if only one of them had been born a few hours earlier or later.

So if success can be based on something completely arbitrary, like birthdays, how can we say that "survival of the fittest" in relation to humans will let the most talented rise to the top. This is obviously an erroneous viewpoint. Ian could have been more naturally talented than Ned, but because of their birthdays, Ned was put into the advanced leagues, while Ian was not. If success depended completely on talent, Ian would be the pro of the two of them.

But because 6.5 billion people are living on this planet, it can be hard to sort out who of us is the most talented at anything. And talent is not necessarily and indicator of success. Again I offer up the example of Thien Thanh Thi Nguyen. Compare that to one of my friends. She has written several short stories, which I think are rather amazing, and yet, she is not famous.

Perhaps the "whoring" nature of self-publication is onereason why the talented rise to the top. To achieve fame in the way that she did, Tila Tequila was forced to self-publicize relentlessly, whereas my friend sort of expects that somehow, she will become famous.

If this is why the most talented do not recieve notice, doesn't it mean that there is something wrong with the model? I realize that the sheer numbers of people alive today prevent publishers and talent scouts from discovering everyone who is good at something, and that if you want to be famous, you have to put yourself out there, but still, there needs to be a way to certify that those who have true talent are exposed and discovered.

But again, as I mentioned at the beginning, the number of talented people on Earth is astounding, and seems preventative to anyone getting discovered and recognized. There are simply too many people.

Which leads me to the necessity of a mass extinction event. Humans are so intelligent and geographically ubiquitous that the normal controls on population size (i.e. Drought, fire, natural disaster, famine, disease, predators, etc.) simply don't work anymore. At this given moment, I am sure that any number of these events is going on somewhere in the world. And is the human population plummeting? No. Even with these events occuring, the human population continues to increase exponentially.

This makes Agent Smith's revelation from The Matrix ring true: "I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species. I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You move to an area, and you multiply, and multiply, until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet, you are a plague, and we are the cure." --The Matrix. (Can't believe I quoted The Matrix, but whatever).

Continued next week.

Twitter

As you know, there's this little thing called Twitter that has a bit of a following on the Internet now. I bet you can guess what's coming next.

Yes, I have joined Twitter. But it scares me, so unless I get a following of fifteen people by Tuesday, I'm going to delete my account. That seems reasonable, right? I don't have to wait long and fifteen isn't that much

Of course. I'm not one for doing irrational things.

So to clarify. Fifteen people by 6:00 pm EST on Tuesday, June 2, 2009. Right then, see you there. Or not.

Oh, and by the way, here's my Twitter page in case you actually want to follow me. I can't believe I jumped on the bandwagon like that. Such a dumb idea.

Dogs of Wrath, The: Hiatus

For those who missed the Dogs of Wrath last weekend, rest assured, I will not let it go the way of The Sixth Degree. It is finished, and I am trying to be able to sell it.

That sentence made no sense at all.

What I mean is, I want to be able to sell the Dogs of Wrath manuscript as an eBook. I have the PayPal thing set up, but I also want automatic delivery or a download link, or something. That's the part I'm having trouble with. I can't figure out how to have both of them together.

Help would be appreciated.

Oh yeah, and I never did write that follow-up post about the meaning of life or the one about money, did I? Well, that's on my list of things to do (which is, essentially, in no particular order: 'Get girlfriend, get married or become responsible baby-daddy whose baby's mother is irresponsible [just to flip the stereotypes and be a single father], adopt female [preferably Asian] child [haven't worked out how to reconcile those two yet, since I want to have one kid and I also want to be a baby-daddy and adopt a girl], finish writing second book. And the aforementioned 'finish blog post series.'

I think I might have trouble finishing things [Wow, one of my parenthetical musings has never had its own line break before. Can you do that?], or maybe just staying on topic). So I'll get one of those done soon.

A'ight, good night guys. See you tomorrow.

Nuclear Holocaust! Plus, a Technorati Blog Link!

As you may or may not recall, a couple of weeks ago, I posted about how I was trying to register my blog to Technorati on the advice of an article by the New York Times' technology columnist. However, when I tried to register, Technorati refused me, which set me on the path to a completely random, rambling rant about nothing (moreso than my usual posts), but also happened to lead me to a new blog that I am now following.

Anyway, I have just retried registering and it was successful, which is why I am now very honored to be able to post this link to my as of now blank Technorati Profile!

