Blogging About Blogging

I’ve been sitting here with the blogger window open on-screen for an hour, but I procrastinated for so long that I can’t remember what I wanted to write about. Lately, I’ve considered writing about ethnic flavors in pop music, online dating and my own fitness. I need to continue writing about my ten favorite songs because, as of today, I’ve only covered one of them. Actually, I’ll cover that next time because I think I want to hit La Isla Bonita and discuss the ethnic flavors in the same post.

Anyway, I read a Gawker post about guys who exhibit clingy and borderline-stalker behavior after going on dates. One man, in particular, was able to email the woman he’d gone out with once because he searched for and found it on the Internet. As far as I know, no one is stalking me. However, I googled my screen name just to see how much information came up. It was surprisingly little, though I did run into a treasure trove of sorts. I found my old blogs on Xanga and Blogger! I’m talking about WhatUpThen’s Xanga and Ice Climber! I had the Xanga just for a couple of months, from February to March 2003. Ice Climber happened during graduate school and just a little bit after, from May 2004 to January 2006. I’m surprised these blogs are still up but it’s just…heartwarming–I almost want to cry! It is so fucking cool to see this stuff that I wrote back in the day. What’s interesting is that I feel I haven’t changed much in these nine years. I definitely sound like a kid in the Xanga blog but, for the most part, my situation hasn’t changed; I’m still working in education, still living at home, still talking about entertainment and basketball and observations of people. One of my favorite lines was from a February 2003 post in which I wished my friend Eric a happy birthday and then asked (in the blog) if he was free that weekend. That hasn’t changed, either; I’m still leaning on Eric and MK3 to entertain me on weekends. Kinda cool, yet kinda sad!

And last, I enjoyed this post in particular.

Fuck, I like this one, too!!

 

Snowboarding in Muju

Admittedly, I’m not in the best mood as I do some notepad blogging while on a ski trip in Muju.  It’s nothing serious, just not the typical food or sleep, the weather is cold and I’m growing a bit irritated with my companions up here.  Eight people in close contact for four straight days and it’s bound to happen; it’s all good.  What’s alsogood is this location.  Muju is only two hours from Changwon by train but it is a different world.  It reminds me of Santa Cruz; the ultimate laid-back town that somehow manages to stay that way despite thousands of people traipsing through daily to experience what it has to offer,  What Muju has to offer is excellent skiing and snowboarding.  I’m not a snowboarder (or a skier), but this place really makes me want to be one.

Everyone and their mother is here.  The resort is packed due to the Seol Nal holiday.  Koreans of all ages a decked out in hip, colorful snowsport attire.  The slopes are giant canvases, peppered with ants (well, they’re not THAT small…maybe beetles) trailing down them to reach the crows of people at each base.  The snowfall alternates between zero and blasting and there is a serene feeling riding the lift up to the top of a slope.

I had been snowboarding only once before — back in 2001.  Eight years is definitely too long between trips because I was pitiful on that first day.  I couldn’t even get up off the ground.  Cliff kept pulling me up to get me started, but without him I could only struggle or sit in the snow developing an ice ass.

My major breakthrough came when I figured out I should push myself up from a face-down position (easy) instead of from a face-up position (difficult at 200lbs).  With the revelation, my falls would only ground me for seconds as opposed to minutes and I could practice being on my feet much more.  Now, on this third and final day of snowboarding, I’m barreling down the hills at high speeds and showing what I think is reasonable control for a beginner.  Granted, it’s all heelside work because I’m afraid to turn my body away from downhill for even a second, but there’s no doubt I’ve picked up a new skill and there’s no doubt I’ll be doing this again soon.

 

Dooce, I’m coming for you

Oh. Hell. Yeah. You can’t see me and you cannot hear the giddy/maniacal laugh I unleashed only minutes ago. Be assured, though, that I’m oh so happy. Something just happened that made my day.

Someone linked to me!!!

It’s this person!!! –> http://videoxy.wordpress.com/

Mystery blogger, who are you? Where do you come from? To what do I owe the honor??

On second thought, don’t tell me. I’m just glad someone found something enjoyable on this blog. There’s a long way to go before this thing gets back to Ice Climber-level, but I’ll just keep plugging away with my scatterbrained posts. Thanks for reading!

