In Which I... Gotta Run!

Goodness. Are we back at another Waning Crescent already? I have some excuses for not posting lately, but none of them are very interesting, so I'll spare you. It's been a fun couple of weeks. In fact, it's fair to say that most of my excuses fall into the overall category of The Fun Not Stopping.

Anyway, my old friend Meep flew in today to spend a week. Yay! But this means I probably won't be posting much for the next little while either. So be good while I'm out. And Happy New Year.

In Which I Answer Your Questions About Music and Portland.

[And by "your," I mean "my."]

Q: What on earth is that new, ominous-looking green building on Burnside that bears no slogan but AFSCME?
A: Why, it's the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. Which I think is a labor union for civil servants... but may just be a cover for a robot manufacturer, who knows.

Q: Is the first-ever They Might Be Giants podcast worth the download?
A: If you are really a TMBG fan, yes. Otherwise, not so much.

Q: With all the mp3 blogs out there these days, isn't there one that features really good writing?
A: There is.

Q: What if popular musicians wrote songs which were anagrams of their names?
A: They might sound like the Holy Tango Basement Tapes.

Q: Say I want to take public transportation from my mansion in the West Hills to the AFSCME building, so I can see the robots... er, government employees. What's the easiest way to do that?
A: Use Google's Transit Trip Planner, which is currently in beta, with Portland as a guinea pig. It's keen!

In Which I Don't Say Much About Narnia.

I feel like I should write something about the first Narnia movie, some sort of evaluative remarks, but I'm not ready to yet. I'm still processing it. There's so much there for me to consider... maybe not necessarily inherent in the film, but so many layers of meaning built up over years of reading and re-reading. So I'll just tell you that I watched it with my brother, and that we both really enjoyed it.

I used to read the Chronicles out loud to my siblings long ago -- four of us in all, just like the Pevenseys. My sisters tolerated the reading, that being the best entertainment available in the absence of television, but my brother was the one who really loved it. In a sense he has become part of the story for me, and I for him. So it was most fitting for us to stumble back through the wardrobe together, after all these years.

Ebert's review of the movie ended with the following rhetorical question:

But it's remarkable, isn't it, that the Brits have produced Narnia, the Ring, Hogwarts, Gormenghast, James Bond, Alice and Pooh, and what have we produced for them in return?

To this I can only answer: Earthsea. I know, I know, it was just subjected to a horrible TV adaptation; but now it's in the hands of Studio Ghibli, the people who brought you My Neighbor Totoro and Spirited Away. Yes, you read that right: anime! It's a weird idea, but I kinda like it. Even though Ged looks suspiciously Caucasian in the movie poster.

In Which I Tidy Up a Bit.

This weekend I've been obsessed with organization. This is not at all normal for me. By nature I'm a piler, not a filer. If only I had these fits of orderliness more regularly, my life would be... well, much more orderly.

This particular fit began yesterday, when I discovered the Noguchi filing system (thanks to Sanguinity). It seems to have been designed expressly for pilers, by encouraging organization without classification. Though it can't replace all my files, it immediately looked like a better option than my current system (which involves periodically sweeping everything off the kitchen table into a box, which is subsequently ignored). So I spent a couple hours today snipping the tops off 9x12 envelopes and stuffing things into them. There are still several piles/boxes left to deal with, but you know what they say about journeys of a thousand miles.

The other thing I've started organizing is my links, or "bookmarks," or "favorites," or whatever you want to call them. I've never really made use of that feature in any browser, because it was limited to a single computer, and, well, I'm not. Instead, I would e-mail them to myself, or to someone else. Finding the link again usually wasn't too difficult... so long as I actually remembered I had it.

