happy Bloomsday blogaversary

Today is the 15th anniversary of the start of this blog, aptly enough on Bloomsday.

It changed my life.

I haven't written everyday.

But the blog provided a blank slate upon which to scribble.

And that got me to limber up any writing muscles I thought I might possess.

Thanks for stopping by.

Onward and upward and sideways and beyond.

happy blogaversary, selfie

Ten years ago, I started The Laughorist, appropriately enough on Bloomsday. I've kept at it. Not every day. I'm glad I did.

Thanks for reading my words.

I invite you to browse backwards into the archives, strolling through the streets of my imagination and the precincts of my world.

Call me Boulevardier.

beauteous Bloomsday blogaversary

Me started this blather storm of laden words in 2006 on Bloomsday, so carry on, keep calm or be qualmed, knickers in pocket, knickknack paddywhack, give the dog a bone.

wordstream rapture

Dear Blog,
I have betrayed you, been an infidel, been unfaithful to your ephemeral flutterings by being faithful to ever-briefer postings, in the Twitterverse (@kocakwords). What a cad I've been to abandon you, this playground of expansive observations and gymnasium of gerundives, this venue of verbs and pabulum, words and wisdom wattage -- just for 140 characters on Twitter! How cruel of me, to leave your for nearly a month, my longest absence, just for a stream of pithy one-liners or vacuous throwaways. But such is our age. Less is more. Or less is less. It doesn't matter, as long as it's less and quicker. And more and Tweetier.

Anyway? How have you been? I see you, the blogosphere, that is, are still here, shrugging of the microblogiverse, not at all averse to aver that lots of words have their place in the universe. Their place is here, home to more-than-140-character discursive ramblings and rumblings, meanderings and wanderings, pings and pongs, throngs of thoughts, tallied in tons of typing and tappings.

Yours,
The Laughorist

what is a blog?

Blog. What is a blog? Yes, it is a blend of the words web and log. For a coined term of relatively youthful status, it seems venerable, as if it has been around more than its dozen-plus years.

People blog, but who admits to keeping a journal? Or a diary? As for the word's sound, its onomatopoeia, it sounds so blah. Ergo, blahgging is what I do on an off day.

Web, with its notion of weaving, reminding me of one of the world's best book titles, Caught in the Web of Words, a biography of the Oxford English Dictionary and its makers. Interwoven connections, in digital thoughts as well as the surprise of you who came here, now reading this or hearing it, if you use such software.

Log, with its notion of solidity, woodenness; the concept of a ship's log book; logs because, we are told, wooden floats measured the ship's speed. Log: grounded, rooted in the earth. Fecund and possibly crawling with worms or moss or overshadowed by saplings, metaphorical and otherwise.

So, to blend these disparate visions (and not end up too cross-eyed or star-crossed):

Words and images and musings wandering or dancing or strolling along the spidered reality of incarnate bits and bytes, testing the pliancy or durability of imagination; both partitioning and elongating threads of meaning or nonsense; registered and recorded and cast into a faux eternity made up of seemingly infinite particles of ephemera, yearning for venerable SEO ranking, for immediate, pop-up Googled status: the canonization of the quotidian.

Blog, blogged, blogging. To blog. Cf. loc. cit. Ibid. Op. cit. Ad infinitum. Into aeternitas.

Age quod agis.

pace

I'm on pace for 365 posts in 2010.

Not likely, given my track, or traction, record.

Anyway, who's counting?

Blogger is. As a favor to me.

Blizzard

Look out for a blizzard of blogging.

It's been almost a week.

Post time (all manics, all aboard!)!

Happy Blogaversary to Me

Fittingly for Bloomsday, today is the anniversary of my blog -- my blogaversary, if you will.

It is 3 years old, with 548 posts and a total of -- what? -- a mere 41 comments. (I kid, barely.)

Let the fourth year begin!

Carry on.

Laugh. Or else.

Limited Edition

On a shelf in the upstairs bathroom at work (where no baths are ever taken), two cans of so-called air freshener stood: a Lysol product that promises "to neutralize" odors and a Febreze product sporting a "Limited Edition" label. For the record, I rarely, if ever, use these products because (a) they emit offensive odors of their own, (b) they are examples of conspicuous capitalist waste fostered by marketing brainwashing, and (c) I mean, really, it's just natural life, and (d) I simply open the freakin' window if my emissions are apt to evoke adverse olfactory impacts in my co-workers. (To be honest, I have never even deigned to try the elegantly and oh-so-cleverly-named-but often-misspelled Febreze spray thingy.) Limited Edition. It got me wondering. How limited? Would it be infinite if it were not a limited edition? Limited in its success rate? Limited in the number of editions such that the one I stared at is the only one anywhere, therefore worth gazillions of dollars? And is there any product that is not a limited edition? I'm one. I'm a limited edition. (But not a product in the aforementioned sense above.) I am limited by time and space; by my capacities, hopes, failures, dreams, aspirations, strengths, weaknesses, et cetera. Ad infinitum (now that's a phrase denoting unlimited!). Limited by my strengths? My assets? Yes, they may be my greatest limitation of all, prodding me to hold on to the illusion of control, tricking me to hold on to what I have not got, nudging me toward willfulness when I should be surrendering or simply waiting. Edition? I am always either editing myself or allowing redaction upon myself. I'm often surprised by the latest edition of myself that hits the existential newsstands, sometimes pleasantly, sometimes not.

Limited Edition. What a paradoxical phrase. It conveys limits, borders, definition, urgency. The very agency of restriction and limitation increases the perception of value. This blog is a limited edition (it is ephemera, as I blogged back in September), read by rare and priceless limited edition readers, such as you,
and you

and you

and you, too (sweetly and forever precious as your birthday approaches, six time zones east of where I sit).


(I am a semicolon; or maybe an ellipsis {perhaps parentheses}, but certainly not a period or full stop; not yet . . .)