Earth's ONLY website.
You are currently browsing admin’s articles.
Please excuse this extraneous doodle. I’m experimenting with images in the blog-hosting software, and I want to see how this comes out.
Of course, if you’re the twisted sort of person who enjoys this kind of very naughty drawing, I invite you to ogle it interminably, and to admire both its captivating message and the artist’s prowess.
Click to enlarge, dummy!
There are two sides to human nature, and they are forever at war. There is the cool, soul-dead rational side. There is the raging animal, all appetite, all anger. Neither side can win the battle, for to win is to destroy our own nature. Victory is cataclysm. It’s like that Star Trek episode with the two Kirks. No, not that one, the other one.
Monkey hate technology
Robot hate the monkey
They will fight eternally
Monkey vs. Robot!
Monkey vs. Robot!
I first saw this video seven or eight years ago. It’s always hung around in my head since then as a metaphor for our inner battles, and as a meta-metaphor for really cheesey metaphors. I lost track of it, and I couldn’t find it forever. But being that we now live in a world without obscurity, there it is, smack-dab on YooToob.
It’s brilliant. It’s stupid. It’s stupidly brilliant.
Click to play, Dummy.
Adding to the list of the many, many reasons that I am way, way cooler than you are, dear reader, is the fact that I know Erin Jackson, who is a semi-finalist in this year’s Last Comic Standing tournament on the well-known and highly-regarded NBC Television Network.
Erin will appear in the Vegas round of LCS and I am certain that everyone in the DC comedy scene is rooting for her. In a world where there is a lot of pettiness and jealousy (much of it instigated by me), Erin has achieved the rare feat of being liked by everybody. And she’s a fun and insightful comic on stage as well.
Here’s her audition set from the NBC website:
So there you go, folks. As a reader of this blog, you now have a rooting interest in her success, and you are hereby commanded to follow her exploits in the days to come.
The track is from The Flying Lizards, circa 1980. Great song, but the truth is that I’m just testing out imeem, which is another website that lets you embed music into your blog posts and whatnot online. There are a variety of sites like this, and I’ve found that most of them tend to be buggy. This one looks promising.
You’ve probably heard this song. If not, you’re in for a treat. And if you don’t like it, consider your good luck that I didn’t post a file from Jandek.
In my preview of this post, The Lizards seem to play just fine. Please post a comment if you have trouble getting the link to play, or even if you can play it just fine, and you want to tell me how much you hate it. ‘Kay?
Click to play, Dummy!
When the burdens of life weigh heavy my soul, I often find solace in contemplating the life of the Great Emancipator.
I loves me my Hard Drinkin’ Lincoln.
In one of my earliest posts on this blog I owned up to being my own worst obstacle. It’s the typical situation for me: I want to make progress but see no clear path, and so while I have many ideas and ambitions, I get frustrated in my inability to implement them.
Right now the biggest bugaboo is the design of this page. It’s functional, but bland. It needs to be engaging and memorable. And getting there requires… what? It’s not clear. I’ve looked at many, many available themes, and none of them seems quite right. I could pay a pro to customize one for me, but that would involve a layout of cash, and even more to the point: I’m so new to blogging that even if I did get the snazziest of pages, I might soon change my mind about what I want. Then I’d be just as frustrated with the new page as I am with this one.
So the alternative is to learn to design the page myself, or at least to know enough about the code to make adjustments to some existing theme to suit my needs. But that does not look easy. I’ll be exploring the ‘Net for better resources to help me along with this (and if you have any suggestions, please leave a comment!). So I’m at that point of intimidation right now, the point where I need to remind myself that, hey, lots of people do web design. It can’t be that hard.
A third option would be to just find a theme that I can live with, and shoehorn my imagination into that template. This is probably the route I will take in the short term. We’ll see.
The solution to all of this? Press on. As long as there is progress from month to month, I shouldn’t let myself get too frustrated about things. After all, it was just a few days ago that I set a To-Do List for myself. There’s plenty for me to spend my time on there.
I’m thinking you’re tired. People are dumping on you, the insensitive louts. They expect you to solve their problems, never stopping to consider that maybe you’ve got some problems of your own.
Am I right? Yes, I am very right.
But I’m not here to dump on you. No, not me. I’m here to make you feel better, friend, if only for a moment. I’m gonna make your day. I’m gonna make you smile for a couple of minutes. Then you can get back to the louts, back to your lousy day, but maybe a little happier, a little lighter. So watch this viddie and thank me later.
Click to play, Dummy!
If I were up on this sort of thing, I’d have an image to go with this post, maybe one of those canned clip-art pics of a dynamic pencil charging forward to check off an item on a page. But I realize that that is a trite idea, one that too many people would go for, and despite the dictum I’ve seen on so many How-To-Blog websites that every post should be accompanied with something more eye-catching than mere text, my battle against the cliche dooms me to plain text.
