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Thanks again to Sandra and Marty for their guest posts this week during the 2HT Summer of Love. Tomorrow, it’s Carly Milne, acclaimed author and sexologist. Woo hoo!
So the other night, the Gay Mafia (and Jerry) came over to Hillywood and Winter and Motley joined us, too. Played some Scene It movie trivia and then Rock Band until Hilly decided it was too loud for her pantywaste neighbors. More pics on Flickr, of course, but here are just a few.
Uncle Monkey Boy before the drunken revelry began.
Rock Band, baby! That’s Othurme, Hilly, Motley, UMB, and Winter.
Attack of the Killer Cat! Michael wouldn’t leave FC alone and FC let him have it a few times. So you heard a lot of giggling mixed with “Ow! OWCH!” every few seconds or so. FC, by the way, is Hilly’s infamous cat. The initials stand for Fucking Cat (no surprise there). This cat is so spoiled, he drinks out of a fucking water glass. I shit you not.
On Tuesday, the day of the big earthquake here in southern California, I met up with my friend, Deana, who I haven’t seen in many years. We used to hang out a lot in Alamogordo, New Mexico, where I lived in my teens up until I got married and went off into the Air Force.
Deana and my bestest buddy, Penny (who was best “man” at my wedding), would hang out all the time, drinking coffee and chatting about anything and everything. It was very cool to see Deana again and we got right back into our conversational groove as if we’d never been apart.
About 20 minutes after she got to Hillywood, the earthquake hit. We rolled through the quake (it was NOT a jolt, by the way) and laughed about it as we watched the news and waited for our cells to come back online.
We caught up - she’s got another child now and is with a new dude I haven’t met, and is now training dogs for a living and has a few celebrity clients - and then talked politics for a while. Yeah, she’s on the left, and I’m on the - hmm, not left. Britt swears I’m a Democrat and I don’t know it, but Deana understands my stance completely. We’ve always been able to share differing views with very little drama or argument. That hasn’t changed.
Apparently, I’m over my bandwidth quota here at 2HT, so I’m just linking that photo of Deana and I from Flickr. Think I need to do more of that. Or upgrade my account. Or something.
Thank GOD I get paid today. Right, on to the meme.
Snatched from the blog jaws of SJ:
I want to:
get my shit together
meet up with more friends while I’m in California
finish writing any of the books I’m in the middle of
find some writing gigs
get an iPhone
I want to think:
that people actually like my snarky ass
that people are generally good creatures
that mean people are hurting
that I’m funny
that there’s a heaven
I want to learn:
CSS
how to better utilize Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro
how to paint better
to stop letting asshats/trolls bother the fuck out of me
how to fly
I want to see:
The Dark Knight
People stop killing each other over religion (or any other reason)
An end to blogiverse drama
My daughters
The inside of my eyelids
I want to try:
Exercise. I really need to lose 15 pounds.
staying out of the drama
bungee jumping
scuba diving
making a podcast
I want to tell:
some people off
people to mellow out
Alanis Morrisette to get pissed and make angry music again
Mountain Dew how much I love Diet Mountain Dew (wish they’d make more diet flavors)
Jerry that it IS “I dream of Jeanie with the light brown hair”
I want to touch:
the small of a woman’s back
a new furry kitten
myself
those magnet rocks that Jester has at his house
clean sheets on a memory foam mattress
I want to smell:
freshly cut grass
toll house cookies baking in the oven
Vulva
new Play-Do
rain on a hot summer’s day
I want to feel:
happy
like I matter
the rumbling of the house in a thunderstorm
unafraid
love again
I want to stop:
the self sabotage thing that I’ve come to excel at
smoking
taking people for granted
giving candy to little girls - what? Where’d that come from?
making wisecracks every time I feel a little serious coming on
I want to let go of:
Self-loathing (yeah, SJ, I can relate)
resentment
my heart
Jack’s World
my fear to move on
What do you want?
Oh, and here’s a fake blog post from the Lazy Bloggers Post Generator.
Holy Blog Of Doom, Batman! I just got slapped with a wet salmon - really - I have not updated this since people stopped clapping and Tinkerbell died… You would not believe that my hands were chopped off and I was waiting for bionic ones. Apologies to my regular readers! Even the little blue ones!.
