In which a return to blogging is attempted

When last we saw our erstwhile blogger, he was spewing forth yet another apology for not blogging more often. Even though he seemed to mean it, it was nonetheless a bit tedious. The only thing more tedious is the several half-hearted attempts he had made to keep the blog alive during his ridiculously lengthy absences. Such attempts typically began with some sort of announcement that he was back on the blog.

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I am back on the blog, Blogreader*!

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Next weekend is Lollapalooza, once a national touring festival and now something which happens only in Chicago, once every summer. Typically during a heat wave. I have never attended one of these before, but I think I had tickets for whichever one Siouxsie and the Banshees co-headlined (1992, maybe).

The lineup looks really good. There is almost never a time in the three days that there is not at least a band I would be willing to see, and there are several slots where I shall have to make a choice between two or more excellent shows. So I've got that coming up. Currently, it is supposed to storm all three days, so I'm expecting a wet, muddy, exhausting slog through the contemporary indie scene. This hasn't seemed to dampen my excitement.

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I also have about a 74% chance of another longish trip to London, similar to the one I took in 2006, near the conception of this blog. This was really when I started blogging seriously, and I expect I'll once again be sending my travels home in 300-word blobs for my friends who cannot come.

*at this point, I'm assuming that the term "Blogreader" applies mainly to my mom and whatever friends I personally harrangue to come and read this. But if any old Blogfriends remain, please stop and say hello.

The Lucy Conundrum

Normally, if I am asked to liken myself to a Peanuts character—which is no longer as much of a rarity as it should be, in the age of memes—I'd have to say I'm Charlie himself. I'm a bit hapless at times, prone also to repeating mistakes and finding myself crushed all over again even though I should know better. Also, I am not a good baseball player.

But thinking about this blog, I realize I have become Lucy, the obnoxious one who continually sets up Mr. Brown for one of his disappointments. And all she does is offer to hold a football.

Just in the way that I flit back in here from time to time with every intent of opening anew this blog of mine, which I think about far more often than would be apparent to anyone who clicks in to find I have once again not created a new post.

So, thinking about it, and myself as a writer, and how keeping this blog made me a better writer, I went and reread a bunch of it last weekend. It was sort of like reading an old diary, except that enough time had passed for most of the entries that it was a bit like reading the diary of someone else.

I wonder if Lucy fully intends to hold still each time. I try to imagine the scenarios that could pull a person away suddenly in the span between when Charlie starts his run and when he reaches that pivotal moment when foot fails to meet ball and he goes off hurtling through the sky. I wonder if Charles Schultz ever thought about the physics involved, and the impossibility of such a thing really being caused by the lack of a football.

I wonder if anyone still clicks in here. I wonder if I can rediscover that part of me that sought out little tales and small jokes to bring back to all those I affectionately called "Blogreader."

Can't hurt to try.

If nothing else, it's a good way to avoid work.

Where was the moon?

First, go here if you'd like to read a Beatle conspiracy which ties into the last post, sort of. Sure makes the "Paul is Dead" lot seem almost reasonable.

So where was I these last few months? Nowhere special, sadly. It'd be wonderful to report that I was absent from the blog because I was gallivanting on some grand adventure.

Nope.

I got pneumonia in February, and took a long time to recover. I found an aborted post entitled "Pneu-Mania!" from about that time which I clearly intended to post, but which was not fit by even the lax standards of this blog.

Can you imagine?

These days I'm back out among the Workers, although now I flit from place to place like a pollinating bee. I have no fixed employment position, which is interesting and sometimes a bit frightful.

And I find a little urge inside me to communicate again, really the first such urge since maybe November. So, we shall see if that holds.

I may have some pictures for you soon, if I can get the time to pull my recent shots off of my camera.

Groundhog

Once again, woodland mammals had no effect whatsoever on the tilt of the Earth in relation to the Sun. Imagine me slackjawed in stunned disbelief.

Winter continues. It always does.

