Boy do I miss blogs.

I have an ongoing promise to myself that I won't go into work on the weekends until noon. Rarely do I keep that promise, because I'd rather intrude on my precious personal time than have to work until midnight on a a weekend.

This morning I actually managed to keep my promise to myself. And it's all Jack Fischl's fault. JACK is the reason that I didn't drag my sorry ass to work until 1:30...

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Back when blogging was a thing, I read a lot of blogs. Like seriously many. As in hundreds. At one point I was reading 362 blogs, 256 of which were personal blogs of interesting people with interesting things to say. I know this because I once mentioned it in a video...

A surprising number of these bloggers became friends that I still keep in contact with today... even though they have long-since given up on blogging. A few of them I manage to visit in person as I travel the earth. Most of them, however, I only manage to keep up with because of Twitter or Facebook or whatever.

It's not the same.

Twitter gives you 140 characters in which to express yourself. That's great for simple thoughts ("I went to the grocery store today"), but total shit for actual communication ("I went to the grocery store today and was attacked by a grizzly bear"). Wait, what? With blogging you'd probably get the whole grizzly bear story right down to the last detail. Now you get the bare minimum of details that always leave you hanging. If you're lucky, there might be a photo attached, but that's about it.

Facebook isn't much better. Sure you have more space to write, but most people don't use it. Twitter and text messaging has destroyed real personal storytelling forever. Instead you get meaningless updates about winning a trivia game or automated data dumps of how far somebody ran today or random links to random stuff... anything but the story of somebody's life.

Am I the only one who misses that?

Anyway...

This morning I was trying to come up with travel ideas that were off the beaten path yet affordable. Looking at my travel map, I noticed once again how Central and South America have barely been touched. This annoys me greatly, so I started poking around the internet for unique travel experiences in those regions. Eventually I landed on a site called Keteka, "Your gateway to authentic tours and activities in Latin America." And indeed they do have a variety of interesting "off the beaten path" tours that are reasonably priced.

After exploring the site for a bit, I happened to notice a section called "Stories from the Road" at the bottom of the page. The first link was "Jack's Blog."

And there went three hours of my life.

What a fascinating guy. He started a blog as a way to document his adventures in Panama with the Peace Corps, and his every entry is fantastic stuff. Entertaining stories about everything from daily life in the rainforest to battling bat poop. Suddenly I was sucked back into the world of blogs again, remembering how great it was to be an observer into somebody's life that's different from my own.

And that's the thing that makes blogging so wonderful... everybody has a life that's different from mine. Which means everybody's life is interesting to me, even though they may find it mundane.

Boy do I miss blogs.

Such a pity that telling your story and inviting people into your life is an artform that's dying out in favor of snippets of 140 characters or less.

Such is progress.

I guess.

So, if you want an awesome read from the glory days of blogging, Jack Fischl is your guy.

I recommend starting at the last page, which is the first page chronologically. Then on each subsequent page, you have to scroll to the bottom and read entries in reverse in order to keep moving forward. Confusing, I know, but it's worth the effort.

Here's the last (first) page of Jack's Blog.

And don't hate me for making you miss blogging. I still do this crap every day.

I hope all you East Coasters have dug your way out of the blizzard by now... because Bullet Sunday on Saturday starts... now...

   
• Blog! Turns out the reason my blog keeps failing is because database tables are being locked, rendering me unable to post anything. I don't know exactly how to keep it from happening... yet... but at least I know how to fix it without reinstalling everything.

   
• Burma Shave! A few people wrote and asked what's with the "Burma Shave" sign I posted. Since the concept pre-dates even me, here's a link to Wikipedia that explains it all...

If you want to take a look at some of the clever jingles Burma Shave came up with over the years, there's a repository for that.

   
• The Pox! It doesn't matter that the whole anti-vaccination movement is bullshit and the people who have been most vocal in claiming vaccinations are harmful are lying assholes... people are buying into it, which means dead diseases, like measles, coming back with a vengeance. There's loads of material online to support vaccination as a critical protection for all society... but Night of the Living Dad has one of my favorite takes on the subject. Here's another...

Too bad people can't get vaccinated against insanity.

