The reason I try to avoid saying anything negative about people, places, and things is because no matter which person, place, or thing you badmouth, it's going to be somebody's favorite. The reason I know this is because people badmouth my favorite things all the time.

There are exceptions, of course. Even a cursory review of my past blog entries would reveal that I fail miserably when it comes to not saying negative things. Here's just a few of my failures...

• Microsoft
• Internet Explorer
• Apple
• Ann Coulter
• Nancy Grace
• Bill O'Reilly
• Rosie O'Donnell
• David Caruso
• Stride Gum
• Spelling Bees
• Jared the Subway Sandwich Whore
• President Bush
• Dick Cheney
• Pat Robertson
• President Obama
• Hillary Clinton
• Clowns
• Orly Taitz
• 12 Grain Bread
• TicketMaster
• FOX News
• John McCain
• Tony Danza
• Kelly Osbourne
• Dr. Phil
• Judge Judy
• Martha Stewart
• Pat O'Brien
• Paul Marx
• Mayor Greg Nickels
• And many others...

But here's the thing. I don't apologize for any of it. I feel what I feel then I write what I write. If I offend somebody because I've badmouthed their favorite thing, well... it's my blog and that's really too bad. They don't have to read it. Because unless I've gotten the facts wrong or said something that was interpreted wrong, I'm not going to apologize for how I feel about something.

Which presents a problem when somebody emails me saying I should apologize for hating on the television series Dollhouse because it was their favorite show and now it's been cancelled.

Um, yeah... while I do feel bad because my favorite shows seem to get cancelled all the time... am I sorry enough to apologize for saying I think Dollhouse is (was) a steaming pile of crap?

Not really, no.

I will apologize for not trying harder to avoid saying anything negative about people, places, and things though.

My bad.

I'll work on that right after I dump out this Ronzoni Bistro "Rotini with Tomato Basil Pasta" which is probably the worst pasta I have ever eaten in my entire life. Seriously, if you want to know just how bad pasta can taste, by all means go try a bag of this heinous stuff.

I just spent 20 minutes writing a blog entry that I ultimately cannot post.

I then spent 10 minutes being mad because I had just wasted 20 minutes of my life.

And then I spent 15 minutes realizing that the 20 minutes I had spent writing was actually kind of healing to me, at which point I was pissed at the 10 minutes I spent being mad. It's a vicious circle. But ultimately I came to two inescapable conclusions: 1) Getting mad is, more often than not, pointless... and 2) Some doors are better left closed...

I am so very thankful tomorrow is Friday. Not that Fridays really mean much... I still have to work the weekends... but at least the work stops piling up on Saturday and Sunday.

Oh yeah! And one last thing before I go...

Because it drives me nuts when idiots present historic inaccuracies as facts, I am compelled to point out that the original motto of these United States of America was considered to be "E pluribus unum" (in Latin) or "Out of many one" (translated into English). While never ratified by law, it did (and does) appear on The Great Seal of the United States, and has since 1776 (really, you can look it up on Wikipedia!). "In God we trust" didn't become our official motto until 1956 when it was made so by act of Congress (so much for separation of Church and State).

Which is why the next time I hear some moron saying "...and that's why our founding fathers made 'In God We Trust' our national motto..." as the basis of an argument, you'll understand my overwhelming desire to punch them in the face.

Getting mad may be pointless, but stupid is stupid.

"Let me get this straight. You're traveling half-way around the world... for a party?"

Lately I've been reconnecting with some of my former high school classmates on FaceBook. It's been kind of fascinating to me because we've never been close as a group, even though some of the close friendships are still intact. Case in point: our 25-year Class of 1984 reunion fell apart before it ever got started this year. It's sad, but not a big deal to me because I undoubtedly would have been traveling and couldn't go anyway (just like our 10-year). But we all served time together in the public school system so there's a common bond there that can't be broken no matter how hard we try.

So far as I know, only two of my graduating class are blogging. One of them is me. What this means is that I'm pretty easy to track down, even though I'm not so much tied to my "real name" but my "online identity" of Blogography. All it takes is a Google search and there I am. And now that I'm connecting on FaceBook it's even easier to find me because I'm linked to a bunch of former classmates there.

And this is where it gets interesting. Because my blog entries are duplicated on FaceBook as "notes."

It's interesting because my blog is highly superficial, as I don't talk about work, family, relationships, or anything I consider to be "personal." So while people from my past can find me easily enough, they can't really know me online. This is a paradox to be sure, and lately I've been trying to grasp what it must be like for old friends and acquaintances to stumble across my online life.

And let's face it, the online version of my life is pretty bizarre.

To say the very least.