Snow fell here over the last few days and nights. I had heard the word "blizzard" bandied about a few times in the days and hours before the actual snow arrived, but it was merely a snowstorm. The difference between the two is an important one for those of us who live in areas prone to either phenomenon.

Thursday night I bundled myself warmly and stepped outside around midnight. So I guess it was Friday morning. I was out hoping to take pictures, but mostly, I think I just wanted to soak in the bright hush a big snowfall brings to Chicago.

I walked around for maybe 15 minutes, and in that time I noticed only one lone automobile shushing by me. It was nearly as quiet out as if I did not live in a city at all. What sounds there were were absorbed nicely by the layer of snow. It was easy to feel like the only soul in the city.

It is never dark in Chicago, not even deep in the night, but a fresh snow makes the whole place glow with refracted light. It's like the light cannot escape. I absorbed as many lumens into my eyes as I could, but it had no effect that I could discern on the overall brightness.

My sluggish camera found enough light bouncing off all the new white to hold focus in the night, even if all the resultant images were heavily tinged in yellows and golds. They were nearly sepias already, so it was not a giant leap for me to finish the job myself when I processed the results.

Here are a few shots from my midnight creeping:




While it crunched satisfyingly under my boots, the snowfall was a little disappointing in terms of actual accumulation.

In the shots, the lights are all severely blown out, which I guess is technically bad photography, but I love how they turned out nonetheless.

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And I guess, if you are a bad blogger and stop posting regularly, Blogger will take away the stripey backdrop of your banner at the top of your page. Just another thing to be wary of, Blogwriters. Hope you guys can still enjoy the site without the friendly stripes until I can remember where that thing was in my code and fix it.

Maybe it's a punishment not for the lack of posts so much as that I think it may have been longer than six months since I posted about children or animals, in clear violation of the Blogger terms of service. I think my last post that counts was probably "Sphinx," in which I recounted my difficulties in teaching my cat to quiz me with riddles in our idle time.

The cat, of course, has nearly nothing but idle time. His schedule is clear. I left out the classifieds not long ago, in hopes that he would show some interest once more in computer programming, as he did when he was young. To show his contempt for my plan to get him to start contributing to the household, he or his sister urinated on the pages.

Does this qualify as a cat post now? Can I have my stripes back?

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I think this blog is open again, Blogreader. Soon enough, you might find Monday Morning Haiku (often before Tuesday afternoon) and buzzing about a fiction contest sometime in the future. Maybe even the reinstatement of the ill-fated "Ask the Moon" advice column.

But smaller steps are necessary. I feel unreasonably skittish about blogging lately, and I don't want to spook myself right back into the darkness.

In the meantime, as I find my feet again, feel free to drop me a comment, tag me with a meme.

Um...

I did not mean to be gone so long. I did not mean to be gone at all, in fact. And now enough time has passed that I feel ridiculously self-conscious putting up a post. Best just to get one up so that the bubble is burst.

I was uncommunicative to the extreme for a little bit there, and then, when I had intended to start posting again—perhaps a fun "Ask the Moon" about what to do when a blogger disappears—I got an abscess in my tooth and lost another week to fever and such.

And so, I suddenly find December has fallen upon us. My play has completed its run. Time has passed and I have shared nothing new with you, my promise of stories untold in the last post now sounding nearly funny in light of the time in between.

Some of you have expressed hopes that I am well, and I appreciate that. I have not responded to the comments on the previous post, and I may not, but I wanted you to know that such missives were touching to me.

Anyway, enough maudlin wailing. I am back. I hope to remain back. Thank you for coming by and reading.

Moon Topples blog post

Apology for lack of recent blog posts and explanation of whereabouts. Further explanation of whereabouts and small joke at writer's expense. Alternate punch line to previous small joke. Declaration of intent to maintain blog with greater diligence.

Five asterisks, centered.

Beginning of anecdote concerning recent event or activity. Additional sentences as needed to flesh out detail or advance narrative of anecdote. Inadvertent revelation of personal detail. Conclusion of anecdote with reiteration of main point to reinforce perspective.

