2013 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2013 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 1,200 times in 2013. If it were a cable car, it would take about 20 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Meanwhile, I was reading the intro to Sweater Quest this weekend, and the author could remember nothing that year she would put on her obituary. Well, I thought, there’s nothing in particular I can think of that would make my obituary interesting, but at least I’ve done stuff this year.

1: I finally got a job—Hooray for passive networking! Because that is one thing not on my skill list.

2: I wrote approximately 1.3 novels. Even if, for November’s National Novel Writing Month, finishing the 50,000 word goal meant typing about a third of that in six hours just before the deadline. Which is an accomplishment alone.

3: I read 132 books, seven more than my goal. Mostly they were not of the enlightening type of books and more entertainment, but that’s what I needed this year. Unfortunately, reviewing fell by the wayside.

4: I completed some knitting?

5: I at least didn’t gain any weight.

Eh, enough about the little things I’ve managed. I wasn’t completely oblivious to the outside world. Then again I’m still only going to talk about what interests me.

For example, while I linked to GoodReads before, I haven’t been using the site since it was purchased by Amazon in…March, I believe it was, and when the first major policy change lead to many user reviews being deleted, I’ve hardly visited. Even so, it is already clear that the site is transitioning from reader oriented to an author/sales focus. And a lot of the active users I followed really did leave, either deleting accounts or only posting links to reviews on other sites.

I made an accounts on BookLikes, and if I ever manage to get it up and running, I will link here.

Haven’t been to the movies much this year, but mid-summer realized that only two of ten trailers had speaking female characters, and of those one says evil and the other was eaten. When I watched Catching Fire, practically the same thing happened, only there was one more trailer with lots of women! And that, Divergence, sounded absurd. Apparently girls only get to watch other girls act out nonsensical plots. Once you’ve noticed, you’ll never be able to ignore it.

What else…the library’s book group is still hanging on, if only just. A few of the remaining members started a writing group as well. Speaking of, if I don’t bring a story to Thursday’s meeting, I’ll have to read my high school fan fiction. I have four stories in-progress because that will. Not. Happen.

And there will never be links to that.

Other book-related news, not too long ago, all the major online ebook retailers removed all “explicit” content books from their stores. Because no one wants to read erotica. All this in response to a vocal group in the UK. That’s not insane or anything. Look, I don’t read it (mostly because it’s not a genre known for high quality literature) but I refuse to accept censorship as the answer.

When you go from that to the NSA*, well. What else can I say? Isn’t that a note on which to end the year.

Let’s declare 2014 the year of intellectual freedom! Positive energy can’t hurt.

*My tablet tried to force me to blame the NBA which I know nothing about. Creepy.

Honor Thy Inspiration

So I meant to write, when I went to my room, but instead turned a book. This time to a book of arts in northern California. The danger in art books is the inspiration. Now I want to make teapots or bureaus or glassware. Someday I will fill my home with such items, handcrafted and individual. (Who needs unique?) That will take awhile though. After all, mass production was invented to make things cheap, and I’ll have a hard time giving up my parsimony.

Digression: One of the examples Miriam Webster gave for ‘parsimony’ was “She walked five miles to the store just to save a few cents on gas.” My first thought was that Americans are fast because unlike the rest of the world we won’t walk. Perhaps she enjoys the route and can take shortcuts impossible for cars. Or she just loves to walk and watch the seasons change, which you just can’t see from the roads. Or she’s older and retired and this is her day to get out of the house. But given the costs of gas anymore, and depending on where else she has to go, it might not be a few cents (apologies to international readers who may find their way here where Americans complaining about the cost of gas must seem unbearably decadent).

At any rate, if you’ve ever ranted over the epidemic of obesity in this country, you can’t make fun of someone walking too much.

Despite the inspiration that started this post, the middle has been endangered by my current exhausted lassitude. My thoughts move like molasses. A somewhat outdated metaphor, I suppose, because molasses no longer has much of a place outside the cliché. Which is unfortunate because molasses had much more flavor and even more nutrition than our beloved refined sugar. Back to the point, if you’ve ever poured molasses — a misnomer if I’ve ever heard one — you know it’s not merely slow but exceedingly sticky.

Given the associative state of the post, a more apt comparison might be to nearly empty bottle of honey turned upside down… slow and sticky, somewhat crystallized, and dripping from every side of the container. A messy subject.

I keep thinking to bring this to an end that will tie it all together in a nice complete package. But I can hardly remember the idea that started this post in the first place. More than just the emotion of arty and inspiration because I’ve been fortunate to experience it often… Though I’m rarely disciplined enough to do anything more than plan what I want to do with it.

There’s some advice for you. Don’t worry about being worthy of your inspiration, giving it the skill you might think it deserves. After all, no one will ever have your idea. Even a failed effort may inspire someone else at least. Why be disappointed in that?

