A place called B.L.O.G.

Hey there. Have you seen my new blog yet? It’s real purdy.

I’ve been blogging there a lot. That is why you haven’t been getting the alert e-mails. The new blogging site doesn’t do that.

I hope you are having an excellent day.

Love,
Dylan

It’s over, Friendster.

This relationship has been going nowhere fast for months now. I bust
my butt, posting blog entries every couple of days — sometimes every
day. And the quality of these blog entries … well, that speaks for
itself. I think it’s pretty clear that I’ve been putting in my share of
the effort here.

But you, you have done nothing but disappoint me. First came the
thing with the ads. Was that necessary? Good grief. A tasteful banner
ad here and there would be one thing, but look at these eyesores! What
were you thinking? Then there’s the weird formatting problems, the
stupid redesign of the main site, and the continued problems some of my
handful of faithful readers have encountered getting the damned thing
to load.

I just can’t stay here when it’s so obvious that I’m the only one who’s trying.

I will fondly remember the 125 posts that I’ve made here in roughly
a year. But it’s time to move on to bigger and better things.
 

To get to my new blog, click here or paste this address into the browser: http://aplacecalledblog.blogspot.com.

You’ll still have to come here to read all the archives, of course.
I know that people really enjoy reading and re-reading their favorite
entries over and over again. So, this site will still be here.

Also, you’ll have to bear with my while I spruce up the new place;
just like anybody who moves, I’ll need time to get all the "pictures
hung" and the "furniture arranged" or whatever.

See you over at Blogger.

I have had my desk at work for more than 2 years now. It’s nice to have a desk. It’s a wonderful place to set my computer (with its two monitors — yes, that’s how cool I am) and my other stuff.

When I worked for the daily Strib, I was kind of a floater, and I had no desk of my own. When I worked in Albert Lea, I had a desk in an office and a different desk where I did most of the actual work. Neither felt like a real desk. In Fergus Falls, I had a very small desk and I moved to a new desk once during the year-and-a-half I was there, so it was hard to get much "desk momentum" going.

Now, for the first time, I really feel like I have made myself truly at home at a desk. I was looking around my desk just now and realizing this. Partly this is because I got some bamboo and a little vase at Ikea and placed it on my desk. It’s the first time I have had a desk plant and I kind of like it. It really completes this desk thing I have going here.

Here are some of the other things I have on my desk or pinned to the slightly fuzzy walls around it:

• Two pictures of Jimmy. One is his first-grade class picture and the other is of him with a big grin on his face while he sat in a bumper car at Valleyfair a couple summers ago. It’s my favorite picture of him.
• A headline clipped from the paper that says "Whatever was Dylan thinking?" I love it. (The headline was about Bob Dylan, but it’s fun to take it totally out of context.)
• Three B. Kliban cartoons. B. Kliban, in case you didn’t know, was the greatest cartoonist ever. The three I have are one that shows a cow (fully clothed, of course) standing in a snowy landscape trying to sell copies of a newspaper called "Cow News" to the assorted penguins, polar bears and walruses that are walking around. Another has a woman scolding her husband, who is drawn all wiggly and curvy. She is saying "I want you to stop this wiggly business … it’s bad for the children!" And the third has a sober-looking man wearing a business suit and a pair of SCUBA flippers trying to take a pie away from a bearded, scruffy-looking man; the caption is "Your government in action." I love B. Kliban.
• Two clippings from "The Onion": One that says "Every time area man drops by, friend is watching The Big Lebowski" and one that says "Yeti releases abdominable crunch workout video."
• Two drawings by Jimmy: One self-portrait of him saying "Booya!" and one of a chicken playing chess with a cat. Both are pretty old.
• My sign that says "The occupant of this desk has gone __ days without getting punched in the back of the head." (Each day I hang up a scrap of paper with the updated number; today it’s 35.)
• A calendar Jimmy made for me at school.
• A wrapper I found for a vending machine product called the "Big Az Burger." I find that hilarious.
• And, items that are here for temporary stays: A toothbrush and toothpaste, a copy of the book "The Wal-Mart Effect," and a large spoon.

And thus ends the most pointless blog entry in the illustrious history of "A Place Called B.L.O.G." And that, friends, is truly saying something.