Five asterisks, centered.

Photographic image taken by writer.

Sentence explaining the provenance of the image with reference to Chicago as "my city" and the reader as "Blogreader." Statement of affection for photography and/or camera. Continued explanation of photograph and where it was taken. Small joke at writer's expense.

Five asterisks, centered.

Long form joke at writer's expense.

Five asterisks, centered.

Reluctant opening to section on the status of off-blog writing. Latest theory as to why it is not going well. Further explanation and vaguely-worded apology to self and/or reader for lack of progress. Listing of new strategy coupled with reasons why new strategy will change everything. Small joke at writer's expense.

End blog post.

Year One concludes

One year ago today I started to look into the possibility of having a blog of my own. Something like 90 minutes later, although I thought I was still just researching the idea, I made my first post to this page, and sent an email to a few friends letting them know I had started a blog.

It was easy. Accidental, even.

Even though I had made the decision to pursue writing on my birthday nearly two months earlier, it was the launch of the blog that started to solidify this idea in my head. Here I had the ability to write about whatever I wanted, with the added incentive of maybe being read by a person or two.

While I have not lived up to my original intent of writing here every day (especially this summer), this blog has become an extremely important outlet for me, housing many words and images that otherwise would have had no real place to go.

And through it I have gradually met a lot of interesting people from around the world. Not bad for something that I thought initially might be a good way for me to waste time and make a few of my friends chuckle from time to time.

In honor of my bloggiversary, I thought I might bake a cake, but then I thought about the image of a man sitting alone in his apartment, maybe wearing a pointy hat, eating an entire cake by himself. It was not a good image for me. So e-cake instead for all the Blogreaders who have helped to make this first year of The Moon Topples a success. Thanks muchly.

Irony and stuff

Irony seems like the right word to describe having been awarded a Thoughtful Blogger Award by lovely Verilion and Wanderlust Scarlett during a week of ignoring the comments piling up on the previous post. My apologies especially to those of you who thought I was stewing in something bad, with no encouraging words from me to suggest otherwise. I am fine.

You are some awfully nice people, Blogreaders.

I am told that this award means I am being honored for making people feel welcome when they stop by this page, and I am delighted to think that this might be so. I'm really more of a Cantankerous Bastard in person, but I guess they didn't have an award for that. Maybe it is too long to fit in the space they wanted to use.

And then I find that I have also been given a Creative Blogger Award by Liz Fenwick, Novel Racer and Blogfriend. She's the one who always seems to come by to prod me back into my writing when I have wandered too far afield.

This award feels a little ironic at the moment as well, since my creative juices haven't exactly been surging lately. I am not overly worried, however. I think such things are cyclical, and that before I know it, I will be awash in ideas again.

In a couple of weeks I will have been blogging for a year, and I've been thinking about it a lot lately: what a year is, what it means to keep this blog going. I have even thought about a retirement from blogging.

Even in my hypothetical scenarios, no sooner do I announce that I am done with blogging than I have something I am dying to share on my blog, and I crack open the seal to post again. I may not be posting daily like I used to do, but I have come to the realization that keeping this page, writing here, and interacting with the people who are kind enough to stop by—well, these are very important things to me.

From Liz's post, I learned a bit more about where these awards originated, which is here. I normally skip the part of any blogging experience which requires me to tag people, but this one seems worthy. If you are mentioned below, the link in this paragraph is where you can go to find your award. So here goes...

I wanted to give a Thoughtful Blogger Award to GoodThomas, but he no longer exists, so instead I'll give it to my friend David, over at Witnessing Am I (which I tend to read as Witnessing Ami, and I really want to know who this Ami is and why David is spying on her). David is thoughtful not only in his comments, which he responds to diligently, but in the content of his posts as well. I wish the best for him and for Ami.

