When they said to make your blog specific to one topic, who knew there would be a niche for everything? Here’s a blog about cat ladders. Seems as if Central European and Scandinavian cat owners are the biggest proponents of the cat ladder movement.

Have a look at them. Some of them are really well-made. The indoor ones give the cats an impressive play area.

Apparently, Matt’s photo of an Alba Iulia cat ladder got in there. I wish they had asked for permission before taking the photo, though. Matt would’ve said “yes.” Plus, I would have told them to credit the photo correctly. They took the photo from my blog and assumed that it was mine.

Huh. This is as close as I have ever gotten to remembering this blog’s anniversary. In 23 minutes, it will be seven years old.

Has anyone else noticed that lately, the internet has been getting lonely?

So many good bloggers are deserting the place. The ones that are left behind are running out of things to say. Or, they are just commenting on the latest gadgets and blogging conferences and metablogging conferences and conferences to plan metablogging conferences.

Blogging has become a way to sell ad space, to impress people, or, I dread this the most, to brand oneself. Yeah. I’m unique. Like everyone else.

Little. Yellow. Different. published a conversation on the origins of the demise of blogging:

1. There are too many of us now. In a pool of 20 million, a blogger’s voice is diluted. Not like the good old days when there were a mere 2000.

2. If a blogger does have an audience, he or she needs to keep them happy. Flagrant airing of opinions might alienate them and reduce readership.

3. It’s the age of mega-blogs. Personal blogs will just have to wait for a meteor to crash to the earth, fill the atmosphere with clouds of dust, bring down the climate, and kill off the dinosaurs so that small furry creatures can evolve in peace.

4. Personal blogs are brands.

Little. Yellow. Different. goes on say that he no longer wants his personal experiences archived online. Plus, there’s the whole thing about living in the moment.

My friend MaikoPunk gave up blogging recently for other reasons, namely that blogging is getting in the way of more serious writing - writing that pays the bills and gets more credibility.

A few years ago, Neil Gaiman I believe it was, quit blogging because blogging got in the way of his more serious writing. He suddenly reappeared one day, saying something like, well, there is something I get out of blogging. Maybe he still blogs, maybe he doesn’t again. He’s quite accessible as a writer, whereas so many decent bloggers who quit…are just gone.

Though my RSS feed has over 200 blogs, I only regularly read five of them. About once or twice a year, I remember that I have a burning interest in abandoned rusting tea kettles. Yet, these specialist blogs are taking over: my collection of personal blogs, which I read because I like the people and want to see what’s happening in their lives, shrinks every month.

I do maintain a dead bloggers folder on my RSS feed. All the dead blogs go there. One day, when one of them stirs, I will be ready to read their blogs.

As for myself, I have bored or alienated all but a few loyal friends. My stats are depressing: during the last month, I had 2000 visitors, in August 2007, I have 12,000 visitors. In addition, there are many personal things I cannot or will not write on my blog.

I’ve thought about coming up with a schtick, a niche where I can dole out my expertise and gain some measure of internet popularity.

What’s the point? I have a dozen hobbies, I read widely, I go through phases of learning about xyz then switch to abc. Five million blogs already do photos better than I ever can or aspire. I’ll leave real illustrators to show off their art and real connoisseurs to document every meal. I am not even sure if I will stick with my museum career any more, so I cannot specialize professionally either. Nor do I have a hamster in the household anymore, so my slim claim to internet fame is gone there too.

About two years ago, when I first realized I’ll never be anyone in this internet pond, my first reaction was to delete my blog and purge all mentions of Maktaaq from the internet. I still believe that I am not at all relevant to anyone. In fact, in real life, I have almost no friends and my life is just the mere cycle of sleep, eat, work. There is no point at all in me writing. I have nothing original to say nor can I even write my thoughts in a fresh way.

Only about every five posts or so do I get comments. The commenters are always the same five people.

I keep writing to practice writing. I also keep writing because, even though only five people comment, at least someone is reading. If these five feel compelled enough to give me any feedback, I am that much less alone in the world.

Guess what? I got my first guest blogging gig! I’m headed for the big time in bloggerdom now! Yeah, after six years I am finally getting some recognition.

To help out my friend Raul who is doing this crazy Blogathon-blogging-every-half-hour-for-24-hours thing for charity, I wrote a post. It’s slotted at 4 am. Contains some hogwash about a freak animal. You can read it and Raul’s other posts on his blog, Hummingbird 604. His chosen charity is the BC Cancer Agency.

