This is more like I am working behind the counter of a candy store and no customers are coming in and I get bored and start talking to myself and maybe wondering if I made the wrong kind of candy or if I should change the window display or put up a sign saying I am having a two-for-one sale or a special on caramel apples, and I can see you all wandering past my little store, the store I have put so much effort into making look cute and fun and where I come in early every morning to make 600 kinds of candy because I know all of you like different things and I just want so badly to make all of you happy and if that isn’t enough to satisfy you then maybe I should just sell the candy store and move to Seattle and open a freeking Starbucks because that would be better than throwing a pan of molten taffy in somebody’s face and end up… whoa… I got a little off track there with my analogy, but it was fun to do a sentence with no periods at all and I think I might do that more often.
I thought maybe it was the zombie pictures I did all week. Not everybody is crazy about zombies. But then I posted a picture of Willie, a baby so adorable that other babies just give up trying to be cute when he is around, and still my candy store was a barren place full of dusty brownies and… okay, I need to get away from that analogy.
So once again I will remind you all that I am only here to entertain you. And I want you to help me do that. To use another analogy… one which I hope I do not get carried away with, because this blog is supposed to be family friendly… but this blog is supposed to be a little bit like sex. It works better if you participate. Tell me what you like. Tell me how to please you. You might be surprised at the lengths I will go to to make you all warm and tingly. (Is tingly even a real word, because my spell checker doesn’t thinks so, but it ought to be if it isn’t?)
So in the interest of this interactivity, let me hear from you. Throw some weird ideas at me. I do weird. Ask any of my regular customers.
In case it is early where you are and you are still working on your first cup of coffee, I will offer just a few random ideas to get the ball rolling.
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What I would like to see on this blog:
1. I want to post a picture of my pet on my blog so you can come over and copy it and then use Photoshop to turn my dog into an alien with six eyes and green fur, or put my head on my cat, or make my hamster look like a tiger, or make my goldfish ride a motorcycle, and then I can go to your blog and copy that funny picture and put it back on my blog.
2. More pictures where you make Dick Cheney look like an idiot. Like when you turned him into Fred Flintstone and a sausage and a rock and Gumby and then you made him into a gynecologist…that was so sick… or the ones where the pictures move and you made his head erupt like a volcano… I think it was called Dick Cheney gettin’ volcany… do more of those.
3. More original song videos, because your songs are just so sweet and lovely.
4. More stories of your weird and incredible life… especially those ones where you almost die.
5. I want to put a photo of my ex husband… (or girlfriend or whatever)… on my blog so you can come over and copy it and work some Photoshop magic on it and make him weigh 800 pounds or get caught under a farm tractor or make it so it looks like he is picking his nose or is French kissing a walrus or being eaten by a big shark.
6. I like it when you scan your old paintings and drawings.
7. I miss your pictures of sunsets.
8. Do more funny things with mustaches… You know, where you switched famous people’s mustaches around?… that was good.
9. Type more words… I like to read the words.
10. Stop typing so many words… I like the funny pictures.
11. Do more posts like this one where you feel sorry for yourself because you are getting fewer visitors… even though you still get way more visitors than me and I hate you!!!
12. More Conan the barbarian… you can never get enough Conan… remember when you did those pictures where Conan came over to visit at Christmas time and helped out, or when you had him trying to cope with living in modern-day society?
13. The ninja pictures cracked me up.
14. I want to learn more about you.
15. Stop talking about yourself all the time, nobody cares.
16. If I post a picture of me holding my baby will you please switch our heads with each other like you did with Willie and John?
17. More pictures of Willie. In fact you should stop doing all this other stupid stuff and just post pictures of Willie, because that is one cute baby.
18. Do more of those posts where you get carried away and write open letters to terrorists and future potential nuts who might go on a shooting spree and you end up pissing off people like the K.K.K. and the N.R.A. and terrorists and gun nuts who might actually track you down and kill you.
19. I am not crazy about your Photoshop pictures, but the ones where you came up with other jobs that famous people might have had if they never got famous… those were kind of cute… The one where Lady Gaga was wearing her meat dress and helping to train vicious police attack dogs… oh man… you kill me.
20. More pictures of you when you were a kid… and stories too… lots of stories.
21. Type up more of your poems and things you wrote back when you were younger… you know… before you got old and your mind started to decay.
22. Maybe blogging is just not for you. Don’t you have more constructive things to do with your time? You are ignoring your family and abandoning your chores, all just for the sake of impressing a bunch of people you will never even meet in real life. Really, how many hours have you spent doing those 660 posts and what do you get out of it? Some momentary thrill of having strangers validate your existence by making comments on your blog? I know, I know, you say you do this because you are all art-side-of-the-brain and it just comes out and you just want someone to see what it is like to be you, and maybe someday your future great grandkids, if they are born with the same mental condition will be able to read this blog and find out a little about where their strange ideas come from, and you use the excuse that a popular blog will help you when you try to get real publishers to print your funny sci-fi novel, but I can’t help thinking that this has more to do with the fact that you are adopted and have abandonment issues and low self-esteem and you just feel that you have to be the center of attention and that is why it bothers you so much when a few fewer people show up to oooh and ahhh over your pathetic and desperate clamoring to be noticed.
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Remember, these are just ideas. I hope you come up with some better ones. Something that will make us both happy…
Pouring My Art Out 
I vote for numbers 17 through 19!
That is a pretty heady mix.
You wouldn’t want your blog to become only one-dimensional, would you? Just giving you lots of fodder for topics.
You know I am just going to end up doing something crazy, right? I don’t even plan this stuff. It just happens.
I vote yes. To all of them. You know, like choice D) All of the above.
You want to let me run wild? Are you insane???
Ummm…I don’t THINK so, really…but a lot of people have asked me that in various different words over the years, now that I think of it. So, maybe.
