12/30 NaBloPoMo09 – Harry Potter at the Drive In

I want to say something nice about the new Harry Potter movie, but I just can’t.  All I can think is, you call that a movie?  Doesn’t something have to move to qualify as a movie?  And is there some sort of shame in having color in your movie?  Does it all have to be silver and black?  Is this a 2 hour homage to the Oakland Raiders? I would rather be watching football than watch this movie.  Maybe that doesn’t sound extreme to you, but trust me, it is one of the strongest statements I can make.

Jay had the right idea – he fell asleep about 20 minutes in, and snored the whole time.  I foolishly stayed awake, thinking that something might happen.  I mean, there was a plot in the book, as I recall.  I read it – maybe it was a bit tedious, but I did.  All this seemed to be was an extended series of near-poisonings where everyone turned out to be alright.  By the time that something I dreaded happened – which I won’t divulge, in case you are one of the dozen or so people who haven’t read the book – I was just plain burned out.  The only reason I didn’t walk out on this movie is that I literally didn’t know where the exit was, and I didn’t want to turn on my headlights on the off chance that I might ruin someone’s enjoyment of the movie.

At least I got to see it at the drive in.  I haven’t been to a drive in since about the 6th grade, when I believe they had Star Wars followed by Porky’s, and the only things I remember are my dad snoring through both of them and some kid at school saying that if my family saw Porky’s at the drive in, my mom must have thrown a blanket over the whole car.

My mom did not.  But in retrospect, I’m surprised.  I wish I had had a blanket to throw over my car tonight – that or I wish I could pull the memory of that movie out of my brain with a magic wand and store it in a test tube on the shelf…no, even then I wouldn’t get my 2 hours back.

11/30 – NaBloPoMo09 I’m still learning about tags…

Hi All.

First, let me say that I don’t know if I’m going to do very well with the National Blog Posting Month in the next several days – I will be up North, and the internet connection is questionable.  So we’ll see.  Try not to cry if I don’t post for a few days.

But I wanted to write because I was just looking around at the wonders of wordpress.  I followed a link back to ‘humor’ because that is how one reader got to my page today, and while I was just looking around there, I noticed that some of the tags people put on their writing are quite odd.

In one blog, it was tagged with the following: “Just Plain Strange, humour, 80s frat party movies, batchin’ it, anal bleaching, male brazilians, lively dinner conversation, yo-yo management and small children, anal botox“.  I don’t want to put these things in my blog, but it’s an illustration.  Are there people out there entering in things like ‘lively dinner conversation’ as a search?  This is not to make fun.  THis is an honest question.

Are tags meant to be something that people can and conceivably would search for?  Or, in the case of this blog, which I didn’t read, are tags more of a warning not to bother?  I know that wouldn’t be the intention of this blogger, but that’s the function that tags served in this instance, and that I’m sure they will serve again, at least for me. What do other bloggers think?  Do you tag with phrases that won’t be searched for?  Am I missing the point somehow?  Please comment if you have thoughts on this – I promise to read at least 5 of your posts if you comment. (That’s my standard practice, anyway…   )

Another question I have is whether people put in unrelated tags just to get the hits – like, if you are a blogger, do you put in something provocative and popular and then hope people read anyway, despite their disappointment?  I’m sure that tagging up this blog with Michael Jackson and slang names of body parts would do wonders for my stats, but I would rather believe that people are actually reading…  Or I suppose I could try my hand at writing about the things that are more popular in this world rather than my own random thoughts.  But no, I wouldn’t want to disappoint my loyal readers, whoever you are.

8/30 – NaBloPoMo – Emotional Vertigo

I have been a do-gooder all my life.  Always wanting the best, the ideal.  Not materially, but spiritually.  I revel in good deeds, in participating in a successful endeavor that will do no less than change the world.  The next right thing is my mantra.  Joy is being useful, helping people.  I want to do good and seek out the good in others.  I want to be the first to catch a glimpse see it, coerce it out if it’s latent.  Maybe this is why I am a teacher.

Lately, I have been experiencing something strange – a confusion, a dizzying mental drag causing me to sway in my belief in humankind.  It’s as debilitating as the vertigo I used to occasionally suffer, but again, it’s spiritual and emotional.  A doctor once explained vertigo to me as a brain’s confusion between reality and its perception of reality.  If the muscles in my neck are too tense and a breeze caresses them in just the right way, my brain will believe that I am falling although I am simply standing or sitting.

Emotional vertigo, I posit, is the confusion in my brain that arises when my ideals are brushed by even the lightest hushed wind of a disappointing human reality.  When my expectations of something or someone I’ve idealized are met with non-ideal reality, my emotions swoon inside.  My elbows tingle, I mix up words as I try to speak, I weep without direct cause.

The cure for physical vertigo that has worked for me is to stretch my neck and to ice those muscles.  I am still seeking the cure for ‘emotigo’ – I know that the disillusionment will not last.  Reality may not be ideal, but it’s not bad either – somehow to stretch my mental muscles and reset back to reality.  Perhaps vacation will do the trick.

6/30 – NaBloPoMo09

Everything is an advertisement lately. I was reading some advice about blogging, and the article mentioned advertising on blogs. I have never even thought about trying to advertise anything. Sometimes I talk about my novel, *still seeking representation* but I don’t consider that to be advertisement.

The author was saying that if you had enough viewers every day, say 1000, that you could get a company to place a banner on your page and they would pay you $200 a month. Weird. Perhaps I can be accused of not knowing what I’m talking about, since I have a daily average of about 5 readers – and that is a vast improvement over a couple of months ago… (thanks, you 5) but even if I had a large readership, or perhaps especially if I did, I would think that letting some corporation try to influence you to buy some crap you don’t need – or even crap that you do need – would be a let down. I would be disappointed in myself.

I hope that if you are another blogger, you will agree with me that advertising on your blog is not the way to go. I actively seek out pages that are by people who are writing for the joy of writing or because they are committed to the topic – not because they are mildly clever at embedding a bunch of key words that advertisers want you to click on.

Not everything needs to be a goddamned advertisement. That said, someday Jay will get his t-shirt printing endeavor together, and maybe I will offer his atheist themed shirts. But then it would be a cottage industry, not a corporate interest. And I would be sure to only offer shirts which would be entertaining to read in an ad… then it’s an even trade, right?

Vegan Plans

I’m not sure why they call it surfing and not drowning…  I started off about 45 minutes ago thinking that I would write a quick post and then go do some cooking.  Well, I forgot my password, and that could have been simple enough to rectify, I filled out a form and was sent an email with my new password, but then I got distracted by the other emails in my inbox.  I figure this process is exactly why I don’t write more often.

So, pointless little rant that I’ll most likely erase later out of the way,  I am writing today. Yaye.

I was thinking that I should write about vegan cooking, since I’m doing some of it today.  I got a tasty little cookbook from my lifepartner, it’s called Veganomicon brought to you by the same folks who wrote Vegan With a Vengeance.  I have had cookies made from a recipe out of vwav, but do not own a copy.  I’ll be making  scones and foccacia in a bit here, then I’ll (hopefully) report back on the results.

meantime, why don’t you go cook something, and then tell me all about it? Sheila

Spam is a bummer.

That’s all I have to say, but I needed to say it.  Almost every comment that I have received so far has been spam.  It’s weird to write into a void, believe that you have had some actual impact with a person, and then find that it’s only an ad for a yoga studio, or someone selling vegan food(! I thought vegans were better than that!  I guess we have to buy food, too…).  I swear, capitalism sucks the marrow out of everything decent and creative that Americans try to do.

Thanks to my lone friend, Hershey, for providing a little real commentary!  Sheila