Websites and Reasons To Keep My Day Job--

HTML Language = How To Make Lousy:

Today I tried to add a search bar to my website and I realize how much I know and don't know when it comes to creating websites. I wanted it to the right (I even found in the code where it said "left" and typed in "right" and it didn’t move. I expected a two step to the right, an electric slide, but no, it just sat there right in the middle of everything looking odd. I'm just glad I have a nice background color for it as it kind of blends in (kind of, like a traffic accident blends in with a freeway).

Poet's Websites:

I did create my own poetry website through Geocities, though they had a "Page Wizard" and I think if I try to change any of the code manually, I no longer can access the Page Wizard, which is really the only way I'm comfortable with that website. I’d like to be able to do more. I’m sure there are large books on this, but I’d much rather wander my way through it changing this hocus pocusly, making blue appear where there once was red.

If you’re a poet reading this and do not have a website, I think you need one. Really. I know I get crazy (okay, not exactly "crazy," just wishful, when I find a poem by a poet I really like and I try to find more of his/her work on the web and I can only find a handful of this and that. And then I have to go to each site/ezine and check it out. Even if you have a blog, you need a central website where readers can find you and a sampling of your work and books. Yes, even if you don’t have a book. Imagine that you will have a book some day.

I started with a free website through Geocities. It made me have this as my webpage: www.geocities.com/agodon but I was fine with that. It was free. It wasn’t until a friend of mine said he saw a naked man on my site when I got a little nervous to what exactly I had set up on my website. You see, I have “Ad Blocker” on my computer so I never saw the ads. I assumed they were just sunsets or pictures of kittens. Apparently, my ad was selling protein pills or some special thing to give men big muscles. The man was actually not nekkid, but in a speedo. Wonderful. As my family checked into to see my new site, they were greeted Thor the Studmuffin saying hello first. It was then I decided that $8 a month (what Geocities changes to take the ad off your site) was worth it so people could go to my site without a picture of eye-candy to go with it. So, now I’m just www.agodon.com. It’s better without Thor. Well, maybe a few people miss him.

Bad Mickey, Worst Words/Best Words

My Mice Like to Party All the Time--Well, that strange smell of death or sauerkraut seems to be almost gone. I wonder if something bigger ate the smaller dead thing. I know, not a nice thought, but an honest rural thought. Though the idea that I have a forest of animals in my cellar doesn't please me. I know there are a couple mice (and one newt), but that is all I know. Who knows what is going on down there, our house is 75 years old this year (well, *that* part of it, the living room and bedrooms were a remodel), maybe it was a celebration gone bad and one of the mice passed out in the furnace. It happens.

PO-ET-RY:My recent attempts at poems leave me wondering what I was thinking when I began them. The have interesting lines, but go nowhere. They are similar to the well-dressed people at a party who when you try to converse with them, have nothing interesting to say. Pretty to look at, annoying to take. Still, I'm writing, which wasn't happening due to my critical paper.

Worst Words--I was thinking about how there are certain words that make me cringe (similar to how I have to change the station if I hear "Mr. Bo Jangles" or "Send in the Clowns." ) Here are my least favorite words in no particular order:

meme, filibuster, my bad, irregardless (not a word), midwifery (pronounced "mid-wiffery"), ointment, panties (esp. when said by a man), potty (same thing), spatula, schedule (pronounced with an English accent), whew.
(though I don't always cringe at the UK version of "schedule," it depends who is saying it and how many times.)

Favorite Words--Of course, if I'm revealing my worst words, I should even it out with some of my favorites (again in no particular order)--

discombobulated, lollygagging, topography, lumpia, dishrag, whiplash, mascara, numbskull, Zanzibar, penumbra, edgy, hipsway, fishhook, undulate.