Turns out there is a better system, and it's been around for quite a while. You've probably already heard of it; in fact, you may even already use it (I know Allan does!). del.icio.us is, much like the Noguchi system, brilliant in its simplicity. When you see a web page you want to bookmark, you just click a button and del.icio.us remembers it for you. You can also annotate and tag the link for easy reference. Nice, huh? But it gets better. You can send links to other users. You can see how many other people have bookmarked a given page, and how they tagged and annotated it. You can look at what links are popular today, and what's been most recently bookmarked. You can use it to set up a wishlist (one that isn't limited to Amazon!). The list goes on. If you haven't tried it yet, you really should.

I've decided not to post my del.icio.us page to this blog, because it will eventually paint a more detailed portrait of myself than I'm prepared to share with the world at large. No, I'm not hiding anything sensational; I'm just weird like that. However, I'm more than happy to share with anyone who knows me in real life, so if you're curious, drop me a line and I'll send you the URL.

What makes both of these organizing tools so appealing to me is their flexibility. A fixed system of files (whether paper or virtual) requires constant revision in order to keep up with the flow of incoming information -- particularly for anyone whose interests are continually evolving. But the Noguchi system, by avoiding classification altogether, allows for a purely intuitive means of storage and retrieval. And the tags used in del.icio.us (and gmail, and flickr, and an increasing number of web-based resources) provide a highly flexible system of classification that doesn't limit an item to a single primary descriptor. Someday we'll be able to organize files on our hard drives this way! There's an exciting thought.

In Which It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Ear.

I have a confession to make: I hate Christmas music.

How can this be? I love music, and I love Christmas. Something has clearly gone terribly wrong.

It wasn't always this way. I used to love Christmas music unreservedly. Then I only loved some of it. Then I became alarmed by its tendency to spill over into November, when I wasn't ready to hear it yet. Then I vaguely resented all of it, unless I was singing it with other people, which has happened less and less in recent years. This year, as I was gritting my teeth at the grocery store while some canned singer repeatedly reminded me he was simp-ly hav-ing a won-derful Christ-mas-time, I realized that my distaste has finally bloomed into genuine hatred.

I have some theories about how this may have happened. One is that Christmas songs, since we only hear them for a short time, don't have to undergo the same Darwinian struggle for survival that everyday songs do. Bad Christmas music gets recycled year after year, simply by virtue of being holiday-appropriate. Another reason is that Christmas music tends to involve a lot of choirs and big bands, which I generally tend to avoid. A yet more significant factor is commercialization: a little bit of my heart dies every time something I once held sacred is cheapened by mass-media overexposure, in a blatant attempt to separate as many people from their money as possible. (See also: Lord of the Rings.)

In a further ironic twist, my first response to this realization was to listen to a lot of Christmas music, in search of some that doesn't make me cringe. After some thought, I decided my primary criterion for Good Christmas Music was that it had to be good enough to listen to all year round without getting sick of it. (Anything I listened to as a child is disqualified, as I can't address it with any objectivity.)

Unfortunately, I was not able to compile an entire mix CD's worth of songs that met this standard. However, I present to you some highlights of my search.

Here is the best Christmas song I've heard this year. I don't know anything about the artist, other than that she's from Canada, and that she makes this old German melody sound prettier than I would have thought possible:
Feist - Lo, How A Rose E'er Blooming

Several years ago, Sufjan Stevens recorded three Christmas EPs for friends. All of them are now available for free online. I wholeheartedly recommend them; they are gentle acoustic arrangements of carols, hymns, and original songs, with Sufjan's hushed tenor at the forefront. They're reverent without being arrogant, and sweet without being precious. You can download all three (zipped files) here:
http://www.chattablogs.com/quintus/archives/019581.html

Finally, if you're going to record obnoxious Christmas songs, you might as well be as obnoxious about it as possible. Last year on MetaFilter, one gentleman noted:

I like to sing Jingle Bell Rock, but using only the words "bell", "rock", and "jingle".... Drives my wife nuts. I'd record an MP3 of me doing it if someone could find me a karaoke track.

Someone could, and he did. As far as I'm concerned, this is now the definitive version of Jingle Bell Rock:
http://quasistoic.org/PinkStainlessTail - jinglerockbell.mp3

Which Is Largely Hit And Miss.

