State of the Blog 2011

First of all, Happy New Year from everyone here at the nuclearheadache staff.  Of course, that staff is mostly just me.  So, I guess that means Happy New Year from me.

There are some benefits to running a one man operation.  I can make my own hours, set my own terms, and come and go as I please.  So, I suppose this is as good a time as any to announce that it's time for another break here.  I'm not sure how long.  It could be a month, or maybe more.  At the very least, I'll probably start posting on the Night Owl blog in the early spring.  The change in the weather always seems to put me in a sentimental mood.

In the meantime, I'm trying to work on some ideas for a Kindle series, something fictional, something serialized.  I'm open to suggestions.  Also, I'm sure I'll be kicking some nonsense up onto the FARNC from time to time.  And although I've neglected my Encyclopedia of Sheep for the past few months, I always hope to have some dreams to report over there.

So you won't be rid of me completely.  I'll still be around, reading everybody's blogs.  I just need to kick back for a while, go into a low power mode, amass my ideas and get my ducks in row.  Maybe I'll work on my metaphors a little.  I'd be a little more specific about time tables and such, but that's the point, I need to be a little unspecific for a while.  I need to relax.  Anyway, rest assured, one way or the other, in one capacity or another, I'll keep blogging and writing.  I can promise you that.

And finally, this blog topped 30,000 pageviews this morning!  Thank you slender man, wherever you are!   

My Blog Turns 100

I just spent the morning down at the DMV, which, as you know, is pretty much like having someone break a broom stick across their leg and then give you a colonoscopy with the jagged end of it.  So, I'll try to keep this short and hopefully sweet.  This is the 100th post here on nuclearheadache.  There isn't much to say except thanks to everyone who's kept up with it, and who has contributed their own two cents in the comments.  Thanks to everyone who has spread the word about this blog.  I don't do much on the promotion side these days, and my efforts were always fairly half-assed to begin with, so word of mouth is my most relied upon method, and still the most genuine really.  Things like Entrecard, Twitter, Networked Blogs, and such, get traffic and sometimes "followers", but they don't seem to do much that adds to the actual audience that actually reads this blog.  That seems to come little by little, through interaction and establishing connections and relationships, and it spreads from there.  So help yourself to some cake, and..let's see...what else do we need?  Maybe some ice cream.

There.  That's good.  And maybe some music too...

That'll work.  And how 'bout some strippers?

No, "Stippers"!!!  S-t-r-i-p-p-e-r-s.

???? 

Dust to Dust

One of the great parts about blogging is the fact that while many of us often deal with the same pressing issues and difficult questions, we're still able to take our own style and approach to the subjects and frame them in our own unique ways.  Some bloggers openly declare their intention to hurt their reader's brains. Some bloggers tear at the scabs of people's complacent sensibilities.  My friend Vincent just likes to take walks.  His blog A Wayfarer's Notes has a premise which is beguilingly simple, while it's execution is prolific in its complexity.  It doesn't hurt that he's a damn good writer either.  He goes where his feet take him, and he lets his mind wander in a similar fashion, and on his blog he shares with us the results of these physical and mental ramblings.  His reveries aren't always confined to his walks.  Sometimes he's in bed half asleep; sometimes he's hanging the wash out to dry.  But one of the charms of his blog is that he often organically incorporates the physical details of his surroundings with the abstract musings of his ideas.  This has the sublime effect of placing thoughts in the context of life.

His latest post is a fine example of this.  He not only tells us of an epiphany that he had, an intuition of immortality, but he also describes exactly where he had it and even provides a picture of the spot.  Of immortality he says, "Normally, when we speak of being immortal, we refer to the notion of the 'I' not dying when the body dies. But I saw, in that moment, that the 'I' is nothing more than the body’s mechanism for looking out for itself. It dies and unravels, but consciousness is all-pervasive, in all beings, in all matter. Call it awareness, call it an indwelling intelligence in everything, if you like."  As usual with Vincent's post, this gave me a lot to think about.