Two other friends are blogging for charity over the next 24 hours: Miss 604 and Isabella Mori.

Have a good night!

I’ve started to notice a trend.  When I don’t blog, this site gets lots of visitors.  Yet, as soon as I put up a post, all visits drop.  It’s like people come here, see a post, and think, Oh, shit, she’s blogged.  Then they get the heck out of Dodge.

I recently discovered the Urban Style blog, full of photos of what cool young things from BucureÈ™ti are wearing. Not as much colour as I would wear, despite a few winter coats and tights on the brighter side of the palette, yet, I grew up knowing that Romanians have fashion sense (even the men - I don’t care what you say, MaikoPunk). Canadians in your ugly fleece, goretex and soccer mom Lululemon ensembles, look over this blog, then burn your wardrobe.

Fashionable as they are, however, young Romanians just wear western clothes. Someone could drop off a dozen Romanian teenagers in any North American neighbourhood and, aside from the better combinations and colour choices, you’d think they were just regular Anglo-Saxon kids.

Yet amid all the fashion that could be anywhere, there’s this super original dude:

Let’s see: he’s got his traistă (Romanian woollen bag), his black căciulă on his head, a vest, and his traditional straight shirt (with what looks like a belt).

Dressed in the most Romanian of Romanian peasant wear, all that’s missing are the opinci.

From the footwear page on the Eliznik Balkan Folklore site:

Opinci are made of a single rectangle of cow, ox or pig hide gathered round the foot in various ways. Two main types are found in Romania but with numerous zonal variations…..Opinci were tied to the feet using one or more nojită (narrow strips of leather or strings made of goats or horsetail hair which is usually died black although white is used in Moldavia)…..Many 18th and 19th century pictures show Romanian peasants wearing opinci, though by the 20th century this form of footwear had become less common. F B Florescu, in her book on Romanian opinci said that this form of footwear had completely disappeared by 1957 (Florecu 1957).

As the next photo attests, we can exhibit our Romanian-ness by wearing our opinci:

The poster reads “Remain Romanian in Europe [i.e. the European Union].” It’s a political poster for the Partidul NaÈ›ional Țărănesc CreÈ™tin Democrat (the PNÈšCD, or the National Peasant Party-Christian Democrat). The Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada’s Romania Country Fact Sheet has this to say about the party:

The PNÈšCD is a successor to the National Peasant Party which was founded in 1869. It was banned under the Communist regime in 1947, but remerged in 1989, at which time it refused to work with the National Salvation Front (FSN) due to the FSN’s high concentration of former communists. The PNÈšCD has undergone numerous splits and mergers. Following poor results in the 2004 election, the PNÈšCD merged with the Union for Romanian Revival (Uniunea pentru RenaÈ™terea României, URR) and formed the Christian Democrat People’s Party (Partidul Popular CreÈ™tin Democrat, PPCD) which promotes a centrist platform. The party’s leader is Marian Petre MiluÈ›.

But back to the Urban Style dude: he is one cool kid. More Romanian young people should emulate his example and stop being so ashamed of being Romanian. If someone sees this dude on some București street, give him a pat on the back from me.

Alas, I missed the big hullaboo over my five-year anniversary as a blogger and now I am closer to my six-year anniversary. I’ve had the maktaaq.com domain name for two years now; this new site still needs a lot of work:

• I need to figure out why the new RSS feed truncates my posts.
• I find the new title hideous but Matt likes it.  (At least one reader likes it.)
• My illustration for the header is in Canada while I am in Romania.
• I don’t have an about page.
• I haven’t updated the categories for the old, pre-category posts, except 2002.
• I haven’t gone through my links to weed out the dead ones (and try to find cached copies of cartoons you shouldn’t miss).
• I haven’t moved that sitemeter thingie over.
• I haven’t answered the comments yet.
• I lost about 200 posts in the move and I have to figure out how to get them here. This blog is first and foremost my journal. I enjoy going back and laughing at myself.

But Matt told me not to be a perfectionist and tell everyone already.

1. Long paragraphs.

2. No spaces between paragraphs: it’s different when paragraphs have only a single space between them in books or newspapers, on a computer screen, it’s as bad as long paragraphs.

3. Blogger commenting: why should everyone have a Blogger profile? I want to go directly to their blog!

4. Truncated feeds: I don’t always have time to go to a blog to check the full version. It gets especially bad when I have to play catch-up with a million posts - I usually never bother reading everything.

