Tag Archives: blogging

WordPress.com Magic Elves Offer Colorful Second Opinion of My 2013

December 31, 2013 By in Meta Tags: , , , , , , , , , 11 Comments

Happy New Year, readers and skimmers alike! Here’s hoping 2014 proves to be the Greatest Year of All Time. At the very least, maybe it’ll help us forget the parts where 2013 let us down and still has a lot to answer for.

For MCC’s second New Year, the happy-go-lucky stats wranglers at WordPress.com have compiled an automated 2013 Annual Report for each and every blogger on their roster, complete with fireworks and eye-popping design work and a world map in case you prefer practical gifts. In addition to the facts and figures I already reported yesterday with my own manually culled year-end review, this report also helpfully confirms which WordPress bloggers left me the most comments last year and therefore deserve innumerable treasures in Heaven and possibly also baked goods. You should subscribe to all of them so they can rise to fame and I can write entries about how I’m one of the Little People who knew them way back when.

For the intensely curious, WordPress’ report also reveals which of my 2012 entries absolutely refuses to die. It didn’t exactly go viral or receive attention from any major online sources I’m aware of, but passersby just keep clicking it and clicking it and clicking it and now the report thinks I ought to consider churning out more daily posts exactly like it, despite how impractical this would be on multiple levels.

Have some sample artwork as an additional incentive. Ya like colors? It has colors.

The weirdest statistic it reveals:

The Louvre Museum has 8.5 million visitors per year. This blog was viewed about 80,000 times in 2013. If it were an exhibit at the Louvre Museum, it would take about 3 days for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the report in all its scintillating wonder!

That most important part, once more with emphasis:

Happy New Year!

Midlife Crisis Crossover 2013 in Review, Including Last-Minute Posts Seen Only in NYC and LA

December 30, 2013 By in Meta Tags: , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

Hi-dee-hoo, fans and visitors! Welcome to the second annual Midlife Crisis Crossover year-in-review for this humble site, launched on April 28, 2012, as an excuse for one guy to do things, try stuff, and think whatever aloud. Next week will mark MCC’s 600th post, but that’ll be in an entirely different year and is therefore ineligible for celebration at the moment, so forget I mentioned it till next week.

This occasionally purposeful experiment has lasted a full twenty months without crashing and burning yet, though we’ve seen some excitement, some tears, some discomfort, some joy, some serious stress, and some much-needed days off. And that was all just over Christmas break. 2013 was a year of successes and failures, of triumphs and tragedies, of records and horrors. MCC’s own fortunes have ebbed and flowed depending on which subjects caught my attention at the right time, which times I was utterly out of step with the rest of the world, and what moments of synchronicity were the most unexpected of all.

Of all the nouns to frequent the site this year, none had a deeper effect than Boston.

Boston Public Garden, Boston vacation

Continue here for MCC’s own best and worst of 2013!

The MCC Christmas Archive!

December 19, 2013 By in Meta Tags: , , , , , , 1 Comment

Christmas with Morgan Freeman

Remember when putting words in the mouth of Academy Award Winner Morgan Freeman was a thing? Did that ever stop happening?

Before the Christmas season is too far gone and everyone turns off their internet for the rest of the year, the following guide to Christmas entries from the Midlife Crisis Crossover back catalog is provided here as a value-added holiday gift for any new MCC followers who joined us in 2013, for longtime MCC readers who love themed compilations, or for incorrigible MCC spammers who need new pages to infiltrate. If you’re running low on online reading matter or are interested in seeing the state of MCC ’round this time last year, these free samples are just what the MCC programming department ordered.

PLEASE NOTE: the presentation of this clipfest does not mean I’m going on hiatus until January like a network TV show. I’m still allowing for a day off each week, as I’ve been doing for the past several months, but I expect to stick around and do my part to fill the void left behind by other bloggers jetting off to Grandma’s or Antigua or whatever. To me, holidays don’t seem like a time for not writing. Also, if I take more than one day off per week, site traffic paranoia kicks in and I have to breathe into a paper bag for a few hours, until enough internet wanderers click on that one undying, year-old Wreck-It Ralph entry to make me feel useful again.

