Bottled Sky

An online acquaintance died yesterday. Hearing about the death of someone I know always leaves me feeling disoriented, but this one was particularly shocking since she was only a little older than I, and like many people, I associate death with old age. It really goes to show how unpredictable life is and how anyone can die anytime in a countless number of ways.

It also made me wonder how many abandoned sites out there belonged to people who have died. Not that I’ve never thought about that before, though. In fact, a couple of years ago I gave my FTP password to my friend Chrissa, along with instructions to post a quirky and light-hearted death announcement on my site just in case it’s still around when I die. Something morbid but funny and maybe even cute, I told her. Tall order? Nah. If anyone can pull that off, it’s Chrissa.

I mean, she wasn’t even weirded out by my request, as I’m sure my other friends would have been had I asked them instead. She actually likes the idea — at least enough to give me access to her LJ account every time she travels abroad, so I can do the same for her should her plane crash. (Hopefully I will never have to.)

This reminds me, I need to update her on a couple of password changes I’ve made since migrating to WordPress. Hey, it’s better to be prepared.

I have a folder entitled “Weird” in my e-mail account specifically for strange or silly e-mails sent via this website. For some reason almost all of the messages that end up there are from male visitors. Here’s a rundown of the more interesting ones:

• One guy described my site as “babaeng-babae” (very womanly). That in itself isn’t weird at all, but then he added, “I can smell you from here.” Yikes.
• Another guy decided to regale me with HIS ENTIRE LIFE STORY IN CAPS LOCK. It was one long paragraph of caps-locked goodness detailing his life from birth to his current efforts to become a licensed chemical engineer. You’d think that a Chemical Engineering graduate would be smart enough to find the Caps Lock key and turn if off, but you’d be wrong.
• After blogging about my decision to become a vegetarian, a concerned visitor sent me this wise warning: “Scientists claim that humans’ brains didn’t begin to grow until we started eating meat. You don’t want to go retro!” Did you get that, people? Giving up meat will cause you to regress into an ape. Be warned!
• I honestly do not know what to make of this next one, so I’ll do away with the commentary and just post the e-mail in its full, unedited glory:
  

  I just want to tell you that you are very very beautiful girl because I saw the first your photos, but when I read about you I was disappointed because your beauty is much more unique than your personality. I hope that you will change one day and that you will be able to love somebody who will wish you so much as I could if you would not be so selfish and conceited as you are now. If you ever wish to be courage and love a clever man who would make love with you 3 times per day and smile at least 3 hours, send me e-mail. By the way, there are so many beautiful girls who would like to be special and unique, but if they do not have nice personality and good peaceful heart, they are simply not attractive to clever and goodlooking man, just to under-average stupid and reach men who will be never able to give you what you really need and to make you happy, just to give you money to go to shopping. Do not be angry on this e-mail, I just wish you all the best!!

• A foot fetishist offered to buy me gifts in exchange for pictures of my feet. The request was a little creepy, but the e-mail itself was very politely and apologetically phrased. I almost wanted to reply, “You don’t need to buy me gifts! My feet are sluts — they’ll do it for free!” Almost
• “I…I think I Love you!” Awwww.

My LiveJournal has been “smoochified.” I normally don’t do mushy, but I came across this old drawing of mine and felt the urge to use it in a layout:

I added the style sheet to the LJ themes page in case anyone else wants it. I had a few drops of creative juice left over after finishing the layout, so I made a bunch of icons as well.

In other news, my mom is now a blogger. I guess everyone and his mother really does have a blog these days She chose Mrs. B for her screen name and refers to my dad as Mr. B and me as Miss B in her entries. I love it, haha!

To my knowledge, my dad has yet to join the blog-wagon. He does visit this site regularly, though. (Hi, Dad!) Sometimes we’d be eating dinner and he’d say, “By the way, in your links page you missed an ‘I’ in ‘visiting.’” Who needs Spell Check when you have a perfectionist father going over your website?

I began writing when I was five years old, typing short stories on my mom’s office computer. I wrote about rude rabbits and pigs with wigs and fancied myself the next Enid Blyton, whose books I used to collect. I later discovered poetry and penned many a bad rhyme. And then came the “junior journalist” phase, where I joined essay writing contests and became a staffer for the school paper. Growing up, I was so often told that I had potential for writing by both biased (my mom) and unbiased (teachers, who didn’t like me because I was an apathetic underachiever) authority figures that I thought it must be true.

Here’s the truth, though. Even now that I have successfully earned a Journalism degree, I still can’t decide whether I like writing or not. While there are times when I feel the urge to just write, I usually struggle so much with it that I wonder if I’m even having fun. It’s rare for me to come up with a piece of writing that I’m satisfied with, and even when I do I still cringe every time I see someone reading what I wrote.

It’s drastically different from what I experience with my other hobbies. Even when it takes me days to complete a layout or finish a drawing, there’s no doubt in my mind that I’m enjoying what I’m doing. And I’m always proud of the end product and eager to show it to anyone who’s interested, whether I’m completely happy with it or not.

However, this is also true: for all of my creative pursuits, I always appreciate a good critique. I don’t mean good as in positive, but as in detailed and specific. I’ve attended writing workshops where they figuratively ripped my assignments apart, but I’ve found those sessions very helpful and even enjoyable. Not all reviews I’ve received were useful, though, particularly those that came from people who 1) didn’t really know what they were talking about and 2) didn’t take into account what I was trying to do with my piece and simply made suggestions based on his own vision. For me a useful critique is one that points out issues I might have missed and helps steer the piece closer to where I want it to go.

Kimmie‘s recent review of Skylight was definitely useful. I requested her to critique this site after reading her well-written article on website reviews. Her suggestions helped me address many issues that had been bothering me before. The features section is now more organized and the index page less cluttered thanks to her. Next step: a more flexible CMS. I seriously need to move on from Blogger. Any suggestions?

I decided to participate in this season’s CSS Reboot and came up with a WordPress theme called “Bloom.”

I was browsing through an old issue of Time Magazine, when I saw a picture of the King’s Forest room at Hotel Fox and became instantly inspired. (Even the name of the hotel itself was enough to tickle my fancy. Hotel Fox? How cute is that?!)

I have never been attracted to the color orange in the past, but that particular hue really caught my eye. This blog’s previous designs had a lot of blues, greens and grays in them, and I wanted to use a color that I haven’t used before. I was also going for a slightly more grown-up look, something feminine but not frilly. Of course as dictated by tradition, the design still had to feature a cartoon version of me. Aren’t all personal websites at least partly narcissistic, anyway?