The first article I read in 2023 was this one: Bring back personal blogging. And it's interesting to me because every new year I debate whether or not I'm going to keep doing =waves arms= all this. The question has been especially wearing on me during the pandemic when I'm just not doing anything worth blogging about.

The article itself has some very good points though.

Social media, for all its popularity, simply doesn't have the community building that blogging did back in the day. I've made a lot of friends via blogging, and a handful of them are closer than many of my in-person friends. My guess is that this is because in-person friendships rely mostly on how often you see them, where blogging friendships rely mostly on how often you keep in contact with them. Even if you meet up with them in-person from time to time, your relationship goes beyond presence.

On April 18th, Blogography turns 20 years old.

Back in the day, I'd hold a week-long Blogiversary celebration with contests, new merchandise, and everything. Just look at this video from 2008 when the Grand Prize was me flying to wherever in the world the winner was so I could deliver prizes and have a party...

And so I did. I flew to St. Louis and had a great time!

I can't imagine doing anything like this now.

I mean, sure I still meet up with old-school bloggers from those early years. I met with one back in 2021, another in 2022, and will meet with another in March (proof positive that the article is right about the communities we built). But that's a far cry from all the "Dave Events" that used to happen... or even the larger gatherings like TequilaCon.

But it's this past community that still exists which makes blogging something I'm not quite ready to give up on yet.

So... here's to twenty years of blogging... and counting, I guess?

Wishing you and yours all the best in this New Year.

And... apparently my blog is borked again. I can update pages, but posts kinda fall into the void.

I used to use an app called "MarsEdit" which was a very nice composing tool. But it stopped working once the security on my blog changed because it doesn't support the required authentication now. I know that it was recently updated, but it doesn't look like the security was touched, so I started composing posts in WordPress directly. Problem is that WordPress doesn't like you to organize your own photos and wants to do that for you. I'm not a fan. This means I need to hand-code the photo HTML by hand. Also a pain in the ass.

AND THEN WORDPRESS EATS MY POST!

I wonder if it's a better option to compose the posts in MarsEdit and then copy/paste into WordPress? At least that way my posts wouldn't be lost if they didn't actually... you know... post.

=ponders-

Oh well. All that's going to have to take a back seat to fixing whatever is wrong with Blogography first.

The sad thing about the demise of blogs is that our online communities have been fractured.

Facebook is nice, but you can have friends half-way around the world living in the same city who don't even know that each other exists. Back when blogging was a thing, we'd regularly have meet-ups, and new friendships could be formed since everybody showed up to the same place and got to know each other in a social setting. There are days I miss blogging more than others (even though I'm still doing it)... and today is one of those days.

It's a lovely Spring day. As much as it can be, anyway. So I guess it's go time... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Opt-Out of Stupid! =sigh= The first Mother's Day without my mom was, as you can imagine, a soul-crushing event (and each one after is no easier). Not because it reminded me of what I had lost... because there wasn't anything that didn't remind me of what I lost... but because the weeks leading up to the actual day means being inundated with emails telling me to buy a gift for my mom. That's an assault that was incredibly difficult to deal with, because nothing would make me happier to be able to buy something for my mom again. Now-a-days, it's getting a bit easier because companies are allowing you to fine-tune your emails to not include events which my be tough on you. But of course there are total fucking assholes who want to make this kindness into something horrible. Because that's where we are now...

@jwilliamj “My political beliefs = anti 2010 meme”- @Matt Walsh #fyp #foryoupage #viral #foryou #leftistlogic #conservative #woke #stitch ♬ original sound - JJ

Just fuck you. Is there absolutely anything... anything at all... that can make you put yourself in somebody else's shoes for even two fucking seconds? I try to find the best in people, but I sincerely doubt it. Trading off of misery is apparently too profitable.

   
• Tattoo Me! I was outright called a "satan worshipper" once because I have tattoos. I told them that my tattoos have nothing to do with satan... only to be screeched at with "ANY TIME YOU DESECRATE THE BODY GOD GAVE YOU, YOU ARE WORSHIPPING SATAN!!!" And that's when I looked her dead in the face and said "Then hail satan and fuck off, I guess." Because I'm happy to confirm idiotic biases. I'm here to help. Which is why this resonates with me...

@nurse.alexrn My boss was crying laughing #nursesoftiktok #nurselife #nursehumor #nurseproblems #nursetok #medicalhumor #nursinghumor #nursetok ♬ original sound - Tank the GSD

People are so toxic now-a-days that unless you conform exactly to their ideals they go all asshole on you.

