Category Archives: Meta

There’s Nothing Wrong with Your Internet Connection. For Now.

September 9, 2014 By in Meta, Misc. Media Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment

Net Neutrality.

90% of the following message was provided as an unpaid courtesy by Battle For The Net. The other 10% is value-added MCC editing and reformatting.

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If you woke up tomorrow and your internet looked like this, what would you do?

Imagine all your favorite websites taking forever to load, while you get annoying notifications from your ISP suggesting you switch to one of their approved “Fast Lane” sites. Think about what we would lose: all the weird, alternative, interesting, and enlightening stuff that makes the Internet so much cooler than mainstream cable TV. What if the only news sites you could reliably connect to were the ones that had deals with companies like Comcast and Verizon?

On September 10th, just a few days before the FCC’s comment deadline, public interest organizations are issuing an open, international call for websites and internet users to unite for an “Internet Slowdown” to show the world what the web would be like if Team Cable gets their way and trashes net neutrality. Net neutrality is hard to explain, so our hope is that this action will help show the world what’s really at stake if we lose the open Internet.

If you’ve got a website, blog or Tumblr, get the code to join the #InternetSlowdown at the official site. The Internet Slowdown official Tumblr also has a quick list of other things you can do to help spread the word about the slowdown.

Get creative! Don’t let us tell you what to do. See you on the net September 10th!

Net Neutrality.

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Special thanks to Automattic, the talented minds behind WordPress, for supporting this effort all the way. This isn’t the first time I’ve seen them advocating from the front lines of the internet battlefield. If I could hug or high-five each of their employees personally, I totally would.

Top 10 Ways I’ll Be Celebrating MCC’s 800th Entry

August 28, 2014 By in Meta Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Sundae in Salem!

I had no idea how to illustrate this entry. After 28 months I still have no site branding to showcase. I’m not in the mood for anything prideful. Please randomly enjoy this outtake from our 2013 road trip — me eating a sundae at the Witch’s Brew Cafe in Salem, MA. Why not.

We interrupt our Wizard World Chicago 2014 galleries to bring you this brief intermission noting the occasion of Midlife Crisis Crossover’s 800th post!

Neither writer’s block nor Hollywood’s siren call nor reckless abandon nor typing-finger tumors have stayed me from my appointed fixation yet. If and when MCC crashes and burns someday, I hope I can think of reasons to blame anyone and everything except myself.

From the Home Office in Indianapolis, IN: Top 10 Ways I’ll Be Celebrating MCC’s 800th Entry:

10. 10,000-word all-star salute to me, myself, and I

9. Have a WordPress “Freshly Pressed” banner tattooed across my chest

8. Reprint a past entry no one else liked except me; grovel for pity-Likes

7. Eight-hour scenes-after-end-credits marathon

6. Saccharine love letter to my wife that makes all other readers nauseous

5. Write epic fanfic crossover “Bunheads Go to Sleepy Hollow”

4. Buy a PS4 and one game; play until my gamer-cred upticks; then go settle every Quinn/Sarkeesian rage-war single-handedly

3. Prize drawing to get rid of all my unwanted DC New 52 comics

2. Live-tweet a Dog with a Blog rerun

And the number one Way I’ll Be Celebrating MCC’s 800th Entry:

1. Family road trip to Ferguson!

How Much Would You Pay for Midwest Convention Space?

August 21, 2014 By in Conventions & Events, Meta Tags: , , , , , , , , 2 Comments
Who N.A.!

Who North America is a regular staple at our regular cons. They seem to be doing okay, even though they have to pay for four or five times the space.

This past Wednesday I walked into my comic shop and waded into the middle of a conversation about booth space prices. Awesome Con is staging their first Indianapolis show in October, and the guys weren’t too keen on what was being asked, how much extra a corner booth would cost over an endcap, and why the con’s rep promised them a “locals” discount over the phone that appeared nowhere in the marketing materials. Much snickering ensued.

Continue reading →

Granny Driving in Tractor Parade (experiment #2)

August 14, 2014 By in Meta Tags: , , , , , Leave a comment

Granny on tractor

Sample image from our day spent strolling around the 2014 Indiana State Fair. As you might expect from a state fair, there were unhealthy new food items and small entertainment spectacles and amateur art and general Hoosier happenings all around, such as the driver seen here, one of several participants in a midday parade around the fairgrounds’ long racetrack alongside numerous other farmers on tractors.

More photos to come in the next couple days, here on MCC…

Not Put Asunder, Ten Years and Counting

July 20, 2014 By in Meta, Mundane Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Us in Fargo!

This is how everyone spends their tenth wedding anniversary, right? Because my wife and I sure wouldn’t want to look out of place or anything.

Right this way for a post-vacation update!

A Muted Moment with a Meaningless Muffin

June 29, 2014 By in Meta Tags: , , , , , , , 3 Comments

Muffin!

Sometimes a lazy summer strikes when you least expect it. For a few random days at a time, you’re surrounded by quiet, relaxing doldrums. Your TV schedule loses its pulse. Theater screens are usurped by movies clearly rated NFY (Not For You). Headline news is, if not slow per se, more irrelevant to you than usual. Sometimes a muffin with too many ingredients is the most exciting thing that’s happened to you.