I am overwhelmed with sleeping my way to the top, planning my wedding, just generally being a nuisance to society in general, my day is a magical flight from 8am to I run out of alcohol. I am not being a whinging Pom or anything. I wish you could be here to share it.
I swear on the bones of my ancestors I will make more of an effort to blog more often until the nice men in the white coats come back. Promise! What do you mean you don’t believe me?
And another one.
Today my parents were reading a book about ingratitude of the European lowlands. They were a little intrigued by that stuff, so they began explaining my friend Julio about it, and he started bitching:
“Dude!.. Get out! Don’t tell me you’re into the European lowlands too!”
But then when my parents got to the part about the ingratitude, Julio suddenly got this dangerous look in his eyes. Then later, Julio’s brother told me that the reason Julio was so freaked out was because he was watching about ingratitude on TV. At times Julio can be really strange like that, but he kinda loves me…
And finally, thanks very much to Dawg for the teddy bear award he gave me the other day. He recently went to the Vermont Teddy Bear factory and their philosophy is “if you care, send a bear.” So here I am, sending a bear.
I’m choosing just a relative handful of people here, of course. I mean, you ALL mean something to me, but I’m not about to list my whole freaking blogroll.
- Hilly
- Dawg
- Poppy
- Miss Britt
- Avitable
- Jester
- Othurme
- UMB (still no blog? REALLY?)
- SJ
- Winter
- Karen
- Becky
- Lisa
- Vahid
- Dave2
Thanks to everyone for tuning in for yesterday’s SecondHand Radio with Jeff. It is the final episode, at least on Blog Talk Radio. I’m switching over to Talkshoe for future episodes. And I’m probably moving to Thursday nights. Gotta wrangle up some guests, but I’ll keep you posted, of course.
For those of you that have already listened to the show, if you’d like to check out the links for Jeff’s kids’ projects, here are the links:
Austin’s Skateboard Park Project
So as I sit in Hilly’s apartment, listening to the merriment that is Jester, Uncle Monkey Boy, Othurme, Winter, Motley, and myself singing and playing Rock Band and drinking, it’s time to write something about Dave Diego.
Hilly and Winter and Motley and I drove along the coast, heading for San Diego. Some scenery was prettier than others, but the driver went (relatively) quickly. There was a lot of traffic, but no big deal.
When we got to San Diego and finally parked, we saw Boba Phet.
And the folks from the Dharma Initiative.
We decided - after realizing that Nicky Rotten’s was having a UFC fight night and charging a $10 cover charge - that we’d replant Dave Diego into the Whiskey Girl across the street.
There were of course, many people there. Dave and Hilly were together like glue on corn flakes.
Or wait, was it this two?
Hard to say. There’s Vahid and Hilly. Hilly was sandwiched between them most of the evening.
There’s Winter, Vahid, and Hilly having some laughs. There were many there that evening.
And SJ giving me some loving.
There’s Richard and Daniel, part of the gay coalition.
And there’s Paul.
And Jerry, aka Othurme.
There were zombies!
And guitarists singing Johnny Cash and Oasis!
And babes galore!
I mean, LOOK!
And there were heated debates about the injectability of gayness!
And again, much laughter.
And many more pictures on Flickr, which you can find by clicking in the “Stalking Karl” section in the sidebar of the blog. Just click on the blue and pink circle thingie.
Afterwards, despite nearly getting mugged by a guy with a paint scraper, we walked around to find Motley a ladies’ room. In doing so, we ran across someone who told us about a free art show. Most importantly, there was an open bar.
So we went to the art show and met numerous artists in a couple of different lofts. There was some cool collaborative art mural being done by a bunch of different artists. And also hair graffiti.
There’s Motley sporting her new bad-ass beehive.
It was a very cool night and the art show just made a marvelously fortuitive cap to the evening. Wish you’d been there. For reals, yo.
Filed under Travel, Weblogs | Comments (25)
Thanks to SJ for another great guest post here in the Summer of Love. Yes, it’s true, I hate LOLcats AND I hate the “word” w00t. But SJ was able to take both concepts and make me laugh…not easy.
Tomorrow it’ll be Shelli from Shelli’s Sentiments! Woo hoo!
I’ve had people ask me recently why I’m never on chat. It’s true that I am kind of allergic to chatting, though I go through some chat spurts once in a while. Most of the time, chatting is rather boring for me, truth be told. Unless I’m chatting with a good friend like Hilary.
