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One of the things I love most about having work to do is that it forces me to procrastinate. I like to say that it gives my procrastination purpose. And one of my favorite ways to procrastinate with purpose is to add new features to this blog.

Now, I know that, with a few exceptions, an increasing number of you read this via a feed reader. And I can respect that. It allows you to put off reading certain posts that look far too amazing for the frame of mind you are currently in, and save them for a time when you can pour over every word and marvel at my mastery of prose. (You might also call this "Getting Caught Up" or "Selecting All and Marking as Read"). I get it.

But all of you feed-reader types are missing out on a few new "Bite Sized" features I've added to the site. Since we all love bullet lists, here they are:

1) The Picayune: If you've been here for a while you know that I used to break up my long posts with smaller ones. Asides, if you will. I've brought these back. Partly because my brain is thinking more in "Asides" these days. And partly because I realize long-winded posts don't go over well on the Internets. These will actually get integrated into the feed, so feed-readers won't notice much of a difference, except that there are smaller posts coming through. If you stop by the home page, though, The Picayune will be beneath the photo feature.

2) Twitterized: I was a late comer to Twitter. I resisted it for a while and scoffed at micro-blogging in general. But I'm developing an appreciation for it now. And yes, I'm Twittering. My Tweets now appear here on the home page, below the fold. By the way, if you read this and you Twitter and I'm not following you, let me know.

3) Deliciousness: Also below the fold is a public feed from my Delicious bookmarks. These are mostly just random articles I've read and which I feel like sharing. Nothing big, but it's there.

Finally, one other content note: I recently added a way for you to browse through all photos in the the Photo Blog. In the past, you had to click forwards and backwards through the entire collection of hundreds of photos. Now you can "View All" and easily click through the whole archive. I owe thanks to the creator of ThickBox for the nifty Ajax-y interface.

Okay. That is all. Except for this: It's August! The beginning of the end of summer. That means cooler weather is on its way. And this year, like there is every four years, there's a wonderful bonus ... Olympic Swimming starts in just eight days! Yee-haw! I will be spending most of my time here.

link to this | comments (2) | File:  Swimming  Olympics  Nicolasix  Blog 

I have to do it. I'm sorry. I've put it off for months. I've told myself I should not write about it. That I should put it out of my mind for good. That the subject has been beaten to death by millions of us blogger types all over the overcrowded and puffed up blogo-verse-osphere. And yet there it is—a shadow of a thought. Lurking like a small furry chipmunk at the edge of its dark little chipmunk hole in my mulched and weeded beds, curious to poke its head out, but at the same time shy and self-conscious and worried I'll chop it's little fucking chipmunk head clean off. Or that Honey will eat him.

I'd like to think that God had the best of intentions when he created chipmunks. But even God has days when he feels a little ornery, and all he feels like doing is kicking back and letting off some steam. So he invites Old Scratch over to his place and they smoke a couple of bowls and play a little XBox. And, over a heated game of Madden 2010 (they get advance copies of software) they think up ways to piss people off, or ruin Jason Lee's career. And the next morning God wakes up refreshed, clear-headed, and alone, and he goes to his window and sees what he's done ... that now there are chipmunks. Or Daschunds. Or people who drive Hummers. Or ... Backstreet Boys. And he just shakes his head and curses Old Scratch and decides he will love these things anyway.

I am on the verge of this kind of mistake.

Do not do it, says my Rational Side.

This will shame you.

You will regret it.

You will feel cheap and dirty.

Oh, Rational Side. You are so clever when you betray me. You and Irrational Side are in cahoots, aren't you? You know that the very arguments you use against my behavior will eventually send me hurdling frantically toward it.

You are a Brutus.

Fucking backstabber.

Geez, man. Come on! What's all this build-up about? Have out with it already, Dave!

Okay, okay. Sorry.

It's Facebook. The big "FB." The cherry-filled donut, moist with gluteny, glazed goodness. The turkish delight, lightly dusted with powdered sugar. The raging shot of Patron, warm and smooth, at 2am. And I hate you, Facebook. With all my heart I hate you. And yet I can't ignore you. I can't stop eyeing your pages. I can't stop myself from checking you once or twice or thrice a day to see if one of the 75 or so friends I sit amongst has posted some morsel about what they are up to so I can pop it back and swallow it without really tasting it. FB, you've turned my friendship with these people into some kind of non-stop tapas meal. Only it's one where most of the time is spent watching other people eat. Because real communication, real meals with substance, rarely occur.

I think Jeff said it best in one of my favorite posts by him when he refers to yoga as "the Facebook of physical activity, an anesthetic for life spent next to people without ever really communicating."