Last night was the first time I picked up a bow in about two months. Turns out it was actually the last open shoot night of the year at the community center, too, so I'm glad I braved the cold. It was good to catch up with my friend the archery gnome, whom I can't resist referring to here as Fletcher (not his real name, but his real occupation). It was good to use those muscles and those parts of my brain that I've been neglecting. It was good to look the target in the eye and say: Oh son. You're goin' down.

Actually, the target got the last laugh; I am totally out of shape. I tried to just focus on form without worrying too much about where the arrows ended up. So if you were an unfortunate beetle wandering around the target, you would have been quite safe on that center X.

Also, I was glad that the other people were shooting compound bows. A recurve archer like myself will typically fire off 3 arrows within a minute or less. But it's a lot easier to hold a compound bow at full draw, so compound archers take their time aiming. Lots and lots of time. I normally get impatient waiting for them to just fire the darn thing already so I can go pull my arrows, but this time I was grateful for the interval to stretch and breathe.

So that brings me up to 7 out of 10 fun things on my post-November rewards list. Still to come are 7) the broadband internet connection (for reasons already described), 8) the visit to the comic book store (because I just haven't got around to it yet), and 10) the blogging. Which I suspect will pick up after #7 straightens itself out.

Oh, hey, you know what? I'm not going to that Andrew Bird/Nickel Creek show after all. It's all Karen's fault. She gave me a 30% off GAP coupon that was good through last weekend. So I took a shopping buddy to the GAP outlet, and we both left with armloads of incredible deals! Whee! But, um, we sort of spent a lot of money in the process. So when I was buying my ticket for the show, and I realized there were going to be more (dis)service charges than I anticipated, and I thought about all the Christmas shopping I have yet to do, my enthusiasm faded before I could enter my credit card number.

I would normally consider excellent music to be more essential than new clothes. But every time I put on my new coat and go out in that biting wind, I think I have chosen wisely.

In Which We Party Like Writers.

This year, regional word counts were one of the features added to the NaNoWriMo website. Portland ranked 11th in the world, ahead of NYC, Boston, and San Francisco, with a collective total of 3,756,412 words.

Last night was Portland's TGIO, the party celebrating the end of NaNo. There were heaps of things to eat, oodles of interesting people, and lively conversations in every corner. We had shared a remarkable experience, even if we hadn't actually all been together or even met before, and now we shared the buzz of triumph. It was pretty great.

But the best part of the evening was when people took turns reading excerpts from their novels. What an incredible diversity of imagination, tone, style, and personality! They covered the gamut from hilarity to heartbreak, with narratives of bad dates, battlefields, bandits, road trips, drug trips, dockside brawls, people with wings and people with tentacles. It was hugely entertaining. And there was something so satisfying, on such a primal level, about a group of people just sitting around telling each other stories.

Thinking of that now, I also recall that phone conversation I had with my songwriter friend the other week (he needs an alias; let's call him Bombadil). I was giving Bombadil an overview of my novel, and he interrupted me to exclaim, "You're telling me a story! This is so cool! ...And we're adults!"

What is wrong with us, that this sort of experience is so unusual? Because I have a strong sense that it is something we were meant to be doing.

In Which A Herring... Doesn't.... Whistle!

Last night I saw a movie for the first time in ages and ages (okay, a month). I thought I'd long since missed my chance to see Mirrormask, but I caught it on what I think was really its last night in town.

I'm generally interested in anything Mr. Gaiman (the screenwriter) is involved in, partly because he's done some remarkable things, and partly because he's just such a nice guy. Considering the mixed reviews it got, though, I wasn't expecting to be impressed by this one. Oh, but I was.

Sure, it was uneven, parts were boring and/or confusing, and it could have been cut a lot shorter without losing much. But it also offered a fascinating metaphorical examination of what it's like to be a girl at the edge of adolescence.

