The Skivvies Blog Celebrates 501

That's a brand of jeans, you know. A formula the Levis company whipped up one day. They went through 500 false starts, pants with one leg longer than the other, pockets sewn inside instead of out, see-through denim, etc., until the scientists finally hit on the right formula, #501.

With just the right denim, the right pockets, the right leg length on both sides, they knew they had it right. A quick rivet to the butt and the thing was ready for the rack. And history. The mighty 501 was born!

We have a similar cause for celebration at the Skivvies blog, as we have raced through 500 false starts -- blog posts -- and now have finally attained perfection, #501. With this one going over 500 now all my blogs are old enough to know better. They've become as comfortable a pair of good pants, something for me to stretch out in and be free.

May all your days be Skivvies days. Mine are, and look, it hasn't hurt me.

The Obscure Side Roads

Sometimes I forget that my little blogs are on the very obscure side roads of the internet. Since I'm here everyday, of course, to me these are familiar. But it actually looks like it takes some effort to get here. If you search for just the right phrases -- like maybe "The Obscure Side Roads" today -- I place pretty high on the results. Otherwise, I'm down in the mix with everyone else.

And since I hardly ever make it to everyone else's place on the obscure side roads, there's no real reason why they should make it to mine. But I'm here, by cracky, and not leaving anytime soon.

I'm always kind of amazed when I hear about terrorist trackers, that they're able to keep track of blogs (I think) and websites that come and go in a matter of seconds (I imagine). But something that's here and never leaves, there's no such attention given. It all depends on what you're looking for.

I was trying to check some of the obscure side roads at YouTube today. I was looking for music videos by average people, ones that only had three or four (or no) prior views. That means you have to look at the "Recent" videos, just posted. Otherwise, there's lots of stuff from big record companies that dominates the opening page.

I found a few, including a teen band practicing somewhere. That wasn't too interesting, but a little. Also a couple of girls, individual videos, singing to songs on their stereo. They weren't very interesting either. But it was something that was different. The obscurity at least was refreshing.

Wow, A Follower

Somehow, miraculously, I got a follower on one of my other blogs!

That makes two now over five blogs. Heck of an average, I know, but you have to start somewhere. I know it could be more if I told my real life friends and family about these blogs. But I keep it all secret.

Someone asked me the other day about what "projects" I'm doing. I "duhh'ed" and stumbled my way around with words for a few seconds, then covered nicely.

Ha ha, sometimes, just for the heck of it, I like to go downtown, lean against a building, and defy people to recognize me. Of course they never do. How could they?

In Other News -- I'm always interested in the automatic bot/word aggregators at Twitter. I can't remember the ones I've accidentally triggered. One is "ho." If you use the word "ho" in a post there's a bot to pick it up and mention it. I had another one but can't remember what it was. Then tonight I accidentally got another one, when I used the phrase "high five" in a tweet. That's pretty odd, huh?

Why Is It So Hard To Get Followers At Blogger?

It seems weird to me that I never get any followers at Blogger. I'm not complaining and I don't really care. But it is a weird thing.

Were they picturing Blogger as some sort of social gathering spot? I don't know. I do know I have five blogs I update virtually daily, sometimes three or four times daily, and there's only one follower on one blog. And I don't know what his story is!

But you go to Twitter and make an account and you have 40-50 followers in a month or so. I've seen people on there with 200 followers and they haven't even written their first tweet yet!

(It seems like I've already written about this subject. But it's still on my mind.)

What precisely do you have to do to have followers on your blog?

Contractual Obligation Blog Post

Blogger is supposed to put red and blue M & M's in my computer room. This is not being done. I found some other colors in the mix.

Also I need a box of Puff's tissues, a hand towel folded in fours, and a single square paper towel on top of that.

And I need a 20" box fan set on medium blowing approximately 20 degrees away from where I normally sit. Blowing to my left.

A lot of this stuff isn't being arranged to my satisfaction.

(As far as water, I want a pitcher of tap water with some professionally made ice in it.)

Twitter Account

I'm a little late to the Twitter scene. I looked up an old friend of mine on there who has around 100 followers. The stuff he's got on doesn't seem extremely interesting to me, very tech oriented, but he has all these followers from somewhere.

So I have an account finally. Under the name of "dbkundalini" in case anyone ever sees this and is interested. Somehow I got two followers. Which could be like when you go on MySpace, how "Tom" instantly becomes your friend. Maybe these same two followers are followers of everyone. It would seem very strange to instantly have two followers when I barely said anything. But I've said a few things.

