Yes, yes, it’s supposed to be “9000”, but you get the idea
Wow, 2024 is the year of the Milestones for Sir Bookstooge. I had 60,000 Comments, I amassed A Huge Following, at the end of the year I will have done 10 years worth of “Bookstooge Reviews Year X” and will do my first “Decade in Review” and yesterday, with that lowly post about Groo, the silliest comic the world has ever seen, I passed the 5000 post mark.
I celebrated by buying this tshirt on Etsy:
When people ask me what I do for hobbies, I tell them that I read books and then blog about it. When they ask me what else, I tell them that’s it. They are usually skeptical at first. Then I tell them how many books I read a year on average and how much I write online and they begrudgingly admit that maybe I am correct 😉
So rejoice with me! This is another instance of finding the joy in blogging and I for one am taking it for the ride of a lifetime. Until I run out of gas or hit a brick wall, hahahahaha 😀
Well ok, to be honest, it has some touchups that need to be done, but my Author Index project is essentially finished.
I started this Project back in October of ’22 and have been slowly working on it. I am now done the bulk of the work and just have to add all the “new” authors that I’ve read since I started. So I’ll have to comb over my Calibre library and play catch up. It also means that I need to do monthly maintenance and add new authors at the end of each month. That is MUCH easier than doing the 900+ from scratch. I can handle that easily.
What this means though? Between this and Hotel Bookstooge, it means I’ve put more work into Bookstooge.blog than I have into any other blog I’ve had over the years, to the point where I feel extremely possessive of this site and can only imagine one scenario where I would disappear it. Sadly, this does mean that I am tied down to WordPress.com for the quite foreseeable future. So expect me to rage and rattle my chains and then do nothing because the reality is that I’m here and I cannot abandon this much effort. It would kill me to do that.
What this means for you? Not much really, unless you use an index a lot. My experience has shown me that not a lot of people do and only the outliers tend to. But do be happy for me, because it’s another Blogging Project under my belt. I think I’m going to take a nice long break from such projects. Unless someone suggests something that catches my fancy, then all bets are off.
When it comes to books, I refuse to be one of the yapping drones parroting the same lines about the same books about the same authors that 1000 other bloggers are yapping about all at the same time. Yap, yap, yap…
Which is why I will read the books I do, in the very faint hope that just maybe ONE of those brainless drones will take a chance and try one of the books that nobody else reads any more and begin their own unique reading adventure through life.
STEP OUT OF LINE AND READ SOMETHING NONE OF YOUR PEERS ARE READING!!!
Of all the sorts of people in the world, I would have thought book readers would be the first to go their own way and do their own thing. Instead, all I see is a mass of faceless non-entities. Bowls of oatmeal, without even flavor to distinguish one from the next. Even their bowls are all exactly the same.
If I have to be a bowl of oatmeal, I will be a bowl of oatmeal like this:
Thankyou for listening. Just needed to get that out of my system. Crabby old hermit mode is powering down now. Normal functions will resume in 3….2….1….
Likejitsu, silent but deadly. The Art of Likejitsu is wildly divisive art because it can be used in so many ways. From a non-verbal “I acknowledge your presence” to a full blown “I LOVE YOU AND EVERYTHING YOU DO IS PURE AWESOMESAUCE” (I know most of you use it that way, and no worries, no offerings or worship needed), Likejitsu is one of the most versatile weapons in the arsenal of all Blogshido practitioners.
I use Likejitsu as an all purpose weapon. Sometimes I use it to acknowledge that someone wrote the post, or comment. Sometimes I just don’t have the words for what you wrote. While I might be a very wordy person, even I sometimes either run out or simply don’t have things to say. When you write a post about the accidental romance book you read, what am I supposed to say? I hate romance. But you read it and blogged about it. I think that deserves an acknowledgement.
Some people will take that to the extreme. You all know the type. The blogger who goes through and “likes” about 30 of your posts in 30 seconds. Most of those aren’t real people anyway. They’re just scumbags or bots. Either of those deserve to be chopped in half with a big fat ninja sword.
Other bloggers eschew likejitsu entirely because they feel it is too easy, entirely misused. I don’t blame them at all. I understand their viewpoint entirely. Of course, if they don’t ever comment, I don’t even know that they show up because they are invisible. So if that’s you, leave a flipping comment once a year or so, okay? Thanks.