I’ve just started on a topic I could easily turn into an entire series of posts on its own so it’d better stop myself. Except not to tell myself I can’t write it until I really know what I want to say, because that’s what I did last time when I betrayed my information, and then I didn’t post for more than four months.

Strange Things WP Wants Me To Do

Tag everything with gaming, climate, nature, vacation, travel, politics.

Now, I* know I’ve mentioned politics, though I generally try to avoid it: I’d hate to lose a job because we can’t have reasonable discussions anymore. Though I the candidates impressed me during last night’s debate, as they each seem to have more of a sense of humor than all of their proponents combined. So it’s probably just that they’re better actors than all of their proponents combined; though I think civility is a good thing to act at, even if you can’t be sincere.

I may have mentioned that I play the Sims games, occasionally—that is, I may have occasionally mentioned that I occasionally play the Sims. But I think most gamers don’t call that gaming.

As for nature, I like it well enough. Sometimes enough to go out in it. Hiking is nice, except for the bugs and the fact I’m entirely out of shape. And I’m not much of a traveler because I’m neurotically impecunious and traveling alone makes me sad. Up here in the high desert, there isn’t much to say about the climate, except it’s been hotter longer this year and we’re still in a drought. Even for a desert.

Still I don’t think I’ve ever managed a post that could be tagged with all of those words at once. Until now anyway.

A neighborhood in The Sims consists of a single screen displaying all playable houses. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Other things WP tries to get me to do: put an umlaut on create (crëate) and vacuum (vacuüm). As we appropriated those words from the German roots quite a long time ago now, I’m resistant to spearhead the efforts to bring them back, much as I like the word umlaut.

WP also thinks I should be erotically impecunious, instead of neurotically so. I’m not that exciting, though. FYI.

*Also, all of me, or at least my brain thinks this, and not just my eye. Thank’s for trying to help me out there, WP. I had to check that one.

So here’s my gaming, climate, nature, vacation, travel, politics. Maybe now the next few suggestions will be appropriate for the post.

Oh, and I’m not trying to pick on WordPress, really. But every time these things shows up, it amuses me. And it demonstrates why you should never, ever, rely on a spelling or grammar check.

We Hear So Many Words And None Make Any Sense

I visited RiteAid today. If I haven’t mentioned it before, RiteAid is the largest chain store for 100 miles, so it’s kind of a thing, locally.

I’m more than willing to get lost in the rows and rows of soaps and creams. They’re just so pretty and clean and bright. Just imagine how much these companies spend on graphic artists for these products. They’re so tempting with their promises of soften skin, smooth wrinkles, even tone.

But.

And there’s always the “but”. But—then they always seem to promise to bring back your skin’s “radiance.”

I don’t know about you, but my skin has never been radiant as:

1. radiant  brightness or light: the radiance of the tropical sun.
2. warm, cheerful brightness: the radiance of her expression.
3. Rare . radiation. [dictionary.reference.com]

I’ve never glowed, my skin isn’t particularly cheerful (unless it’s getting up to more than I do), and I’m pretty sure I’m not significantly radioactive.

It bugs me. Why are we so complacent about such empty words? My parents taught me to be skeptical of advertising, and now making fun of commercials comes like a reflex. Still, radiance has always slipped under my radar. Not that I believed any of these promises, but not the ubiquitousness of that word.

Like Garnier’s new BB Cream. Have you seen the commercial, all the models yelling “BB” like it brings to mind anything other to mind than pellet guns? And I couldn’t find what “BB” was supposed to mean anywhere. Until my mom saw a Fred Meyer ad insert. BB, that magical serum, stands for—get this—Beauty Balm.

Wow.

Bottom line? Question everything. When you see an ad promising an end to that one problem you simply must solve, really ask what they offer. I promise you, it has little to do with what you actually need.

Warning—Digression Ahead

I should write a real post.

It’s not as though I lack material. Aside from all my saved drafts, all ready for whenever I actually feel like giving them proper attention, I also have a bookmark folder titled “Blog Topics” where I save every site I feel like I could talk about, and I don’t even want to think about how many are there—I don’t know that I’ve ever reviewed it.

But despite coming up with at least three possible posts today, I just distracted myself and can’t do more than an aside.

I’ve also been known to paint… (Photo credit: Debbie Ramone)

Because I fired up my old computer: the laptop my parents gave me for high school graduation. And while I’m not ashamed of giving away my real age in general, thinking about how long ago that was is just too depressing to think about.

Anyway, the old brick still works. It still works nicely after about five or ten minutes of loading, and it does get hot, and the pointer keys are ridiculously loud and loose.

Also? All the keys are worn smooth. It feels so strange, so warm and soft like a living thing.

Kinda creepy. I’m emotionally attached to it, so I’m not giving it up (even though my brother just informed my there’s enough dust in the average keyboard* to grow marigolds) and therefore I hope it won’t eat me with technology goes sentient.

*no citation given