Working Out

How I feel when I work out:

How I feel when I don’t:

So the question is, why the hell do I get lazy and lose all my tyrannoness?

 

Zombie Lit

This exercise with Dillon’s Blog has been pretty fun for me. Usually when I begin any creative writing, I get an idea that provides the big picture, but sometimes it gets so big I don’t know how to populate the setting with intriguing characters. Often this causes the idea to go to my memory bank, or one of many Google Docs or docs on my hard drive.

With Dillon’s Blog it was interesting to narrow a story’s scope down to one character, whom told everything through his point of view. I deliberately structured this to be like somebody’s personal blog, one whom is writing for an audience that includes his friends and any strangers that happen by. Thus the writing is non-chalant and candid, and there’s a lot of focus on Dillon’s thoughts rather than the external action in his world. Each entry has a small set of objectives. One is to further the story, one guy’s blog as he witnesses a zombie infestation unfold. The next is to broaden some portion of Dillon’s life in a small way. The third is to inject the background information of Dillon’s world.

Zombie literature is to me a well-worn path these days, and the tropes involved are firmly established. Hence I’m trying to broaden and stretch the convention without taking this so far out that it falls under its own weight. So if you have been reading Dillon’s Blog, you likely recognize some familiar features of a zombie story. What I hope you’ll pick up on are my personal touches and my own take on this kind of tale. Also I hope to achieve the goal of creating a character readers want to know and follow through his story, and feel for him as new events befall him.

If you haven’t read Dillon’s Blog yet, now’s a good time to get up to speed – there are only 14, very short entries so far. If you have been reading, then thank you and I hope you’ve been entertained. There’s much more to come, I promise.

 

More Dillon’s Blog + Twitter

There’s a new post up on Dillon’s Blog. Also I created a Twitter account for the main character. It’ll help if you follow both, for as the story progresses, it’ll make more sense for the character to tweet certain things rather than blog about them.

 

New Projects

I am working on a new project I call “Dillon’s Blog.” It’s on WordPress like this one, but it is written from a fictional character’s standpoint. If you’d like to see it, go to this address and give it a read. It may seem very innocuous now, but the story will slowly unfold over the coming months. There’s definitely more to it than what you will see in the current posts. Enjoy!

 

Beer Blog Reviews/ Blog About Beer

Blog About Beer. That’s pretty straightforward, isn’t it? It was started in 2007 by Luke Livingston, but Logan Thompson took it over in 2010. Thompson lives in the heart of craft brew country, Vancouver, WA. He insists he is no beer snob, and his reviews prove that. Some of these reviews here are very straight forward, plain spoken and honest. Thompson manages to get a hold of some really cool beers too. While an acai’ berry beer is not at the top of my wishlist, I’d definitely give it a try based on his description. Also I have got to find me some of this Magic Hat he’s reviewed a few times now.

BAB’s layout is clean and very professional. If any blog is a great representative of beer blogging, it’s this one. Simple colors arranged in eye-catching patterns, uniform fonts, clean logo and a great layout that lets your eye follow one portion to the next.

What I really like are what Thompson finds that aren’t related to beer reviews or beer fests. For instance he is the one who reported on Untappd before I did. Also his post on the Cycle Pub makes me envious of the Pacific Northwest – more than I already am just because of the beer there.

Thompson’s writing is concise and to the point. It’s also casual and invites discussion. He freely engages in conversations with his readers on his blog, which demonstrates an air of friendliness. Like Beer Buddha, Thompson understands the spirit of craft brewing that makes it great – sharing and engaging in comradery over great beer.

BAB is definitely a keeper in the beer blogosphere. You can follow it on Twitter if you choose but it’s worth going to and bookmarking.

 

Beer Blog Reviews/ Beer Buddha

Beer Buddha's Blog Header. The only good pic of him I found.

I’m making it a goal of mine to go over the beer links saved to my bookmarks folder, actually read through the blogs listed there and see what’s worth keeping. It’s a bit of a housekeeping and research project, for a while back when I started LVO, I wanted to keep tabs on the beer world and forward along what I thought was noteworthy. As the ship got rudderless I went off into politics, sci-fi and other realms, but lately I’m trying to bring it back to this blog’s original focus. With that in mind, I will go through the various beer blogs and pages I’ve discovered and give a brief description and commentary of each, leaving it up to you to see for yourself whether you agree with my assessment, or just think I’m full of shit.