The people I'm friends with on FB are generally people I know—or have known at one point in my life—fairly well. They're people I've shared common interests with. I think with the exception of a few, they are people who I've known "in real life" before I knew them "online." And it's great when I get re-connected with them. But then, like some massive yoga class, there we are, inches from one another, all getting off on our own thing, finding our six chakras, discovering our power animals, and not really talking or even acknowledging each other.

Let me be clear: I'm not pointing any fingers here. I'm just as guilty of this as anybody. (All I usually do on FB is re-post the things I write here.) Nobody's at fault here. FB just works this way. It's kind of what the medium encourages: for us all to become voyeuristic spectators of each-others existence. And who am I to judge that kind of thing? I mean, I keep a very public blog in which I sometimes talk about my very private life. Why? I'm not sure. But here's an attempt to figure it out.

The thing is, I feel like I want something more from Facebook. To me, the value of FB, or any other online social-networking tool, should be to bring us back together in the real world. If a person is not somebody I'd realistically hang out with in a bar or a coffee shop, then I don't see much point to seeing them every day on Facebook. But what about playing games, Dave? You don't have to be best friends to play a game of Scrabulous with somebody. I could see where the games would be sorta fun for people. But I never liked Scrabble when it was something you played on a board, so I definitely do not want it on my computer screen. I do see some value in being able to share book and movie interests. But even with that, it's really not about communication is it? People rarely actually write anything about the movies or books they list. So the recommendations lack context. What they lack is a conversation.

Basically, here's the central irony I've found with FB: Sometimes I wind up feeling less close to people after we've gotten connected on FB then I felt before, even if I hadn't seen that person in years. I mean if the person is somebody you haven't spoken to in a while, then there's this very wide gulf of time between you where all of these things have happened in your lives and you can't just get caught up on that shit by writing a couple of sentences on a "wall-to-wall." So instead, you just say nothing. And so then, there they are: in front of you every day, virtually closer than they've been in years. And yet—because you haven't really communicated with them—they're further away than they ever were before. They become almost like a neighbor that you see from over a fence every day and with whom you don't ever really talk about anything meaningful. Instead, you yell one-liners at each other about how it's really freakin' hot today or man, the Yankees are sucking some ass this year, aren't they? And how are you supposed to respond to these things? You can't. So you shrug and you pull up another window with your work in it, the stuff you're supposed to be doing but don't want to, and you go back to your life.

And now your most recent memory of this friend you haven't seen in 15 years is that they just had Cheerios for breakfast. Or that they are power-washing their house today. And you might like to ask them, how did that power-washing thing go? But you don't. Not because you don't care, but because what you really want to ask them is, "how have the last 15 years been?" But that's too much to bite off in a status update. And, oops, an email just came in which you have to answer, so you reckon' you'll ask about that power-washing thing some other time.

But you never do.

Despite the negativity here, and contrary to the title of this post, I don't actually think Facebook is a mistake. It's a really great app, and I've always thought that. I love how it connects you with people. I also love it from a professional standpoint, for the way it encourages open development, and how it's clean and polished. But the thing is this: It's a good app, but it is just an app. It's an app that connects people. That's it. And the trick is to not let it turn your friendships into endless tapas ... or yoga.

Ahh ... so there it is: My Inevitable Facebook Post. Until now, you could search my site and not find one reference to FB, which kind of surprised me when I realized that. But not anymore. I've entered the din of conversation, even though the Internets never asked for it, or cared.

And I guess I don't feel as dirty as I thought I would. Which is kind of disappointing.

In the end, this wasn't nearly as bad as, say, ... chipmunks. Or Daschunds. Oh well. Maybe next time.

First, I've got to find somebody with an XBox. And a couple of bowls in need of smoking.

link to this | comments (8) | File:  Facebook  Chewing  Blog 

The memes have been flying all over the place lately. And I got hit in the crossfire. Twice. One in each leg ... I've been tagged by Lemmonex and Jeff. But here's the thing ... one of these here memes asks for six quirks and the other asks for seven random/weird things. Together this adds up to ... let's see, carry the one ... thirteen. And there's no way I'm posting thirteen things about myself. Even if I space them out over two posts, it'll still be a total of 13 in a week and, well, that's just ... unlucky. So I've got to throw one more in for good measure. And good karma.

So here we go, six plus seven, plus one. Random/Weird/Quirky. And since we're already on the subject, we might as well start with this one:


Lemmonex didn't post rules to "seven things," so as far as I can tell there is no tag requirement. So I'm going to claim ignorance and go with that. But there were clear rules for six things, as set forth by Jeff. Here they are:

1. Tell about six unspectacular quirks of yours
2. Link the person who tagged you
3. Mention the rules in your blog
4. Tag six following bloggers by linking them
5. Leave a comment on each of the tagged blogger's blogs letting them know they've been tagged

Now to tag ... I'm going to make it easy and go with bloggers whose names begin with H or J:

• Hammer
• Hannah
• Helena
• HH
• Jinius
• Joanne

Ya'll have been tagged. Enjoy.

link to this | comments (10) | File:  Things  Music  Ho_Hum  Books  Blog 

On a recent trip back to DC via Baltimore, I asked Mat if he thought there was a difference between the "Blog Me" and the "Live and in Person Me." His response was immediate and it kind of surprised me: "I think the 'Live and in Person You' is much more quirky." I took it as a compliment, though I had the uneasy feeling that it could really go either way. I can always count on Mat for ambiguity.