   
• Jenno! A conversation I had yesterday...

"Ooh! There's a new Hannah Gadsby special on Netflix!"
"You like Hannah Gadsby?"
"Sure. I mean, there's parts of her sets that don't hit with me, but that's okay."
"THAT'S BECAUSE YOU'RE A MAN!"
"I HAVE APOLOGIZED FOR MY GENDER MANY TIMES!"
"YOU CAN'T APOLOGIZE ENOUGH!"
"I'M SORRY!"
"Okay. You're good for another day."
"DAY? Can't we call me good for a month? Or at least a week?"
"No."
"Okay then, have a nice evening!"
"You too!"
"As good as the patriarchy will allow."

As it turns out, this is my favorite her specials.

   
• Lord of the... Rings?! These Wes Anderson parodies just keep coming. And are fantastic...

As always, I would pay serious money to see this film if it existed.

   
• Dooce. One of the most famous bloggers ever, Heather Armstrong, died this past week after losing her long struggle with depression (a battle she fought very hard, even going so far as to undergoing experimental treatments where her brain activity was stopped then restarted). This is awful. I think she wasn't even 50 yet? She's one of the old school bloggers who started around the time I did. I wasn't into mommy-blogging, but I ran across her posts from time to time and she was about as real as you could get online. Which is probably why she was so popular. I'd read things she wrote and think "Wow, I could never get that personal so publicly!"... and I'm betting that's what made her so relatable and beloved by the community that formed around her (even though lately she became infamous for blogging some pretty heinous things that I disagree with vehemently). Rest in peace, Heather. You can't get Dooced in heaven. Thinking of her two kids today.

   
• Tour of Wealth! Architecture YouTube is a bottomless pit of amazing homes and buildings for me. I can get lost there for hours. This one popped up this past week, and I honestly don't know how to feel about it...

If I had the money? Sure! I'd live there! Except... I just don't know how I could sleep at night knowing that I've used $250,000,000 that could have gone towards helping people. AND STILL HAVE MILLIONS LEFT OVER TO SPEND ON A NEW HOUSE... OR TEN! It's just so unfathomable to me.

   
Wishing you a good rest of your Sunday.

I do not take blog hiatuses very often. It's actually pretty rare.

I've had maybe 5 or 6 in twenty-three years maybe? My longest hiatus was, understandably, when I was moving my mom to a facility (and the aftermath) because I couldn't care for her any more. It was the absolute lowest time in my life with a hurt so deep that communicating with the outside world (let alone the entire internet) simply wasn't possible for four months. Oddly enough, I didn't take a hiatus when she passed two years later. By that time I had already said goodbye twice... once when I moved her out of my home... again when she no longer remembered me... so it was actually therapeutic to remember how incredibly lucky I was to have such a great mom, and reflect on what an inspiration she is and the horrors of her slide into dementia, then talk about my lessons learned about caring for a loved one with dementia so that maybe it could help somebody else.

Other hiatuses aren't nearly so dramatic. A couple times because I had things to deal with. A couple times because my blog was broken.

But this past week? There really isn't a reason. I just needed a week off. I have entirely too much on my plate to write about anything so I just... didn't.

Let's see what happened...