Enjoy! And if I don’t see you before then: Merry Christmas!

* * * * *

* “What Christmas is All About: an Imaginary Dramatic Reading” — The meat of this entry is shown above, but the link contains a couple more notes for temporal context.

More MCC Christmas stocking stuffers from last year!

So You Want to Be a Super Awesome “Freshly Pressed” All-Star

October 28, 2013 By in Meta Tags: , , , , , , , 9 Comments

WordPress "Freshly Pressed" badgeA fake reader lurking within my subconscious writes:

Dear Mr. Crossover,

Hello! How are you? I am fine. I have been using WordPress.com for four years. Please follow my blog and reblog all three of my posts so far, because I just Liked a random post you wrote last month without reading it and now you owe me. I have another question. I read your About page and it says you had three different posts on Freshly Pressed, which is a really big deal because it means WordPress likes you best. I think that’s really unfair and you didn’t deserve it and I want to know your secret. How can I be more like you and get Freshly Pressed so that I can become famous and everyone will like me and then I can write for Hollywood and make enough money to buy your website and set it on fire and run over the ashes in my new Humvee? Also, I nominated you for a Liebster Award and I will Follow you if you Follow me.

Sincerely,
N.V.S. Strawman
Exposition, WY
http://ripoffsweatshopfashions.wordpress.com

Dear Mr. Strawman,

I wish you hadn’t asked, but I can tell you what I’ve learned from the experiences that changed my life forever and made me Hero of the Internets. As you begin reading, prepare to rethink your entire existence piece by piece, until every second becomes retroactively spectacular from Day Zero onward.

Click here for handy tips on how to be me!

A Few Plugs for Old Friends

October 22, 2013 By in Misc. Media Tags: , , , , , , , 2 Comments

Erin Boyes, Fruitcake

Erin Boyes and just desserts, in promo art for writer/director Seth Sherwood’s short film Fruitcake.

When I first boarded the Internet express back in 1999, I was fortunate enough to discover a few different online communities with hobbies, interests, sensibilities, and misfit vibes similar to mine. A couple of those places humored me and didn’t complain when I stuck around for as long as those communities existed. While many contemporaries, rivals, and extras have come and gone, it’s been a grand old time chatting, debating, spitballing, and growing older in real time while maintaining virtual connections with some of those folks over the past decade-plus. The most gratifying part is watching their creative endeavors in assorted arenas, as cast members (so to speak) have found ways to put their talents to use, been rewarded with moments of success, and/or kept dreaming even bigger dreams.

Historically speaking, Midlife Crisis Crossover has been terrible at plugging friends’ projects. You’d think it would be one of the many natural uses for a nicheless blog like mine, and yet…here I am, smacking my forehead and feeling sheepish about the oversight. If I can’t pass along their good news and upcoming projects — especially for the magnanimous one or two among them who’ve kindly passed word along about this site to their own connections since its inception — then what can I pass along?

In that spirit, MCC offers the following items of interest for your perusal. It’s been a privilege to share membership in the same online community with each of these contributors, who deserve the success they seek in their respective walks of life. If said success includes a product with a “Special Thanks” section, here’s hoping they keep the little people in mind. LOUD COUGH.

* * * * *

For your reading/viewing consideration:

MCC Q&A #5: Of Sandmen, Midlife Crises, and Comic Con Updates

October 15, 2013 By in Meta Tags: , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

RoKenhrontyes, Marti Matulis, Sleepy Hollow, Fox

Sometimes even Ro’Kenhrontyes has questions that need answering, and mirror images are terrible at trivia.

Though I don’t advertise it heavily with an intricately crafted banner across my “About” page, Midlife Crisis Crossover maintains an open policy of Ask Almost Anything (because in my lifetime, AAA has been far more beneficial to me than the AMA), which extends not only to regular readers and commenters, but also to constant Likers, silent Followers, and passing Googlers. If you have a question, a plea, an intensely thoughtful comment, or a request for a fun brainstorming list that can’t be answered in a short, simple reply, we’re happy to elevate it to Main Topic status for a future entry and explore the subject further in depth. Caveat: you must prove you’re not an illiterate spammer in order to qualify for this offer.

