500: So Many Posts, So Many Spelling Errors

We have a milestone here, folks: I've reached my 500th post. To celebrate, I added some new features. First, you'll notice the addition of the media tab at the bottom of each posts. I added this mostly for the +1 like feature; I figure that if no one feels comfortable in commenting, they might at least feel comfortable in anonymously indicating they liked a particular piece. And at least that way, I know someone is responding. So please use that.

You'll also notice that there is a new "tag" sidebar. The idea for this 500th post was that I'd amass a top 10 list of my favorite posts, in the process of sorting these tags a bit. It was interesting to see what tags bubbled to the top after I started organizing them. "Friday Quotations" and "book reviews" were easy guesses, but "personal," "theory," and "Comic book Wednesdays" were a bit of a surprise. But after a few days of tag sorting, I've decided that this is an ongoing project, not something I'd finish for this post--if nothing else, I had to stop in order to get the post done before the Friday Quotations was due. Oh, the arbitrarily set burdens of the hobbyist blogger!

In no particular order, then, here are 10 blog posts that I came across while sorting that I feel best represent me over the past 500 Posts:

- Yeah, So This Is A Thing Now. The very first Friday Quotation. A legacy begins.

- How to Change a Bike Tire. The culmination of many, many posts on the horrible times I had with my old bike. If there's a lesson here, it's that having broken things doesn't mean you're a broken person.

- They're Not Clouds, But They Are Fluffy and Soft. A piece on family and food. When I think of the traditions I'd want to pass down to my children, this is what I think of.

- WORDS WHAT BOTHERS ME. I think the title's pretty self-explanatory. And pretty bad grammatically. I'm glad I got that "fair enough" thing off my chest--I've been composing that rant for years.

- Spoileriffic Movie Review: Bedazzled. Because frankly, Petter Sellars deserves more attention. "Be careful what you wish for" really is a repeated trope in Western culture. Something in our cultural composition really hates the notion of a shortcut.

- A Punisher Retrospective. An in-depth examination of the Punisher as a character, and particularly Ennis' run. I'm proud of this piece. It still gets a large number of views, though that may be more for the pictures than the content. Someday, I'll write another respective on Hellblazer's John Constantine.

- Dual Book Review A dual book review of Jasper Fforde's Shades of Grey and Ethel Wilson's The Equations of Love. I love the sheer audacity of the dual book review--it takes what's already my longest type of post, then nearly doubles it by looking at two books instead of one. I like the idea of contrasting themes, but this particular mash-up is insane. I like the final thought, though.

-Light Snow. A reflective piece on snow and the city at night. This essay reminds me of the early days, right around when I was switching from a course blog to a personal blog, and wasn't sure what that meant to me yet. I'm trying a little hard here, but I think that makes it endearing.

Shadow of the Bat, or, the Story of the Unsensible Purchase . In which I detail the ridiculous lengths I went to in order to get Arkham Asylum. It wouldn't be a proper blog list if it didn't have something on both video games and my "adventures."

Welcome to The Daily---: A Story of Delayed Gratification. A discussion about the format of the Daily Show, inspired by watching it on a jerky live-stream during a work-out session. I think this post nicely encompasses my pop culture side and my analytic side.

And that's ten. Thanks for reading, folks. Here's to another 500.

Later Days.

Give me a head with LESS hair

It's a momentous day--26 years ago, a Baby of Consequence was born. How am I celebrating, you may ask? Well, I got a haircut. My family has been politely suggesting--and loudly insisting--that I do something about my shaggy dog look, and I have. No more goatee, scraggly facial hair, dangling forehead locks, and oh-so-delightful sideburns. We're back to the clean cut look, a perfect way of saying look out world, I've got a new haircut.

Beyond that, I turned in my Art and Persuasion paper and took out the first four books on my comprehensive exam, Lit Theory. Not a one of them was written in the last millennium, so this should be some fun reading. (I'm not even sure myself whether I intend for that to be sarcastic or not. I love me a good Greek/Roman legend, but after Timeaus, I know that reading Plato sometimes means 40 straight pages of "the third thing which is like unto a field, but neither one nor the other."