• My spiffy new heat pump uses the existing return line to the air exchanger in my garage. It's a line that goes through my walls. And because the builder did a horrendously shitty job securing the line and made zero effort to dampen the sound, it can get way more noisy than I'm comfortable with. So I am having to rip out another wall to deal with that (let's see... that would be #4, if you're counting).
• After my first landscaper got COVID and was no longer able to work... my second landscaper bailed after I approved his plan ("I can't deal with the job right now")... and my third landscaper just plain ghosted me after his final proposal didn't include major things we discussed, but was the still same price he originally quoted!... I am now on landscaper number four. I am fairly optimistic. And I'm happy that I didn't spend all the money I saved for the project four years ago.
• My annual Spring allergies are killing me. As I age, I swear they are getting worse and worse. It's all so weird because I had outgrown all my allergies decades ago, only to have them return now? Why?
• My job is pretty tough. I have to juggle a lot of tasks, know a lot of information, and be creative enough to assemble it all in a pleasing way. Which is why I don't fucking need things making my life harder. And the thing making my life exceedingly difficult right now is the Epson Colorworks printer I have to use for printing labels. Constant problems. Changing labels is a nightmare. Constantly thinks it's jammed when there's nothing jammed in it. A roll runs out of labels and the printer acts like the world is fucking ending instead of just stopping and alerting you. Half the time I end up having to turn the printer off and on MULTIPLE TIMES in order to get the thing to finally LOAD THE FUCKING LABELS. — The first computer I used was a punchcard computer as a guest of a university. From there I moved to a VAX. The first personal computer I had was an Apple ][. I have bought more computers and computer tech in the past 40 years than I can even remember. AND THE EPSON COLORWORKS PRINTER IS THE FUCKING WORST OF ANYTHING I'VE EVER USED! Seriously horrendous. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. I FUCKING HATE IT. I'd almost rather draw the labels by hand than to use this fucking thing ever again. I fantasize about setting it on fire. Or pushing it off a cliff. Or dropping it in the ocean. I am posting this to my blog so that anybody Googling for thoughts on this fucking piece of shit will know to avoid AT ALL COSTS.
• Because time has been scarce, cooking has been minimal this past week. The majority of what I've been eating has been frozen stuff. It's starting to wear on me. Until I started eating healthier, I had no idea how much of a toll crap food was taking on me. But I'm just too exhausted to spend the 30 minutes to an hour cooking up something better each night. Really hoping to do a hard reset on my meals soon, because this is unsustainable.
• And of course there's the usual bullshit that never seems to stop. I swear, some people have completely given up on decency and kindness, and just just live to see how many people they can hurt. Watching it in the news day-in and day-out is demoralizing in every possible way. A part of me wonders exactly what has to happen before there's no turning back from the toxic hellscape we're creating. I mean, clearly we're already in hell... Florida reaffirms this almost daily... but this trend of persecuting as many people as possible just because people don't like them or don't care about them will almost certainly spill over into things and people who they DO like, right? Trans persons and drag queens today... but maybe Episcopalians and left-handed people tomorrow? Where the fuck does it end?

Since blogging is pretty much... well... dead... I might have to take a minute more often. I always thought that if I took breaks I would just stop altogether, but it hasn't happened yet. So maybe?

Remember back in the mid-2000's when I was having annual Blogiversary contests and creating cool Blogography swag for prizes and purchase?

Pepperidge Farms remembers.

And so do I every time I open my closet. That's because I kept a number of the T-shirts for myself. Most of them I wear only on special occasions because I'm down to my last shirt. But others? I wear to death. They don't look all that great now because the ink is flaking off, but the shirts themselves were quality and are still in good shape so I am happy to wear them anyway because they're darn comfortable.

There is one of my designs from 2006 that actually looks better the more it ages...

So cool. If I could have found a way to print like this when they were new, I would have absolutely done it!

Interesting to note that at the time I designed the shirt, Bad Monkey looked quite different...

And that was when Lil' Dave still had "mitten hands" as well. In-Between when I designed the shirt for the contest and actually printed it, Bad Monkey had changed to his current, thinner version... and Lil' Dave has actual fingers.

Good times. Good times.

Something I need given that there's no new episode of Ted Lasso tomorrow.

I am really torn on this whole "link tax" bullshit that's getting signed into law by certain countries.

Essentially this boils down to governments forcing major media companies like Google to strike agreements with news organizations. That way, when you search for something on Google (or Facebook or any company that monetizes results based on another company's content) and a result from a news organization pops up, Google has to pay them money because their content has been monetized by Google.

On one hand, it's like... okay... Google is making money by serving ads in their search results or news feeds, so why shouldn't the news organizations showing up in those results get paid for making Google rich with their hard work?

On the other hand... why the fuck should Google be held responsible for other companies not monitizing their own content? If you don't want Google to make money off of you, then no problem. Add code to your website's HTML instructing Google bots to not crawl your content. Problem solved. Why in the hell are governments getting involved in this? And if you're going to pass laws for news organizations to get paid for making Google money... why not everybody? Why not bloggers? Blogography is heavily indexed by Google, and I have a lot of content that gets looked at by Google search referrals. So where is my money??

I have to say... I am kinda on Google's side this time.

Which is something I haven't said very often.

Google is merely refering people to your content. It should be up to you to monetize everything once somebody clicks through to visit your site and read your stories. Run ads. Offer subscriptions. Whatever. Just be grateful that Google is sending you the business. How else will people even find you if you're not getting Google search referrals?