From time to time we also review queries and curious sentence fragments from passing search engine users, because even the silent, fleeting passersby deserve to be heard, even if they’re no longer around to find the answer they needed. We haven’t checked the ol’ MCC search-term mailbag in ages, and the suggestion box has indeed been stuffed silly. Tonight seems as convenient a night as any to dig in and bring closure to the unclosed.

Let the questioning begin!

* “is there any biblical parts in the movie the crood”

There’s a flood. Close enough?

* “does rachel and matheson due from the grenade in revulution”

If only we’d been so lucky. So far, still ticking.

* “train floats”

No, it won’t. Please think twice before making this misconception integral to your next heist caper.

What else do our Googlers demand to know?

Obligatory “Freshly Pressed” Follow-Up Thank-You Ramble

September 22, 2013 By in Meta Tags: , , , , , 5 Comments

WordPress "Freshly Pressed" badgeIs it okay if I feel proud and sheepish at the same time?

The gracious editors at WordPress liked a post of mine from last week well enough to showcase it as “Freshly Pressed”, meaning a temporary spotlight in the WordPress commons area where thousands of other writers might give it and other folks’ recent “Freshly Pressed” posts a look. It’s extremely kind of them and thoroughly unexpected.

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The Curse of the “Follow” Button

September 21, 2013 By in Meta Tags: , , , , , , , 24 Comments

Follow Button Nightmare

Just so we’re clear, this haunting illustration is not intended as a superliminal message.

The Followers list of the average WordPress user is comprised largely of other WordPress users. The community is extremely supportive that way. On occasion I’ve even dug a little deeper into those notifications and discovered usernames popping in from Blogger, Tumblr, DeviantArt, YouTube, and other creative sites. If readers are attracted from outside the blogosphere altogether, that’s worth an elaborate victory dance in my book.

Some of that support is provisional, though — offered in hopeful accordance with the implied adage of “I’ll follow you if you follow me!” I’m not sure how many online communities this largely unspoken expectation pervades. When MCC first launched, I kept this guideline in mind, especially in the early era of single-digit daily traffic when any sort of response, human or otherwise, was a welcome change of pace from spending quality time with the Void.

The longer my resulting reading list grew from everyone I Followed in turn, the less I wanted to keep observing that adage. And yes, I mean “reading list”. I tried keeping up with all of them/you, even if the subject matter didn’t interest me in the slightest. It seemed the most honest response. I still read many, many blogs in any given day, but I’ve had to perform some serious triage for the sake of my free time and sanity. I’m unclear on when the “Follow” button became less a simple, literal statement for some users and more of a token to be swapped with passing strangers like marbles or pogs.

For some of my oldest followers…I think using the “Follow” button jinxed them.

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2013 Road Trip Photo #10: Counting the Blessings While the World Races Past

September 10, 2013 By in Meta, Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

I-93 South, Boston

Not every moment of the average vacation will lend itself to an attractive headline, a cheery anecdote, or a photogenic souvenir. Even the world’s greatest professional travelers have their share of failures, their horror stories, their occasional awkward faux pas, their incidental doldrums, their best laid plans gone awry. All of those not-shining moments are yadda-yadda’d from the eventual professional article, to the approval and applause of a hundred Likes, a dozen Follows, and a few cents’ worth of ad revenue generated by their hits. Selective anecdotal recounts can turn anyone with a travel budget into Hero of the Beach.

Full disclosure from this humbled amateur with complicated aspirations: Day Four of our road trip began not with entertaining travel heroism, but with ninety minutes of sitting off to the side of I-93 South during Boston’s mid-morning rush hour.