Right this way for upcoming plans after the calm…

Midlife Crisis Crossover #0: the One-Man Dramatis Personae

June 12, 2014 By in Meta Tags: , , , , , , , , 3 Comments

Welcome! Turn Back!

Welcome! Turn back! Welcome back! Hie thee hence! Join us! Shoo! Whichever!

Welcome to entry #733 here at Midlife Crisis Crossover! If this were a mainstream comic book, I would’ve already stopped and relaunched a new site with a new at least thirty-seven times by now. Fortunately, I have no marketing department giving me marching orders. Unfortunately, I have no marketing department spreading word of me to the four corners of the planet. The compromise is so aggravating.

If you’re just joining us or recently discovered the site, you may be a bit disoriented, even after reading the “About” page I wrote two years ago and have amended a few times since then. That version contains the “in-story” reasoning behind the site name without confessing that it was contrived using the Wheel of Fortune “Before and After” method. I’m sure it sounds like rubbish if you’re not a comics fan who knows what a “Crisis Crossover” was. The bottom-line truth is I needed a name that no other writer, blogger, or sensible creative type would want. That’s one objective met, then.

In the days of yore, comics writers followed a helpful rule of thumb: “Every issue is someone’s first.” New readers appreciate accessibility. Most sites use the “About” Page to catch visitors up to speed and don’t look back. (I offered baseline advice on this one time.) While mine does its job to a certain extent, it doesn’t summarize every version of me that readers have seen in these pages. Sometimes each me can act as though they exist on a different Earth apart from my other selves. Sometimes those worlds drift apart. Sometimes the me of two worlds vibrates in harmony as one. Sometimes worlds collide.

Right this way for the Unofficial Handbook of the Midlife Crisis Crossover Universe!…

Rallying for Rarasaur.

May 23, 2014 By in Meta Tags: , , , , , , , , 12 Comments

Rarasaur!

The original Rarasaur mascot says hi!

Once upon a time, there was a happy, prolific blogger named Rara, read and loved by many. In her time on WordPress she’s been a font of creativity, effervescence, community spirit, encouragement, whimsy, thoughtfulness, and simple ways of pulling out of downward spirals. She’s been featured on WordPress’ Freshly Pressed main stage more than once. She’s been a frequent guest contributor on other sites, from relative unknowns to the official site for The Queen Latifah Show.

Full disclosure: I’m a follower. We’ve exchanged comments back and forth on each other’s sites and shared geek thoughts and sensibilities. Many, many other folks in the WordPress community could say the same and have better, more inspirational stories to tell. She’s respected and cheerily infectious that way.

And then one dreadful day she saw coming, The MAN sent Rara to jail.

How you can help in little ways…

Midlife Crisis Crossover Celebrates Two Years, 700 Entries, Countless Stories Yet Untold

May 7, 2014 By in Meta Tags: , , , , , 2 Comments

WordPress 2nd anniversary!

Your official 2nd-anniversary notification from WordPress looks like this. Printing, framing, embossing, and/or enlarging to poster size are optional at the writer’s expense.

It’s that time again! Through the grace of God and the stubbornness of me, Midlife Crisis Crossover reached and surpassed its second anniversary on April 28, 2014. I postponed the party because I didn’t want to interrupt my annual C2E2 photo journal marathon at its height, and I fancied the idea of coinciding with this, MCC’s 700th entry. That’s two milestones nailed at one time, both highlighted without passing on the extra costs to You, the Viewers at Home!

For those interested in reliving the creation of MCC and/or time-traveling to key points in its distant past, the following moments are recommended for historical purposes:

* The first official MCC entry, basically a satire of the Indianapolis majority’s unseemly, senseless hatred of mass transit. I spent a full week writing and refining this launch post, researching blogging platforms, and experimenting with the control panel once I’d made my decision. After going live on April 28th, it had maybe seven whole views in its first week of existence. With almost no promotion and nothing in mind resembling a quote-unquote “marketing strategy”, I like to think that’s seven more views than I had any right to expect.

This way for more topics, answers to forgotten questions, ruminations on possible futures, and possibly more!

“American Blogger” Trailer Spells Doom for Future Tomatometer Rating

April 11, 2014 By in Meta, Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , 1 Comment

"American Blogger" PosterTwo weekends ago saw the low-key, zero-promotion release of a professionally polished trailer for a new documentary called American Blogger, in which a young filmmaker chronicles his forty-state road trip to visit forty of his blogger wife’s blogger associates. After receiving single-digit daily traffic in its first week of release, last weekend it soared to the kind of near-viral status that every blogger dreams of attaining. I wish I could say this sudden fame was due to the trailer’s proud, heart-swelling representation of an entire internet culture. Unfortunately, it was the other kind of fame.

In a world where millions vie for the attention of billions and the most innocent art projects can veer radically out of control when we least expect it, one young filmmaker would experience an apocalyptic shift that would thrust him into the burning limelight, shatter his innocent perceptions, pulverize his foundations, and transform his life retroactively from birth onward for all eternity. Along the way he would solidify old friendships, make new enemies, suffer hard choices at one crossroad after another, hold his ground against the forces of evil, stand on the bleeding edge between order and chaos, find himself the last repository of hope in a world gone mad, and scream “Vendetta!” at the infinite blood-streaked skies as the rage of a million exploding suns threatened to consume him from within.

Or something like that, the way his trailer narrator tells it.

This way for an entry that will change the way you see an entire industry!