Purgatory

In the sense that this is going to be a place where things are purged so they can move on.

I make a note of ideas for posts now and then; I'll usually put some stuff in the body to remind me and then save it as a draft for "later".

Later is generally synonymous with "never" and if the post was topical in any way then it is guaranteed to sit forever, waiting for a later that will never come.

Regard:

"Curves or: How I learned to stop using movie cliches in my titles"

This was one of the first drafts I saved. It was going to be a tutorial on using the Curves tool in editing software. I found at one point that editing Curves was totally unapproachable. Then I learned how to use it and I wanted to share my knowledge with the world in a tutorial format that borrowed heavily from Cracked's image/punchline writing style. I will now instead defer to the excellent Cambridge in Colour for their existing tutorial.

"God Bless You, Google Images"

90% of a post about the importance of using photographic references when drawing. It also had a joke about Scorpions (the band). Too easy. Plus I think everything I wrote after that draft clearly demonstrated the helpfulness of Google Images.

Using references is still important if you're illustrating, painting or writing. Or sculpting. Really, doing anything.

If I ever do one of those things and use references, I may write an actual post about of it.

"Bored... To Death"

This one was actually about the excellent Project Zomboid. It may have been a complete article, actually. It also was very faithful to stealing Cracked's style (using "Wait, What?" as a section heading) and had a joke about Cruisin' Exotica, an awful arcade game. Basically I'm impressed with the game's ability to turn your own sense of monotony into an environmental danger. After three in-game days of eating spoiled meat and standing motionless, listening to zombies outside your window, you tend to take stupid risks and end up dying. I haven't played the game in like, four updates to the beta so I can only assume it's even better now then it was then.

"CNN Goes Off the Rails"

Just a concept. I really wanted to create a clever infographic that showed how quickly the comments on a CNN news story would descend into batshit crazy tinfoil hat racism. Trying to measure this is like trying to measure the output of a fire hose with a rain gauge. Basically, the answer is "Instantly, on any article" and I don't think that really needs a infographic.

"Wedge Salad Vodka Infusion"

This is basically what it says on the label. I had dreams of ending up in Lifehacker or something (maybe Make?) with a great tutorial on making wedge salad flavored vodka. The bleu cheese was something of question mark for me and I didn't feel like dropping a bunch of coin turning vodka into poison. Plus, I'm lazy.

If you try it, I can say that I read one time that refrigerating alcohol you've infused with a fat will cause it (the fat) to solidify. This enables you to retain the flavor-bearing oils while removing the less desirable rendered fats. So if you can get tomato, bleu cheese, lettuce and bacon flavor into a bottle of Smirnoff, let me know.

"You're Out of Milk"

I'll just paste the notes I left myself in August:

Other things to put cereal in?


yogurt
water
whiskey
midori

I pictured this as a "Steve, Don't Eat It" photo essay. I don't, unfortunately, have Steve's commitment to his craft.

"Suicide Drinks"

Are you seeing a trend? I had helpfully left myself the note to "write about this".

Everyone knows that suicide soda fountain mixes are awesome, and with those Coke Freestyle machines you could spend a half hour mixing some real Willy Wonka shit.

Unfortunately, everyone also knows that suicide mixes end up tasting like Dr. Pepper with varying degrees of fruitiness so I figured that's kind of a dry hole.

"Measuring Up"

The gist of the article? "Listen to these wacky archaic measurements we use because we don't have the Metric System!"

Unfortunately, all I had come up with in 9 months was the "acre foot" for measuring large quantities of water and a "hogshead" which I think is a barrel of some kind.

Plus when I actually tried to conceptualize an acre field filled one foot deep with water I found I was able to. Really after a moment's shock it doesn't seem so unreasonable.

Deleted!

"The Road to Hell"

I balked at the idea of having my "local butcher" french the tips of a roast or grind veal for a meal, as suggested by numerous TV chefs. Then I realized I was personally aware of several local butchers, all of whom I've found to be useful for those very things. So rather than come off as a hypocrite I figured I'd just keep my mouth shut and leave the trussing of roasts and the slivering of rib membranes to the pros.

There was a funny picture of a dog, though.

"Wordsmithery"

Lord. This was going to be a lengthy critique/analysis of rap lyrics. I believe that even if done earnestly, no such analysis can be performed without coming across as very ironic and very white.

Oh, also it was mostly about Eminem.

"Halloween Recap"

There's kind of a finite window for blog posts about Halloween. Mine? It was awesome, thank you. The costumes were great too. I even have a few build pictures!

But Halloween was a long time ago, now. I'll have to hope for better luck writing things come October 2012.

"Wizard of Oz/Populist Movement/Occupy Movement"

Speaking of windows shutting. I was watching Wizard of Oz, I knew it was something something allegory about farmers, and we were in the middle of Occupy Fever. I found some delightful coincidences between the plight of the Populist movement that Wizard of Oz is allegedly about and the numerous demands of OWS. Briefly, rich oligarchs wanted to continue to keep the value of the dollar pegged to the price of gold because it benefited them in a way that I still don't full understand. The rest of the country (farmers) wanted to the dollar tied to something less volatile and more friendly to the sums of money they were exchanging.

Anyway there seemed to be a 99% vs. 1% thing going on way back when and I thought "Everything old is new again! I should write about this!" And I should have.

But then it got too cold to protest and by now I'd have to re-read the Wikipedia article on the bi-metal standard and I'm certainly not going to do that.

"Verbiage is Garbage"

Don't use the word "verbiage" when you mean "text" or "copy". It means that, but with connotations of excess. Like, if you want me to write some verbiage for you then you're asking me to throw in a bunch of extraneous, poorly written crap.

Not enough content for a whole post and frankly, a little preachy.

Phew!

That's it, that's all of my really old drafts that I was certainly never going to revisit. Actually now you've got a little "blog in a box" kit. It's like my free band names, but not as clever. Enjoy!