Um...

Outside of one or two stalwarts you can count on, my blog reader has been awful quiet lately. I realize that the continual presence of Charlize is putting a lot of you to shame and all but this is ridiculous. I'd like to think you are all self-respectful enough to realize your blogs can catch up to Version53's standard of excellence with just a little bit of work. Come on now.

In the photos I've been picking of her you should by now have noticed a distinct lack of prurient "cheesecake." I think just a classy head shot of my personal icon is sufficient. Besides, long time readers will probably note, suggested sensuality has always been a bigger hit with me than the blatant, obvious kind. I'm actually turned off a little by women who plunge their necklines, wear bright red skirts and almost-all revealing sheer stuff, and vamp around like some kind of sexual robot. I have always been more inclined to find appeal in the moves a woman makes when she is unaware of herself or just being natural. The stuff women do when they're not trying has always been more appealing, and it's always been that way for me. Just in case anyone wanted to know.

Well let's see, what's news around here?

I feel like I'm repeating myself a lot lately. Thrice this and Thrice that. The GOP is a shitbag. Those passing for modern American conservatives need to all die in a fire and blah blah blah. The usual stuff. Has anybody noticed the links to dangerous anarchists being cycled through the sidebar? No? I didn't think so. Oh well. A guy can try.

Boo! Scare ya? Yeah well, whatever.

I'd talk about how a web design service some of us know is pitching in to build a personal website for me, but I may already have. Have I? That's exciting but also a bit perplexing. I have been told by people in the publishing business that writers need to have a "platform" (I keep using that word because that's what has been being described to me) these days so that it is easier for people to represent their work and for publishers to give them a window of opportunity. Here's an article at Poets&Writers that sort of backs that up. A pretty engaging discussion there if you get a chance. I'm gearing up for a campaign to once again try and storm the bastions of ink and paper. But I may end up looking at the small press world - which has been my haunt anyway - if it starts to look a little dreary. The plain fact is that the publishing world seems to be going through a drying-up phase. And the indies are simply exploding. So far as that goes you have to wade through a lot of shit to find good stuff, but good stuff exists. If you read our magazine you'll get some names you need to follow up on. Just sayin'. Again.

But anyway the website thing is perplexing because, as I explained to the designer doing the work on it, on the one hand I'd rather pull a B. Traven and live and work anonymously in the lost hills of Mexico, but the realities are that you have to get published before you can deny the attention. Sort of goofy if you ask me, but that's the truth. So I've had to come up with "I did this" and "I did that" to fill in some of the biographical stuff that has to be posted and - i tell you what - you do that for any length of time and you start to feel like a self-promoting twit.

I have found that putting together the work of other writers is incredibly rewarding. But I think I said that once before too?

So obviously I have nothing new to say except the usual hurr durr.

Hurp... durp...

Sorry.