Crappy Idea

I'm thinking of starting a new blog entitled My Magnificent BM and Other Colontastic Adventures.

Its content will at least be better than the shit on this blog.

My Week as a Social Person

Or How to Make Friends and Influence People with Alcohol

In true McBastard fasion this post is a week late. The week before last I decided to take a tentative step out of the comfortable darkness of my hermitude and venture into the blindingly bright light of social interaction. Aside from the occasional taggings along with my roommates past and present, over the past year I've hardly made an effort to meet new people and make new friends. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but I've felt that I may not be making the most of my experience in a new city. The other week, though, I made up for that a little bit.

First up was a date on Tuesday. I guess I have gone on several dates in the past year, so this is nothing new, per se. But, to coin a phrase, one can never go on too many first dates. It was a pretty good date, too, in my opinion. We were just supposed to meet each other after work and get a couple drinks, but it turned into a dinner date. The bad part was that I drank way too much, but the good part was that she did too and didn't seem to notice. I'm hoping to arrange a second date for some time this week, but she just moved into a new place over the weekend, so I don't know how feasible that will be.

Most of the rest of the week was occupied by what the Intarwebs calls a "meetup" in which a group of people who've met online but usually have not met in meatspace get together and apparently drink copious amounts of alcohol. And that's just what we did.

On Thursday, I met up with some other twenty-something bloggers, from the aptly named Twenty-Something Bloggers community, for some Chicago-style pizza. And then we went to a bar and got drunk. On Friday, we skipped the dinner part and went straight to a bar. On Saturday, we met up at a wine tasting, then went to a bar, then went to dinner, and then went to another bar. On Sunday, we stroked our livers gingerly and went to the Pride Parade. Overall, it was a great success. I met some interesting local bloggers as well as a few from the far reaches of the country. Now I've got so many more blogs to read that'll never get bored. They even convinced me to get on Twitter. So now there's a whole new avenue through which I can annoy you, dear readers!

Now I must scurry back into my cave, biding my time until the next event lures me back into the sunlight.

Too Quiet

I haven't posted anything here in a while, because, well, there's not much to tell. I'm still looking for a job in Chicago (though, last week I did start working at a nearby Piggly Wiggly to pay the bills), my motorcycle's still not fixed, and I'm still living with Happy Time Harry and Stellar.

All in all, not much has happened, but you know me: I'm always up for not doing much of anything. It has been kind of nice aimlessly drifting through the past month or so, carefree. The only down side is that it's been fairly debt-inducing. But that's nothing new for me.

I suppose there are other things about which I could be writing in the meantime. So, I guess I'll try to resume my responsibility of inane blogging with yarns and misadventures. Stay tuned.

The Month That Wasn't There

September was eaten up by a too-long, nigh unproductive business trip, procrastination, and good old friends' weddings (not that I'm complaining about that last one). I started on several posts and I even wrote a new part of Superhero, but I never got around to publishing any of it.

That's sad for September, but good for October, I guess. I was told recently that I don't post frequently or consistently enough, so I'm going to try to post at least a few times a week next month. Also, I'm going to try to continue my serial story, but I think I'm going to finish writing all of the few remaining parts before I start publishing them, so I don't lose interest in writing it again.

Good things (or, more accurately, not-that-bad things) should be coming in October.

Don't Hire Me

I hope that the recent trend of employers investigating job candidates online is replaced by employers actually analyzing facets of potential employees that pertain to work. I think it is much more important for an employer to find out whether the person they are interviewing has good interpersonal and communication skills than it is to peruse their social networking site profiles or judge them based on their credit score.

Finding out what a person reads, what they do in their spare time, and how they express themselves regarding topics of interest -- be it politics, education, art, history, etc. -- would seem to me to be much more useful information than the plethora movie quotes and "Hey, I fucked your mom!" comments left by friends on the profile pages of social networking sites. There seems to be several pitfalls with judging the character of potential employees based on their online presence.

An employer might find posts or pictures suggesting that a job candidate has participated in some illegal hijinks, casual drug use, and overindulgence in alcohol. But how does one does one distinguish these probably true admissions from failingly humorous allusions of bigotry or hopefully false claims of violence? It is a fact that this information has been published to public forum, the Internet. But it hasn't been published in the journalistic or literary sense that most people are used to. This type of content has not been reviewed. Rarely has it been edited. And it does not claim to stand up to the same ethical or professional standards that traditional publishing does. Truth is often mixed in with falsehood. Exaggeration is accepted, sarcasm expected. How can an employer expect to parse all this information fairly?

Also, many people adopt an online persona when publishing information to the Internet. They may portray themselves differently in cyberspace than they would in meatspace. Perhaps they might act how they wish they were. Or maybe they act how they are afraid of becoming. The Internet can allow them the freedom to act in different ways, ways that are drastically different from how they would ever portray themselves "in real life."