5. Long posts: I am guilty of this.

6. Posting more than once a day: though I read a few local and specialized blogs every day, I hardly can keep up with others and I end up skimming for something that interests me. When it’s a personal blog, I’d rather be reading everything and really getting a feeling for the author’s life. Actually, I really love my once-a-weekers - I can even forgive them if they write long posts.

7. More after the jump: no! I usually read over my morning cereal. I can’t put down my spoon, click, then pick up spoon. I ain’t no multitasker, stop asking me to work so much.

8. Links without comments: I want to know why you want me to go there.

9. More than two columns: I can’t concentrate. I am also additionally fussy in that I prefer my sidebars on the right, but that’s just going into crazy territory, I know.

10. Posts without titles: someone told me my posts should all have titles. It’s made me think about what exactly I write about and makes me keep to one topic. If I have more than one idea, I can make two blog posts.

11. Good blogs that disappear: I still lament the passing of Baboon Ass. With so many inane dead blogs that cling to the internet like pond scum, at least the good ones could remain un-deleted, like rafts of hazelnut wafers among the pond scum.

12. Tiny (or huge) writing.

13. Exciting blogs that peter out after five posts: local museum blogs are pretty bad about this. I get excited that I’ll be learning about the history of, say, Coalmont, BC, then nothing!

14. Exciting blogs that spiral out of control because they don’t understand blogging: again, in my profession, organizations make blogs that sound more like marketing tools, with rehashed press releases. I can read those elsewhere; I prefer to go behind the scenes, meet the people and find out about the job.

15. No email: so what happens if I am too shy to write a comment to you?

16. Bloggers who don’t answer their comments: sometimes someone has five comments, some of them questions…which seem to hover there, all lonely, for all eternity. I really appreciate reading someone who responds, even to thank their commenters. Hey, we’re bloggers, not rock stars.

17. Unfeedable comments: sometimes I want to read the comments but I don’t want to have to keep returning to the blog to see the updates. I love getting them in Bloglines. Of course, almost all blogs are guilty of this infraction, but with Haloscan and the Metroblogging Vancouver site, you can get your blog posts and comments too.

18. Comments that turn off after a while: what if I want to comment on your long-ago post on 19th Century gorilla-shaped tschochkes? Huh? What, after November 23, 2004, everything that can be said about gorilla tschochkes has been said? What if ground-breaking research has unearthed new gorilla tschochke revelations?

19. Image-stealing: I don’t care that much about Mickey Mouse, but when it’s just some kid down the street, please ask her before you use her photo, even if the Creative Commons license says “Exploit me.”

20. Serif fonts: these belong on the printed page, not the computer screen.

21. Marketing requests made of bloggers: please don’t send me requests to blog about your movie…send me a copy first and I might change my mind. I like horror movies and all, by the way, but I draw the line at Hostel, Saw and their ilk. Seriously though, no one reads this blog except a few people who like naked mole rats. I am flattered that you would think I am popular.

22. Spam/Trolls: delete please.

23. Teen accessories: music, moving pictures, stars that follow your cursor around, abbreviations, etc. The “Next Blog” feature on Blogger is what usually brings you to these sites.

24. Status updates: Happens in blogging for beginners, aka Facebook. Usually appears as “Jimbo is Julie ate my corndog.” Or “Madeleine is Up at the crack of dawn.” I, and others like me, will judge you on your grammar and capitalization.

25. YouTube: I hate it when I have to click that play thing. Almost as bad as something that starts up as soon as you visit the page.

Yes, I am guilty of many of these. I promise to blog about what I do like next.

Updates:

19. Image-stealing: When I wrote this, I was thinking of the Dallas girl who was made fun of in a Virgin Australia commercial. I don’t care if the images are free - surely no one just takes free samples at a supermarket without acknowledging the free sample food giver-outer? I think it’s just nice to make a human connection, to thank them for their image, and to let them know where it’ll go.

21. Marketing requests made of bloggers: I am not famous. I somehow got into a horror movie niche, over which I am thrilled, but these poor kids making films are trying the blog route of promotion. It kind of died down after Snakes on a Plane failed. Not saying I am not flattered, but I was taken aback.

I had no idea how to even rate these films, and some of them sounded gory, which I actually don’t like (unless it’s quick, like in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre - I hate scenes that linger on people screaming).