Helena, the pre-adolescent heroine, gets lost in a dream-city that seems to have been inspired by her own drawings. The windows of the buildings in this city look into her own bedroom, from the walls where her drawings hang. Peering through these windows, Helena sees a dark doppelganger of herself taking over her world: wearing punk clothes and heavy makeup, acting hateful toward her father, kissing a boy (gross!), and gleefully destroying things that are precious to Helena. When the child-Helena shouted in vain from a drawing, "Dad, don't listen to her! That's not me!" I got that weird déjà vu feeling.

When we left the theater, we discovered a huge old mobile stairway-thing right in the middle of the walkway. It was unmanned; apparently whoever was changing the marquee had decided it was time for a break. So, of course, I climbed it. The marquee letters were brittle and hard to move, so I didn't actually get to help out with the sign-changing. But the view sure was nice from up there.

In Which I Am So Glad To Have Finished Way Before Deadline.

My site was down today, wasn't it? It totally was. Man, I hate that. There's not even anything important on my site yet, and it still bugs me.

In other non-connectivity news, I talked to the DSL people, and they said they couldn't possibly help me until December 9 at least. This is because of how many other people in my area are using the same service. Just so you know I'm not putting it off....

Speaking of Andrew Bird, he is opening for Nickel Creek on December 6 and December 7 at the Roseland. If anyone else is as excited by this news as I am, you should probably come and hear them with me.

Unless you live in Japan. Then you're not invited.

In Which The News Is Only Good.

Yes. I finished Monday night, just before midnight. Thank you, thank you.

It's funny how, once the ol' wordcount passes 50K, everywhere looks like a good place to stop. I think my novel would have benefited from being ended a little more conclusively. But I did finish the story arc, so I'm content. There's always the rewrite for things like that.

And yeah, throughout most of this month I thought this wouldn't even be something I would want to rewrite... but as it all started wrapping up, I realized (to my very great astonishment) that parts of the story actually work pretty well, and that I really like several of my characters, enough to already be wondering about future stories for them to do things in.

It needs a heap of reworking, though. I still don't know exactly what I'll rework it into, since it didn't really turn out like I meant for it to, and I have no idea what it wants to be or how to help it be that. But I can figure that out some other month. In the meantime: No! You can't read it.

But! Many thanks to everyone who heartened me this month with enthusiasm and interest, sympathy and competition, food and companionship, and all other forms of encouragment. It wouldn't have been any fun without you.

Also! I tested negative for strep throat, and am feeling well enough today that I will probably actually have to go back to work tomorrow. I guess a full week of Thanksgiving vacation is probably about as much as anybody can expect to get away with.

And! Since a blog post wouldn't be complete without some kind of link, I leave you with the promise of snacks:

Andrew Bird - Tables and Chairs

In Which I Have Good News And Bad News.

The bad news: I'm sick.

The good news: I'm sick.

As long as I don't get so sick I can't wiggle my fingers, I should finish my novel sometime tomorrow.

In Which Even a Sith Lord Needs a Tray.

I got to talk with an old friend last night, a musician and songwriter who takes his craft very seriously. When I told him about all this noveling stuff, the struggles, lessons, rewards, etc., he could totally relate. One of several wise things he told me was that nothing you create is a waste of time; even if it doesn't come out right, it's still practice, which is valuable in itself.

I knew that, but I think I needed to hear it again. I sort of had the idea that last November's novel was Practice and that this year I would write a Really Awesome Book, but the novel that is emerging from this month looks, again, very much like Practice. Which only means that practice is exactly what I needed.

I'm sitting here next to my sister, who is surfing on a separate computer (we call this "quality time"). She's at comedian Eddie Izzard's site, and she keeps clicking on things with little sound clips attached. So Eddie is saying things like, "This is the home page: Mom, Dad, all that kind of thing," and "If you have broadband, download things now!" She is really, really amused by this, which in turn amuses me.