An Inspirational Blogger Award must go to Reading the Signs. She writes with grace, whether she is remembering her father or worrying about a trip to the dentist. Like a lot of the people I have met through blogging, she is wrestling a novel onto the page. I, for one, would love to read it.

When I first met Caveblogem at Pretty Good on Paper, he was alternating posts about entering fiction comps (and goading me into the first contest I held) with somewhat strange ones about how to make a PDA holder out of paper. His scientific mind and an article he read led to his wonderful analysis of the words in actual use in the blogosphere. I think I was one of the first dozen or so to be scrutinized, but by now his word clouds and haiku have become the must-have blog accessory. I offer him a Creative Blogger Award for discovering a way to link statistical analysis with the fact that bloggers love to hear things about themselves.

I draw a lot of inspiration from Minx as well, both on and off the blog. She's talked me off the ledge with my novel a few times, and once mailed me a mysterious, empty envelope. Although I find her willingness to join literally anything that comes along a little distasteful, she has proved to be a great friend for a blogger to have, one who somewhat effortlessly draws people together, even as she is flipping us all off. An Inspirational Blogger Award for Minx.

Finally, Heart in San Francisco is so consistently entertaining that I suspect future generations will debate whether she ever actually existed, or was merely a consortium of delightfully amusing writers all using the same pen name. I have my suspicions as well. At any rate, whoever they are, they get a Creative Blogger Award from me.

I could go on and on and on, dribbling out my praises until this post was more or less a replication of my blogroll. The rules say to give out five, though, so five is what I held myself to. If you are in my blogroll at all, though, you should know that you are certainly one of the thoughtful ones, who made me feel welcome when I knocked on your doors to offer a comment. If you aren't in there, well, it's likely an oversight, and there's always room for more.

Oh! And here are my awards:








Thanks again to Verilion, Liz and Scarlett for thinking of me.

Breaking Radio Silence

I've been feeling unusually quiet lately, Blogreader, as you may or may not have noticed from my lack of posts. I've been writing a little, outlining some—thinking and plotting and dreaming a bit in the hopes that I will soon have enough planning done to start my new draft.

I've been staying off the computer more than normal as well.

This isn't depression, this latest batch of quiet. I am familiar with depression, and this is something else. As near as I can tell, it is simply quiet.

It is good to be silent sometimes, I think. Besides, using the standard picture/word ratio, my last post was slightly over 10,000 words. Surely that was enough to last a while.

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You guys seem to have continued the tie score as to whether the clouds in the previous post were cotton candy or the impending apocalypse. I suppose I will declare cotton candy the winner on the basis of the earth's continued existence.

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We have been having a heatwave here. If you don't understand the cliche about it not being the heat but the humidity, come and spend a summer in Chicago. Sadly, the really bad heat, the kind that actually claims lives, is not due until late this month and throughout August. So there's that to look forward to.

I finally broke down and bought an air conditioner two years ago. Within a few hours I was puzzled at how I had survived for so many years without one. As much as I support energy conservation and the like, there is also a limit to how many hours I am willing to lie in a pool of my own sweat trying to pretend I'm not miserable.

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Announcement #1: In case you have forgotten or were not aware, the next GBA(s)FC will be starting August 1st. I imagine it'll run a lot like the last one, except that I will be scaling back the prizes somewhat. I plan to have only a single winner in the Author's Choice and Jury's Choice categories, and possibly an honorable mention or two. This is due to budgetary restraints as well as wanting to make sure that the people who win feel special. A friend also pointed out that a high percentage of winners also can make the people who do not receive an award feel worse. This makes sense to me.

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Announcement #2: I will be quitting smoking on Monday, July 16. Tuesday at the latest (depending on when I finish off my current stash). This will not be my first attempt to quit smoking, but I hope it'll be my last. So wish me luck with that, and send me candy if you wanna. Well, e-candy, I guess. I expect I'll try to blog when things get rough, so you can expect some posts about how I'm feeling terrible. What fun!