And because it’s such a rare occurrence, me chatting, on the odd occasion I DO get online with my chat client I get barraged with people hitting me up for chat. Bing! Bing! Bing! Bing! Bing! Suddenly there are 15 windows open and I don’t even have enough hair to pull out at the moment. It’s overwhelming.
So there you have it…why Karl hardly ever chats.
I’ve heard the term “Alpha Blogger” batted around the blogiverse for a while now, so it’s nothing new. What IS new is that I’ve recently been labeled an Alpha Blogger myself. Huh? ME?
I don’t know how you could possibly confuse me as an Alpha Blogger. Hell, I don’t even know how you DEFINE Alpha Blogger. So let’s look it up, shall we?
If you look up the definition of Alpha Blogger on Allwords.com you come up with the following:
alpha blogger
noun
- (internet) A very popular, widely read blogger.
Hmm, okay. That gives us at least a starting point to discuss the term. How, then, do you define “popular” and “widely read?” I get a decent amount of traffic, I suppose, if you’re going to use statistics as a metric. Nothing amazing, really, but I’m happy with the traffic I get.
According to Woopra, I get anywhere from 120-500 unique visitors a day. Nowhere near some people I know, like Jester or Dave, but still.
So is it traffic stats that make you an Alpha Blogger? If so, I don’t think I qualify.
Is it comments? Again, I don’t think I’d qualify. I generally get 20-40 comments a day. Sure, there are some posts that generate more comments, but that’s a common phenomenon on most blogs. When I’m writing a post, I can’t gauge whether or not it’s going to get a ton of comments. Seems to be arbitrary, which ones get more attention than others.
Then there are odd cases like Jester’s blog. During one of his hourly radio shows, we talked about blog traffic and he mentioned he gets quite a lot of hits every day, but very few comments. He gets far more traffic than I do; yet I get far more comments than he does. How the hell does that fit into the Alpha Blogger scheme of things? I have no idea. But he was thrown into the same Alpha Blogger pool that I was.
I admit that when I hear the term Alpha Blogger I kind of get the heebie jeebies. It smacks of elitism somehow, at least when you hear it in the context it’s often used. Someone said recently, “Oh, you’re one of those Alpha Bloggers, aren’t you?” in the same sort of tone you might say, “Oh, I just stepped in dog shit, didn’t I?”
I replied, “Who, me?”
It’s true that I hang with some really good bloggers, some of them with relatively large readerships. Hilly, Miss Britt, Avitable, Dave, Kapgar, and the list goes on and on. But that’s what happens when you reside on the Internets…you connect with people. You find good blogs to read, you comment, and eventually those people check out YOUR blog and hopefully bookmark it. Over time, you become friends and you introduce them to other friends…they introduce YOU to some of THEIR friends, etc. That’s the nature of the Internet.
Everyone has their own little corner of the Internet, populated with their friends. Some of these corners overlap here and there. But MY little corner is certainly not an elite group. It’s not something that “outsiders” can’t get into. (For a nominal fee, of course. *cough*) Really, it’s pretty simple. Write good blog posts on a semi regular basis and you’re pretty much in. Come to TequilaCon or any of the other blogger gettogethers and you’re pretty much in. There’s no secret formula, really. We joke about the PRB (People’s Republic of Blogistan) but really have no idea what the boundaries of this little country are.
But having a little corner in the blogiverse does not make you an Alpha Blogger. Those are totally separate issues and somehow they seem to have gotten lumped together.
Alpha Bloggers, to me, are people like Heather Armstrong, Robert Scoble, Arianna Huffington, and Seth Godin. People in the Technorati Top 100. They get mega traffic and are probably raking in the major money from their blogs, too.
Don’t get me wrong, I’d LOVE to be an Alpha Blogger. More specifically, I’d love to make a living from my blog. But that’s not the case. As it is, I get enough to cover my monthly blogging costs, but that’s about it.
If anything, I’m a C-List Blogger. Or a SecondHand Blogger. And that’s just fine. For now. 
What do you think? Am I an Alpha Blogger? What defines an “Alpha Blogger” for you? Is it a clique thing or a popularity thing? Both? Go ahead and discuss. I really want to know. I mean, if I’m going to belong to a club I think I ought to know how the hell I got in in the first place.
Filed under Blogging, Uncategorized, Web/Tech, Weblogs | Comments (63)