The question of the "self" I'm portraying here is one I've been thinking a lot about lately. And it's one of those "crises" that people who blog tend to go through and it's a very boring sort of crisis to have, I know, and I'm a little embarrassed to be going down this road, frankly. But I've done it before. Several times, actually. And I'll probably do it again. So whatever. Deal. This one has a pay-off though, because it involves You!

More and more, You are meeting me for the first time through the words I write here, and not through the words I speak in everyday conversation. Which means that, for many of You (or Yous, as they say here in Jersey) Your entire perception of me is through my writing ... and the occasional strange photo I post of myself. You've never heard my voice. Or seen the manner in which I speak, my facial expressions, my tone, the way I laugh at a good joke. The slouched, cross-legged way I sit in a chair. The way I move my jaw back and forth or tap my teeth together when I'm thinking about something. Like what I'm doing right now, for instance. You don't know about these things. Or rather, You do now. But only because I told You about them. And there's a difference, isn't there, between the "book knowledge" sort of knowing that you get when I tell you I do these things versus the "familiar" sort of knowing you get when you experience those things for yourself. But at the same time, You know a side of me that people who have known me all my life (but who don't read this blog) don't know. You hear a different sort of voice here. Still me, but probably different from my "live" voice.

And so I imagine in knowing that blog voice, it kind of makes me like a character to a lot of You, a character in a very elaborate fiction, a fiction complete with plot lines and a cast of secondary characters all firmly and self-consciously rooted in my own life. And so the real difference between this sort of "fiction me" and the "non-fiction" me is in the words not written. The stuff I, as narrator, leave out. And that makes me deeply flawed and unreliable as hell. And who knows, maybe that's why You like me.

But here's the scary thing: even I'm beginning to see myself this way—as a character. It's partly out of necessity, because sometimes it helps to have that distance there so that I can put the stuff down that I want to put down and ignore the surrounding din of Audience, and that cowering internal voice telling me don't say that. But the problem is that if I'm the character AND the narrator, well, let's face it: I'm kinda fucked. Talk about an existential crisis. I mean, how can I have any kind of objectivity or, for that matter, any kind of subjectivity? How can I exist? Will I suddenly dematerialize? Will I one day only exist online? Will I only exist to You. I guess in one sense the answer to these last couple of questions is: "Eventually, yes." But what about now?

I recently read Lunar Park by Bret Easton Ellis in which the main character of the book is "Bret Easton Ellis." The character Ellis is also an author and has many similarities to the real Ellis, except that he's a character ... in a piece of fiction. I kind of love that idea. And I think it relates nicely to the act of blogging, though I'm sure that's not what Ellis was intending.

Anyway, I watched this BBC interview Ellis did in October 2005 following the release of Lunar Park. The whole thing is pretty good, so if You have some time, take a look. But here's the part I liked the most: In talking about the success of American Psycho, Ellis says:


That last sentence is the kicker. Once a book or blog or character is out there, we have no control over it. And if that blog is mine? And that character is ... me? Holy shit. I'm screwed. I always hoped I'd be saying this under different circumstances, but ... I am completely in Your hands. And since we're still in the lingering twilight hours of Web 2.0, and user-generated content is apparently all the rage, why don't You leave a comment and at the same time satisfy my narcissistic curiosities by answering the same question I posed to Mat: Is there a difference between the "Blog Me" and the "Live and In Person Me?" I'm afraid without the answer to this question, I might cease to exist altogether. So Your very participation is crucial to my survival. I'm hoping that maybe even a few lurkers will comment, though I won't hold my breath. If You don't know me in real life, make up something. Tell me what you imagine the differences to be. Go ahead ... define me. Today, it's all about You ... talking about me, of course. Let's not forget what's important.

link to this | comments (10) | File:  Ho_Hum  Fiction  Blog 

I've never been the type of person who joins things. I went to a college where about 80% of the student population was Greek and I still never felt the need to Rush. Of course, that may have had less to do with my reluctance to join things and more to do with a general distaste for Frat culture and a resistance to the idea that I needed to find all my friends within the first month of school.