(I had to post the link in order for them to verify that I owned the blog.)

Now that that's out of the way, in my last post, I mentioned the very real possibility of nuclear holocaust. It may be just a coincidence, or some sort of subconcious expression of the effect that watching Nicholas Cage's latest film, "Knowing," (which was a piece of sh*t, by the way) has had on me. Either way, I have been having thoughts and dreams of nuclear holocaust (by the way, in case you couldn't tell, this is a picture depicting about the maximum range that Iran's new nukes could reach), all of which, for some reason, seem to involve me quickly making a post to this blog along the lines of, "The missiles are about to hit the Northeast. They've sounded the alert sirens. I don't know how much more time I have, but rest assured, I will keep you updated and I will fight the cancer, heat, cellular degeneration, radiation poison and disintegration until the bitter end. F*ck the bastards that came and sh*t on the American way of life! Solomon out."

Then, just as the missile is about to hit, I fold up my laptop, stand erect with a steely glint in my eye, and begin to run away from the missile, escaping just in time in one of those action movie explosion escapes (you know what I'm talking about. The hero just barely makes it out from the exploding vehicle, house, secret lab or other threatening structure, and is pushed to the ground by the explosion's shockwave, but gets up with nary a scratch, cut or bruise), then I run somewhere with free, unrestricted internet access and continue blogging until the end of the world. And you know my last word is "This is Solomon. Goodbye," and I click Publish just as the missile hits and I die a martyr for a now extinct civilization.

Yes, I know how implausible that is. Yes, I know the destructive power of nukes. Yes, I would not have time to escape the shockwave, and if I do manage, by a miracle, to evade the epicenter in the fashion that I have described, I would have massive radiation burns and likely be in too much pain to do anything.

But it's a cool scenario, isn't it?

I also know that the likelihood of Iran setting off a nuclear war is extremely low, since the President knows that massive retaliation would be swiftly forthcoming and very possibly fatal for all of Iran. He might even set of a nuclear world war, which no one wants. This is why nuclear weapons are used more a bargaining chips in the international game of diplomacy, along the lines of countries with nukes saying to the nukeless, "Send us money or we bomb you to the Stone Age."

Or something like that.

But even though I am aware of this fact, or have rationalized it through a brief consideration of the problem, the presence of nukes still worries me, especially with the recent apparent glut of news stories about small, US-hostile nations building and launching nuclear weapons tests.

And if I'm the only one, I might as well cede control of this blog to my brother and turn myself into a crazy bin.

Which I won't do, because Mr. Obama apparently shares my views. You all know about how he wants to abolish some nukes (if you were able to find my small, relatively obscure blog, you know about current events), and how no one else thinks it is really feasible or rational (oddly enough, suggesting the disposal of a few slightly volatile substances is not rational) to do so.

I am hardly in a position to suggest a plan to make Mr. Obama's dream a reality, nor do I believe myself capable of fulfilling such a momentous task, but I do think that it is somewhat feasible, and in fact, necessary. I use this analogy: Do you really need 7,600* bullets when you can kill just as effectively with just one or two? The problem worsens when it is revealed the the bullets are highly volatile and need constant care.

Think about it.

*Number of warheads in the US arsenal as of November 2002, according to the website http://www.nrdc.org/nuclear/nudb/datab11.asp.

Greed is Good . . . if You Don't Overdo It, and Lust is Just Bad

A'ight (don't you hate it when people spell that word "iight," or "Aite?" It's a f*cking contraction of "all right," so there should be a f*cking apostrophe at f*cking least!), some of you Holmes-y types may have noticed that I have changed my favorite websites. I added Mr. David Griner's The Social Path blog after reading his post The Seven Deadly Sins of Social Media, which I found after visiting Delicious' in order to add this blog to their stores so that more people could read it and improve my self-esteem. I decided to visit Delicious for this purpose after reading this article on the New York Times website about how to build traffic to your site, which suggested going to Delcious and other sites and registering my blog there.

However, after reading The Seven Deadly Sins of Social Media, I realized that I was embodying the first, third and sixth sins, (which are Lust, Greed and Envy, respectively) and that commiting these sins was not getting me more readers, richer, or making me the most popular blogger to ever live.

