In Which Our Author Ponders the Nature of Identity

Aw man, this is actually a pretty cool topic. You know what would make it even better? If I wasn't half goddamn asleep. EXHALE HEAVILY. But I guess here I go. Identity...

Identity...

Identity...

What is it? Well, it is certainly a topic upon which I have blogged extensively. But what is it's nature? What does it mean to have an identity? I guess it's something about a thing which is preserved over time. An identity is something that a thing reliably has. But that's not always true, is it? Identities change over time, and sometimes in moments. For example, my blog used to have an identity associated with quality. Now? Not so much.  Now it's more like "Things: Crazy? Conclusively yes."

In Which Our Author Tells Everyone What He Does Well

So this post is supposed to be a how-to on something I do well. I do a lot of things well, but none of them are very hard. Probably the thing I do the best is be Joe Flores. That is sometimes hard, I guess. Um, how you be Joe Flores.... you...um...get born on February 12th, 1989 to Richard and Janet. Make sure you are born with pneumonia. If you are not, try again. Step two is you try your best to grow up. That's the tricky part. Honestly I'm still on that part. If you get past it, let me know.

In Which Our Author Relates the Story of the Fifteenth Picture on Facebook

That would be this:

It's a picture of me and Katie, mentioned in a previous post. This was taken in my house while we were playing a game called Balloon Cup. That's a fun game that Katie owns and I used to always win but now I sometimes lose. Her face looks a lot smaller than mine in this picture, but in real life our faces are pretty much the same size.

In Which Our Author Maps Out a Roadtrip He'd Like to Take

My motivation is on the wane. So I will tell you that I would like to take a roadtrip to Orlando, Florida, home of Disney World and Universal Studios. Here is a map: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&source=s_d&saddr=Lafayette,+IN&daddr=Orlando,+Florida&hl=en&geocode=Fb61aAIdaWPS-imt6ioZGgATiDH1Hk_o2-1BpQ%3BFeB1swEdXEAm-yl3vM3-2HPniDGev6U8BrLDCg&sll=28.538336,-81.379236&sspn=0.183076,0.308647&vpsrc=6&g=Orlando,+Florida&mra=ls&ie=UTF8&z=5

In Which Our Author Speculates About Who Has Stolen The Blog Day Box

It's Will.

In Which Our Author Makes a Gift or Treat for a Friend

So my girlfriend (who is totally the opposite of Matt in that she is the best) wrote me a very sweet acrostic poem. You can read it here. In return, I made this flower and gave it to Will.

I did this because I am awful. I had intended to avoid an overload of gross couple grossness, but my plan backfired as now I must be extra gross in order to atone. So... a haiku!

Katie is the best.

Her name is the sound of joy

Filling in my flaws.

In Which Our Author Writes a Story Starting With a Random Line in "A Tale of Two Cities."

The "sharp female newly-born, and called La Guillotine," was hardly known to him, or to the generality of people, by name. He was comfortable in his ignorance, as he had been comfortable in that hotel room using her as an escape from his wife, as he had been comfortable discrediting her in the news and destroying her life, as he had been comfortable dosing her with an experimental drug his company was developing. As he had been comfortable watching her die. But she would not let him be comfortable any more. She had already systematically disabled the security he had built around his life. His family, his coworkers, and everyone who had naively stood in her way. And now, as the knob on his office-door turned, he knew she was coming for him.

In Which Our Author Hates Matt Gyure

The Internet, have you ever met Matt Gyure? You should avoid that because he is objectively the worst person and a strong contender for worst living being. In the race for "Most Terrible Life Form," he was neck-and-neck with MRSA until MRSA started mentoring a troubled inner-city youth last month.

See, this hour's topic was supposed to be "Walk 100 paces and find a thing to blog about," and like a dutiful participant in 24-hour blog day, I did exactly that. I took Matt's camera/phone and walked 100 paces, at which point I found this house whose windows were glowing green. I thought that would make a really cool blog so I took a picture, but I was kinda nervous because I was taking a picture of someone's windows, so the shot came out kinda blurry. So I deleted it and took another picture, this time at peace with my suspicious behavior. I checked it on the camera/phone to make sure that it looked good and hightailed it back to the house before the neighborhood watch came after me. But when Matt went to upload the picture to the Internet, he said it wasn't there.

I am convinced he did that because he was jealous because my picture was better than his. He didn't want to face the truth that my blog about the hi-jinks of a family of wizards or Christmas elves would have won blog day. Anyway, wish him luck in his contest for Most Terrible Life Form. The prize is a monogrammed wool sweater soggy with dog spit.

