Yes, I did make it look like a treasure map… because there is treasure to be found when you visit my weird little slice of nonreality… AKA ‘my blog’.

I have gone to great lengths to make my blog easy and fun to navigate. I needed help to do some of this, because I am a computer moron. This is an immersive, interactive experience. You have all helped to make this blog what it is.

But the thing is… and if you are new here, you will soon find out that I really like my ‘thing’… wait… that sounded wrong, but let’s just move on… it is not easy to describe to new people exactly what it is that we do here. I mean, I am not even sure exactly what we do here, and I am doing a lot of it.

I can’t just tell you to search for things by title, because I tend to name my posts funny things and then forget where I put them. Also, we do so many different things here that if you ended up following me because you saw me do one kind of thing, then it might be a while before I do that thing again… or I might never do it… because I have crack squirrels in my head.

And you can’t just wander around down there with no guide or idea where you are going. We have lost too many innocent souls that way.

So I made this map, just to give you an idea of some new ways you can explore this blog. Yes, you can still just scroll down into the endless abyss… that is a good way to get used to being here. But if you want to try exploring with a slightly more focused view, here are some clever things that might help you find things that interest you.

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THE KEY TO THE MAP

Part One… the Top Bar… or whatever you call that black bar underneath that picture at the top of my blog of my cool shades… hint… it has buttons on it… that are labeled…

1. The about page. This is my most popular creation so far… which is ironic, because it is really meant more as a warning… rather like the warning the skull over the entrance to the Pirates of the Caribbean ride gives you before your boat goes over the first waterfall. My about page is also a legal necessity… it is a disclaimer in the event that you do get lost in the swamp that is my imagination, or somehow manage to injure yourself in any way.

2. My Book Page. This is one of the places you can go to order the books I have written. There is a delightful children’s book that I wrote and illustrated, as well as the first two books of my action/adventure/humor sci-fi series: The Otherwhere Chronicles. Book three is being edited as we speak.

3. My Original Song Videos. These are not actually videos in the classic MTV sense. I haven’t yet figured out how to put large, memory-sucking videos on the blog yet. But I did record some of my original songs, with me singing and playing the guitar… sometimes with multiple tracks so it sounds like two of me playing and singing together. Then I made cute little videos that are really just still pictures in a slideshow sort of a thing. But I write nice love songs. And I even put the lyrics in there on some of them. This section will be updated as I record more songs.

4. Pictures of Aliens from my Novel… which should read ‘novels’ now, I guess. This is exactly what it sounds like. I used Photoshop to do some pictures of some of the aliens I created for my books. I created a few hundred alien races, and this helps me feel that they are living, breathing creatures.

Part Two… the Sidebar… more handy links and stuff…

1. Right at the top is a link to that post where we are going for the record of ‘most comments on a single, private WordPress post’… So far we have over 35,600 comments. You should add one. We have way more comments than posts that went viral and got thousands of comments from people telling the author that they suck. We do all of ours with love. We have contests and games. We have drunken reunions. We write poems and stories. We try to see who can outdo everyone else when it comes to… all kinds of weird things…like the time we all tried to see who could flirt with themselves the best. Someday we might make all these comments into a book.

2. Some stats, the follow button, and more links to my books… because I am trying to make a living as a professional author.

3. Tweets… this little box shows my latest tweets. Or you could just follow me on Twitter. Dana Carvey from Saturday Night Live follows me on Twitter. And I have gotten tweets from Eric Idle, William Shatner, James May from Top Gear, Ricky Gervais, and a few other famous people. I only did Twitter to force my older daughter to admit that I was cool on Facebook if famous people responded… so I rocked that.

4. Top Posts and Pages. A list of the posts that get the most attention. If you like to follow the crowd, this is a good place to start.

5. ***This is the best tool to use to find weird stuff*** The Word Cloud… or WordCloud… or wordcloud… Each of the words or sentences in this big ‘cloud’ of ‘words’ is a link that you can click on!!! So you can find ‘categories’ of things all in one place!!! Let me give you an idea of what you might find:

A. Flowers, sunsets, dogs and other animals… those might just be all the posts I ever did of photographs of animals and flowers and sunsets, but I bet some of them are not what you expect.

B. Funny famous people pictures… I can’t explain it, just go poke around some. There are real people in there as well as fictional characters, and I guarantee that you will see them doing things that will surprise you.

C. Conan the barbarian… I love that guy, but once again, be prepared for weirdness.

D. Dick Cheney… I hate that guy, and there is a reason why he is the only politician in the word cloud thing. If you hate Dick Cheney, you really want to see all my posts about him.

E. My art, stories of my life, my travels… Hey, I have lead an interesting life, and I share it all with you.

F. Stuff about blogging… uh… that covers a lot of ground.

G. My weird moving pictures… Another good place to start if you like bizarre.

H. Willie… just stuff about one of the cutest little kids ever… and we are watching him grow up.

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So there you have it. My blog is my life. I share it with you. If you read my whole blog you will know me better than you know any other human being… unless they live in your house. I am an all-art-side-of-the-brain freak of nature, and some day my descendants will be able to show this blog to the weirdest kids in my family tree and they can read it and find out why they are the way they are… and blame it all on me and my frighteningly strong genes… Sorry, kids.