Category Archives: Idle Chit-Chat

Holy Crap, It’s September

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Shield-Nano-Blue-Brown-RGB-HiResAnd September is almost October is almost November and November is NaNoWriMo. Some years I dread it, other years I look forward to it. This year I’m starting to work up a pretty good stoke about the month. I’ve been pondering the setting I described in my description of a plausible-future Miami. I’ve had tons of ideas for characters, and lots of thought on how to enrich the world. Along with the algae harvesters and whalers who work outside the towers, there are divers. People who take a deep swim into the drowned suburbs looking for things that still have value in this world. Swimming through a structure that was not meant to be underwater, and spent years being pounded by waves as the water line rose, is not terribly safe. Most of the houses have collapsed.

There are business parks, too, and some of them are still standing, but there’s not much in them that’s of interest anymore. The big stuff was moved out in advance of the rising waters.

Some of the divers don’t have citizenship in any of the towers. They are rafters, pulling the islands they call home from place to place, scouring the world beneath the waves. When the storms come the towers allow the rafters to tie up in the lee of the buildings, and let them sleep inside. How much raft is left when the storm has passed is a crapshoot.

Plot? Hm… kinda stuck there. Diver meets tower-dweller and the violins swell? Maybe as a side thing. Diver finds something game-changing? Promising… but what? I’ve done a NaNoWriMo with a flagrant ain’t-gonna-tell-you macguffin, but that isn’t the right thing here.

Ooo! Another enriching detail I just thought of that doesn’t help me at all in discovering a plot but I want to put it here so I don’t forget: the city-towers follow a strict set of codes above the water, but below the surface, where none can see, there is a quiet, bubble-free war going on. The best skin divers are valuable assets, but no one talks about it. That would explain why the towers let the rafters tie up during storms.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, this episode is mostly just me thinking out loud. But if you’d like to chime in with ideas, I’d love to hear them.

Let’s think about the whales for a minute here. I’ll have to do research and whatnot, but it’s quite possible that before the Lucy and her locking knee that cetaceans were the most intelligent creatures on the planet. (Hominids’ brains started biggerizing at an appalling rate once their hands were free to do mischief.) Whales, meanwhile, couldn’t use tools or light fires. What if there were an equalizer? Something new to give tech to whales… But I don’t want to write some “whale messiah” or even “whale whisperer” story. My whole background idea with the whales was that some algae-eating species of whale would know prosperity in a way they never had before, and this would give them an opportunity to organize. I don’t want to mutate them.

Meanwhile, carnivorous marine mammals are pretty much screwed, along with anything with gills. So long, we’ve run out of fish. Warmer water and massive nitrogen boost from fertilizer runoff has restored algae as the king of the sea and, at least in temperate climes, the oceans are anaerobic once again.

So anyway, what I’m looking for is something that lies beneath the surface of Miami, (Ooo! Maybe something in the sewers? Beneath the ground beneath the water? Cool idea and dangerous for divers but alas pretty farfetched.) Probably simplest to just make it something worth an enormous amount of money — enough wealth to change the balance of power between tower-cities — but something with a larger significance would be awesome. I just don’t know what it might be.

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Talking to Women with Headphones

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There’s one of those artificial controversies going on over in Facebook-world that has people so lathered up that even I know about it. There seems to be a competition going on over there now for who can say more stridently than everyone else, “If she’s wearing headphones, consider that she might not be looking for conversation.”

But you know what? I talk to strangers with headphones fairly regularly. I invariably say the same thing, and I often say it loudly: “ON YOUR LEFT!”

I use this little opening line on headphone-wearers (not just women, but mostly women) who are walking down the center of the path, or are not walking in a straight line, drifting over as I approach from behind. Non-headphone wearers get a gentle “ping!” from my bell while I am still well behind them, then a louder “PING!” as I approach if there is no indication they understood the first bell. I love having a bell that I can ping at different volumes.

I get that headphones are fun and provide a signal to those around you that you would prefer not to be disturbed, but for crying out loud, you still need to be aware of your environment. Personally, I never wear headphones while on my bike, because I never know when someone in a car is going to try to kill me, and my ears may provide the only warning I get. On the trails, I am the fast-moving death machine, and while I do my best to be conscientious, a little awareness from those on foot is really welcome.

For the record, now that I consider it, I actually say “good morning” to almost everyone I encounter on the off-street paths, unless they are having a conversation. I say it softly, and headphoners probably are unaware I said anything at all. The earlier in the morning I ride, the more people respond with a friendly “hello” of their own. There are some people who I see regularly, and a few of them return a smile and a wave. Others forge ahead on their health regimens with grim determination.

