It's Like High School All Over Again...

I've been de-blogrolled and I'm not sure how I feel about it.

I'd been on this person's blogroll for a few months and then suddenly I was gone. No warning, no explanation. I mean, damn!

I can't truly take it personally, after all, since the person doesn't really know me and only reads the blogger side of me. And since I chose not to use my blog to discuss the more intimate details of my life, this blog is just a tiny reflection of who I really am.

Still, I can't help but be a little hurt by it.

I guess it is a bit karmic: I've removed people from my blogroll before and will surely do it again - but usually because they've stopped posting or post so infrequently that I've lost interest. But this is different; this is more of a: "I once blogrolled you because I found you interesting and now I don't."

I think we'd all agree that the cardinal rule of blogging is that you have to do it for yourself and nobody else.* I started my first blog because I wanted to force myself to write daily. My second one started because I was moving across country and wanted my friends and family to be able to keep track of me (since I'm horrible at keeping in touch) - it was easier for me to write a post than write multiple emails or pick up the phone.

But if you blog to gain approval or acceptance from others, it's a losing game. I've met (both physically and virtually) some great people through this blog but that's the icing on the cake - it can't be the sole reason for doing it.

So then why do I feel rejected?

[I would love to have pants like that, btw.]

* The other cardinal rule, of course, is never to post photos of your genitals. I learned that the hard way.**

** Just kidding. I've never taken photos of my genitals and posted them to my blog. At least that you know about.

Under Construction

Hello Boys & Girls.

Please bear with me as I work through some template issues. I tried making some "small" changes to the blog last night and, well, things got a bit out of hand.

Until then, enjoy this lovely photo of a squirrel.

PROPER!

200

[this is Andrea's cherry ride. i don't know Andrea. but this photo comes up when you photo search cherry ride.]

This is my 200th Blogger post. It's been a good ride so far. I've been blogging for a little over three years (first on my own site [now quite defunct], then MSN Spaces and now Blogger. I'm a bit of a blog slut). It's been hard for friends to keep track of me, but I thank everyone for sticking around as otherwise I'm sure I would have stopped a long time ago.

And thanks to all the new folks who've hitched a ride and/or are stopping by for the first time. Hello.

In this short amount of time, I've been back to Australia to visit my boy Richard, moved back to Chicago, found a job, told off a rude girl in line at Starbucks, rediscovered my long-supressed love for Dunkin' Donuts, drank a 40-ouncer in a respectable restaurant, and let one rip in a deli when I thought nobody was around (turned out there was).

I was supposed to be taking a bit of a break from blogging, but I've been able to verify what I've always suspected - I've got a bit of an addiction.

But in case I'm away for a few more days, you can read some of my favorite posts here, here, here, here, here and here. And here, here and here.

PS - I'm also glad because this week I've reached a milestone - over 100 visitors a day, which is great (and totally self-indulgent). Sure, there are some of you out there who get hundreds of visitors a day. Don't spoil this for me.

PPS - $17,500 - is that good?

Saturday. Proper!

I cleaned out the car this morning - some additions and subtractions to the blogroll (hey, I warned you). Will probably add a few more links over the next couple days.

I've now got at least one party to go to on Halloween (thanks Classy!), which is a huge relief. Guess we should probably rent our costumes soon because I have no suitable backup...

Kathy got me involved in this cool little project this week. For a class assignment her daughter Christina made a journal and wrote the first entry writing about herself and Portland. She then put it in the mail and sent to me (arrived yesterday). This afternoon I need to write a little about me and Chicago. Once done I send her and her class a postcard, put the journal in the mail and send it along.

Now, I want Christina to have the most kick-ass journal in her class, so I'm sending it across the Pacific (why waste time with this pansy-ass America stuff?). Aside from controlling the next person the journal goes to, after that it is anyone's guess. I hope it goes to cool places across Asia, Europe, South America , etc. I would have loved to have done this as a kid, although it probably would have never made it past Ohio.

Finally, my obsession with Little Superstar continues. If you thought his pop and lock was awesome, he can kick some major bad guy ass. And as this photo below shows, I think he's cross-eyed.Wait -- I guess now I do have a suitable backup Halloween costume!

What Do Jelly Shoes, Southside Posse, Poppin My Collar and Burger King Have in Common?

Searching for the Cherry Ride on the Web but don't know what terms to use? Try the following:

• Someone recently found me while searching for "Hostess cupcakes slogans jingles"
• Also "'gay face' gaydar." (Which, btw, I think is a great name for a band.)
• Oh, and I'm still the #1 link for "ever since I can remember I've been poppin' my collar" - I get about 3 hits a day from that one. (Which is great, you know, because I'm so Street.)
• Doing a search on "woolworths - jelly shoes"? Yep, I'm about #6 on that list.
• How about "southside posse"? Again, you'll find me at #6.
• I'm currently #9 for "whats the ingredient that makes the burger king BK stacker so fatty and full of calories." I'm actually quite proud of that one as I do consider myself an expert on fatty BK foods (the answer, btw, is fat -- fat makes the BK stacker so fatty).
• And I'm ashamed to say that I'm both #1 and #2 for the search "you're momma's on crack rock" -- not because I'm embarrassed to be associated with such a fine song, but because of my incorrect usage.
• But perhaps my favorite, the one I am most proud of, is that I'm #6 in a search for "crocs are dumb."

