Back to Square One

Our dear friend Mr. Farty has asked the bloggie question "What got you started blogging?", and requests answers.

A long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away...

No, wait. That's the beginning of Star Wars.

A long, long time ago in an at-the-time amazing new toy called the "Internet", I found this place called "The Palace" - a revolutionary (at the time) spin on the traditional "chat room" - a graphical alternative to the mass of scrolling text that was the main feature of A-OHELL's claim to fame (other than their annoying blue download lines... am I the only one to remember THAT atrocity?)

In this place, I encountered a number of folks with whom I still maintain contact today. One of them was Kal, a nice young man from Scotland who was in school at the time, and who eventually went to work for the Courts, and then became an ambulance guy.

As with all good things, the heyday of the Palace came and went, the teenyboppers discovered it and destroyed that which was an adult place and turned it into a "L33+-Sp33kz" nightmare - and we all (mostly) left.

Kal resurfaced with a blog. I don't think it was "Trauma Queen" at that point, but I might could be mistaken. I read it daily, but didn't comment because I didn't know what to say. Kal and I still kept in touch some with ICQ and e-mails and stuff.

One day IIRC, I couldn't find Kal's blog - and I asked him about it and he told me he didn't think I read it because I never commented. He sent me his new URL, and I started to comment often.

About 2 years ago, I decided that I'd try my hand at it. WTF - can't be all that hard, right? Just type a lot. So I did. The whole "blogger" bit was easy to work with, and the price was right. I didn't think anyone would ever actually READ it...

Imagine my surprise when I started to get comments from folks I didn't know. I'd "clicky" back thru their links and read THEIR blogs. Some of them were positively BRILLIANT. Some of them were... interesting. Many of them had lists of other blogs to visit. Kal's had such a list, and I clicked-thru and found Croila, who led me to Jules and Peacechick Mary, who lead me to Kvatch and John Good and so on, and so on,...

Eventually I felt brave enough to do some minor editing on my "template" myself - yes, those ARE my eyes up there. The little mouse avatar is the one I used to use most of the time back in the "Palace" days. I have no clue where it is from, other than that I found it sitting in a "used avatars" room and decided it worked. The Storm At Sea on the right was made using "Paint" during a moment of supreme boredom. The quotes are random thoughts - except for the one by Amelia Peabody Emerson... that one is from a book, and still strikes me as hillariously funny for reasons that I've gone into before and don't choose to type up again.

There ya go, Mr. Farty.

537 days