Velvet Verbosity

Lceel gave me an award, like what? A week ago? I have a half written post about it but I have to choose 5 bloggers to pass it on to. Should be easy, but nothing is easy in my world. The act of choosing something, ANYTHING, for me is pure torture. Let me put it to you this way. Recently someone I work for who totally loves and respects my work basically outed me as an obsessor (I would obsess about obsessor not being a word, but I can’t obsess about EVERYTHING!). Now before you start hopping around in front of your computer yelling to your spouse in the other room, “I SO called that one!!”, let me tell you something.

I obsess because I’m ADD and obsessing helps me to focus. I have this on very good authority. Yep. I had my brain waves measured cause I thought I was suffering from anxiety (aka obsessiveness) and lo! No anxiety pattern, but a CLEAR and DISTINCT ADD pattern. Whaddya know?

Turns out I adapted to my ADD mind a long long time ago by hyper-focusing. As a toddler I could watch ants or spiders for hours. After I learned how to read, I read voraciously, consuming books like other kids my age consumed popsicles and Saturday morning cartoons. Once I discovered TOPICS I would read every book on a topic that interested me, and then I would read all the books that were referred to in those books. I never left the library with under the maximum number of books I was allowed. Ever.

So what’s my point? There isn’t one. I’m just making excuses for my poor blog etiquette. This whole post is a product of my reviewing some of the blogs I read, and then clicking through to other blogs, and THEN discovering the whole world of Daddy Blogs which has totally restored my hope for humanity. Sort of. And now I have more choices than I could ever handle.

So I’m working on it Lceel. I haven’t forgotten. It’s just going to take me a while because I’m busy obsessing about WHO to choose. I hold you personally responsible for the state of my fingernails.*

*So totally not true. My fingernails are beautiful and healthy and I’ve never once chewed them.

Now even the homeless are blogging.  For reals.

The Homeless Guy 

Some excerpts:

All the libraries are closed today - not a good thing for the homeless. Yesterday’s balmy weather and high temps in the 70’s will be tempered today with highs in the 40’s.

With the library closed, I hope to do some cafe hopping. I hope they let me hang out on their computers for most of the day. That shouldn’t be a problem if business is moderately slow. Now to just find a good position in this seat, so that my back won’t hurt.

The Homeless Guy even Twitters!

I am on Twitter.com Start up an account, if you haven’t already, and follow me! I am at twitter.com/thehomelessguy.

What the hell?  I have a Mac Book Pro and I still don’t really get Twittering.

Technical blogging behind-the-scenes crap is probably not what you came here for, but today, that’s what you’re going to get. Making this blog work isn’t as easy as it looks. Of course, being a creative perfectionist never helps in making things easy. I’ve been trying to find a template that I could be happy with while I built my own over time. There is no shortage of good looking wordpress templates out there, but most don’t work the way you want them to. The last one I had up here was very attractive, but really screwed with the formatting on several posts. I tried redoing a couple of the posts, but the template was stubbornly holding on to wonkiness, so I gave up and tried a couple more of the templates I had downloaded.

Changing the templates is actually a fairly simple process (as was exporting all my posts and comments from blogger) but frustrating. I put up a template, view the site, and WOW! That looks great, I think to myself. But wait? What’s this? Where did my blogroll go? Or, whoops, that first post looks great, but the rest look like I was drunk when I was writing them.

Template after template presents some sort of problem, ranging from minor annoyance, to “Holy crap, that looks like hell!”

I’m settling on this most recent template because it is by far the cleanest in terms of formatting, as well as easy to read, elegant and simple. However, I had to delete almost all videos because they were messing with the page code, which I can’t edit because it is using CSS style sheet coding as well as pulling content from, uh, somewhere. I think it’s a problem with the combination of a new template with imported content. Clearly the recent video I posted is not a problem. It wasn’t a big loss to lose the other videos, most were for laughs anyway, and they are easy enough to find on YouTube should I decide that my blog just wouldn’t be complete without them.

This is one of those templates that doesn’t like wordpress widgets, and doesn’t allow for the built-in blogroll which was so nice because I could have categories. I’m sure if I had the time, I could figure out the code and add it, but I’m opting to build it as a page instead.

I also had serious trouble installing my tracking code. That’s still a little messed up, so I can’t tell who, if anyone is visiting, unless they comment. Maybe I’ll just buy myself a Romper Room mirror so I can see you all by way of magic. “I see Lceel, and Larmster, and RJ, and and and…” Remember that creepy woman and her mirror? I watched that show during a brief stint in a daycare, and I remember all the kids leaning in closer as she began to name off names, and I thought, “If this woman can look through that television box and SEE me, I am so outta here.”

“If you build it they will come”.

