despite the sadness and loneliness and fear and anger and self-loathing that may permeate my being at various times in the midst of this break up, and i am starting to – and i have to – recognizing the good things. like waking up at 4.30 in the morning and having the prerogative to grab my laptop and type without bothering anyone. so that is another change a-comin’ down the pike.

we’re breaking up but still in the house together, at least for the next little while. it’s not unlike just having a roommate, which is peculiar and comforting at the same time. i’ve been wondering that i slid into that role more easily because less of the romantic feeling has been there between us for the last little while…maybe we were really destined to be buddies and not … lovers. (did you throw up a little? i did. i hate that word.)

my resolution to post more is incredibly strong. i see the list of posts – so strong at 1,121 – dwindle over the last year and it hurts my heart to think writing has somehow gotten the shaft and isn’t seemingly high on my list of priorities.

94 percent of blogs are abandoned. 133 million are indexed by Technorati but only 1.5 million were active this week (7.4 in 120 days.) 57% of US bloggers are male, and surprisingly, 58% are older than 35 (42% 18-34.)

This strikes me as unsurprising but depressing nonetheless. If I’ve learned anything about myself, it’s that I don’t enjoy being boxed into the majority. This stat, in a roundabout way, does that — though this blog has been updated and I am younger than 35.

When I read this post, I thought about mog itself and what I do this for, esp as my posts have become erratic the last 6 months or so. And I realized, as I have many times before, that this is simply an extension of the notebooks and scraps of paper I have written on all my life. It’s my meager attempt to put my thoughts somewhere; the Internet has afforded a semi-useful platform for doing so. They don’t do anyone any good in a dark closet corner, right?

And I’m not doing such a great job at that these days. It’s not like I believe I need to be posting about my struggles with R across the country or the absurdities at my job. I’ve learned enough over the years that this blog is not well-hidden enough to allow for such frankness. Though now that I have typed it, I realize I should be more honest on here. More open. I’ve slipped a bit. I’ll see what I can do about that.

In the meantime, enjoy the baby dustmop.

they can be basic, like this one:

or a little trickier, dealing in the land of misplaced modifiers:

or my own personal favorite, the completely incorrect use of quoation marks, like this:

tripp hipped me to this website, which i think is so god-damn funny i almost shot crysal light out of my nose.

so, if you want to be a buddy and email me a pic if you happen upon any of these types of things as you go about your daily life, i will be eternally grateful.  well.  maybe “eternally.”

Seriously.
I think this tops the post I saw yesterday about gimps gone wild (nsfw).

And I might the only person to put those two topics/sites together.

the 7 steps of a cinephile. scary, as i believe i am in stage 5, possibly six already. i burned out after being sick and im not sure im back up to speed. or if i will ever be. i mean, stage 6 is:

Ages 42-45/ watch only Reality TV and Internet porn, get drunk alone, send mass emails linking to Armond White reviews

sounds ok to me.

how about information about listerine’s “24 hour protection, use twice a day” marketing spiel? i can’t get over how dumb this is.

april talking about how grownup she is now and how, upon seeing michael jordan last night she didn’t say: “I’m wearing your underwear!” or “I’ll bring the toast if you bring the Space Jam!” which actually makes me sad a little. because both comments are actually really genius.

somehow, denver is named the drunkest city in america. granted, if i lived there, i would be drunk a lot. but i don’t see how it beats…vegas, say.

“my perfect christmas” by james caan. words fail me. so i will quote:

You know what I like to do at Christmas time? Fuck broads – that’s what I like to do. It’s long been a practice of mine to spread peace and goodwill to all womankind during the yuletide period – skinny broads, fat broads, big titty broads, broads with glass eyes, prosthetic legs and sometimes – God forbid – ugly broads with no fuckin’ right to have my dick in them. So that’s what I like to do at yuletide – and if you don’t like it, you can stick up your ass.

it only gets better from there. man, that makes me laugh.

blogging turn 10 years old. dec 17, 1997. which is mildly interesting, as mog started 1 year later, the end of 1998. and i was blogging from them on…so 9 years now for us? wow. no wonder there are thousands of posts on here. guess we were among the early ones afterall. i usually don’t toot horns, but matthew has said this bit for years. and finally, ill accept it. we were blogging before it was cool. and perhaps after it was cool too.

april tagged me with a ‘say 7 secrets’ meme. now, as i said, i don’t usually do these things. but i believe april made 2 faulty assumptions here, one building on the other.

the first is that i would see that she had tagged. because other than mentioning it in her post, she didn’t give me a heads-up. fine, fine. though i have blogs by friends who i dont read regularly, so i dont think its clear-cut that i would see this.

but the second is the reason i might not have caught it. because april has not told me she is writing online again. i only found out i had been tagged when i noticed some traffic from her site and wondered what the hey was going on. nice one, april. you were in my feeds, but i had shifted folders around and hadn’t seen your latest wave of writing. oops.

but here we are, so let’s see what seven secrets i can whip out for you that aren’t totally obscene, freaky or depressing.

