So a lot of folks have been mailing me lately requesting In Passing stuff. Tee-shirts, mousepads, coffeecups, and especially stencils to take to your tattoo artist. Ok, I was kidding about the last one, but people really have been making requests for the others, especially coffee cups, (which seems exceedingly appropriate to me, given the amount of coffee I consume while gathering material for the site.)

Cafe Press is great for this sort of thing. If I provide the content, they'll print it on tee shirts, boxer shorts, gilligan hats, beer mugs, frisbees, etc. And as I understand it, they don't make anything until someone orders it, so it's not like I'd have to invest in 50 tee shirts and then desperately hope that they sold. Plus, I think I'd have the option of making a dollar or two in profit for each item sold, which would be nice to help out with the whole paying for web hosting for this site thing. :-)

The only downside is... I have to provide them with the content. I've got 1002 quotes to choose from (3000 if you count the not-a-guestbook) but there's no way I'm going to make all the fabulous people who buy In Passing tee shirts walk around wearing the current logo. I'm not much of an artist, I made the logo a long time ago and haven't had a better idea for changing it, plus half of the time I read the site using w3m, a text based browser, so I don't see the title .gif anyway.


The community is a huge part of the site, and you'd be the ones buying the stuff anyway, so you should definitely have a say in what goes on it. Right now I'm thinking the items should have the logo small on the front, and a choice quote on the back. So I've got a plan. I'd like you all to choose your favorite quotes from the site and post them as comments on this entry, and feel free to add any discussion about why you like it best, etc.

As for the logo... I'm not an artist. But some of you are. And if some of you would like to share your artistic talent and draw up a logo for In Passing, you'd get credited on the page, lots of cool points from me, and the chance to see your work on a website with a couple of thousand daily visitors, and on t-shirts. If anyone wants to try this, logos should somehow use the words "In Passing," in a legible font, and that's about as far as requirements go from me. Preferably black, white, purple, or some combination thereof. Please mail me a link to a .jpeg (or .gif or .tiff, etc) if you can, or send it to me as an attachement if you can't. I'll pick out my favorites and we can vote on them here.

Sound like fun?

Hello to all the readers of Playboy -- you folks obviously do read it for the articles.

Yep, In Passing got a one-line mention in the "Living Online" section on page 32 of the July issue. I wonder if they knew that I once considered "short attention span voyeurism" as a tagline for this site...

Many thanks to reader Scott for cluing me in, and to the clerk at Tower for being so amusingly confused when I went to buy the issue. (The story of the latter is in the comments, for the curious.)

So, it's time for the Bloggies again. No, not the Webbies, the internet-wide award ceremony I worked at over the summer. The bloggies are just for weblogs, and a much smaller affair. No awards show, no glossy magazine and flashy after party, just people voting online for sites that they like, and the winners posted on a web page.
The definition of weblog has always been fuzzy -- some say it's a site that logs other sites on the web with copious links, others say it's a site that logs the life of the person running it. I'm sure there's a trillion other definitions, but I've come to accept that In Passing fits into the defintion of "weblog." Somewhere.
There is a lot of talent in the weblog community, and it would be an honor if In Passing was nominated alongside all those other sites I respect.
That said, yeah, I'm asking you guys to vote for me. Don't worry, I do feel plenty sheepish and silly about it, but not so sheepish and silly that I'm not willing to ask. If you enjoy In Passing and think the site and the community of folks who visit it deserve a little recognition, you can nominate it for a Bloggie award here. I think "Best Topical Weblog" is probably the category where In Passing fits best.

And as long as I'm making reccomendations, I'd like to throw out a few other sites I admire.

Best non-weblog content: Crushing Krisis and the weekly song trios there.
Best programming of a weblog: Fury and Linkstew.
Best American weblog: Wockerjabby.
Best Canadian weblog: Succaland.

There are many other sites I enjoy that deserve recognition, but for now I'm going to bed. I'm guessing the clever readers of this site will use the comments for this post to suggest other websites worthy of nominations. Happy voting, and thanks.