However you use Likejitsu, just make sure you’re not expecting everyone else to use it in the exact same way as you do. Down that road lies madness 😉
I came home today after work and jumped online to check the blogosphere. I always check my spam comments folder because people get caught in there and I don’t want them to be stuck for days 🙂
Well, I had over 100 flipping spam comments all saying something along the lines of “This was a great movie, everyone should watch it” along with a link. I’ve had this going on for a couple of weeks, but never this bad.
When the russian spammers hit me, in cyrillic, I simply copy/pasted one of their letters and put that in my “goes straight to trash” rules for comments. However spammers work, once the programs realized the comments were going straight to trash without even the spam folder to check things, they dramatically decreased. To the point where I get 1 or 2 per week, instead of 10-20 every day. 2 years ago I did the same thing for the spanish spam bots. Just put in an upside down question mark and voila, they went straight to trash. And I haven’t been bothered by them for over a year now. So making spam comments go straight to the trash definitely stops them from mobbing my site.
Therefore, I am going to take some seriously drastic action, for about 2 months. I am going to make the word “movie” verboten in the comments here on Bookstooge.blog. Any comment with that word in it will go straight to the trash without me ever checking it. I realize this will cause chaos and confusion on my ever popular “movie review of the month” post, but I suspect you all have the intestinal fortitude to weather such vicissitudes. I also realize this will hit some bloggers much more than others and for that I apologize in advance. I just can’t think of any other way to deal with these forsaken movie link spammers.
I will re-examine things in September and make a decision about continuing this ban on the “M”-word then. I really hope that this drastic action will take care of things however.
While Blogshido is as varied as the people who practice this ancient art, the core of the discipline has always been the same. You can remove the Monthly Kata and still practice Blogshido. You can even ignore the venerable, honorable and most inspiring Taekommentdo and still practice Blogshido. But if you do not practice Post-fu, then you are not practicing Blogshido.
Some Masters of Blogshido, when practicing Post-fu, will pour out their very life essence into it, an artistic outpouring. You can almost feel the blood, the sweat, the tears, the absolute agony that went into the creation of their mastepiece of Post-fu. You know you are watching something special, something never to be repeated even while longing to perform it so well yourself. The downfall of this kind of practice in Post-fu is that the artist themselves know they will never reach such artistic heights again. It can easily turn into a self-defeating spiral of doom instead of a celebration of something wonderful.
Other Masters of Post-fu take a much more workmanlike attitude towards it. They make posts like they make a bologna sandwich. Bread, mayo, bologna, cheese, bam, put it all together, wham, done. Eat and enjoy. And they can do this day after day, week after week, month after month and even sometimes, year after year. The audience isn’t wowed, they are not moved to tears, nor are their hearts shattered. But they get a nutritious and filling bologna sandwich every day (well, as nutritious as a bologna sandwich can be anyway!)
A grounded Master of Blogshido will know which style suits them best for writing. But they will also know the proper balance in the choices they make of which blogs to follow. If I follow 100 Workmanlike Masters of Post-fu, while my Taekommentdo might become second to none through practice, when will I have time to practice my own Post-fu? And if I follow 100 Artistic Masters, who only post once a year, that sets an impossibly high bar for myself when I do go to practice Post-fu.
Personally, I only follow people who practice Post-fu at least once a month. Now there are always special circumstances and that is fine, but if someone isn’t practicing once a month on a consistent basis, I don’t consider them a follower of Blogshido anymore. How can I call you a Sandwich Maker if you never make sandwiches? And don’t even try to pull that “There is no sandwich” crap on me, Neo tried it with the spoon and look what happened to him, he got Matrix Resurrections. I trust that is warning enough for you all.
I am currently working on my Author Index. It is going extremely well. I started at Z and am currently working my way through the D’s. Specifically, I am dealing with Charles Dickens right now. I have 56 reviews for that man. And I have to go through and find each post and see if it has the Dickens tag and if not, add it.
I was wondering, why do I do this to myself? And I realized that if I wasn’t doing this, I’d be doing something similar and complaining about that too 😀 I am just an organizational freak and I need to accept that fact. Whatever my current hobby is, I’m organizing it. When I was playing Magic the Gathering, I had all sorts of ways to organize those cards. I eventually gave up because 15,000 cards were simply too much for me. At least all my reviews are now electronic so I can deal with them a bit easier.
