After a troubleshooting session with emuues this evening, I've loosened up this blog's spam filter a little bit and tweaked a few minor things which have been bugging me for a few months. So now, ha, I am officially running "Weirdblog version 8.1109.9" for my three or four or five readers. If anyone has had problems posting comments here (like getting a completely blank page) since — well, ever — hopefully that will take care of it. Mea culpa. The good news is the spammers have had trouble too, which was really the whole point. I'm sorry for the rest.
I know, I know, blogging is dead, and here I am being an old fart. Shut up and get off my lawn.
Honestly? This is the time of year when school supplies are everywhere; in fact, at this
point they're probably marked down because Halloween is coming. You know... got to keep
the machinery of commerce moving at all times. But during the thick of it, I found myself
looking at notebooks and pens, thinking back to other times when I did this on paper
— designed covers, scrounged around for numbers in magazines and adverts to glue on
the front. Hey, why not... this is a picture of the cover of Weirdbook 20, which was one
of my favorite cover designs (or undesigns, in this case). It was kind of a patchwork of
where my life was at that moment in time, and the words on that cover reflected most
parts of it.
I miss those days sometimes, dragging a notebook around and scrawling in it. And in the thick of school shopping, I missed them a little more than usual. I feel like that was closer to the so-called "real me" (whatever that may mean). As I've pursued this blog experiment, I've often wondered if I've been true to myself knowing the potential audience was the entire world. So it was good to hear these kind words from emuues (who I don't think would mind me quoting her):
The wise ass is in there, along with the loving husband and father, the struggling human being, the concerned (and frustrated) citizen, and the tongue in cheek observer of the oddities of everyday life.
That certainly sounds like me. I guess it's come out a bit at a time, like developing a character on a television show or in a story or book. Little things which suggest traits, patterns of behavior, qualities, beliefs. Again, a patchwork, with me unaware I was (and still am) stitching it.
So maybe this blog experiment is a success after all. I don't know what I planned to accomplish with it exactly, and sometimes still don't... but if those are the qualities coming through, I don't think it's a bad thing.