It seems to me, if he wanted to pursue this idea (assuming even that he's interested in treating it as an idea.  He might be content to take it as a moment of awe and wonder, and leave it at that without further questioning.  He and I are of somewhat different temperaments.) ...but suppose he wanted to look deeper into this notion of consciousness being something larger than the finite existence of the ego and the individual.  Then, I would suggest that to find a clue to how it all ends, one needs to look at how it all begins.  If "our" consciousness, his and mine and yours and whoever's, returns to some universal mind upon death, then it seems to follow that they arose up out of that universal mind at birth.  If consciousness transcends the individual, mustn't it do so in both directions in time, mustn't it precede life as well as succeed it?

For instance, under that post I left a comment speculating about immortality on the basis of the Law of Conservation, the question of "Where does it all go?  Where does a lifetime of knowledge and my knowing of that knowledge...how can it all just vanish without a trace?"  This is, of course, an entirely different point from the one Vincent was making, and yet it proceeds from the same principle that consciousness is part of something larger than the individual life, in this case, part of the general substance of the universe, a transubstantiation of matter and energy and thought that somehow endures in some form.  To insist that it must return to something, is to insist likewise that it must have come from this something.  Arguing from Conservation requires a persistent continuum from which the individual rises and falls.

I'm reminded of Adam from the Bible, and I'm struck once again by the metaphorical insight of those ancient writers.  Adam was formed from the dust of the ground to which he would someday return, life rising up out of the very substance to which death would eventually return it.  Or as Mark Twain once put it, "I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it."

But yet, we can't simply return consciousness to the shelf where we found it.  It's a used item, changed and worn and broken in by passing through a lifetime of our experiences.  It began for me as a crack of awareness in the world as I first opened my eyes.  I knew nothing beyond the most natural of bodily functions, breathing, sleeping, crying and so on.  As time went on, that crack of awareness has grown.  It has become a repository of information and experience.  It has gathered the dust of my life to complement the dust of the Earth.  When the one returns to the ground, what becomes of the other?  It has blossomed, grown in complexity and substance.  Isn't it made of something?  Where do it go?  Is it disseminated through-out this universal mind like fertilizer, enhancing its general growth and vitality?  Does that flash of memory in my mind, my foot making cracks in the ice...will that someday be part of a stream flowing over a rock?  Will the algebraic equations I learned somehow fall from the sky with the rain?  Will my laughter grow from the ground?  Where does it all go?

We're not done with this subject.  Not by a long shot.  It's one of the most important, most enduring questions of the human race.  It's also probably the most difficult to answer.  What happens to us when we die?  Only the dead know for sure, and they're not giving up any of their secrets.  So it's up to us.  I'll chip in.  I'll do my part, and I'll do my best to give you a headache in the process.  That, for what it's worth and while it lasts, is my "individual" perspective and contribution to the whole cosmic mess.       

A Break from the Headaches

A week or so ago I began to get the feeling that I needed to take a break from this blog.  I felt an impulse to do something that went in a bit of a different direction from all these crazy theories and ideas.  Lately, I've been feeling a slight staleness creep in and my interest has been slipping a little.  I wouldn't go so far as to say that I'm sick of doing this.  I'm just saying that I need to take a break before it gets to that point.  If my heart's not into it, then I'm not going to be putting out any kind of quality material.  I won't be doing you guys any favor if I force myself to keep going.  Luckily, I know myself well enough at this point in my life to know that this disenchantment is just a passing phase.  My interest in things goes in cycles and seasons, and when the cycle comes back around I'll return with a fresh enthusiasm for this material.

Meanwhile, I'm not planning to take a break from blogging.  In fact, I've started up a new blog that I plan to work on while I'm on a break from this one.  As I said, I've had an impulse to do something different.  This new blog will be a bit more personal, less about my ideas and interests and more about my life.  I hope that my regular readers here will at least check it out at www.notesowl.blogspot.com  If it's not your cup of tea, I understand.  You can consider yourself well rid of me for a couple of months.  I just hope you'll still be here when I come back, and we can get into more confusing craziness and mushroom cloud migraines.  Consider this, like, the end of season one or something.  I've only scratched the tip of the iceberg.  There's still plenty of stuff to get into.    

