Scruffy crooner Matt Alber finally hits the East Coast, not counting one-off publicity/fundraising shows in New York. The “tour” isn’t substantial by any means but he is coming to DC (yay!).

The first show is January 18 in NYC with Celisse Henderson. He shoots down to Va Beach and then Balmer, hon, before coming to the District on his birthday, February 6. He’s teaming up with singer Tom Goss (who I’m unfamiliar with) and playing at Delaski Theater in Adams Morgan. I’ve never heard of this theater but bought a ticket anyway and I’m excited to go. After the DC gig he heads down to Florida for a few gigs sans Mr. Goss. Hopefully he’ll add some mid-Atlantic cities to this tour, check out all the latest at his website, mattalber.com.

In my excitement of learning of the tour and purchasing an immediate ticket, I tweeted my excitement and received a personal tweet back from Mr. Alber. <swoon>

Either I’ve gotten too lazy or to old to go out and enjoy playing in the snow. We’re getting about 18″ already here and it’s still coming down. I was originally planning to go and do early Christmas with the fam today but that was wisely cancelled. I’m not about to get all bundled up and take a walk around the block with this much height of snow, even if the sidewalk snow is packed down, which I really doubt it is.

This storm, along with Tiger Woods, is why people shouldn’t start doing “Best of…” lists until the year is actually finished. Go December!

Funny trending topics on Twitter today are #snowpocalypse, #snowmageddon and @snOwMG.

Here are some pix, including the buried red Zipcar that I originally scheduled today.

Can you see how frequently I’m writing here? Answer: not very. Or at least that’s how it seems to me. With nothing going on to really write about, except resume sending-out and that can get pretty dull real quickly, well, there’s nothing to really write about.

A blogger friend I mostly keep in touch with through Twitter started mentioning the hashtag #NaNoWriMo. I clicked on it and saw that others were tagging it at as well but I couldn’t figure out what it was by their tweets. A quick google search provided the answer I was looking for.

Did you know that November is National Novel Writing Month? Well it is. Look it up. It’s an online project where writers “feverishly” pound out a 50,000 word novel during the month of November. That’s 1,666 words a day. The outlook on it is not to edit and not to think about it too much. Just write. They even say “it’s about quantity, not quality.” So while it’s not supposed to be stream of consciousness (although I guess it could be) the idea is to write without knowing where your characters are going, but for you to keep going with the writing.

In 2008 5% of the 119,000 who entered finished the lofty goal of 50,000 words. Seeing as how I started already a day behind (November 2) I really doubt I will finish successfully. 1,666 words a day, every day, is a lot of tappity-tapping. We’ll see how it goes. If I can finish with 20,000 words I think that would even be an accomplishment. I’ll post a downloadable pdf once it’s complete and you can read the missing plot and lack of character arcs for yourself.

So, to recap:

What: Writing one 50,000-word novel from scratch in a month’s time.

Who: You! We can’t do this unless we have some other people trying it as well. Let’s write laughably awful yet lengthy prose together.

Why: The reasons are endless! To actively participate in one of our era’s most enchanting art forms! To write without having to obsess over quality. To be able to make obscure references to passages from our novels at parties. To be able to mock real novelists who dawdle on and on, taking far longer than 30 days to produce their work.

When: You can sign up anytime to add your name to the roster and browse the forums. Writing begins November 1. To be added to the official list of winners, you must reach the 50,000-word mark by November 30 at midnight. Once your novel has been verified by our web-based team of robotic word counters, the partying begins.

If you’d like to join the madness yourself, please link your author name to “futurejunkie” so I can see how far behind you are as well.

More on Nitevisions, the Duran offspring band and some speculation of a Spandau Ballet offspring band and a new battle that could reign supreme on the UK pop charts can be found here and their Twitter feed is here. In America maybe the closest pop battle we’ve had would maybe be Madonna vs Michael Jackson in the 80s? Unlike the Brit counterparts of the early 80s and mid 90s (Blur and Oasis battling it out for Britpop) there wasn’t a lot of public mudslinging, just a race to see how could sell more albums. Maybe a Britney vs Christina battle comes to mind? Possibly. I guess times have changed now and they let others do their mudslinging for them.

Here’s the infamous battle on Pop Quiz between Duran and Spandau:

There’s an article in this weekend’s New York Times about abandoned blogs. This happens when the author gets busy, bored or moves onto another form of press release. I’ve followed some blogs that have had a formal “Cya l8r!” entry, some have had detailed explanations for the reason they’re shutting them down and others have been simply set adrift. That’s all fine, ain’t nobadi mad at ya.

I’m waiting for this to happen in the Twitter world, too. Everybody’s all gaga over getting a Twitter account, and drooling to find out how they can make money from it. Chill, people, it’s not a gold mine. Some have taken to Twitter as an easy form of (the original) status update or quasi-press release. Others have signed up and nary posted a tweet. Or rapid-fire tweets within the first week of signing up and then nothing for months. To each their own.

