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Category: Opinionated

Personal Blogging is Dead

Published May 22, 2014

Ok fine, maybe it’s not dead-dead, but Personal Blogging as I’ve known and loved certainly is. A little history, if I may.

At the risk of sounding like a hipster (shut up.), my involvement with blogging began before “blogging” was really even a thing. Back then it was an “online diary” first. That was where I learned the importance of understanding your privacy settings, and not to put something online that you don’t want everybody to be able to find out about. I think it’s why I’m not super concerned about what Facebook knows about me; it knows what I want it to know and it doesn’t know what I don’t. After that it became “journaling”, and it started becoming more interactive. It was easier to follow people, easier to comment, easier to make friends.

Finally, it became blogging. A lot of the same old services were still being used, but it was very gratifying and strangely liberating when I bought my own domain and installed my own software. After participating in Blogathon, I met a lot of cool new people and hit my blogging hay day.

And then… the scene changed. A lot of my blogging friends stopped blogging. Comments decreased. Friendships faded. Then the worst happened… people started blogging for profit. It was no longer personal.

But it wasn’t just the blog scene changing that led to the mostly-death of this blog. I changed, too. I found that I had nothing to say here, really. The day to day didn’t seem as important to write about. Maybe it was just the arrogance of Youth that made it so easy for me to share all the little things and think that anybody cared. Maybe it was that I had more adventures on a weekly basis than I do now. Maybe it was the audience and camaraderie. Or something else entirely. Realistically it was probably a combination of all those things and more.

Sure, I’ve been blogging. I write a lot about my crafting over at katili*made. There is still a very lively blogging community, it’s just more themed now. It’s evolved to something else, something different, and as a blogger maybe I needed to evolve a little, too.

What does this all mean for Kat Scratch Fever? It sounds like the death of it, I know. But actually, it’s not. Lately I’ve been wanting to post here more. Things are new and exciting and different again. Life goes on and it has interesting things. So, I’ll post some of it. I imagine they will be a different kind of post than they were years ago, but KSF will have some life breathed back into it.

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High Heels Have Gotten Ridiculous

High Heels Have Gotten Ridiculous

Published Nov 11, 2010

Maybe I’m not the right person to comment on this; I can count the number of times I wear heels a year on one hand. Women that wear heels to the grocery store baffle me. Dancers and performers that can jump and run in heals astonish me. Some of the heels I’ve seen online should be categorized under “Art” and not “Footwear”.

This is a new level of ridiculous, though. Can someone please, please, PLEASE explain to me why ANYBODY would need to wear a shoe with a nine inch heel on it?! You fall wearing those shoes and you’re breaking more than just your ankle and your pride…

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Cruise Ship Calamity

Cruise Ship Calamity

Published Nov 10, 2010

I read an article today on CNN about a Carnival Cruise that got stuck at sea off the coast of Mexico after a fire in the ships engine room took out most of the power.

Based off the article, it sounds like it’s been a pretty rough few days for the passengers and crew – no hot food, no hot showers, no lights, etc. It’s an awful way to spend a vacation, and I sympathize for the guests on the cruise. It’s also a nightmare for the crew, who is trying to do everything they can to make these guests as comfortable as they can, while enduring the conditions themselves.

All in all, it sounds like a place I’m glad I’m not.

However, because I like to have opinions about things that have no bearing on me, I’d like to say that this part kind of  annoyed me:

And while Carnival Cruise Lines said Wednesday that most passengers knew that the Carnival Splendor’s crew was doing the best it could, there were reports of passengers pledging not to take up the company’s offer of a free replacement trip.

Carnival has offered to refund the original cruise cost to everybody, give them a free replacement trip, and pay for people’s travel arrangements since the boat is docking in San Diego instead of Long Beach like it was planned, and yet people still have a fit about it. Bad things happen sometimes. Yes, it’s a bad few days, but this is pretty much the epitome of a First World Problem. You think that was a bad three days? There are people that LIVE like that, all the time.

I’m not saying that I wouldn’t be unhappy about what happened if I was there. I’d do my fair share of grumbling for sure; it’s the people saying “You’ve ruined cruises for me forever!!! I’m never going to have a good vacation or take a cruise again!” that I think need to relax. It’s not the end of the world, especially since it sounds like nobody got injured or seriously ill, just inconvenienced. This is the first time something like this has happened in Carnivals 35 years, and it’s not likely to happen again. Take the money back, go on your free replacement cruise, and have a great time then. Chalk this one up to “one hell of a ride!”

