Sometimes I feel the need to make an easy blog entry.

This usually means I’m torn – torn between A) the silent periods that occur on my blog because I haven’t taken the time to write something worthwhile, and B)posting “fluff” on my blog just to make an entry, hoping to avoid appearing dead.

My personal stance is – I’d rather a blog author not post something than strive to maintain a posting frequency that might make some of the blog postings “blah” or “ho-hum”. To me, micro-blogging aka social networking sites (twitter, utterz, etc) is where the “blah” belongs (blahlongs?) because at least there’s activity. “I. Am. Not. Dead.” is what micro-blogging screams. Having the sidebar show my latest activity, as inconsequential as it may be, helps the blog stay fresh.

I don’t want to have a blahg.

This stance of mine has evolved over time. If you look at the blog archives in my first and second years, I did a lot of fluff. I started with “pic-a-day” where I just put a photo or funny photo. I also did a “caption contest” series for a while. Back then, micro-blogging wasn’t all the rage, so many blog authors struggled with questions such as “is this tidbit worth a post?” and “gee, it’s been 4 days since my last post, what should I say? No, that’s not ‘big’ enough“.

I don’t remember when it clicked for me, but at some point I decided to try and settle on one post per day. This is what Blogography does. Since Dave2 has one of my all-time favorite blogs, I figured I could learn something. And learn something I did. Having a pre-set posting frequency helped me plan. I gave up the stress of posting something, sometime and traded it for the less stressful idea of posting something daily. The concept of a deadline actually helped the situation.

There were other benefits to this approach as well: for one, I felt that the expectation of a daily post would help readers decide to follow my blog. I knew that in my own head, I asked myself “What’s Dave going to write about today?” and it made me want to go look. I wanted that same question repeated throughout the world, but with my name in the question.

What about you?

So what do I post today?

I’m posting fluff.

In the extended entry, you will find some funny newspaper clippings sent to me via email recently.  What’s funny is I started with just the newspaper clippings and then realized that I was posting fluff, so I ended up making entire post about posting fluff, which in itself made the post not fluff.  To me, that’s as clever as Seinfeld making a show that’s about nothing.  

(PS: Microsoft, if you’re listening… I’d totally do an ad campaign for a lot less than $10 million)

(more…)

Previously, I had written a post about a demon spider on our property.  We’ve had a couple more sightings, although these particular arachnids are less demonic and therefore downgraded to “simply interesting due to size”.  I mean, isn’t it cool to see such a big spider, like RIGHT THERE?

For those of you who’d like to see a video of the above spider, I just uploaded my first video to YouTube, so we’ll see how well that works.  Just click on the photo above and let me know how it works.

See if you can find any black circles.  No, really.  You think you found one?  Then look at it again and see if you can point right at it.

It’s getting serious!

I like this a lot.  It’s a piece of art in a smoker’s lounge.  Not so subtle, eh?

Get your mind out of the gutter.

Ok, it turned into a “how cute can a cat or dog get” collage instead of “great positions in bed,” but I hope it brought a smile to you anyway.