In Which Our Author Is a Dog Named Jake

Hi Internet I'm Jake and I'm very happy you're here but it's gonna take me a while to get up because my bones hurt but don't worry it's not a big deal I'm still really happy to see you and you should touch me and if you're not gonna touch me then I'm gonna touch you okay here I come I'm up now walking to you and I'm down on the ground again but this time on top of your feet so you can't move wait you're moving come baaaaack. Okay this is nicer now I'm sitting with my head in your lap and my full body weight on your legs so you can't move this time and I'm gonna tell you about this guy named Joey he's good he used to be better but then he stopped being so good because he got old but probably not old like me we used to play games I really like to jump and he would watch me jump and it made him happy so it made me happy and I would take my toys and run around and he would try to take them and sometimes he'd get them and throw them and he wasn't very good at getting them because he used his hands and not his mouth but that's why it was fun. Then when we were inside we'd play hide-and-seek and Mikey would cover my eyes and Joey would go hide or the other way around and then I would go find them and I always found them even though they tried different hiding spots and then I would lick them because I won but also because I love them. Also I would wake him up in the morning when Mom would tell me to and sometimes that made him mad and I got confused but other times he thought it was funny and he'd pet me did I mention I like being pet because you stopped petting me a while ago and that's not totally cool with me so if you could start again that would be great and I won't resort to drastic measures like putting my paw in your lap and then flexing my nails. Okay good we can begin again. So Joey got older and then he left but he still comes back sometimes and he pets me for a while and we catch up but I don't really care he feeds me and takes me outside when I ask him to so that's nice and he pets me and I like that this is a not so subtle hint because you aren't petting me with the same speed and intensity that you were before. Okay that's better. Sometimes he still plays with me and that's really fun but we both get tired and stop. In conclusion he's great but not present and sometimes I forget about things that aren't here. Where do you think you are going I'm not moving.

In Which Our Author Trades Places With Alonso Quijana (from the musical Man of La Mancha, not the book by Cervantes)

T'would seem I have encountered a device belonging to the Great Enchanter. When first I lay eyes on it, I knew it to be a thing of evil, wrought by dark magics, intended to mislead. I began to give it a sound and thorough thrashing proving the strength of my arm and dedicating my victory to my lady Dulcinea. But before I could strike true, the box, by means of some spell, caused my foot to turn upon some wrinkle in the carpet, and down I came.

In Which Our Author Imagines Again.

Lots of imagination and what-ifs here, but I guess I can get behind that. This one is "What would the world be like if people had gills/wings?" First of all, in our expedition to the hypothetical, we must establish some rules. Since this is my blog, we're gonna play by house rule. My rules. And by my rules, having wings is not the same as being able to fly. You know who has wings? Penguins, emu, certain species of buffalo, and this lady's cat:

None of those things can fly, because they don't have the proper musculature and/or bone-structure. So we are talking about a race of people with largely ornamental wings. As if humanity were suddenly an anime convention. Oh boy...

But gills, on the other hand, are a different story. Gills are an organ unto themselves. Saying someone has gills implies that that person can breathe underwater. So the sea suddenly becomes habitable. Our bodies aren't necessarily suited for life underwater, but building adaptations to our bodies that God never intended is kind of our thing. So within a decade or so, I imagine we would have mounted the food chain down there and showed it who's boss just like we did up here, and suddenly our horizons open. We just have to deal with useless, waterlogged wings.

In Which Our Author Imagines His Life Without Computers

I actually lived a good majority of my childhood without extensive access to computers, but now I couldn't imagine life without one. By themselves, they are okay. I can write things and print things and play things, but that all gets boring pretty quickly.  Like a person with no friends, a solitary computer is a useless pile of trash, deserving only ridicule and violence. But like a person with a lot of friends, a computer connected to the internet is sexy and cool and uncensurable. Shut up, Spell-check! It's a word. I looked it up. The Internet is to me as her mirror was to the Lady of Shalot. (Literature, bitches!) It is a way of viewing the world without the dangers of participation.

Oh no! It's 4:59! Uh without computers I would probably be better but maybe not the end.

In Which Our Author Imagines Worlds

The next topic is "Your favorite make-believe game." There was some debate among the participating bloggers about what constitutes a make-believe game. For me, it's any game that doesn't have set rules or turns, any game that has to be played by people with imagination. I guess I could say that improv games are my favorite games of make-believe. A group of people creating worlds so real they draw in crowds of strangers. That's pretty awesome. But I also really liked when I was a kid and me and my brother and my cousins would run around the backyard playing Power Rangers and Beast Wars and other games where we would create worlds that were real only for us, but so real that we could stay in them for hours and hours. Anyway I really like make-believe, but I got food during this hour so this is all I'm going to write.

In Which Our Author Participates in That Thing Again

Hey, the Internet! It is once again 24-hour blog day, and I am once again going to blog the shit out of shit. So the first topic is "How to make the food you eat most." The food I eat most, excluding things that are made by restaurants, is probably sandwiches. So, um, put a bread and then put some inter-stuff and then put another bread.

Voila! Sandwich! My favorite inter-stuff is sliced chicken, Colby-Jack cheese, and goldfish. Er, sorry. I mean Goldfish®. I have never eaten a goldfish sandwich, though I would not be opposed to doing that.

The humanity adds flavor

End of blog! Exclamation marks are a wonderfully artificial way to add excitement!