 

Standard Whining

I think it’s safe to say that recently Ice Climber has been in a creative sinkhole. Of course, many readers out there are just itching to say “Sh*t, this whole site is a creative sinkhole! What’s the URL for Dooce?” Hell, I don’t know. I took it off my links. I’m sure there’s something interesting on Plastic, though.

It’s important, I think, to understand the purpose of this website. Still, there’s a hobby mentality surrounding it for me. Ice Climber is like a Tamagotchi or like that episode when I was nine and I had a tiny potted cactus; it’s just an examination of yourself to see if you can make the egg hatch or, in the case of the cactus, have the willpower to keep from watering it. I just couldn’t fathom a plant that needed no watering…for weeks! One day I broke down and watered the cactus. I did it out of love; it was in order to save the thing from withering away even though it showed no signs of dehydration. Anyway, the cactus died the next day…isn’t it ironic? Ice Climber has been going on for well over a year, so maybe I shouldn’t worry too much about creative lulls because they’ve certainly happened before. Somehow, though, I’d like to make it bigger and better…or just have it serve a higher purpose. I can’t say anything definitively just yet, but I think before long there may be some sort of transformation.

 

Check It Out

Did I already apologize for disappearing for two weeks? If not, then a big “My bad” to all of the lovely people that read Ice Climber. You know how it is sometimes. There’s no theme to this page, nothing perpetual or consistent to fall back on for material. Since the posts are generally about me, I think my willingness to post hinges upon how I feel at the moment. And, I guess for the last two weeks I’ve just felt uninspired. But “uninspiration” is a dangerous thing. Not being inspired to write my thesis for the past six months is why I didn’t have it completed on May 19, when it was due. Perhaps it has taken two weeks for me to come to terms with the fact that finishing graduate school actually requires a great deal of effort. In any event, it’s time to get back on track, which includes sharing curious anecdotes and sensationalizing myself (NEVER!!) through this incredible blog. So, uh…off we go.

Check it…I’m totally finishing my master’s project this summer. It’s about the motivations of underrepresented students in the sciences (and their implications on diversity in higher education)! This isn’t going to be some groundbreaking document, but the investigation on diversity tends to focus on the background and socioeconomic (such a university word) characteristics of students. What about the student’s thinking? One thing that has been illuminated from a few interviews so far is that people perceive the sciences as where the $$ is. I mean, if you want that SL500 and you’re not an entertainer, how are you gonna get it? Well, evidently lots of minorities take business, so there’s that. Otherwise, it’s physics, dammit.

Hey, take a look…it’s June! I’ll hit you all later.

 

Still Here

Just having serious mental block lately. Which is alarming, considering this blog isn’t exactly the New York Times. In any event, I’ll get something up here soon.

 

3 Wonders

There must some way to snazz up my webpage so that visitors can be satiated when I don’t post for, like, two weeks. I oughta start by replacing that hit counter. The CoolCounters thing seemed like a good idea because there were some cute images, it gave interesting information like search terms (more on that later) to arrive at this page and it’s only $2/month. But, as it turns out, there aren’t that many images I actually want on here and I want something that will positively bombard me with data. Every hit on Ice Climber will be like its own focus group. So, yeah…I’ll look into it soon.

Someone gave me this Letterman-style list today. #1 is mighty clever.

Top 3 Things NOT overheard at a D&D convention:

3. “What is that movie with the Ewoks? You know, it’s that one movie…”
2. “Wait, porn? On the Internet?”
1. “The most interesting thing happened to me today.”

And last, Joan Ryan asks, what the fuck is wrong with these people?? Ignorant, racist, irresponsible, greedy, inconsiderate…you name it. Even for people who are passionate about the “A&F image”, so go buy some Hollister or American Eagle. I guarantee no one will know the difference.

 

Starter (B)log

If you visit this page regularly you know that I have a TON of blogging to do. Cramming the last two weeks into a single, gigantic superpost crossed my mind last night, but there was homework to finish, that new episode of Family Guy to watch and, later, my first visitor to Seattle. By the time all was said and done it was 2:30am and ever since freshman year I’ve been in a struggle to not go to sleep so late. Sooo…I’m gonna do that backblogging again and broken up into chunks. It’ll be like reading last week’s newspapers.