I generally have more enthusiastic greetings for dogs, like the small Corgi-mixed-with-something-or-other that was hauling a tree branch substantially longer than he was this morning. “Nice stick, buddy!” I said as I rode by. I wonder what the headphoned woman holding the leash thinks I said. Probably nothing good. But as long as the dog’s not wearing headphones, I think it’s ok to talk to it.

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Knives Episode 20 Released!

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keIr8jbMXxmru4jF8SmZgLewEQsJqeLDjbPX7mnqvHXuQ641S02V6HFty34Ricip_large_2This is a significant milestone in the story and in the history of the Soul Thieves. We don’t know anybody who sits at the big table where decisions are made, but something has gotten the wizards worked up enough to make a big move. If this were chess, the Soul Thieves just moved their queen. That’s a bad strategy early in the game, but who knows how long this contest has been going on?

Behind the scenes things are proceeding apace, but I did realize while working on episode 21 that I had messed up an important detail back in episode 17 or so. I went back and made some changes to those episodes, but nothing Earth-shattering. Ah, the joys and pitfalls of serial fiction. Good thing I don’t have very many readers yet.

Thanks, as always, to my patrons. Some of the beer I drink writing each episode is funded by you, and it makes me proud and grateful to have your support.

Episode 20: Conflagration

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A Message in the Night

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Early morning, still dark outside, the world quiet. I was sliding back into deeper slumber after a wakeful moment. A phone rings; I answer. An old friend.

“Wondering when the next episode of Knives is coming out,” he says.

Another voice, another old friend. “It’s been a while.”

The next voice is from one of the Kansas Bunch. “Whatever happened to Munchies?” she asks.

“And Monster,” another voice says, close enough to the project to use the shorthand name.

More voices, now with faces. Writers, readers. “Wait a minute,” I ask, “Is this an intervention?”

It was.

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Et in Arcadia Ego

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Nicolas_Poussin_-_Et_in_Arcadia_ego_(deuxième_version)I live in a trailer park next to a sprawling cemetery. When the zombie apocalypse goes down, I’ll be relying on my better-armed neighbors on the north side of the park to slow the onslaught while my sweetie and I escape. On a recent stroll through that cemetery recently, I noticed a few things, and it got me to thinking more about what I would want etched in stone above the small patch of real estate reserved in my name that no one was ever allowed to use for any productive purpose.

I passed one monument, dark marble, with text in a script I was unsure of. Fun and curly letters, but I could tell it was a poem. In my imagination, I was looking at a verse from beyond the grave, an insight into the nature of the afterlife.

Soon after I passed an equally magnificent monument etched with the words “We will miss you.” Frankly, this inscription annoyed me. Clearly this message is not intended for the rotting corpse in the ground; this is a resolution by those still above-ground to honor the dead so that when their time comes, perhaps they will be remembered as well. If the spirit interred therein could read the words, it could also discern the truth of them.

I think, perhaps, my most lasting published words will be what’s carved in the stone over the patch of lawn my corpse commands. The title of this episode refers to a painting I once saw in the Louvre, and while scholars and people who know latin may disagree, my simple, naïve interpretation of the scene, where people are reading the words on the stone is, “I used to live here, too,” or in modern lingo, “I had a life, love, passions and fears, just like you. And now here I am.” An entirely appropriate memento mori from dead to the living. (Scholars go on about death existing even in utopia and shit like that. I respect scholars, and maybe the painter was over-thinking things, but my answer is better.)

A brief aside for art criticism: It’s funny, in my recollection of the scene, how small the people were, dwarfed by the world around them. The image in my head is, apparently, a departure from the actual work. Perhaps there was another pastoral scene nearby in the museum that tied itself to the same memory. And researching the thing on wikipedia now, I’m a lot less impressed. Too much nearsightedness and pointing. “Holy shit, Marge! Get a load of this one! Makes you think, don’t it?”

So what will my stone say, should I even rate such a monument? It depends on circumstances, but I think the message must come from me. Don’t carve messages to me in the stone; I won’t be able to read them.

For your reading pleasure I have a few modest candidates here. It’s good to plan your last words in advance.

The first is dependent on the manner of my demise:

Here lies Jerry
Run over by an asshole
rushing the red light.
Was that you?