Now, to you my problem and how I realized that I have a problem, I suppose that at this point, I am to figure out how to overcome my problem, or pose some sort of philosophical query to you, which no one will much care about, until my next post in about two or three days, or a month or two. However, I still want to be widely read and recognized, ridiculously rich (who doesn't?), and the most well known purveyor of the written word ever (an honor that probably belongs to either J.K. Rowling or the assortment of people who recorded the events of the Bible).

So then, what have I learned? What is the point of this rambling, rather bland post about nothing? Can it be said that there is even a point, and that the point matters to anyone at all?

I just read that last sentence and it makes no f*cking sense at all.

But anyway, why write this post, since right now, I just seem to be going on and on and on about some random sh*t until I can think of a good way to get Arlen Specter into this post.

Damn. That was cheap. I can't even put him in this post in good faith anymore. Forget I mentioned him.

So now what? I think I'll just end it here, and note that today is coincidentally the 101st anniversary of Mother's Day in the United States.

Happy Mother's Day, everyone.

Absence and Child Abuse

As some of you have probably noticed, (and I know you're out there, I get status reports weekly) I have not posted in over a month. I offer no apologies or explanations for this occurence, nor will you get any in this post or any other, since I proclaimed in this post that I would no longer apologize for gaps in posting, since I feel that humbling myself is not the best way to gain followers and/or readers. However, not posting for about five weeks is also not the best way, since the amount of hits decreased the longer this place wnet without an update.

Might be a coincidence, but it probably isn't. Regardless, I have returned.

I suppose you might want to know why I was unable to post and what I was doing. It's a long story, but the condensed version is this: My computer was hit by a virus that blocked most sites (except Yahoo! and gmail), so I reset to factory condition, but couldn't find the USB that held my wireless settings (that had been set up by a techie friend of mine who has since moved) and I was unable to set up the network again. I just found the USB yesterday, and all is good. My Norton antivirus is up-to-date and I have unlimited internet.

As to what I was doing, I have begun writing a novel about a girl who is being abused and I expect to be done by July or so. Which reminds me: I will resume posting of Dogs of Wrath, The on Saturday, and continue every weekend until it is finished, I get published, or the world ends (which it supposed to do in 2012, according to the Mayans).

Ok, so that's what's up. Ducky, thanks for the comment, and I'm glad that you read my blog. Shout-out to everyone from Travian and playdiplomacy.com.

Conficker, Linux and Programming

I have never been a computer geek, despite what my friends may tell you, and the fact that I spend as much of my time on computers as I possibly can. To me, a true computer geek is someone who can dismantle a computer, install a new operating system, link hard drives to get the maximum operating power, debug their own computer, edit the system code, hack, know what Linux and Java are and be able to program in them, know why <--!nocomment!--> is funny, in short, all things that I cannot do (except that last one, which is funny because that is an HTML comment tag, or something approaching it). I barely know HTML, and the final insult to all of those computer geeks out there is that I just learned what Conficker was last week via the New York fucking Times!

Now some of you are probably out there going "This guy is called a computer geek? Man, he isn't even 1337! (totally stereotypical geekspeak, I know)" But it pains me as much as it pains you to have to share this title. I think of myself as rather cool (shut up, f*cking idiot friends) and to be called any type of geek is insulting to me. But this is all beside the point.

I want to be able to program in Java, write a program, fix my computer myself, crossover to Linux, and if I could, I could probably stand being called a geek. Sh*t, geeks are getting to be kind of cool now. Have you seen the size of some glasses out there?

So my point is this. I need someone out there to direct me to a website where I can get Linux. I Googled it (did you know that "google isn't really a verb?) and found this site, Linux.com, that redirected me to these other Linux sites and was a waste of time. So you Linux users out there (at least one of you must read this) where did you get your Linux from? And did you get it for free?

Because despite the fact that I am not a computer geek (and never will be), I want me some Linux.

Is it a bad thing?

Do you remember that I told you guys that I had moved, which was the reason for me not posting for a few weeks?

Well, I'm in an apartment in a city, on a main street, and about every night, a police car or fire truck, or ambulance goes by, disturbing my attempts to sleep. (No ill will, police people, you're just doing your jobs, and to have the sirens and quieter would impede your ability to protect us members of the docile, sheeplike citizenry).