Versatile Blog Awards

The other day I got the "Versatile Blogger Award" from Chanel, via Candice, who I think deserves an honorable mention in her own right.  So, there I was with this award, which comes with all kinds of rules which I'm just going to flat out ignore, and I got to wondering, "What's so versatile about it?"  In fact, I'm not sure what any of these awards are supposed to do except sit over my sidebar as a concentrated testimony to my undeniable greatness.  Doesn't sound very versatile to me.  So, I set out to fix this sad state of affairs and come up with some really versatile uses for these awards.

1. The "Life is Good Award", which I got from Donna, can be used as a handy camouflaged kite on a nice spring day.  You can fool people into thinking that there's a rainbow in the sky.  Then they'll take pictures of them and post them on Facebook as if anyone cares.

2. The "Atypical Dollar...um"  Okay, so this one isn't really an award.  It was a button, but Scott vaguely suggested that he might make it an award.  Well, good enough for me.  With the awards it goes.  Anyhow, I figure that you could print out tons of these and take them to your seedier strip clubs.

Washed-Up Stripper: A whole dollar!?  For me!?

You: Yeah, you totally...uh, deserve it I guess.  Just don't, like, flip it over or anything.

Washed-Up Stripped: Why does it have a transparent "N" on it?

You: I gotta go.

3. The "Your Blog Doesn't Suck Award" from Doug clearly belongs over the fireplace mantle.  Time to take down that Picasso and put up a real work of art.

4. The "I Pity the Fool that Don't Read Your Blog Award" from Asha has limited applications, but it can be made into a real cool Mr. T-Shirt if you ever find your self caught in a time warp and sent back to 1983.  People might start asking what a "blog" is.  That's when you spray them with your future mace.

5. The "LOL Award" from Rachel via Lolamouse is great for bait in a mouse trap.  Forget that pesky old cheese.  Lure the mice in with something they really crave.  You know what I'm saying?

6. The "Stylish Blogger Award" from Chanel would make a fine looking hat.  Sure, people might look at you funny, but it says "stylish" right on it.  How much more classy can you get?

7. The "Your Worth a Million Bucks Award" from Rachel is perfect as a band-aid decal.  Now, instead of a mere field dressing for minor scrapes and wounds, it'll be like you're putting a million dollar price tag on your child when they come to you in tears.  It's great for their self-esteem and it declares your asking price if you ever decide to put the kid on Ebay.

So, there you go.  As far the Versatile Blogger Award itself, I'm thinking that maybe I'll print up thousands of them on napkins, since napkins are about as versatile as it gets.  You can wipe up anything with them.  Am I right?      

Time Travel Month

This month I thought I'd do something a little different.  Instead of the random assortment of nonsense that I usually post, I've decided to post a random assortment of nonsense with a running theme: Time Travel.  I've been planning this for a while.  If you recall way back, I mentioned that time travel has been an obsession of mine since I was a kid and that I was going post some thoughts on the subject one of these days.  Well, today is one of these days.  Actually, it's a whole month of these days.  So, let's get things started off on the right foot.  In the spirit of this theme, I'm going give you the links to all the posts for this month so that you can go into the future and read them before I write them:

Time Travel Month

Stop Trying to Kill Your Grandfather

Superman & the Wave Model

John Titor

12 Monkeys: Mental Divergence

Correspondence with My Future Self

The Infinite Pocket Watch

Possible Methods

Of Fortune Tellers & Predestination

If I Had a Time Machine

Grant Me the Serenity

Trying to Understand Relativity(part 8)

Ah, so you're back.  How was it?  Wait...don't tell me the details.  It's probably better if I don't know.  I'm sure you can well imagine the temptation for me to click on the links myself.  I could take a peek, see what I wrote, maybe even just copy and paste the posts as "new posts" as I go along.  That would certainly save me the trouble of having to think of what to say and the effort of having to write it.  Unfortunately, this would result in what's called an ontological paradox.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.  Literally.  Hmm, I wonder if maybe I could just take a quick glance at that first link, just to see how this post is supposed to end.  Ahhh...Really?....Like that?....Well, that's lame.

