Who do I still think I am??

This one's about solstices, taglines, and fits.

30DBC PROMPT: "June 21, 2014 is the Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year. After June 21st, the days will get shorter until the Winter Solstice. Some people celebrate the solstice. How will you celebrate the longest day of the year? Will you write verse? Will you write prose? Will you have a BBQ? Will you protest?", courtesy of Janine .

'Sup y'all? I feel like every month I set out to do this blogging thing with great intentions (typically first thing in the morning), and by the time the last week or so of the month rolls around I start putting off writing entries until the last possible moment it seems. Like, it's almost 9pm, and my body knows I'll be goin' to sleep in somewhere around 2-3 hours...and I've had all day to come up with something on top of it, and I barely feel like doing this (or anything else, for that matter). Maybe months are like my own personal solstice seasons, where I care about things more at the beginning of each month and by the 21st I have more of an affinity for dumpster fires and "Other Stories From Around The Web" rabbit holes than I do my own writing. Someone commission a research team to study these habits for me, please and thank you.

The cool thing about this prompt is I actually have an old poem from around the time I joined WDC that's titled, ironically enough, "Summer Solstice" . It's not very good though...it's written from two different- possibly indifferent- viewpoints, and it really has almost nothing to do at all with summer or solstices. Maybe metaphorically there was some sort of hidden meaning involved, but in all likelihood I probably wound up with a line or two stuck in my head somewhere between lying awake in bed and taking a shower that morning, and it happened to be on June 21st of that particular year. Sometimes that's how this extracurricular stuff works out for me.

As for this year? Well, I don't normally celebrate solstices, nor do I commemorate them with words (most years). No barbecuin' for just me- I had a big lunch, thanks- and even though I need a few items from the drug store it can wait. I thought about maybe grabbing a book and heading over to the nearby park for some reading and so I could take advantage of a gorgeous day, but I kinda didn't feel like walking very far (even though the park is like two blocks away). It sounds kinda depressing, but the summer solstice and it being "the longest day of the year" makes me kinda sad because that's when I realize I haven't done nearly as much in nice weather as I should've and it's all downhill from here until next spring (because you can't just count the winter solstice as a turning point the same way you can the summer solstice...there are far too many days after December 21st in the northeast that suffer from single-temperature or lower weather conditions). I know it's my fault for not realizing sooner that I should be doing more things outside and all, but still...maybe I should've re-read this prompt after every few sentences, because I totally just remembered the "Will you protest?" part of it. Maybe I should start up some kind of protest...against me and for only allowing myself two and a half good months of decent weather (now until September...can't trust the skies or the wind in September) to enjoy the outdoors.

Maybe I make up for it by not complaining much at all year-'round about weather. The same people bitchin' about how sick they are of the cold and snow by the first week in December are usually the same ones who're breaking a sweat as soon as it hits sixty degrees and are crying for the air conditioning because they can't believe how hot it is already. The first day it doesn't rain they're all tuggin' on their collars like, "It's so muggy today! My grass could really use some rain!" Naw man, don't lie. It ain't your grass...it's you that's too pussy to deal with any kind of climate and you're too lazy to take a cold shower or whatever, so don't be tryna deflect your issues on inanimate objects and then six months later try to tell me I should come shovel your driveway or bring you hot cocoa 'cuz you're afraid to leave your house because you might get frostbite or some shit. I'm not havin' any of it. Yeah, if I'm protesting anything, it's those people, because they seem to really like to promote my testiness.

BCF PROMPT: "Often, our blogs have taglines. But what if humans did, too? What would your tagline be?"

I've actually pondered this concept before, but in a slightly different way...what if, whenever we walked into a room, we had a soundtrack playing? Sorta like that time on Family Guy when Stewie got a job  , or when you had that IM service that played an almost unintelligible five second snippet of a song for all of your friends whenever you signed on or signed off or typed something and pressed enter during a group chat thing...wow, that was like 15 years ago, and look how far the internet and technology have come! And I still can't enter a room to the theme music from The A-Team unless someone's got it handy and cued up on a cassette or a cd or their phone, which in my opinion would take something away from the moment. But I digress...

A personal tagline? I see the point, but that would all kinda make us characters in the grand sitcom of life. The memorable roles get the taglines, and the taglines are uttered by the memorable people. Hi chicken...meet egg. The problem with that is not everyone is worthy of saying something cool at the right time because, let's face it, we all have that friend who says the wrong thing at the worst possible moment, and it's usually because they think they're being funny, but they're just annoying. Even Gomer Pyle knew enough not to say "Goll-oll-lly" all the freakin' time, ya know?

