Cranking it out

I've decided that once I get an idea for a blog post, I should just type it up and push it out like I'm aggressive mom-to-be past the due date and I just want it all to be over (angry comments soon?).

Rule: If you are writing something - anything - online and you want it to be useful, one of the most basic things you can do is include the date. Yes, there was an article without a date and it annoyed me so much that I had to write a rule about it. There was also the time when I got excited about a band coming into my town... two years ago. Well that would be awesome if I had a frickin' TARDIS, but I DON'T! (ooh, watch my page hits increase now)

See here's the deal: you are on the internet. Ideas are flying around all the time. There are all sorts of cross-references. New technology/software comes out. Things are moving so fast, that yes, something you posted two months ago could become mildly irrelevant (or really irrelevant). I'm sorry if that scares you; that's what it means to be on the internet. But guess what! What's helpful to your readership (and folks using search engines) is a DATE! If I look up the top 10 iPhone photo applications, I want to know they're the top 10 RIGHT NOW. Not the top 10 applications that are now seen as feature-poor, sad pandas.

You think you can hide the irrelevance by hiding the date? Nope. What if somebody wants to give a "history of iPhone photo applications?" Your easily-searched site without a date could easily have been a good reference point, but nope, no date, so you've eliminated THAT use for your page too.

Please. Please, just include a date with your postings, folks. It doesn't hurt anything, and adds so much value to the reader. Even if they can't appreciate it consciously/immediately, they will once they look for it.

Also in other news, I've had a bout of inspired, productivity/self-improvement fever. In this regard, Ze Frank is still relevant even from 2006 (and just pretty damn amusing):



Psst... this is another example where including the date is good. If you're still relevant years later, it can only be impressive to see the date.

How do you survive as a text-based blog?

A little
poem
is all
you have
left
of your attention
span.


Rule: (at least it seems like a rule) Blog posts without photos rarely get read.

Sometimes I stare at the ceiling trying to figure out if my blog posts are interesting/useful enough to carry a reader's attention to the very end. Anyone have any thoughts on how to keep attention as a text/writing-based blog? Saw someone's blog had categorized posts by the time it takes to read them. Kind of neat.

Photo by me.

If you've never had dim sum, you need to do it.

I was having dim sum with my mom in Taiwan. The dim sum in Taiwan is some of the best anywhere, even rivaling Hong Kong. We had gotten up early, and not too many other people were in the restaurant. The sky was light, but cloudy and weak. She and I only spoke to order or discuss what we wanted next.

We ate and ate, and it was very quiet, and the only other sounds were the carts rolling, plates, clinking, and occasional low talking. Something was odd in the air, but at the table, it was a safe place.

I remember being in a tall building, and the curtains had been drawn open. Why were there so few other patrons? But all we needed was the food and our own fragile company. We ate in the milky morning light as silhouettes. I ate warm, soft, savory things. I dribbled soy sauce and red vinegar on my plate. I bit into shatteringly crisp things. Steam and fragrance rose from steam trays. I wiped silky grease from my lips.

It was like I had died, and the afterlife was calm, watery light, hushed shadows, and the stars were really twinkling plates and chopsticks making some cryptic, tired music.

Rule: Always get the egg tarts at dim sum.

Pretty things!

I love glass as a material. So pretty.

Specifically, I've always had a love of cups, glasses, and bottles in all sorts of shapes and sizes. How pretty are these coupes?

Photo credit: BHLDN Website

Rule: Once you've identified your favorite materials, don't go nutso and surround yourself with an unruly mass of it. If you must collect, you must also learn to arrange. This is what prevents "Hoarders" from knocking at your door.

I have been wandering around amazed

That is what I have been doing this whole time instead of blogging. There's a ton to be amazed at out there.

Here are some of them:
- Everything being really dark during a rain shower except the neon green new leaves
- How long people are willing to wait in line for free cone day at Ben and Jerry's
- How quickly the weather can turn
- This amazing strainer/steamer thing. What an example of great design.