So I made it! I got the land (domain), I got the permit (host), I got the building materials (Wordpress), I got a temp-orary shelter (template), I put all my words in boxes and moved to the new place (I got exported). I like the new place, don’t you? But it is under construction so forgive the wonky formatting. I’ll be behind the tarp building the final site.

I’m here. I’m alive. And kicking. I’ll be back soon with something of actual substance. Send me some love. Tell me what you want to hear about. Give me a writing prompt.

I was out of town for Thanksgiving, and I thought I would surely find time to post, but it just didn’t happen folks. I’m re-acclimating to home and work. I’ll write soon.

I asked this question of some fellow bloggers over on the NaBloPoMo forum. Like, should I tell you, dear readers, that I blog in a bowtie and striped socks…only? Or that this morning I ate a double whopper from three days ago for breakfast? Or that I live in MaryMark Pennsylvania at 204 Iron Rod Lane? Or that my boyfriend likes to wear my bowtie and striped socks on Wednesdays at 7:32 P.M.?

Just how much should I tell a bunch of strangers, any of whom could be my next great stalker?

The truth is, I think I already have some answers to this question. And the answer depends largely on what you want to accomplish by blogging.

If you want to have an audience, a real audience, there are three known formulas that seem to work. 1. Have a topic or theme, and be an authority on it. 2. Get personal. 3. Be scathingly funny. It goes without saying that all three require good writing. And good writing combined with all three of the above is bound to be a hit.

Think about it. From a reader’s perspective, you might catch them once, but what will keep them coming back is either a desire to know more about your topic, or a desire to know more about the writer. Funny is just funny and people always come back for funny.

Blogs are a form of media and it stands to reason that what has always worked through history will work for blogs. Take television. The general categories of choice are news (informational television), drama (including the bane of our century, Reality TV), and comedy. You could break it down further, like into cartoons and music television, but these really still fall into the three larger categories.

Anyone can blog, and everyone seems to. However, not everyone is being read. (Whether everyone should be blogging is a topic for another post.) Gaining an audience requires emerging, through strong writing, into one of the general media categories. Establish yourself as an authority on something, reveal the drama of your own life, or take comedy lessons from Citizen of the Month. He’s even mastered how to harness all three here. (Look, it’s about his ex, her bra, and how he mastered the art of unhooking said bra so just go read it. You’ll learn, you’ll love, you’ll laugh.)

Myself? I don’t care if I have an audience. But if you do happen to be reading, perhaps you could say hello? You know, just a little comment so that I can see you’ve been here? Not that I care or anything.

I was randomly tagged by Nancy to post seven of my oddities. Since being tagged I’ve been lazily rolling the idea around my brain. You know, through the maze of belly-button lint I’ve got stored up there. I think there’s still a few neurons and dendrites left.

I’ve never been “tagged” online before. My initial reaction was the same as when a telemarketer calls my house when I’m in the middle of cooking dinner or I just sat down for the first time in 57 hours. Tagging on a blog is like sending a chain letter, only without the warnings that should I fail in my task to pass it on my nose will fall off, my hair will spontaneously catch fire, warts the size of Cleveland will pop up all over my body, and I will never ever be loved by anyone. Ever.

By the way. No offense Nancy. I know you were just doing your bloggily duty. And because I realize that, I’ll play. For a minute. Grudgingly.

1. I didn’t like the game of “tag” when I was a kid. I couldn’t stand the anxiety. That and other kids touching me. Who knows where their hands had been!
2. I did love playing Hide-N-Seek. I always won. No finding = no touching.
3. I like stale Peeps. In fact I don’t like fresh Peeps at all, but I love stale ones. Makes it more of a challenge to bite their heads off.
4. Even though I blog, I don’t enjoy revealing private things about myself to the public. There’s a distinct difference between writing and listing. The first reveals something about the author. The author is providing a window into their mind. Yet one can never be entirely sure what they are seeing. Listing is like standing on your front lawn and revealing random body parts, up close, for passersby. There’s not a lot of doubt that, “Yep, that’s a kneecap alright.” “I think the technical name is Patella dear.”
5. I once had an injury to my middle finger that made it stick up for months. No. I’m not joking. It’s a good thing it looked a little purplish and gnarled. (See? Body parts.)
6. I diligently avoid wearing pink.
7. If I could pick my gender when I’m 70 I would choose to be a man so I could have a mustache to stroke and a pipe to smoke as I think.

Here are the rules:

1- Link to the person that tagged you and post the rules on your blog.

2- Share 7 random and or weird things about yourself.

3- Tag 7 random people at the end of your post and include links to their blogs.

4- Let each person know that they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

I won’t be tagging anyone, but feel free to pick this up voluntarily.

**Image from Elliott Avedon Museum and Archive of Games, University of Waterloo website.