This seems like a good a time as any for a status check on my New Years resolutions. Let's see...
--I want to find an agent for my novel. I've been sitting on it for nearly two years now; enough's enough. It's time to get that masterpiece out there. Well, I've got a lovely collection of email rejection notes. Perhaps I may be one of those artists whose genius is never recognized in its own time. I'll keep trying, though!

--I'm going to try to stick to my exercise routine a little more stringently. I had been planning on starting this one in December, but considering that most of December in my home province averaged at about -27 degrees, there was a minimum amount of running accomplished. Well, you can hardly jog with lots of snow around, so really, I couldn't get started until March. Then it was the end of term in April, so that was a wash. Classes started in May again, so I wanted to get into the swing of things before adding more to the routine. And then it was June, and I didn't want to start anything before my trip home. Then it was end of the Spring/Summer term... All right: bottom line, I've gone jogging and done my exercises for every day so far in August. We'll see where we go from there.

--More romantic conquests! Hey, gotta start at some point, right?
Ha. Ha, ha, ha. This involves a series of stories that are not getting broadcast over the internet. Suffice to say, the last few months have shown the most effort I've ever put into this area to date (pun intended). And results have been mixed. By which I mean entirely negative. But now I've got a sexy new haircut, so look out, ladies.

--I want to watch more TV. Because there needs to be something on this list I'm actually going to do.
Done, and done. Go Team Person!

So that's 1 for 4. But hey, there's five months left. Plenty of time to turn things around. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got some birthday reading to do, concerning a certain Longinus fellow and his thoughts on the Sublime.

Later Days.

Where do we go from here?

This post is going to be the last one for the purpose of the class course. I'd do some big retrospective, but I think that'll be covered pretty thoroughly by the blog essay we need to write up describing our blogging experience. (And I'll be posting that here, in a few days, in case anyone's interested. As if the average length of these entries isn't already long enough...)
The question for today is what happens to this blog afterward. In a lot of ways, I think that's the most interesting part of this study; out of the fifteen or so blogs created for the course, how will they change once the original imperative to create them ends? In most cases, I assume that the change will be the end of the blog itself, deleted, aborted, or otherwise cast adrift into the electronic void.
But not Experimental Progress! Nosireee, I have determined that I do indeed like the sound of my own voice, and as such, this blog will continue long past any sensible expiration date. Here's my bold, decisive vision for the future:

• More delving into the minutae happenings of my life. What's the status of my toothbrush? Do I wear boxers or briefs? (No.) What did I have for breakfast? Tune in and find out.
• Related to the boxer issue, I will also continue the exploration into--for lack of a better term--my inner self. If past entries are any sign, these explorations will blur the line between uncomfortable and insightful until the two are irrecoverably linked.
• Reviews. I snuck the comic book review section into the blog, but the professors specifically warned us about turning the blogs into "what I'm reading" sort of affairs. While I understand their reasons for doing so, I think this dismisses a potential source of "writing the self." If we're going to go so far as to consider items such as a personal profile and the questions on a fill-out form as potential sites for personal definition, then certainly there's a lot be gained by the review process: what is reviewed, what connections are drawn, what cultural background is implied and articulated through the reviewing process. And all that is a very complicated way of saying that starting next week, I'm going to be talking more about video games, books, and TV shows.
• Random thoughts. Did Pope deliberately write in such a manner as to be obscure as possible for future generations? Does the pineapple really count as a fruit if it's on a pizza? Are there any Disney Characters that could legitimately beat Bugs Bunny in a fight, or at least fight him to a draw? Mainstream Disney; keep the genie in the bottle.
  
• I should clarify that last one. It means I'll be posting more random thoughtsn not "here are a bunch of random thoughts." I mean, they are random thoughts, but they're meant to indicate the quality of future random thoughts, not stand as random thoughts as their own. And not all random thoughts need be in the form of a question, although there is no set rule prohibiting that construction.
• Future posts may contain more rambling.

And with that, I'll return to the question I had way back in the dawntime of this blog: Anything you, the reader, would like to see? Post comments as you see fit.

Later Days.

Oh, almost forgot, the last thing future blog posts will cover:

• The reason I end every post with "Later Days." Yeah, now you gotta stick around, don't you?