This was driven home last Wednesday when one of my former classmates wrote and said "Let me get this straight. You're traveling half-way around the world for a party?"

Answering this question in the affirmative just raises more questions, namely "You're traveling half-way around the world to stay with random people you met on the internet?!? Are you crazy? And there's no real way to explain that to somebody who isn't involved in a blogger community and still appear sane. Believe me, I've tried.

Though, even if you remove blogging from the equation, it doesn't make much difference in my case. I once flew to Copenhagen for just 9 hours so I could attend a birthday party of a non-blogging friend. I guess I am crazy like that.

Oh well.

At some point you have to stop trying to explain your life and just live it.

I guess I'm there.

The day started off with an interesting twist... the hot water heater in Dutchy's house went kaput. The ladies managed to track down a hot shower for themselves (use your imagination here, heaven only knows I did), while I volunteered to stay behind and take a cold shower. So as to spend as little time as possible being chilled, I devised a plan whereas I would hose myself down, suds myself up, then rinse myself off.

It was a good plan. At first. Hosing myself down wasn't too bad, as it only involved a few seconds of contact with the icy water. Sudsing myself up was equally trivial. Where things went terribly wrong was in the last step.

Because it takes considerably longer to rinse soap off than to put it on.

And the entire time I was standing under that freezing stream of water... I could Not. Stop. Laughing.

Which probably made a terrific impression on Dutchy's neighbors, hearing a guy laughing hysterically while in the shower (let's hear her try to explain THAT one away!).

What finally made the laughter stop was when I looked down and saw the my once-magnificient pooferflargen had shrunk to the size of a peanut. There's just nothing funny about that.

Fortunately, Dutchy's cat was nonjudgmental on my plight...

But the morning's adventure in shrinkage was all made worthwhile when Dutchy made my wildest fantasty come true... her and Penelope took me to a snack bar so I could get some frites met mayo...

But the awesomeness did not stop with the fries and mayo.

It was taken to the Next. Level.

Because I was able to also have a cheese sandwich as well. A cheese sandwich made with "Old Cheese." Beautiful, sexy, tasty, aged Dutch cheese. On a roll. That looked like this...

While I looked like this...

Then, after a lunch so delicious I achieved orgasm, we went wandering in the local shops so I could make fun of the native products. I think this one speaks for itself...

Unless you're familiar with the French language, in which case it seems perfectly sane.

But if you are not familiar with the French language, you may be wondering how much more hilarious a product name could get than "Douche Creme."

I'm glad you asked...

I can't quite decide which one I like best. There is a case to be made for both Douche Oil and Douche Scrub. But there was no time to debate the merits of these douchey products because Bitchsterdam was at hand, and we had to head up to Amsterdam. Where we ran across a new batch of elephants! Including this beauty...

... on the way to the Hard Rock Cafe...

Where an amazing group of people consisting of Mr. Geeky Tai-Tai, Geeky Tai-Tai, Bra-Dutch, The Dutch Bitch, ME!, and The Lady Penelope got together for a wonderful night of food, drinks, and a lot of laughs...

Despite all that, there was still time for my Jägermeister habit to corrupt the innocence of Penelope's seasoned wine-loving palette...

All-in-all in was a wonderful evening at the Hard Rock Cafe...

Because I was the luckiest bastard on the planet this night, as I got to go back home with THIS...

All my thanks to The Dutch Bitch, for hosting such a fantastic event!

And I'm off for a wild weekend in DutchyLand with the Bitch that is Dutch...

Also in attendence will be the Lady that is Penelope and the Tai-Tai that is Geeky.

With a roster like this, only time will tell if I manage to survive the event.

Here's hoping that if (by some miracle) I do survive, I'll not be permanently damaged...

This is an entry I originally wrote on June 15th. But I never was able to finish it, and instead went with Bad Monkey pooping in a diaper. Since then, I've changed, updated, and altered it a half-dozen times, but still ended up not publishing it for one reason or another. Then Hilly went and posted something along similar lines today, so I figured it was probably time I just went ahead and let it go (after cutting out several paragraphs of angst, then updating it again to be more current)...

I want to take a break from blogging, but I don't know how.

It's not that I don't have anything to blog about... I just don't have anything I can blog about. The only things going on in my life right now are work and personal stuff, neither of which I choose to talk about online. So instead I muddle through, posting even stupider crap than usual just to keep my blog going at a time when blogging is the last thing I want to be doing. It would be nice if this were a temporary situation, but right now there's no end in sight.

The obvious solution would be to go on hiatus. But I'm fairly certain that if I gave up blogging for any length of time, I would end up abandoning it all together. The only thing that keeps Blogography going is my habit to post every single day. The minute I start skipping days or filling in with guest-bloggers is when I might as well shut down altogether rather than spiral towards the inevitable.

