Who's Watching

Here's an update on activity in my other blogs.

The New Low Down

• KISS and Condoleeza Rice

An Oddment of Sandwiches
This purposely un-bloggy thing has turned into a story collector, of all things, thanks to a writing exercise I came up with back in November. I take the Word of the Day from two word-of-the-day services and try to sketch out a scene that makes use of both words, for example "garboil" and "lacuna". One time what came out was a poem. I try to keep this to a single page in a 7x5 notebook, so most of them come out pretty short. Initially, I tried to use both words in the story which was fine at first, but quickly began to feel forced.

It's been a profitable exercise, artistically speaking, although being in control of all these characters can be a burden. Bumping off a talking penguin is one thing, but with one poor sap I needed two edits to make sure he was dead.

So we'll see where this goes. Most of the pieces I've sketched are still in the notebook, where they will remain. No use crying over spilled ink. But there are several characters who keep turning up asking me for fresh scenes. I get the feeling that two of them are going bound to meet sometime.

Whereabouts

The decent fellow who poses as the crusty blogger XO recently posted a post about the lessons he's learned in two years of blogging. They're worth reading, as is XO, generally. So go ahead and do that some time.

My point in posting today (and I purposely waited a day so this wouldn't come off as an April Fool's post) is to fess up to breaking Lesson #9:

Lesson #9 - POST! To paraphrase an old axiom "Bloggers blog." No one is going to add you to their Google Reader if you only post a couple of times a year. WRITE GODDAMNIT! Nobody is going to read a blog that only gets updated when the seasons change.

This brings up several issues:

• I don't know if you can "break" a lesson, but I respect your pedantry.
• It hadn't occurred to me that I might be on anyone's Google Reader.
• Spellcheck notwithstanding, I support the presence of the N in "GODDAMNIT!" I also support pronouncing the N sound which results in a satisfying Yosemite Sam impersonation if you say the word with sufficient vim.
• I wholeheartedly support Yosemite Sam impersonations. And adverbs.
  
• I actually have been writing quite a bit recently, although most of it has been on paper, which seems deliberately obscurantist but wasn't intended as such. It's just that I still have a thing for pens and paper. I'd take an hour in a good stationers over a museum anytime.
  
• There have been numerous things posted over at Oddment of Sandwiches, but let's face it that thing really isn't technically a blog, but more of a sheep in blog's clothing.
  

Still, it would have been considerate of me to inform all five of my readers when I felt this most recent hiatus coming on.

So, sorry about that. And as they used to say on the Carson show: More to come.

New Thing

I've decided to funnel my jazz blogging into a separate space: The New Low Down.

Cuz I've got so-ooo much time on my hands.

Design tweaks and more focused intentions to come.