With the recently-passed "link tax" law in Canada, Google is telling the Canadian government to fuck off. They will just remove all Canadian news sources from appearing to Canadians who are now legally required to be paid. Sure Google will have less content in their search results to monetize... but they won't have to pay anything out either. I'd argue that this doesn't benefit Canadians at all, but what do I know? Google said the same thing to Australia and France, but eventually capitulated. It will probably be the same for Canada.

And the USA is likely going to be adding a "link tax" soon.

If I were Google, I'd do some things...

• Stick to their guns and not capitulate to governments requiring them to pay money to news organizations. Let the news organizations monetize their own shit. See how long it takes for news organization to come begging for Google to add them back to their services and tell the government to abandon the law.
• Put a badge saying "PAID CONTENT" on all news sources that charge people to read their news articles. That way, when a search result includes a story by The Washington Post, for example, people will know that if they click through they'll have to pay money to read the full story. Because, hey, why isn't The Washington Post having to pay Google for sending them new subscribers? Fair is fair, after all.
• Extend an olive branch to all official news organizations by offering them free ads on Google services, especially on their news page, based on how much of their content ends up in search results. This is kinda a no-brainer compromise.
• Extend another olive branch by offering revenue sharing to companies or individuals who agree to NOT have paid content, with the amount received based on actual clicks. That way sites without the deep pockets of The Washington Post to set up a subscription service can have a mutually-beneficial relationship with Google. If they are making content which is interesting enough for people to consistently click through, then they are helping to make Google successful and can be rewarded. Set a threshold of how many clicks you need to get payment, then extend it to everybody. If sites like Blogography are getting a million clicks a month (HA!) then why can't they be considered along with "official" news outlets? I work just as hard on my content as they do, and consider my hot takes on things just as valid as "editorial" content, so why the fuck not? Hopefully this will allow cream to rise to the top and auto-generated, inflated, and artificial crap fall off of Google's radar. Ain't nobody wanting to read that shit anyway.

Ultimately I think it's important that news organizations get paid for their work. But to put that responsibility on Google is outrageous. That should be up to Google. And if people don't like it... then everybody can tell Google bots to not crawl their site until Google agrees to fork over the money and share their success. That's how the market works. If governments wants money to go to news organizations, then have that money come from the government.

Regardless of how this all shakes out, to have governments jumping in the fray is a terrible precedent. Today it's Google... what's tomorrow? Me? Every time I share a news story I'm going to be responsible for paying them money? I call bullshit. They should figure out their own monetization just like I do (which is $0 since I don't charge for anything, but still).

Have a government-mandated monetized weekend, everybody!

"What are you gonna do? Complain? And start a massive public fight with someone extremely famous and get smashed into dust by thousands of fans? No thanks. And that was my Uber, too! I paid money to have one of my jokes stolen by a multi-millionaire! When people hit a certain level of celebrity they start to think the world actually revolves around them and they can just take something if they want and say it's theirs." — hbomberguy, Harris Michael Brewis

Blogography has been going on for a while now. Over twenty years, to be exact. And the vast majority of that time I've been posting daily. As you might guess, having twenty years of content on the internet means that you've got loads of stuff for people to steal and claim as their own.

And it does happen. I regularly get people writing to me saying "Did you know this person is taking your stuff?" Usually it's DaveToons or my photos. Sometimes it's my posts. Twice it's been people stealing entire months of my posts and pretending to be living my life. Including the time a person stole my travel posts, including those talking about blogger meets that I had organized!

Back in my early days, I would write to them and ask them to credit where they got the material or take it down. Eventually that was too much effort so... as long as they weren't making money off my work... I just let it be. If they were making money off my work (when I myself am not), I'd usually send them a bill with a usage fee. They'd never pay it, but odds are they would take it down. A notable exception being a very famous blogger (circa 2007) who stole one of my posts (complete with my photos!). I sent them a bill for $2,500. They replied telling me "no" and said that I should be grateful that they were giving me "exposure"... except they weren't, because my name or a link to my blog was nowhere to be found. Rather than risking all-out war, I let it drop. Which is why when they had a spectacular downfall due to a bit of a scandal years later, I chalked it up to karma.