(p.s. Doug Stevens @ I Like Cheese has decided to match me post for post on this, doing his own riff on the above titles.  I'll post the links to his versions at the bottom of each post.  Atypical Scott @ Atypical Read is also doing...something.  It involves insanity, I know that.)       

My Blog Turns 50

I've known about blogging for years, but I had the misfortune of first learning about it from an article written by someone who dismissively described it as a bunch of narcissistic, self-indulgent whining about boring stuff that no one else cared about.  Foolishly, I accepted this critique without further investigation.  Most subsequent opinions that I heard were along the same derogatory lines.  Even the positive opinions sounded awful.  They all praised blogging for being so "raw" and "free form" and "unedited" and "yeah!"  Brother, that sounded like a bigger mess than what my dog leaves in the back yard.  Meanwhile, all this information was being filtered into my brain through the word "blog" itself; quite possible the dumbest, ugliest word in the English language.  I don't care if it's short for "web log".  I don't care if it's short for "baloney log".  Can't we call it something else?  Can't we call it something cool, like "Vampire Hunting"?  I'd like to say I was a vampire hunter before I died, but what can I do?  I'm just one man!

Ahem...I'm getting a little ahead on my story here.  So there I was, lost and wandering the internet.  Occasionally, I would run across a curiously babbling fellow traveler who would call out from the wayside, "Hey there, Check out this link where this guy talks about what I was saying yesterday about the thing.  You know?"  I would thank this odd, simple creature and make haste in the direction that it sent me.  That was interesting, I would think, as I continued on my way.  Gradually, the world's dimmest light bulb went off over my head and it finally dawned on me that these were blogs that these people were sending me to.  I learned that while they could be self-indulgent, they certainly didn't have to be boring.  I learned that people used the format in a wide variety of ways.  I learned that you could write about something other than the color of your cat's latest hairball.

Why it took me so long to realize this, I don't know.  Honestly, I'm a little slow sometimes.  For some time, I'd had the idea floating around in the back of my mind of starting my own web site where I'd post regular articles about my ideas, and maybe reviews, and whatever.  I knew nothing about HTML coding, and I didn't want to pay for web hosting, though.  Then this blatantly obvious revelation about blogs came along, and I realized, hey, I could do all that by writing a blog.  And so, out of the formless void "nuclearheadache" was created, and I saw what I had made and I said, "Yeah, alright.  That'll work.  I think I'll go make myself a roast beef sandwich."

My office, or whatever you want to call it.

The first post I ever wrote and posted on this blog was actually the Artificial Intelligence post, which is now buried in the archive somewhere in the middle of October.  I was dissatisfied with it when I first wrote it.  It seemed like a bad way to start.  It was too cold and impersonal.  It set the wrong kind of tone, and I wasn't sure where to go from there.  So I pulled it, and started over with a little snippet that basically just said, "Hey world, I'm here."  Eventually that got deleted as well.  As it stands now, the earliest post on the blog is about this documentary that they showed on The History Channel called Apocalypse Island.  This seems like a fairly random place to start, but in a way it's appropriate.  I made this blog to delve into everything from the big questions of our existence to the little trivial details of our lives, from The Big Bang to fortune cookies.  That first post falls somewhere squarely in the middle.