I'll try to say a few things once in a while, whatever. Right now I'm doing my Grandma Slump character thing. Which I think is funny even if it's all a tad diffuse. I don't know if this guy is supposed to be crazy, eccentric, or exactly what. Because it's all made up as we go along.

My Charter

Every few months I need to come up with My Charter. What do I hope to accomplish in writing this blog called [whatever it's called].

Is it just something I do to keep my fingers busy, to keep my hands off the street at night? Yes, in a way. Otherwise I'm twitching them, fidgeting them, trying to over clean the pores on my face. That can be too much. You might get skin cancer.

I think charter is the word that would be accurate there. They have charter schools, which means, I really don't know. They're chartered with a particular mission, I would guess. Like the mission to teach art or science. That's their goal.

My charter: Essentially to keep my fingers busy and to keep my hands off the street at night. Also to entertain the masses who never come here. It's a cul de sac. A dead end. The last resort.

But it does have a charter.

A Follower

I hate to be too self referential but I have a follower. I'm full of questions, such as "What now?" Should I be serving tea and cookies?

Maybe I was an idiot for putting the follower widget on there. I figured it'd be something I'd wonder about if anyone ever clicked it.

I go to random blogs frequently and notice they have 10-20 followers and I wonder how that ever happened. Maybe they're like friends at Facebook or Scribd, nobody really, or relatives. Or people are exchanging followers like this, I'll be yours if you'll be mine.

It gives me something to think about, though. Such as if I make this guy mad will he leave? If I fail to write something for a week will that be it? Many other questions arise in my (usually) tormented mind, but I don't want to state them, because it might tick him off.

Sometimes I have the thought that just shouting in a vacant building is preferable to a stadium full of people.

Do I Have To Be What I'm Looking For?

I don't want to be what I'm looking for on the internet. Because I already have what I have within me and if I write it, it doesn't do me any good to read it.

I keep looking for what I want to read. More or less this, a spiritual, eccentric, level-headed, funny, winking, humane blog that's regularly updated, by someone quirky yet not insane, someone earnest yet not trite, someone feeling yet not sentimentally sick. Is there such a thing?

I like looking at spiritual blogs, always hoping, but they tend to reek of conventionality, or unconventionality that's too far out of my range. I'm giving up hope.

Not Opinionated Today

I haven't got a lot on my mind, opinions to spout off about. I do see that Joe the Plumber is serving as a war correspondent in Israel for some organization. Nothing can go wrong there! There were a couple blurbs I saw about it, one of which being that he got into an argument with an Israeli reporter, over whether that reporter supports Israel's efforts in the latest mess. I forget the other one.

My opinions are being tamped down by tiredness perhaps. Or, when it comes to politics, I'm holding them in abeyance till we get rid of Bush. My opinions on Bush haven't changed, but they're kind of tedious to keep giving. I don't like the guy, never have. So there. I'm hoping for the best from Obama and think he's definitely a decent person. Finally, someone I vote for wins ... first time since Clinton, an eternity ago.

I have an opinion on Burris. I don't really have any great affection for him, nor do I have any hostility against him. I'm glad he's going to be seated as a senator -- all official now -- because I think they need to follow the law as it's written, not the way they wished it was. So that's good news no matter how he'll do as a senator.

I see there are a couple of other inauguration pray-ers tapped for the 20th. Of course we have Rick Warren, who got big headlines about it. But at Huff Post they have headlines for a couple more: Gene Robinson, the Episcopalian bishop, is giving an inauguration prayer. Also the Rev. Sharon Watkins has been chosen for a prayer at an inauguration prayer service. Looking at the article, she is the president of the Disciples of Christ organization. So Obama's going for the celebrities.

Lysol South of the Equator

Check out this 1950s ad for Lysol, to keep the lady's "hoo-haa" sparkling clean and fresh. Is va-j-j what they're saying these days?

This is a link to The Gina Monoblogs.

Lysol, as in the industrial strength disinfectant of the same name...

Click the first link for the full ad. It's strange.

His Head's Shaved

The guy at Every Time I Poop got his head shaved.

It's worth taking a look, but please don't blame me if (or when) you disagree.

Desi is God

The blog of a young teenage woman, Desi, who says she's God.

Her grandma got her a pink Bible, not a gift she liked.

She has a music player, which is cool. I kept it on because I love the song by One Republic, 'Stop and Stare,' but since I haven't had the radio on much lately, and I hate to buy tracks at I-Tunes, I haven't heard it much.

There's a lot of these kinds of blogs. But this one has a few little cool things about it.