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Post-Convention Photo-Sick Blues

August 22, 2013 By in Conventions & Events, Meta Tags: , , , , , , , 1 Comment

Goldens, Wizard World Chicago 2013

The next time my wife and I decide to attend major geek conventions two weekends in a row, someone needs to remind me to sleep twice as much first.

Today at the comic shop, one of the owners confirmed they and the other customers have been suffering from “GenCon hangover week”. We don’t drink, but the effects are similar. We’ve been wiped out the last few days, soldiering on in our jobs, ignoring the lingering muscle strains, and lamenting that we’re no longer surrounded by those who Get It. That last part’s always the hardest to handle.

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Your Handy Spam Comment Inspection Checklist

August 16, 2013 By in Meta Tags: , , , , , 12 Comments

MasterSpam Theatre

Random spammer, welcome to This is Your Life! And might I say, you have much to rethink.

Each day the ol’ Midlife Crisis Crossover spam filter catches a few would-be advertisers and funnels them into a gravity well for handy reevaluation and inevitable permanent disintegration. For my first depressing month on WordPress it was simple to discern spam comments from real, live comments: if it was a comment, it was a spammer. My undying gratitude remains perpetually owed to those longtime followers who wrote real, live comments in subsequent months so that I could eventually form a basis for comparison between sincerity and superficial salesmanship.

Nowadays my daily spam dosage tends to be the same few varieties over and over again. It’s quick to flush but boring to glance at. It’s rare to see one of their lowly kind be creative enough to merit more than four seconds of my time.

When one of them fails at their quote-unquote “job” in spectacular fashion, then they have my undivided attention for all of a minute, the equivalent of an eternity in their world.

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The Official MCC “Not About” Page

June 30, 2013 By in Meta Tags: , , , , , , 2 Comments

Randall A. Golden, Midlife Crisis Crosssover

Shirt probably from Kohl’s; shorts probably from Wal-Mart. Wristwatch definitely from Wal-Mart. Most expensive item: ticket to visit Manhattan’s Top of the Rock. (2011 file photo.)

Consider this another hearty greeting to the continuing influx of new subscribers, real or otherwise, to this humble blog of mercurial intent. If you have no idea what we’re doing here on MCC, feel free to check out the official “About” page for a vague explanation festooned with a smattering of concrete details. Would-be MCC historians unaware of this site’s early days can check out the original, full-length version before I was overcome with a rare rewriting impulse and vaporized several hundred words.

For those who find both versions no help whatsoever, the following is a new companion piece to clarify the broad MCC mission statement by confirming some of my areas of weakness, insufficiency, disinterest, and/or mild anitpathy. It’s my hope that outlining the opposite of me should help manage expectations for future passersby who might be tempted to tap the “Follow” button with misguided hopes for the future of our reader/writer relationship.

For those tentative visitors, please be aware Midlife Crisis Crossover is 99.99% guaranteed to be not about:

* Fashion. No one wants wardrobe tips from a guy who flinches at a thirty-dollar price tag on a shirt. Occasionally I’ll feel a twinge of jealousy at those men who have the clothing budget to wear suave, name-brand outfits from classy outfitters whose newest offerings are featured in men’s-magazine pictorials before they reach upscale store racks. Even if I reconfigured my mindset and funneled all my comics/movie funding into a new monthly allowance for fabulous clothing, the best-looking items are never manufactured in my size anyway. The best you could possibly see from me here is a column called “New T-Shirt of the Month”. (For the record: my most recent acquisition was a Hawkguy T-shirt. See what I mean? And it’s even worse if I have to explain a joke.)

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An MCC Reader Survey for Every Man, Woman, and Spammer

June 25, 2013 By in Meta Tags: , , , , , 1 Comment

Once again I’m reporting live from the Department of Trying Something Completely Different and extending this opportunity to YOU, the Viewers at Home, to share your feedback about your Midlife Crisis Crossover reading experience. This may be an imperfect structure (I’ve already encountered one unresolved bug), but I beg your forgiveness and your willingness to humor me in this flighty endeavor.