Despite my complaining, I am enjoying myself immensely. Which is why I am complaining. I just can’t enjoy something fully unless I’m miserable about it. Yeah, I rolled my eyes at myself too, but hey, that’s just how I’m wired so I’m learning to roll with it. So join me in celebrating by being miserable with me, hahahahaha! Dickens for the win!
Previously on “Blogshido: The Way of the Blogger” I discussed my reasoning for doing my monthly roundup & ramblings posts. Today, I would like to discuss another aspect of blogshido, namely, commenting.
Taekwondo is a martial art form where, according to wikipedia, “punching and kicking techniques, with emphasis on head-height kicks, spinning jump kicks, and fast kicking techniques.” are the way to victory. That tells me that taekwondo isn’t fooling around. It is short, it is sharp, it is trying to get it’s job done in the fastest and deadliest way possible. In martial arts, you’re trying to destroy your opponent and taekwondo excels at that.
I rigorously practice taekommentdo every day. I might go so far as to say that besides the main art of blogshido, that taekommentdo is the particular art of blogging that I love the most. But just like all other aspects of Blogshido, it is highly personalized. I have gone so far down the path of taekommentdo that my mastery of this form might look completely different from another master’s form. My foundational belief is that no comment is wasted. Just like a punch, it doesn’t matter if it breaks your opponents ribcage or not, they are forced to react and thus you can control the battle. The same principle applies to taekommentdo. When I leave a comment on someone’s post, I have taken control of the blogging narrative. A good opponent will know how to roll with that and thus can begin a long and enjoyable battle. But sometimes a quick kick to the nads is all that is needed and the battle is done.
Whatever form you choose to master in taekommentdo, the most essential part is practice, practice, practice. Your words are your weapons. Only you can use them. Do not let them rust and tarnish from disuse. Keep them sharp and shiny by constant use. Thus you will grow the will of a warrior deep inside yourself. Plus, it’s easier to kick someone’s head off if you practice doing that everyday. Otherwise you’re liable to pull a hamstring. Do not let Master Fnog’s prophecy be true about you!
Sensei Bookstooge will now dismiss you all to practice.
Blogshido. The Art of Blogging. The Way of the Words Warrior. Keyboard Ninjitsu. This ancient art is as many faceted as there are people who practice it. I will not even attempt to cover everything associated with this wondrous art today, but instead I will focus on the specific kata known as The Monthly Review.
I have made this aspect of Blogshido fully my own. To the point where I have a kata all my own, which I call the Roundup & Ramblings. Now, it might surprise you (but hopefully not) to learn that I began to practice R&R not because everyone else was doing it and I wanted to be popular and fit in. Someone who is reading this may even think to themselves “Then what is the point?”. I forgive you and to show that I really have, I have a cookie, a nice glass of milk and your binky blanket just waiting for your nap-nap.
POINT ONE to Bookstooge-san for discombobulating his opponent
Other practitioners of the Monthly Review have their own reasons and methods. My goal is not to judge them. A true master of Blogshido knows what works for him may not work for others and accepts that knowledge, thus making him even more Masterly.
POINT TWO to Bookstooge-san for being so masterly
No, my goal in starting my Roundup & Ramblings were very simple. A very small force may redirect a larger force away from itself and thus Blogshido teaches us that small efforts not only can be effective but that they use less effort and thus prolong your stamina in a battle.
POINT THREE to Bookstooge-san for prolonging his stamina and thus being able to blog for years and years and years.
My blog is mainly a review blog of books with a smattering of non-review posts thrown in. Soon after being married it became evident to both Mrs B and me that she had zero interest in the books I was reading and reviewing but was very interested in the random thoughts that popped out of my head. This laid the foundation of me linking up all of my non-review posts in one easy to access place.
POINT FOUR to Bookstooge-san for thinking of his wife
Once I began doing that, I realized that it didn’t need to stay there and I could include lots and lots of ads, errr, data. Thus the power of Blogshido came full circle. My kata of Roundup & Ramblings ended where it had begun. I was using my own energy to power others which in turn empowered me to overcome them all. Thus my mastery was complete.
POINT SET, MATCH AND WIN for Bookstooge-san winning at Blogshido
Back in November I began to work on my Author Index Project for the blog. I started out haphazardly but then decided to be a bit more organized about it. I started at Z and have been steadily working my way backwards. Once I finish I’ll go through and add all the new authors I’ve read since then and then try to update it on a monthly basis.
BUT!
