And It Begins.

"Once upon a time, there was a little girl named Goldilocks.  She  went for a walk in the forest.  Pretty soon, she came upon a house.  She knocked and, when no one answered, she walked right in."

I have been thinking about how often to blog ( –noun 1. a web site containing the writer's or group of writers' own experiences, observations, opinions, etc., and often having images and links to other Web sites. -verb (used without object) 2. to maintain or add new entries to a blog.) Am I the only person who dislikes circular definitions?

As well, I've wondered how long a blog should be. The consensus ( "How Long is...." and "How Many Words...." Two may not be a consensus, but I am limited in words.) is about 500 words with the caveat that any blog should be written to the subject and images should be added (crap!) There's that pesky learning  new skills requirement. Thank goodness for Blogger. It makes all of this easy. (See added image at the top)

I played with the idea of posting three times a week and then I remembered last week's schedule and cringed.

How do I figure out how many words this is? Am I too short? Too long? Or just enough? A little past the halfway mark. I copied and pasted into a word document and then let it count the words. I'll be able to save the blog, too, in case the cyber wonkies eat the post. This is technology and the one thing I have learned about technology is that bad things will happen. Motherboards die right before you back up everything. Viruses infect your machines and before you realize it, you've infected every thumb drive with all of your back up.

But wait, this is supposed to be about how often I'll post. I don't know. I know that I'll post at least once a week and maybe more. I may aim for three posts a week, and that may drive me crazy. Let's face it, I can already tell that this is going to be another thing I use to procrastinate from accomplishing my goal of finishing the blessed book. "Writing, writing every where and not a 'The End' in sight." (paraphrased from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner)

Having started with Goldilocks and the Three Bears, I'll finish with her, too. I don't feel like this yet, but I understand her motivation.

"Just then, Goldilocks woke up and saw the three bears.  She screamed, "Help!"  And she jumped up and ran out of the room.  Goldilocks ran down the stairs, opened the door, and ran away into the forest.  And she never returned to the home of the three bears."

(457 words plus these makes 461. Done 462. Good christ, shut up already, Maria. 468)

The First Time

This is my first ever public blog post and while I do have many, many opinions and am more than willing to share them all with you, this is more of a test post than anything else. If you're reading it, welcome, but something tells me that no one will be reading it because it is the first, and no one I know, knows that I am doing this.

This post is stealth blogging or as much as anything can be stealth in a public forum. It is stealthy in the sense of hiding in plain sight. Who reads blogs just to read them? I cannot even keep up with my friends' blogs, their posts on other people's blogs, and their cyber-book tours which is blog hopping with a purpose as far as I can tell.

You may ask why I am starting this with all of the cyber noise that exists out there already. The best answer would be because I am supposed to. I am an unpublished author and I am "supposed" to blog, Facebook and tweet. I am on Facebook and I've enjoyed finding old friends and reconnecting with my spread out family, but I am very opinionated and as a writer, I've been told that I shouldn't share those opinions that it may turn off readers. I am pretty sure that the blog will do that too because what do I have to write about but my opinions?

On the other hand, okay, there is no other hand. I am bound to offend people. I won't mean to, but I will. I am a strange combination of my bleeding heart, socialist, pinko mother, and my fascist, Rush Limbaugh fan father. I believe in teachers, and civil servants. I think capitalism at its best is an amoral system and should only be used as a tool and not worshiped as a guiding principle for life. I believe that what adults over the age of twenty-five do with their lives with other consenting adults is none of my business and my current guilty television watching pleasure is "The Real Housewives of New Jersey" season 3. Those women are better than a soap opera. Who knew that people like that really existed? I thought that they were exaggerated caricatures.

I'll be back. I need to figure out how often I'll be posting and what I'll be posting. This is just a test to see how it looks and what I can do. Oh, I did put it behind the "adults only" filter because of that whole opinionated thing and because I don't think sex is a bad thing. I don't understand why American culture is so open to violence and so freaked out about sex. I find films and stories about violence far more pornographic than say Playboy. The "Playboy" issue is another blog post for another day when I am feeling fat, ugly and worthless because I am not a skinny fully waxed eighteen year old with paid for stripper tits. I am sure that I'll be ranting on that another day.

The title of my blog is from Lewis Carroll's "The Walrus and The Carpenter," from Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There. I'll close this post with the last stanza of the poem:

"O Oysters," said the Carpenter,
"You've had a pleasant run!
Shall we be trotting home again?'
But answer came there none--
And this was scarcely odd, because
They'd eaten every one.