And already I’ve dug myself a hole: Now I am vulnerable to attack at any future point when I do lapse into cliche (count on it), and worse, I’ve dodged the real issue, and that is that I haven’t spent the time to figure out efficient ways to get more images into my posts.
That’s the real truth: If I were more savvy about grabbing useful images for posting, I probably woulda gone with the first idea, just like everybody else. And regretted it afterwards for being trite. I am a sad mass of contradictions.
KillThisBlog has been running for two months now. I’m pleased with my progress. I’ve gone from knowing next to nothing to knowing the bare minimum, and that is an advance that I don’t want to dismiss as trivial. It’s a necessary threshold that every new blogger must cross. So yay for me. I’m walking through walls. Even better, I’ve managed to get several of the snazzy doo-dads onto my pages: I’ve gotten videos into my posts. Images, too. I’ve set things up from WordPress and Google to track my traffic stats. I’ve got the social marketing links at the ends of my posts (even if I’m still unclear on how to use them to bend the Internet to my will). And I’ve managed to get ads onto my pages, which is another important threshold to cross.
It’s been a fun project, and even with my teeny levels of traffic, I’m getting people clicking in from all over the planet. That’s cool in ways I thought I was too cynical to find exciting. So thanks to everyone who has been clicking in, even those who only got here by mistake.
With all that in mind, here are some of the main things on my mind, stuff I want to learn next:
So those are the main things. No time limits — I’ll be satisfied as long as there’s steady progress month to month.
If anyone who happens on this post has any suggestions, please leave a comment — any new resources that come my way will be very welcome. And I hope that others find value in watching me grope my way through this process. I’m finding it more and more interesting the deeper I get into it.
Just to take a serious turn for the moment…
I am a HUGE fan of those dark and brooding Scandinavian films where life and death and their darkest intimations are studied in bleak detail, where the viewer is not permitted to avert his gaze from the forbidding void that is our inescapable fate. You know — those shadowy cinematic meditations from the likes of Ingmar Bergman and the late, great Bjorni Yorgibjorn (and if you don’t know who he is, well, sucks to be you, doesn’t it?).
That’s why I’m thrilled beyond all imagination that I have stumbled upon this short film, De Düva (1968), online — a film so obscure and so forbidding that it’s not even on YouTube. I first saw it many years ago and it has haunted me ever since. Running time is about fourteen minutes, so set aside at least that much time for some high-quality existential dread.
I’m not kidding. You will want to see this. Trust me. It could change you.
Saying Barack Obama is Muslim because his middle name is Hussein is like saying Richard Nixon is a cartoon character because his middle name was Milhous.
All I know about SEO is that it stands for Search Engine Optimization and that people who run websites ought to know something about it. People who are good at SEO are good at showing up at the top of the list when you search for something on a search engine, and that’s important if you’re trying to get noticed online, and especially important if you’re trying to make money here. It’s not all that big a deal to me, at least not yet, but I am pleased that I am already number one on Google when you search the term “Kill This Blog,” which is at least the small patch of ground I’ve staked out on the World Wide Web. Not vital, but nice to have.
Today on Google I had occasion to search for a video that has been making the rounds online: you’ve probably heard of it: Called “The Last Lecture,” it’s an inspiring 75-minute talk by Randy Pausch, a college professor who has been diagnosed with an incurable form of cancer. Not a very cheerful subject, obviously, but like Clint Eastwood says in that movie, we’ve all got it coming, and so it’s important to all of us how we manage the small amount of time we have while we’re here. (I haven’t watched it yet… frankly I’m a little afraid to.)
So I was looking for Pausch’s official website, which I assumed would be thelastlecture.com. And so it is. But when I searched the term “thelastlecture” on Google, Pausch’s official website, with his own URL as the search term, it ranked tenth on the list of results. Number one on the list was the website www.thelastlectureS.com.
You click on www.thelastlectures.com and what do you get? A keyword sniping website with nothing but an affiliate link to Amazon for Pausch’s “The Last Lecture” book.
Now, I don’t quite know whether to be impressed with some SEO gunslinger’s ability to outscore a New York Times #1 Bestselling Author’s website on the title of that author’s own book, or to be disgusted with the degree of audacity it takes to skim a few percent off the sale of a book from someone dying of cancer. I’d like to think I’m the kind of person who would denounce that sort of thing… but I can’t help being a little impressed.
Obviously, I hope to avoid that kind of behavior in my Internet career. But here’s to hoping an SEO expert will accidentally show up here and let everyone know how that sort of thing is even possible.
It’s called a favicon!