I’m starting off this series of posts with The Beer Buddha. Beer Buddha is from Louisana in the New Orleans region, and cites his credentials as working for a distributor, a brewery and three beer stores in his neighborhood. He uses Blogger (blogspot), as several of the beer bloggers I’ve seen do, for his layout. The close-up beer background in his page is one I’ve seen on other blogs, so it suggests to me that it’s a template of some sort. As far as layout goes Beer Buddha isn’t crowded, and it’s clean but it could use some tweaking in the color and font department.

He has a menu at the top linking to reviews, a beer map so you can find the various stores and pubs where the Buddha has obtained his goods, a link for interested advertisers, a store and a few other features. It’s nice he has them right where you can see them, so there’s no searching and no confusion as to what’s on the site (Yes it’s a beer blog but there is a lot to write about within that subject).

Beer Buddha seems to be established in beer blogging, for his links list is long and his posts indicate sponsorships, partnerships and friendships with vendors, distributors, pubs and other businesses. He is involved with Top of the Hops, a series of beer festivals across the NOLA-Biloxi region held in the spring.

Regarding the content, through Beer Buddha you’ll definitely get a good catalog of local NOLA beers such as Bayou Teche, Abita, and NOLA. He exchanges beers with other bloggers and conducts reviews, goes out to local hangouts to try their food and sample NOLA beers, and does giveaways too. Beer Buddha has made some tracks in beer blogging and going across his page, you get a slice of life in the Big Easy. He provides some commentary regarding LA liquor laws, the joys of grilling, and of course a ton of beer reviews. Beer Buddha’s writing style is pretty candid and direct. He doesn’t beat around the bush in regards to what he perceives as the positives and negatives of a beer, and is unafraid to lay out his opinion for any brewers who happen to be reading. Interaction on his blog is small. I caught one post with 14 comments but the average seems to be 1-2. That indicates he has readers and probably a following, but not an interactive audience – at least not on the blog itself. For all I know Beer Buddha’s interactions possibly happen more on venues like Facebook, Twitter and in real life.

All in all I think the Beer Buddha represents what’s great about beer bloggin and what it should be in terms of information, community-building and generating enthusiasm for local color and beer. It’s definitely worth it to check in, see what he’s drinking at the moment and getting a ground view of the Louisiana brew culture.

 

Tweet Your Drink

Well I guess it was bound to happen. Social networking is now specializing. Whereas before you had your MySpace, then Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare, the sophisticated drinker can now log in and check in with his/her beer on Untappd.

The purpose of Untappd is to announce to the internet what beer you are drinking at any given time. The beers are in the site’s database so when you update your status, you are connecting to a specific beer and brewer. This keeps track of the beers you’ve drank and in the process you earn badges. In addition some businesses are in the database, so you can additionally check in at which bar where you’re drinking.

I just recently created my own Untappd account, which you can view here if you want. A couple things you need to know right away: it will ask you to link your Facebook/Twitter/Foursquare accounts, but I don’t think that’s actually mandatory to use Untappd. Second you can’t update beers from your computer. Untappd makes you go to the mobile website, log in there and then check in with your beers through clicking “Drink Up.” I don’t like the mobile-only option. The interface itself is a little horsey, because you have to manage with your tiny keyboard to look up a beer, the site is always asking for your location (Which you can decline, but still it is a privacy issue), and after you post there’s a sense of, “Now what?” Back to drinking, I suppose.

If you click on “the Pub” you can see what everyone else is drinking. That’s possibly Untappd’s most useful feature because you can see the wide varieties of beer being drank. For instance when I scanned the Pub, I instantly saw a lot of brands I had never seen before.

I’ll be honest I think I might use this thing two or three times and that’s it. I like to drink beer, not catalog it. I may as well count calories with my food. Drinking and eating to me aren’t exercises in accounting and data entry. There are people who seem to like the novelty of this though.

 

Rock of Aging

The 23 year old me:

“Hmm let’s see, it’s Friday, what the hell is going on tonight?”