The thing is, I have this sort of romantic notion that groups should just develop organically, at their own pace. Not through a process which starts by doing a two-week Rush through twenty different houses to prove yourself to people you don't know. Then you put in "bids" to the houses you like and you wait to see if you're accepted by one of them. And then you are, and in what is perhaps your proudest moment on this earth, you become a Sigma Chi, or a Tappa Keg, or whatever and so obviously this means you must subject yourself to some strange homo-erotic initiation ritual where your pledge brother comes in your hair while another dude sticks his dirty underwear in your mouth—oh, I'm sorry, have we been introduced yet?—and then you get drunk and head out into a field to get branded on your ass with a—holy shit, that's a real fucking branding iron isn't it guys? okay, okay. wait a minute fellas, I think there's been some misunderstanding, I mean this can't be safe ... oh, shiiiit!!!!

I don't know. I guess it's just not my cup of tea, is all I'm saying. But some people like that sort of thing. And hey, you've got to give them credit for knowing what they like.

When I was younger, I always thought my propensity not to join things meant I was kind of "anti-social." And the whole not joining a Frat thing served to reinforce that perception about myself. But as I got older I realized this wasn't the case at all. That I was, by nature, a pretty social person. If I had been at a more liberal school, I probably would have joined several groups because I would have probably felt more of a sense that I was already accepted. And maybe in this sense it was sort of good I was at W&L because, at that age, I really needed something to rebel against. And by rebelling against the social scene there, it actually helped me academically, because I spent a lot more time studying. If I had been at a school like Brown or Vassar, I probably would have been just another Birkenstock-and-flannel-wearing neo-hippie waiting around for the next promising three-way. And studying? Who cares about studying?

I guess what I'm saying is if I do join a group—and here's the tricky part—I want to actually feel like I'm part of the group before joining it. I want acceptance into the group to be a pre-condition of ... gracing it with my presence. Dig? That way I'm just loved. Automatically. Without doing anything but showing up. Is that so much to ask, people? I mean, really!

But last week, I stepped out of my comfort zone a bit and joined Thirty-Something Bloggers. See: here's my profile. Given my phobia of groups, this is not something I normally would have done, but having just moved from DC, where there had been a great "community" of bloggers (thanks in large part to dcblogs.com), I wanted to try to find something similar to that. It's nice to have that sense of community when you blog. For one thing, it provides a way for other people to find your blog. But more than that, it helps give you a sense of context and "place" where otherwise you're just this single voice shouting into the ether. What I like so much about DCblogs (who kindly still keeps me in their "blogroll" by the way) is that it really allows you to work into it naturally and with no strings attached. You live in DC? You blog? Fine! You're a DC blogger. It's really that simple. There's no test involved and you don't have to say anything about yourself. You're not obligated to meet anybody or say hello. You just send a link to your blog. Period. Nobody initiates you. At the end of the day, you still might wind up with somebody's underwear in your mouth. But if you do, it's because you totally wanted it to happen.

The Thirty-Something Bloggers group felt a little more risky to me. You have to set up a profile, which, of course, makes you sort of "define" yourself in a very superficial way. And then there is this whole business of having "friends" in the group, which of course is one of those MySpace-like concepts that doesn't really mean anything because it becomes a kind of numbers game. But the bloggers who were in the group did seem like people I related to. And the quality of the blogs on the site was good. And there was actually a DC blogger I recognized who had already joined. So that helped lend some credibility to it. But I was still sort of skeptical, because a group based on age seemed flawed somehow. I mean, being a "Thirty-Something Blogger" is, by necessity, a temporary condition. In the end, one of three things is bound to happen to all of us: 1) We will stop blogging. 2) We will continue blogging, but will eventually turn forty. 3) We will continue to blog and never turn forty. And while that last scenario may seem like a good one, it's actually the least-desirable outcome of the three.

But I decided not to over-think it. Or rather, I did over-think it (as you can see), and then I took a few steps back and joined the group anyway. Because why the hell not? It's all about making connections with people, after all. Isn't it? That, and trying not to take yourself too seriously.

So how do I feel now that I'm a Thirty-Something Blogger? What does it mean? Well, I'm not exactly sure. I haven't figured it out yet. Right now I'm just sort of existing there. My profile pic just floats around on the page and shit, looking dorky and weird. Pretty soon, maybe I'll throw myself into a discussion or two. Or maybe I'll just sort of fade away into the background and never say or do much of anything. I have yet to make friends with too many people. Actually, I've made precisely two, and one is the group creator, and so she has to be my friend ... by law, I think. My other friend—who I've already had a fight with over—of all things—grits, goes by the provocative name of Horny Housewife. And doesn't it seem like I should get extra "friend points" for that or something? I may get my Vassar moment, yet.

link to this | comments (8) | File:  Thirty_Something_Bloggers  Friends  College  Chewing  Blog 

