I don’t care if you take the images from this site, but take the time to save them to your own box and upload it to your server yerowndamnself.

You’re costing me bandwidth, with no return on my investment.

Fucking looters.

So, the first one is from Rae Lori from way back in February. Aarrggghhh. So embarrassed. Especially since I like her writing voice. Very calm and sweet (what I’ve read of her).

This is the Premio Dardas Award, which…

…acknowledges the values that every Blogger displays in their effort to transmit cultural, ethical, literary, and personal values with each message they write. Awards like this have been created with the intention of promoting community among Bloggers. It’s a way to show appreciation and gratitude for work that adds value to the Web.

These are the rules:

1) Accept the award, post it on your blog together with the name of the person that has granted the award and his or her blog link.

2) Pass the award to 15 other blogs that are worthy of this acknowledgment.

3) Remember to contact each of them to let them know they have been chosen for this award.

Well, screw the rules (as usual). I’m just going to list a few of the blogs I read on a semi-regular basis, in no particular order.

Motley Vision

Thmazing’s Thmusings

Chasing the Long White Cloud

Eugene Woodbury’s Ooburoshiki Blog

Eva Gale

Don’t Publish Me

The eBook Test

Romantic Inks

Deborah Riley-Magnus, Writeaholic

Big Bright Bulb

Free Range Kids

If you’re in this list and you see yourself, considered yourself to have been tagged and you are now it. Otherwise, thank you for some awesome stuff you give me to think about on a regular basis.

Then we have the people who stumble across a blog whose agenda doesn’t coincide with their own, and they do a hit’n’run. I did this once (that I remember) and I was very embarrassed with myself. I had no reason to haul off on that guy. I went back and apologized, but the damage was done and I can’t take that back.

So here’s a study:

One message board where I lurk is an active, established community of self-publishers, and a certain couple of traditionally published authors swoop in from time to time to berate them how deluded they are. Um, okay. Thanks? If you don’t like what those people are doing/saying, don’t go there.

On a blog where I lurk, a post hit a hot button of mine, but I almost never post there and I didn’t want to do like I’ve done before and swoop in to tell them all to shove it, because, well…I’m not an active participant otherwise. Why would I do that? All I have to do is not go there.

It’s taken me nearly 40 years to learn that keeping my mouth shut gets me in a lot less trouble than opening it.

But sometimes…it’s a fight to keep from saying something.

I lost this round. *sigh*

Anyway, this is much cleaner and easier on my eyeballs. I hope to get back to blogging semi-regularly, too.

I’ll leave this one up for a few days and see if it grows on me.

I’m trying to finalize the blog theme I’m customizing, which means lots of changes in the way things look. Unfortunately, two things have happened:

1. The new theme has only one sidebar and I’m rearranging stuff.

2. WordPress asked me to upgrade to 2.8 and now my stupid widget function isn’t working. I only found out about this when Dude said, “Where’s the latest comments list?”

I’m hoping to get the thing up and running some time tonight, but don’t quote me on that.

UPDATE on 6/19/09 at 11:11 pm CDT:

1. For some reason, the “date” function on this template doesn’t work. That’ll be a dealbreaker if I can’t get it to work.

2. The “Stories” tab above doesn’t point to anything yet.

3. The blogroll is hand-coded in the other template, so I need to get that in here properly.

4. I have a few other widgets I’d like to try out.

The break has been nice, quite honestly, but I do have a backlog of things to say now and after I got a tweet from a concerned tweeter inquiring as to my rightness with the world, I eased my way back to twittering too. (I do love Twitter. Facebook…not so much. Actually, not at all.)

I’m going to pick up where I left off over at PubRen and start being more of a contributor over at that juggernaut April set up, Publetariat.

This blog: Why Mormon Girls Stay Single is probably a lot funnier now that I’m married, but I had to tell you about it, which is actually the whole purpose of the post. I found it via the current, ah, kerfuffle (don’t hit me, Jessica) over what is and is not a real bloggernacle blog, but my blog is not any one of those.

Thank heavens.

One thing that totally gives me an emotional wedgie is this: When you reply to a blog post that asks an open-ended question, and you put a lot of time and care and thought into your reply, and you’re not acknowledged by the original poster, not told that you’re brilliant, not told that you’re a fucking idiot. What I mean is, NO ONE who comments is acknowledged and the blog doesn’t have enough traffic (read: any personality) to generate its own activity.

Hit’n’run poster who was doing her time on a group blog. I’m on several like that. They have one thing in common: They’re LDS. They’re about writing. PLONK

I don’t think I’ve done this (I try to be conscientious about commenting), but if I have, feel free to shove it back in my face.

And while I’m bitching, might as well throw this out, too:

Takes me about 3 days through the blogosphere these days to get tired of the latest catch phrases and buzzwords. And I’ve used some of them in the last 6 months. Well, no more.

drinking the Kool-Aid (thank you, O’Reilly, like, 3 years ago)
honing your craft (and plain ol’ “craft” by itself by now, no matter what it’s in reference to)
made of awesome
made of win
meme
OMGWTFBBQ and any variant thereof
FTW (for the win)
trope
srsly

And also? My blog is just way too cluttered for my taste. I’m going to have to figure out something workable before my ADD gets violent.

What are you latest internet pet peeves?

For fun and a free e-copy of The Proviso, be the first to peg the reference in this post’s title.