I have a funny story about that… but maybe not here…
Oh my gosh, you’re hilarious. Starbucks all the way, my friend. Unless you are trying to attract my kids. Then you can just have them. I was honest about the zombies…I couldn’t even open a post for fear that I might have to look at one.
The things I like are: LIFE. Stories of real life. (i.e. the first number 14).
And you still owe me a poem.
I do?
Yes. You wrote a poem for Edward Hotspur once and I was offended that I had never received such an honor. Being that your blog isn’t all about me, it was hard enough having to compete with YOU in this whole thing.
You promised that one day it would come. When the inspiration hit. I know it will be worth it, so I haven’t brought it up. Until now.
There once was a lady from Nantucket…
ha!
You need to remind me of these things… I have a brain like… squirrel!
Remember that time when you were going to write a poem for me?
ummmm… no
I don’t remember the poem thing, but if you say so… what kind of poem? And I fixed the numbers… good catch.
A poem about popcorn would be good. Or red. Or puppies.
Red puppy-flavored popcorn…
Recipe for a great poem.
And a good snack.
Indeed 🙂
I like the spicy ones…
It’s February. Winter blues, and I’m cold, and I’m sick and tired of the cold. I’m also somewhat on a blogging hiatus. I needed a break from reading blogs and writing posts. So … you just do what you want to do here, Art. Have fun. Some of us will snap out of it sooner or later and be back full-time. 😉
Turns out that wordpress may have been doing something to the search engines. Everybody’s views are way down. Oh… they will pay. We will light the flaming beavers or revolution once again… but this is why I am useful to have around. I get people stirred up. It keeps life interesting.And we end up learning stuff. Ha!
Then they are getting back at me for promising porn and not delivering. My hits went from hundreds a day to 50 a day if I’m lucky. Even on the days I actually write something.
It is the end of the world without the zombies having to lift a finger.
This was great, Art. In reading the comments, I was intrigued by what the previous commenter said about search engines. My numbers have dropped in the last few days to almost nothing as well. I love what you do here, so just keep doing it. Whatever you feel like putting here. It’s always entertaining. 🙂
I just need to let off steam now and then. But I do think this is WordPress getting back at me for the revolution…
Ummm, what was the question again?
I want you to write a nice post on how much I adore David Beckham!!
Ummmm… sure… I could do that… people would love that…
Can you make Dick Cheney’s actual head explode? I hear he likes hunting. I would start there.
I don’t really want to go to jail just to have a little fun… a lot of fun… let me think about that one…
Everyone, and I mean all of us out here, LOVES you so stop worrying.
I was thinking that it’s possible no one out here is who they appear to be. Maybe you’re really an accountant in London and I could be a very sophisticated 12 year old boy living in Adelaide; Moosey might be a 97 year old Grannie from Ludington, MI. Really, none of us may be who we say we are. Who knows?
I wonder about that too… but with me, you really do get what really is me. Could I fake being me? That would require that I be so weird that even as weird as I am I couldn’t wrap my head around the idea. I would have to be an evil genius to think up a fake me as weird as the real me, and I ain’t that smart.
I almost met Moose when he came to L.A. on a trip, but I got hung up. He might actually be someone else, but why would be choose to be who he is pretending to be maybe?
Yeah, see what I mean; it gets in your head. I know you and the Moose Man are who you are and, Gawd knows, nobody wants to be me but it’s kind of fun, in a diabolical way, to think about it. I’d like to pretend I’m someone else except being me is so time consuming that I couldn’t manage it. I bet sasha could do it!
He is many people rolled into one. We could all start multiple personality blogs…
i know……And so do I…….we only have an ickle inkling, though
Talk amongst yourselvs… I’ll give you a topic… the The Holy Roman Empire was neither holy nor Roman… not wholey Roman…
that’s very kind of you to supply us with conversation fodder……Yes, lovely, you’re a lovely man…..but i make it a point not to discuss religious matters….Without our Rabbit present.
Silly Rabbi… tricks are for kids
more of number 19! :)))
I was not expecting that… but I can do it!
Carry on with all those topics. If it ain’t broke….
Though I would like you to do something freaky with my cats picture
Your wish is my command… now don’t get carried away with that power… ha!
My cat zombied will be cool
zombie cat is a cool name for a band..
It’s yours for $10,000
I will think about it after I get rich and famous.
OK, friends rate – $1
Can I pay that off over time?
You’re good at haggling
Comes from being poor.
When they changed the Reader, my views dropped by more than half. Yes, more than half. I had been having a steady increase all through November and December up to the middle of January, but then mega-drop.
It’s not just you, I’m hearing it from a lot of people.
Oh crap… do I have to do another one of those ‘never mind’ posts? I think this is WordPress getting me back for my revolution.
Oh, my first part of the book might be on sale in a month or so. It should be on Kindle and other electronic thingies… But you might even be able to get a real copy on actual dead tree material…
I know that I still can’t use the new Reader cos it gives me headaches. I have to visit each blog individually to see if there are new posts and that takes up SO. MUCH. TIME.
Well then I am sorry to have two places for you to check out. Stop being so popular and having your opinion matter and you could take a break.
Pffft. Popular? I am not now, nor have I ever been popular. But thank you.
Popular with me, is what I meant.
Are your numbers only down because of search engines? I think WordPress changed something because my numbers decreased a ton from search engines a week ago.
They have started the counter revolution! Man the barricades…
If that’s your problem I wouldn’t worry about it because those people aren’t reading as much. Find other ways to boost your numbers.
I told you, I am not doing any nude scenes… unless it furthers the plot line or is artistically relevent.
You’re Meg Ryan’ing again. Stop it!
I am an artist… if I knew how to add an accent to that word, it would be even better… artiste… dang it…