As an avid reader of many small blogs and social photo sites (I’m looking at you Flickr) I have noticed a social writer’s norm whenever there is a longer-than-expected break in posting. The writer starts the long-awaited post with an apology. I’m sorry I haven’t written/posted in a while, I’ve been busy with blubbity-bloobity blah-blah-blah. While the art of blogging is by definition self-indulgent (myself not excluded) this seems to take it too far. It’s as if the author pictures 1,000s of impatient fans feverishly jamming the F5 key awaiting the next bit of gospel about American Idol, or how strongly the blogger disagrees with the Casey Anthony trial outcome after reading a synopsis on TMZ.
I haven’t written anything new in over 4 months. I’ve had plenty of ideas and written many unsuccessful entries that never made it past the first few sentences or simply a title. The ideas weren’t bad, they were just abandoned. Instead of apologizing though, I thought I’d share this this rare collection of unreleased material in this compilation entry.
1) Governing Rules by a College Freshman in 1998
In my freshman year of college I certainly did some odd things. At one point I came up with a list of around 10 laws for my own country based on simple annoyances at the time. I thought it would be interesting to write about these rules today and give my (somewhat) matured thoughts on them. The problem was that I could only recall 2 of them.
Rule #1 — The soles of woman’s shoes should not be more than 1 inch think at their thinnest point
In the past 12 years I’ve personally known several woman who wear these type of platform shoes so it’s hard for me to still promote this rule. These shoes simply make people taller, which is fine. I don’t really know why I pointed my fleeting teenage angst in this direction. At the time, I suppose, they looked silly as they were a growing trend and were new to me. But, they display far more common-sense than high-heels or even a tie. So, I hereby revoke this rule ladies.
Rule #2 — In fliers hung around campus, it’s acceptable to write “Today” in big letters across the flier. However, the flier must be removed by the end of the day.
I still kind of find this annoying, but creating policy around it seems a bit much.
2) An Irish Wave
The winter of 2010/2011 saw a reindeer-poop-load of snow fall in January. It didn’t melt for months and caused mountainous snow banks to take up huge portions of the road. This caused already raged Boston drivers to lose all Christmas spirit as they honked and cussed at fellow drivers. This reminded me of our recent Ireland vacation where roads are so narrow (without snow banks) that the Irish have politely adjusted to this type of driving. While they may punch me in the face for not knowing (or caring) about which countries really make up the U.K., they politely wave and smile as they are forced to stop and let me pass.
But I wanted to take the blog farther than that. By St. Patrick’s Day the snow banks weren’t that bad, but the holiday gave me a second excuse to have an Ireland-related post. The problem was I came up with the great idea to post a lengthy medley of Irish songs on the accordion. I should have simply settled for less, but I never recorded anything I was proud of and the idea was scraped.
3) Santa Clause is a…
That title needed work, but I believe I was trying to think of something less harsh than “Santa Clause is a Lie”. I wanted to write about the dangers of a child believing in Santa Clause but I don’t think I could even convince myself that I cared too much about the topic. I wrote the following lines, and nothing more:
Spoiler alert for the 2-8 year old crowd.
Should we tell our child that Santa Clause is real? This debate has been jingling through this year’s pregnant holiday season.
4) European Black(berry) Plague
I was planning to tell stories about how my blackberry never works at first when entering Europe which would tie in to being addicted to the device. I think the issue was largely that any reader of this site has probably heard these stories a million times. Also, the stories are just somewhat pathetic to re-live and probably not all the interesting to begin with. There’s been a million articles written about how American’s are now addicted to the Blackberry, 95% of which bask in the cleverness of calling it a “Crackberry” while most likely never even indulging on at least a taste of this poor-man’s cocaine.
5) Web 2.0 and the Golden Rule
This post was to be inspired by the following tweet of mine from October 20, 2011:
The problem with web 2.0 is too much giving and not enough receiving. I hope web 2.1 is more rewarding.
I wanted to talk about the ridiculous amount of blogs and material being posted today. While people spend hours creating their own material, they spend little time reading and fully understanding the work of others. I’m as guilty as the next guy on this so it was tough to write something while pretending to be on a pedestal.
The Disney-channel conclusion to this is to finish what you started. Follow through on your ideas. But the realistic conclusion is you can’t finish everything you think of and you must pick from your best ideas in interest of time. Obviously a Lady Gaga medley trumps anything above, or maybe that will never happen either.
LET IT BE REVEALED 