Blog Move!

This blog has moved! Thanks to everyone for supporting this iteration of the blog for as long as you have. It's been a good run. For further awesomeness, come to:

http://theinquisitiveloon.wordpress.com/

Wordpress offers me far more options and flexibility than blogspot, so the blog has moved there for the foreseeable future. I look forward to seeing you all there!

- The Inquisitive Loon

3-21-12 Blog Update

Hello gentlemen and ladies!

So, as you may have noticed, I haven't posted on the blog for a little while. I have been confronted with that monstrous beast that is preparation for grad school, specifically writing a hell of a lot of scholarship essays, which has consumed my writing energies and prevented me from keeping up on the blog. I'm not quite done with it all, but I wanted to tell you that this will change.

But perhaps not in a way you might expect. After all, it isn't like grad school will present me with a festival of free time. Instead, I might not easily manage finding time for writing at all, though I remain optimistic. I wanted to write this to explain that I'm going to be trying something new. A personal goal for myself.

Here are my goals for this blog:

• I want to continue contributing and writing to this blog until my fingers get arthritis.
• I want to see my writing style and experience change and grow from this.
• I want to encourage guest writers to write about whatever is most thought provoking for them in all the subjects the blog hits on (see Categories).
• At some point, I want to possibly migrate this blog to another service/provider/whatever-the-hell-you'd-call-it, because of the limitations of blogspot.

Now I'm going to talk briefly about each of these in turn.

The first two goals are for me alone. Currently, this is going to manifest in me writing less frequent posts that make up for their lack of quantity by focusing on quality. I want to try and make a goal of writing less reviews and instead writing and musing upon aspects of things that I read/see/do/whatever that intrigue me and that I can talk about generally. For example, in my last two posts on the game Mass Effect 2, they haven't been reviews so much as me talking about aspects of the game that made me think about certain aspects of the story or gameplay. By doing so, I believe that I can do some cross-genre/cross-media conversation that will be more thought provoking as well as escape my tendency of the past few months to keep myself to a tight review mentality and regimen. Of course, this is subject to change later as, in this little corner of the Internet, I am God and I can do what I please.

Guest writers. You all are awesome, and I love having your voices and unique interests present themselves on the blog. If you have any friends who would like to try it out, feel free to let me know and I can help set that up. Also, feel free to hit me up with questions on how the blog is doing or if you want to try something new that you aren't sure I'd be cool with. I very much enjoy the special posts you all have made. The recent post of “Three Movies to Avoid” comes to mind, as well as “Grimm vs Once Upon a Time” and posts akin to that that pit one film/TV show/book against another. I'm also reminded of when we compared our “Top Five Movies that Influenced My Life”. These exercises are fun, original, and often hilariously entertaining to read.

Finally, the blog migration. This isn't going to happen anytime soon since I'm just too busy and disinclined to look into it right now, but I dislike a number of things about this blog that could be better. For example, writing comments is kind of a pain in the ass for people new to the blog, and they don't feel readily available. And I really don't like how hard it is to access older posts. Sure, we have a Categories line, but have you ever tried to use it? It simply chronologically displays posts of that category from most to least recent without allowing you to do anything but hit “Older Posts” over and over without any hint of what lies beneath. The Blog Archive, while nice to have, could be more helpful. Things like this prevent the blog from reaching more people and striking out into the Internet.

That said, The Inquisitive Loon definitely *is* popular. Within a few days we'll have reached 150,000 views, which is quite an immense number from where I'm standing. However, it could do even better than that, and I still haven't reached my goal of having complete strangers discuss blog posts among themselves in the comments. At some point, I'm going to make an effort to see how I can make the blog more accessible and displayed to an even greater amount of people. We'll see how it goes, and any advice any of you have to offer on that would definitely be appreciated.

On that note, I was going to do a handful of mini-reviews on things I've done and seen over the past few weeks, but I think I'm actually going to just address those in a few sentences and then save my writing energies for the first of my aforementioned new future posts that will be less review and more musing/opinion. So all I'll say is:

Underworld: Awakening a miserable fusion of fan fiction and script-writing that should be avoided at all costs.

Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman is one of the best, enthralling, and readable biographies I've ever read about a powerless girl who grows into a mature and beautiful woman who commands an empire.

Guild Wars is an enjoyable older MMORPG that will appeal particularly to those people who enjoy tactical games and the manipulation of skills akin to collectible card games of old.