Recently I also got something to promote a local charitable event. But, while I want to be a good citizen, I have no idea how someone who bumbles about like I do, can even seriously write about this. I think those of you who read this blog aren’t here because I am saying anything worthwhile or new; you’re here because you’re my friends and want to humour me. The one or two of you who may not know me, I think I just haven’t rambled enough lately on about how much I hate Republicans or how I think vampire fiction sucks. I may do so and then you’ll stop reading. You think now that I am all about hamsters and Belgian comics.

24. Status updates: I like status updates, but I like them written properly. Sometimes they’re hard to read. This peeve should read “Grammatically weird status updates.”

25. YouTube: I just don’t like to be told “You gotta see this!” then have to sit through 6 minutes or even 2 minutes of waiting for what I gotta see. Most times it’s not worth it.

So, do any of you have pet peeves?

For about a year now, numbers of visitors to this blog have jumped to an unbelievable number.

I went from around 10 daily visitors in early 2004 when I first added a site visit tracker thingie, to about 30 when I was blogging more frequently. Of that 30, almost 30 were readers as opposed to people googling hamster menstruation or slipper spanking (look me up, I am an authority of sorts in those fields).

Oddly enough, now that I only update once a week, my numbers have shot up to almost 400 visitors a day. Out of those 400 visitors, only about ten a day seem to be people actually looking to read this blog, meaning my readership is back to 2004 levels. The other 390 site visits are almost all from image links (like this). I sometimes just link to photos if I don’t bother to write to ask for permission to use photos directly or if I never get an affirmative response from the image’s copyright holder. Who knows why my links brings in so many visitors to my blog?

Mostly I ignore these visits. But sometimes a ridiculous amount of people come to just one post of mine. These days its the naked mole rat post. Last November I wrote about the British TV show QI and, in particular, about my discovery of the naked mole rat, a grotesquely fascinating looker of an animal. I linked to this picture.

A year ago it was hundreds, if not thousands of visitors coming to read the Resurrection post. I wrote that one after visiting Arizona in 2004 and, by writing it, I alienated one American reader who objected to my calling Americans “militaristic.” I was then de-linked by this individual. Then no one noticed that post for two years. Suddenly, people from all over the US were entering my site through that one post, making me suspect someone emailed the link to a bunch of their friends. Is it the “militaristic” comment? Is it that the Marines are deciding whether or not to take me up on my request to being recruited? Is it the Arizona tourism board finally deciding to use my idea of Krazy Kat marketing to promote their state?

Now it’s visitors from all over the US, Kuwait, Italy, Dubai, Britain, France, South Africa, Australia, Sweden, Syria, Turkey, Finland, Indonesia, Korea, Qatar and other countries coming to see pictures of naked mole rats. I’d love to know why that particular post.

In a rather stereotypical deduction, I am guessing that by the number of Islamic countries represented, it must be curious sheltered girls. The European countries also have sizeable Islamic immigrant populations, with yet more curious sheltered girls. These curious girls want to know what penises look like but they do not have access to art history textbooks and they cannot ask their brother’s friends to display their goods. Their parents or their government monitors their online visits.

Then I come in. I write: “The naked mole rat is the only animal that resembles human male genitalia.” Then I link to a picture of the penis-resembling naked mole rat. Voilà. Girls know what to expect their first time and I am a feminist hero. Well, hopefully the girls are not traumatized by the fangs. Or, if they are, hopefully they will be inspired by their nightmares to write some great horror novels that publishers will have the sense to translate into English.

So, what is it about naked mole rats? Seriously, I want in on the joke. Why so many visitors for this picture?

Like everyone else with an internet connection, I spend a lot of time on Cute Overload.

Then there are those days when a kitten just won’t hack it.

Were you one of those nerdy kids who knew every animal in the Funk and Wagnalls Animal Encyclopedia? Did your parents order you those as-seen-on-tv Safari Cards in the Eighties? Can you tell a tarsier from a douroucouli? Did you ever describe the takir as your favourite animal at show-and-tell? If you answered Fuck, Yeah! then Just a Little Guy, the blog of cute cussing animal babies, is the blog for you.

Written and compiled by a 28-year-old dude from Brooklyn, Just a Little Guy is the nerd’s Cute Overload, or the Cute Overload with Vice overtones, though, um, Just a Little Guy came first. It’s just past its first birthday. Which means that Cute Overload is derivative; Cute Overload is the Just a Little Guy of the trailer park. Or something. Anyhow, the guy took his GRE and the Cute Overload girl didn’t.