1. i have recently figured out that my job, and indeed, my life, requires a fair amount of control. by me. i think it has to do partly with being sick and lack of control that inflicted upon me.
2. i hate that the skin on my face is fucked up but am loathe to take too much medicine to try to help it. additionally, it got worse after being sick, for whatever reason. every doctor i have ever spoken to about it has refused to believe me that they are related.
3. i had a 20 second crush a few minutes ago as i got on the train. sadly, she sat elsewhere in the train and i will probably never see her again. especially since i’m riding a train that is an hour later than my usual one.
4. though i make myself sick with anxiety in trying to decide if roxy is the right girl for me, i’m also fairly positive i will marry her. though this just increases my anxiety because ‘what if she isn’t right for me…and i end up with her anyway?’ the logic is circular and like every other relationship i have ever been in, i commit myself so totally that i feel completely trapped before there is even any notion of a future.
5. i am listening to ‘no more tears’ by ozzy right now. and you know? it fucking rules. in fact, i’m going to have to listen to it a second time.
6. ok, that doesn’t count as 5, because it really isn’t a secret. and this doesn’t count as 6 either.
5. i am planning on a large amount of creative output in the next 6 to 8 months. writing, books, animation, drawings, videos and dvds are all on the plate. i’ll post as things firm up.
6. i’m terrified of rachael moving for grad school and having to make the decision to move with her or not. this is not so secretly referred to as ‘the talk we aren’t allowed to have yet.’ coupled with secret #4, i believe i have an unwise amount of anxiety about my relationship with her. this too only causes more anxiety.
7. i have, not so tastefully, suggested recently to roxy that we get a girlfriend. and explained the notion by saying it would be like ‘getting a dog that talks. and that we could dump.’ if you find this to be not so surprising, i would like to say i was at least 33% joking. this, again, may or may not be a secret. but it is somewhat horrible to be admitting publicly. so it stays.

i’m not as high strung as i sound by these; i actually just tried really hard to admit things i don’t usually admit. at least in writing, publicly.

plus, ive posted (and will post again tomorrow) so much silliness, i thought i would be serious again for a moment.

and now i think i get to tag 7 people with it.

petunia, aubrey, roxy, madame levy, kurt, lisa, ray and hima (8, because i think hima will rebel. but still, i want to see what she does.)

edit: well fuck. re-reading the meme rules, it’s facts, not secrets. so i just said a bunch of personal stuff for no real reason. well, secrets are more interesting than facts, so i’m changing the rules a bit. that’s right. secrets it is. if i’m going down, i’m taking you with me. die fish devil!*

* quote from ben in ‘mask of evil.’ it rolled off my tongue. or something.

from his website:

I’m up to my neck writing my next book: LADIES OF THE NIGHT — A HISTORICAL AND PERSONAL OVERVIEW OF THE OLDEST PROFESSION on our SIMMONS BOOKS/PHOENIX BOOKS imprint. It should be finished by Spring.

yeah, as the source i got this from points out, its the ‘personal’ bit that is creepy.

via confessions of a college callgirl (which is almost certainly nsfw, but well worth reading. and she skewers him better than i just did natch.)

also, it says something about him when the following snl skit is on his site and:
1. it is someone impersonating him,
2. the skit is ‘the 2007 national douchebaggery awards’, and
3. gene simmons is supposed to be a judge

i’m glad the guy can take a joke, but i’m not sure that is the image i would be actively promoting. esp when the banner on his site actually says ‘gene simmons on snl?’

but, after reading the first chapter of ‘getting things done’ (before i got derailed by library due dates and ‘the etched city’, finally — thank you dutton), i can finally point out two very real things:

1. if you have something to do and it takes less than 5 minutes, just do it already. and 2. make lists. make lists so you can push that data out of your mind. put it down somewhere else so you can stop thinking about it.

and thats what im working towards. one thing i just finally did? add several livejournals to my feeds. finally. i feel like a dunce for having taken so long, but now dutton and glen and chriswhite will be delivered to me whenever they update. i know im missing others, so if youve got a livejournal, tell me. ill gladly make sure i keep up with you, im just notoriously bad at it unless its in my feedreader. (and if youre on flickr, let me know as well. i need to add you there as well — all my flickr contacts flow into a feed. so i get all the new pics you post as well.)

and csbox not only added a feed to his site last week (relaunched!) but asked for a list of my feeds. im not going to post it right this second, but its coming. i just want to give it a little more time. with new feeds added almost daily, i want a settled list before i share.

and yeah, after thinking and sleeping and thinking some more, ive decided — mog is gonna move to wordpress in the next few months. i have no idea how thats gonna work either, but it seems like a good plan. no decision yet on comments though. so if your name isnt bitzao and you have an opinion, im all ears.

oh and organized? i totally set up some billpays online this morning. im so awesome.