I didn’t even know there was a word for this thing until this afternoon. It’s the little icon up there in your browser next to the URL. I drew it myself using an online favicon editor. If I could figure out how to embed a hyperlink, I’d do that, but here’s where I did it:
http://www.degraeve.com/favicon/
I’m sure embedding links is easy enough, and I’ll be putting that on my list of things to learn. I’ve found that most of this blog stuff isn’t difficult — the hard part is finding the info and trying it out the first time. Once I found the favicon information, the whole process took about fifteen minutes.
Yes, my icon is a little lame, and eventually I’ll get something more convincing. But it’s very cool for now and I’m proud to the point of smugness that I’ve figured this out.
So… one more victory for which I await your congratulations.
Just trying another new look here, for giggles, etc.
It seems like ALL WordPress themes are designed either by Hallmark or by a kid in his mom’s basement wearing a propellor beanie.
Eventually I’ll find one that works for me. Or I’ll figure out how to adjust one to suit my various Lucy Schemes.
Anyhoo… As you were, soldiers.
Well.
Tonight’s goal was to alter the look of this blog, mainly to see if I could actually do it. And I’ve done it. Hooray.
In WordPress-ese, the new design on which this new lay-out is based is called a “theme.” As in, I previously was using the default “theme,” and now I’m using a different “theme” that I downloaded off the WordPress website. This particular “theme” is called “Pearly Grey 10.”
I’m not terribly crazy about it, but the goal was not perfection but merely alteration. Now when people visit my blog (ha!) they’ll need at least three seconds to figure out I’m a newbie, whereas previously they could tell instantaneously. I’ll be scouting up other “themes” in the weeks to come, and maybe even learning how to make adjustments within a given “theme,” altering it for my own purposes (he said ominously).
All of which is to say… progress. I’m picking up speed here a bit.
I’ve just upgraded to WordPress 2.5. The whole process literally took seconds.
Turns out my terrific Web Host (HostICan.com) has a one-click upgrade link. No digging into the maze of Internet file folders at all. This is my first post generated with the upgraded platform.
I had been avoiding this job for days, fearing it would take hours and be way more complicated than I could handle. Makes me wonder how many other blocks I’ve invented for myself.
You know: Obstacles that don’t really exist.
What am I going to do with the rest of this evening?
…is to upgrade to WordPress 2.5.
I know that doesn’t sound all that challenging, but you’re dealing with a world-class doofus here, and it’s likely I’ll mess it up quite thoroughly if I get it wrong. Me vs. Computers? Bet on the box of switches.
It’s typical of me to make progress only very slowly, in all areas of my life. The instantaneous changes that all the self-improvement gurus promise never works for me. It all comes very slowly, I plod along, and eventually I notice I’ve transformed without even noticing along the way. But day to day it’s so damn slow it is frustrating.
Figuring out how to upgrade will be a great step forward in this blogging project, but the thing is, to an outsider, no change would be apparent. The blog wouldn’t look any more elaborate just because I’ve made a few changes behind the scenes. But everything that follows will have to wait until that is done.
I know, I know — there are people who can handle the upgrade inside of ten minutes. Unfortunately, they’re not me…
Because of the unrelenting demand of the predominant majority of my reader (all one of you), I thought I would, explain the River of Rags video I posted the other day. But first, an interlude. Friends, it’s time for The Buffalo Muskrat Show!
Here’s the explanation: Many moons ago I lived on the arty East Side of Milwaukee. I worked at the arty Oriental Theater, where I mostly swept floors, but also had stints in the box office and behind the concession stand. It was a reasonable gig for vague, incongruent people like me, as it wasn’t very demanding and kept me running with some interesting, semi-arty people. I was not one of the arty people myself, and mostly I kept to the very outermost fringes of the world of the truly artistic, but I knew people who knew people, some of whom actually knew people themselves.
Across the street from the Oriental Theater was a vintage clothing shop, run by a Mr. Jerry Fortier, called Sweet Doomed Angel. It was the place where arty people shopped for their duds. Me, being not arty, got my clothes from Sears. Or somewhere. I dressed to blend into the background, and mostly still do. I did not know Mr. Fortier, and still don’t, but I knew people who did.
Mr. Fortier was an Arty Person. He had a local band called the Trance And Dance band (and I, being slow on the uptake, required YEARS to realize the name was a pun). He also made art films, among them, The Buffalo Muskrat Show, which I saw ONCE back in the 1980s, and the song stuck with me ever since. Loved it. But until the advent of YouTube, chances of a repeat viewing of such an obscure piece of cinema were nil.