More wandering to come, but I promise more posts too. I need to feed my instagram to this blog. I'm too lazy to Google it. Someone wanna tell me an easy way to do it?

Rule: If you're going to walk slowly, walk slowly in order to observe the world around you. Otherwise, get outta my way!

Outta my way, peas! Photo credit: Dreamfarm website

This is not an amazing poem.

I am gearing myself up for my birthday, for which I am going to attempt to make a craaaaazy cake. (It's probably not that crazy, I'm just new to baking) Emboldened by assisting my boyfriend in making croissants, I feel ready for challenges!

So here is my anthem for taking this project on.
---

If you're having crumb problems, I feel bad for you son, I got 99 problems but a cake ain't one.

I got fat contol on silpat patrol
Foes that wanna make sure my oven's closed
Cake critics they say she's "Yolks, sugar, fold"
I'm from the kitchen, stupid, what type of recipes are those
If you grew up with holes in ya fondant rolled
You'd be celebrating the minute you was havin' dough
I'm like cut critics you can kiss my donut hole
If you don't like my pastries you can eat a dinner roll
I got beef with potatoes if i don't cook they cold
They make a good meal, but they're not desserts SO
Food blogs try and use my bundt pan
So readers can give 'em more hits for comments, suckers
I don't know why you're not a fan,
Or understand the tastebuds that Yellow Thunder has
I'm from easy bake to croissants, bitches I ain't dumb
I got 99 problems but a cake ain't one
Hit me

99 problems but the cake aint one
If you're havin' crumb problems, I feel bad for you son
I got 99 problems but a cake ain't one
Hit me

And here is the cake that I am hoping to make (it has 15 egg yolks! holy balls!):


Photo credit and recipe:
http://cafechocolada.blogspot.com/2011/01/bohemian-cake.html

Rule: Don't make two rules in one day. Shit.

Another amazing poem

(Reprinted WITHOUT permission... I hope I don't get sued one of these days)

Antilamentation

by Dorianne Laux

Regret nothing. Not the cruel novels you read
to the end just to find out who killed the cook, not
the insipid movies that made you cry in the dark,
in spite of your intelligence, your sophistication, not
the lover you left quivering in a hotel parking lot,
the one you beat to the punch line, the door or the one
who left you in your red dress and shoes, the ones
that crimped your toes, don't regret those.
Not the nights you called god names and cursed
your mother, sunk like a dog in the living room couch,
chewing your nails and crushed by loneliness.
You were meant to inhale those smoky nights
over a bottle of flat beer, to sweep stuck onion rings
across the dirty restaurant floor, to wear the frayed
coat with its loose buttons, its pockets full of struck matches.
You've walked those streets a thousand times and still
you end up here. Regret none of it, not one
of the wasted days you wanted to know nothing,
when the lights from the carnival rides
were the only stars you believed in, loving them
for their uselessness, not wanting to be saved.
You've traveled this far on the back of every mistake,
ridden in dark-eyed and morose but calm as a house
after the TV set has been pitched out the window.
Harmless as a broken ax. Emptied of expectation.
Relax. Don't bother remembering any of it. Let's stop here,
under the lit sign on the corner, and watch all the people walk by.

"Antilamentation" by Dorianne Laux, from The Book of Men. © W. W. Norton & Company, 2011.


Rule: Okay, this isn't really a rule, but I'm getting my daily dose of poetry from "The Writer's Almanac," which is the e-newsletter from Garrison Keillor, of "A Prairie Home Companion" fame. I highly recommend subscribing to it, to get more reading of awesome stuff into your life. Then again, you might be reading that week's post from me. Oh well. My favorite lines are "You were meant to inhale those smoky nights / over a bottle of flat beer, to sweep stuck onion rings / across the dirty restaurant floor, to wear the frayed / coat with its loose buttons, its pockets full of struck matches."