There are a million and one reasons not to do something. But they all usually amount to one thing: fear. And let me just say that I've got some of the fear and some of the dread when it comes to this thing I've started, Fiction Fridays. I've gotten used to writing certain types of posts in a certain voice. It's gotten comfortable. I write about particular topics. I poke fun at myself. I try to be humorous, when I can. I've begun to whittle down the focus of things here. And so it's become somewhat safe and easy for me. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. But I'm never one to ride the wave of "safe and easy" for very long. Safe and easy waves are usually short-lived ones, low and close to the shore. And so last week I decided to throw this Fiction Friday thing in the mix to stir things up and generate some big surf. And, you know, I think I've succeeded because, I have to admit, what I'm looking at here—these waves—they're awfully big, and I'm apt to fall off of these crunchers—and often. It was, in fact, a real challenge to stick to Fiction Friday this week, but not for the reasons I expected. I'll explain ...

I just got through reading Bret Easton Ellis's Lunar Park. There's some interesting stuff in that book that I want to flesh out in another post, but for now, I just want to cite this one quotation that touches on the heart of what I'm struggling with here. The main character of the book is "Bret Easton Ellis," and this "character self" says early on in the book: "I could never be as honest about myself in a piece of non-fiction as I could in any of my novels."(25)

In the book, there are many levels of irony with that statement, which I love. But what struck me most about the comment is how strangely accurate it is with my writing on this blog. I feel much more vulnerable posting fiction than I do the non-fiction riffs I usually write, even though, as I've written about before, there are definitely elements of fiction in most of my posts, which I call the "exaggeration license." And maybe it's that ability to fictionalize the non-fiction that makes it "safe." Along with the ability to pick and choose what I write about. The stuff that's true, that I don't mind sharing, is just what it claims to be: fact. (At least as much as anything filtered through the psyche—the id, the ego, the super-ego—and written down is "factual.") And the stuff I don't want to share is conveniently left out, glossed over, or otherwise hidden.

But with fiction, the entire thing is open to interpretation. It's not "truth," per se, because none of it actually ever happened, at least not exactly the way it's described. But there is truth in it. And sometimes that truth is more true than anything else I write. Sometimes that truth is the scariest thing to put on paper (or screen) and show to people.

Which brings us back to "the fear." We live in a world of fear. And, I'll tell you, I'm scared. A lot. I'm scared of dying. I'm scared of things like cancer. Of bacteria. Of the crap in our oceans poisoning our bodies. But I'm also scared of living, brother, and I'm sometimes scared of myself. Because with all the standard set of fears that got instilled in me as kid, it really is true that "my mother never warned me about my own destructive appetite" (thanks Jenny).

When it comes to my writing, I'm scared like hell of using cliché, of being trite or boring. But I'm also scared that if I don't indulge in cliché at least a little bit, I won't be understood. And more than anything else, I'm scared that the stuff I'm putting down is just plain bad. That's a big one. I had a short story from college I was going to post this week, but yesterday I got cold feet. Because it's really weird looking back at things you wrote almost 15 years ago, even for me, let alone you guys. It needed a heavy edit.

So, for now, I think what I'm going to do is use Fiction Fridays as a way to post short "writing exercises" that I get from this book called The 3 am Epiphany, which I bought about a year ago, but haven't done much with until now. In my college creative writing classes, my professors always kind of frowned upon writing exercises. Their feeling was just that we should write what we wanted and bring it to class for a very public lashing and embarrassment in front of our peers. Good times. But that approach really leaves things wide open, and tends to fuel a bit of the "writer's block." Because when everything is possible, it's difficult to focus on just one thing. Sometimes the restrictions put on you by an exercise can be oddly "freeing."

For the purposes of my posts, using the exercises will, I think, take some of the pressure off and makes the posts more "casual." I won't have to feel the pressure of "finishing" a story and biting my nails wondering how it's going to be interpreted. Okay maybe, I'll still have some of that, but having the rules of the exercise there (along with a self-imposed length restriction) will put a little more separation between me and it. I also think it'll make for more bite-sized (read: "blog-able") stuff, frankly.

I started this as an "intro" to this week's Fiction Friday post, but quickly realized it was going to have to be it's own post because, like most of my posts, it would be too damn long. So there it is. I've got another post ready, but I really don't like to post twice in one day. Other than the weekends, Friday is always the slowest traffic day. It's pretty much universally that way on every Web site I've ever managed. I can't figure it out, because you would think Friday would be a big Web-surfing day. But I suppose it's also a day for "long lunches" and "leaving early" or catching up on the shit that you put off all week. So chances are most people who stop by my blog won't even read any of this until next week, if at all. So that means I sort of copped out of Fiction Friday this week. But not really. Because I had something ready. (Really, I swear!) I just had to say this other thing first. Anyway, if you have any thoughts, speak up. Leave a comment or send me an email. I'd love to hear them.

