A Brief Explanation of Muddled Ramblings and Half-Baked Ideas

It’s not such a big deal, really – I woke up one morning and realized that what I was doing was’t what I wanted to do. Five years later I did something about it. This is me clearing my throat, trying to find my voice. Some days I get close.

Other days, well…

It’s a strange conceit to think that people I don’t even know will give a rat’s ass what I think. I’m OK with that. There aren’t too many ‘dear diary’ entries here. I’m just looking for things I can write about. When I find them, I try to write about them well. My goal is to be interesting, or at least amusing. I almost had thought-provoking once. Maybe with practice I’ll get there. I know you don’t care what I had for breakfast. I don’t even care about that and it was my breakfast, unless there was something at breakfast that inspired me to write.

Like eggs. Mmmm… eggs.

Still, we do have fun here. If you know a great way to get poor quick, or if you happen to be a Belgian Buddhist Kung-Fu/Brew Master Monk, this is the place for you. Don’t forget to read the comments; there are people who hang out here who are much smarter and more articulate than I am. Chances are, you are, too. We cover a huge range of topics, so don’t form your conclusions based on one or two entries.

Things we have discussed here lately:

  • Space Launch Systems and Lunar Vacations
  • People in bars
  • What a government is and what it should do (and the best beer to use to buy votes)
  • Suicidal Squirrels
  • Bars
  • The Road
  • Rutabagas

There is also a running story, Feeding the Eels, which is in the style of an old detective radio series. I mostly do it for simile practice when I don’t feel inspired to do so-called real writing. Still, it’s fun—at least for me.

Also, please be sure to leave a guest haiku! Just leave it in a comment somewhere; I’ll find it.

two times out of five
haiku writ by someone else
a breath of fresh air

Finally, it’s worth noting that the look and feel of the site is definitely – and perhaps permanently – in flux. So far I’ve been mucking primarily with the main page, so the other pages seem fairly ho-hum in comparison. I have decided not to go too far out of my way to deal with all the quirks of Internet Explorer – IE is the biggest impediment to progress on the Web, and I’m not going to let Microsoft hold me back. You shouldn’t either.

Leave your mark in the sand before you move on.

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24 thoughts on “A Brief Explanation of Muddled Ramblings and Half-Baked Ideas

  1. So you moved your “novel” from the header to it’s own entry. Font on the header still isn’t good on windows, but there is a lot less to read.

  2. Font is trying to echo the “half-baked Ideas” part. I am still looking for the right “messy, gummed with ink for 30 years manual typewriter” font. The two key features are messiness and some letters too high and too low. I know the font is out there, I just don’t know where to look.

  3. An interesting feature would be some kind of signal that an entry has new comments since last time I looked. Its getting hard to remember that SSDC had 25 entries yesterday, and so nothing new. However, this is only a frosting on the cake idea. I’m not sure how great.

  4. Actually, it would be really good. I know because I already get to see a list of all comments over at the HaloScan Web site, and it’s really handy for keeping up when there’s been an addition to an old entry. I’ve been trying to figure a way to pass some of that comment-following lovin on to the world, but I’ve come up blank so far.

  5. HAve you ever thought of having a sort of free form comments section where visitors can leave an undirectional sort of, well, comment? Free form ranting can lead to interesting discussion topics.

  6. That should be easy enough, though what’s really needed in that case is a forum. Check the one I just set up at the Hut. I could make another of those and link it to this site without any problem if people would use it. (The hut is not being used much at the moment because I haven’t told very many people it’s there.)

  7. you can set up your comments as an rss feed through haloscan. thats what i did on my site. only problem is the header (in the newsreader) donesn’t show the title of the entry the comment is from. just the page name. which in the case of iblog looks like a really long phone number

  8. I started working on a program to look up the entry based on the ID, but it would be much better done on the server side. I’ll talk to the Haloscan boys – all that’s really required is the ability to include arbitrary metadata with the comment. I could do the rest.

  9. fan bloody tastic!!!! wish i werewith you mate!! could do with some tequilla madness! Is it only beer or will anything suffice?? More photos please if you stay sober enough to post them. When will it all end?? does it ever have to? so many people so many places… i will be in touch x

  10. Of course, Belting down a couple of shots of Patron followed by half a gallon of Jose Cuervo until you find yourself in the corner with people you don’t know singing songs you don’t know in a language you don’t know is pretty fun too.

  11. what is this place? a shrine to intellectual masturbation? Pseudo-complex sentences germinating from a bad acid trip.

    Keep going. you can only improve.

  12. Umm… thanks, I think. I don’t call them Muddled Ramblings for nothing. If you didn’t like the eggs, you certainly won’t like today’s episode, but you are welcome back any time to see if I’ve gotten any better.

  13. a haiku for you…if you are southern baptist you will find this funny or you will want to send me to hell.

    what where you thinking

    when you put on those white pumps

    after labor day

    cheers

  14. Hey Jerry! Do you remember me from NM Tech days? We enjoyed many many Scotch Buys together back then. I like your blog. Who is Amy? Wow! E-mail me sometime. Jim

  15. Jim! Holy crap! One of the few who truly appreciated Barton’s QT, the liquor cabinet in a bottle. After all these years, I am once again in a place where beer is cheaper than soda.

    I will most certainly drop you a line.

  16. Oh man! My stomach did a somersault when you mentioned Barton’s QT. I can still taste that tall (very tall) QT and Coke. Too much! Anyway, drop me a line as I do not have your e-mail address. Oh, I too live in a place with cheap beer available 24/7 here in Las Vegas, NV.

  17. Hey, Jerry, I e-mailed you the other day about my novel More Booze than Blood. I’ve been enjoying your site here – it interests me more than most stuff on the internet. I’d like to send you a copy of my novel. Is there an address I can mail it to? I’ve looked around on the site for one, but haven’t had any luck.

    Cheers

    Sean Meagher

  18. Jumping off the path

    Stories bubbling within

    Cry for attention

    New to MAC, not so new to writing, but never been published yet. Casting about for a better tool than a wordprocessor and stumbled upon your diggs.

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