I am finished with up to the M’s. What a chore! 79 authors with the last name starting with “M”. And only about half of them had their names as tags so I had a bleeding lot of work to do. The only other letter with more authors is “B” at 87. I am not looking forward to that already :-/
But rejoice with me. Things like this make me happy 😀
The year in general sailed along for both Mrs B and me. We both ended up working more than usual (I think our average weekly was 42 or 43 hrs). Those extra hours made a big difference. Student loans are finished! So now we’re using that money to pay down extra on our mortgage. I’m hoping we can shave off 5-6 years off the loan life. That’s my next big life goal, to get that mortgage out of the way.
We helped out each month with super church (sunday school) and live streaming (so 2 sunday’s a month) and I’m finding my tolerance for the kids is waning. There is one parent who pretty much brings her kids to be babysat and they’re not disciplined at home so they’re not model kids. Thankfully, after having used the “nuclear option” once, (take them out of class and march them up the middle of the aisle and drop them back off to their mom in the middle of the sermon) they’re learning I mean business. They’re not bad kids, just unruly and undisciplined. But it’s exhausting and those Sunday’s I come home and flop on the couch. Streaming is easier but mainly because I refuse to treat it like a show. I use 4 camera angles and that’s it. I don’t zoom around, I don’t focus on people playing special music, etc, etc.
This year was just a blur. Not that good things didn’t happen, or bad things, but overall it went so fast that it was over before I realized what was going on. Which is fine when you’re concerned about who is elected to political offices, but not so fine when it comes to paying bills. Actually had one bill go to a bill collector because I completely forgot to pay it. Sigh, life moving faster isn’t necessarily a good thing.
One of the kids at church expressed interest in Magic earlier this year so I’ve been getting together with his Dad and him once or twice a month and turning him into a life long addict. Someone’s gotta do it, so it might as well be me 😀 Speaking of Magic, I began collecting the Mirage set from 1996. Along with 4th Edition, those cards are some of the iconic visual memories of my late teen years. Plus, collecting cards doesn’t take up nearly as much space as collecting books does, hahahahaa!
General Bookish Thoughts:
Looking at those numbers, man, did my book numbers go up! Part of that is because I was reading individual issues of comics all year (whereas I had only started doing that in July of 2021), but even that only accounts for about an extra 25, so I simply read MORE this year. The Pages and Words metric fully back that up. It didn’t “feel” like I had read more, but with not picking up any other new hobby, Reading picked up the slack.
The rating is down only a little bit from last year, but 2021’s rating was down from 2020’s, so I’m on a downward slide, albeit a very slight one. I think that is because I’m reading more. There are more crap books than fantastic books out there, so the more I read, the greater my chance of a getting a crap book. All it takes is ONE one star book in a month to drag the whole year down. And since I am so picky about handing out 5stars, well, it doesn’t surprise me. But as long as I stay above a 3star average, that means I’m enjoying the majority of what I read. I’ll try to be content with that.
With all of that being said, I only had FOUR 5star reads this year and all of them were re-reads. I had NINE 4.5star reads as well. On the other side, I only had TWO half star reads and NINE 1star reads. So I feel that I balanced everything out in the end.
With around 57 of the reads being re-reads (including ALL of the Bone comics), I’m still sticking around the 25% mark. I have a feeling that number is going to drop in ’23 as I am becoming more leery of re-reading my “old favorites” as I move into the phase of life (fully middle aged now) and all of my manga will be new to me as well. I am ok with this change.
Well, despite my issues with WP.com in 2021, I still came crawling back for more in 2022. To the point where I have a paid plan and Dotblog Site, sigh. Thankfully, I haven’t experienced some of the problems that I did last year, but I never count WP.com out of the problem fight. If they can’t make one problem get you, they’ll invent a whole new one, the wretches.
I have also realized that despite all of my complaining and grumbling, that I have nailed myself to WP.com. The finishing up of construction on The Hotel Bookstooge pretty much saw to that and the continued work on the Author Index is like putting up shutters on the windows. You only do that if you think you’re going to stay in the place for a while.
Between the paid plan’s upgrade to my storage, Dropbox and Caesium, space is not an issue for me.
The Churn continues apace with other bloggers slowing down, stopping or just moving on to other hobbies. I have also done my own share of unfollowing this year and finding new bloggers to follow. If I could have one blogging wish for 2023, I wish that things would stay stable in that regards. That’s a vain wish though, knowing how unstable the world in general is right now.
So the long and short? I’m here, I’m standing tall (well, kind of) and I’m not planning on leaving. But I’ll still be complaining.
