I'm still here

I haven't felt too inspired to blog much lately. But that doesn't mean that I haven't been using my Blogging Energy Units.

Over on the Blogger Buzz blog there was a post called "The best blogging advice you’ve ever received." It includes a few bits of advice, but then opens the floor for submissions of advice that bloggers have received - or given. This meshed nicely with a post I wrote a few weeks ago, so I decided to do leave a comment with a link to it. As I had hoped, this resulted in a slight uptick in traffic, and a flurry of comments on that post. Some commentors asked for additional advice, or expansions of things I had mentioned in the post, so I have obliged - in some cases, with comments longer than many of my blog posts.

I also felt the need to take a friend to task who has been pretty staunchly in the "Obama is to blame for everything" camp  since day 1. I could have simply used this post as a comment, I suppose, but instead wrote the whole idea anew - with a comment of roughly the same length.

Then there's the Casey Anthony thing. I've tried to avoid it on TV and online as much as possible, to the extent that that's been possible when every "news" channel has been treating this like the single most important story since...well, the O.J. Simpson trial. I have my own opinions about the case, which probably aren't very different from yours. But neither you nor I nor pretty much anyone you'll see ranting and yammering about this case on TV or online was actually there in the courtroom (despite what some people who watched the whole thing on their talking picture boxes might think.) So, yeah, there's no justice for the victim of this horrible crime - but as Alan Dershowitz has pointed out, murder trials aren't about justice for the victim, they're about proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, something that was not done in this case.

But once the verdict came out, the Internet - Facebook especially - went, to use a technical term, apeshit. People are turning into lynch mobs, planning to go after both Casey Anthony and the jurors who heard this case - and we're talking about people who have almost certainly pissed, moaned, bitched, whined, and complained* each time they've received a jury duty notice in the mail, and have probably done everything in their power to avoid having to actually serve on a jury. And then, just as bad, maybe even worse, are the folks who have fetishized little Caylee Anthony, composing songs, creating videos, Photoshopping images of Jesus welcoming Caylee into Heaven.  For God's SAKE, people, there are horrible things happening just outside your doorstep, things you'd rather not know about, things you'd prefer not to get involved in because it's not your place, and none of your business, and how could we have known and what could we have done? So instead people obsess over and objectify a dead little girl, and transform her into a symbol of all the things that they wish they could have done in all the times they had failed people in their own lives, as if taking a picture of a little girl they had never heard of and would probably never have given a damn about if it weren't for the horrible circumstances of her death, and then covering that picture with hearts and roses will somehow make things better, make up for all the things they've never done, all the times they should have cared, should have acted, but didn't.

So. Anyway. I haven't actually come out and said that, of course. But I have left some lengthy comments on other blogs, like here and here.

And then there's NEPA Blogs.  We're trying to keep the beat going there with a minimum of two new posts a week and a header picture change every Wednesday. Whoever does a post also does a repost to the NEPA Bloggers group on Facebook, and Michelle also reposts to the NEPA Blog Twitter feed. I have a few blogs set aside to link to eventually, but last night I was inspired to do a brute-force search engine search - and hit the jackpot. Darling Stewie isn't just a great blog; the blogger at Darling Stewie is also fully involved in multiple social media platforms. So once I told her she'd been linked, she reposted my blog post to her Facebook page - and more than doubled our site traffic for the day! That's the way I'd always like to see things go!

I've also written another story for the second "Machine of Death" anthology, one which became particularly poignant today with the final launch of the Space Shuttle. I mean to get that submitted tonight.

And then there's the job thing. One major job submission today, within minutes of learning about the job; and just after I sent it, I received an e-mail from another source recommending the same job. Plus I've got another résumé to submit elsewhere; all I need to do is knock out a cover letter.

So. I'm still here. That's what I've been up to. How about you?

*OXFORD COMMA 4EVER!!!