University education's price hikes would be far more tolerable if they simply presented them in a lump sum altogether instead of hitting you with endless little charges on technology, tuition deposits, fingerprint scans, and bullshit like that. I speak from direct, recent experience.

And that's all I can think of for now. Inquisitive Loon, signing out!

11-10-11 Blog Update

No, the blog is not dead.

Instead, its main contributor, The Inquisitive Loon, has been viciously ambushed by that which we call "Real Life".

*the audience shudders with awe*

That's right. "Real Life". A mixture of factors made it so that the Loon has been knocked out of writing commission for some time (and will be for a tad longer). Among the host clamoring at his door are: the Four Horsemen of Fatigue, Unhealthy Snacks, Females, and Obsessive Compulsive Reading; the grim specter of Grad School Applications; the angry behemoth that is Homework; and the impregnable monstrosity that is Work.

Altogether, these colossi of demanding-the-poor-Loon's-time have zapped him into crazy mode. Gone are his ambitions to participate in NaNoWriMo. The mere thought of plopping down a 50,000 word novel in a month on TOP of all his other obligations is suicide. And the blog has suffered in the process as well.

But never fear. The Inquisitive Loon will never perish. He will rise up from the morass like a phoenix and write again. "Real Life" will be defeated, one way or another. And then the blog will be vibrant with life once more.

11-29-10 - Blog Update

So, as those who come here regularly may have noticed, my last post was about a week ago. I just wanted to explain that this is because I've been both out of town on vacation and working on a new short story. And, of course, I have a final exam to worry about, so my time to write has decreased for a short while.

I have not yet decided if the short story that is taking up my usual blog writing time will be posted here or not. It is a short story that is very personal to me, and I haven't been able to decide whether posting it will be a good idea or not, as it has a subtle relevance to events that have occurred recently in my life. In the end, I probably will, and probably nobody will have any idea why I worried so much about it. Long story short, I'll be done with it by the end of this upcoming week, probably, so normal blog posting will resume around that time.

Hope everyone has had a great thanksgiving. Happy holidays to all.

Brief Blog Downtime

Hello all. My laptop has had some issues this week, making it impossible to write for the blog, as I use the laptop for everything Inquisitive Loon related. This, along with midterm busyness, has prompted me to take the week off. My normal posting schedule will resume next week. Damn faulty laptop chargers!

The Guest Writer Manifesto

Since the idea of a blog germinated in my mind, I've been interested in persuading select friends and family to consider doing guest posts on The Inquisitive Loon. The possibilities were very compelling to me; more content is always beneficial along with additional points of view and fresh perspectives on all manner of hobbies and interests. Thus, having finally convinced a friend or two to do so, I figured I would write a brief blog post about the guidelines that they will be writing under before their posts show up.

Guidelines

• Subjects: The main purpose of the blog is to provide fun, interesting, and compelling posts that are informative and appeal over a broad range of interests. These interests include fiction, nonfiction, history, politics, movies, tv shows, education, and possibly more as time goes on. Consequently, guest writers must have their posts be relevant to these subject areas. Given the wide array of choices, this shouldn't be too hard.
  
  
• Accessibility: is of paramount importance. For a blog post to be considered, it must make an effort to explain what it is talking about for people who have never heard of or read about the subject before. Advanced discussion and details can only come once an informational foundation is laid.
  
  
• Length: must be monitored. Anyone seeing a wall of text is instantly discouraged from actually reading the blog post, so the general guideline I've been using is to stay as close to 1,000 words a post as possible. This is still a substantial amount (about a page and a half, single-spaced in Word) and thus is a fair restriction. To be frank, I've busted this length a couple of times so far, but I'm the blog creator and I'm allowed to break the rules occasionally.
  
  
• Grammar: Posts must be decent and readable without more than the occasional typo. Almost goes without saying.
  
  
• Images: are encouraged within reason as it provides a visual aid along with a break for the eyes from reading all the text. I spend a good deal of time finding good stuff too, so I hope that future guest authors will do the same. I think four or five maximum per post is a good benchmark as, with 1,000 words, more than that makes the post seem disjointed and picture heavy.
  
  
• Fun: Guest writers must write about something that both interests them and is fun to write. If not, then why the hell are you writing it? The goal of the blog is to have readable and enjoyable posts over many topics and, without the enjoyable part, it all falls apart.

