Please note: This is not a Goonie fetishists site. I don’t care if you have dreams about Kerri Green’s underpants. If you leave disgusting comments here, they will be deleted. So don’t bother anymore, okay?

New Poll: In honor of the group therapy session Brigita and I are having, please indicate your position in your junior high social caste system. (For you non-Americans, we’re talking about ages 13-15.)

I haven’t been in a very bloggy mood lately. I say that knowing that I’ll probably end up posting fourteen times tonight.

I’ve been thinking about that “audience” thing I said below. You know, in my mind I think of the audience of this site just being the folks that leave comments. But I myself visit lots of sites where I just lurk and never post anything. So I wonder – do I have many lurkers? If you’re a regular-ish reader and you rarely (or never) comment, please do me a favor and say hello. You don’t have to come up with anything witty; just let me know that you’re out there. (I’m suddenly paralyzed by the thought that there aren’t any lurkers, and this is just going to be embarrassing.)

“How to Write a Better Weblog.” I actually thought this article was fairly useful. I mean, as Michele points out, blogs are mainly personal sites and therefore no one should ever attempt to proscribe the way they’re to be written. But for a lot of us, what started out as a personal exercise has become something bigger. You find a “voice”. You worry whether the design of your site is sending the right message. You start to play up to the audience. (After all, if you didn’t acknowledge them at all, why are you posting this stuff on the Internet anyway?)

For me, this site started as a way to keep lots of family and friends updated on what I was doing far, far away. But nowadays, for better or worse, it’s become so much more than that. It’s partly my own talk show, where I get to lead the discussions that I want to lead. It’s partly a travelogue, where I get to show you guys some of the amazing stuff I’ve seen. It’s partially a diary, so I can remember the day I left Netdecisions or the day my new brother was born. There are so many reasons that we write, but at the core of every one is the idea that someone else is going to read it.

That’s why I found the article useful. Not because it tells you what to write about in your weblog, but because it emphasizes the importance of good writing for an audience. Sure, it’s not a law and you’re free to “rItE hOwEvHh U wAnT”, but think how much more impact your ideas and thoughts could have if you presented them more readably. Look at the A-listers that everyone links to. What do they have in common? Good writing. If you care at all about your audience (and whether you admit to it or not, you do), you should make sure that reading your site is a pleasure, not a chore.

I’m still working on the photos. I’ve discovered an upside to jet lag: you get a lot done in the wee hours of the morning when everybody else is asleep. I’ve got about 60 done and 30 to go. Should be up tonight. In the meantime… let the blogging begin!

Beware the Ides of March! In a completely blatant and non-subtle ploy for commercial gratification, I added my birthdate and links to my Amazon UK and Amazon US Wishlists to the left-hand column. That’s right, folks, in just over two weeks yours truly crosses the threshold to 24. (What a boring number.) I’ll still be in Oz, so don’t bother ringin’ up, though. The celebrations, for those in Ye Olde London, will be postponed til the end of the month.

Some things you might’ve noticed:

1) I changed the image name of the the Valentine. It shouldn’t hurt anything on your site if you’ve linked to the post, but if you’ve linked to the image, you’ll need to update it. (You’ll see it’s a simple change.) If you’re sucking it down off my site onto your own page, though, you’re gonna get a broken image. Which is your cue to copy it to your own server if you wanna keep it.

2) I’ve been mucking around with the stylesheet and layout here. Let me know if it creates any problems in your browser. Thanks…

I was just checking my referrer logs to see how many people have been sucked in by my flagrant karma whoring on Plastic, when what to my wondering eyes should appear but an honest-to-goodness disturbing search request! Somebody apparently found my site after searching on “asian escorts at web”. Huh. Now that I’m listed on Google I seem to be reachin’ a whole new audience…