Oh, now he's doing his Darth Vader bit, and it's making me laugh too hard to write.
[Note: contains vocabulary unsuitable for small children.]

[Edit: corrected italics tags. Again.]

In Which I've Got Will And A Little Time.

Last night I wrote about 1500 words of dream sequence. I like writing dreams; the symbolic and the surreal are familiar territory for me, whereas reality all too often feels like a foreign country.

I sometimes listen to music while I write, but mostly not, because there is always, always music going on in my head. For instance, when I have exceeded my word count goal for the day, but am still bent on pounding my way through the rest of an interesting passage, this is often what I'm hearing.

The New Pornographers - Use It

In Which I Think Happy Thoughts.

I did, in fact, write over 8000 words this weekend, landing me at a count of 31,459 (63%). Now I am almost back on track. However, I am feeling a little blah today. In order to keep my eyes on the prize, I find it helpful to think about exactly what that prize entails. Here are some fun things that wait for me on the other side of November:

1. Being able to say that I've completed a second novel (which has taken me to new depths of awful prose, clumsy characterization, and tedious passages of interior monologue written blatantly for the purpose of increasing wordcount without having to decide what happens next).
2. Attending the local TGIO (Thank God It's Over!) party, where exhausted and exuberant Wrimos will congratulate one another on their verbosity.
3. Catching up with a number of people I haven't spoken to in the past month.
4. Dusting off my bow and getting back to the archery range.
5. Recreational reading. There's a heap of half-finished books next to my bed. Also, Chesterton's Orthodoxy has been sitting on my coffee table for weeks now. It has a sketch of the author on the cover, and sometimes I could swear the old codger is winking at me.
6. Going out in the evenings... to places that are not coffeeshops or food courts.
7. Finally actually getting a broadband connection at home. My mama will be so proud!
8. A visit to Cosmic Monkey Comics, where I hope to acquire the final collected volume of Y: The Last Man, as well as the first MOME anthology and an odd little book titled Will You Still Love Me If I Wet the Bed? However, frequently when I go to the comic book store intending to buy something, I come back with something very different, so you never know.
9. Resuming my habit of absurdly long phone conversations with Ah.
10. More time for blogging?

[Edit: Blogger won't let me do an ordered list, so I redid it manually.]

In Which I Am, As Usual, Easily Amused.

Remember when I said I really wanted to add some more water to the Mystical Tree to see if it would grow so top-heavy it would collapse? Well, I was saving this experiment for the 25,000 word mark. But the other night, in a fit of absent-mindedness, I tried to blow some invisible dust off of it. It immediately lost about 1/3 its foliage. When I tried to move it to clean up, it continued dropping greenery at an alarming rate. The stuff was like cotton candy, dissolving at a touch, only into dust instead of stickiness. Oh, well. I shook off the loose bits, which was pretty much all of it, and put more water into the base.

The effect, two days later, is somewhat disappointing. Before, it looked like I'd stolen it from a model train layout (N gauge). Now it looks like a cardboard cutout with some yellowy-green mold on it. Which, I guess, is all it really ever was. But still.

I know this is supposed to be an educational toy, but since it didn't come with any informative material about substances that turn into fuzz as they evaporate, I'm not sure what a kid like me is supposed to learn from the experience. Perhaps one of the following:

1. Mysterious chemicals have mysterious properties.
2. It's November. Trees are getting naked. Peer pressure?
3. I can kill any houseplant if I put my mind to it -- even the ones that aren't alive.
4. Little distractions go a long way when you're supposed to be writing.

Speaking of #4: the box of Christmas decor is still lurking in the bathroom at the coffeeshop.

In Which My Chances of Victory Seem a Little Less Remote.

Last night I figured out that if I could get 2000 words written before bed, and then write 4000 on each remaining day of the month that I don't have to work and 1200 on each day that I do, I'd finish on time, with two whole days free to dedicate to family Thanksgiving activities.

I then proceeded to fall asleep on the couch after only writing about 800 words.