Simple honesty can be compelling:

I would have preferred
to continue living
but apparently my opinion
doesn’t matter

Which is a variation of:
dang

Then again, being dead, maybe you know something your readers don’t. Vague prophecy is popular in some circles, and hey, it keeps you in the game, at least until five years after the big event:

On August 3rd
In the fourth year after the
GRAND UNMAKING
Return here when the bloated
reddened sun touches the
western horizon.
I’ll have a message for you.

Or perhaps the mystical powers of the departed can be put to more mundane use:

Thanks for visiting,
but I’m pretty sure you left your oven on.

In a similar vein, if Arnold Schwarzenegger’s headstone does not say the following, I demand a full inquiry:

I’LL BE BACK

Finally, it might be my last chance to advertise:

Hey! Check out my story
in the July 2006 issue of
Fantasy and Science Fiction

It’s a fun game, thinking about what your final, enduring words might be. And although some of these ideas are silly, that’s all right. In fact, it’s better than all right. Dispense with the usual platitudes and seize your chance to shape how you will be thought of long after anyone who knew you is gone. And maybe make some stranger’s day while you’re at it.

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Another Reason Mexican Television is Awesome

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I’m in a local cantina and on the TV there’s some sort of quiz show happening. When the contestants get the answer wrong they get a pie in the face. When they get it right, they get a generous shot of tequila.

“Tequila!” the teammates of the most recent correct answer shouted in unison. Good times.

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Starmind: The Rest of It

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Talk talk talk sex escape talk talk hippies lecture drugs talk talk talking while dong things end.

To expand on that a bit:

Talk, talk, talk. There is a sizable chunk of Dave Van Arnam’s Starmind that takes place in a single room, with most of the characters unable to move. There’s just talking. Then the Tylerbody (the shorthand used for the three personalities all sharing one body) bangs the hot nurse (with Joe at the controls; Jailyn has a bit of trouble with this part), and then literally minutes later is rescued from the clutches of the Evil Dr. Brian.

Tylerbody blinks Tylereyes and whistles with Tylerlips. It is a creative solution to the impossibility of finding an adequate pronoun for the multimind. Creative, perhaps, but not very good. Later, when the personalities experience moments of great union, THEY see through THEIR eyes and learn about THEMSELF. I found MYSELF glancing ahead to see how long these all-cap pronouns were going to last.

There are some fun parts along the way — for instance the book, written in 1969, credits the Beatles’ music from the 1980’s (their ‘middle years’) with helping to spark a global cultural revolution. Alas, that revolution petered out after global biological warfare killed half the population of Earth, but the country folk (or as I call them, ‘hippies’) have been carrying on.

Meanwhile, up in space, the giant asteroids that have been outfitted with pseudogravitic multiwave generators haven’t up to this point accomplished much except cost a lot and suck down gigantic amounts of power. Think of them as super-huge microwave ovens that don’t really heat things up very well. But as the three minds become more integrated they realize something: Those microwave ovens will work better than anyone ever imagined, if only the right person were to stick THEIR head in it. So THEY do. And it’s awesome.

And thus mankind is given the stars, as long as they can construct just the right three-brained people to stick their heads in the microwaves. And, as no other intelligence has come up with the idea of merging people’s brains and sticking them in gigantic, inefficient, microwave ovens, mankind goes on to rule the galaxy. But that, we are told, is another story. Maybe one without so much talking in it.

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Let’s Make Episode 18 Official

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So here’s the thing. I actually hit the “publish” button on Knives episode 18 a few days ago. And immediately had second thoughts. I was confident in the story, but not so much in the mechanics. So I didn’t tell anyone.

At least one faithful reader found the chapter anyway, and I’m flattered by the enthusiasm. But over the last few days I’ve been subtly betterizing the episode. Hat tip here to my proofreader for this episode, who didn’t sign up for the job but still accepted the role gracefully.

In revisionist history news, I added two words to episode 13. “Trust me.” The aforementioned proofreader might better be dubbed “editor”.

Looking toward the future, episode 19 is having an identity crisis. There are the simple things that must happen, and there’s the who-knows-what-when question. I just wrote an exchange that I’ll probably delete tomorrow. I have to remind myself that everything that happens in episode 19 is in service of episode 20. Because in 20, shit gets real.

Shut up and let me read!

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Knives Episode 17 released.

