I'm in transit today from Chicago to St. Louis for the Christmas holiday; so I thought I'd write an entry in advance full of some random notes, and post it in the morning before all the craziness started, just so I wouldn't have to deal with it while traveling. Enjoy, and expect my first entry from St. Charles tomorrow.

--My old buddy Greg Gillam recently came across some freaky crap in the Heterotopia again, which he is awfully good at doing - dude, the Christian Underground! "I'm hardcore, and I can pray wherever I want!" Dude! And I know, I should be awfully alarmed by such a group, but I just can't stop laughing at the image of some pasty brainwashed 16-year-old Christian nerd suddenly dropping to his knees and praying at a mall, thinking that all the other 16-year-olds at the mall are in awe of him for his fierce dedication to his spirituality. You go, pasty brainwashed 16-year-old Christian nerd! You're hardcore, man, just like your Youth Pastor said you are! And when all those other people walk by you and roll their eyes, or make comments about how sad it is to see brainwashed teenage zealots, it just means that they're jealous, because you're hardcore and they're not! And hey, once you're that bourbon-drinking, chain-smoking, 23-year-old disillusioned art major you're destined to become, you're going to have the absolutely greatest "stupid shit I did as a kid" story to tell at parties out of all your friends! Because you're hardcore!!! Go, pasty Christian teen nerds, go!!!

--Are coffeehouses rapidly becoming soulless hubs for those with WiFi laptops to collectively gather but never interact? Or are they still serving the same purpose they did in the '90s, ushering in a second age of salons and community development? Well, why not a little of both? Why not specifically designate a portion of a coffeehouse as a "quiet zone," for those who are legitimately there to get some computer work done, while having the rest of the place still devoted to conversation and community interaction? It really surprises me, frankly, that most coffeehouses aren't acknowledging this, that their customer base is more and more becoming antisocial workers who are specifically there to be left alone; it seems to me that there's a lot of money to be made by the first coffeehouses to actually recognize this, and to create an area within that space specifically for people trying to stay far away from screaming children and gabby friends. Anyway, just some food for thought, for any of you who might work in that industry yourselves.

--Some interesting trivia: Sunday was the 140th anniversary of slavery becoming illegal in the United States. Hmm, maybe this will be yet another law Republicans will try to repeal before the next election.

--So, I've been following with great interest all the recent woes the company Six Apart has been dealing with lately, regarding all the problems with their TypePad blog-hosting service, because I happen to be a Six Apart customer myself. (I use Movable Type, the same software that powers TypePad blogs; in my case, however, the software resides at my own website instead of Six Apart's servers, which is why I didn't experience the blackout so many others did.) And I'm not about to try to justify the mess Six Apart is in these days regarding it all, or argue why you should stay with them instead of hopping over to Wordpress (which apparently just thousands upon thousands of people are in the process of doing right now); I did, however, want to simply remind people that we're talking about two different issues here, and to urge you not to confuse them in your head.

The problem that TypePad customers have been dealing with recently has to do simply with Six Apart's hosting abilities; more specifically, their lack of ability to elegantly expand with the dramatic rise of interest all blogging systems have seen this year, and if you feel like bitching about this then I say go right ahead. This has nothing to do, however, with Six Apart's actual software, of the type engine actually powering one's blog and making sure that archives get placed in the right area, that templates are automatically updated, etc. I'm a big fan of Six Apart's actual software, which is why I felt compelled to write this item today - it's powerful, it's adaptable, it's customizable, and offers a whole lot more options at the raw level than just about any other type engine out there. And it'd just be a shame, I think, to see the whole issue get mixed up in the public consciousness because of this recent mess, of people thinking that the company's actual software sucks just because their ability to adequately host websites does too. Because this, of course, would lead to the failure of Six Apart as a company, and suddenly I wouldn't have any technical support or updated builds or cool new plugins being busily invented by amateur enthusiasts...which is in fact what is exactly going on these days among the world of Palm owners, as it becomes more and more clear that Palm really is going to dump the Palm operating system for good soon, and simply become yet another Windows Mobile company. And this is bad enough, because I've invested a whole lot of time and money over the last six years into supporting PalmOS, with it now likely becoming a dead format even within a year from now; and I would just hate to see this happen with Movable Type as well, because it really is a great program and I don't want to have to use fucking Blogger or the like instead. Anyway, just something to keep in mind about it all.

--Dear John McCain: Won't you please, please run for President again? Think of it as a higher calling, like people who join the priesthood do - that this nation absolutely needs a smart, astute political moderate to be President in 2008, that in fact it will be impossible for things in this country to ever get better until we have a moderate in the White House. In fact, I'll go one better and publicly declare this - that if you run, I'll vote for you, which would in fact be the first time in my entire life I would've voted for a Republican. Come on, Mr. McCain - do it for the good of this country!