Still! Hope springs eternal in the blah blah blah. Today I already have 3000 words under my belt, I'm about to launch into a scene that could wind up just about anywhere, and it's only 10:30! And I've already had a nap and some caffeine! I am unstoppable.

Besides, I have this lovely, lovely quote from grrlpup to spur me on:

And I will emerge, because there are people ahead of me and people just behind me, and in my mind NaNo is a group of people running pell-mell across the field holding hands. It seems like a stupid way to run, because why would you need to hold hands to run? and some people are ahead and others are lagging behind you, but if you don't let go, you'll get pulled along, and even if your foot lands in a rabbit hole, the others will yank you up and along.

She has totally pegged the NaNo experience. It does seem like a stupid way to run, but all those people really do get you across the field, as long as you don't let go. (I suspect her observation has wider implications as well. Maybe I'll figure that out, someday, when I have time to think again.)

The other encouraging thing I've discovered is that it's a lot easier to move the plot along if, instead of trying to come up with really cool things for your characters to do, you encourage them to do things that are really stupid. Why didn't someone tell me this a long time ago?

In Which I Disclose My Writing Progress Thus Far.

My word count currently stands at 22199: 44% complete. I'm significantly behind schedule, and have been for the past ten days. This bothers me a lot.

The nightly struggle is writing vs. sleep. The tricky part is that the less sleep I get, the slower I write. But the more sleep I get, the less time I have to write. So if I go to bed early (read: before midnight), my wordcount falls behind, but if I write an amount I'm satisfied with (read: 2000 words), I don't get enough sleep, and everything starts falling apart.

This wasn't as much of a problem last year because of differences in my schedule. Also, last year I had a roommate who would fix me dinner, chat with me while I ate it, and then say, "Well, I'd better let you get to writing" and pretty much leave me alone for the rest of the evening. That was AWESOME. But this year she's writing her own NaNo in faraway Chicagoland, so I have to fend for myself with the food and the washing-up and the telling myself it's time to write.

One thing that would definitely help is if I were more interested in my story. I love the concept, and my characters have tons of potential, but I can't figure out what to do with them. I just know I want it to be something really cool.

But that's part of my problem, I'm telling myself. It's really more important, in an endeavor like this, just to have them doing something, just to get things moving. Fellow Wrimo Sanguinity aptly described the work of the middle part of a novel as "racking up the tension and racking up the price." I keep repeating this to myself when I wonder what the heck to write next.

Last night, in the interest of said tension- and price-racking, I determined to write a scene in which things actually happen, dramatic things, things that neither I nor my characters had planned on. So I wrote a few lines in which my main character is woken in the middle of the night by someone else. Then I had to figure out why. Various scenarios came skulking into my head, and I picked the one that seemed most promising. I looked at my list of things that need to happen in this general part of the book, and picked a couple to work into the scene. I wrote what happened next, and tried to figure out what happened after that, and whether it would be more interesting for things to go wrong at point A or point B. I wrote a little more. I rearranged events in my head, envisioned some possible scenes, and kept going.

It was slow going, what with all the figuring-out parts. But by allowing my characters to make a mess, and then letting them decide how best to clean it up again, I did manage to get over 2000 action-packed words out of the evening. And yeah, it was after midnight when I quit, and yeah, I am tired today. But it's Friday, so that's okay.

Whew, so that was a lot of writing about writing. Hey, did you know that male mice court their mates with ultrasonic songs? It's true. You can read the story here. Even if you aren't interested in the research involved, you may want to listen to mp3 clips of a mouse love song shifted down four octaves or slowed down sixteen times. I especially like the latter. It's no Marvin Gaye, but it wouldn't sound out of place on a birdsong recording.

[Edit: corrected sloppy italics tags.]

In Which We Discuss Fame and Anonymity.

