Friday, July 08, 2011

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!!!

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

Kate said...

Uau, you've been up to a lot of things!

I've been meaning to check out NEPA blogs for a while now, maybe I'll do it tomorrow. What is it about, anyway?

About the Casey Anthony case ... I hadn't even heard about it until you mentioned it in your post. Uhmm, around this side of the world I guess everyone's more concerned with Strauss-Khan and the IMF and Greece and Moody's and stuff like that. Oh well ...

D.B. Echo said...

Hi, Kate! NEPA Blogs is a blog that links to blogs by or about people from the Northeastern Pennsylvania area. We have a strong sense of regionalism here, coupled with a massive regional inferiority complex and a great deal of self-loathing. We're trying to capture the essence of the area by showcasing the hundreds of blogs that are being written about it, or about things going on in it, or just about...stuff.

I talked about the history of this site, and why I created it in the first place, in this post:

http://anothermonkey.blogspot.com/2011/05/nepa-blogs.html

D.B. Echo said...

Kate, how is the Strauss-Kahn sitiation perceived there? I've been wondering about that.

May I ask, where are you located? I was assuming Portugal, but I guess that's just from you mentioning visiting the South of Spain. But that's a really reak basis for that assumption.

Kate said...

I actually changed my name on Blogger from Melody to Kate, so that I wouldn't be faking everything too much. But yes, you assumed right, I'm from Portugal, the name Kate is just a variation from my real name.

About the Strauss-Khan situation, everyone was very accusing and stuff, and now they've actually stopped talking about it in the news, but I just bought the latest Focus magazine and there was an article there about both Strauss-Khan and his alleged victim. The article really made me rethink my position, because of the facts they presented about the victim (lying about the number of children just to pay less, etc). Maybe the next week's issue will have something else, I don't know, but the case finally died out here.

The focus is now mainly on Greece, Italy, Moody's and, of course, the IMF.

I'll check out the NEPA blogs post now! ;)

Todd HellsKitchen said...

Glad to see all that blogging energy isn't going to waste... LOL... As for me, I'm on my summer break so my blogging time increases tenfold... As for the news... I've become pretty good about avoiding all news stories that i find especially troubling... The DVR makes it easy to fast forward... And I make good use of the scroll wheel on the pc... I saw VERY LITTLE of the Casey story... And I'm proud of that! LOL