What do you think? Are you “OMG never going on a cruise” because of this? Do you think I should shut my big mouth cause I wasn’t there (of course you do)?

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{blank}ing While Driving

{blank}ing While Driving

Published Nov 6, 2010

In the past few years, most of America has passed legislation to prohibit talking on a cell phone without a headset, and more recently, texting while driving. Since the majority of America is totally and completely not capable of safely and responsibly multi-tasking, I am perfectly okay with these new laws. In fact, I’d rather like to see them expanded to other things, because I see stuff all the time that surely can’t be any safer. Or, more to the point of why I care, any less annoying to me as the car behind you.

Smoking while driving:
If having a phone conversation while you’re driving is illegal when you have one hand on the phone, but legal if you have a headset on, and thus both hands on the wheel, then smoking while driving shouldn’t be allowed. That takes a hand off the steering wheel, and your eyes off the road if you actually use your ashtray. Nobody does, though, which adds the burning embers and cigarette butts that people always throw out the window.

Eating while driving:
See above for the whole “one hand off the steering wheel” thing (which I don’t care about but I think that’s part of what the Law is about). More to the point though, when you’re sitting at the red light unwrapping your food and looking in your lap for that french fry that you dropped, the light will inevitably turn green, and you WILL NOT GO, which will fill me with rage.

Putting on makeup while driving:
Are you serious?! First off, you’re going to poke your eye out like that one day and it’ll be your own fool fault. Second, you should be paying attention to the road in front of and around you, not to your face in the rearview mirror. When you sway out of your lane and sideswipe me, I’m going to be really upset and will probably jam your mascara brush up your nose.

Reading while driving:
I can almost see this being okay at 7:30am on I-5 in the middle of downtown Los Angeles, where it is pretty much a parking lot and you can sit in the same spot for ten minutes, easily. But, that guy that was blocking my intersection this morning, reading a book and as such couldn’t see the murderous glare I was casting on him? NOT COOL, MAN.

You know, at this point, I almost think we should ban “Doing Anything but DRIVING While Driving”. The other day, I watched the guy in the lane next to me almost rear end the car in front of him multiple times because he was too busy gazing at the girl in his car to notice the car stop for red lights/stop signs/the dumb kid that ran into the street. Seriously dude, she’ll still be there when you get where you’re going. Take a picture and pay attention to traffic.

I know that not everybody is that dumb, but sadly, the 99% of people that can’t drive properly are ruining it for those of us that can. One of these days I’ll write a post some of the ways people that actually are paying attention still manage to fill me with rage.

So, what {blank}ing while driving things do you think should be prohibited?

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Vampires in a Parallel Universe

Vampires in a Parallel Universe

Published Nov 5, 2010

Earlier today, Yoshi and I got to talking about Kindred: The Embraced and how sad it was that the show got canceled when Mark Frankel died. That got us wondering, how different would the whole vampire craze have been if that show stayed on and got popular back in the 90’s? I thought I summed it up pretty well on Twitter…

If Kindred the Embraced hadn’t been canceled we’d be over vampires, Twilight wouldn’t have happened, and the world would be a better place.

The idea amused me and the thought process kept going, so I thought I’d expand a little.

Seriously though, if Kindred had kicked off the vampire craze back in 1996, we’d totally be sick of them by now. I hear Showtime was talking about picking up the show, which would have upped the awesome factor a bit. If the longevity of X-Files and the popularity of Buffy and Angel is anything to go off, the audience was definitely there. I think it could have done really well.

And, since Vampires would have been (very) loosely based on the White Wolf definitions, they would have been a lot cooler. I’ve played both the old World of Darkness vampires and the new ones, and those vampires are way cool.

So in this parallel universe I’m thinking of, Vampire Mania started in 1996. I’m guessing it probably ended about 2003, cause we all know that we have short attention spans. That means that by 2005, when the first Twilight book came out, nobody cared about vampires anymore, which means the book probably never got published. This, more to the point, means that the movies never got made, and my kind will not go down as the generation that like sparkly vampires.

Tell me how that doesn’t make this a better place to live?

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