this april will mark my sixth anniversary of maintaining a blog with five of those being with the recently defunct journalspace. luckily i had most of my entries stored offline as i was trying to migrate them here. there are a lot of people that are not as fortunate.
moving all those entries have allowed me to retag and review some of the stuff i posted over the years. it gives me a very big brother feel, deciding which portions of my history i want presented. although with the ubiquitousness of the google cache, i’m sure even the portions that are not being reposted can be found somewhere. currently, i’m adding and editing entries from july 2004, including search for and ultimate success in finding a job. with the benefit of hindsight, i wonder if i was that anxious to do have a job that i completely misread the situation or as i continue to move, i’ll find the point where things all started to go wrong.
the other thing that the journalspace failure has solidified in my mind, aside from the need for frequent and reliable backups, is the need to have control of my own content. it’s easy to let someone else do all the hard work, but what happens when it becomes too much trouble, too expensive or too impractical to maintain or change the terms of service at random? journalspace is not the first provider to close it’s doors nor will they be the last. one of my objectives for 2009 is to host all my online digital content myself or at least have copies hosted here. it’s never going to be as slick as flickr or .mac and i’m never going to have all the features that those services provide, but at least it will all be mine.
today marks the second anniversary of my time here at JS and what a long strange trip it`s been.
i actually started blogging a week earlier at blogspot and somewhat dissatisfied i moved here. i`ve seen people come and go, seen the member rolls grow from 4000+ to whatever epic number they`re at now.
over the course of 2 years and nearly 1200 posts, i`ve participated in quizzes and memes, shared my life down to the tiny, trifling details, i`ve waxed poetic about my love, i`ve railed about the inefficiency of bureaucracy, i`ve bitched about my job; i`ve tried my hand at satire, voiced my opinions and stood up for what i believe in and i wonder, where do i go from here?
i don`t want to stop but i fear that i may be repeating myself or just unable to articulate some of the thoughts that are bouncing around in my head. i have all these ideas for brilliants post in my mind but the minute i sit in front of the computer the most cohesive portions of those thoughts flee leaving with an outline but no body.
even a post as whiny as this has suffered rewrites and deletions to numerous to mention. writing posts used to be an effortless exercise. thoughts flowed as fast as i could type, driven by some inner need to be exorcised, now i must chase them down, trap and tame them before they lend themselves to be shared.
i generally watch four hours of tv a week. i`m very specific about my tv watching, Alias on a Sunday, Gilmore Girls on a Tuesday, Smallville and Angel on a Wednesday.
last night the wife who is a disaster flick fan got me to give up alias for nbc`s 10.5. what a waste, a lot of good talent for a poorly written, poorly edited piece of dreck.
i had the whole plot outlined in 15 minutes including the nuclear detonations. that why i generally don`t watch much tv, it`s too predictable. even the commercials are predictable. the other thing last night was the constant commercials for friends, my god, talk about milking the cow.
i don`t give a shit. never liked friends. i know some people that would think that my last utterance was sacrilege, but it`s true, i`ve never found it particularly funny, it`s never moved me. i`ve never found that level of self-absorption even mildly amusing. if i want light and frivolous fantasy, i watch charmed, that at least is a little more believable.
where does the good writing go? i know television is the lowest common denominator, but it`s getting a point where between the level of stupidity between scripted and `unscripted` television is completely blurred and once something appeals to the masses everyone seems eager to fall over themselves to copy it.
there is a short story, i can remember by Roald Dahl, the Great Automatic Grammatizator [don`t be lazy, go look it up], which describes a computer that writes novels, i think that day has come, especially to television tired, formulaic, detritus.
it`s one year to the day since i started posting here and what a long and colourful ride it`s been. i was editing some of the categories recently so i got to re-read some of my earlier entries. there`s a lot of dreck in here but there are quite a few bright spots as well
since i`ve been here, i`ve made a few friends, been inspired to improve my writing, seen a number of good writers come, go and return. i`ve shared my life, mostly uncensored, the highs and the lows and it`s been good. i enjoy what i read here, i appreciate the opinions, the comments and i`m looking forward to another year here.
i`ve got a lot of stories to tell and opinions to offer, i`m not going anywhere in a hurry.
vic and i have decided that our current entertainments are worthy of the big screen. we are attempting to write a comedic screenplay about our adventures.
if you get a little perspective on our situation it does seems a little funny.
neither of us actually has actually written a screenplay (well vic has done documentary work and i’ve attempted documentary work) and this is going to be our first combined endeavour. i think it’s going to be fun. work begins this weekend. vic is off to the wilds of michigan with the familia for a week, so i’m planning on channelling the anger, the frustration, the lonliness of the next couple of days into a serious stab at our very entertaining story.
the time has come to get some sleep. too many late nights over the last couple of days. although i should unpack the three bags full of laundry, but there is the feel of slipping on a still hot, fresh smelling tshirt. ok so i’m a freak (and fucking lazy too)
gnight.