On that note, let it be known that guest writers will be coming soon, and if other friends and family find this framework appealing and want to make posts of their own, feel free to let me know.

Why the Blog?

Yes, I know that isn't a loon.

For a while now I've been thinking of the merits of creating a weblog, livejournal, online diary, or what-have-you. The benefits are attractive and varied. I can keep track of what I'm doing, create opinions and reviews of whatever I encounter on a day-to-day basis. I can take my obscure hobbies and talk about them in a way that would be infinitely more open to commentary instead of maintaining a written diary. A main goal will be accessibility, writing about my many interests in a way that would be interesting and understandable to those unaware. Finally, and perhaps most important, I can practice and hone my writing skills, an ongoing goal set years in the past.

So here I am, my first blog post down, and voraciously eager to write more.

What can you expect in my blog?

Endless, detailed analysis and commentary on the things that I do and see. This encompasses a broad range of hobbies and interests: video games, politics, history, biographies, science fiction, fantasy, education, movies, television, culture, and countless things besides. My inspirations and obsessions change over time, but one can look at that short list and know that those are the subjects I will touch on the most. I like the idea of being a prolific writer (of good material) so I aim to blog often if not every day. I hope to also have friends use it as a platform to supply articles of their own, to provide other perspectives. We'll see how it all goes.

Now for a couple of updates to get you up to speed on my interests as they are currently.

Books

On the book front I'm slowly working my way through biographies of the American presidents from Franklin Delano Roosevelt onwards. My decision to do so was based on interest in two things: the personalities/leadership approaches of the presidents themselves and seeing precisely how the Cold War started and the long-lasting hostility between the United States and Russia. My knowledge of the shift from World War II to the Cold War is embarrassingly limited, so I began this endeavor to help account for that. At the time of this writing (9/2/10), I have finished a biography of Roosevelt and Truman, and am moving on to President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Video Games

Despite the often negative connotation applied to those who love playing video games, I can freely admit that I'm quite the video game enthusiast. Scratch that, I'm completely addicted to the media format; I always have been since I was young. Given this adoration, I recently created a long list of video games I would like to play and experience, and am tackling those games one at a time. While I tend to be open to all genres, I tend to gravitate toward role-playing games (RPGs) the most because of their sharp focus on story, vivid characters, and deep, complex gameplay.

These days I've been playing through Final Fantasy IX, the ninth installment of a massively popular and complex game saga, each game populated by angsty superpowered teens and psychotically hyperactive golden ostriches. Sadly, my playtime has been sporadic for a number of reasons: the endless demands of playing other games with friends, the awesomeness of my girlfriend, socializing, reading, working, eating, sleeping... That and the oncoming tidal wave of class and volunteering, which will likely nuke my free time back into the Stone Age.

But worry not, reader. I will find time in my day to update this regularly. In the name of writing improvement if nothing else!

Education

I have aspirations toward becoming a high school teacher of Social Studies. The next prerequisite college class is this Fall, and I'm raring to go. Many of the classes at Portland State University have been relatively easy, but I've detected a distinct bias among the students that brings out much gnashing of teeth and an inability to hold back from contesting silly opinions. Consequently, every class I've taken there has been an exercise in patience and ongoing verbal deathmatches with the rest of the class.

Given that the school year is about to begin again, I will also be tutoring at a high school nearby in Portland. Expect harrowing, desperate tales of myself trying vainly to teach math and science to kids when all I want to do is treat the massive tomes like rotting coconuts. Hopefully more kids will come to me with Social Studies or English homework this semester.

Conclusion

I'm excited, and I hope anyone who chooses to read this will be too. I especially look forward to the possibility of debates opening up over the topics I address, from hobbies to politics to the meaning of life and the possible existence of giant space hamsters lording over all in the universe. Yet, at the same time, I won't be surprised or put off if I don't get any internet traffic for some time to come. Which is why I'm doing this for my own benefit, with the added bonus of being able to potentially benefit others as well.

This will be a learning experience to be sure, from writing to managing a web page. And hopefully, as the blog grows, I'll be able to pass on new ideas, experiences and catharsis; the blissful feeling that comes from learning, expanding one's horizons, and discovering things true about yourself from what you choose to read. To accomplish that for complete strangers on the internet (and friends/family who decide to read this) will make this all worth it.

And thus does the blog begin, with summary, hope, and interest.