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keIr8jbMXxmru4jF8SmZgLewEQsJqeLDjbPX7mnqvHXuQ641S02V6HFty34Ricip_large_2
Episode 17 is ready to read! Martin may not be at his most lyrical, but you have to cut a guy some slack when his intestines have been rearranged. Kat makes a decision that catches everyone by surprise, with the possible exception of Bags, and Baldwin tries to convince me that he has a place in the larger narrative.

Behind the scenes, there were a couple of links that weren’t working, but everything should be hunky-dory now. Let me know if you have problems. This theme isn’t working quite as awesomely with iPad as it was alleged to; I’m still poking at that.

And, as always, a big thank-you to my patrons. This wouldn’t be happening without you.

Episode 17: The Cost of a Small Victory

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A Few Random Thoughts about That Pokémon Thing

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A game that gets people out of their houses and interacting with one another is a good thing. If all those Farmville players (or whatever the last Big Thing was) actually start talking to other humans, that’s a win. Apparently people are discovering that exercise is a side effect of the game. But…

More of the zombies in the graveyard were in cars tonight. Kind of undoes the good of the previous paragraph, and accelerates global warming at the same time. So far, there’s been a copilot zombie in each car, holding the phone, but we’ll see how long that lasts.

This may be the first real game-changer in the internet era that wasn’t funded and first used by the porn industry.

I think my next novel will be about a serial killer who lights houses on fire and then hacks people’s phones to put rare Pokémon prizes inside the inferno.

On that topic, who decides where PokéThings go? Is it some massive computer algorithm that is gathering unprecedented data on human behavior? I think I have my novel after the next one. Pokémon Go is like SkyNet, except instead of trying to wipe out humanity, it will just lead them around chasing colorful little monsters, unwittingly doing the AI’s legwork, pointing their cameras were the PokéBeast wants to see.

Or maybe the next Augmented Reality game will be Grand Theft Auto Go. Steal that Ferrari and deliver it to this address and level up!

Will our phones put little Pikachus next to the Trump button in the voting stalls? Or will people just forget to put their phones down and cast their vote while Google watches? So many questions…

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Looking for the Joke with a Microscope

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I was thinking about the movie Repo Man the other day, and a song got stuck in my head. I mean, really wedged in there.

“It could be worse,” I hear you all say. “The soundtrack to Repo Man is epic.” And it is. I could have “TV Party” running circles in my brain, or “Pablo Picasso”. But no, the song that keeps popping back up in my head is not on the soundtrack, even though it is an integral part of one scene. Someone even gets beat up for singing it.

Yep, I’m Feeling 7-up.

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The Apocalypse has Arrived

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I bicycle through a cemetery every day. It’s peaceful. Today, however, the place was filled with zombies. I think you know what kind.

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Knives 16 Published

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Yep, that’s right, Episode 16 is out, and it’s a big one! We meet the Soul Thieves, and no one is ready for the confrontation that follows — not even the Soul Thieves. The good guys probably won’t catch them so unprepared next time. Fun question: did Elena get her wish?

From a writer’s standpoint, I made some promises in this episode. After today, Martin will be angry one more time, and it will be cataclysmic. But until then we can count on him keeping a level head and killing people only for entirely rational reasons.

Thanks as always to my supporters; you guys rock.

The episode

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Coding Through Hoops

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I had a dream the other night, in which I was fixing problems in someone else’s code. Javascript I think. The thing was, each instruction in the code was a dog, and to fix the code I had to make the dog do the right trick.

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The Best of the First Million

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Muddled Ramblings and Half-Baked Ideas first started in 2003, when the Internet was young and even tiny backwater blogs could score high on search engine rankings. It really started to gain traction a few months later, when I hopped in my car and started a road trip for “a few weeks” to see more of the lovely United States before relocating to Prague.

The road trip lasted more than seven months, and one of the best things about it (from my point of view) was the blog. I kept the driving short most days, and allowed plenty of time for writing. I was enjoying it so much, I actually tried to get Mazda to hire me to keep doing it. I was really living the Miata life. Alas, I never found a contact with a remote understanding of what I was proposing. (“Good luck with your book!” they would often say.)

So eventually I stopped driving, hopped on a plane, and found an apartment in Prague. Living in a foreign country is of course the source of many good stories, and the blog grew and flourished. (For certain, very small values of “flourish”.) It never became big, or popular, but it did form a nucleus for a wide-spread community. That made me happy.

When I came back to this country the tenor of the blog changed again; I can’t give too many details about my work, and now I’m in a relationship that makes much of my life none of your damn business. Facebook continued to grow and fill the community role that blogs like mine once did (more easily, if not as well), and the list of regulars here has diminished. Still I keep blogging.