Here's one now. Anyway, ignoring for the moment the rate of crime and regularity of accidents that must be occuring for this many government service vehicles to go by every night, do you think it's a bad thing for me to begin to be able to recognize the vehicles? Like, 'Oh this one is a police car,' 'Oh, listen to that, two ambulances and a fire truck. That sounds bad,' etc., etc. Yeah, I'm sure some of you have been able and are able to do that (identify emergency vehicles by the siren) and you might use this as evidence to pinpoint my race, age, sex and location (Hint: I'm not white) due to my being close-lipped about my identifying traits except where it is absolutely unavoidable (i.e. the copyright at the bottom of my story posts [when I get that bitch published, I am not going to give some of my royalties to Blogger or Google, because I expect this thing to be a cash bonanza and enable me to not have to work for the rest of my life] because if I didn't add those, this website might take some of my profits from the royalties) but I couldn't, because before I moved, I lived on a quiet residential street in a suburb.

So this is a new thing for me. I've never been able to do that, and I am very proud of myself, while somewhat scared/confused/tired.

Oh yeah, and I've decided to stop dating. Forever. No more women (or men) for me. You'll miss me.

Verifying this Blog with F*cking Google

So for the past month or so, I have been trying to make my blog a little more tech savvy, by which I mean, adding hit counters just to see how many people actually read this piece of sh*t that I post on every once in a while, and putting it in Google's search results. I began trying to do the first when I started to wonder how many people visit this thing and if my periodical "I'm sorry for not posting and I have no good reason, but things will change and I'll post more often."

Then I don't. I continue to post sporadically and you're lucky if you get one or two posts out of me in a month, if that. That's not right.

Now, before I go on, let me tell you that this is not going to be one of the type of posts that I hate to write, and that I vowed to write no longer in this post. Having said that . . .

I have spent the entire morning, and some of the afternoon trying to get Google to verify my URL. I went through the entire Blogger menu until I found an area where there was HTML. Then I pasted the META tag into the code after <head>and before <body> in about ten different places fifteen different times, and saved, and kept clicking verify at least twenty times, and it wasn't until the sixteenth saving that I realized that every time I saved, Blogger's thing, whatever it's called, kept rearranging the META tag, and deleting bits so that instead of <meta name="verify-v1" content="/vhyFkWM72jhoxokObT3sZezIXN/a51Ag0+GZGbh9iA=" /> saving, it saves as <meta content='/vhyFkWM72jhoxokObT3sZezIXN/a51Ag0+GZGbh9iA=' name='verify-v1'/>, which doesn't look that different, but it is.

I realize that the previous paragraph must have been a little incomprehensible to those of you who are not tech savvy, but hang with me here and just accept the fact that this is very annoying. Think of it as . . . you're writing something in Word and an idea strikes you, so you open up the Find thing and search for the place you wanted to edit. But you can't find the place with find, so you scroll through and it turns out that in the place of the phrase that you wrote, "the woman put on the shirt," the computer replaced it with, "the lady put on the shirt." Grammatically identical, but not the phrase you put in, and not what you were looking for, and you didn't change it. Annoying, isn't it? No? Well, I don't care, it is to me.

So, once I saw this, I stopped trolling through the Blogger template code (which is way too long) and went back to the Google URL register page and clicked the other option, Upload an HTML file. Then I stopped for a moment and thought.

Hmmmm, thought I. The way I usually post, I do everything through Blogger's website. I can't upload an HTML file to my blog. (Because an HMTL file is the internet's equivalent to a text file and Blogger only allows you to upload video and picture). But then I remembered that my computer is a Vista, and if I click the option to start a new Word document, the computer gives me a choice between starting a plain Word document and starting a new blog post. And coincidentally, (well, not really, but whatever) a few months ago, I had set up this option so that, were I to start a blog post with Word, once I finished, I would just have to save it and the computer would upload it to Blogger for me!

Whatever, I'm writing this thing and you're reading, so it is cool.

I went to Blogger help and did a hit counter search and found a few good results. I clicked on the first one, which was – guess what? – Google. Google Analytics, to be precise. I clicked on that one, registered, and once again, guess what? They wanted me to add more stuff to my HTML code. So, because this was pretty early in the morning, not far along my journey to get Google to verify that I did in fact own my URL, I added it as well. But, unfortunately, they also refused to acknowledge that I had posted anything in the template code, so I got off that site, and registered with another one, that gave me actual instructions on how to add their code to my page! I mean, it was as if Google believes that if two guys can start a world spanning, globally recognized company with a ridiculously high stock price in their f*cking garage, the least someone like me, who has written HTML code exactly once, in a long episode two or three years ago, who can barely remember any of it, should be able to hack Blogger's servers (for that is what it seems is necessary to alter my blog's HTML code in the way that I want), which, let me mention, are also owned by Google, and add their f*cking hit count style code to my blog.