Lastly, what if an employer strikes the candidate from the list due to having googled that potential employee and finding several results with links to websites that are offensive or frightening? The employer may be glad that he caught this wacko early in the interview process, but what if the offending sites belonged to another person by the same name as the candidate? The potential employee would actually have done nothing wrong in the eyes of the employer; his only crime would be having the same name as a pervert or bigot.

The adage goes "Don't believe everything you read." This is doubly true for things read on the Internet. Employers need to find new, more useful ways of finding out the relevant information about their future employees.

Promises, Promises

Last week I made some blogging promises that I didn't keep. I didn't blog as often as I said I would, and about the topics that I wanted to. So, I suppose I broke my promise. I'm not too broken up about it, though. Are you?

Missed

I haven’t been posting regularly recently. Further, I have't been posting my serial story like I promised I would. And I appreciate those who have called me out on it (Thank you, The Magster and Pancake Wrangler). It helps me to know that I am actually being held accountable for my promises.

I haven’t been particularly busy lately, but I just haven’t felt like writing. It’s the apathetics’ version of writers’ block. So, I’m going to try to jumpstart my inspiration with a solid week of blogging. From tomorrow to next Saturday, I promise I will post at least once every day, or my name isn’t Cynical McBastard (which it isn’t). I want to post at least four Superhero updates (to make up for those I’ve been missing) and a couple discussion topics Justin and I have explored recently.

In the meantime, here are some topics that I missed blogging about:

• It was my 24th birthday a couple weeks ago. I’m too young to say I’m getting old, but I’m too old to say I’m young.
• I went to my first wedding of the year a few weeks ago. I’ve already got three more lined up, one of which I’ll be in (i.e., the Stellar + Matt wedding extravaganza). I just need to be invited to one more wedding to break last year’s record of four weddings attended.
• I interviewed for a new job. It sounds like it will have some to do with technical/instructional writing, but for the most part be a jack of all trades. The interesting part is that I would be working with Justin (or “under” him I should say).
• I went to the Royals opening day game on Monday. I had a great time sitting out in the parking lot, drinking beer, and eating burgers. And the game wasn’t bad either. The sun was spitting out carcinogenic rays, the weather was calm and beautiful, and the pretty girls were out in force – it was the perfect day for baseball. Plus, the Royals actually won, so that day might actually be classified as a miracle.
• I started working out again. I was just tired of getting winded walking up a few flights of stairs and, in general, feeling like a slug. I haven’t exercised in over a year, and by the amount of huffing and puffing and sweating I do after a quick thirty minute workout, it’s pretty evident. I’m not aiming to lose weight or build huge muscles. I just want to stop feeling listless and lazy. And to not sigh or grunt when I bend over to pick something up.

Serial Fiction Blog List

My brother (Pancake Wrangler), my friend (Luciano), and I have all been writing serialized pieces of fiction, using blogs as our medium. It seems blogs were made for this. The author writes a bit of a story. The readers read the bit of the story and have the opportunity to respond, via commenting, to every portion of that entire story. The author gets validation. The readers get to partake in the creative process. Every one wins!

You'd think that there'd be tons of serialized fiction blogs out there, right? But after several searches, I haven't found much. What most searches for "fiction blogs" reveal are blogs written by fictional people. They are fictional online diaries. This is an interesting genre, I'm sure, but I can barely stand most blogs I come across written by real people. Why would I want to read a blog by a fake real person? Like "reality TV," fiction posing as reality fails to entice me; actually, it annoys me. I should care about something just because it purports itself to be true? Quit a-million-little-pieces-ing fiction and write something that will intrigue the reader without tricking them. (And, yes, I just verbed a book title.)

So, I said all that to say this: I am compiling a serial fiction blog list. It will contain links to blogs solely devoted to one or several works of fiction, broken up into sections that are or have been updated periodically, or links to a table of contents of such a work of fiction contained within a blog not singly devoted to serial fiction.

Divine Intermission

Luciano

Five Chapters

various authors

Healing Knowledge

df

Mortal Ghost

L. Lee Lowe

Superhero

Mr. McBastard

The Unbinding

Walter Kirn

untitled

Pancake Wrangler

Zen of Evil

Christopher Michael Nelson

Zen of Evil: Progeny

Christopher Michael Nelson

If you or anyone you know has a blog that fits the guidelines above, email me or leave a comment, and I'll add it to the list.

Blogger beta Miracle

The Blogger gods have heard my prayer and have smiled upon me. After posting last night, I tried to switch over to the new Blogger yet again, and it worked! Thank you, Blogger.

Expect some changes in the near future. I plan on making or finding a new template.

Blogger beta

Is anyone else having problems changing over to the New Blogger? I was a little hesitant to switch over to the New Blogger beta, but I eventually became curious enough to check it out. But when I tried to switch my account over, it gave me an error. I thought it was just because they hadn't worked out the kinks, yet.