Now take an early lunch, already! And have a good weekend.

link to this | comments (6) | File:  Writing  Fiction  Chewing  Blog 

You've had this happen. I know you have. You wake up in the dark of night. Or morning. And your head is buzzing with this great idea for something. A story. A business idea. A song. No . . . it's more than that. This is the story. The business idea. This is the song, dammit. And there you are with the knowledge that . . . Well, I'll be damned. Here it is. By God, I've found it. Finally. But you're in that in-between state — not quite asleep, not quite awake. And in the hyper-clarity of that moment, you forget that you can forget. You have absolute trust in your own memory. And so you smile away the thought of getting up and writing this thing down. Because the bed is warm. And the air outside is cold. And you don't even want to get out of bed to pee, much less find pen and paper. There's no need . . . because you'll remember. And in the morning it will be glorious. Like walking around naked in cowboy boots. Yeah, that kind of glorious. And you'll get up and out of bed and have coffee and maybe some grits. And you'll find your notebook. And you'll use ink to jot it down. Because when it's all real and electric like that, you use ink. And all will be right in the world. And you'll listen to Renee Montagne and Steve Inskeep through the mono speaker in your kitchen. And the news will be good. And the dishes will clean themselves. And your work will be fun. And the only phone calls you will get will be from people who want to pay you to be funny. And you'll feel young and strong. And maybe your chest will puff a little. And your shit won't stink.

So you close your eyes. And you mull over the idea a little more, burning it firmly in the grooves of this think wax you're spinning, laying down the track of this fucking great thought, before fading back inside the envelope of your easy slumber.

But then you wake. Daylight. And the urge to pee is still there, only more pressing. And when you roll out of bed the cowboy boots don't seem to fit right. Renee and Steve insist on giving you all bad news. The dishes get dirty just by looking at them. And your work is not fun. And people only pay you to do excruciatingly boring chores. And, holy God, it's impossible to mistake it, your shit most definitely stinks. But worst of all, you realize that the thought is gone. And you feel kind of cheated. And like an idiot for being so stupid and letting it slip by. For succumbing to sleep. Again.

But sometimes it's not even the fault of sleep. Sometimes, you're driving North of Newark toward Essex County. And you're in the middle of saying something to the person next to you. And it occurs to you: this would be a great post. Maybe the greatest post. And you pause a moment and file it somewhere in that steel trap of yours. And then you go on talking about some shit that happened to you the day before. And the person you're talking to, well she felt it too, that thing that just slipped by. But she doesn't interrupt, even though she wants to. She just puts it away. Because it's Saturday morning and there's all the time in the world to go back and recall and discuss. And just like that, the day is gone. And you've looked at a million houses. And they blur together at the edges of your mind. And it's not until you're driving back to Baltimore that you remember that moment from this morning. And you're squinting your eyes and you're trying to remember what it was that you thought would make such a great post. You turn to her and you say, "You know I had this idea for a post earlier. Something that happened this morning." And she says, "Yeah, I remember it. I felt it too." And now you have corroboration that yes, there had been this moment. And it was a good one. And you say, "Please, for the love of God, can you help me remember? Because I think I might have to scratch my eyeballs out." And she says, "Me too, I will do it too. And I will also gnash my teeth and wave my fists and curse the gods." And this does make you feel better for a little while. And after you both have done that all the way to Delaware, you begin to throw volleys at one another, hoping something will jar the thing loose. You re-hash all the conversations you had, the houses you saw, the miles you covered.

And at the end of it all, what you have is a bunch of possibilities but no absolutes. It is gone. It has escaped. But I'm telling you people — it was there. You'll just have to believe us. Because this, friends, is not the greatest post in the world. This is a tribute.

Tenacious D would be proud.

link to this | comments (4) | File:  Ho_Hum  Blog 

I've had a few late nights this week. Because it was time for a remodel. And remodels happen best at night. And I just hope my new neighbors don't have sensitive ears. Because my office shares a wall with them. And there have been keyboard taps coming from over here. Lots of 'em. Tap. Tap. Tap. Remodels can be loud affairs.

Remodels also works best when all the lights are out, save one. Sitting in a shadowed room. Headphones on, all snug and complete. Tonight it's been a lot of the Soul Coughing that fills them. And I'm mouthing lyrics here . . . Irresistible. Bliss. — And ever since then I got disseminated. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. Yeah. It just flows better this way.

And so, as you may have noticed unless you're reading this from a feed reader, nicolasix has been spruced up a bit. Some new color. A wider look. A more newsy feel. A lot of the ideas for the look and functionality have been fueled by a project I'm working on right now for a client. That tends to happen a lot. As I work out problems in other projects, it gives me ideas for my own site. And it's great when that happens — when the pro work you do fuels your personal work.