The Year of a Million Words

Here's someone with a goal of writing a million words in 2008. I've had that goal before, at least conceptually. But I always thought if I were writing about my writing of a million words, eventually the commentary on the act would overwhelm the output of anything interesting. And at the end I'd be saying something like "A thousand to go, and I just did four more there, but with that last phrase and this one, I have 17 or 18 more, depending on whether numbers count as a word, and in saying 17 or 18 I hadn't counted on these last couple of clauses." So you can see the conundrum. But if you just write, write, write, blather on endlessly, I can see how you could do it quite easily.

How to count your words, though, I suppose put the whole thing in Microsoft Word before posting, because it the number of words...

His blog is at this link.

Here's a piece of a post from today:

This is what I did tonight when I had the room to myself:

Watched Portugal versus Czech Republic, y’know, to unwind after work.

Checked my emails, check my statcounter, read a few other blogs.

Opened a blank document.

Went and looked in the fridge. Decided I’d cook tea.

Ate tea in front of the TV.

Did the dishes.

Decided I should also make my lunch for tomorrow.

Opened an existing story which is missing its final scene.

Checked my emails again.

Lattice of Coincidence

A funny Photoshop picture of Lou Dobbs in full Mexican regalia, with a very cute little dog on his shoulder.

A Fairly Erotic Picture

Quite a photo, no nudity, so you won't get in any trouble clicking it.

An India Blog

I'm not too sure what this blog is about yet. But it's about India, and it's in English. Just glancing at it, it has some nice graphics. Part of it looks like fiction, or folk tales, or something. I need a nap, but it's getting too late in the day for one.

Written by Dr. Manoshi Bhattacharya.

Being Ourself

Beyond Mindfulness, Beyond Oneness

From that site: "This blog is an open discussion about living with the awareness that we are not merely "interconnected" but we are actually all one whole interacting with itself. How do we move beyond mindfulness into a state of action springing from the wholeness of the "now" (as Eckhart Tolle refers to it)? The site's founder is author Ty Clement, whose book Being Ourself (www.beingourself.com) is due for release in Spring 2009 by O-Books (www.o-books.net)and explores similar issues."

Open discussion...ABOUT...living with the awareness. So someone has the awareness and has been living with it, that we are not merely "interconnected" -- we being you and me -- but we are actually all one whole...interacting with itself. The first part of what we're aware of is that we are not merely interconnected. So we set up the thought of interconnection, community, joint-purpose, shared self-interest, while thinking individually, and say that's not it. Then we understand that we are actually one whole interacting with itself, live with the awareness, and openly discuss it. We need to assert and demonstrate that the one wholeness is true and what it does, interacts with itself.

Mindfulness in this case must be the awareness that we accept, then moving beyond mindfulness must be moving beyond the awareness, definitions, assertions, to...a state of action...living it...that springs from the wholeness of the "now." It's not good enough just to state things, but to get to a point where it's the real life now. Which I really agree with. I'm generally sick of the constant definition of things, introductions to more introductions.

It's no good to keep saying "life in more abundance" (John 10:10) without ever getting down to living "life in more abundance." Eventually the word has to give way to life, to the point that the page can be wadded up and forgotten. Why do you need a map once you're there?

So Many Records, So Little Time

If you like records, there are interesting blogs out there on the subject. I haven't seen many, but somehow I know they're out there.

Here's one I saw the other day -- and it's added several posts since then -- So Many Records, So Little Time. There are pictures (labels) of records by Inez & Charlie Foxx, The Move, Bo Diddley, Gloria Lynne, Boogaloo Joe Jones, Lonnie Youngblood, Brenda Lee, Georgie Fame, Buster Brown, and a few others. And also a player for listening to some of them.

I think I need one of those players.

The record pictured above is not from that site, but is one of my old favorite records. "Egghead" by Jill Corey. I've had an LP by her too, and maybe still have it somewhere. I've never heard the LP. The song "Egghead" is real cute. He's someone who is a brainiac, knows a lot, but not about love. "Egghead, you're such an egghead, you know an awful lot about an awful lot but there's an awful lot you don't know. You're a genius, you're a whizz. You can win most any quiz. But you're not so smart when it comes to the heart, you're the biggest fizz there is." But it has a happy ending, "Egghead, I love you so!"

So you can just embed songs, like videos. Oh, learn something everyday!

So Long, Roy Lee Harmon

Anybody up for another round of beating up on Roy Lee Harmon? Me either. It seems like a dream anyway, like yesterday wasn't even real. It was real, though, I'm sure, because I can see the posts still there.

Columnists may come and
Columnists may go and
Never change your point of view.
When I run dry
I stop awhile and think of you

So long, Roy Lee Harmon.