My Own Biggest Fan

I have nothing to write you guys about so I am going to throw together a half-arsed entry and you are going to have to be happy about it. Yes I know it has been two weeks, but hell, we all have our down times right?

Two things that come up in conversation when people talk about Mason and the Internet… 1) Mason finds weird things on the internet and people ask “How do you find that stuff?” (this happens with music too, and if you are a music fan it is one of the most annoying questions one can field) 2) My blog is impersonal.

The reason that my blog isn’t all about me me me is that I don’t want people to know about me me me. This is just a forum for things that I find cool, or that I might have done that I want my friends and random strangers to see. 99% of the public doesn’t care what my cat puked up (to borrow an example from Joy) so why would I write about it in a public forum? That said, this place IS called My Own Biggest Fan, so odds are the things I show you have some bearing on my life. It is just indirect.

As for statement #1, here is a little insight into How Mason Finds Things…

I long ago ditched Fark.com for Boing Boing. Fark was fun for awhile but really, how many times can you read the same joke over and over and still find it funny? It is like those people that can watch Monty Python and the Raiders of The Holy Grail and find it hilarious every time, even though they know the movie verbatim. I mean, why even bother with expending the calories putting the tape in the VCR? They could probably recite the whole movie to a blank wall and get as much joy out of it. I once saw one of these people watching this movie (and of course calling back to the television his favorite lines) and not once did he crack a smile. Of course there are a lot of factors at play here, including intense social incompetence and such, but I will end this train of thought right now. Anyways, like I was saying, I read Boing Boing.

I am a sucker for any blog that is more useful or cooler than mine. This is why I read BB and through BB I have discovered new and fun things that yes, I could live without but for the most part have enriched my life, way more than say, a night watching TV could do. (I do not own a TV by the way)

I have found a new love in Cool Tools It is sort of a show and tell for creative types. BB linked to it and that is how I found it. So there you go, one cool blog type thing, led to another. Not a horrible thing seeing as how the information that is on CT is stuff that will actually help my endeavors and isn’t just a time sink like say, Fark or pr0n.

While browsing CT I found an entry that talks about this nifty little OSX application that displays phrases called Oblique Strategies which are little Zen-type phrases that are designed to help the artist, designer, musician what-have-you get out of a rut. They were conceived by Brian Eno and Gregory Taylor in 1979. It is free and it can be downloaded here. I have already emailed the app to anyone I know (or can remember) that runs OSX, so I am not sure how this could help anyone else reading this.

Anyways, like I said, this entry was written to fill space. I really didn’t feel like updating the site at the moment. Funny thing though, I essentially stole the format for this entry from Joe’s daily email list, but admittedly, with probably half the entertainment value. Weird thing though, at the very moment I was ripping him off he sent me an email asking why my site had not been updated. If I were more superstitious I would have been freaked out.