Arioso—blogger medium

Among the eclectica I intend to share with you on Hopelessly Eclectic is a special feature called "Arioso—blogger medium" (big surprise if you read the title).

People who know me well might say "Strange, I'd have considered you more of a large than a medium. Well, an XL really." Not that kind of medium, silly. I recently discovered that I have been endowed with technopsychic powers (although some scholars consider them psychotechnic). These powers enable me to channel writers throughout the blogosphere, capturing their unique voices and ripping them off for my very own blog.

"Strange," you might say, "I was under the impressions that mediums channel dead people. Can't you only channel dead bloggers?"

Aha! One might think that, but I seem to have the gift (and the curse) of being a rare clairvoyant–medium, with the ability to receive and transmit live bloggers on both VHF and UHF, as well as satellite. It truly is a wondrous gift.

For those of you who have not sampled widely of the fruits of the blogosphere, there will now be no need. I will bring a great variety of styles and content to you right here on my site. For those of you blog floozies who wander about the Internet, consorting with all kinds of authors who may or may not practice safe hosting... come home. I'll type sweet nothings meant for your monitor alone. Also, my computer is virus–free. Honest. It's a Mac.

In today's episode of "Arioso—blogger medium," I will channel Chuck Kempenburg, representing the genre of blogging that may alternately be called "The year–round Christmas letter" or "If I ever blog like this, please impale me on the nearest umbrella immediately." (Medium's note: I cannot be held responsible for spelling, punctuation, grammar, or halitosis contained in a channeled blog.)

Hello again. It's afternoon now, and I've had a little nap since my last post. We got a call from Eugenia at Yale Technical College. She's made the Dean's List (again). We're just as proud as we can be of her. Art History can be a tough major, and she's really working hard. Her paintings use to be on our refrigerator but now their up in the Druessel Gallery on campus. (Ha!) She's still not sure what she wants to do after college, but we figure it wouldn't hurt to have another couple of senior years. (She hates it when I tell that joke.)

Jeanie is still going through the Change, but she's pretty agreeable most of the time anyway. (Ha!) Her job is going good, and she'll probably get that promotion to assistant night shift department manager pretty soon. The assistant night shift department manager right now is getting ready to retire, and Jeanie has the most seniority.

The kids were all home for my birthday on Saturday, and did we have a hot time! We were having a lively game of Scat, and Benji (he's a Sophomore at Gerald Milfton Senior High, and at the top of his class in Auto Shop) suggested that we switch to Jenga. I tell you, there was more hootin' and hollerin' than this house has seen in a long time. As usual, Rachel's husband (the socialist) really didn't seem that interested, but I could tell he was having a good time when he took out that yellow brick from the very bottom.

Rachel and Karl headed back to Arizona this morning so they could get back in time for Rachel to be on jury duty (the first time in our family!!). It should be interesting. Nobody was killed or anything, but there was something on the news about cruelty to iguanas. Rachel has always been wonderful with animals, so she's very qualified for the trail.

Well, I suppose I ought to sign off for now. I've got to get to my urologist appointment by 4. It's nothing bad. Just the usual kind of stuff. I'll see you all later.

Talk amongst yourselves

Many thanks to Asaraludu (try saying that five times fast) and Greg for contributing to the betterment of this blog and the world by posting comments. Just a reminder, you aren't required to register or sign into anything to comment on a post, and you will gain notoriety (or notoriousness) among the many readers of this forum (well, about 20 since I started last week, according to my stats package).

If you find this space at least mildly interesting, please pass the word to friends at work, home, church, coven meetings, etc.

And now, let's hear about the fabulous prizes that Asaraludu and Greg will win for having shared their thoughts.*

• An all expenses-paid trip to your nearest restroom, whenever you need it—unlimited visits!
• The gratification of knowing that you are a person of uncommon quality
• One Perl shell script of your choice (subject to availability)
• Three dollars has been donated on behalf of each of you to the Bill Wants Some Pepsi fund.

By the way... tune in later today (okay, maybe much later) for an important discussion of Husband Points.

