12.03.2011

cheap sex...


don't get excited... i didn't pull Karen out of the memory box again, i was just thinking about something that Jim of Parkway Rest Stop posted today, on the most auspicious event of the 9th anniversary of his most excellent blog, which was last week... he commented on how many, present company included, have stopped blogging and fallen into the social network trap of Facebook. i mean, it does work, if you're interested in making sure your dribblings hit a pretty much captive audience, rather than the hit or miss reality of a regular blog. it's easy to fall into the comfort zone of it. it really is like cheap sex. it's the social handjob network syndrome... you either stroke yourself or get stroked by everyone else and you feel really good about yourself because you rubbed out some asinine comment or drop kicked a link from somewhere else. and everyone either sticks their thumbs up or drops a pat you on the back comment for being so fucking witty... but it's never enough, it's like adolescence all over again, that fourth trip of the day into the bathroom with your rag-tag copy of Stern magazine that you're always dragging around because, you tell everyone, it's really good to practice reading for your seventh grade German language class, but it's really for all those damned saucy adds they have for German girls underware... ok, you guys get the idea, right? that's Facebook... mental masturbation for the masses...
well, that's about enough of that, don't you think?

all that sort of talk dragged up a particularly rancid episode in my affair with the fore mentioned Karen, she who lived over the cafe on the left coast, in Coronado, California. she who never wore clothes. she who always made a damned good pot of coffee. she of the famous black hair... one of these days, i'll finish telling those tales. but now, i need some bourbon. i'll be right back.

ah, how thou doth warm and cheer, Wild Turkey... my mood is better already. i almost wish i hadn't quit smoking, a nice, unfiltered Camel would really hit the spot right now. it's been just over six months without any tobacco, i'm looking forward to my one year anniversary, i'm going to light up a nice mellow cigar to celebrate. i think if i get one year under my belt, i'll be able to enjoy a stogie or my pipes once in a while without getting hooked on the coffin nails again. or not. at this stage of life, i'm beginning to wonder if it even really matters... it's funny how looking into the gaping maw of mortality puts things into a different perspective. a lot of crap that used to matter, just doesn't anymore. and some things that were just hanging there have suddenly become the most important things in the world. i guess it will all work itself out in the end, huh?

so. i'm going to endeavor to spend more time here and less time in the bathroom with Facebook. really. you'll see...



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6.12.2010

Saturday's Goth Girl...





blah, blah, blah... snort, fizzle, goop...
This blog has turned into a wasteland. Gotta rethink this... Stand by for adventure in 3... 2... 1....


spew accordingly below...

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3.10.2010

69...



nothing to say, really... just couldn't pass up the opportunity to give everyone's inner seventh grader a chance to giggle at the post title...

here's some naughty Zappa songs for you immature brats, too...
Enjoy.







spew accordingly below...


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2.07.2010

38...



I seem to be having some sort of Firefox / Blogger comment conflict. It won't let me leave comments on my own blog. If I switch over to Safari, no problem, works just fine. Anyone else ever encounter this? Any fixes?





spew accordingly below...


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2.03.2010

34...



I finally received the Haloscan death notice and my comments with them are now disabled, so I'm using the embedded Blogger comment thing until I figure out whether or not I want to shell out thirteen dollars a month to Echo to host my comments. I'm thinking not.
Please let me know how the Blogger comment thing is treating you.
Thanks,
The Management





spew accordingly below...


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1.05.2010

5... continued...



2 things;
1. Happy Twelfth Night.
2. Commenter John asks why I started blogging. A fair question, worthy of an honest answer. John, I haven't the slightest idea. I've been reading blogs for years, probably nine or ten and just figured I'd give it a shot. I'm not much of a socialite, I can count my closest friends on one hand and have a few left over. I don't go clubbing any more, rarely go to concerts or shows, just the occasional opera or a night out with a friend, sometimes my daughters. I shun being in public in general. I guess it was just an available outlet for whomever wanted to read what I had to say, respond or refute, without having to endure the face to face thing. This blog has changed over the years. It started out as a "hey, guess what I did today?" thing, interjected with some humorous looks at current events, then folded into some sort of gut spilling venture during an especially dark time in my days, then I got very political and, thankfully, now, it's much less so. That was taking a toll that I couldn't afford to pay. It's been a place to show my dark side, I've always been a sullen foole and when I found the goth outlet back in the day, I jumped into that feet first and found some comfort there. I was always of the goth bent, just never had a style or label to go with it. I never let it go, hence the title of the blog. Some people mistake the "sad" for unhappy, but it's not. "Sad old goth" is a term coined by the second generation of goth kids back in the eighties for those who passed into the nether world of their thirties and beyond and still hung on to the lifestyle. Sad = pathetic...
I guess all this is less of an explanation than I could really dredge up, but all of it is truth. I will say that because of this blog, my horizons have been immeasurably expanded, I've made a multitude of "friends" that I'll probably never meet and the many that I've been able to meet are the most admirable, honest, forthright and upstanding folk I'd ever had the pleasure to. They are rare folk, indeed, very rare.
So, there you go, somewhat. An answer, of sorts.