In the call to war against the cute animal upstart, JALG writes, “Domesticated animals. They’re BRED to be cute. It’s like genetically modified athletes.” Whereas Cute Overload sticks to puppies and kittens, with the occasional foray into kookaburra territory, Just a Little Guy throws open a cornucopia of cuteness most of us didn’t know exists. Hence the discovery of the momonga, the hamster of the Japanese woodlands. Other, deserving cute animals finally get their fifteen minutes and we all benefit.

Let’s cut the editorial and get to the good stuff. At this, the first ever Just a Little Guy retrospective, the cutest, meanest Just a Little Guy blogposts are in the spotlight:

• Penguin pooping: I bet you anything March of the Penguins and Happy Feet have nothing like this. Like one commenter put it, I’ll never use toothpaste again. Furthermore, we learn that “the velocity of a penguin’s shit is high enough to chip a human’s front tooth.”
• The pacarana, an animal even I have never heard of, shows that other good things come from Colombia besides cocaine and paramilitary torture. The best is the third image down, scanned from the National Geographic. It’s the pacarana, in his guinea pigginess, leaping straight up. And then it crashes a car. My kind of rodent!
• A wombat, nothing more, nothing less.
• Wombat + red panda. But the words win: “This mother giraffe actually suctions her baby’s head and then catapults him into enemy territory where the lanky limby little guy goes whirling dirvish on his enemy. His little head on his long ‘ol neck acts like a mace. Suckers get played when they mess with the giraffe.”
• A wombat of Ivan proportions. Great smile, buddy!
• On Aussies groping wombats, there’s fourth from the top: “Man, this wombat looks fucking laaaaaaazy, and believe me I know lazy. Some wombats are like: hold me. This one is like: cradle. I’m just going to lie here like a sack ‘o’ taters.” Then check out the last wombat: “There is something about the bug eyed look of surprise combined with the clean hands and stethescope that has a really genuinely horrific sci-fi alien-probing unwilling-patient thing.”
• A wombat Casanova? “I don’t know what his secret is but he alread managed to get her fucking jacket off and now he’s working on the pants. Starting at the knee? Fuck it, dude. Whatever works.”
• The toe-spreading tapir.
• The first momonga sighting: “I think he ganked those eyes off of some cartoon character and come to think of it, this is what it would look like if animation worked backwards and cartoons could be made real.”
• The momonga motherload: “They can fucking fly.” and “Look at his big ‘ol eyes and his smug little fucking grin. He knows he’s cute. He knows he doesn’t even have to try. Some people have it so fucking easy.” The best is the swarm of momongas at the very end: “The one on the left. He looks like fucking Wolverine ready to pounce. Feel me? And his gaze is so intent. I’m creeped out. For real.”
• Beaver kittens: Canada’s mascot.
• Velcro bears: If Chief Ten Bears hasn’t blogged about this, hell.
• More velcro bears: check out the little back legs on the little dudes. Squeal! It’s like they’re those bathroom door icons. For Matt, a bonobo fact: “the females have evolved specially rotated pelvises so they can engage in better female-female missionary-style sex,”
• You know that cute Edvard Munch screaming otter that Vancouverites paste on their personals ads? Here’s what he’s saying: “I think he’s screaming about how cute he is or maybe, he’s yawning cuz he’s so tired from being so fucking cute all day.” This makes JALG the greatest real phone sex athlete in the world.
• Fourth down, a cute evil possum. I’ve only ever seen these guys dead on the centre line, probably because rednecks swerve to hit them. Yeah, you curse the world with your little Dracula hands, Mr. Possum! Then fifth down and I am sold on possums.
• Panda Dog
• Canada, Land of the Pika. This is why US neocons shit their beds at night when they dream of invading. Hands off. They’re ours.
• The honeybadger website link evaporated, but there’s the keep on truckin’ sifaka third from the bottom. “Where the sweet fuck is he going in such a funky rush. Groove on by dude!”
• Baby squid, last photo.
• Sloth in a box: “For god’s sake. The desperation and neediness is oozing out of the corrugated sides. Does he want out or does he want YOU to come in? I don’t know but what ever it is I’ll do it.”
• And finally today’s post, baby otters. Kind of reminds me of Tarepanda, the Japanese melting panda. As for the Xinjiang bear cub, it’s Jeremy! Let’s cuddle sometime, Xinjiang bear cub.