   
• Lost? Lost was one of the best shows to hit television. For the first season or two. Then it became an idiotic mess of stupid shit that was piled on top of more stupid shit where nothing was resolved and nothing made sense. I maintained again and again that the writers had no clue what in the hell they were doing and that there could be no pay-off for such random idiotic bullshit. And now? Yep, yep, yep.

   
• Park! "Nara Dreamland," Japan's answer to Disneyland that opened in the 60's, was eventually closed in 2006. Probably because Japan ended up with an "authentic" Disneyland of their own. Since closing, Dreamland has been left abandoned. I was curious to know if anybody had managed to take photos of the empty park, and was surprised to find some incredible shots on a blog by photographer/writer Michael John Grist...

Well worth your time to visit, if you're into this kind of thing!

   
• SkyMall! As a frequent flier, I was very sad to learn that SkyMall has filed for bankruptcy. Not that I would ever buy their crazy, overprice crap... but it made for some much-needed entertainment on more than a couple flights...

After all, who wouldn't want a suitcase scooter?

   
And... I'm spent. New bullets in five days.

When Blogography broke down (again) on Monday, I was half-way tempted to just leave it broken.

This was just the excuse I needed to hang up blogging once and for all, as lately it seems more like a chore I have to do rather than an activity I want to do. But I've gone through rough patches like this before and have always cone around, so I thought it best to get things running again. If I'm going to quit, it should be a decision I make instead of a decision I'm forced into.

So here I am.

Still.

Guess there's no better reason to do a meme than that...

1. There's something about you. What is it? A sense of adventure.
2. You know the way you do that thing? What is it? It's all in the wrist.
3. What grey areas of your life scare you the most? None of them. I accepted long ago that things are rarely black & white, and am perfectly content with that.
4. What is something that you wish you knew the answer to, but would never try to find out? What it feels like to free-solo climb Half Dome in Yosemite.
5. Everyone has that 'thing'. Their 'it'. What is yours? Not being afraid to step outside my comfort zone.
6. What is that one thing you just can't seem to put your finger on? How people can hate something so vehemently that they have made no effort to understand.
7. If you could leave this world discovering one thing, what would it be? Extraterrestrial intelligence.
8. Why do you love them? They earned it.
9. Why do they love you? I earned it.
10. This time of the year makes you... Bored.
11. The way to your heart is... which way? By showing kindness to others.
12. It gets under your skin when...? People behave badly or stupidly or rudely in public. By clipping your toenails in a restaurant or letting your kids run ape-shit in a grocery store or talking on your phone during a movie or whatever... you're infringing on other people's peace and making it hard for everybody to just get along.
13. Why did you leave? It wasn't my choice. I was forced out.
14. What is something you stopped believing in? American justice.
15. What is something you'll never give up on? Humanity's ability to eventually sort itself out... as unlikely as that may seem.
16. You forgot what they said, you forgot what they did, but what feelings do you remember? Rage.
17. Open up. About anything. I have no desire...none whatsoever... to be in another romantic relationship. Ever. I have been so much happier since I've stopped trying. Friends, family, and occasional kindness of strangers are all I need to feel complete.
18. Whenever you smell it, what does it remind you of? Maui.
19. Close your eyes and smile. What memory did you think of? Africa.
20. You'll never understand why... There are people who have absolutely no regard for others. And usually they are politicians who are supposed to be doing exactly that.
21. What was the moment when 'it' hit you? Bangkok, Thailand, 1998.
22. What's keeping you from moving on? Responsibilities.
23. No one likes to dwell, but if you could go back, what would you change? I would not have wasted my precious time on those who ended up undeserving of it.
24. If you could predict your future, you'd want it to look like...? Like Back to the Future II... THE FUTURE IS NOW, BITCHES!
25. If the eyes are the windows to the soul, if I looked in yours, I'd see...? Hope.

See you tomorrow, I guess.

And so... updating WordPress ended up being a very bad idea, because Blogography done broked real good last night.

Which happens from time to time, I know, but it's no less irritating. Usually I would just stop the world and re-install everything from scratch, but that's not an option right now. Maybe come the weekend...

Sorry if you're one of the thousands of people who can't start their day without a dose of Blogography. Guess you'll be taking the week off then?