Me, I’m doing both and have been doing both. I don’t see the tweet as a replacement for the blog or vice versa. A blog entry of “On the beach now. Can I get some WiFi out here please?!” doesn’t make sense, but as a tweet it does. And there’s no way that I could sum up this entry in 140 characters. But I’ll tweet a link to this post and they work in tandem.

That said, today is my three-year blogging anniversary. At this address at least. I have some archives from ten years ago when I was posting a journal on OpenDiary.com (before it was called “blogging”) and a secret Blogger site that I used for a few months in ’05 but it’s really too dark to share any of that info.

Here are previous June 07 posts:

2008
2007
2006

It’s 1994. Kurdt has just offed himself, Blur’s Parklife and Orb’s Live 93 play continuously in my CD stack while The Twins™ sunned themselves on the brick courtyard in front of my lovely little garden house. I motored about in my 1977 VW Beetle at 25 mph, filling the tank on Friday evenings on the way home from work and giving her a wash on Saturday mornings. I never locked her doors.

I had recently purchased my first computer, a Performa 630 CD. Yes, it had the “CD” in the name, pushing the new-fangled technology of CD-ROM. Fancy. One of the underlying reasons for this purchase, aside from the fact of not wanting to go into the office to mess around with Illustrator and do side projects was to play some games. SimCity 2000 had just come out and I was embarrased to have my boss finding me playing on my work computer on a weekend, so I figured I needed to move it home. Another game I desperately wanted to try was Myst, a game played with a CD and Mac-only at that point.

Myst was really a revolution when it came out. It featured wonderfully rendered 3-d images, almost unheard of at that time. The interface was simple, static point-and-click images to turn, navigate down a path, etc. The game put you on a mysterious island and you had to figure out what to do; it’s intrigue was in its beauty and simplicity (and once playing, complexity) and wondering around, figuring out how to work the elements on the island and puzzles contained within. I remember it came with a blank notebook where you could jot down things to remember, sketch out maps of the puzzles and basically doodle what was happening around you, as several “books” in the Library on the island showed you as you read them. The game also featured QuickTime movies embedded into the gameplay, which again, was unique for gameplay at that time.

During this time I was also dating Mr. Shipman who was currently working for a client in Chicago and would return to Houston for the weekends. On weekends we would have our together time, going to dinner and having beers and doing dating things. Once I had a big outing planned and Mr. Shipman, after learning I had Myst and being the computer geek he was, said “Why don’t we stay in, order a pizza and play Myst?” Heaven.

Last week Cyan, the creators of Myst, released the iPhone port of the game which is identical to the original from 1993. I think I still have the original booklet that I diligently wrote all my clues in 15 years ago but I’m not sure where it is. It may have been discarded before the last apartment move, I’m not sure. What I do know is that I’m immersed in a world that is oddly familiar (sometimes blatantly) but feels primitive, exciting and full of nostalgia.

I haven’t had to diagram much this time around and back then finding a solution to a tricky puzzle was to sit there and figure it out, whereas now a simple Twitter question or using a provided “hint” link will eventually lead you online to the answer you’re seeking. Trying not to use the hints I’ll still be through it in a week or so now, because I know what to look for, opposed to the couple of months it took me to complete it back in 1994. It’s still fun.

From fuzzyco. His Twitter feed is here.

As everybody drool$ over how to make money from Twitter, I share with you my first tweet posted two years ago today. It’s banal, of course. This is currently on page 160 of my feed. I have posted exactly 3200 tweets.

Insomnia is the new 401(k). Middle of the night Twittering will be our downfall. Kara Thrace is the harbinger of doom.

Another sleepless night and a early morning mental debate of “whether to put the coffee on” or lie here for another three or four hours. On my Twitter feed, @Mr_Darling (another recent insomniac) tells the world he’s headed to his local Safeway. It is 6:08am. Since I was going to go to the store sometime today anyway, I decide to do the same. I get dressed and head out, whether the morning rush is already in swing but the sun hasn’t crested the cloud-laden horizon yet. I take my sunglasses just in case I will want them on the walk back.

Of course, the Safeway is devoid of customers. I think there were only a handful of us in there; most of the cars in the parking lot were undoubtedly employee-owned. Restocking of shelves and buffing of floors, however, is in full swing.

I grab my usual basketful of groceries and head home, passing people who are headed the opposite direction towards the Metro on their way to work. I get home around the same time that, three months ago, I would have been catching the bus outside and undoubtedly already complaining about my commute.

But now I have milk for my morning coffee, and after breffus I’m going to start making sauce. Crushing garlic and chopping onions before 8:00am, why not?

Purchase: $33.54
EBT Card Balance: $156.21
Club Card Savings: $11.00 (25% of purchase)