Defenestration

My promise to you: Today's post does not feature wombats, bugs, or Barbara Streisand.

Moving on to other things...

For a long time now, I've had a desire to defenestrate.

(That sounds perverse, yes, and that's why I chose to use the word. It doesn't truly describe what I'm about to do, as it actually means "to toss out of a window", but it sounds slimy, so I couldn't pass it up even if it's wrong. So sue me, Daniel Webster.)

The three or four masochists among you who continue reading my pieces to the end every time you stop by have certainly noticed how far the crap on my sidebar extends below the bottom of anything I write. And, God knows, I write some damn long pieces, so that means there's a lot of useless shit on my sidebar. In the interest of providing old friends and new visitors a less-cluttered Suldog experience, I'm going to trim things down.

Before I do, however, I'm going to explain what will get tossed, and why. That way, if you happen to be the owner of something I'm going to toss, and you care enough to not want it tossed, you can contact me and plead for the bloggity life of whatever it is. I'll listen patiently, then do exactly as I damn well please. So, yes, feel free to beg, but don't be surprised if your thing hits the pavement despite your protestations.

The first things to go will be links to blogs that haven't published anything during the previous 45 days. This will involve some good old friends, and that pains me, but I figure 45 days is long enough to come up with at least one new idea even if you're soft enough in the head to have me as a friend. If you haven't published in that length of time, and you've offered me no good excuse for not having done so, consider yourself defenestrated. Out the virtual window you go, Bub!

Next to go will be links to folks who don't have links back to me. They name streets after you - One Way! If you aren't willing to deface your sidebar with me, I'm not giving you a place to crash, either. Hasta la defenestratio, chump!

Not everything I give the ol' heave-ho to will be a link. Some will be pieces of ephemera that may have irritated you as much as they did me. I'm talking about awards, of course. While I've had some fun with them in the past, insulting hell out of whomever gave me one, I'm tired of that game. I'm never accepting another one. And I see no need to keep those that I did accept hanging around and stinking up the premises. I'm going to go about the defenestration of these in a casual way, though, as my ego is too big to just toss 'em all in one fell swoop (which begs the question of there being other sorts of swoops, but let's not worry about that now.) I'll begin by deep-sixing those that are linked to non-functioning blogs, and then later on (as my ego enters a refractory period) kill those that still send you to someone living. They will all go eventually.

That takes care of the sidebar cleansing. One other thing I'll be doing (which won't affect the look of this blog, but I feel it only right to mention it) is a general purge of posts. I am going to go through my backlog and delete anything poorly written or personally embarrassing.

(Ha-ha-ha, wise ass. No, that doesn't mean everything here will disappear.)

I've contemplated this for quite a while. There are a lot of hideously-constructed, poorly-worded, ill-conceived, too-many-dashes (or parentheses) pieces of excrement clogging up the cesspool of my back pages. They will be assigned for relocation (the relocation area being the eternal void, so if you're a Buddhist, or otherwise believe in some form of reincarnation, then perhaps you can look forward to them returning some day as either planks in the Republican Party platform or Hallmark greeting cards featuring chimpanzees, depending upon their karma.)

The last time I said I was planning to do this, my brother-in-law strongly opposed it. He said that it wasn't cricket - or words to that effect - since a blog is supposed to record one's day-to-day thoughts, feelings, etc., and going back in time to revise history wasn't fair. He had a point, but I'm tired of having those skeletons lurking in my literary closet. On the off chance that some dope is impressed with my current writing, and wants to offer me bazillions of dollars to do this sort of thing on a regular basis, I don't want the ship of my dreams scuttled because of some random split infinitive (if I ever figure out what in hell a split infinitive is, I mean.)

(By the way, when I say "embarrassing", I only mean in a literary sense. Most of you know by now that I have a high threshold for personal embarrassment, so stories concerning masturbation, inability to manage anger, evidence of my unsuitability for public consumption, and other such things that folks with some restraint might have had second thoughts about making public, will likely remain extant rather than become extinct.)

Anyway, that's what's going to happen. It will begin next week as I have the time, so if you feel something of yours (or something of mine for which you feel an unnatural affection) might be headed for oblivion, start pleading obsequiously now. Otherwise, it may well be gone the next time you come here.

(Of course, that assumes you'll be returning, which is a leap of no little faith considering the spectacularly unreadable drek I just gave you.)

Soon, with consolidated stuff.