<@jasonw> diablocody: Picked up a new magazine, settled in contentedly, and opened to a page with David Edelstein calling me “a joke.” Good morning!
<@jasonw> That is why I could not handle being famous
< zole> Yeah, that’s a bit rough
< zole> Although to be fair Diablo Cody kind of is a joke
< zole> “Did you hear the one about the stripper who became a screenwriter”
< zole> “Stop me if Juno this one”
< zole> EXPLODE
<@jasonw> Ugh
< zole> That second line may not have been necessary
I complain too much about things that bug me, so in the interest of being described with an adjective other than “cantankerous”, I’m now going to talk about something I like.
Fat-free Fig Newtons! I’ve just discovered I love them. The fig part is nice, but what I really dig is the cake portion, which has just the right chewy, obviously-mass-produced texture.
I’m late to the Fig Newton party because the TV commercials that ran circa 1990, when I was an impressionable youth, were ridiculous. As I recall, they were all variations on the assertion that Fig Newtons are not cookies. And? Broccoli florettes aren’t cookies, either. That’s why I don’t like them.
I’m glad I decided to mention this, too, because in doing my thirty seconds of research I found out that Fig Newtons, like all good things, came from the Boston area. I always assumed there was an Isaac Newton connection, but nope, it’s named after Newton, Massachusetts, where I used to work.
When I started a blog I promised myself I wouldn’t apologize for not updating. I hate it when people apologize for not updating their blogs. If your blog is mediocre, and statistically speaking it probably is, it’s pretty damn presumptuous to think that anyone was really missing it. And if your blog is really good, then it’s free reading material, and nobody has any right to hold you to a schedule.
That said, I feel bad for letting my nascent blog collect dust for over a year. But I promised. So how about this: I haven’t updated my blog, and fuck you.
It’s hard to write a good blog. My respect for the people who write interesting posts on a regular basis has gone way up since I gave it a shot. When I was doing Death To The Extremist it was easy — well, possible — to churn out updates on a schedule, because I just had to pick a topic and think about it until something funny emerged. With a blog you have to actually say something interesting and new about the topic. Or I guess you could also just link to something interesting and new and then say something lazily snarky about it.
Actually, the bigger difference between publishing a blog versus a comic seems to be getting readership. This is the behavior pattern I’ve noticed in myself, and I suspect it’s common: if someone links me to a particular installment of an online comic, I’ll read it and then I’ll read a few more strips in the archives. If they’re all pretty good, I’ll probably come back to that comic. But when someone links me to a blog post, even if it’s really good and I add it to del.icio.us and everything, I will invariably close the tab after I’ve read it and go about my Internet business. The only way I’ll ever see that blog again is if they write something else that gets linked around. Only then, and only if I remember the blog from before, will I then add it to my RSS reader. I guess that kind of serves as a quality/notability filter, but it makes me an awfully tough audience.
I was super fortunate to have carried over some readers from DTE, and I’ve probably lost all of them because of the radio silence. I’m OK with that, though. Part of DTE’s undoing was that I started caring too much about the amount of readership I was getting (or not getting, I guess), and that’s too much dang pressure. So if I’m still on your RSS reader, look forward to more posts and even more relaxed standards of quality! There’s also a surprise or two in the pipeline. Okay, not two. One, tops.
I just got an email from my gas company that seems to be offering me a chance to win Red Sox tickets. I say “seems” because the email doesn’t say “Red Sox” even once. Here’s what it says instead:
Subject: “KeySpan Wants to Take You Out to the Ball Game”
“Let KeySpan Energy Delivery Take You Out to the Ball Game! Complete a Quick Online Energy Survey for a Chance to Win”
“[...]you will be entered to win one of 12 pairs of tickets to a game in Boston*.”
That sounds like “free Red Sox tickets”, right? But they don’t actually specify. I’m left to wonder. Is there some legal reason they can’t say Red Sox? It wouldn’t surprise me. Are they trying to cover themselves in case they can’t get Red Sox tickets, and send people to see a minor league team or perhaps Somerville High’s lacrosse team? But the fine print clearly says “home game” and “professional baseball”.
It’s probably the legal thing, but I’m fascinated by all the circumlocution. “Fill out this survey and you could see a baseball team play in Boston, if you catch our drift.”