Random

1. Thank you Blogger for fixing the comments debacle between beta and non-beta users. I take back every bad thing I said about you in the last two weeks.
2. I wish my MSN Spaces friends would just get Blogger accounts. It would just be easier.
3. Every once in awhile, my site meter makes me laugh, particularly when I see how people get to my site. For example, I'm the #2 listing for "youtube barry manilow (bermuda triangle)" on Google.

Finally, and a bit more seriously, there is a person out there who I don't know at all (she's commented once on my site) but has me at the top of her blogroll (I think because it is in alphabetical order). I am flattered and grateful anytime anyone puts me on their roll.

But the other day I was reading her site and her entry that day was a tirade against her boss who she clearly doesn't like. Nothing wrong with that per se, but she called her boss a "faggot" twice. This is where it gets tricky, no?

I think most all of us use derogatory terms among our friends (I use the "f" word among my gay friends sometimes and lord knows I've called female friends "bitches" to their faces, so on and so forth) and sometimes you'll hear a comedian use a racist/sexist/homophobic term for a reaction (most often resulting in a humorous outcome).

The point being, neither me nor my friends have problems calling us these names because we know each other well enough to know our intentions by using such terms: the irony (and humor) of me calling a gay man a faggot is because I myself am a gay man; the irony of me calling a friend a racist term comes from the fact that I am not myself a racist. Etc., etc.

Maybe this person has a bunch of gay friends and uses the "f" word all the time in a manner not meant to offend her audience, and maybe I've become an eavesdropper among her circle of friends and don't know her well enough to assume the worst. I am no prude, or PC-ist, or overly-sensitive person so my first inclination is to let it slide.

But then there's this other side of me that wants to email her and write "Btw, I'm guessing you don't like homos based on your use of the word 'faggot' to describe a guy you don't like. As a 'faggot' myself, you may want to take me off your blogroll since you must not really like me all that much. Or better yet, please remove me from your list since I don't really want anything to do with you or your site."

Or maybe I'm just over-thinking everything per usual. Maybe the person in question, who I think reads me on a regular basis, could respond and let me know her thoughts.

So Sayeth Cherry Ride

My blog is like the English language - constantly evolving (or rather, since I think of myself as a language and grammar snob, should say "devolving").

Or maybe my blog is more like a shark -- to stop is to die.

Either way, the point is I'm constantly doing shit to my blog to make it look different (ha - I almost said better), like adding new links or adding posts on a regular basis.

I like to keep it fresh. Keep it real (as the cool kids used to say about a decade ago but I'm trying to bring back for a second wind). Take for example my blogroll. Now, I don't want to be one of those annoying bloggers who is constantly adding new sites and has a blogroll of about a hundred blogs. [C'mon -- it isn't like you're actually reading all of them on a regular basis! Unless you don't have 1) a job; or 2) a life.] I think one must exercise some discretion and not just throw any old blog to his/her list. So I'm starting to reach a point where some blogroll editing might be in order.

There are some of you listed on the right side who don't blog on a regular, or even semi-regular basis. I'm not talking about the people who blog about once a week; I'm talking those of you who seem to have taken the summer off [which, is like, the absolute BEST time to blog!!].

Let me get to the point: If you want to stay on the blogroll, you need to put a little effort into it. Post every once in awhile. Or maybe leave a comment if the thought of writing an entry is too much commitment to handle right now. Many in the guilty party are friends of mine - awesome people who I like to spend time with who make me happy and all that. You are and will always be my friend, but the question before you is: Do you also want to be my "blog friend'?

Because a blog friend is someone who shares with me a love of blogging. If your last post was in June, you don't love to blog (or maybe you do and your dead or something, which I wouldn't know about anyway because you didn't blog it to let me know).*

So please don't take it personally if in the next week or so your blog disappears from the column on the right because you've lost interest. There's nothing wrong with losing interest of course, that's totally cool. We can and will still be friends, we just won't be blog friends, and that's completely OK.

And on a completely different tangent - fuck off Blogger people and fix my fucking photo posting function already.

* To give you an example, "J" is one of my truly best friends. But he's not a blog friend because not only does he not blog, but he thinks blogging is "gay."**

** It should also be noted that "J" himself is a homosexual, so I'm not sure where the insult to me is supposed to come into play, but anyway.

Guinea Pig

So this morning I signed up for the new Blogger beta. Yeah, I'm trying to become what marketers like to call an early adopter.

Overall, a very enthusiastic thumbs up. Generally speaking, I like the new improved look. And this took me very little time. To compare, last weekend I did a 10-hour site overhaul to accomplish what I was able to do in 2 hours thanks to the new templates, rich text editing, and more robust custimization features (God, I sound like a commercial).

The one thing I don't like is that the beta will not yet let you make changes to the HTML, which means that for the time being my blog has to look just like the template. No adding or customizing other parts of the template like my header with the awesome "Route 666/Devil Child on the Big Wheel" photo that Kevin created for me a few months ago. (Sorry Kevin, I promise it'll come back up as soon as Blogger allows me to do it.)

Until then, I'm gonna miss the little guy...