Today, however, I’d like to climb in the way-back machine and look at some of my favorite older posts.

Suicide Squirrel Death Cult

It was today that the truth became obvious to me. Driving peacefully up Glenwood from the main town, two six-packs of beer placed carefully so that the side-to-side forces of the upcoming twisty road would not dislodge them, a squirrel came dashing out from the far side of the road and ran full-tilt to intercept me.

Sometimes the blog episode is merely a catalyst that gets people talking. This episode debuted early in my road trip and sparked a lively conversation in the comments. It was that post, I believe, that began to gel the blog community, or bloggcomm, as it was soon to be known. 84 comments followed, covering black holes, David Bowie, and squirrel activity around the world.

The end of the Road Trip

On the penultimate page our hero is hurtling across the heartland, thinking deep thoughts. You turn the page, and it just says, “And then he stopped.” You blink at the sentence, feeling gypped. “That’s it?” you ask the book, but the book just sits there, ignoring your ire. “And then he stopped.”

It was a bittersweet time when I gave up the road trip and moved on to a very different phase of my life. I thought of the story I had been telling, and how it ended. It turns out, it ended in a way very satisfying to Eastern Europeans, with more questions than answers.

Allison in Animeland

“Transfer student!” called one student as he dove under his desk.

“We’re doomed!” shouted a panicky girl, cowering in the corner. “So young… I’ve barely lived at all.”

“She’s so cute…,” said a boy holding a handkerchief to his nose.

“Everybody stay calm!” bellowed another girl over the noise.

“I don’t see what the big deal is,” huffed a pretty blonde.

“Don’t turn me into a monkey! Please don’t turn me into a monkey,” sobbed another boy.

The teacher seemed unaware of the bedlam. “Allison has come all the way from America. She may not be familiar with all our customs, so be sure to do your best to help her feel welcome.”

One of the serial fiction pieces on this blog. I noticed that in many Japanese cartoons, untold mayhem is wrought by transfer students. It occurred to me that any student in that world would immediately recognize that the presence of a transfer student was Big Trouble. Transfer students are always demons, or robots, or escaped lab experiments. Allison, however is a perfectly ordinary American girl who knows nothing of those conventions. Or is she!? I intentionally did not spend a lot of time honing the episodes of this adventure, but just let myself be silly. I am tempted, one day, to carry this forward. There’s so much more anime to lampoon.

The Accidental Actor

“Hey,” Soup Boy said to me, “you want to be in James Bond?” “Sure,” said I. Now, because of a simple accident of logistics, you will quite possibly see my mug on the silver screen, while interesting things happen behind me.

While in Prague I had span of a few months where I landed several gigs as an extra in large films and an actor in small ones. It started with Casino Royale, where my job was to look American. Then followed a gig looking like a bum, and then looking like a lab assistant, and others. Good times.

The Stan-Man Plan

“Please, sit,” the border guard said, unconcerned for the busload of people who were waiting. Close up, Robert could see that his uniform was faded and worn almost through in places. “May I see your passport, please?”

Robert handed over his passport and his visa paperwork. The soldier looked at the visa, nonplussed. “You intend to stay here?”

“Yes.”

The guard set down the papers and scratched his head while he regarded his guest with open confusion. “Why?”

Each November 1st I publish an excerpt of the writing I did to kick off NaNoWriMo. In 2005 that effort was The Stan-Man Plan, in which venal Washington politics land a mild-mannered language expert in the forgotten land of Ztrtkijistan, which may be a country, or may be a province of a neighbor. No one has ever cared enough to figure it out. It’s that kind of place. In fact, when Ghengis Kahn came through, he took one look at the little valley and decided to go around. McFadden quickly admits he is a spy, thinking that would get him sent home, but of course it’s not that simple, and hijinks ensue.

The Cowboy God

“Hello,” I say. Suddenly I feel like I’m intruding. I should have knocked. “The door was open.”

The door on the right opens and a figure emerges, small and gray and lost in the gloom. “Of course,” she says. She steps forward into the splash from one of the windows. Her hair is dark and very long. Her skin is pale. She looks moonlit. “Preacher’s not here,” she says.

“That’s all right,” I say. “I’m looking for the Cowboy God.”

She takes another step forward and stops, back in shadow, but I can feel her watching me. After a moment she says, “We got the same God as everyone else.”

I nod slowly, but then shake my head. “No,” I say.