Assuming I didn’t break anything, embedded in this entry should be a simple survey — two pages, five questions in all — providing statistical info on the MCC readership at large to satisfy my curiosity, to help me think a little harder about what subjects to incorporate here in future entries, to show me whether or not the PollDaddy survey function is worth reusing, and to determine once and for all how many of you are real and how many of you are Matrix holo-henchmen.

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New Rule: Never Write Grumpy.

May 11, 2013 By in Meta, Mundane Tags: , , , , , 12 Comments

Baby Midlife Crisis CrossoverBehold the author at age two, picture taken by a professional photographer circa 1974. To this day I can’t believe my mom agreed to pay for copies. I do understand the parental compulsion to save memories and moments of our offspring’s precious childhoods. Judging by my scornful expression, I gather this was a day in my life better off forgotten. I’d hate to see the rejected takes.

This expression also sums up my mood for too much of today — a poisonous mixture of mandatory overtime in unhealthy, sleep-depriving amounts; stupid chronic muscle pain; a block’s worth of trudging through a nasty downpour without rain gear or even a jacket; and capped with a surprise medical bill from an office visit fifteen months ago. It was the kind of day that inspires little creativity and copious moping if I allow it to consume me. Ibuprofen and caffeine in varying doses soothed to limited extents, as did my wife’s usual daily abundance of kindness. She’s nifty like that.

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The Fable of Why This Blog is C2E2’s Fault

May 9, 2013 By in Conventions & Events, Meta Tags: , , , , , , 1 Comment

Midlife Crisis Crossover, Randall A. Golden

Portrait of the would-be writer at C2E2 2012. Appropriate soundtrack: the theme from Laverne & Shirley.

Once upon a time there was a guy from Indiana who wrote a lot in college, took classes for it, thought that majoring in a related field would be the right choice, dropped out without credentials, stopped writing, but never stopped reading or wishing he would make time to think of reasons to write.

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Midlife Crisis Crossover Celebrates 1st Birthday, Threatens to Begin Repeating Itself

May 8, 2013 By in Meta Tags: , , , , , 6 Comments

Midlife Crisis CrossoverOn April 28, 2013, the blog you’re presently skimming celebrated its very first birthday. Strange but true! I would’ve marked the occasion sooner and in a timelier fashion, but longtime readers might’ve noticed I had a hard time shutting up about that blasted C2E2 event for a few minutes. Even though our official six-part photo gallery is completed, I still have at least three posts’ worth of C2E2-related material in store from a different angle. Out of respect to my readers who might not be as enthralled as I am by local comics conventions, a broader, general-audience digression seemed in order. Also, I’d like to mark the occasion sometime before next New Year’s.

It was a singular event that inspired me to launch this humble site out of a combination of frustration and curiosity. (Expect the story behind said event in an upcoming entry. Enough time has passed, I think, that I can share it with fewer sour grapes.) I set forth on this strange journey to discover the answers to a long list of questions for myself, including but not limited to:

1. How many consecutive evenings in a row can I find a reason/excuse to write about something before I stumble and fail?
2. How much am I willing to sacrifice for the sake of writing?
3. Can I start such a project without a preexisting audience?
4. Is it possible to build an audience from the ground up? Not counting spammers?
5. What sorts of writing will I like best? And what kinds might become a dreary chore?
6. Is there a question #6?
7. Can I enjoy myself without being jealous of those who do this regularly for money?
8. Will anyone I know even care?
9. Am I alone in this?
10. Do I really like writing? If not, what am I supposed to be doing with my life?

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MCC Q&A #4: Because Blogging Award Disqualification Can’t Stop Me

April 19, 2013 By in Meta Tags: , , , , 8 Comments

Christopher Plummer, The Sound of Music

Now taking requests! Anyone wanna hear “Edelweiss” for the 300,000th time?