*All prizes and gifts are incorporeal.

...and the first shall be last

As it turns out, first blog posts do serve some useful function. (see This title left intentionally blank.) It seems that I may after all have to dispense some information that is of a first-postish nature. Still, I think I took an important stance by resisting the pressures of society to post a first post first.

Henceforth, I will be rescuing first post information sentence-by-sentence from its undisclosed location for inclusion in this and occasional future posts. In order to preserve my journalistic integrity (and avoid being wrong), I will not ever publish all of the information from my first post—or maybe I'll use up the last bits in the final blog entry just before I die.

Anyway, here is some first-post information that is just now being leaked to the press:

• Please join the conversation by using the comment links after each entry. All of us together will be much more interesting than just me by myself.
• Tell me what you like and don't. Since I haven't committed this space to anything in particular, the content can match the title.
• If you'd like to link to this blog from your site, a trackback feature is also available ("links to this post").
• Come back often. I'll work hard to keep this page updated and engaging.

Thanks. I have to return to the mother ship now for a while.

This title intentionally left blank

I suppose that starting a blog this late in the phenomenon means that my introductory post will necessarily be a pack of clichés, consisting of phrases like "Welcome to..." and "I hope my readers..." and the like. To avoid all that crud (I do hate clichés), I've decided to skip directly to my second post. My first post has been rushed to one of the undisclosed locations among which Dick Cheney has been shuttling during the George W. Bush administration. As it turns out, this specific location is rather small. I take some satisfaction that my first post jabs uncomfortably into Mr. Cheney's back while he is holed up there.

Clever readers (whom I hereby brand "trouble-makers") may say, "You can't have a second post without a first! The first post we can see is your first post, you nincompoop! Besides, the whole idea sounds hackneyed anyway. Somebody else has already thought of it, even if I don't know who; it was stupid then, and it's stupid now!" Note that clever readers tend to be long-winded and use many exclamation points.

One other reason that I'm dispensing with my first post is that I lack any of the conventional bric-a-brac that goes into one. I don't even know exactly what this blog will be about. I have too many interests, passions, and distractions to settle on just one. (See the two words at the top of the page, in which "eclectic" is clearly a euphemism.) Also, I don't know enough about anything to populate an entire blog—maybe even a full sentence.

By the way, I'm not going to gush about what I hope you get out of this blog, either; it would be a crime to contaminate your experience with my preconceptions. (Okay—to be honest, I really don't know what I hope you'll get out of it. Even if I did, I wouldn't let on. I'm terribly insecure, and I would dread the hate (e)mail... "You fraud! You hoped that your feeble posts might mildly amuse me, cause me to think, or make by breath minty–fresh! Instead, your prose is dreck, your perspective is furnished in Early American Redneck, and my boyfriend will no longer kiss me!")

Note that hate–(e)mailers seem to have much in common with clever readers. Also, they're apparently female or living an alternative lifestyle. Additionally, note that the proper disclaimer to make where I'm from (after making reference to any sort of alternative lifestyle) is "not that there's anything wrong with that." This clearly identifies the disclaimant as a Big Person, but has the benefit of giving potential non-Big Persons nearby an additional disclaimer—something along the lines of "...though I don't go in for those sorts of shenanigans." I will avoid such disclaimers and all others like them—except perhaps for mockery purposes. Feel free to think whatever you like about me. You're probably right.

No doubt clever readers (eternally curse them!) will also have noticed by now that my train of thought lurches around like a top-heavy shopping cart with two defective wheels, pushed by an epileptic mountain goat with three of its legs tied together. (Clever readers appear to be very creative, but a little strange.) My above general abdication of disclaimers precludes me from now trying to make nice with any epileptic goats I may now have offended. Oh well.

A final way that I will reject the model of first posts is in refusing to tidily wrap up the post with a carefully thought-out and decisive closing that alerts readers to the fact that I've stopped rambling for a short while and intend to come back later to type some more. I'm not going to do that. Instead, I will