So, the resolution of the hit count episode was a happy one, but the URL verification one goes on yet. It remains to be seen if this will have a happy ending, or a horrible one, where I rave and rant at my computer, but stop shy of actually damaging it, for then what would I do?

I don't know. Probably read Ian McEwan and Ayn Rand.

And the previous line would have been a great one to end this post at, but I am afraid to stop writing, should this scheme of mine not work, and Google continue to not verify my URL, which would piss me off immensely, not that you couldn't have garnered that from the previous one thousand, seventy six words, that I assume you read, instead of skipping down to this point.

Because that would be immensely irritating, as well as an indicator of poor upbringing, and would compel me to hunt you down through your IP address (which is also given to me by the hit counter that isn't Google) with a deer rifle, and perhaps kill you, perhaps, just wave it around and look frightening. Either way, I can assure you, you would not enjoy it.

And I am certain that you would never skip to the end again.

Deal with it

OK, I know that I have been gone a while, and I know that usually, after an absence of this caliber, I would write a soppy post apologizing for my absence. However, I've decided to stop. I have a f*cking life. I am doing this because I f*cking want to. (Also, nobody reads this, but that's something else.) If I don't post for a week, or a month,or a f*cking YEAR, it's my own f*cking business. Besides, anyone out there who reads this does not complain, so I don't care. Yeah, take that.

Ashamed

So here I am, on my computer every single day, for at least an hour, my blog is fourth on my list of startup tabs and every single day I log on my computer, look at my blog and say, "I'm going to post something. It's not like I have a lack of material to post. Oh no! I just read some of "Lies my Teacher Told Me" and in one chapter I found a whole lot of sh*t I could write about. Boomers! Remember this picture? And this one? Yeah, these were in there. So I could write about these, but I won't.


And so TODAY I open the tab and I say to myself, "Look, you've been NEGLECTING your blog for a week." But I don't post yet. I check out some of the blogs that I like and I see that THEY'VE been posting pretty frequently. So now I gotta live up to them in my mind and post some sh*t.

. . .



I am such a bad blogger.



HOWEVER, I am now back! I will f*cking post like crazy for as long as possible until I become otherwise engaged.

I have nothing to say

Guess what happens when you give an introverted single guy who thinks he's the best person in the universe unlimited access to an audience willing to read his work, with the single stipulation that he write at least a paragraph a month? Yes, you're right, it has happened again: I am f*cking out of ideas. My friends say that writer's block is sh*t or it's all in your head. Yeah, like they know. And actually, to clarify, I'm not out of ideas, I have one more, a rant against pop culture, but I figure Lewis Black has that covered pretty well. So, for all intents and purposes, I am out of ideas for the time being.
F*ck, this is a total pain in the a**, having, or rather, wanting to write sh*t and post sh*t but not being able to think of sh*t. I mean, I have another few installments of THE SIXTH DEGREE, but I don't want to post them in case I get writer's block on that sh*t too.

I just read what I've written so far and it sounds like a coherent blog post, so I'm going to post it. Too bad for me, almost no one will ever read what I have written because I have not yet established a prominent spot in the blogosphere. I think one day, I will post total bullsh*t nonsense and THAT will be the day someone comes and reads my blog and they'll see this BS post and think, This guy's an *sshole. I shouldn't give a sh*t about what he thinks. Then they WON'T tell their friends about my insightful clever, mind-opening, and truly witty blog and I will go back to the bottomless pit of the Internet, confined to the anonymity of an electronic Sargasso Sea. (See? I said I was mind-opening. Now, odds are that you will have to look up the Sargasso Sea. I'll wait.) Ah, well. Fame isn't all it's cracked up to be. (So they tell me) I guess I can go without being famous, because then I get to write the sh*t that makes my blog insightful, clever, mind-opening, witty and truly unique. So there, big publisher people. I took writer's block and did something with it. F*ck you. Oh, and normal reader? Think about all the other stuff I said, before I started to insult publishing companies.