Way back in Post the First, I established the following guideline for my blog:

4. I will neutralize any potential negative side effects of blogging by ... avoiding the use of real names, except when discussing Famous People, such as myself. Note: this last part will be extra fun, like writing in code or something.

At this point I would like to clarify my intent in making such a resolution.

The blogosphere is a funny place. Different people interact with it in different ways. Some confide in it, some perform for it, some write only the facts of their own existence, and some invent characters and write about their fictional experiences. However you handle it, the fact remains that when you post something on the internet, you're addressing the entire world. Granted, most of the world isn't listening. But anybody could be (and often is).

I'm a very private person. This blog is, among other things, an attempt to become a little less private, to get used to the idea of sharing my thoughts with the world - both in order to remind myself that my thoughts are worth sharing, and also because it's good practice for publication.

However, as a private person, I respect other people's privacy. Many people, for many reasons, prefer anonymity online. Thus the use of aliases. If you have an anonymous web presence, or no web presence to speak of, it's not my job to change that for you; so you get a Code Name by default. Which is, like I said, Fun.

On the other hand, aliases become sort of pointless if you already blog publicly under your real name, and if your weblog is obviously for public consumption. (I had no idea, when I started this, just how many of these people there were in my circle of acquaintances.) See, in that case, you're already Famous, by my definition. Anybody can google you up and read about your life. Anonymity is obviously not important to you, so I'm not gonna protect you.

Unless, of course, you do or say something I want to blog about, but suspect you would prefer I didn't. Then I'll call you something else.

Probably.

In Which Someone Else Says "In Which" Too.

I've been keeping an eye on Paul Ford's blog of late. Ford caught my attention after admitting to being the inventor of rock-star-wannabe Gary Benchley, under whose name he had written a series of articles for the Morning News. Benchley's "autobiographical" adventures ranged from the hysterically funny to the really, really disturbing, with ample cleverness in between. Sadly, they eventually tapered down into tedium. Then Benchley announced he was discontinuing the articles because he'd been offered a book contract, and Ford announced he was Benchley.

I find Ford, like Benchley, to be hit and miss. His writing is sometimes outrageously clever, sometimes inspiring, sometimes disgusting, and sometimes it just makes me sad for him. Aside from a refreshing neo-Luddite essay (in which he admitted to using WordPerfect for DOS, which I find oddly endearing), I wasn't all that impressed with his recent output.

But then some low-end business blog (the kind that essentially runs on stolen content) stole one of his images, and his response just about made tea shoot out of my nose.

Note: If you see a word you don't recognize in one of the images, replace it with "much, much worse." It will then communicate the intended message.
More Important Note: I really don't recommend clicking through to see what he did the other time this happened to him (in his final paragraph). Just take his word for it: he's matured since then.

In Which I Receive The Proverbial Mad Props.

I passed an old and dear friend in the parking lot yesterday. He pulled his vehicle over next to mine, waving frantically. "Do you have a blog?" he asked.

Why, yes. Yes, I do. Seriously, is there a more flattering question one could ask of a fledgling blogger, given the obvious implication that he really, really wanted to read it? And that he also has a blog which I read regularly? Of course I gave him my URL with all good speed. He even went so far as to say that if I didn't have a blog, he was going to tell me that I should.

I was going to blog about this yesterday, because it was pretty much the nicest thing that happened to me all day (except for the part where I went to bed at 7 p.m.; that was pretty sweet too). But somehow I didn't get around to it.

This morning my RSS feed notified me that his blog had a new post. I clicked through, wondering if I'd get a mention.

Goodness. If I ever need quotes for a book jacket, now I know who to call. Not only did he bestow copious compliments on my blog (after reading all my posts in one sitting), he also, if I understand correctly, now intends to write a series of posts inspired by stuff I wrote. Really! I'm not making this up! You can read it for yourself.

So thanks for reading, Ike.* It's an honor. Please accept this reciprocal shoutout. Here's to many more years of interaction, parasocial and otherwise.

*Yeah, I'm using his real name. He's one of those Famous People.