While it’s on my mind, let me just say that the Family Guy episode, the first one since it was brought back from cancellation, was fucking hilarious. The list of cancelled shows on FOX, the Bed, Bath and Beyond joke and that fucking Passion 2 trailer…those things that genuinely make me laugh out loud are rare. Hopefully the show has some longevity this time around.

 

Wed. night

Ice Climber began almost a year ago in the Odegaard Undergraduate Library here at the University of Washington. I’m here again tonight after a bit of studying. It’s always fun to come here. It’s like a fashion show, no kidding. The 18-20 year old young women in here seem to embrace one of two extremes: either pajamas in public (a pet peeve of mine) or full-on, hair styled, make-up’d, skin-flashing tartness. Not that I’m complaining. It’s the guys, too. Right now I’m looking over at a dude wearing that multi-colored, vertical-striped dress shirt that I know I’ve seen in Macy’s for $55. It’s nearly midnight, so he got the hour right, but he forgot he is in the library and not Club Medusa…or wherever kids these days like to party. And this other dude has salt-and-pepper hair but there’s no way it could be natural. How the hell did he do that?!

Anyway, the photos from Black Boy haven’t been sorted out yet. In the meantime, I’m going to put up my notes from last week’s camping trip…a process neglected earlier this week, again, because of the play. So read and N’Joy like non-dairy creamer.

This color is for writing done onsite.
This color is for writing done tonight.

I stole the term “backblogging” from the Texas Cooking Woman because that’s what I’m forced to do for this field trip. I have my phone but there is no reception up here in the woods so there will be no audio post. Damn T-Mobile. It’s all good. Practicing writing in the notebook is a good idea.

Four-hour drive to get up here to the Olympic Mountains. Naturally, I’m more interested in my classmates than our surroundings. Everyone here is an up-and-coming naturalist, for sure, but a couple of guys have their own band, one woman is a bartender who looks like a combination of Rachel Dratch and this girl Haane I met in college. Lastly, the three professors along with us are very good-humored. Evidently, they both attended Cal and they’ve been working together for the past 30 years. So, by now, they’ve established a little bit of a rapport. Anytime a grown man can say to another grown man “you stupid son of a bitch” and it’s absolutely no problem between them…well, that’s a sign of true friendship.

It’s ten minutes after twelve and we’ve gotta wake up at 6:30a to go bird-watching so maybe I ought to wrap up. Also, my head is killing me after a margarita, two tequila shots, a Smirnoff Apple and a Lucky Lager. Oh, and Brite Crawlers. How can you top that? Best field trip ever.

Oh, snap! Saw a coupla bald eagles today. One of ’em flying around with a twig! This afternoon, my classmates and I got down and dirty searching for salamanders in a creek. It was cold as FUCK. WhatUpThen is not the outdoor-oriented person, but I certainly didn’t want to stand out or otherwise hold the class back. So I put on my rain gear, raised my Leaf Shield and dove headfirst into the brush, baby! Before long, they’re gonna start calling me Wood Man.

Spirit of the Woods

 

Most Popular Post

It’s a quarter after one in the morning and I’ve taken a break from writing to glance at my counter stats. Ice Climber must have finally gotten included on some search engines or something? I don’t really know how it works. Last week I commented about how some individual searched “men naked showering locker room” and ran across my page. Since then, variants on that general theme have been popping up as search terms leading to this page. Back in May 2004, when Ice Climber was barely a month old, little did I know that my post about the benefits of showering at the gym would become my most popular entry. Just in the last week, I’ve recorded gems such as these:

showering in the locker room
showering in women’s locker room
guys showering in locker room
showering at the gym
ladies showering
showering ladies

and the one that started it all…men naked showering locker room

The first four on that list may not understand the operation of search engines…the “in” and the “the” wouldn’t have been factored into their search. The last coupla folks got the hang of searching keyword-style.

It’s exciting to realize that Ice Climber is the destination for so many people seeking legitimate information! Another day I’ll write something about the non-perverse/voyeuristic search terms. Until then, I’m sure writing this post guaranteed me another 100 hits from people who, uh…let’s just say they’re looking for a little something extra.