Last night was the first night that I’m willing to qualify as proper Miami winter (yes, yes, the 21st is still a few days off), which is to say that driving home late at night with the windows down, in t-shirt and jeans, I felt a shiver or two from the breeze.

I hate not having real seasons, even though I also do appreciate some things about the temperate climate. But, well, I’ll enjoy what I get. Wear a sweater or two.

I’ve found myself really busy over the last few months, which makes things go more smoothly for me, I think. I have less to say on this forum because I’m saying it in others. I’m working, and exercising, and spending time with friends and family and romantic partner, and all of this together conspires to bleed me of the meagre stories I have, until I’m not sure what to write down here when I try to journal.

My life’s grown very comfortable, such that the excitement is minute and perhaps uninteresting. I haven’t been in the mood, I guess, to write about the wonderful meal I made, or ate; the adventure I went on this weekend. I suppose I’ve been unable to write fiction, or poetry even, as well. I think I’ve written six poems in the past six months, which in fact is an improvement upon the preceding year, but is by far a decrease from years before.

I don’t think I feel the drive less, exactly. It’s more of a motivation issue. Always in the past, there’s been some element of conclusion—a poem to submit to the review, or send to a friend; a story to submit to my workshop. Without any driving force, the ideas well up and then die down. That was what was so brilliant about LiveJournal and the other journalling platforms that were abounded in the early/mid 2000s: your friends provided support, encouragement. Just having twenty “friends” on xanga or LiveJournal meant that you could imagine that there were twenty people awaiting your next update.

Tumblr provides that as well, but I think in an age where facebook already records the minutiae of your life, tumblr and the blogging platforms that remain have veered away from self-observation and towards more specific blogs. (The primary exception to this seems to be travelogs.) How many people still write blogs about their lives? Facebook is already recording your life as you live it. (And now, with the new timeline feature, you can go back and browse through the past. It’s a strange concept that I’m sure better essayists than I will cover.)

When I was perhaps a senior in high school, I set about writing a mini-autobiography, chronicling the stories of myself. When I first heard about the timeline idea, I thought of it as an opportunity for everyone to do that, to write an autobiography. I’m curious to see what people will do with it, to see who will create a false identity, who invent a past. Who will be the first artist to publish a character on facebook, whose story we can read? When we can detail our lives with images and video and interactions, map our paths and locate each moment in time, is a personal journal of interest?

As it is, I’ve veered very much towards anecdote-tinged essay on this forum in recent time, coupled with travelog and interjections of films. My earliest journal posts on the web are almost postmodern in style, spastic and jumbled. These days, I use paragraphs.

I don’t know where we’re going, this space and I. I’m sure I’ll keep writing. I hope the subjects continue to blossom.

Anyway, today I decided to make a completely incomplete list, to which I am giving the lukewarm title of “Things that I like on the internet and think you should have seen, too.” Some of these things are older, and I kind of assume that everyone of my generation knows them. Others may be more recent. Most are videos or websites. Many are pre-youtube (woah!), although some of them now live there. Some will be vulgar; others entirely PC. I’m not necessarily going with the super-super famous— no Bed Intruder or Charlie bit me here. No cat videos, either, I don’t think. In any event. I present:

Things that I like on the internet and think you should have seen, too

• Don Hertzfeldt’s Rejected cartoons. I still have a t-shirt from this.
• Bred Neely’s George Washington song. Neely also does Creased Comics and the fantastic Wizard People, Dear Reader, which I would recommend listening to alongside the movie some day. (It’s on youtube sometimes, although it does get taken down.)
• Eric Conveys an Emotion. This is really, really old.
• Homestar Runner. Especially for Trogdor! and Teen Girl Squad.
• Weebl and Bob: Pie. I refuse to watch any other video on this site, but I somehow love this one.
• El Mamut Chiquitito. Okay, so maybe you didn’t see this if you’re not from Miami. Still. If you have any Spanish, I still think this is pretty hilarious.
• The End of the World. You can find this on youtube, but I’m linking to the original website. I like that it’s still around.
• Salad Fingers. Say what you want, I still think this is kind of interesting. Creepy, also. I assure you that David Firth, the creator of this, has more upsetting videos. I won’t link.
• Charlie the Unicorn. Not as funny as it once was, but I still think of it occasionally.
• Potter Puppet Pals: The Mysterious Ticking Noise
• Where the hell is Matt?
• Some select webcomics. Especially Perry Bible Fellowship and xkcd. Also probably A Lesson Is Learned But the Damage is Irreversible. And then, for funny, Hyperbole and a Half and Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
• NY Girl of My Dreams
• Cadbury ad with Phil Collins song. Yeah. I know.
• The Slow Jerk. Yep, really inappropriate, this.
• Those websites that compile people’s submissions: failblog, autocorrect mistakes, When Parents Text, texts from last night, overheard in NY. Too many of them.
• Chromeo – Night By Night. This doesn’t really fit, but I always get the video stuck in my head.
• Cooking by the Book. Really inappropriate. Vulgar. Lil John mashed up with a kids’ show. Amazing.
• The Count, Censored. The Count from Sesame Street with some subtle changes to make it hilarious.
• My Immortal. Fan fiction. Terrible. The full story isn’t as easy to find right now, but I’m sure it’s on The Internet Archive.
• Ukrainian Polka cover of Hot n Cold (the Katy Perry song). Thanks to This American Life.
• Mosh Girl. One of the first of those pictures that got Photoshopped into many, many other pictures. (Like Sad Keanu. But better.)
• Gimme Pizza. The Olsen Twins. Ridiculous song about pizza. Sure.
• Hamster Dance. A clip of the song from Robin Hood, sped up. Tiny gifs of dancing hamsters. Yeah. You remember this. Relatedly, that Spiderman will make you gay gif.
• Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up”. Really, you knew what Rick Rolling is.

I’m missing a bunch that I may add later. For the moment, though. Enjoy.

I invite commenters to add their own. Yessir.

Additions as I remember them:

• Happy Birthday, Calvin. The guys from Robot Chicken re-imagine Calvin & Hobbes. “Mars is amazing!”

The amusing thing, of course, is that I’m currently breaking this rule to write this. But that’s the reason it should be a rule.

The awesome radio show Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me used a song in-between sections the other day. I’d heard it before — it’s a sort of small internet meme going around these days. I can’t figure out where I first saw it, but I found out a bit about the guy singing from this site. I’m not sure why, but it’s interesting to me.

It’s spring break time!

Okay so I may have mentioned before this artist I really like these days, Sophie Blackall, an Australian who’s now based in New York City. Her blog first caught my eye; it’s been covered by the New York Times, and is really just pretty awesome — this is the link you should click on in this post, if you click anywhere. In it, she takes Missed Connections ads from the NY craigslist and NY locals, and illustrates them. They’re almost always amazing, although to be honest her most most recent one wasn’t my favourite. (The above image is hers.) She also sells prints of her work.

But her not-in-that-project illustrations are great, too; I like her style quite a lot, and just find myself pleased with her work in general. There’s a pretty short list of current artists who I (a) know about and (b) really like, and she’s definitely on it. I’m not sure who else is on there, these days. Anthony Goicolea, for sure. Hmmm. There are more, if I could only think of names. Still, I wish I knew more about the current art world. Rachel, oh my sister, educate me.

Anyway, what this may make you think of, if you ever saw it, is Patrick Moberg’s missed connection sensation, NY Girl of My Dreams.com, where he very carefully described some girl he met, and wanted to see again. Which worked. The story as I understand it is that they did meet, and actually dated for a time, but things didn’t work out. (Google corroborates this.) I also really like Moberg’s work. A lot of the artists I like fall between art and cartoon (see, for example, my friend Blake Suárez‘s work), which is perhaps an unnecessary distinction.

For example, I think of the following as comics — and maybe they are. But I’d say the art’s great, too:

• Recombinant Records (Stuart McMillen)
• Dustin Harbin’s work
• Anders Loves Maria is definitely a comic, and the art improved over the years (I’m linking to the first one), and I didn’t always love it, but I think Rene Engström is a fantastic artist.
• A Lesson is Learned But the Damage is Irreversible has long been on hiatus, but it’s fantastic and worth reading through all of the archives
• A similar thing could be said for the Perry Bible Fellowship, a hilarious comic. This one’s also the only one of these I’ve listed for which I own a book.
• Rebecca Clements’ KinokoFry is hard to spell, but beautiful.
• I love the art of Johnny Wander. It’s a diary comic, and they’re not good at doing complete stories, but it’s a lot of fun every time they put one out.

There’s a list at the left of comics that I read. These are all on it.