There is an exception to my kindness, however. If you're using my work to promote hate speech or to promote people who promote hate speech, I threaten legal action. At least I do now. Back in the day I was far more crude. Once some hateful "Christian" organization used one of my photos in an article condemning homosexuality. I was furious. But first I was devastated, because it came the day after a young gay man had taken his own life after relentless bullying. My photo was being used to create an atmosphere so toxic that this young man would rather die than have to live in it. And that caused me to become unhinged. So I changed their hotlink to point to a photo of gay oral sex which had "BLOW ME!" written on it. It was like that for at least two weeks before they noticed, at which time they wrote with their intent to sue. I told them to go fuck themselves, and to stop stealing my shit or I would be the one suing them.

On the other end of the spectrum, I also get people writing to me and requesting permission to use my stuff. So long as they are not making money off of it and it's not promoting hate speech, I always agree. And if they keep the copyright intact, I don't require them to credit me. If they're a charity or an educational organization, I even volunteer to make changes if it would be more helpful to what they're using it for.

And, yes, I do realize that there is likely a ton of my content that's been stolen which I will never know about. Especially by video creators, which brings us to the reason for this post. "hbomberguy" (AKA Harris Michael Brewis) whom I have been following for a while, just released an epic 3 hour and 50 minute video which discusses plagiarism on YouTube. And he has some fantastic examples within. I know that this is an incredibly long video, but it's well worth your time to watch. And I hope you do, because it's a treat...

I am confident that YouTube, as a part of Google, has all the tools they need to go after those who plagerize their content. But they won't be proactive like that because videos make them money with ad revenue, and it's not in their best interest to be proactive like that.

Except on behalf of major movie studios and record labels who have the money to seriously sue them if they don't at least search for stolen songs and clips from movies and television shows.

As for blogs like mine? We're entitled to nothing at all. Well, except plagiarism, obviously.

How typical.

But I'm used to it. And have been for a very long time.

Well, here it is. The entry where I recap all the things that happened in the year. Except... such a post only really made sense when I was actually doing lots of stuff (meaning prior to 2020). Not that nothing at all happened in 2023. Plenty of stuff happened. It's just that going through it all month-by-month doesn't really work when the notable stuff just isn't a massive list.

And so...

This was the 20th year of Blogography. Which means I've been blogging for 20 years. That's probably ten years longer than was relevant, but I'm nothing if not persistant.

This was also the 3rd year of Ted Lasso, my favorite television show of all time. They say it's the last year, but holy crap I hope not.

The greatest thing to happen all year? Grocery delivery is finally available in my area! As God is my witness, I will never step foot in the bedlam that is a grocery store again. Except when the delivery says that something I need is "OUT OF STOCK." Which, alas, is more often than I ever thought it would be.

The second greatest thing? The Dutch Bitch, one of my oldest blogging friends, visited me here in Redneckistan!

I had a lot of expenses this year, so I tried to save money wherever I could. The one exception was a seriously useless purchase of a Bad Monkey neon sign. It's pretty great...

I also bought new pair of SONOS Era 300 speakers, but those aren't totally useless. I get really awesome sound while watching movies now! And by "now" I meant nine months after I bought them because SONOS had to issue a fix so that Dolby Atmos would play on them without blowing up my SONOS Arc soundbar.

In the not-so-frivolous purchases department... I had to replace my hot water heater. Because of course I did. It was one of the few things that hasn't gone wrong with my house yet. And then I had to replace my HVAC system, because it turns out there were actually two things that hadn't gone wrong with my house yet.

This year was the first time since 2019 that I saw a live concert. And only the second time since 2019 that I saw a movie in a theater. Oddly enough, these were two activities I didn't miss as much as I thought I would. But it turns out I hate people, so being able to watch movies and concerts at home is the best.

I didn't catch COVID again this year. To my knowledge, I've never had it. Though I'm six-times-vaccinated, so it's possible I did contract it but being vaccinated made it so mild that I didn't notice. I am not doing incredibly risky stuff (except going to a concert and a movie) so maybe that helps too. I don't know.

I managed to finish my kitchen renovation after years of working on it. Still want to replace the floor, but that's something I'll likely never be able to afford. I also managed to get half of my yard renovated. In another couple years maybe I'll have the money to do the rest. But first I have to repair my upstairs shower (that was leaking).

Because I have time now that I'm at home all the time and don't travel 1/3 of the year, I ranked all the Pet Shop Boys songs. You're welcome.

Out of all the things I blogged about in 2023, I think the thing I most want to leave you with is this, which I ran across in August...

Hope you had a good 2023. And will have an even better 2024.

I'm trying to stay optimistic.