Some random things I used to do here but haven’t done in awhile:
Take photographs
I’d like to start doing this again, actually. I just feel weird and touristy, wandering midtown Manhattan with a camera. My cell-phone camera, while it does have a number of shots on it — including a few from November’s Veterans Day Parade here in NYC — just doesn’t produce anything like the same quality as a real camera.
Write short movie reviews
I stopped doing this sometime in July or August, I think. Not because I stopped seeing movies — far from it — but because I was finding it increasingly difficult to say anything intelligent about them. Some films lend themselves to criticism, but a lot don’t. (Everybody thinks they’re a critic; only a select few are really good at it.) I don’t want to give up on this entirely. I do still see movies, and I do still sometimes have things to say about them. But I think it’s very unlikely I’ll ever get around to that eight-month backlog of movies I haven’t talked about.
Keep a book log
Well, off and on. Again, it’s that struggle of finding interesting or constructive things to say. Sometimes, not much more than “I liked it” or “it was disppointing” springs to mind. I’m definitely keeping track of the books I’ve read since January. I’m aiming — I hope not too highly — for fifty books this year. But I don’t know if I’ll ever get around to writing about them. (I definitely do recommend The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon, though. And Spin by Robert Charles Wilson. Both pretty terrific books.)
Keep a caption gallery
I haven’t updated this in years, and it’s very unlikely that I’ll do so again. That’s a shame, I guess, but I just don’t find the opportunity to cap as much as I used to. I do update Capper Blog with a new photo every day. Everyone’s invited to visit and make fun of it along with the rest of us. And capping is still a big part of who I am online — if not off — but the gallery will probably stay as is.
Talk about the Monty Python Society
I’m still on the mailing list, but I haven’t been in Pennsylvania for going on two years now. Last I checked, they were devoting the semester to Pirates vs. Ninjas.