River of Rags was Mr. Fortier’s opus - a feature length documentary on the used clothing trade, which is allegedly more fascinating than you might think. I have not seen this movie. I heard it was a good effort, especially considering that it was made back in the day when gathering the resources to create such a thing was no easy matter. But back to the point: the clip I posted from the other day sparked a bit of nostalgia for me, because back in the 1980s, I was pretty much daily on the scene where these pictures were shot. In the clip I posted, you’re seeing a truck driving west on Milwaukee’s North Avenue turning the corner south onto Farwell Avenue, which is where the Oriental Theater is. The truck pulls up to the front of Sweet Doomed Angel, directly across the street from the Oriental, and the unloading that you see taking place is, I presume, part of the River of Rags bidniz that is the theme of the film. Then you have the clips of the Violent Femmes playing a show at the Oriental, which they did several times over the course of the eons. And no, I was not at this particular show either.
However, I was at the famous Femmes show, the one where they were discovered by Chrissie Hynde as they were busking outside the theater the afternoon before The Pretenders played our venue. The Femmes would play right outside our door often in those days, sometimes while I was sitting in the box office waiting to sell tickets, and often I was the only one who could hear them. It was quite a din, and the acoustics in the theater lobby were terrible.
I did not really know the kids in the band, but I had sort of a nodding acquaintance with Brian Richie, the bass player — we’d pass each other on the street now and then. The story goes that they were playing on the street, Chrissie sees them, and boom, they’re on the bill for that show’s line-up. And the next thing you know, they’re signed to a record deal.
What never gets mentioned in the telling of this tale — and I can speak with authority here because I was there – is that the boys (and remember, I love these guys) the boys were booed off the stage. They got a very bad response from the crowd, which had just seen a harder-edge punkish opening act (the Blasters, if I recall correctly, but I could be wrong), and following that with the Femmes and their brand of weenie acoustic scruff did not go over well. At all. I ran into Gordon Gano after the show and remember saying some words of encouragement to him, assuming that he was feeling badly about how things went during the performance. I doubt he’d remember that 20-second incident, though, as I’m guessing his mind was on much bigger things just then. The moral of the story being, I guess, that your one big lucky break can be quite nasty at the moment it’s actually happening.
So there you go. Some mysteries solved. Others raised, perhaps. And the closest I’ve ever been to genuine Rock & Roll History.
Also, I probably hold the record for being the person who has cleaned up after The Rocky Horror Picture Show more than anybody else ever. I’m not kidding.
This post is an attempt to see if I can post a youtube viddie. I might explain what it’s about at some future date.
The Violent Femmes appear for a moment. Here goes nuthin.
Diss pitcher iz a funnee man. He iz soooo funnee he makes me larf. I bet youze are larfing at him tooo.
The end.
Lookit deeze nicely nicely purdy flars. Flars is purdy. Me likems. Purdy, purdy flars.
After much deliberation, I have decided not to attend the Olympics Opening Ceremonies in Beijing this summer. That’ll teach ‘em.
…is here. I get piles of ideas of stuff to do online, but the problem is in not knowing how to get it up and running. I’ve developed the somewhat expensive habit of registering domain names that so far have no meaning except to me. The problem is in learning how to get the stuff slapped up here on The Intertube. Not that I’m expecting anything dramatic, not right away, but there is a learning curve. And once I figure out this basic blogging bidniz (and judging from a lot of blogs I’ve been reading, it seems to be a skill even a chimp can master), the glorious manifestation of my genius in cyberspace will proceed with greater alacrity. Alacrity! Alacrity! Dammit! Get me some alacrity! Stat!
By way of explanation:
The purpose of this blog (for the moment) is to provide myself with a platform for learning how to run a blog. That’s right, people: It’s not about YOU. It’s about ME.
That does not mean you won’t find value here. I am an intermittently fascinating person, and you might discover some interest in watching me blunder around this website, adding a little bit every day, and doing my best to warp the Internet to my nefarious ends. Eventually this blog may turn into something more ambitious (and admit it: Isn’t Kill This Blog too good a URL to go to waste?).
Fair warning: At some point I will be adding ads on these pages, not because I expect enough traffic to make it worth the effort, but because I want to learn how to do it.
So stick around. Leave a comment, link back to your own site, offer encouragement, suggestions, insults, and whatnot.
Anyhoo…
LIFTING THE LID OF THE INTERNET AND MONKEYING WITH THE WORKS STOP
FINDING OBSTACLES AT EVERY TURN STOP
THINKING IT CUTE TO REFERENCE OBSOLETE TECHNOLOGY STOP
WILL GET THIS SITE RUNNING AS SOON AS POSSIBLE STOP
PARENTHETICALLY AN OCTAGONAL RED SIGN MEANS STOP
EVERYBODY VISIT THIS SITE OFTEN AND NEVER EVER STOP
This is a test post. Please be duly impressed. Thank you.
