William McKinley’s first State of the Blog address was presented while wearing his finest top hat. Shortly thereafter, his top hat was shot right off of his fat head.

Hello Tom Writes About Stuff fans!

*crickets*

I haven’t done a State of the Blog address since last February, and I felt like it was nigh time to contribute yet another completely useless 1,000 words to the already bloated Internet. Big things continue to happen at Tom Does the Writing About the Stuff Dot Com! Big things! Bigger than Jesus and/or Joe Pesci! New content! Existing content kind of falling by the wayside! Always in flux, always in motion. That’s how my brain works, baby. Get on the roller coaster or stay off of it. OR, if you’re a fatty, get on the roller coaster and then fall out of it because you weren’t secured properly! Either way, man, it’s gonna be one hell of a ride! Take your pills! And let’s catch up, shall we? Great things are afoot! Great great great great things!

Comic Book Stuff

I love working on this. I can’t foresee a future where any of the comic book content will be slowing down. If anything, I wish I could do more with my limited free time. Expect more of the same with this as it has been consistently for the last 15 months.

On top of the regular superhero DC/Marvel Loneliness & Cheeseburgers and the sci-fi/fantasy/horror themed Ghostliness & Nerfherders from other publishers, new features include Golden Age Garbage — cherry-picking and spotlighting the landfill of comic books between 1938 and 1956 (check out Action Comics #1!) — and The Bongo Comics Box — reliving my Simpsons-obsessed childhood with the only comics I ever bought on a regular basis.

With the other comics-adjacent features, The Comic Striptease’s inaugural section Crusin’ Thru Calvin & Hobbes is intended to be the first of many run-throughs of newspaper comics. I’d like to hit Peanuts, Foxtrot, and Pearls Before Swine sometime in the far future, although the notion of actually making through these strips one month at a time is a total fucking pipe dream. Nevertheless, I’m already having fun with it and that’s all that matters to me. Whether or not you’re having fun with it is completely irrelevant.

I still think manga is trash, but I slowly plug along nonetheless and I’m about ten chapters ahead of my current output. Death Note will be featured for at least another volume, then I’ll move onto some other godawful series where the 9-year-old girls are sexualized or Goku takes a shit for 500 pages.

Music Stuff

Jimmy Carter’s third State of the Blog address was interrupted by his brother Billy, who brought seven busty models on stage and doused their t-shirts with Billy Beer.

It’s slow-going, but I’m excited to at least become more motivated on contributing to the Discography Deep Dive. I’ve settled on a note-keeping system that is more organized, but a lot of the work is just the final write-up.

Writing about music makes me pretty nervous. Even though I typically maintain a pervasive attitude of GLEEFUL SILLINESS on this blog, I tend to play it straight with music discussion. I want to take it seriously! Music is serious business to me. I find it difficult to be glib about it, and I believe that’s what causes my nervousness. The words don’t flow as freely, I overthink it, and it takes me seven weeks to write a review of fuckin’ Starless and Bible Black by King Crimson. Nonsense, I say! What I need to do is lighten up, but I have no idea how to do that when I write about music. That’s what AudioBiography was supposed to for!

Speaking of AudioBiography, I’ve been slacking completely on Newer Release Roundup because I simply have not had the motivation to check out new music this year as fervently as last year. I’m burnt out on them, actually. I can only take so much brand new stuff for so long, I suppose. I’ve been easing up on new stuff and taking the time to better get to some older stuff. Perhaps we’ll see more AudioBiographies as a result, and I can try using AudioBiography to practice being a snarky dickhead about my favorite medium in existence! It’ll be good for me.

That being said, right now is list season so I may be writing up a few 2022 reviews before the end of January.

Website Maintenance

I’ve reached stability! Not counting a few nagging, superficial things (I’m not too happy with the category selection sidebar, for example), my entire website is spruced up, organized, and working how I’d like it to. It’s been a long journey, but I’m glad to be at the point where I can put 99% of my focus into writing instead of website maintenance, layout tweaking, and fixing broken PHP commands. It may not seem like much, but it’s a big win. There are some days where I spent hours trying to figure out how to make an image align center for mobile screens. I hate that shit. I just wanna write.

If there is anyone out there, maybe from the year 2028 or something, who may have suggestions on how to improve layouts for portable devices, please let me know. Most of my website considers only the desktop/laptop user, but I try my best to make it friendly for your iPhone 6 from 2014.

Other Stuff

Who gives a fuck about John Tyler? Seriously.

–Flicked Off has been created as a hub for all my movie-related reviews and commentary. I never really liked movies before, but there’s nothing quite like writing about something to get me into it! Isn’t that what this blog is all about? Documenting my progress through my hobbies, old and new alike? Yes, it is. Pay attention.

–The Fantasy/Sci-Fi Diaries has been created to comment upon episodes of all my old episodic TV favorites! Star Treks, Stargates, Buffy/Angel, Farscape, Babylon 5, Sliders, maybe even some Doctor Whos and What-Have-Yous! I’m starting out with The X-Files and it couldn’t be more fun! Again, I’m biting off way more than I can chew by believing I can watch and write about 1,300 episodes of TV, but I’ve always been immortal. Piece of cake.

–The Neverending Story has been created to comment upon chapters of really long books of really long series. I’m talking complete readthroughs. I intend to hit Malazan Book of the Fallen, the Dresden Files, the Expanse, and maybe some other long-running fantasy and sci-fi book series that are way more bloated than they have any right to be. Right now I’m tackling The Wheel of Time and I’m pretty optimistic that I can keep this going on a regular, comfortable pace. I may go insane, but it least I’ll go happily insane.

-I have a few future features planned. Few future features. Say that ten times fast. I’m not the biggest fan of video games, but now that I have the Xbox Series X with a screenshot button I may do a run-through of Skyrim for funsies. There’s also a possible plan for general video game features where I post a bunch of screenshots and make fun of everything. I need to flesh such an idea out further. Also, my kid is getting a Nintendo Switch for Christmas, which means I’m going to be the one getting a Nintendo Switch for Christmas. She’s a tablet swiper and she’s going to be bored and frustrated with using something so outmoded like a controller within a week. Her loss is my gain though, because I’m going work my way through EarthBound and document my whole playthrough. Now THAT I’m fucking looking forward to! You’re gonna love that, it’s gonna be phat yo.

That does it for this edition of the State of Blog address! Stay tuned for next time where I announce a brand new section where I review 7,000 vintage belt buckles.