Then a week or so later, the New Blogger came out of beta. So, I tried again to switch. But it wouldn't let me. I got another error, a different one this time, stating that I had already tried to switch and failed. I know it failed in the past, Blogger, that's why I'm trying to switch again!

So, every week for the past month I've been trying to switch to the New Blogger, and every time I've been denied. I've even written an email asking them what I did or am doing wrong, but I haven't gotten a response.

I really like you, Blogger. And I've stuck by you when people said Wordpress this and Typepad that. So why d'you gotta dis me like this, Blogger? Why?

• Tags
• blogger

FeedBurner

I just signed up with FeedBurner to handle my site feeds. It seems to be cool; it has tons of options for customizing your feed and some pretty neat tracking features. So, if you subscribe to my old Atom feed, do me a favor and switch over to using my FeedBurner feed. Thanks!

Useless Failings

If you're an old reader of Cynical McBastard, and you've just found this, you're probably wondering, "What happened to the UselessFlailings.com domain?" Well, due to a lack of funding, Useless Flailings has gone under. This is hopefully a temporary condition -- hopefully, both my brother (Pancake Wrangler) and I won't be steeped in credit card debt forever. But until then, Blogspot is going to be Cynical McBastard's new home. The same goes for Sticks and Stoned. So, re-bookmark these sites, and be sure to tell anyone you know who I didn't tell about the change. Thanks!

| Tags || money | website |

Recap

This semester has been busy, but that is no excuse for having neglected my duty and privilege as a blogger: inundating you with worthless knowledge about my relatively insignificant life. So, here's some highlights from this semester:

• I got a new job as a kitchen employee at Hy-Vee, the local grocery store. I don't really care for the job too much. I still work at the Language & Literature Division Office. I'm working there over Winter Break, in fact.
• I dressed up as a zombie dressed up as a bunny for Halloween. I was bartender at Choose Your Poison, my fraternity's annual costume party, for a couple hours. During those couple hours I drank approximately enough "poison" to choke a donkey. Afterwards I apparently ended up tackling too many people and wouldn't stay standing up. The Magster, dressed as a hobo, made me go to bed. I puked.
• I read a couple of books that I liked: Ishmael, Possession, and a classic from my childhood A Castle in the Attic
• I put my resume online; I've begun the job search. I've already applied to a couple places, but most employers don't want me begging for a job until February or March.
• I killed a man with my bare hands.
• I participated in Tour de Franzia, drinking over a liter of boxed wine. At some in the night I remember getting into a wrestling match with a blind guy. Later, I puked.
• I decided to recap for you what you missed this semester on my blog.

I'm sure much more happened, but I can't think of anything else important right now. I'll try to start updating more regularly again, though.

I Haven't Forgotten

I thought that I would just let my faithful readers (if there are any) know that I haven't been completely neglecting to post, I've been working on a couple posts, but they are still in draft form. I'll try getting one, if not both, of them polished and ready to post by tonight.

Broken Promise

I told myself that I wouldn't do it, censor myself. But if there's one thing that I've learned about myself over the years it's that I can't keep promises, especially one's made to myself.

So, anyway, I've been meaning to post something for a while now, but never got the guts to do it. So then, I decided to make one of those ambiguous posts about it, but that would just lead to people asking me a whole bunch of annoying questions and prying and whatnot.

Then I came upon a good idea: I will, instead of actually making the post, just answer the questions that I'm sure would have been generated from publishing it!

So, yes, this post is about you. No, it really doesn't matter that much, I just needed to vent. No, you don't need to apologize. And, yes, you should probably stop asking me questions about it.

There Is Nothing New Under the Sun

I've got nothing original to say.

But I'm gonna keep on talkin'!

Extended Archives

I used to have a blog called Z-Gar's Last Big Mistake, before Cynical McBastard came along. I decided to add the archives of that blog to this one. So, go exploring through the archives, and discover what Mr. McBastard was like during the end of this freshman / beginning of his sophomore year of college.

Overdramatic(It's My Blog and I'll Cry if I Want To)

The image of myself that I've created for you is the one I thought you'd want to see, the one I thought would please you. It wasn't perfect, and I knew you didn't expect that. But it was mostly "good" or mostly "cool" or mostly "strong" or mostly something that I thought you'd like.

Silly me.

Apparently people don't want to see an image of me, no matter how pleasing the image. It could be perfect or perfectly imperfect. Either way, they want to see the parts of me that I've kept out of view, the parts that I don't even like, and the parts that I hide even from myself.

So, I'm going to try to do that for you; show everything. Not really for your benefit, but for mine. Because by the end of this thing (post?, weblog?, life?) I won't have to be the hundreds of different me's that I've been being, one for everyone I know. I can just be the one and only Zach, if a single one does exist. I guess that single one will be discovered here. Stay tuned.