Katja tapped me with a meme a couple weeks ago and I didn’t realize it, so this is overdue:

Why do you blog?

Aside from my narcissistic tendencies, I blog because I’m a compulsive writer.  It’s the form in which I express myself best.  Before I started blogging, I kept a journal for about ten years, but that was a rambling, self-indulgent mess.  Blogging forces me to be a better writer; it also gives me a forum for normalizing society’s view of what it means to be a 30-something American guy with a physical disability. 

Oh, and girls.  My blog serves me way better than any dating profile. 

How long have you been blogging? 

My first entry appeared on August 24, 2002.

Self-portrait

See the upper-left corner. 

Why do readers read your blog?

I assume most of readers fall into one or more of the following

a) family
b) friends
c) friends of friends
d) anonymous gimps/geeks/fellow travelers who have some fleeting interest in what I have to say

What was the last search phrase someone used to get to your site? 
“19th floor”

Which of your entries unjustly gets too little attention?

I’m gratified that anyone takes the time to read me.

Your current favorite blog?

MetaFilter, now and always

What blog did you read most recently? 

ThinkProgress

Which feeds do you subscribe to?

Way too many to list here.

What four blogs are you tagging with this meme and why?

Blue, Sally, Goldfish, and PZ because I would gladly hang with any of them. 

Military SF doesn’t usually hold much appeal for me, but I picked up Old Man’s War on the strength of recommendations from Cory Doctorow, among others.  The novel’s basic premise is this: in the future, senior citizens on Earth can volunteer for the Colonial Defense Force to protect human colonies from ruthless alien civilizations that are competing for the same real estate.  The bennies of CDF service include a brand spanking new genetically modified body primed for combat duty.  John Perry, a widower and writer (natch), narrates the story of his transformation from newbie CDF recruit to grizzled veteran of several battles with assorted alien baddies.

Several reviewers have compared this novel to Heinlein’s classic Starship Troopers (which I haven’t read).  I was worried the book would be a testosterone-fueled romp through the galaxy complete with obsessively detailed whiz-bang descriptions of the military’s toys.  There’s some of that, but Scalzi chooses to focus on the human costs of war and the arbitrariness of those losses.  I do wish that characterization had been a little stronger.  Many of the supporting characters seemed to be indistinguishable; they might as well have been called Wise-Cracking, Jaded Soldier #1, Wise-Cracking, Jaded Soldier #2, and so on.  But Scalzi has crafted a satisfyingly lean machine of a plot that kept me too entertained to pay much mind to the book’s flaws.  I will likely pick up Scalzi’s sequel, The Ghost Brigades. 

Next up: the It Book of the summer, Scott Smith’s The Ruins.

I’m leaving shortly for a picnic (despite ominous skies and the scent of rain in the air).  I want to share my feelings on the inherent evil of PowerPoint presentations, but that will have to wait until later.  More soon.

Crop circles are poor supporting evidence for extraterrestrial life (what kind of advanced aliens would waste time using their formidable psychic powers to flatten cornstalks?).  But they make great wallpaper for my desktop.  And I had to smile today when I saw this picture of a crop circle in the shape of the Firefox logo.  Could crop circles be the next form of viral marketing?  Are farmers across the land going to wake up to find ads for iPods and Gap jeans in their fields? 

Sarah Vowell’s Assassination Vacation is an excuse for her to dwell on her obsession and share it with the rest of us.  My hunch is that she is the kind of person who would pull you aside at a party to tell you everything she knows about the influence anarchist thinker Emma Goldman had on Leon Czolgosz, President McKinley’s assassin.  But if she is as engaging and funny and exuberant in person as she is in her writing, I would gladly listen to her for hours. 

Assassination Vacation follows Vowell on a personal itinerary devoted to the lives and deaths of three assassinated American presidents: Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley.  Stops include the preserved home of Lincoln and his family in Springfield, the desolate Jersey resort town where McKinley died, and the former site of the utopian Oneida Community in upstate New York (which once hosted Garfield assassin Charles Guiteau).  Vowell is at her most reverent when writing about Lincoln and she doesn’t miss the opportunity to take jabs at the modern Republican party and its betrayal of Lincoln’s legacy.  But it is Lincoln’s son, Robert Todd, who serves as the book’s symbolic alpha and omega by having the the cosmic misfortune to be an invited presence at all three assassinations.

Vowell is clearly fascinated by the myriad cast of presidents, assassins, and eccentrics that populate her book.  And in the best tradition of historical writing, she lets the reader share in her fascination. 

Next up:  the first volume of Y: The Last Man by Brian K. Vaughan.