I'm tryna think if there's anything I say on a slightly regular enough basis...but I have more contact with people over the internet than I do personally (at least in the majority of the last 18 months or so), and that's not what the prompt wants to know. I guess I have a tendency to punctuate sentences sometimes with a form of "know what I'm sayin'?", although it comes out sounding somethin' like "knawhaImsayn?". I definitely don't think about it when I'm doing it, but I'm pretty sure it comes out whenever I'm tasked with answering any question that's more complicated than a 1-3 word answer would cover. If there's even the slightest bit of explaining involved, I probably require the extra validation of your comprehension at the end of my mouth's diarrhea of the thought process.

It's pretty universal too...it can be used in a pretty staggering amount of situations, because life should never be just a "yes or no" kinda thing. Try it sometime...when you're forced to give an explanation regarding anything, end your spiel with "knawhaImsayn?". It's almost like a decoy tactic and a credibility builder all in one, because it implies that you know what you're talking about more so than the person you're conversing with does, and you've just contracted four words into one syllable, which can give someone just enough pause to consider what you just did there to win over any debate. This head...it's not just a hat rack, people. KnawhaImsayn?

MUSICAL BREAK!!

I nearly went with this EPMD classic jam  , but I'm goin' with this instead because 1) I've forgotten how much I enjoy this song; 2) chances are if you're keeping score at home Oasis > EPMD; and 3) this song combined with the EPMD track sorta gives you "knawhaimsayn?"...can someone mash up both songs and give me a proper remix, please?

THE DAILY BOX SCORE:

"Let's take a walk on the wide side...we all have something we’d like to write about, but that doesn't really “fit” our blog. Write it anyway."

I don't know if there's any topic I'd consider to be a "bad fit" for the kind of thing I do in this particle of internet time-wasting. Never, to my knowledge, has something come up where I'm like "Naw homie, we don't discuss that around here". Nothing's taboo as far as I'm concerned; usually if I'm not bringing something up it's because I'm certain it's something nobody wants to hear about. And given my penchant for already going to places where I'm sure some folks would prefer I not go, I'm sure you can imagine what the off-limits list must look like.

But who knows what the future holds? The things I think maybe someday I'd like to write about wouldn't "fit" in anyone's blog. What if I wanted to bust out a screenplay, or a factual history of the sandwich, or a telenovela for my Spanish-speaking friends? Y'all know you don't read this blog because I might do that one day. Besides, if you are interested in something other than the crap I dish up, you've got a bazillion more reliable sources to get them from before you should be turning to me for your information.

I've been meaning to post this for a couple of days now. I stumbled upon it late one night and it made me kinda homesick because I don't have a Wegmans super-close to me anymore, and I'll be damned if they're not the greatest place to shop anywhere  .

So I've heard that Oasis song probably hundreds of times, and I've also heard NWA's "Straight Outta Compton"   probably thousands of times...and supposedly Oasis nicked a drum loop   or some other sample from NWA, but I've never heard it. Speaking of NWA, more details have surfaced about their biopic  , which is slated to come out in 2015. I'll be kinda excited to see how that turns out.

Anyone see The StoryMaster 's note about pop-notes ("Note: *Popnotes are now prettier!* Have a great wee...")? I still think pop-notes are the coolest thing, and I used to use them all the time when they were first introduced, but for some reason I stopped...probably because I was sick of having to look up how to use them every friggin' time I wanted to stick one in somewhere, and even then I still messed them up somehow, reversing the order or missing a "{/" tag somewhere. And yeah, they did look kinda blah and sterile, like they didn't match the rest of the site's decor. But now that they look more like they're part of WDC, I might have to start using them again.

10k: Speaking of notes, hopefully this is my last update regarding "Note: So, I have this blog, right? It's called [Lin..."...we're close enough that 10,000 views is certainly within range between tonight and tomorrow afternoon. Saturdays are a notoriously slow day for blogging though, and some people like to take Sundays off, so I won't make any guarantees yet...but I'm starting to get excited about being able to give stuff away (with the help of a few friends) really soon.

I think that has pretty much summed up my day accurately...and I've got an hour-plus to spare before midnight! All that really means is I wasted the extra couple minutes of daylight that we only see once a year by being inside and online. I'm such a killjoy . I hope you were just active enough to perhaps get some use out of that extra sunshine, and I'm glad you could tear yourself away from it just to visit with me for awhile. Peace, knawhaImsayn, and GOODNIGHT NOW!!