And so I'm writing this now at 3am and, well, there's not much else to say. I'll post this in the morning because right now it's difficult to see what I've just written. Yep, there's really no telling. I can tell there are words there on the screen, but I'm not really sure what they say. Sometimes my head just reaches that buzzing conclusion of no more input. But I can still output. I just don't know if it makes sense or not. And no amount of Soul Coughing can drown out the sound of those sheets calling me. So distracting.

So real quick, a few things to point out:

1) Most people's screens are set for 1080 pixels and above these days, so the wider default layout shouldn't be too big a problem. But if yours isn't and you're getting a horizontal scroll bar in your browser, then try clicking the 'Narrow' link at the top right of the page, or in the footer. This will make it more comfortable for you 800 x 600 people. And your setting will be kept on that computer, so when you come back again and again (hint, hint) you won't have to make the adjustment each time.

2) As you can probably tell, with the new layout you can expect more photo posts. That was one of my primary motivations for the remodel.

3) Two other sites deserve some mention here, as I drew some ideas from each of them. First, a site I discovered recently: 5ThirtyOne. This one sort of confirmed in my head that, yes, it would be alright to use a more newsy-themed layout for a blog. So thanks for that. Second, I've always loved the way suicide blond's comment form was laid out, all tarski style, so I borrowed that general concept for mine. Again, thanks.

As usual, all content is driven by my own ColdFusion code and styled with my own CSS templates . . .

So that's about it. Let me know what you think. What you like. Or don't. Ideas for things to add. Or subtract.

And have a good weekend.

link to this | comments (9) | File:  Web_Design  Nicolasix  CSS  Code  Blog 

I've been reading and re-reading Hemingway lately, partly because I'm just enjoying his style, but partly because I'm hoping to learn, through osmosis, the art of writing while pleasantly pissed. Unfortunately, I haven't had much luck in this pursuit. I've tried varying the type of alcohol, speeding up or slowing down the pace of consumption . . . but the result is usually the same: crap. So I guess I'm doomed to be a sober writer. And while I suppose that's a noble thing to be, it's definitely not as fun, and makes it all the more necessary to be profoundly intoxicated while not writing.

Anyway, I'm currently involved in A Moveable Feast, Hemingway's personal account of his early years in Paris, struggling to make it as a writer. There are a number of passages where he discusses the craft of writing. This one, I think is particularly good:


I think what Hemingway is mainly referring to here is getting past that point where style begins to stand in the way of content. But I also think he's speaking to how discovering the true content can actually give way to style. Good writing—hell, good anything—involves starting with that one true thing. That spark. A feeling, an emotion: bare-skinned and honest. And when you've found that, the rest falls into place. The style, to a certain degree, is secondary. It will unfold around that initial thrust. People are good at recognizing the non-true. People are good at recognizing bullshit. It'll show.

But writing something true—something that rings true—does not necessarily mean writing the truth. One of Hemingway's biographers (and friends) A.E. Hotchner writes in the 1999 preface to Papa Hemingway, "Part of the mystique about Ernest stems from the manner in which he blurred the demarcation between fiction and fact." He adds that Hemingway once remarked that "Fiction is a magnification of reality." And this is particularly interesting in the context of A Moveable Feast since it is something of a memoir.

So I've been thinking lately about these ideas of truth and fiction and how they relate to blogs. To my blog, in particular of course (because it is, after all, all about me, isn't it?) But also to all "personal blogs." Because people kind of have a different standard for these, don't they? They expect them to be . . . the truth. And people tend to get very upset when this does not turn out to be the case. I sat in on a panel at SXSW last March about fictional blogs. The subject was interesting, though the panel itself was way too short. There was one panelist who had maintained a fictional blog for several years and there was a good discussion revolving around how readers of that blog had felt "duped" when they found out the blog was "not real." Because these readers had related to the narrator and had come to see her as a real person. But my take is this: these people were "duped" because they allowed themselves to be duped. It doesn't change the fact that when these people read the blog it spoke to them on some level. And I think it was that "speaking-to," that conversation, that is what was true. Without it, the blog wouldn't have held their attention. And if they had known that the blog was fiction to begin with, would it have struck them in the same way?

Despite the fact that this blog—my blog—is named after a fictional character, I am not a "fictional blogger." That said, I'll be the first to admit that there are elements of fiction in almost everything I write here. I don't see any other way of doing it really. What I'm always trying to arrive at, though, is something honest and unaffected, and hopefully those are things that come across independent of "fact" or "fiction." Either way, you must get to the one true sentence. And that usually involves baring yourself in ways you don't always feel comfortable doing (regardless of the fact that you might be an exhibitionist at heart.) Because sometimes the fear sets in. A fear of offending, maybe. Or a fear of people not understanding or misinterpreting. And the fear tends to be stifling when you allow it free reign. Of course, this isn't necessarily a problem unique to somebody who blogs. It's a problem with any form of public self-expression or art. And, holy crap, I worry constantly that I don't have the courage necessary to be a writer.

