inherently different

Posting might be lighter than usual this week. We’re moving into our new deluxe apartment in the skies high above South Kihei. Hope your holiday week was fabulous.

I know this is the day where we’re all supposed to be good. Of course, if I did that, I’d be a hypocrite. Some less than suitable observations on Christmas Day:

1. Why is William Hung famous? Doesn’t anyone notice that he looks a lot like Corky from Life Goes On? The guy is more suited to a feature on Tard-blog.com than video specials on VH1. What’s wrong with you people? Why do you continue to buy his music?

2. I’ve been wracking my brain for years trying to figure out exactly what prompted the oversized clothing craze. Rodeo clowns. When you wear big pants, oversized shirts and hats positioned haphazardly on your head, you don’t look cool… you look like a rodeo clown… or Corky from Life Goes On.

Naming your blog is possibly the most important step in this whole blogging business. For instance, Grace D. chose I Am Dr. Laura’s Worst Nightmare as the title of her blog. As you can imagine, her chosen name pushes buttons like a checker at the grocery store. Before I stumbled on the name The Monkey Diaries, I contemplated using, “One Hand on the Bible, the Other in a Choir Boy’s Pants,” but the name was too long and looked really bad with the design I had chosen.

Heather B’s incredibly entertaining blog, Dooce, has since spawned an urban dictionary entry. I would imagine she comes up in a variety of search engine returns that are at best questionable and at worst, objectionable. I personally like saying it almost as much as I enjoy reading it… doooooooooooce!

Laura, of Daxahol fame, is addicted to her child and named her blog appropriately. Of course, chances are better than good that someday Glaxo-Wellcomb will bury her under the weight of heavy litigation for the right to use the name for a pregnancy-safe laxative. Until then, she’s one of the few mommyblogs I can tolerate… perhaps because she (and Dooce for that matter) don’t take themselves too seriously.

Some of you may remember the Sad Day In Mudville post in which I detailed the dunking of my camera into a stream while hiking. I just got the repair estimate… I’m now $161 poorer, but the cost is worthwhile if you consider a new camera of equal capability is in the $1000 range.

I miss my camera like Oprah misses pie.*

*You’d think that at some point I’d get tired of using metaphors to communicate an idea, but I never do.

As you can see, I’ve made a few alterations to the monkey diaries. I’m tooling around with CSS (cascading style sheets) in anticipation of a project I might be working on. I have a love/hate relationship with CSS that began a few years ago when I left Blogger (or bloogle if you’re paying attention) for MovableType. I liked Blogger alright, but some aspects of the app left me wanting and MovableType scratched an itch blogger couldn’t reach. Anyway, CSS controls a webpage much as Cheney controls Bush, which is to say it controls it completely and effortlessly.

Be prepared to see frequent changes over the course of the next few weeks. Until I can get to the point where I can control my REM sleep through CSS, you can be sure I’ll keep plugging away. There are some bloggers who have mastered CSS and its many uses. I am afraid to say that I am not among them. Yet.

In other news, I’ve been listening to some old school 70s pop rock lately. I’m talking Paul McCartney & Wings, Elton John, Simon & Garfunkel, and Dr. Hook. Judging from what I know about my regular readers, I’d say few of you know more than a song or two from the playlist in rotation on my MP3 player these days. Perhaps I’ll have to post a MonkeyRadio collection sometime in the next week or so.