--I don't know why, but lately I've been really getting into the blog of Microsoft employee Robert Scoble, and really digging a lot of the stuff he's been talking about recently. Mr. Scoble, for those who don't know, is in this rather rare and special position in the corporate world, in that he's one of the first "Web 2.0" PR professionals out there; that is, his job is simply to tell the truth about what's going on at Microsoft, to express his honest opinions, even if that leads to him criticizing his own company at times, or championing their competitors. And that's just interesting enough on its own, of course, but then it helps quite a bit that he's a great writer as well - funny, disarming, refreshingly candid, even sometimes more subversive than I ever thought Microsoft would let one of their employees be while on the clock.

Anyway, Mr. Scoble was talking the other day about AOL's recent partnership deal with Google, and had something amusing to say about it all - " ...In Building 18 we were a little disappointed, but no one was sitting in their offices crying or anything like that... " And God help me, for the entire rest of the day I couldn't get the image out of my mind of a bunch of Microsoft employees all sitting around their cubicles weeping, like that Simpsons episode at the telemarketing place: "Why doesn't AOL like us? What did we do wrong? Was it me? I can change! Boo hoo hoo! " Thanks, Mr. Scoble, for adding the nice little laugh to my day!

Plus he's been getting me thinking recently about maybe trying out a new project in 2006 at this journal - to interview prominent bloggers here at my journal once every couple of weeks, that is, and simply ask them questions about what makes them tick, what their blogging experiences have been like, what the worst story is that they have about being a blogger, etc. (Basically, Mr. Scoble has been urging people recently to get out and start reading more blogs, especially ones they might not naturally gravitate to on their own; and then to feature these blogs at your own blog, and interview the blog's creator, as a way of helping to spread the love.) And so that I thought would be kind of interesting, to spend an entire year occasionally posting interviews with people like Scoble himself, Seth Godin (a famous business writer, for those who don't know), Cory Doctorow (sci-fi author and co-founder of Boing Boing), Wil Wheaton , Neil Gaiman , Jason Kottke , Steve Rubel (another popular business writer), Father Roderick Vohagen (creator of "Catholic Insider"), Dave Winer (the co-inventor of not only RSS but also podcasting and the original Macintosh), Eric Zorn (a columnist for the Chicago Tribune ), the woman who does Rocketboom and the like. (Now, this is assuming that all these people say yes, of course, which I doubt all of them will. But you see my point.) And then even more fun, mix in some interviews with blog creators who have much smaller followings as well - like Jessica Stover, for example, hilariously toiling away as a young actress in Hollywood, or Christopher Sharpe, an underground filmmaker (and reader of this site) down in Texas, people like that.

What do you think? Would you enjoy reading semi-regular 2,000-word interviews like this? Got someone in mind already? Let me know!

--Oh, and speaking of Boing Boing, the boys over there recently featured this news at their site, which I wanted to pass along: William Wray, a former animator for "Ren & Stimpy" and former colorist for the indie comic Hellboy, has decided to completely switch career goals in the middle of his life, much like I did in 2004 when I decided to no longer pursue writing profesionally; he has, in fact, decided to become a painter of fine-art postmodern urban landscapes. And like he says at his website (and like I know all too well), it's hard to switch careers like that right in mid-stream, not only terrifying emotionally but also with no guarantee that any of your old fans will follow you into that new foray. He has basically asked all kind souls out there if they might include a small mention at their own site about this recent career change of his, and maybe help him a little with trying to establish this new endeavor; and for obvious reasons, I'm feeling very sympatico with such a plea these days, so thought I'd do what I could as well. Anyway, so here's Wray's new fine-art website - and his landscapes are actually really good, too, so I urge you to spend a few minutes going and checking it out.

And of course this goes in the opposite direction as well - that is, I always appreciate it when those of you are willing to make a small mention of my journal at your own blog. Yes, I know, you probably don't think that your readership of 35 people counts for much - but believe me, that's exactly how I've built my audience up over the last seven years into the size it is now, simply by picking up a couple of new fans each day, usually by one of you mentioning something at your own blog. Believe me, such posts do have a profound impact, and I thank all of you who have done such small writeups in the past.

--Wow, guess who has finally become the newest fan of South Park? That is, now that it's finally showing on broadcast television here in Chicago (channel 26, every night at midnight), and finally has closed-captioning as well, so I can understand what all those fast, squeaky voices are saying? That's right, it's me! RESPECT MY AUTH-O-I-TAY!