The One Rule is to Write

I’m starting to think getting back into NaBloPoMo was a bad idea. I can’t think of anything to write. I don’t want to write. But the rule is that you must post every day for the entire month, and that’s what I’m going to do.

The weather: it’s pretty mild out still, but it’s very damp and keeps raining.

Music: I’ve been getting into Grace Jones lately.

Food: a metric crap-load of fun size chocolate bars counts as dinner, right?

Aspirations: someday, I’m going to own a big sports bar.

TV: I’ve been watching Gotham. I wonder if that one guy is the Riddler?

Pants: bootcut jeans

Dog: fluffy

Butts: plump

Jiggy: with it

Favourite Stooge: Moe

Eggs: poached

Ketchup or Catsup: ketchup

Why: because

20 Litres and a Pound of Butter up a Hill

So I go to the store and I get myself 8 bottles of pop, a jug of milk and stick of butter. The checkout girl and the manager were all like, “Are you sure that you don’t want any help with that?” and I was all like, “Nah, I got this.”

And so, I grabbed all my bags, waltzed on out of the store and carried it all up the steep hill to the house.

My refusal to give in to the convenience of a granny cart has resulted in the formation of giant scary muscles in my arms.

I’m going to use my awesome muscles to punch stuff and commit supervillanry.

“Eric Conveys an Emotion” is Going to Update! Just You Wait and See!

Here’s a small confession of mine: I check on several long-dead websites, which I enjoyed way back when, with alarming frequency, even though I’m almost entirely sure that they will never update ever again.

The problem is that many people don’t seem to leave goodbye posts. It’s just business as usual, until things stop abruptly. There’s so many webcomics, that I used to follow that just stopped in the middle of a storyline without explanation. I’m pretty sure that these people didn’t die suddenly, but I guess in a way part of them did. One day they just stopped, writing, drawing, singing etc. and never started up again.

Or maybe they just got tired of sharing their talents with the internet. I can understand that. The internet is stupid.

Maybe they found a more productive use of their time.

In any case, there’s always this hope inside me. They didn’t really give up. They’re just in hibernation. They’re lying in wait. They’ll be back and they’ll be better. Otherwise, why would they keep paying for their domain names and hosting? Huh? I’ll keep checking. One day my faith will be rewarded with more of what I used to enjoy. I’m greedy, I guess.

The internet is littered with the corpses of a billion dead projects and once in a while I like to prod them with a stick to see if they twitch. (Ick.)

Anyway, go bug Emotion Eric and tell him his dead website is causing me existential malaise.

I think that I’m going to rewrite this later. I can’t really get my thoughts straight on this subject at the moment. Also, I’m missing a bunch of commas.

This Energy Drink is Doing Nothing for Me

I drank all 473 mL of this energy drink jazz and I ain’t got any more energy than I had a few minutes ago.

I think this might be a crock.

What are taurine and guarana anyway?

So very, very tired. Woke up at 6AM, don’t ya know.

Maybe I should just take up drinking coffee. Buy me some $10 dirty boot water from the Starbucks.

I wish that I was capable of photosynthesis. Wouldn’t help me much right now, seeing as it’s night and all. I could get a sun lamp though.

I bought some energy gum one time at a gas station in the United States. It gave me a rapid heart beat. It also tasted horrible. You can buy a lot of weird stuff in gas stations.

Sleepy.

I hear that trepanation can give you more energy. I should try that. Where’s my drill?

I rest my eyes and then it will be all over.

I dreamt about two giant red beetles creaking all over my room the other night. I hope that doesn’t happen again.

Conversations With My Dog

I talk to my dog a lot…

a drawing of laurel's shih tzu dog
Tibet wouldn’t stay still, so this colouration is all wrong.

Interrogations 

  • Why do you have a moustache?
  • Who said you could be a dog?
  • What is your tail even for?
  • What’s with all of these feets?
  • Who is this guy even supposed to be?
  • Why is your face so squishy?
  • Why are you so tiny?
  • Why are you so cute?
  • Why don’t you wear pants?

Accusations

  • You’re just a moustache with a dog attached!
  • You don’t even know what your butt is for!
  • You don’t even know that you’re a dog!
  • You’re just a miniature-sized bear-beast pretending to be a dog!
  • You have a severe moustache disorder!
  • You’re ridiculous!
  • You just sit around in your pyjamas all day!
  • You’re not a real dog!
  • This guy is just a guy!
  • You don’t have the proper license to be a dog!

Proclamations

  • You’re the world’s most fuzziest guys!
  • You’re the smallest guy that ever lived!
  • You have a moustache!
  • You’re tiny!
  • You’re a bear!
  • You’re my best guys!
  • I’m going to eat you!

And, of course, he just stares back at me with a confused look on his face…

…But that’s how humans also respond to me sooooooo…

NaBloPoMo 2014

texts that reads "NaBloPoMo 2014"

I haven’t participated in NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month), an event every November where you post every day for the entire month, in a few years. I near-completely lost interest in NaBloPoMo when it was taken over by BlogHer, a blogging platform for women (duh), and not just because the transition to BlogHer scared most of the men off, but because BlogHer is a cruddy, cruddy website.

Here, have some reasons why I hate BlogHer:

  • First and foremost, BlogHer is exploitative. Most of the posts on the website are written by unpaid community members, while the website is riddled with ads. Community members provide them with content for free, which brings them pageviews and ad impressions, and in return they get, I don’t know, a sense of community or something? You can join a community on BlogSpot or Tumblr and  both of those services allow you to put your own ads on your blog, so that you can get paid for your writing.
  • BlogHer puts outbound links in frames, placing their branding and ads on unaffiliated websites without their consent. This is just plain rude and frames went out of style in the 90s anyway.
  • The current BlogHer website features a tessellated layout and infinite scroll. I’ll probably do a long rant on why I hate these two design trends at a future date, but basically, they screw up navigation and reading comprehension.
  • Their post editor sucks badly.
  • Their name is a stupid pun.

Now, don’t construe this as me being against women having their own safe space for expressing their opinions. I just think that it’s best that such a place doesn’t exploit their talents for monetary gain. When you’re a writer, never work for exposure, or on spec.

So, yeah, this is probably the last you’ll hear about BlogHer from me, because I’m taking NaBloPoMo back from its massive corporate interests for the little guy, or something, I don’t know.

Anyhoo, join me every day this month for more inane rambling.