The Newsstand Sophisticate

Well, 2009 was a fantastically unproductive blogging year for me, though quite eventful and exhausting personally. Frightening, really, that I’ve neglected this blog for a year, and it doesn’t even seem that long. Tempus fugit and all that. This year will be different, perhaps, though again, I’ll make no promises.

I will begin the new year, though, by wishing all readers my best wishes for the year to come, and offer my endorsement for this proposal from the National Association of Good Grammar (NAGG) to say “twenty ten” instead of “two thousand and ten.”

Happy new year, everyone!

I haven’t posted anything in a while, in part because the last three months of 2008 were very busy for me: I had several freelance projects, found full-time gainful employment (twice!), endured an episode of the flu, and found out that my wife and I will be having another child. I would have written exhaustively about all of this, in modern Internet-confessional fashion, but it didn’t occur to me. I guess I just wasn’t made for these times.

The last three months (and last year) were eventful outside the walls of my apartment as well, of course, but I didn’t write about recent great events, either. I could vow to write more in 2009, but my favorite new year’s resolution is to resolve not to make any empty promises.

Best wishes to all for 2009!

I apologize for not posting much lately. I was working two jobs for nearly a month, and then I went camping at Lost Maples State Natural Area. Now I’m on a much more humane work schedule and have a sleeping arrangement that doesn’t involve being bitten by ants, so I think I’ll start posting more.

It was a shock to come back to this site and find hundreds—yes, hundreds!—of spam comments. They were obviously a punishment for my neglect of the site (as if the ant bites weren’t punishment enough!).

I’ve added a plug-in to the site, reCAPTCHA, which should keep the comment spam down. It requires commenters to enter text, which is always a bit tedious, but if you follow the link you’ll learn that by entering the little distorted words, you’ll be helping to digitize books from the Internet Archive. It’s quite an ingenious way of turning an annoying task into something worthwhile.

Just in case you were concerned, the Newsstand Sophisticate is suitable for the whole family:

(via DSTPFW)

Sorry for the lack of posts recently. I’ve been in a bit of a fog, but I’m emerging from it and soon will be posting all the newsstand sophistication you can handle.