The Bee Gees

More weird little internet thingies today. Only yesterday, in fact, I learned that I can do better on a trivia quiz than a monkey!

I like this one because all I had to do was type in my URL and it does the rest, based on incoming links measured by Technorati. B-list certainly isn't bad. I do sort of wish they had some color options, though. Pink doesn't exactly go with the color scheme around here.




And I am apparently quite safe for children as well. I did this one a few days ago and was designated PG because I used the word "punch." I'm pretty sure I used it in the non-hitting sense, but they don't seem to have a contextual aspect to their ratings, much like the actual MPAA. Now, though, it found only a single use of the word "death," and granted me an all-ages pass. How "death" is preferable to "punch" beats me. My guess is also that it only checks the first page of the site, as I know I have used the word "fuck" a couple of times, in my Nano fiction excerpts alone. I believe I had a character say that something "rocks like a motherfucker," and another character echo that phrase in benign agreement. So tell all the kids to come on by the Moon Topples Big-Fun Family Blog.





UPDATE: Tell the kids to stay away after all. I guess these things can change pretty quick once you start dropping the F-bomb.

Just type something and publish, right?

I seem to have forgotten how to blog. I was trying to keep a low profile during the contest, and now I seem to have lost the knack for typing up something of relative interest to share with the collection of virtual strangers I call Blogfriends.

Hmmm. For now—while I attempt to relearn this skill—I will direct you to my exclusive interview with a major movie star, first posted back in December. You can find it here.

Word on the street...

A look at what some other bloggers say about or to me in their comments sections.

I destroy things
"...Damn you, maht!...You ruin everything that is good and pure!"
—Basest

MySpace and marsupials
"...You have caused my MySpace confusion... you have a tail and bandy legs? What are you? A kangaroo?..."
—Caroline at In Search of Adam

On self-doubt
"...Did you mean you never figured out how to like yourself, permanently?..."
—Good Thomas

I scare people
"...I don't know whether I dare visit your place again..."
—Anna MR

I am sensitive
"...I'm sorry I tortured you...It was a thoughtless thing to do ..."
—Daily Straying

On dubious logic
"...I think that statement can probably be effectively challenged..."
—Minty

Arch-nemesis or Blogfriend?
"...I swear to God that I’ll not embarrass you like this again, and that I will insult you with relish when our paths next cross..."
—Periodic Englishman

My thoughts are tailored to suit
"...Thank you for your sartorial advice..."
—NMJ at Velo-Gubbed Legs

esac ym ni eurt yllaicepsE
"...Uoy reven wonk erehw rury rehtaf sah neeb..."
—Heart in San Francisco at Guilty With an Explanation

Big fake words about big real words
"...When you say "ginormous" do you mean that the letters are too big or that the blog spills over the page and you have to use a horizontal bar to slide across?..."
—Shameless Words

I cried and cried
"...And for goodness sake have a word with Moon Topples, will you? If he wants to hang out with the English blogs then he will have to get used to sarcasm and a life less literal!..."
—Inner Minx

Depends on the size of the microscope, and whether your hands are cold
"...People seem so averse these days to being put under a microscope..."
—Caveblogem at Pretty Good on Paper

Blogging by on my looks
"...It's a good thing you're adorable..."
—Ms. Baroque at Baroque in Hackney

I am insightful
"... Oh, Mr Moon, you have seen through my shallow words..."
—Ms. Melancholy at Confessions of a Psychotherapist

The market crumbles
".... I just couldn't work it out...I'm still struggling with the idea of how do you sell a blog? Like what exactly are you selling?..."
Verilion at A Wanderer in Paris

I spread paranoia
"...Maybe the helpful shop assistant had his own agenda..."
—Baralbion at airynothingblog

Teutonic tutelage
"...Maht, thanks for the umlauts!..."
—Kyklops

Simplicity
"...Maht, you're just mean..."
—Chris from The Scottish Lemon

These are in no way taken out of context. Why would I take them out of context? Just to score some cheap laughs? Does that sound like something I would do?