Hardcore Blogging Skills

Imagine you're in the woods putting the finishing touches on a passionate picture of Nature in All Her Glory, when you hear your brother call from the house. "Jean-Claude!" he says, since artists need artistic names. You don't reply because you're contemplating the effects of that crinkled leaf in the lower left corner of the canvas on the human condition, but he repeats, "Jean-Claude!"

"What?" you shout shortly, sending flocks of nature-filled birds scattering.

"There's this guy just in town today who's looking for paintings!"

"The legendary art critic Tomas Refian?" you ask, since every artist knows his art critics.

"I don't know," your brother says, "but he has a nice blue suit on."

You snatch up your supplies, blow on the paint to make it dry faster, and run to meet fame himself in a blue suit.

I feel kinda like that, except the only woods near UF have signs for the girls that say "Don't go in at night or you'll be raped" in more polite language, and I don't paint masterpieces in them day or night. Rather, I heard about a blogging scholarship today and I'm checking myself out for the man in the blue suit.

"Do you maintain a weblog and attend college?" the website queries. Why, yes, I do. "Would you like $10,000 to help pay for books, tuition, or other living costs?" Hey! Over here! Judge me! The deadline to enter is the end of the month, and I'm scrambling to make my blog presentable to the ten-grand-giving powers that be.

I took the first step and bought a domain name for myself. (A domain name, if the old geezers don't know, is something so complicated we just buy one for ourselves instead of using others'.) That's right, you can now read this blog at www.willgoestocollege.com without a trace of Google in the address. Don't think I'm too hardcore; I paid $2.50 more so Google could give me the convenience and Googly austerity of a Google-bought domain name. I was even logged in to GoDaddy.com with my selection checked, with another tab detailing how to link Google's hosting to a domain name bought through GoDaddy, and I chickened out.

I'm not just making urgent cosmetic changes, I've started the blog death march of explaining everything I've ever said on my blog. Someone who makes a joke and then explains it isn't a comedian; he's a bore. But still: old geezers? That's just a joke, see! I use it as a conscious stereotype. And my parenthetical explanation of a domain name? That was a joke, too! I linked to the Wikipedia page, see, which gives about as good an explanation of a domain name as you can get, but then I also linked to the defining document--which is incomprehendible, and that's a joke, see, because in a way the words were correct, but not in the way old geezers would take it to mean, so for those in the know who clicked on the links, it's a funny way to defend the statement I made about the sil--

And the subtitle of my blog? Facebook readers won't know, of course, but my blog's title is "Will goes to College" followed by "Your mom goes to college." What's that about, right? No, see, that makes sense, too, if you think about it! There's this movie Napoleon Dynamite, 'kay?, and if you haven't heard of it that's okay because I like explaining culture to people and Napoleon Dynamite is definitely culture. In the movie, Deb is going door-to-door selling boondoggle key chains ("a must-have for this season's fasion") to raise money for college. Napoleon says he doesn't want any and from the background Kip, Napoleon's brother, shouts, "Your mom goes to college." And you think to yourself, "That doesn't mean anything and probably isn't true," but Deb is mortified that her already embarrassing endeavor has been mocked. See, because "your mom goes to college" is a retort, only no one is sure why. And that fits perfectly with this blog, because you read the title "Will goes to College" and you're like, "So what?" And then BAM! you see the subtitle and you're chastised. So, like, my blog is probably insignificant, but at least I know it and when you make fun of yourself first then no one else can, really. And I talk about culture pretty often, and it's a popular line from a movie, so it all fits together. Get it?

And did you see the crinkled leaf in the lower left-hand corner and how it symbolizes love and justice and all that's good about paintings? No, but really, you should look at my crinkled leaf. It isn't half-bad, I suggest.