Blogspot continues to be my review backup. Not in any meaningful way, as I didn’t do any work on the old reviews, so it’s as big a mess as my WordPress used to be. But it’s there for me when WP.com does something truly stupendously stupid (like they seem to do 3-4 times a year) and is a good safety valve so I don’t feel that WP.com is my only option.
Partway through the year (July to be particular) I stopped crossposting my reviews to Librarything. I had given up on the platform as a social site in 2021 and thus it was pretty inevitable that I stopped using them all together. Guess I’m more surprised it took me as long as it did than anything.
Calibre continues to putter along offline just fine. It is what I now use to check up on anything in particular. Now that it has full database searching abilities, I can look for almost anything and with enough patience, find it. I am currently using version 6.9 and will be updating as the creator puts up new updates.
Definitely Flashman. He lies, murders and rapes his way through the book and we’re supposed to find it amusing. I definitely did not.
PLANS FOR 2023:
Personal:
The Self-Study for my Level3 Certification didn’t work out at all in ’22. I think that really needs to be a top priority for this year. I’m just afraid that I’ll slack off again though and “do it next month” all year long.
The potential move to Georgia is now indefinitely put off. It’s going to take an emergency to get us down there and even then we’d have to think about it. It is going into a closet shelf in the very back of my mind for now.
Trying not to make many, if any, plans. Because situations are easier to handle when you don’t have expectations about them.
Drink a lot of Rockstar energy drinks. Because I can.
Blog:
Continue working on my author index. Continue my Magic cards each Monday. So it’s going to be business as usual. I haven’t had a creative idea for some time about a long running series of blog posts, so I might end up not trying to do any. Which is too bad because long running series of posts is always easier to write and schedule than anything else.
I am going to try to do some more “arty” stuff but we’ll see how that pans out. I would like it to work but the logistics might be greater than anticipated.
Movies are still completely up in the air. There are so many movie reviewers out there. Besides, I don’t watch new stuff and even when I do watch stuff, I don’t really watch it that well. More like “listening to it” with glances up at the tv when there’s no dialogue to tell me what’s going on.
This might end up being a very sloggy blog year :-/
My new laptop came yesterday. I wasn’t supposed to get it until almost Christmas but there must have been something in a warehouse somewhere because it showed up about 3 weeks early. I am pretty happy to be on a laptop again and not on my blasted phone! Even two days was two days too many to endure.
I have also made the choice to go dotblog here at wordpress.com. Despite my many, many, many, MANY complaints about Automattic as a company, they are the only ones that give me the majority of what I want for a blog. Doesn’t mean I won’t keep on being vituperative towards WordPress but I have realized I don’t have any other place to go and with all the work of the Hotel Bookstooge already done and the ongoing Author Index, well, I think it is time to simply accept I’m stuck here at wordpress. So say hello to Bookstooge.blog If you notice any problems, please let me know and I’ll see what I can do to fix it.
Next on the agenda is to change my theme here. I currently use Penscratch 2 and it did what I wanted it to, but when I was looking at my site, I realized people have to do an awful lot of scrolling to get through my posts (sometimes). Then WordPress introduced the Masu theme and I really liked the look of it. The only problem is, it’s one of the FSE themes (full site editor) and I don’t know if I want to mess with all of that. But this month not only have I had changes forced on me but I am actively seeking them out. So I think later this afternoon I’ll be changing my theme as well. Be prepared for a lot of screaming and crying if things go bad.
For right now, that’s enough changes. I suspect there will be more changes by years end, even if I have no idea what they will be. Maybe I’ll buy a red sports car! 😉 hahahahahahaahaa.
After finishing up The Hotel Bookstooge Project, it was evident that I needed another blogging project to keep me busy in the background. But something that wouldn’t disturb everyone quite so much. Bormgans gave a good suggestion that should help anyone searching the site, ie, an Author Index.
While I never use an index if a site has one (I always use the search bar), I’ve heard that other people DO use them, to good effect too. So instead of alienating these good folk of the internet and impeding their unquenchable thirst for all things Bookstooge, I have decided to begin work on an Author Index.
I’ve created a new page and posted the link to it at the top of my home page along with all of my other Important Things. It will slowly fill in over the upcoming year/s. If you are that kind of person, I hope this helps you out a lot. If you are not that kind of person, it will be going on completely in the background so you won’t be bothered or notice a thing. You’re welcome 😉
