marramgrass

My cousin over there on the sidebar (The Zoo OF Small Plastic Animals – a groovy name if ever there was one) has taken up the NaBloPoMo challenge (as has Ruth). Stephen has at last ditched that horrible Livejournal blogging thing he had going on, and appears to be approaching it with gusto. This is a good thing in many ways. The main one is that he tends to be a funny and entertaining guy (even without my family bias), so the more he writes and the more we get to enjoy, the better.

Of course, just reporting on that constitutes a really feeble excuse for a daily post, but it’s Sunday evening and I’m still fully medicated for the dodgy back, so what can I do about it?

I don’t know.

Is it sufficient for me to put myself on the line and hint that I have a couple of (hopefully) majorly interesting, entertaining, worthwhile and insightful — maybe even inciteful — posts half-planned for this month of challenge?

I hope so, because that’s all you’re getting for now :)

I’ll try anything once…

Following on from Andrew, I thought I’d try out this BlogRush thing that seems to be getting a lot of exposure.

We’ll see how it pans out.

It’d be nice if you could style their widget a bit – as it is it’s a bit on the massive side, which is why I’ve shoved it right down to the bottom of the sidebar there.

Traffic is not my aim, here, but it does make me feel popular and validated :-/

I’ve added two new people to the sidebar, and I can recommend their blogs to you:

Ruth Elkin is a youth worker I met last year at the PCI YM Summer School.

David Seah is a designer-type who spends a fair amount of time considering himself and his approach to life; the honesty of his self-assessment is quite humbling. He also designs forms, lots of them, some of which are exceedingly cool and potentially very useful.

Others may join the list soon – I keep discovering cool, interesting and entertaining sites.

The comics are funny, if very gamer-y. Works for me, maybe not for you. But the heart of the matter is a way with words that runs something like this:

You couldn’t pay us to play Lair any more than we have already. The game has given me a new respect for the professional reviewer, because when a game like Lair hits their desk, they have no recourse. They must tread, as Dante did, down that scarred staircase and into the greasy throat of hell.

(Sorry for the naff title – I was struggling with that one!)

Brodie made an interesting post last week. I’d recommend going and reading it and the comments it’s attracted, as it’s what sparked off the thought processes that have lead to this post, but if you don’t want to the gist of it is about another blogger who drew the attention of the photographer of an image they had used. The discussion that follows is very interesting, and has got me asking lots of questions of myself and my own attitudes. My thoughts are a work in progress, but that’s always the way if we’re honest.

(There’s lots of long, dull faffiness in this post, but I hope it ends up somewhere worthwhile.)
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Why is it that when getting to sleep is quite imperative, that’s when you can’t?

(Background: ever since I was about 9, I’ve had recurring bouts of insomnia. I’ll regularly have spells of a week or two to a month or so where I sleep very little verging on not at all — at these times a lot of reading gets done. It’s a trait I share with my father and my brother. You get used to it.)

This morning my alarm went off at 0430, as I had to drive my sister-in-law to Dublin airport (about a 180 mile round-trip — I was back in time for breakfast).

But of course, when I got into bed last night, I lay awake until sometime after 1 a.m. Typical, and I knew it would happen. Any time I have to get up earlier than normal, it happens, sure as anything. Probably because I tell myself it’ll happen, I know.

At that time of the morning, it was quite a pleasant drive.

…

While I’m here, I think I’ll be adding another link to the sidebar, on top of the recent flurry of activity there. Monochromatic Outlook is the very readable and rather eclectic blog of a guy in (I think) San Francisco.

Brodie hit me with one of the memes currently working its way round.

5 things that you may or may not know about me:

1. I have a weakness for bound paper of two forms in particular. I cannot walk by a shelf of notebooks in a shop without having a good hard look and probably buying something. I’m incredibly picky about them, though. (A question: you prefer a certain kind of notebook, one that is quite hard to find in shops in the UK. You discover a high street stationer in Belfast selling them for around half the cost of your usual source. Do you A. buy one, B. buy two, or C. buy two, then go back a few days later and buy the dozen on the shelf and plan a return trip soon to see if they’ve put more out? They’ll all get used, don’t worry…) Otherwise, I’m a sucker for Bibles of all shapes and sizes.
2. Even though I prefer to have my hair quite short (a number three all over), I generally only have it cut every three-and-a-half to four months. The only reason I make it that often is that my wife does it for me. (Cue funny story about the clippers dying half-way across my head when we were about to go out somewhere.) Part of the reason is that I find getting my hair cut to be an exceedingly uncomfortable experience, sitting there while someone works so closely around my head for so long.
3. Our video and DVD collection contains a disproportionate number of what might be called ‘chick flicks’. People tend to assume they are my wife’s, but in most cases they are wrong. I find both Hugh Grant and Sandra Bullock to be quite watchable, even in the same film. How’s that for an admission of guilt?
4. I sort-of fulfilled an ambition recently when a national Christian youth organisation contracted me as one of their writers of curriculum material. In a slightly-different-than-intended way, I guess I’m a published writer. Like I said, sort of!
5. When I was 10, I borrowed a collection of horror short stories from the class library. I only read the first one because it freaked me out so badly. For weeks I wouldn’t go out into the back garden to feed the rabbits unless a parent stood at the back door and talked to me. I recently stopped reading a novel after 50-odd pages because I know it would also freak me out. Those are two of perhaps five books in my life I have started reading and not finished for various reasons. Totally unconnected, I now contend that the short story is a wonderful form that really should be published more often and more visibly, and so read by many more people. Ask me and I’ll point you towards an exemplary collection or two in the genre of your choice.

Where to now? Let’s shunt this along to Stephen, Michaela, Debs, Charlie and Colin and see which of them succumbs…

(1, 2, 3.)

10 things…, number 8 (i).

The photoblog of Gabriel Martinez Aguirre. A very talented photographer I’ve encountered in a couple of different places online. For more, go and get lost in his Flickr stream. Really excellent, and a very pleasant chap in the online world.

Michaela, a youth worker I studied with, writes one of my favourite blogs. Witty, charming, affecting, thoughtful… Another super person, I’m glad to say I occasionally get to bump into her in real life.

Will come back to these with another couple soon.

Si Johnston reflects on the usual goings-on in NI in July.

He writes it at an interesting time for us. We are just about to return to make a home and a life again on that side of the Irish Sea. Recently we were visiting the town where we will be spending a fair portion of our time, and the bunting was up and everywhere was decked out all ready for the festivities of the season. It got me thinking.

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Brodie is writing up the experiences of a small team from his church just returned from mucking in with the ongoing relief work in new Orleans many months after the hurricane.

This will be worth keeping an eye on, I feel. Much respect for people putting their money and their selves into action in such a way.