And now, gentle friends, I shall bid thee fair eve. I am alone this night, save for Tiger, Basil and Grem, three of the most wonderful cats I've ever had the honor of knowing. Night has folded her soft, dark wings around Stately Sad Old Goth ManorĀ®, all is quiet, save for the strains of Henry Purcell's "Hear My Prayer, Oh Lord", playing in the next room, the seemingly ever present wind howling through the spruce trees and the eternal tick, tick, tick of the ancient clock that shares my lair...
Fare thee well this night, my fellow wanderers. Fare thee well...
Gregor




go ahead, make your day...

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1.04.2010

4...



I started this blog seven years ago today...


go ahead, make your day...

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8.13.2009

you know what's weird..?



I mean, besides anything else you might read in here... I checked out my Blogger profile, just in an off odd moment of boredom between bouts of chain smoking and thinking about jerking off, and it says that I've been blogging since 2006. I actually started in January of 2003, when Blogger was just Blogger. Before they sold out to Gaggle Google... I guess anything in the "BG" era doesn't count. Back in those days you had to pay Blogger a small monthly fee to blog so you could upload pictures and such, now all you have to do is start a blog and they monitor it for content, shut you down or report you to the Amateur In Chief's goon squad, all for free!!! Ah, progress...



go ahead, make your day...

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6.10.2009

everything old...



is new again. back to basic black, no frills, no gadgets, except for the scrolling links in the sidebar, i'm a bit fond of that...
if you have any comments about the font or the size or the color, just let me know... i aim to please.



go ahead, make your day...

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3.08.2009

to those who follow...

I'm sorry to those of you that had added me to your "follow" widget thingy on your blogs, that I can't respond in kind, as I don't want to change over to Blogger's XML, drag and drop thing. I'm a dyed in the wool HTML type. I know you're out there and I will be adding you to my links, if you're not in there already. And thanks. I appreciate you readership, really.

Touch me...

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3.06.2009

wishy-washy...

I switched the body text font back to Courier. I really like the typewriter look. Courier is very open and clean and has a slight serif, which actually makes for easier reading then a sans-serif face. As a matter of fact, two faces, Bodoni and Bookman have consistently been judged as the easiest to read fonts for years. My preference is Bookman, it has a slight antique look about it and the carefully crafted serifs make combined consonants flow a bit more and the serif wrap on certain vowels, when carefully kerned, is something to behold. Yeah, I'm a font geek. Goes back to my teen years when I first started learning the printing trade. I worked on weekends for a stationary stationery shop, which was quite stationary, imprinting funeral cards, wedding invitations, raffle tickets and the like on an old, foot-pedal powered Chandler and Price letterpress and hand set all the type out of a California job case. Might be a skill that could come in handy in the coming post-obamalyptic world...

Touch me...

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3.05.2009

I like the gray...

Does this look any better? How about if I made the right side picture a bit narrower and widened the posting area?

Touch me...

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How about gray..?

It really sets off the color of my eyes...How about this size, is it easier to read?

Touch me...

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How do you like this color..?

can you read this..?

Touch me...

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Headline color test...

This is Courier... can you read it now..?

Touch me...

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fonts...

I'm going to do some serious reconsideration as to what fonts I'm using here. It seems that some of them are hard to read, which I can agree with considering I'm using a huge LCD monitor, super accelerated graphic board and such and, while they look ok to me at home, I've been looking at them on various other systems and depending on monitor size and resolution, they are a bit of a strain on the eyes. I'll be testing some new fonts over the weekend after I pour through my collection and will ask you to download some to try out and give me some feedback. I think I'm trying to overcompensate for lack of interesting posts by making things fancy. I do so hate the usual serif and sans serif fonts that are easier to read, though. I have a thing for fancy type faces, probably goes back to my love for letterpress printing. I think I'm going to change the body font to Courier for a while, every has that as a standard font and it's the universal typewriter font, which I dearly love, maybe that will help. The headline font is another matter. I like what I have now, but it looks a little too much like something you'd see in the title of an old MGM pirate movie. Maybe just a change of color for that will help. I'm going to futz with the minor stuff in the sidebar, too, I'll have to look for something dreary, yet legible. Stand by.
Thanks to all for the feedback.


Touch me...

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2.22.2009

After further reveiw...



I think I need to make some changes, like a wider posting area and more narrow graphic on the right side. Also tone down the colors a bit. Do you agree?





Touch me...

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2.21.2009

Comments are fixed...


I had a double closing bracket hiding out in the comment code... damned sticky keyboard.






wander with me...

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Crap...


for some reason the damned comments won't work now... save your pithy comments for later...






wander with me...

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So...


Aside from the huge, egotistical picture of me, what do you think? My photographer bailed on me today and I had the template ninety five percent complete, so I just added a random shot of me to see what it looked like with the rain effect I created.
It still needs some tweaking and tightening up here and there, but everything seems to work. I will be adding a list of fonts you will, once again, need to download for free and install on your computer to get the full effect. I make nothing easy...
Your critical comments are most appreciated...






wander with me...

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