I Me Mine, I Me Mine, I Me Mine

Though how triumphant anything can be at 6:30 in the morning is open to questioning...

I needed a blogging break. No big, grand reason for this -- this wasn't like the LJ Content Strike a few years ago -- but I was tired and desirous of taking time off. It reminded me how long I have been blogging -- in the late 1990s, long before this journal, I was sending about a monthly e-mail to maybe two, three dozen family members and friends. I called them "blast e-mails"; basically, I had a mailing list. It took several months of having chris_walsh as a place to talk for me to increase my blogging frequency. It got to the point around 2008 where I had to tell myself It's okay, Chris, you don't have to post every day. Though I like posting, and I like writing. It's always the starting that's tough (no duh), but over and over I've noticed that writing makes me feel better -- once I start doing it.

People who follow me on Facebook and Twitter know I haven't been too far away, either. I was most limited in my Internet use in the first half of last week, which was probably good as those were busy days in general.

Basically, I've had time to think about stuff unrelated to my blog. Maybe I'll write about that stuff. Maybe not. But I keep finding stuff to write about.

Let me know if there's anything major I've missed.

All the best, all of you.

Thanks to Bobby "Fatboy" Roberts, Mike "Culture Pulp" Russell and my brain, I spent some time this weekend writing insults.

In a couple of venues (like here), Bobby, Mike and eventually others got into a debate about the merits of Shakespeare: is he overrated? Does attention to his works overwhelm theater? Do people focus on his works out of habit, or out of what they can get out of it? But a side-thought came up during this: no matter what you think about anything else Shakespeare did, he was a genius at writing insults.

Why not new Shakespeare insults?

And thus I started spamming Twitter with my attempts, and others joined in. And soon my little corner of the Internet was graced with these:

* "You nosehair-combing flea-farm!"
* "You crap-juggling failed yodeler!"
* "May your lying tongue reach back and strangle your entrails!"
* @culturepulp: "Thou resolution-lowering, atom-splitting Montessori driver!"
* "You mud-encrusted smog-gargler!"
* @culturepulp: "Thou Pinto-owning, Hilton-deep carb-counter!"
* "You road-buckling, weed-puking inverse pancreas!"
* @culturepulp: "Thou Ratner! Thou Michael Bay!"
* @carolynmain to @culturepulp: "Do you up your sack at me, sir?" "Well, my sack is upped, sir!"
* @FuriousDShow: "Thou hath the reliability of Lindsay Lohan's alcohol monitor!"
* "Thou dandruff-eater! Go swim with lice!"
* @culturepulp to @carolynmain: "A pox upon thine credit rating, thou Facebooker ! Thou graphic novelist!"
* @Lea_Hernandez to @culturepulp: "Thou bug-bespectabled Anthropologie trollop!"
* @FuriousDShow: "Thou art a pimple on the arse of progress."
* "Mayest thou dust bunnies grow fangs, you brook-nibbler who wears shoes on your feet!"
* @culturepulp: "Thou Rush midi! Thou boy-band!"
* "Thou spit-spackled no-armed centurion! May you exit your abode via a closed window!"
* @taradublinrocks: "Get thee to a rehab!"
* "I wish for you to excrete spiders, thou waxen-eyed self-hitter!"
* "Become adept at kicking your own face, you piss-reversing sewer-tonguer!"
* @carolynmain to @culturepulp: "Thou middle aged pre-teen sci-fi nerd stain on society's inseam!!!" (To which @culturepulp replied "I am killed! By Bieber's pate I am slain!")
* @IDLYITW: "Mangled flap-mouthed whorecunt! Thou shalt smile then bloweth me."
* @taradublinrocks: "Lord, what fools these Kardashians be!"
* @NormfromTexas: "Thou Hurr Durr myopic pud puller!"
* "Your shenanigans make my eyes roll all the way around & back. Your breathing makes my head hurt. Eat an encyclopedia."
* "Go make soup in your sinuses!"
* @culturepulp: "Thou resemblest an iPhone 4: fair of curve, slight in reception."
* @kiruppert to @culturepulp: "Thou vapid fool would challenge the very depths of Palin!"

But then Mike Russell contributed this:

@culturepulp: "You will hang like pretension 'pon a hipster's beard."

And I told him "And with that, thou hast won these Internets. *salutes*"

---

* Credit for "Yon momma" goes to online critic Scott E. Weinberg.

Friend-locked so my folks don't see it, plus it was how I signed a private e-mail:

All best, you tree-fellating nosehand...

My walk to work currently takes me past giant ads for Mad Men.

The front windows of the store at the front northeast corner of the Fox Tower was first festooned last week with giant ads of the abstract black-white-red image of Don Draper sitting with his cigarette, and this was to advertise the contest that could win someone a walk-on on this show. This week there are now giant photos: Jon Hamm as Don in one, January Jones as Betty Draper in another. (No Christina Hendricks as Joan Holloway yet, sadly, but if you need a Hendricks fix, here you go.)

Ahhhhh; again I'm not the first to appreciate this, but the so-elegant look of that show and its characters contrasted with the damnably inelegant chaos the characters must weather, much of it brought upon themselves for being difficult, entitled people -- that gets me. This is one of those shows I've only seen parts of, but see more I shall. I appreciate its success, and its influence. I hope it means more people think about what we can be glad we didn't keep from the early 60s. Strange, difficult time. Contrasts with this strange, difficult time, I'm sure, but that's not a comparison I can really make at this time. I could after, of course, seeing more of it.

In short: elegant. I can get behind that.

What's a good time to reconnect with someone? Reconnecting being easier now with Facebook and other Internet tools, maybe we reconnect more often, but we still can't know the potential news you'll run into when reconnecting.

I stab-in-the-dark found the profile of Derek, one of my call center co-workers, and sent him a friend request. He and I worked together from 2002 to 2004, and had dealings on-and-off after that, then years of not running into each other. Plus I know he moved more than once in that time, so it was less likely we'd run into each other randomly on the street as we've done in the past, but the internet...yeah, you know.

Said former co-worker is now married.

And said former co-worker is now also a dad.

This...this was a good time to reconnect.