imagining a title [seriously; this isn't it]

but no, really, you are

I went an entire post without declaring: “You’re welcome.”

is it still insane if it’s predictable?

On Friday afternoons when we don’t have web meetings, I sometimes find myself at my desk in the main office. Maybe I have a video cooking in the other room, but it’s usually because I don’t have anything important enough to start or finish on a Friday afternoon. This is my special time to read blogs. 

First, let me extoll the virtues of Chrome. I love the Chrome bar because I don’t have to write special search terms or use googe. I just type what I want to look at however it’s sub-consciously worded in my brain, and Chrome knows exactly what I’m trying to tell it. Once it’s figured me out, usually a few letters in, I just hit enter and it goes there. It knows me better than I know myself.

Anywhoodle, I often go to Hyperbole and a Half, though now I know enough to save those for when I’m home because i’m trying to cry less at work. I also have read through all her archives and now that her posts are getting more and more elaborate, she doesn’t post as often. So it’s a special treat to go over there and see the top panel of a new cartoon. I click away really fast so that I can save it for a time that I really need it. As a substitute I stumbled upon Today is my Birthday, and it’s usually a very good time. I like the Cake Lady and Aunt Becky and some other stuff. But The Blogess is my favorite. She embodies everything the craziest part of my brain thinks but never converts to language. Many many times I read her posts and try so hard not to laugh out loud that my eyes well up with tears, my cheeks get sore, and my eyes bug out. I try to compose myself when people come in the door but I’m sure that I look like I just saw something dead or my leg is caught in a bear trap. And then the floodgates open and I start thinking in run-on sentences that have extremely odd nouns to use as examples (see bear trap above). My inner monologe is twice as fast as normal and most of it doesn’t have any punctuation which is only made worse by the run-on sentences. My brain loves this; my brain wants to be like this all the time, but if it were I surely wouldn’t be able to work in an office and I might need a padded cell.

Today I couldn’t keep hte laughter inside. The strangled sound burst fouth and I had to cough several times to make sure my lungs were still in the right location. For the record, the post was about a new web tool that makes predictions about what your next tweet will be based on former tweets. When Ally did it, the predictions were funny, but mostly nonsense. Jenny’s predictions were eerily accurate. Not only was the sentence structure correct, but so was the syntax. She really could take a month off and just run the generator. But I don’t really want that, of course.

I love her conversations with Victor. I know that if I really said all the things I think about to AK, he might have to learn to be more Victor-esque in our conversations.Or maybe he would just leave me. I really don’t want to take that kind of chance.

So I just read and don’t comment and then write about it on my own blog which I realize is kind of creepy but what can you really expect from me on a Friday afternoon?

oxford comma is the way, the truth, and the light

Persephone Magazine has raised again the perpetual question: Oxford comma- for or against? I will defend in a pistols-at-dawn duel to the death. People, seriously; it just makes sense. 

nom-chompsky:

answers are for newbies

Upon reaching my Terrible Twos, my father vowed that he would always answer my questions truthfully and to the best of his ability. Two year olds are best known for their barage of ‘why?’ questions. was a talker. I loved to explain things and I couldn’t imagine why anyone else wouldn’t want to. My dad tried to keep up. I would grill him about cloud shapes, rules about noise in libraries, the decline of the 2 dollar bill, and the logic behind bedtimes for little girls. If it existed, I needed to know why.

He tried his best. I don’t remember the exact question that pushed him over the edge and compelled him to spit out the dreaded answer: “Because I said so!” Since it never became a deeply ingrained memory I could later tell my therapist, I probably accepted it as a valid response. But for him it was a slippery slope. In mere seconds, he became like all other parents.  

Despite this, my curiosity was not squelched. 27 years later, I became a PhD student, a martyr who eschews a normal life in a quest to answer questions that no one else can or will. Of course, the cruel truth of scholarship is that truly good work raises more questions as it answers. Sometimes all you have to do is ask; there may not be an answer, or it may not matter. The asking alone is an art and a skill.

Now that I’m a grad student, it’s my job to ask (preferably new) questions and at least seek (preferably creative) answers.  I’m reading more of Tarleton Gillespie, whom I admire and am envious of. He’s the guy who raised questions, provided answers, and set a framework in which I can follow. I read his book and wish I had the chance to write it. But I have to remind myself that there’s room for me to try to answer his questions and ask more of my own. All it takes is the willpower to  face the empty page and write all the words in my head that seem content to stay there. Even in small steps, the Big Project is scary, overwhelming, and not for the faint of heart.

On another note, blogging is also not for newbies. I’m tempted to write a blog about blogging, but I can’t do something so unabashedly “meta” when I’m extremely sick of the word. So far, I can’t even title the damn thing because I’m not entirely sure of the point. But if I write anything worth reading, even if it’s by 2 people, (hi mom) then I’ll consider it a successful endeavor. I have plenty of blogger-crushes, and I can only hope to provide a small percentage of what they do.

tumblrbot asked: WHERE WOULD YOU MOST LIKE TO VISIT ON YOUR PLANET?

How funny you should ask. I answered that question during my first month on tmblr, and read the post today for the first time since then. It’s still accurate: http://kristenchamberland.tumblr.com/post/10711504/question

Thank you, Nick Denton

Welcome back—

I’ve never opened a time capsule, because I was the kind of kid who would spend days collecting and archiving the perfect representations of contemporary American culture, researching a weatherproof container, convincing my friend’s dad to dig a hole in the backyard, ceremoniously bury the box, and then promptly forget about the whole endeavor. If the new owners of Amanda’s house ever take up hardcore gardening or try to lay a pet to rest, they’re going to unearth a whimsical, magical key to the late 80’s. I hope they have a working cassette player.

But now all of our backyards stay intact. As the media loves to warn us, the internet never forgets. Googling past screen-names yields a frighteningly accurate chronology of my life: Tori Amos fan sites, geocities, high school projects, fluxcapacity, university awards, my livejournal… So I may have forgotten tumblr, but tumblr did not forget me.

I stopped blogging two years ago when I ran out of steam and limited my my self-love, world commentary, and internet goodies. But scrolling through this little time capsule made me determined to re-embrace the madness.

How did all of this even happen? On a fateful day in February 2011, Gawker Media unveiled its new design, and there was a collective meltdown in my corner of the internet. The slow decline of quality content on Jezebel had led me to FuckNoJezebel and STFU Jezzies, which led me to Persephone Magazine. Like so many other lost souls, I fled to Persephone and found myself in a warm fuzzy place. When the mistress of STFU Jezzies retired the blog and created a personal blog, caitastrophejane, I realized I’d be spending plenty of time back on tumblr. 

So, essentially, if Nick Denton were less of a jackass, I probably wouldn’t have found my way back. Now that I have, I can give my facebook friends a rest without resorting to tweeting. Obviously, brevity is not my strong suit. But rambling commentary is, so stay tuned.

Vamps

I have something I need to get off my chest.

Any adult reading the Twilight series should be shot. For the nation’s silly tweens, I am making a concession. Let them have it; they’re too young to be part of the Buffy generation. And not enough of them have been forced to watch the series on DVD and get the proper training on immortal behavior. But anyone over the age of 25 should know that the only real vampire/mortal romance was between Buffy and Angel. There, I said it. Go away, you Twilight freaks. You don’t know anything about brooding vamps. You don’t know anything about teenage girls in love with the undead. You don’t know that all vampire issues should be solved with a good roundhouse kick and some clever dialogue. I cannot let this stand.