As things rolled along, I got a feel for what I was doing and a better sense of how this was going to work.  I would weave certain running themes and topics in and out of each other, picking up the threads now and then, and interspersing them with stand alone posts.  So far this has worked out well, and it always leaves me feeling like I've got a lot more to deal with down the road, so I haven't run out of material yet.  At first I felt like I was speaking to an empty auditorium, listening to the uncanny echo of my own voice.  Eventually some people started to drift in.  Some of them probably mistook the place for a bar, or they just wanted to use the restroom, but some of you have stayed and made your own contributions.  I thank you for that, and for helping me feel like this isn't completely wasted effort.   

From some of the opinions I mentioned above, it's clear that professional writers consider blogging to be the internet's version of vanity publishing, something any old fool can do.  Even the "positive" remarks that I mentioned are unmistakably condescending.  It's true that anyone can start a blog.  You can have a new one up and running in five minutes if you like.  But not everyone can write a blog and stick to it, and not everyone can create a blog that anyone will actually read.  In this homemade, do-it-your-self world of electronic words, it may seem like there's no quality control whatsoever, but like any other form of publishing the quality is controlled by you, the reader.  A bad blog will whither and die on the vine.  Even self-publishing has its own form of natural selection.

So here we are at post number 50.  It's been fun so far, and hopefully I can see this through to another 50 and beyond.  When I hit 100, I think I'll take time out again for another filler post...errr, I mean retrospective.  Until then, hopefully I can keep it entertaining.      

The Power of a Word

I want to thank everyone for their comments on the last post.  I want to thank you all for your thoughtful and intelligent consideration of what I was saying, and for your own insightful input.  Mostly, I want to thank you all for not jumping ship on me.  I know how touchy a subject race can be.  I woke up today and realized that it was Martin Luther King jr. Day, and I thought, whoops.  Perhaps my timing wasn't the best, but I had no intention of coinciding with the holiday.  Quite honestly, I had forgotten all about it.  I meant no offense by what I said, and I sincerely hope none was taken.  I hope you understand; I couldn't very well argue for a word's right to remain in Huck Finn if I wasn't willing to write the word myself.  If I danced around it and only made oblique references to it, that would have undermined the point of the post, as well as compromised my own integrity.  However, I want to be perfectly clear that I absolutely do not advocate casually throwing racial epithets around.  I just don't believe a dead writer's words should be tampered with, just to make us all more comfortable with our own history.  I could only hope that no one tampers with my own words long after I'm gone, assuming anyone even remembers that I was alive.

I believe that if there's any hope of us all getting along and putting these painful chapters of the past behind us, then we all need to learn to calm down, relax, and speak openly about these things.  I think that acting like someone has violated some sort of restraining order if they get within fifty feet of the subject of race is counter-productive.  We need to put our cards on the table.  We need to embrace the awkwardness and push our way through, rather than running away.  I don't believe in sugar-coated social tranquillizers that put us all to sleep and allow us to go on living in denial.  I believe in the smoke alarm that wakes us up so that we can put out the fire before it's too late.  That alarm might be painful and disturbing to the ears, but it's far better than letting the house burn to the ground.  

People ofter say, "We'll look back on this and laugh someday."  I truly hope that day comes on the subject of race.  I hope the day will come when the lexicon of hatred will hold nothing but blank pages, and the words that sting and hurt today will finally become demystified and robbed of their power.  I hope the day will come where we'll be able to sit down and talk comfortably about the people we all once were, but are no longer. That day may be a long way off, but it'll never come until the tension in the air is diffused.  If we go on hiding everything behind painful smiles and we walk on egg-shells around each other, if we jump to conclusions and fly into anger at each other at the mere mention of a word, then we'll never be able to reveal the warmth of our true smiles and welcome each other in as part of the larger family of the human race.

Am I defending the word?  No.  I'm saying that the word gains power if you lock it away in a vault.  It becomes the "forbidden Word" with a capital "n", and it grows to mystical proportions.  It draws attention to itself in that void of silence where you censor it.  It becomes the undiagnosed cancer festering beneath the skin.  It becomes almost sacred and revered by virtue of being forbidden.  I say let it go.  Let them scream it from the rooftops until their voice is gone.  Don't give them the satisfaction.  Who cares?  It's just sad, angry men cursing the world.  They hold no real power over you.  They hold no power over any of us, beyond the power we give them.  Don't give them the power.  Let the vault stand empty and leave them with no weapons in their arsenal.  I hope we can forgive and be forgiven and all move on together.  There's a universe of incredible possibilities out there if we can set aside our petty differences between each other.

