VirusHead

As is my habit from time to time, I’ve changed the look of the blog. I’m using a different base theme, and I’ve customized it a bit.

This is more the standard blog width. I’ve been using full-screen flexible templates for a while and so it looks a little “skinny” to my eyes, but perhaps it’s easier to read this way. I’d like to figure out how to make it about 200-300 pixels wider, but I’ve run out of time today.

The subtitle of the blog has changed, and I’ve added a few of my favorite virus-related quotations on the right sidebar.

I am fond of the rotating banner at the top. I’ve added fifteen images from my own photo collection so far. I’ll probably delete some and add others for a while as I discover better ways to select just the right bit of the photograph for the dimensions of the graphic.

The “V” background graphic is brought in from the main site for a little more continuity. Of course, VirusHead.net badly needs a complete redesign, but that’s a much larger project.

The post “signature” (it’s not actually a scan of my handwriting) is also a new thing. I saw them on some other blogs and liked it. I suspect that it won’t be permanent.

Let me know if anything wonks out on you.

Mama Christy tagged me for an 8 Random Things about me meme (I can refuse her nothing).

Here are the rules.

1. Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
2. People who are tagged need to write a post on their own blog (about their eight things) and post these rules.
3. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
4. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

OK, on to the eight random things about VirusHead:

1. I harbor a secret hope that sometime in my lifetime we will see a Pope named Hilarius II. Little things like that keep me going.
2. I still don’t salute the flag, even though I haven’t been a Jehovah’s Witness for many, many years. It’s a creepy nationalistic ritual, and I think things are always very bad when flags become too important.
3. I despise ants. When I was five, I climbed a fire-ant hill in Houston Texas and was swarmed. My wise mother bought me special ant-stomping shoes. They worked very, very well. Nowadays, I pick them up between my fingers and squish them until they die. I am now so sensitive to the toxin that I have a little sphere-shaped hole in my toe from when I was bitten in graduate school.
4. I adore Chocolate Malted Ovaltine – hot or cold. When I was pregnant with Ben, it was the only real craving that I had. I drank quite a lot of it. Really. A lot of it. About a gallon a day.
5. That reminds me.. I don’t eat or drink “diet” anything. I use butter and sugar and whole milk. If I can’t have whole milk, I’d rather just have something else than mess around with skim or even 2%. I don’t eat a lot, but what I eat has a minimum of chemicals (you know, unless I’ve just got to have some Funyons: moderation in all things). I am very suspicious of fat-free dairy products, sugar free cookies, diet soda, and so on. I’ve never seen anybody lose weight by eating or drinking any of this stuff.
6. I can no longer hit E above C when I sing, unless it is in a Bee Gees falsetto. Wah.
7. I’m not a joiner. I’m not a team player. I’m not with the program. I’m not progressing our goals. It would never occur to me to take prisoners in the first place. And I really detest sloppy, euphemistic language, no matter how guilty I might be of using it myself.
8. I really, really wish that we had a good climbable maple tree in our yard, but we don’t. It’s oaks and more oaks, with old dry pines and one fig tree. I miss having a good perch in the trees.

Anyone that wants to participate is hereby invited. Here are some people that might have fun doing this, but no worries if you don’t feel like participating.

• Dante’s Virgil
• Grateful Bear
• Makanani
• Meditations on an Eyeball
• Postcards from Hell’s Kitchen
• Prose and Thorn
• Telling it Like it Is
• The Raven’s Retreat

Lin at Telling It Like It Is has shot me right in the head with what she’s calling a 357 magnum meme. Assembled over at Home with Heather, this one asks some basic questions about blogging. Far be it from me to refuse such a sweet request from a fellow former JW… so…

1. How long have you been blogging?

I started blogging four years ago (November 2003). I actually had a couple of other blogs – one at Blogger and one somewhere else that I’ve forgotten – but this is really the only one that counts. My domain – woo-hoo!

2. What inspired you to start a blog and who are your mentors?

There wasn’t any one reason that I started blogging. I wanted to bookmark things that I enjoyed, mark life events, comment on politics and culture and so on. My first posts were a couple of poems, a celebration of the birth of my nephew, a collection of funny religion products like the Huggy Jesus, an ex-JW take on Michael Jackson, thoughts about Bush’s campaign discourse, and wondering if snipers had “nests” before Oswald. So it’s always been an eclectic blog.

Mentors? None, really, not for blogging. I’ve enjoyed many different kinds of blogs, but I just do my thang. Where I’ve needed the most help is for design and coding issues, and fortunately other bloggers are very generous with information and assistance – too many to name.