The first straight-up fiction I recorded here (I think), and there’s still a lot about this one I like. It grew in my head after I passed a sign at the side of a Texas road, white in the gray of a rainstorm. The story grew in my head as I drove, heading toward North Carolina in the final weeks of the Homeless Tour. That night, somewhere in Louisiana (I think), I sketched out a draft. The Wanderer shows up in a lot of my stories; someone traveling, seeking, without knowing what he is searching for. Most of those stories appear elsewhere, but there are a few here.

A Couple of Fragments I Like

“I just can’t believe what a big deal you all make of this.”

“Listen, we have to look out for each other, and it’s traumatic for the newbies. We’re not like you. We don’t just sniff each other’s butts and then go out and get drunk.”

I let that pass. I had tried the “more hygenic than shaking hands” argument before, but it never worked.

Though complete short stories are rare around here, I do like to share little bits and fragments of stories I will never write. The ol’ Vampires-n-Werewolves-n-shit sector of the urban fantasy genre has been beat to death, but honestly I think there could be more butt-sniffing. And leg-humping. So I provided it. You don’t have to thank me, it’s what I do.

Graybeard

I laughed, accepted the pen, and signed the back of the photo. Around me people were trying to figure out who the hell I was, that a man with a long gray beard would stop me, already have a picture of me, and ask me to sign it. At that moment I was implicitly a celebrity, and if only they had known how to ask they could have got my autograph, too. I was a supermodel.

Graybeard is gone now, but he made Prague interesting, to say the least. This day saw us crashing a promotion for a fashion magazine. I was, I must say, the best model in the bunch, but not the prettiest. Not by a long shot.

Feeding the Eels

Among a certain type that booth is legendary. It’s the booth where Louie the Skunk shook hands with Precinct Captain O’Malley, giving Louie control of a large slice of Midtown, the booth where Six Finger Frankie proposed to a dancer named Lorraine before she took off with Old Ed in Frankie’s car, and it’s the booth where Lumpy Gannett accidentally shot himself twelve times with his revolver. There’s a mystique surrounding that booth, and it repels those who don’t belong. Maybe the faint smell of corruption and blood speaks to some part of the human animal, pushing them away. If she noticed it she was unaffected.

The link is to the first episode, which is a hyperbolic exaggeration of 1950’s hard-nosed detective pulp written as part of a Google-bomb experiment. What follows is my first shot at serial fiction here at Muddled Ramblings and Half-Baked Ideas. Since I didn’t want this project to interfere with my “real” writing, there were rules: I couldn’t spend more than 90 minutes on an episode (though in the later episodes I sometimes spent much more than that), and at the end of each episode I’d pick a title for the next one that was intentionally difficult. No planning, no vision for how the story comes out, but almost by accident there are some sweet moments. Ah, Meredith. I should probably bang out the last couple of chapters sometime.

Heisenberg’s Daughter

She may still be out there somewhere. I hear rumors now and then. Moscow, or Cape Town, or Jackson Hole. She’s the kind of person who could be in any of those places. She could be anywhere. Her potential is everywhere…

Because nothing says romance like particle physics. This is a piece of what the kids call “flash fiction” these days. This little piece actually found its way to print, with a little tweaking.

The Remains of the Night

Dreams can be complex and confusing things, not bound by the rules of logic or waking life. When I wake up slowly from a dream-filled sleep the transition can be gradual, as the elements of the vision scatter and fade before the onslaught of rational thought that (usually) marks my waking hours. Sometimes, however, there remains a last vestige, like the Cheshire Cat’s grin. Like a grin without a cat, it can certainly be an odd scrap of thought.

I suppose the brief, inconsequential little episodes should have representation here as well; this is one I stumbled upon while looking for something else. If you like it, there are plenty more.

I think I’ll stop there. I’m omitting some of my most popular episodes; for instance for several weeks this blog was the top hit on Google for the phrase “New York Sucks” (back when humble blogs could top Google searches), and the episode “Eggs Over Easy — The Definitive Step-by-Step Guide” stayed near the top for a long time. There are more technical episodes as well; my treatise on CSS border-radius, with up-to-date info on support in various browsers, got a notice from a big tech publication and became so popular that my web host of the time shut me down.

The other thing not well-represented here is the community. Funkmaster G-Force, gizo, Dr. Pants, bug, Mr7k, and all the rest who made this thing worth doing. The commenters, the lurkers, the people far apart but all right here. This million-word celebration is about you guys. Thanks to all of you.

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