After These Messages

I tried out a new ad program out yesterday.  It didn't work very well.  First, it took hours upon hours to activate, so that for most of the day there was this thick, blank, blue strip taking up half of my sidebar.  Then, I checked on it last night just before leaving for work and it was ready.  I turned it on and there was this ad for dog biscuits with the picture of a bulldog.  As I scrolled down, I discovered that, much like any dog, this ad was following me.  It must have thought I had food.  This quickly got on my nerves, so I deleted it.  I'm sure it's available for adoption at the ad company if any of you other bloggers are interested.  I already have my hands full with my real dog.  

This ad business is a touchy subject with some people.  Obviously, I don't really have a problem with it.  This blogging can be fun, but it can also be a lot of work, and if someone wants a few bucks for their trouble, more power to them.  However, there's a fine line between making your ads visible, and shoving them in your visitors' faces.  I've seen some blogs that are an absolute mess.  Banner ads that overlap the text, making it unreadable.  Cartoon bunnies holding flowers and wandering all over the place.  I think I even saw a wizard selling car insurance, but I may have been hallucinating just as I was about to pass out from sensory overload as I was mumbling weakly, "Where's the stuff I'm supposed to read?"  If I were presumptuous enough to start doling out advice after a mere two months of blogging, my first tip would be: If people can't can't even find the post, then you have a serious design problem.

Me, I like to think I run a pretty clean ship around here, sometimes obsessively so.  One day, I spent nearly three hours working on the header for my other blog, cropping and resizing the background photo so that it would fit, and playing around with the contrast and the focus so that it was faded enough that it wouldn't intrude on the title but still visible enough to just barely make out what it is.  It's sad, I know, but we'll have to leave the diagnosis of my obsessive compulsive disorder for another day.  For the moment, my point is that although I haven't made two nickles to rub together from Google's Ad Sense program, at least the ad is relatively neat and unobtrusive and it doesn't chase me around the page.  I kind of like that little box off to the side.  Even though you'd need a master's degree in accounting to figure out Google's payment algorithm, I think I'll keep it.  I even see some interesting stuff on there sometimes. 

The Amazon "favorites" boxes along the sidebar haven't really done much either, but I think I'll keep those too.  They look nice, and I like the fact that I got to handpick all of the products myself.  I see that people often list their favorite books and whatnot along their sidebar or they fill out those tedious "about me" forms with the boxes for their interests and hobbies.  I just figured that this Amazon widget was a means of basically doing the same thing AND displaying a few ads at the same time.  Honestly, I think it's the neatest advertising idea I've seen so far, and I'm surprised that I don't see it more often on other blogs.  I can't recommend it for its earning potential at this point, but I do really like the idea.

Now, please, don't take this post as a desperate attempt to drum up business or something.  I just wanted to mention my advertising misadventure from yesterday and talk about ads in general.  It's probably bad taste to even discuss your ads, and it might even be considered rude, and I suppose it might make some people uncomfortable.  I guess there's no easy way around that.  It's like sitting down next to someone who's eating in a restaurant and mentioning that you're hungry.  No matter how much you protest that you're just making conversation, someone will always suspect you of ulterior motives.  Besides, I'm sure there's nothing that makes people feel less inclined to click on an ad than being fed some sob story begging them to do so.  It's part of our common rebellious streak and our natural aversion to all things pathetic.  And hey, I get it.  If you come here at all, it's not to look at ads, or click on ads, or...well, read posts about clicking on ads.  I'm just glad you're here, and I really appreciate all the comments and feedback I've gotten so far.  That's all that really matters.  Thank you.