January 2004 Archives
Obviously things have and are changing around here. Around everywhere, really. In The Blog, while there are thousands and thousands of new sites and voices appearing everyday and it seems like someone else is the newest, freshest Flavor of the Month, my old standbys, those people who were around when I first started back in January 2000 have been in a steady decline. People going on hiatus, people doing their sites in for bigger and better things. It's obvious to me that in the identifiable cycles of blogging: optimistic launches, the cool upswing of linking to the new A-Listers, the Plateau, and then the inevitable "Why Am I Doing This" conversation that either causes them to quit blogging, take a breather, or to press on in some aimless direction hoping to find new inspiration, there is nothing new under the sun. What's old is new again and every other cliche still rings true.
It's true that there have been more times in the last year where I honestly thought about doing something else. Giving up on the Woo and working on a new site, under a new name, with a new purpose. Whether obvious to anyone else or not, I haven't felt the same about blogging since Mom died in March. It was more of a surprise to me how much I blogged FOR her while she was living and how much it became a way of daily communications between her. She loved the life I was leading and found herself riding my days with me through what I wrote. She loved that I was snarky and a bit cynical and never hesitated to call me if I hadn't posted something by the time she got into work every morning. Of course, blogging for her while she was sick took on a purpose of its own and thankfully, while I lost most of my entries prior to May 2003 in a hosting service move, I was able to save all the posts about her and her illness. And then she died and I came back to work and things had changed both significantly and not so much so. I lost my voice, it seemed to me. Posting was nothing more than standing here so I didn't lose my place. To say I even felt mediocre would be generous.
So after so many months of thinking about it and talking about it, I sat down and worked up a new design. I can't remember, if ever, that I've had a site that wasn't somehow blue or gray in theme. It's like a new haircut for me, I suppose...not sure how much I like it right now, but I'm going to give it a chance to grow on me. I also pared the content way down. Does anyone give a fuck what I'm downloading from iTunes or reading? My way to compensate for that very important information is to phase out short filler postings about nothing and concentrate more on my writing posts. I'm looking for my voice again and I remember it best when I thought I really had something to write about and that's what I'm hoping to find. And there will be some added features in the next few weeks once I figure out the guts of the machine a bit better; categories and searching functions and all that.
In the meantime, I'm still here, but the Emperor has some new digs he'd like to show around a bit.
Based on all the trouble I get into over the things I pick up scouring through the Blog, it's a wonder I'm ever allowed to log on at all. I'm impressionable, dammit...practically a sponge just waiting to wipe up the spill on the counter whether I need to or not and yet when someone throws something out there, I'm there to consider it, roll it around in my head, and then go do it. It was exactly this that happened when in reading someone's blog (and someone's blog who I don't really care for, but that's a whole other story) I was introduced to the fun that is Civilization III. HA!
For anyone who knows me and while I'm fine with all things pop culture, my actual propensity and coordination for video games is about nil. Sure I was raised on the Atari 2600(tm) but somewhere after Pitfall(tm) when the joystick evolved from a single stick and button into some fleshed out buttons-on-top-AND-bottom where you had to remember and be able to navigate complex series of right-button-left-button-while pressing the jump button-four-times maneuvers, I just quit and found out about self-exploration. My video-game career ended there. Fast forward 17 years and while I've tried out several different games, spending way to much money on something I knew I had no interest or passion in pursuing, I'm still sucked in by a good sell and Civ III seemed to be it. The sell wasn't even particularly good, actually. It's just it sounded interesting to me and so I found both Civ III and it's expansion pack, Civ Conquests at Wal-Mart the other night and threw them in our cart along with several new winter hats, those fingerless glove-mittens, knitting needles, and a birthday card that had a dog blowing a gum-bubble out of it's ass.
Needless to say, after a 3-day weekend, it's safe to assume I still have NO idea how the game is played nor how to win. I essentially just keep clicking the button to advance another 50 years until my city treasury is so low the town has burst into unrest and flames and there is some rosy-cheeked fop telling me I need to build a Colossus and become envied of all civilizations. As I'm not an instruction manual kind of guy in any good sense of the word, the 56-page Civ III manual has been of little value to me. So essentially I'm left with $70 worth of gaming software that not only utterly bewilders me, but also sucks up my time that could be better spent vegging in front of the TV watching reality shows bitching about how I never have enough time to read or write or do any of the other things I always think about doing but never get around to.
On the other hand, it's better than sitting around listening to crap about Jacko or the Iowa Caucuses or that God-forsaken State of the Union address on tonight.
Last year, in what was arguably the worst winter season up around our area that most could remember, Jeff and I had exactly no snow days. We made it to work and back home every day, regardless of whether it took our normal two hours or hemorrhaged into a four hour ordeal. And no wrecks or wipeouts.