Ode to Drive 105

Elvis Costello, U2, the Cure
Elvis Costello, U2, the Cure
Raconteurs! Raconteurs!

Elvis Costello, U2, the Cure
Elvis Costello, U2, the Cure
Arctic Monkeys! Arctic Monkeys!

At least they’re taking chances.

Pledge Drive

Contribute online
or call
our 800 number.
You may think
this is free,
but if you listen
you should pay.

Think about
how your life would be
without us.
$10 a month
that’s $120 a year
in case you didn’t know.

They’ll give me
a T-shirt
or a nice live CD,
but I’d let them keep
all the stuff
if they’d just
talk less.

93X (a haiku)

93X rocks
And you can tell they’re bad-ass
‘Cause their DJs swear

Jack FM (a haiku)

104.1
Like your iPod on shuffle
If you have no taste.

June 7

165 B.C. The first known member of the Belden bloodline, a druid priest named Grailde DeBayldon, rolls chunks of sheep meat and goat cheese up in a flat piece of bread, inventing the world’s first burrito.

5 B.C. A whale in the north Atlantic does that really cool thing where the water shoots out of the top. You know that thing? That thing is cool.

24 A.D. Jesus, like, walks on water, or something. Nobody was really paying attention to him so we don’t know for sure.

425 A.D. Pope Elvis Bowie XVI invents rock-n-roll.

999 A.D. The world is on edge as preparations for the end of the century go into full swing. Especially worrisome is what’s called "Ye Olde Y1K Bug," which, it’s feared, will cause all technology — including the wheelbarrow, the shovel and the torch — to stop working.

1491 A.D. The real first European to reach America, a Dutch nobleman named Hulk Hogan, arrives in New England, wins a bloody cage match against Indian chief King Kong Bundee, and is appointed emperor of North America. But instead of taking this post, he travels far inland, lays eggs in the Mississippi River, and goes into 450 years of hibernation, knowing that he will one day return to claim his rightful place as ruler of the world and star of films such as "Suburban Commando." (The eggs would later hatch and become alligators. Alligators that say "ooh, yeah" a lot.)

1898 A.D. At the World’s Fair in Brussels, horse-and-buggy tycoon Phineas J. Goodfellow presents his newest invention, a two-wheeled, mule-drawn contraption on which the rider stands while holding a set of handlebars. He calls it the "Segway Buggy." The London Times calls it "the future of transportation."

1942 A.D. I think there was some kind of war going on or something.

1976 A.D. My mom stops at a Mexican restaurant for dinner, and some of the spicy deliciousness of the burrito she consumes is sent to her 7-month-old fetus through the umbilical cord. The fetus falls in love with burritos, right then and there.

1983 A.D. President Reagan goes undercover for the CIA behind the Iron Curtain. He snaps a bunch of bad guys’ necks with his bare hands and shoots down two helicopters with his handgun. He recovers the stolen microfilm and thwarts a Communist plot to invade West Germany. While he is away from the White House for three months, he is replaced by a gussied-up dancing robot they got from Chuck-E-Cheese. All it is able to say is "How about some birthday fun?" His approval ratings skyrocket.

1997 A.D. They get a new guy to do Mickey Mouse’s voice, and it’s just not the same after that.

2001 A.D. In a move that dashes the hopes of many, NASA announces that it will not be embarking on any space odyssey.

2005 A.D. I finally realize what coasters are for.

Do you ever close your eyes and just wish you could lay down and keep them closed for an interval of 30 to 180 minutes? That’s how I feel right now. I need a freaking nap.

I love napping. God, it’s fun. I want to nap every day. I want to lower my body into a reclined position, my head supported by a pillow or cushion if possible, and drift off into sleepy-land.

It’s summer now. Summer, for me, is known as the Season of the Sweaty Nap. I’ll nap and sweat simultaneously. (Saves time that way.) There’s something a little unpleasant about the sweaty nap, but at the same time, it’s all right. You really feel like you’ve accomplished something during a sweaty nap. You know that even though your conscious brain is turned off, the rest of your body is still plugging along, using its cooling mechanisms and what have you.

