Recently in blogging Category

check this out:

an old post by me (with which, by the way, i no longer agree)

ralph waldo emerson:

I have no cranky objection to world travel for the purposes of art, of study, and goodwill, as long as the individual is first domesticated, or doesn't go abroad with the hope of finding something greater that what he knows. He who travels to be amused, or to get something he doesn't have within, travels away from himself, and gets old among old things while he's still young. In Thebes, in Palmyra, his will and mind have become as old and run-down as they have. He carries ruins to ruins.

Our first journeys show us how little difference places make. At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty and lose my sadness. I pack my bags, hug my friends, get on the plane, and wake up in Naples, and there next to me is the cruel fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. I look for the Vatican and the palaces. I pretend to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions, but I am not intoxicated. My giant goes with me wherever I go.

shoulda known, the blog let me down and didn't actually magically post my scheduled thanksgiving post. that's technology for you.

wow, it sure was tough to get the words properly aligned in that last example, and the background box still isn't right.

i won't bore you with the details of how i got the words lined up, but it involved vim, proving again that truly je suis des etats-unix.

i renewed my fancy domain today, and when it came to the part where they asked for the name on my credit card, i had a hearty chuckle -- same name as the domain, nyuk nyuk.

is it?

well i really don't like how that last post came out. i'm all rusty and unbloggified. the only honorable way to erase that post is to bury it under a storm of new posts, all well written, entertaining, and informative, obviously.

fortunately, i had a nice little bike ride today, so i can blab about that a bit, and about some boring stuff i thought about whilst biking.

first off, my favorite short, bearded, bespectacled asian walking buddy (we're imaginary buddies, though both of us are real people) was on a bike today. yay semi-stranger! i meant to congratulate him, but it just didn't happen.

while i was busy not congratulating a guy i don't really know for getting a bike (and had we not been moving in opposite directions, and had we been actual buddies instead of imaginary buddies, i'd have joshed him well-meaningly about getting some skinny tires, dammit), i was thinking, for reasons i now cannot remember (truly, this is gripping writing) that i spent the first third of my life desperately attempting to fit in, the second third of my life acknowledging failure in that arena, and actively not fitting in, and it seems that in this third third of my life, i'm synthesizing the two approaches by truly (as opposed to those who say it but don't mean it) not caring about fitting in to anything, except on special occasions when i do care, at which times i frequently meet with the sort of smashing success that would have driven 15 year old me matcha-green with envy.

HOW WAS THAT FOR A RUN ON SENTENCE?

pretty good, i think, yet otherwise, there is no fault with it.

there are donuts here, courtesy of the in-laws (who during a past visit accused us of simple mindedness for not knowing there was a donut shop two blocks from our apartment). i find that i do not want a donut. i really ought to want one, i haven't had more than three donuts in five years, but i have no urge to try one, despite being just back from my bike ride. maybe next time.

truly, your URL guessing skills are beyond compare.

first off, a couple posts ago i introduced a blog character with the name "artemis". that's a lame-ass name and regret it.

henceforth, i'm renaming that guy "miles o'brien", on account of how he argues with keiko. har har har! "artemis" sounds all pompous and faggy.

anyhow, hops and i went down to miles o'brien's place last weekend for some ribs, latakia, and trash talk. we got more than we bargained for as he graciously served us anniversary-style champagne, some awesome, CA-made (CA: fuck yeah!) private label tiny-batch brandy, and a metric ass-load of allergens.

the first thing I noticed when we got into his pad was how much cleaner it looked than last time.

I later found out that miles o'brien had given it a big cleaning because he'd read on my blog the day before that I was cleaning as much as some lady and he didn't want to fall behind in the power-cleaning arms race.

har-de-har!