Christopher East

I’ve finally gotten around to finishing up my review archives:  there are now pages for music and television.  Aren’t I organized?  (Or maybe just ridiculous…)  Have a  great weekend!

This weekend I spent several hours obsessively working over my website, adding graphics and links.  I’ve been meaning to do this for a while but the more entries I posted, the more daunting the task became.  I’m glad I finally made the time for it, though, because I think the site’s a lot more visually appealing now, and hopefully the links are useful too.  Thanks for all the advice, Jenn!

Although not readily evident on my site — my current WordPress theme doesn’t display them — I add tags to all of my posts.  I just noticed the tags section on my site management page creates a tag cloud, and it makes for an interesting visual.

Based on my tag cloud, I have learned (if I didn’t know already):

• I seem to write about Castle more than I watch it.
• Amazingly I am now a bigger fan of the Los Angeles Kings than I am of the Buffalo Sabres.   There was a time when I never thought this would be possible.  (But the Sabres are still in my heart…)
• My favorite TV show is still Mission: Impossible, even after all these years.
• Oslo is getting more blog-attention than Cairo.  (Need to do something about that…)
• I’ve posted more about England than about the United States.  But I guess I’ve never taken a trip to the United States, so that makes sense.
• Dollhouse made me think, even when I didn’t like it.
• I love GarageBand!
• Looks like I’ve got a thing for Amy Acker…
• Looks like I’ve got a thing for…Fran Kranz?
• Most-mentioned authors:  Alan Furst, Nancy Kress, John LeCarre’, Maureen F. McHugh.
• What is this Futurismic thing?
• I am very interested in World War II history.
• You may never have heard of The Sandbaggers, but evidently that show is important to me.
• The largest tag by far:  Subnetworks.  It looks like I really do want to finish writing this novel.

And now, to tag this post, thereby reinforcing my tendencies…

I spent some time over the last couple days building a simple Review Archive for the site.  Since the main focus of my reviewing has been on books and movies — and because my TV and music reviews have been somewhat more disorganized — those are the categories I featured.  There’s also a page for the Spy 100 Project, which I will update as the viewing proceeds.  At some point I might add more sub-pages, but this seems like plenty for now!

Random, recent observations…

• I half-watched I Love You, Man (2009) from across the room last weekend while playing WoW, and laughed enough that I felt like I should have been paying more attention.  The premise is paper-thin, but Jason Segal and especially Paul Rudd are pretty funny in it.  (The whole “slappin’ the bass” thing was killing me…)
• Evidently I’m the only Southern Californian who fears getting run over when accessing my car while street-parking.  Everyone else here just seems to assume that the world will get out of their way.
• I still believe reality television is fundamentally bad for you.  That said, uh, congrats to Antonio…
• If Dean Lombardi trades Alexander Frolov, I will personally kick him in the nads.
• Blog posts I keep meaning to write:  “Los Angeles vs. Iowa City,” “My Dream Supergroup,” “10 TV Characters Who, for Good or Ill, Have Contributed to My Behavior”
• I’m going to start calling Facebook “Guiltbook.”  Please don’t take it personally if I don’t download your aps, people…there’s only so much time in the day!

And speaking of Facebook, Oslo is now a proud member of Catbook…here he is chilling on the piece of cat furniture we’ve taken to calling “the Lounge.”

Ozzie in the Lounge

According to WordPress, this is the 100th post I’ve made to this blog.  Back in January when I started this blog, if you’d told me I would write 100 blog posts in an entire year (let alone its first eight months), I would have laughed in your face.

Of course, I owe it all to Jenn, and I can’t think of a better subject for a milestone blog post than my awesome girlfriend.  Three years ago this past Wednesday was the first day we met, and we both still think of that as our first date.  She’s made my life immeasurably better in just about  every respect.  Thanks, sweetie!  I dedicate these first 100 blog posts to you! 

The reason this blog’s been quiet for the past week or so is that Jenn and I were overseas!  For the past eight days we’ve been roaming England, mostly in Yorkshire, but we also spent a very fast and busy day down in London.  This was my first journey out of the country (not including Canada — I love ya, Ontario, but you’re practically my back yard) and I had a fantastic time.  The travel days were long and tiring, but mostly very smooth and unproblematic.  Overall it was a great trip!

As I reacclimate to my day-to-day life over the next few days I hope to be posting some blog entries about some of our adventures, plus some photos, and reviews of my entertainment consumption during the vacation.  For now, though, I’ve just got time to point to a new photo of me on my About page: Jenn took this one of me at Bolton Abbey, early last week.  More to come…

Hi, there! As many of you know, I’ve never quite gotten the hang of blogging…not at Futurismic, and certainly not with my LiveJournal. But for some reason I still feel compelled to give it a shot, and to that end I thought a new blog and website might be a good way to ring in 2009. Many, many thanks to Jenn for setting this all up for me, and very quickly. So quickly, in fact, that I barely have any material in mind yet…doh!

Anyway, what do you think of the site? It’s set up to cross-post to my LiveJournal, so anyone signed up on that feed should see my new posts, and comments can be made in either place.

It will come as a surprise to many people that I used to be a very vocal and opinionated person, particularly about science fiction. It has been brought to my attention — well, actually, I kind of noticed it myself too–that anybody who knows me from online would have no idea that I’m opinionated. I don’t know what exactly happened — stage fright, professional paranoia, whatever — but for some reason when I write things for the whole world (theoretically) to see, there doesn’t seem to be much me in my writing. Somewhere along the way I got cautious and stilted and boring, and wrote blog posts like someone convinced nobody gave a shit what I thought about anything. It made for a pretty dull journal, and maybe that’s why I never kept up with it.

Well, I’m still convinced nobody gives a shit, but this time I’m going to try not to give a shit about that.

I want to get back into the habit of being opinionated — particularly about fiction, film, TV, music — and try to have some fun sharing those opinions. I am a media junkie to the core, and at worst I’d like this to be a record–for myself, if nobody else — of my likes and dislikes from all the reading and viewing and listening I do. I’d also like to keep people up to date on what’s happening in my life in general, and with my work on Futurismic, and I’ll probably have other random thoughts along the way as well.

Who knows, maybe I will charge headlong into this blog and then sputter out again. Or, maybe I will write a ton of blog posts nobody wants to read. But I’m looking forward to giving it a shot, and trying to make a habit of it, and maybe I can rediscover a little of my writing voice in the process.

So take a look around at my humble digs, and let me know what you think!