theology&geometry

Internet, if you are not periodically checking up on Sexy People, then I don’t know what to do with you.

The amazing diversity of the human form and professional photo studio backdrop is absolutely astonishing.

Well, here we are. I say “I think” up there because I’m not entirely confident that I’ve got the kinks worked out to the extent that I should be letting people look at what I’ve done here. I mean, I know for a fact that there’s some wonky shit happening downpage — scroll and take a look — and I am having no luck figuring out why some posts are bleeding into others and why my damn manual line breaks are not working and bumping the text down below the photos like they’re supposed to. I don’t know, and if I can’t figure it out on my own, I’m sure I’ll go groveling to some of my fancy web-developer friends. You kids with your programming languages. You disgust me.

Anyway, let’s all wave goodbye to the blogspot-era T&G pictured below:

As you can see, my crush on Helvetica Neue 25 Ultra Light continues unabated. There’s just something about that typeface that makes me breathe a little heavy when I see it. You type nerds know what I’m talking about. I’m pretty excited to be typing body text in Verdana, too. I’m not sure why I didn’t switch to it sooner. And check out that justification! I can’t decide if I like it, though. Maybe that’s what’s causing all those muff-ups below.

So my master plan — it’s so important that I’ve got it scrawled on a sticky note — is to flesh out the domain and have a professional corner and a photography corner and some other corners I can’t think of right now because I can’t find my damn sticky note. (Right now if you go to theogeo.com you’ll get a very rude 403 error. My apologies for both there being an error page there — I’ve yet to build an index page — and for how curt it is. The world and the internet could use less of that rude shit.) This place could end up a proper website, if I do it up right. Or it could end up like this hot mess right here (warning, there is sound — hideous, hideous sound). We’ll just have to see.

Well, I did it. Today I happened to notice that theogeo.com was free (it was occupied the last time I checked … a couple of years ago), so I snatched it right up. I’ve been squatting here at Blogger for five years now. Five years! Does anyone remember when I used to have theology-and-geometry.com? Yeah, this will be a hell of a lot less letters to type.

My informal plan is to move all my posts to WordPress and go from there. In reality, I don’t have a fucking clue what I’m doing. I’ll let you know as soon as the new site’s up and running. Until then, we’re blogspotting, baby.

Maybe I am dead. Because this is the first substantial stretch of time during the five years this blog has existed that there’s been nothing going on that I absolutely had to write about, even though there’s been plenty going on. It proves, at least for me, that blogging is strongly habitual and that if you truly devote yourself to the laziness within, it can overcome anything.

All kidding aside, I’ve been a lazy piece of shit since getting back from vacation. I always go through post-vacation depression. Always. I think this particular bout of nonsense has been compounded by the fact that I was mind-numbingly busy from mid-April until just this past weekend. I like being busy but once the work/play obligations clear up, it’s like coming down off of a drug. There’s withdrawal then recalibration. And in between there is a lot of crap food and a lack of exercising. Cue the self-esteem issues, and we’ve gotten ourselves into a lovely little circular rut.

I realized today while transferring important dates from my 2007 calendar to my new 2008 calendar (yes, I said new; I suck at life and just now got one AND it cost me $6.50!) that the cats were born on April 20, not April 11 like I thought a month ago. I suppose it doesn’t matter anyway, but you’d think I would be able to remember that they were born on 4/20. You’d think…

I’m not dead. Just distracted. I think I may have temporarily lost my blogging mojo. It’ll probably come back. I just needed a little break.

In the meantime, I must insist that you watch this:

The teevee tells me that the weather’s gone all orange and pink and red. It’s disgusting, mixing those colors like that.

About an hour ago I was driving north on Avalon, taking a right onto Madison, when I saw the biggest fucking lightning streak I have ever seen. It was so big because it was seemingly right in fucking front of me, and its union with whatever it struck created the loudest and sickest boom-snap-crackle-fizz in the air around me, and set off car alarms all around the Piggly Wiggly.

It made my teeth hurt.

So, like many other level-headed young adults in this city, I’ll be spending the evening at the Beale Street Music Festival downtown on the riverfront, blogging for the Commercial Appeal‘s MIM blog. I’ve got Courtney’s galoshes, Donna’s raincoat, and, if I can sneak out of the office in an hour or two, all night to devote to some mud-stompin’, hurricane-drinkin’, and music-listening.

Should be a good time. If I don’t get electrocuted.

Because concepts you pitch that start out looking like this

end up looking like this

after he’s worked his magic.

To say I have talent envy doesn’t even begin to cover it.

Link love: Check out the newly redesigned Shelf Life blog, the book blog from the CA.

Bonus link love: Shane’s blogging again!

… do not panic. I am jacking around with the template to try and get an “older posts” link at the bottom. It’s not as easy as it sounds, apparently.

So bear with me.

Update: Screw it. To get that little link, you have to upgrade the template from classic to the new Blogger’s XML based “Layouts” template, and then you have to basically re-code all your customizations, and unless I’m redesigning this place (which I will in the next few months, probably), that’s not something I’m crazy about doing right now.

I’m sure there are hacks to get that link (in fact, I’ve looked for a good one for months) but so far nothing I’ve found suits me. And everyone seems to just suggest I move to the Layouts option as an easy fix. But guess what? DON’T WANT. So this means that in order to get older posts that have fallen off the index page, you have to search through the archives, even for stuff I wrote just a week ago. That’s not too terribly annoying, in the grand scheme of things.

But what IS annoying is that if you clicked a tag — say, one about my cats — and wanted to read all the millions of posts I’ve made on that subject, you could only get to the first 20 or however many can fit on the front page. There’s no link to take you to the rest. Annoying.

Any hacks I’ve missed to fix this problem?

In case you missed it …

Thursday, July 12

Thankful Thursday
I was kind of hoping readers would chime in and list things they were thankful for, as sort of a breezy end-of-the-week exercise, but no one seems to be up for it…

A new literary and film genre?
I had hoped to get a discussion going about the terms “chick flick” and “prick flick” and whether or not they’re helpful markers when it comes to film conventions, but no one’s biting…

I’m not really sure where all the other guest posters have been this week. It’s been kind of dead over there.

So far, I’m doing a really shitty job of getting any discussions going. It’s probably the know-it-all tone I take, plus the bummerific subject matter I tend to pick to post about. Hmmm. The most popular posts over there seem to be about childrearing and television, and maybe books, the first of which I know approximately nil, and the other two of which I get my fill of thanks to other websites and blogs. So, I bust out with the culture critiques and the gender blah blah hooey and I guess everyone is falling asleep and wondering when the weirdo who likes to bitch about “the dominant cultural imperative” is going to shut up and go back to her hermit hole.

I’ve never really blogged for an audience like iDiva’s before. Actually, I have no idea what iDiva’s readership is like; I assume it’s a lot of moms, middle-class to upwardly mobile, perhaps fairly suburban? Not sure. I’m kind of doubting that they’re the kind of cynical, leftist humor-mongers that hang around here (with a few right-leaning exceptions).

So, how to engage readers? I’m not that great at doing that anywhere I blog.

I suppose I should take a more engaging, conversational tone, as opposed to a soapbox tone. That could help. But even then, is there any way to engage readers on controversial topics while still maintaining my distinct voice and point of view? Do I have to play devil’s advocate on every post to jar people into saying something?

The rest of my iDiva posts.

What’s awesome: Having a hilarious story to tell.

What sucks: Not being able to blog about it.