Year-struck is being Freshly Pressed, and it’s taking a long time to get all of the wrinkles out. Sadly, only Yearstricken’s blog is wrinkle-free now. What with all the visitors, she considered getting freshly stretched by plastic surgery but that requires money. She’ll be back tomorrow as wrinkly as ever.
(Note to new readers: The Freshly Pressed post was from last week and was a lead-in to the post that followed, Math has Problems. Thank you for reading, commenting, and following.)
When I started blogging, I checked the Freshly Pressed homepage to find blogs to read. Then I discovered the Topics page and searched that way. Once I found blogs I liked, I checked out their blog rolls or went to the blogs of those who commented. On those blogs I found more blog rolls and more comments.
I don’t cook anymore because I’m too busy learning how to make (and spell) bouillabaisse; my house is a mess, but I know how to make environmentally safe cleaning products and how to organize my closets; and I rarely speak to my husband because I’m too busy reading the five blogs I found that tell you the secrets to a happy marriage. Plus, there’s the stat-checking, which reminds me.
Hi. I’m back.
But that’s not what I want to talk about today. Yesterday I did check out Freshly Pressed, and I saw somebody I knew! In blog talk, that means a blogger that I follow and who follows me. Unlike in the real world, in the blog world, you want a bunch of strangers to follow you. Whoever has the most stalkers wins. But to have stalkers, you must stalk; so it’s difficult to know who is following who. It’s like riding a carousel but without the music. I’m the one on the Palomino.
But that’s not what I want to talk about today either. (Going round and round like that makes me dizzy!) Kate of Views and Mews of Coffee Kat got Freshly Pressed. Not Kate herself because that would hurt, but her blog. Go see right now; there is not a wrinkle in sight. That’s how good those WordPress ironers are.
Congratulations, Kate. Don’t worry about the rest of us and our wrinkly blogs. We’ll manage somehow.
I’ve been tirelessly working on a list of awards for the rest of us. See below. Please feel free to add your ideas.
Freshly Blessed – for blogs with a spiritual emphasis
Freshly Blessed
Freshly Dressed (fowl division) – for cooking blogs
Freshly Dressed (fowl division)
Freshly Dressed (human division) – for fashion blogs
Freshly Messed – for blogs about home renovation
Freshly Messed
Freshly Stressed – for mommy blogs
Freshly Stressed
Freshly Tressed – for blogs about hair styling
Freshly Tressed
Pressed Flesh (G-rated) – for blogs about pregnancy
Pressed Flesh (G-rated)
Frenchly Pressed – for blogs about coffee and the French press
Frenchly Pressed
How WordPress encourages those who write literary questions
Above is the new format WordPress uses to encourage you after you publish on your blog. Just like your mother, it’s there to tell you that you are awesome but you need to set some goals, oh, and you forgot to add these tags, but I’m not surprised really, you’re just like your father.
The best part, of course, is the quotation under your new goal, put there to motivate you. See the one in the picture above: “Dreams are illustrations from the book your soul is writing about you.” This was said to the author, Scott B., who has 13,686 friends but only 13 words. But not all pithy little sayings from WordPress are like that. For instance, this is what WordPress said to me yesterday after I posted: “That’s not writing at all, that’s typing.”
The quote is from Truman Capote, who said it about Jack Kerouac’s book On the Road, which chronicled Kerouac’s road trips with other members of the Beat generation. Truman was not invited, so he stayed home and wrote bestsellers like Breakfast at Tiffany’s and In Cold Blood.
Famous typist, Jack Kerouac (Photo by Palumbo via Wikipedia)
You have to understand that Truman grew up without a first name (his parents borrowed the neighbor’s last name, Truman, and made him use that), so he may have been jealous about Kerouac having two first names: Jean-Louis. Since Kerouac was also a poet, he chose the nickname Jack, because it rhymes with his last name. Most people don’t know this, but I know all this literary stuff because I studied some literature in college.
Since Capote was only 5’3”, his ego couldn’t squeeze into his body, so it became his bodyguard and liked to get drunk and talk trash about other writers. Writers like Jack Kerouac, who had his own problems with fame and alcohol, but still managed to get his own Wikipedia page.
Now, am I making some kind of comparison and saying WordPress is short? Based on its font size, yes. Am I saying it has an overly large ego? No, just an overly large logo. I have no idea if it gets drunk, but I wonder sometimes when I read Freshly Hammered Pressed. It certainly talks trash about typists like me, who have their own problems that unfortunately have nothing to do with fame or alcohol.
Apparently, WordPress reads my blog and isn’t afraid to give me its opinion. I can hardly wait to see what it has to say to me when I publish this post.
year-struck 