Hello to all the readers of the San Jose Mercury News! A columnist for that newspaper, Dennis Rockstroh, interviewed me last week and the article went into print today. It's also availible here, on the newspaper website.

Another unrelated news item, there's a new link on the sidebar, "Donate." I finally got around to making the long-discussed tip jar, so that if people like, they can help me offset the costs of hosting this site. Much more info about that if you follow the link.

Newsflash, minor change -- the archiving system got a whole lot prettier thanks to code from Benjy of Linkstew. You can peruse all the old entries by month, instead of by page. Not terribly exciting, but very useful.

We are not alone.

That's the overwhelming message being presented through photographs of the world mouring, on this thread. Keep clicking next page (not next thread) to go through all 19 pages, there are a lot of pictures there, and a lot of support. The outpouring of emotion for friends and strangers is beautiful.

There are all kinds of mourning ceremonies today; at 10am PST there will be a moment of silence. At 7pm (don't know what time zone) there will be a nationwide candlelighting. Participate as you like.

I wanted to post new material today, but I just couldn't. It seems disrespectful... I suppose this is survivor guilt for someone thousands of miles away. As much as I recognize that a lot of people could use a diversion right now, I feel like it's just too soon. My friends and I tried going to a movie tonight, to take our minds off everything.

Somewhere on the top ten list of signs that you're emotionally unwell is crying at the movie American Pie 2.

Yeah.

In the meantime, if you would like a diversion, I reccommend the archives here, or something simple and funny, like the Brunching site. Grocery store humor is safe. Ha, ha, Alanis Morissette sure has lyrics that are easily mocked.

Normally I find that site pretty funny... I guess I'm not very good at being distracted.

Hang in there, folks. May tomorrow be better than today was

So I have a project for you all.

As I mentioned earlier, I'm on the volunteer staff for the Webby Awards, which are the internet equivalent of the Academy Awards and are being held at the Opera house in San Francisco.

My job? I'm on the team that makes the guests feel special while they're walking along the red carpet. We're like paparazzi with polaroid (or digital) cameras, we hand out party favors, etc. Some of the party favors are the little red decorated envelopes that they put money and fun stuff in for Chinese New Year. Well, we're supposed to fill them with "fun, interesting, unusual messages." Like oddball fortune cookies.

And I thought, who better to come up with the bizarre than the folks who have seen it all?

Your mission, should you choose to accept it: submit a comment to this thread containing a fortune like or just utterly random message. (And you should post nothing but that message, since I'm just going to print these out directly. Also means your name + email will be attached if you choose to enter them in.)

Ever want to tell something to the internet's A-Listers? Tell a story, give advice, write a review of your favorite website or rock band, or attempt to read the future of the person who will get the message. If you've never posted before, there's a first time for everything. This is a chance to send your words out into the world (and save me the trouble of thinking up things for myself.)

It's a race for the first 50 posts (since I only have 50 envelopes,) and the only rules are keep it clean and don't be mean (since I will be giving these out to unsuspecting innocents.) Funny is good.

On your marks, get set... go!

"Kaycee" was a hoax.

I know this isn't anything new to a lot of people; when I originally found out about it a few weeks back, I didn't think it deserved a news item, so I just directed all conversation about the issue to the entry I'd posted about her death.

However, as the mainstream media is picking up the story, I'm getting more and more emails from kind readers trying to break the news to me gently. And while I appreciate the mail, I thought I'd just mention it here so everybody knows, and knows that I know.

My thoughts on the end of the Kaycee affair are here.

Jon Carroll, a columnist for the SF Chronicle, wrote an excellent piece yesterday about the whole debacle. I agreed with a lot of his views, and I really liked what he had to say about the media and fiction, about belief and what "meaningful" really is.

I should be studying for my final this afternoon, but instead I'm updating the page. (Story of my life lately.)
This is a good newsflash though -- a while back I did an interview with the Daily Cal, which is the campus newspaper, and today it made it to press. Check it out here. Hello to all the Cal readers!