This year so far, we've had only two somewhat minor snow falls and in the first, we plowed the truck into a tree and with the second, falling last night, we couldn't even make it to work. Not that we didn't try, though. We left a few minutes early at 4:40am and diligently navigated through the seven powdery inches that had yet to be scrapped this morning all the way to Port Jervis where we pick up I-84. Unfortunately, the entrance ramp to 84 is this long, curvy thing so when we made it around the curve, we could finally see the interstate had been completely shut down and miles and miles of cars and trucks were at a dead stop. So carefully and quite illegally, I backed down the long, winding entrance ramp in reverse and we called it a day. Official snow day which, while sounding nice, is actually a huge pain in the ass as my boss left for vacation to day and this was going to be my first day in charge meaning I'm trying to monitor and do damage control remotely from home.
On the other hand, I have a roaring fire started, coffee on and bacon thawing and literally nothing to do but cruise the internet and check my voice-mail. Jeff actually went back to bed as the prospect of sleeping in on weekday past 4am just doesn't ever happen.
Western Digital 80GB USB 2.0 External Hard Drive - 2MB Cache 7200RPM
iPod Dock Connector to FireWire and USB 2.0 Cable
Underworld DVD
Dark City Soundtrack
Midnight Growlers - Sling Bears DVD
Awesome. Now there's a reality show for those of us who are tired of the frat boy/large bosomed formula. "Scary" alternative folks who get to wield the power of voting out the poseurs.
Unbelievably, there’s a certain criteria for being a hip NYC blogger. The first being that no one believes in or follows a certain criteria which is why I'm so not hip, it's probably making me hip on it's second go around. That being said, anybody who's anybody around the City has caught Andy's Potty Mouth show as it was making the rounds and growing into the phenomenon it has become this past year. All the while, those of us who beat feet from the city every afternoon around 4-ish have totally missed the boat. Until now.
For some inexplicable reason Andy and his Potty Mouth have been booked at the Rainbow Mountain Resort up in the Pocono's next Friday night. So what? So I live a bit further than a stone's throw from there but it's totally close enough to go see it so we're planning an unusual night time commute through Milford and down to Rainbow Mountain. What a gay lodge is doing in the middle of no where, I still don't know, but I'm not complaining if they're importing Andy and his show. I finally feel like I can cross off one of the hip-criteria criteria’s. Next up: wear Jeff's John Deere(r) trucker cap with irony.
I always knew I had an iPod in my future. It was inevitable that what everyone else had discovered last year would eventually make it's way to me grubby little geek hands eventually. But for about the first time in my life, I'd not indulged my instant gratification need for gizmo's and decided to wait to buy one. To actually save up for it or as the case may be, to wait and save until Amber came through for me.
Well, in a somewhat questionable move by Jeff to either be a loving partner rewarding my materialist prudence or to circumvent a coming brawl for stranding me at home after New Years by taking my credit cards, he arrived home Friday night with a bright, shiny new 40GB iPod with my name on it. It's hard to stay mad in the face of such a white flag of truce. Yes, I'm just that easily manipulated.
So I've been pouring through all our CD's this weekend, loading everything up that I could possible want to listen to and have come to this irrefutable fact: my musical tastes SUCK. I was talking to someone earlier this weekend making that same confession and he said my tastes were just eclectic. I think having Lords of Acid sitting right next to my favorite tracks from Disney's "Hunchback of Notre Dame" would say otherwise. And for all the schlock I put on the iPod, there is an equal amount that I haven't because I can't for the life of me figure out why I bought it in the first place. Lots of early 90's electronic stuff from The Shaman that harkens back to those days when I was a gay-bar twink wearing metallic-dyed hair gel, I suppose. I do have an inordinate amount of soundtracks and cast recording albums (I can finally have immediate access to Fiddler on the Roof when I need to practice my bottle dancing) and of course just about everything Vangelis ever produced. I cut back and only put on my favorite Enya tracks but loaded just about everything from Pink Floyd. The biggest delight was being able to pick up all those single songs that were favorites but which we'd bought the whole album to get which is why iTunes has been such a great thing as I've gone back and picked up several songs and whole albums which I'd either lost or damaged beyond repair over the years.
Now I'm afraid I'm going to drop this thing in the toilet and lose the last 24 hours I spent ripping CD’s, watching the 658 songs I have sitting on the thing lost to the murky depths. So I'm not going to wear it to the bathroom for now.
In case the new "This is me" picture at the side isn't clear enough or in case someone is scratching their head thinking, "now there just is no fucking way that 'mo is wearing a ding-dang apron with the word 'piggy' embroidered on it", I most certainly am. The other option was having my picture taken wearing Jeff's matching apron with the word "poopie" embroidered on it. One must pick his own poison.