I have toyed with the idea of writing out-right fiction on this blog. Because in some ways, fiction would open up some new possibilities. But it has just always seemed out of place here. And so I've been tossing around some ideas for a different blog, something more fictional that I can do alongside this one, and hopefully one of these days it will become a reality. (Oops. No pun intended.) But if it does come about one of these days, I don't want it to necessarily be defined by the fact that it's fiction. Because even if it is fiction, it's going to be based in some sort of truth. Because, to be honest, I'm just not that imaginative . . .

I read a lot of personal blogs. Some of them are written by people who give their "real" faces and names to the Internets. Some are people who prefer to remain anonymous. Some of them are people I know "in real life" others are people I've never met. Some of them are probably entirely "factual" accounts of "real" life. Others probably contain a good deal of fiction. Either way, it doesn't really matter to me. The way I see it, every "true story" has elements of fiction. And any good fiction is filled with elements of truth. The "true thing" —the one true sentence—is what speaks to people. That's what matters. Without it, there's nothing.

link to this | comments (9) | File:  Writing  Chewing  Blog 

Bloggers tend to blog about this subject ad nauseam, particularly people who have just started blogging. So it pains me a bit to go down this road. But what the hell. At the risk of making people sick, I have to now jot down a few words on this here blog about - here it goes - the act of jotting down a few words on this here blog. Don't you love it? Blogging is so self-referential. It's the perfect medium for a postmodernist-leaning, Gen-Xer such as myself.

I've felt a bit muzzled lately. Muzzled, as in restrained, like the the thing that goes over the snout of a dog. Not muzzle as in a Muzzle of Bees, which is a Wilco song. Or just plain old Muzzle, which is a Smashing Pumpkins song. Sorry, but the Mellon Collie recently found its way onto my iPod for some reason, which might explain some of the Infinite Sadness, of late. And, holy moly, have I mentioned that the new Wilco CD, Sky Blue Sky is really, really good? Really.

Crap. You see? This muzzling - it's got me all crazy-like. Makes me all scattered in the brain. And a bit skittish. I mean, even more than usual.

But let me get back to the issue at hand: the fact that these words I'm writing are up here and out there and every other term you can think of for 'publicly available,' and indexed, and devastatingly searchable, archived - potentially - for years and years. Sometimes that reality is just a little bit overwhelming, especially when you see it backfire on some people in not-so-positive ways. There's so much talk about how the things you write online might turn off an employer or client or, in the case of singles, a potential date. Luckily, I'm not worried about the latter, but the former does cross my mind from time to time - the fact that there may be potential clients out there who have Googled me, found this blog, and written me off because, you know, who wants to work with a guy who writes about having an ultrasound done on his right testicle?

Of course the flip side of this, is that putting yourself out there in words and pictures (no, there are no ultrasound pics, sorry) may help you find people who actually get your personality and sense of humor, and this could lead to some much better working relationships. However, if I were to find a date based on the aforementioned post, I might be a little - what's the word - terrified. The bottom line is you can't think about it. Otherwise, it's hard to write anything at all without editing it to death, which goes for just about any writing, really. But with blogs it's kind of part and parcel of the whole medium, because there tends to be a kind of 'urgency' ingrained in the very style of the thing. It's a get-this-out-there-now, editing-is-for-wimps kind of mentality. But here's a little confession: I edit all of my posts. Here's another: there are many, many things I've written for this blog which I've never posted. And finally: It's not uncommon for me to spend a couple of days writing something to put here.

This all might make me a little uncool in blogging circles (as if the testicle/ultrasound thing hadn't done that already). And it's part of the reason I'll never be an 'A-List' blogger. There are actually several other reasons: I post too infrequently, my posts are way too long, and I'm a male 'personal blogger,' quite possibly the lowest life-form in the Blogosphere. And right now, I'm muzzled. Which makes everything worse.

It's times like these that call for photos instead of words. So here are three new galleries I've been meaning to post for a while now, two final ones from our trip to Japan this spring, and one final 'Before and After' gallery for our bathroom. I will now go back to being muzzled.

Japan Trip - Osaka
Our trip to Osaka, where we come across painted manholes, Panchinko and accidentally venture into the red light district.

Japan Trip - Nagoya
We spend a couple of days with Mitch and Naoko in Nagoya. We catch a baseball game, go to Starbucks, shop at the local Mac store, and eat burgers. Such a strange and different world from being in the States.

Bathroom Remodel - Start to Finish
One final gallery for the bathroom. A lot of people have seen some of these pics already, but I figured I'd put them all in one place, the before, during, and after.

link to this | comments (3) | File:  Blog  Writing