Anyway, I don’t know why I’ve been so tired lately. But for some reason I want to nap nonstop. That raises an interesting question: If you nap nonstop, is it still a nap? I’d say no. I guess that would be called a coma, actually.

I am a little afraid that I will fall asleep at my desk, thus destroying once and for all the perception that I am a hard worker. You just can’t fall asleep at your desk and keep that kind of reputation going. It would be a shame if that were to happen. But at least I’d be well rested.

(yawn.)

It’s over, folks. All done. Finis. Endut.

It happened on Wednesday, May 31, 2006. The Ramsey County Courthouse, 15 W. Kellogg Blvd., room 190, 2:15 p.m., the case of Belden vs. Belden. There was this judge who wasn’t technically a judge (she’s a "family court referee"), but she had a robe and when she came into the room, we stood up as if she were a real judge. Then we had to raise our right hands and swear to not lie about stuff. Then we sat across from each other at this table and the ref went over all of our papers and asked us very basic, obvious questions, to which we (well, mostly she, because she was the petitioner) would say "yes" or "no."

Ten minutes zipped past, and then it was done. The ref said that the judge would approve it that day and that we’d be getting a notice in the mail in 7 to 10 days about how to pick up a certified copy of our divorce certificate, or decree, or edict, or whatever it is.

It’s over. I mean, it had been "over" for a long time, but now, officially, it’s over.

It started, officially, almost exactly 8 years ago, on June 13, 1998, but really it "started" long before that, in the fall of 1993, when I was still a senior in high school. HIGH SCHOOL. That’s when I met her. That was 13 years ago. That’s almost half of my life ago. The person I was then and the person I am now don’t resemble each other very much. If you were to somehow put them both in a room, I don’t even know if they’d get along. The "then" me would probably be quiet and awkward and the "now" me would probably intimidate him. They might have a few laughs together, but I think the "now" me would cringe at some of the things "then" me would say. And the "now" me would think it was sad how little the "then" me thought of himself.

If the "now" me could tell the "then" me anything, what would it be? Would the "now" me tell the "then" me to do anything differently? I don’t know. Fact is, the "now" me would be a different me if the "then" me had done things differently. Would he be a better me? It’s possible. But I don’t think so. I think what was supposed to happen is what did happen.

A lot went down in those 13 years that served as the bridge between "then" me and "now" me. It would be a disservice and a lie to say there weren’t good times. Of course there were. And it would be dishonest to dismiss all the bad things and pretend they didn’t have a profound impact on me. The bad things always teach you more than the good things. The good things are easy. You just sit there and soak them up and it feels  nice. But it’s the bad things that make you think, agonize, suffer, worry, wonder, question, change. Is it a good thing that I changed as much as I did? Yes. I think that’s something that the "then" me and the "now" me could agree on, because the "then" me didn’t really like who he was, and if he met me today, I think he’d wish he was more like me. And now I know that if he were to confide in me that he felt that way (which he wouldn’t have done), I could comfort him by telling him, "It will happen. You’ll get there."

And I think it would be wise of the "now" me to add one final thought: "When you get there, don’t stop."

Why am I not a world-famous blogger yet? Why am I not even a Friendster-famous blogger? Goddammit, my blog is the greatest thing since unsliced bread. That’s right. You read that correctly. Not just the best thing since sliced bread. Better than that. The best thing since the first time somebody decided to mash up some wheat and add some yeast and bake the freaking thing. That’s this blog.

Friendster does this thing now where it shows you samples of what other people are writing on their Friendster blogs. There are so-called "featured" blogs and then there are all the rest. Who are these people doing these featured blogs? They are not good bloggers. I don’t want to be judgmental here, but … but I can’t think of a way to end that sentence. These people should be banned from blogging. Write something interesting, you dolts! Can Friendster not see the oh-so-obvious supremacy of "A Place Called B.L.O.G." over crap like this and this and this? Why am I not a featured blog yet?

Maybe I will have to accept my role as a cult phenomenon with a small but devoted following and give up any delusions about mainstream blog popularity. I’m the brilliant, underrated Mr. Show of blogs, while these other dweebs are the Saturday Night Lives of the blogosphere. Yeah. That’s what I’ll tell myself. I like that.

Grrrrr.

I’m actually in a very good mood.