Velveteen Mind

Break Out the Chocolate-Covered Donuts

Psst...  Big news over at Blog Nosh Magazine today!  Here's a nibble of my weekly Nosh Notes from the Editor:

Blog Nosh Magazine is a virtual buffet of blog content. However, we are more the kind of buffet you might find at a casino: neither Italian, nor Mexican, nor Creole, nor American. We are better for you than a dessert bar but more sinful than a salad bar.

And like most buffets, the majority of our fare has been festering in the back of the kitchen for a while (harhar, a joke meaning our content comes from your blog archives, sans mold). We just happen to have a knack for freshening it up before offering it to the early-bird crowd.

Perhaps a metaphor involving wine would have been more appropriate? After all, we are highly selective. Noted.

The most important thing to remember when sampling what we place on your table is that we don’t ask that you always like what we are serving, just that you try it.

This week has been a fascinating week at Blog Nosh. Here we are, noshing left and right with posts about homosexual marriage, body image, lost and found love, finding our place in the right church, making the most of the day we are given, adoption and abortion, homeschooling with flavor, and poking a bit of fun at men and their egos… when all of the sudden we slip in a (gasp!) favorable post about George W. Bush.

You’d think a rat ran through the kitchen.

...

Continue reading How We Roll.  Pumpernickel and Rye Style. at Blog Nosh Magazine and be sure to check out the front page for our big news!

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In the Absence of a Sarcasm Font: Audioblogging

{Audioblog} Listen to or Download 'In the Absence of a Sarcasm Font' read by the author

We recently published a post at Blog Nosh Magazine that suggested the word "sarcasticate" be added to our vernacular.  "Sarcasticate" would be a verb and it would mean "to make something sarcastic" as applicable to writing text. 

"You see, I can make things bold. I can italicize. I can underline. I can even strikethrough. But, I can’t sarcasticate."

Gone will be the days in which people misunderstand your tone of voice when reading your brilliant writing! 

The Nerdist suggested a special font for sarcasm, after a couple of sticks-in-the-mud griped about a recent Wired article of his:

"I think both gentlemen failed to grasp the tongue-in-cheekity of it all. This is why there should be a font for sarcasm."

Hell.  yes.  Ditto.  Amen.

He went on to suggest that allowing such vocal readers to complain probably saves random strangers from being gunned down in the park.  "Gripes Not Snipes, I always say."  The Nerdist and The Bloggess should get together, is all I'm saying.

But unless Chris Hardwick figures out how to get more than just free gadgets out of all of these tech-gurus he knows, we won't be getting a font for sarcasm any time soon and I'm sick of either explaining myself or becoming a better writer.  Humpf.

That leaves us back where we started, with the burden of conveying tone remaining squarely on our shoulders, whispering into our ears, "No one is going to read that in the high-pitched nasally whine you are imagining.  Try harder.  Devices!  Devices, I tell you!"

Writing devices.  All of the little tricks of the trade that we use to convey tone.  You know...  ellipses... 

Blank space.

ALL CAPS!

wordssmushedtogethertoconveyimpatienceorrambling

Um's and er's and pfft's built into our text to help pace the reader.

Yeah, uh...  no.  kthanxbye

Despite our best attempts, we all still end up with comments that take us off guard with their level of misunderstanding.  Those "are they serious?" comments that make you think that someone involved in this equation must have been reading something other than what you wrote because forchrissakes that's not what you meant!

This, people, is why my posts are so damn long.  I try to cover every possible angle, anticipate every possible interpretation and conclusion and then address it before you force me to mutter, "But that's not what I'm saying" or "Yes, I already knew that but it was redundant to spell it out."

Then I don't end up with any comments because there's nothing left to say.  Crap.

(insert ;) emoticon, which is yet another device meant to convey that I'm yanking your chain but that I really hate to use in blogging because are we twelve?)

So...  in the absence of the sarcasm font and therefore the ability to sarcasticate, I have decided to start cheating: 

I'm adding audioblog versions of my posts!