3. Are you trying to make money online, or just doing it for fun?

Neither. Once or twice a year, I get enough commission from Amazon to get myself a book. Not for the money, then. On the other hand, it’s not just for fun. There are a lot of different reasons that I blog. It’s a ritual that helps me stay grounded and in touch with myself and the worlds that I inhabit (and that surround me). It’s a personal journal – although somewhat censored – about important events and thoughts. It functions as outreach to other former JWs and people who are dealing with various issues having to do with Jehovah’ Witnesses – and that is very healing to me, too. It allows me to have the feeling of having some small voice with regard to what has happened and is happening in the United States, and to support activism, however small.

4. Tell me 3 things you LOVE about being online.

Three things? I love meeting and communicating with people I would never have known otherwise. There are at least a dozen people that I’ve met through this blog that I consider to be good friends, notwithstanding the fact that in most cases we never have met off-line.

I love reading other blogs, and I feel strongly that blogging has encouraged a wide variety of people to do more writing… and thinking. This encourages me and contributes to a feeling of hope about the future. Even when I vehemently disagree with someone’s thoughts, the very fact that they are writing means that they will do more writing. The more you write, the more you think, and the better you become at both.

I love the social aspect of the internet. I’m a little isolated these days, working part-time as a consultant, being a mom, and now without my own car again. One of my last close girlfriends here just moved out of state. Through the blog, Facebook, Care2, MySpace, and so on, I feel like I’m keeping up – at least a bit – with friends, old and new, and they each have extremely fun things to do beyond social networking. I digg Digg. I love to StumbleUpon things. I love to find things on YouTube (see Salvadore Dali on What’s Your Line – of course he’s an artist, but also an author, and according to him, an athlete too (hee-hee).

5. Tell me 3 things you STRUGGLE with in the online world.

The main thing I struggle with is having time to do all things I love to do. I sometimes have trouble with just playing around instead of writing something substantial in the blog.

I also get overwhelmed by how much information there really is – news items, blog posts, political actions, petitions, votes, bookmarking, weighing different viewpoints and perspectives. Sometimes I have trouble keeping up – even with just the things that really matter to me.

Last, as you may have seen in posts before, I struggle with being fair, ethical, compassionate, caring. It’s a high value for me, but it is sometimes very difficult to hold myself to my own high standards.

Ok, so that’s how it goes.

Now, as far as tagging five more bloggers, I’ve become a bit hesitant. On the one hand, a link from this blog to another blog is almost always a good thing – it gives you another little bit of reputation at Technorati and it might bring more readers to your blog to see all the other cool stuff you’re writing.

On the other hand, some people are tired of the memes, have too much else to write about, and so on.

So we’ll do a win-win. I’ll tag 10 people from 9 blogs – only people I’d really be interested in knowing more about and who haven’t already answered these kinds of questions as far as I can tell (that lets you out, Todd, and Jolly Roger, it’s up to you). “The tagged” are then completely free, with total diplomatic immunity, to participate or not. No worries.

• The Artist formerly known as PusBoy and magicalshrimp at Virtual Pus
• PB at Prose and Thorn
• Jamie at The Online Rant
• Vance at Meditations on an Eyeball
• Traci at Buttrrflyyz
• Bev at Makanani
• Larry at Larry Hnetka Goes HMmmm
• Don at Life Cycle Analysis
• And just for the “most unlikely to respond” factor, let’s say Neil Gaiman

Now, just because I haven’t named you doesn’t mean you can’t participate!

My friend Amanda innocently suggested that I join her in adding the visual bookshelf application to my Facebook page.

Little did she know that it’s just the sort of thing I would latch onto when I’m bummed out. I guess it’s better than some of the alternatives.

I’ve already listed well over a thousand books that I’ve already read, and more than a hundred that I want to read. It’s ridiculous, because that doesn’t even begin to really address the sheer number of books that could be listed. I still read about 5-6 books a week, and I’m not a kid.

I don’t think I quite realized until just this moment: I am – truly – a complete bookworm nerd.

What a strange collection it turns out to be.

So many of my friends emailed this to me that I had to think I’m either a kind of Mommy-archetype for my friends, or it had to be a very fun video. I think (I think) it’s the latter.

A woman condenses everything a mom would say in a typical 24-hour period into the framework of the William Tell Overture.

So, by viral selection, here it is:

Yup. That’s about it.

(Thanks to Barbara, and Jacque, and Troy, and….)

Anybody got the lyrics?