Why hello. I didn’t see
you come in. Ha. This is a funny joke, as this is a pre-recorded message, and I
have no manner of seeing you in the first place. The hilarity of this humorous
gaffe is granted extra joke quotient by means of it being a text post, even
lesser in vision-capabilities. It is even further bolstered by the fact that
this exact joke has been used many times by other people. Therefore, the
statement was both a joke and a
reference. In the real world, this would make it less funny. Fortunately, we’re
on the internet: Where only hilarity can result by continuously bringing up a
delicious buffet of dead horse entrees. May I take your coat? HA! How am I
supposed to manhandle this outward fashion layer when I am on the other end of
your internet? You’re probably not even wearing a coat! Unless you are. Then I
suppose it’s slightly less hilarious. I’ll adjust the joke quotient.
I suppose it’s time we
got down to business. Straighten your tie, dust off your pants, pull up you
suspender straps that no one actually wears these days, because I’m about to
hit you with some HARD FACTS.
FACT 1: Guys, making internet funnies is haaaaaaaaard.
FACT 2: Guuuuuys, having a real job is haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaard.
FACT 3: Guuuuuuuuuooooiiiiiissse, having a real job and also making
internet funnies is HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRR....aDUH.
Alright, those may not
have been actual facts. What is an actual fact, as some of you may have deduced
and began weeping over already, is that this is the only blog post this week.
Instead of a (theoretically) well-thought out post on game design, let’s play
adventures, or fish Hitler dubstep, you get this. It’s just me caterwauling
about in thoughtless floppy free-association for however many words strike my
fancy. Actually, probably less than strikes my fancy. My fancy is one demanding
mistress, and I can no longer afford to let it spill my word blood by the
thousands every single week. This brings me to the actual point of this post:
From now on, I will be posting an update EVERY FRIDAY. However, there
is no guarantee that these updates will feature PRE-PREPARED CONTENT. Instead,
they may just be me RAMBLING OFF THE CUFF. Any time I do not have a blog post
ready by Friday, I will MAKE UP SUCH A POST ON THE SPOT. These posts could
feature basically anything, perhaps even those PERSONAL DETAILS I so dread to
dictate to my digital audience. If there is a proper, pre-prepared update in
progress, it will receive a STATUS UPDATE. There’s really no reason that I keep
CAPITALIZING PARTS OF THESE SENTENCES.
To understand this
change, let’s break this into two points:
Why Are You Doing This?
Facetious whining aside,
I really am struggling to update this blog regularly while juggling my full
time job. I’ve kept things up to a decent pace, but the price is that I have
very little time for other personal projects. I’ve never bothered to measure,
but from previous experience I’d say every average-sized blog post (about 3000
words) takes about 6-8 hours to write, edit, add pictures, self-deprecate, cry
softly in front of, etc. That’s a decent chunk of time to take out of every
week when work and commuting are in play. Not only that, but sometimes I ramble
on even longer than intended, or the articles feature a lot of research
(usually playing games) before I can even write them. The previous massive,
11,000 word saga on Homestuck was originally going to be one standard length
article. Don’t even get me started on how long it took to listen to and
evaluate several hundred songs, watch over 100 animations, and read samples of
dozens of forum adventures.
So I’ve decided that
sometimes, I’ll shoot for lighter content. As much as I’ve neglected it in the
past, I think consistency is important. The more regularly you do something,
the easier it becomes. This is demonstrably the case with my blog, which I’ve
become pretty comfortable with in these past months of steady updates. Whether
or not it shows in my writing is left an exercise for the reader, but I mean,
did you see a few paragraphs back when I used the word caterwauling in a
sentence? Like damn son. Who even does that? Not your neighbor Fred, that’s for
dang sure. You think Fred would’ve whipped out that tactical nuclear strike of
language in casual conversation? Fred doesn’t know squat! Dude thinks
linguistics is a type of pasta with, and I quote: “those little twistie dealies”.
Wordplay is not his strong point. Another weak point of his is that I made him
up on account of him being fake and not real, but we’re getting off track.
Consistent updates keep
my banter broadsword sharp as a saw-tooth, which isn’t actually as important as
it seems because broadswords relied more on weight than sharpness but shut up, internal dialogue. The point is that I
want to keep in practice so I don’t fall off the word wagon. So I’ve taken the
view that even a quick, sketchy freeform post is preferable to none at all, or
a late one. This leads to the second question...
Why Haven’t You Done This Before?
There are a number of
reasons. In the past, I was afraid of making the commitment in time and effort
for consistent updates. Obviously that’s not so much the case these days. At
this point, all my reservations basically boil down to one point:
I want to provide quality content.
This is not a personal
blog. It’s a content blog. This isn’t to say that I’m forbidden for discussing
my personal life here. I’ve shied away from it before because I don’t know how
much I want plastered on a permanent digital record and don’t have much
interesting to say on it anyways. But I’m open to speaking more about the man
behind the word processor. However, what I really want to do, on this blog and
in general, is to create content. Creating and consuming content are basically
my many-faceted jams. I want to entertain people, to make them laugh or think.
I don’t want to go on about what I had for lunch, or what kind of day I had. It’s
just not in my nature. Hence me doing very little with social media yet pouring
multiple novels worth of words into a collection of articles that very few
people see.
Talking about myself or
throwing out some quick and dirty snide remarks isn’t without value. But at the
end of the day, I want to make something that lasts. I want people to be able to revisit things I’ve written
years later and be just as entertained as they were before. I create the type
of content I think I can enjoy, at a level of polish that, while still quick
enough to be enjoyable to write, still maintains standards. Having said all
that, I think some quick update posts will keep me fresh and may at least brief
laughs in between proper content (which is still happening). It’s like the
filler arc of your favorite anime, except instead of going to the beach or
charging up chakras for several hours, it’s just a guy spilling the top of his
brain shelf onto a page and hoping something sticks.
Truthfully, I don’t know
how this will go. Maybe it’ll be a smashing success, and I’ll get my own
television show entitled “Some Inexplicably Popular Blogger Vomits Overwrought
Metaphor”. The show will star me and a pet monkey in a monocle solving
mysteries on the mean streets of steampunk Victorian London, as I know nothing
about television and neglected to read the actual pitch for the show because as
soon as I saw the budget I was already out buying a chimpanzee sidekick.
Alternatively, maybe this
will crash and burn spectacularly. I’ll say something so horrendously offensive
that our future alien overlords make a pit stop on Earth to enslave us all.
Then as I’m dragged weeping into the Zokthulian snickerdoodle mines of planet
XY101 I’ll cry my unending regret for not sticking to my strengths. Strengths
like writing glorified fanfiction of mid-2000s video games and not bringing about the shocking halt of
human civilization, both great qualities for a friend or family member to have.
This could suck. This
could be pretty okay. My self-deprecation shtick doesn’t allow for the
possibility of it being fantastic, but I guess I’ll just limply throw the word
down so I can claim I called it when it’s monkey-buyin time. Whatever downsides
can come from such quickly produced prose, let me just say one thing.
This article is 1500
words, I enjoyed writing it, and it took me an hour.
And that is god damn beautiful.
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