A huge fan of audiobooks, I'm totally putting my melodrama hat on for you.

Oh yes, dear readers-come-listeners, you can now listen to my breathless tones as I read my posts to you live!  Well, -ish. 

There is currently a delay of about a day before I get the audioblog versions posted because I tend to furiously type and hit publish all within the same twenty minute period.  I've heard I could save things to "draft" until the audio version is done, but I've also heard that you shouldn't send emails when you are angry.  Or drunk.  Now, where is the fun in that?  Delayed gratification.  Pfft.  Maybe for you, but clearly not for me.

I'm also working on an easy link so that you can subscribe to my audioblogs via iTunes, but that takes some planning and I think we've already established my take on that.  I'll get back to you.

In the meantime, I've recorded some of my favorite posts and would love your feedback.  For instance, is anyone even going to listen to them?  Yeah, I'm thinking that would be a good place to start.

On the downside, I can't find anyone else that is doing audio versions of their blog posts, so I don't know how mine compare.  On the upside, I can't find anyone else pretending to be an audiobook performer, so I don't know how mine compare.

Posts with audio versions, so far:

I Am a Have but I Happen to Have Not

Hierarchy of Suffering. Who wins?

Gravel Paves the Road to The White House

The Trouble with Pies

Coffee Cup Lipstick

I Own This

iPod Identity

Be warned that I tried to read them more slowly than I speak so that you can actually follow along in the car (or wherever; that's your business) and I also apparently didn't find it necessary to stick entirely to script.  Before I do any more, let me know if anything doesn't work...  though if you just can't get them to play at all, I probably can't help you.  Gripes not snipes, people.  Gripes not snipes.

Most importantly, I have to say that reading what was written to be read silently was actually more challenging than I expected. 

All of those devices I spoke of earlier?  Yeah, just try to read a strikethrough out loud.  Jesus.  Good Lord.  Man.

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Facebook is Giving Me an Identity Crisis

Have you ever felt an unexpected shift in the core of who you are?  You are trucking right along and suddenly realize that something has changed?

Imperceptible shifts in your course, happening over time, until you abruptly find yourself in a different place than you planned.  You find yourself a different person than you expected.

Perhaps this is simply growth.  Perhaps this is simply growing up.  Perhaps I'm simply losing my mind.

That last one was a joke.  But I bet you smiled, because I bet you've been there.

I posted a quote from Patton Oswalt on Twitter a while back, taken from Lewis Black's The Root of All Evil on Comedy Central, in which Oswalt said regarding blogging: 

"Bloggers are the root of all evil because they have reduced us to a first draft culture."

I thought that was actually funny (come on, it is!), but let me warn you, this is a first draft and one I plan to hit publish on as soon as I finish typing.  It's one of those things that we might all feel, but rarely take the time to explore, so before I shake it off, I'm going to put it out there. 

I blame this identity crisis on Facebook. 

 

 

Yes, I say that tongue-in-cheek, but on some level it is true.  Facebook has put me back in touch with high school and college friends I haven't heard about in years, laying all of their lives out in an orderly fashion, ripe for comparison.

Half of them have families and jobs and most of the same responsibilities that keep me from going out to a club every other night.  The other half seem to be living virtually the same lives we lived in school, only with legal ID's and fewer grades.

It brings up so many personal questions that I don't generally allow myself to consider.  Questions like, "Um, was it an option to keep partying?"

That is a simplification, but still.

For now, I'm just putting this feeling in front of you.  I'll write more about it later.  Later, being after I finish the relaunch of Blog Nosh Magazine, which is certainly artificially inflating my stress level and causing me to rub my own nerves raw.

But maybe it's also an opportunity to rattle those nerves a bit and see what shakes out.  What sparks to the surface. 

Want to frazzle some nerves with me?  Ask some questions like, "Do I still want to drop it like it's hot?" or "Is it still an option to shake it like a Polaroid picture?"

Hell, let's just listen to some music:

 

(feed readers, if you can't see the music player, you are so missing out!)

...........................

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