Though I don’t post gigantic blinking .GIFs begging for it, Midlife Crisis Crossover maintains an open policy of Ask Almost Anything (because in my lifetime, AAA has been far more beneficial to me than the AMA), provided I’m aware that I’ve been asked questions. Thanks to a moment of well-timed stumbling, I discovered eleven questions aimed in my general direction from C.v. Heerden from Bridging Worlds, who was actually bestowing upon me the honor of a nomination for the Liebster Award for meritoriousness in the field of blogging. I’m much obliged for the nod.

Two slight problems:

(1) I already did a Liebster Award entry previously, and probably shouldn’t repeat myself any more than I already do. Unless that somehow draws more readers, in which case I suppose I can spend the upcoming MCC Year Two simply reblogging my previous twelve months’ entries one by one and live the high life at the corner of Easy Street and Lazy Boulevard.

(2) According to the Liebster Award rules set forth in myriad versions by the mysterious governing body that refuses to step into the spotlight and claim authorship of their works, it was my understanding that the Liebster Award nominations are permitted only for bloggers with a limited number of followers.

Thanks to MCC’s social media connections, a growing number of live readers (for whom I remain humbly grateful, and from whom I always welcome input), and an even more rapidly growing number of spammer followers (about whom STAB STAB STAB STAB), I believe my current Follower count, though still puny by the standards according to pro bloggers who earn a living at this (in front of whom I remain consistently humbled), still disqualifies me from the Liebsters based on the limits I’ve seen in other Liebster Award entries (200, 500, 1000 whatever).

Regardless of my heartless exclusion from the proceedings by that Mysterious Governing Body, the nominating post did include questions for the nominees. If the MGB would like to emerge from the shadows and try holding me back, I welcome the chance to meet them face-to-face in the light of day.

Anyway. Mrs. van Heerden’s questions, answered in order:

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Welcome, New Bloggers! Your Default “About” Page is Showing.

April 11, 2013 By in Meta Tags: , , , , , , , , 18 Comments

Far be it from me to convince myself that 350+ consecutive daily MCC entries and fourteen years of Internet participation experience (dating to the era when Usenet was ebbing but not dying, and “social media” wasn’t a labeled thing) are sufficient credentials to hoist myself upon an ornate pedestal and begin dispensing wisdom from above to fellow WordPress users about The Correct Way to Do Blogging. For reasons that would require a separate entry altogether, I don’t even like dispensing constructive criticism to other online writers, let alone have the ego to declare myself in the sensei business. One glance at MCC’s minimal visual design should provide evidence enough that I have a multitude of lessons yet to learn for myself.

Regardless, longtime bloggers can agree on a few of the most basic of basics. Today’s message is about one of those super-basic basics.

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“Very Inspiring Blogger Award” Nominee Considers It an Honor Just to Be Allowed Internet Access

April 7, 2013 By in Meta Tags: , , , , , 5 Comments

Very Inspiring Blogger AwardI’m well aware that my scattershot topical approach, my avoidance of narrow specialization, my complete lack of millions of share-happy friends, and my refusal to curse probably sabotage the chances of Midlife Crisis Crossover ever being seriously considered for the sort of major awards that have committees, budgets, perks, or multiple voters. I appreciate it, then, when another writer in the Internet trenches takes the time to send an encouraging gesture in my direction.

The Very Inspiring Blogger Award is one of many such gestures available to us. It’s not an official commendation with a nomination process or a governing body or a brick-and-mortar hall of fame that our family could visit on our next road trip. Quite the contrary, the VIBA is a pass-it-on pick-me-up that comes when least expected, means no harm, and provides opportunities for networking and paying forward to others.

Special thanks are owed to Tony Roberts at A Way With Words for this duly acceptable nomination. It’s especially noteworthy to me because Tony is one of only three other WordPress.com users from Indiana that I can recall encountering in MCC’s eleven months of existence. If I include WordPress.org, the head count expands to a whopping four. Truly we Hoosier bloggers are a mighty, tiny army. (If any other Hoosier bloggers are out there, that’d be nifty to know. I can’t even hear you breathing.)

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…Every Word Handwritten.

March 8, 2013 By in Meta, Mundane Tags: , , , , , , , , , 12 Comments

Note 1 of 13
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