*Looks on internet, clicks on local entertainment website, checks events calendar*

“Oh cool, I like that band. They’re at Dirty, Dingy, Smoky Club Dowtown tonight? I love that place! It’s such a shit hole! I love shit holes, because I’m in my early 20′s and don’t care about hygiene or being mugged! What time’s the show? 9 o’clock? Awesome, because I really have no motivation to go anywhere before 8 pm. It’s going to be awesome watching two other bands play that I don’t give a shit about, and wait until nearly midnight to see the one group I want to see! Maybe I’ll just stay up after I get home too? Fuck it, I’ve never just sat around drinking until the sun came up, let’s see what happens!”

The 30 year old me:

“Oh fuck yes, it’s Friday. I’ve been getting up at 6:30 am all week and I’ve had to either shovel snow or scrape the ice off my car all goddamn week, and my commute has taken 10 minutes longer due to the idiots too dumb to drive in snow. I can’t wait to crack open a beer and not do jack shit. Oh wait, what’s this on my Facebook?”

*Clicks events notice, sees a show by a band I enjoy is playing nearby tonight*

“Hey, maybe I could go to that? Okay what time does it start?”

*Doors open at 9 pm, three bands are on the bill. I have heard of one of them, and it plays last*

“Uh…9 pm start, band won’t go on until 11:30 or so, I’ve been up since 6:30, my car payment’s due and the next pay period isn’t for a week – oh and it’s cold.”

*                  *                    *

“Fuck it, not going.”

 

Stupid

I’ve been meandering through topics for a while now, sometimes taking reader-submitted topics and writing on them, other times going into politics, and even trying to be funny. If there is one thing tying all these posts together, it’s stupidity. Maybe that’s what this blog’s focus is: taking real world topics and showing people their asses. What’s great is there is never an end to this kind of content, because people are constantly doing utterly stupid things. Listening to an alcoholic rant about Nazis and calling it informed, political commentary? Stupid. Taking pills that have nothing more than a placebo effect at best and calling it a valid alternative to scientific medicine? Stupid. Bitching about not getting a free day off from the weather? Stupid.

I seriously wrote one, single post this week about a sober topic and used no sarcasm whatsoever, and didn’t hold people up as modicums of idiocy. One post where I tried to be dead serious and try to encourage discussion about a very real, very serious issue. It has had six hits on it since I published it. My post ripping on Rep. Michele Bachmann has had 458. So even the audiences out there of Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, Google and so on prefer the angry material. Which is not surprising really, given what counts for news and entertainment today. Numbers like these seem to lay out the path Lobo Verde Online must take if it is to become successful.

I am probably not going to take such an easy road though. Though I will continue to point and laugh at the folly of others (Schadenfreud, the Germans call it), I still like music, beer, brewing, science, science fiction and all the other things I’ve written about here, even if they only get 2 hits a piece. I’m a writer, and I write. If I don’t write what I like then there’s no point in doing it, even if it made money. Then I’d just be a hack. I already have a day job where I work for money. I do this for passion. So I’m okay with being obscure and only getting hits if Reddit likes one post out of several I submit, or if Facebook only nabs a dozen hits here or there, because as long as I’m writing, then things are good. I’ll toil in obscurity. I’ll be just one more blogger on the internet. As long as I have this keyboard, a monitor and an ISP connection I’ll keep pumping this stuff out. If you are out there and like it, I hope you have enjoyed most of it. That’s the best I can desire. Thank you for reading and I hope you keep doing so, whoever and how many of you there are.

 

Sometimes I Write Funny Stuff

I like to moonlight over at Super Fun Patrol and pretend I’m a comedy writer. I just put up a new post called “The Basic Guide to Midwestern Cooking.”

Excerpt:

The Midwest, which comprises Ohio through Nebraska going East to West, and Missouri to Minnesota going South to North, is often called the Heartland. This is because of the very high rate of heart disease that afflicts its people. It’s also called America’s Bread Basket, due in part to Midwesterners’ neverending, insatiable craving for the various starches and grains they grow on their arable, fertile farmlands. Many Midwesterners are descended from German, Irish, Swedish, Norwegian, Czech, Polish and other European immigrants. These immigrants left harsh conditions and sometimes starvation to come to America, where they moved inland, started farming and promptly said, “Now let us figure out how to consume all this good food until we pass out. Oh and somebody invent mayonnaise so we can smother all our food with it.”

Head over to Super Fun Patrol and check it out!