To people who have been blogging across multiple calendar years, moving into 2008 was probably not that big a deal.

But to me, someone who just started blogging in 2007, suddenly all the posts I have completed thus far have all been folded into a single “2007” line on my sidebar. I’m experiencing the same feeling I would get when I would enter a new month of blogging and leave the previous month collapsed, except for some reason this time the feeling is around twelve times as strong. There is probably a way of configuring my blog so everything isn’t collapsed, but don’t worry — I have resigned myself to this collapsosity already.

My doodling days might be behind me. A long time ago it stopped being about the doodle — now it’s more about the drugs and the sex and the booze. Where did it all go wrong? Enjoy your doodle, Dale. It may be the last doodle I doodily-do.

MizSplotchy got us a subscription to Netflix for Christmas. With a constant influx of awesome movies, will I still brave the urban jungle of LaGrange for my Two Buck Schmuck feature?

The iSplotchy campaign has stalled. I have a reasonably clever idea on how to steal GKL from the clutches of her running mate Dr. Monkey Von Monkerstein, but I am so bad and lazy at Photoshop that it likely won’t ever happen. And if it doesn’t happen, that’s pretty much it for the iSplotchy. Paging, Dr. Zaius!

Here are some things I would like to get done in 2008, which may or may not be interesting to readers of this blog:

• Complete some music for the soundtrack of a short film for my NOLA traveling buddy Andy
• Start and finish a 15 minute short film from a script I have written
• Start or join a rock ‘n roll band and play a couple gigs
• An incredibly cool themed week on this blog that I don’t want to give any hints as to what it is, because it will be difficult to pull off, but boy if I do, it’s going to rock your freaking socks off

Assuming I get it off the ground, the short film will take up a huge chunk of my time for the year. Right now the film seems more of a dream than a reality, but by declaring an intent on this blog to do something has so far helped me with my follow through, so here’s hoping it does the same for me here.

I would appreciate that no calamitous events occur which completely derail my plans. Not so much that I don’t like a curveball thrown my direction every once in a while, it’s just that I’m not particularly fond of calamitous events.

Besides my goals for 2008, I’ll probably continue to share assorted bits from my life. For example, at an activity room in the Illinois State Museum over this past weekend, my daughter was looking at things through a magnifying glass. I asked her, “How does that look through the magnifying glass?” to which she replied, “Bigger.”

Yours in hopeful uncertainty,

Splotchy

There are many annoying bloggers (yes, I am talking about you) who have “Word Verification” turned on for readers who wish to leave comments. It’s basically some wavy text that the typist has to read and then must type in addition to leaving their comment, perhaps to prove they aren’t just creating text by accidentally sitting on the keyboard while expelling gas.

Oh, sure, we try to make light of this allegedly positive feature that takes several seconds of our lives as we try to communicate our comments to you. For example, sometimes in the comment itself we leave:

“My Word Verification was ‘yodelqr’!”

Make no mistake, this cheeriness is superficial — we are not happy.

Many weeks ago, I made the decision to do away with Word Verification on my own blog, in solidarity with Coaster Punchman.

Still, you Word Verification wackos haven’t gotten the message. In addition to this, I have recently noticed that the amount of Word Verification letters I am required to enter on some of your posts is reaching the double-digits.

So, here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to add the possible threat of physical violence to the equation.

By continuing to have-

1. Word Verification turned on
2. A post I feel compelled to comment on

-you will be held accountable for your actions.

On the off chance I get one of the series of letters below as my Word Verification text, you will be consenting to the consequences outlined.

Word Verification I Get – What You Get

Yahweh – Kick in the groin
Snurp – Punch in the mouth
Oopah – Scalded with flaming cheese
Yapple – A bag of oranges to the stomach
Whammy – You have to watch gameshows until your eyes bleed
Pumnotl – A stern look
Uuuuuuh – A boxing of the ears
Fluffy – Nothing [I wouldn’t mind this word]
Ruqponbop – Pubic hair pulling
Kickme – See Yahweh

I am posting this at 8:27pm folks, despite what Blogger might tell you.

7:27pm my ass.

Shortly out of film school, I was working as an electrician on a movie that was being shot in my hometown of Springfield, Illinois. Most of the crew was from Los Angeles. I struck up a friendship with one of the electricians from L.A.

I don’t believe he had ever spent a great deal of time in the Midwest. One of his observations was the abundance of vanity plates.

The first license plate I had was a vanity plate. No, it wasn’t my name, nor was it “Splotchy” or any derivation thereof. It was a common word that I just happened to be fond of at the time. Guess what the word was if you care to (hint: it foreshadowed my career in computer programming).

Currently I read a variety of people’s blogs, and a variety of people read mine. To the best of my knowledge, the blogs I read are in the Midwest, with a few on the east coast.

Blogs seem to have a tendency to clump together, aligning themselves along lines of similar interests, political beliefs, etc. I imagine geographic region also plays a part in this interblog stickiness as well. Still, I find it curious that that in the months I have been relatively active in the blogosphere, to my knowledge I haven’t come across any west coast bloggers.

Is there a connection between the perceived prevalence of Midwestern vanity plates to a visiting Californian, and my perception of the overwhelming number of blogs in the Midwest region?

Vanity plates are essentially a very tiny expression of one’s identity, set adrift in the “autosphere” of anonymous license plates. Blogs to me in some ways seem to be a very elaborate vanity plate.

So how many of you bloggers have vanity plates on your automobile?

I have witnessed a phenomenon on websites, predominantly blogs, where the writer will employ the use of strikethrough.

I am wheezily infuriatedpuzzled by its use.

When I was going through school, we were nearing the end of the dominance of Satan’s pianotypewriters. It was never acceptable to do a strikethrough on a paper you intended to hand in. You needed the magic of Wite-Out.

I later had a temp job where I had to use a pain-in-the-ass piece-o’-shittypewriter to fill out some forms that had triplicate copies in lovely colors, separated by carbon paper. There too, it was not acceptable to use strikethrough. I actually would use correction fluid — I had a color for each copy of the form.

So, why are people using strikethrough? Do they feel you, as their loyal and faithful reader, should wade through their sloppy prose? Where do they get their ballsnads (sorry, CP!), anyway?

Are they trying to be annoyingfunny?

SAY NO TO STRIKETHROUGH.