But I'm not ready to say goodbye. At least not yet.

So I've been trying to renew my enthusiasm for blogging by doing a lot of guest-posting, taking part in Blogathon 2009, limiting my time on Twitter and FaceBook, meeting up with other bloggers, coming up with recurring content ideas, and trying to steer clear of memes and other "easy" filler.

I don't know if it's working just yet, but I certainly hope so.

Because blogging has come to mean an awful lot to me, and the thought of having something so important die off is painful. At first I thought it was because of the relationships with readers and fellow bloggers that I've been lucky enough to find... but ultimately I think it's the relationship I've built with myself here that's the most important. While not a personal blog by any means, Blogography has become an outlet for self-expression that would be very hard to replicate any place else. It's an opportunity to step outside the horrors of Real Life once each day and finding a part of my life I can share... even if it is just a drawing of a monkey.

My blog may just be a reflection of a small part of me, but it's still me.

And I think that's something worth saving.

So I'll keep trying.

I'm not at BlogHer in Illinois. I'm not at Comic-Con in Caifornia. I'm working in Washington State.

This sucks twelve shades of Sunday, because I would gladly be at either event than stuck here.

The good news is that it really takes the pressure off having to write something for Blogography. After all, with the tons of news, blogs, and tweets coming out of Chicago and San Diego... who would notice if I put up something that sucks? Maybe I should just press my ass to my webcam and post that. Except I really don't want to get ass-prints on my laptop screen since I just cleaned it yesterday. I also worry about being flexible enough to webcam my ass without hurting my back, so I'd probably end up having to hire a stunt-ass anyway. Which begs the question... where exactly would one hire a stunt-ass? It's not like they advertise in the Yellow Pages (well, they might in L.A., but certainly not in my neck of the woods).

And now I'm just tired. Tired of driving. Tired of working. Tired of staring at a computer screen.

But not tired of playing Lego Batman on the Wii.

Which is probably a lot more fun than stupid BlogHer or dumb Comic-Con anyways!

At least that's what I'm telling myself...

As I sit here staring at a blank screen, I realize that I've done absolutely nothing blog-worthy today. I worked for four hours, then spent my afternoon and evening doing all those little things that I never seem to have time to do. Before I know it, it's 11:00pm and the day has gone. My first instinct is to call Bad Robert because just five minutes on the phone with him would give me enough material to blog about for an entire week. But he has a job which requires getting up at an insanely early hour and is most certainly already in bed.

Blogging can be so bloody difficult sometimes.

With no Bad Robert to help me, I now turn to my How to Blog the Blogography Way flowchart to see what I should do next...

Ah, here we go then...

Well that wasn't so difficult after all.

Tonight as I was waiting for my computer backup to process, I started going through my webfeeds to clear out any dead blogs I might be subscribed to. There were a lot more than I thought there would be... twenty-seven to be exact. The fact that these people have (apparently) given up on their blogs and moved on with their lives is not surprising. Most blogs don't last more than a year, and those that do seem to suffer burn-out as they pass year two. Even hitting that magical third year hump isn't the guarantee it once was. With social networks like Twitter and FaceBook becoming more and more of a time-sucking vortex, people seem to be blogging less and less.

What is surprising is how most people have chosen (presumably) to end their blog.

They just disappear one day and don't come back.

Thirteen of the blogs I deleted have a last entry which gives no indication that the author was even considering quitting. On the contrary, eight of them were making promises for future posts... like "I'll post pictures when I get back"... and "I'll write more about that later." Of course, those days never came. I can only assume that they were killed in a tragic accident or somehow ended up with amnesia and forgot they even have a blog.

Six of the blogs just kind of petered out. They posted less and less until all they were posting is random updates weeks (or even months) apart saying something like "I'm still alive" or "Haven't had time for blogging recently" or "Wow, I'm neglecting this blog lately, but I promise to start writing again soon!" Of course, they rarely do.

Five of the blogs mentioned something about "taking a break" or "going on hiatus." That's all well and good, but if it's been longer than six months, I'm just going to consider it a permanent hiatus.

Two of the blogs went private.

Only one blog... one... posted "It would seem I'm not blogging here anymore, so I guess I'll be shutting this site down soon." It's refreshing to have somebody actually come out and say it rather than leave you hanging and wondering if they're dead or alive. No promises. No dragging it out for a slow, painful death. Just a decision to stop blogging one day, and a note to let people know about it.

When I eventually pack it in, I hope that's the way I'll go. It only seems polite, really.

Hmmmm...

I'm not here today. I'm blogging over at Anissa's place...

UPDATE: Just in case something goes missing, I'm copying my guest post in an extended entry...