One of the things that make blogs blogs, according to many social media ‘thought leaders’, is the comments section – the arena of interplay between the author and the reader. Well, through the magic of comments, I’m giving the reader a chance to steer while I put on a tie or send a really important text or try to find that one CD that’s in the back seat somewhere.

That’s right, it’s time for another USER-GENERATED CONTENT WEEK! UGC Week 1 happened in Fall 2008, and I blogged about subjects like having a beard, mexican food, the presidential debates and why the CW drama One Tree Hill is a metaphor for the modern political landscape.

Those were okay topics, but now it’s 2010, and you need to step up your game, readers. In the comments section, leave me some things that you’d like to see me write a post on. Next week, I’ll write a post about every single thing you guys and gals come up with.

So, let’s have at it.

So, I’ve had a few questions from various corners about the results of the survey from earlier in the week – what the results were like, what my ideal answers are, whether or not anybody came close.

For the first question, as indicated in the same post, I’m hoping for cute, sane and nice. Out of all of the respondents, the only one that chose all three of these also chose every possible option, thereby skewing the data unreliably. So let’s just go with 0%. I don’t attract sane or nice people, it seems, and that explains so much.

The Beatles is an overwhelming favorite, with only two respondents declaring Elvis and one casting a vote for Elvis Perkins.

Almost everybody was a nerd, with only one supercool person protesting too much and saying no.

Which brings us to the wolf question, which is a reference to, for those not in the know, this piece of apparel (read the reviews!). Most answers were – thankfully, because I know most of the respondents – 0, but one unfortunate has 1-3 wolves in her closet and another who, based on her aggregate answers, may actually be my soulmate, says “Never Enough.”

I find it ironic that, when asked to define irony, only one person comes through and gives me the Reality Bites quote that I was looking for (go you!). Many others shared either Alanis Morrissette lyrics or embarrassing personal moments of irony – many of which were song-ironic but not for-real-ironic. Best answer? “Like silvery or bronzey, only with iron.” There were also three “I don’t knows,” one of which turned out to be ironic in and of itself after some followup in the comments.

And the Madea question? You are all what Corky St. Clair would call “bastard people,” the way you’re so mean to poor Madea. Many of you want to send her to either Jail or Hell (where she will presumably sass the devil). The same erudite lady who selected Elvis Perkins in the musical question here admits that she doesn’t know what Madea is but is familiar with the Greek tragedy Medea, which gets bonus points in my book.

And unsurprisingly, many of you were in the “No, Sir” camp on the Reagan question, except for the one person that I know that would name him “The Greatest.”

So, what have I learned? Well, other than that I surround myself with toxic, Beatles-loving people, I don’t know. And that first part I knew already, too. So yeah.

So, I have noticed that posts about my personal life get more comments than the other stuff I blog about. Consider this shameless pandering to that discovery.

The impetus for this was, like with most things that get stuck in my head, a snide remark. I interrupted a friend in the midst of an anecdote to ask, facetiously, if the girl in the story was cute, and was rewarded with, and I’m paraphrasing here, “Maybe you’d do better if you focused on ‘nice.’” Which is true. But that led to me joking that I’d add it to the list, which led to the creation of a spreadsheet, which included a column for “# of dates before spreadsheet revealed to girl” and most of the questions that appear in the survey. At least I think that’s how it went. There was pizza, and pizza distracts me sometimes.

Maybe this can be a regular feature or something.

As an admitted music junkie, I am constantly looking for new stuff, or really just stuff that’s new to me. I don’t want to make it sound like I have this mad delusion that I’m some kind of tastemaker or whatever. Lord knows I’m not. Sometimes, as was the case with Russian Red, Black Kids, Marnie Stern or Girls, I stumble across stuff that I really like. Other times, well, I’m not sure, guys.

Such is the case with Owl City.

Instead of finding Owl City on my own, I had Adam Young’s music recommended to me by about a half dozen people, all comparing him favorably to other artists that I know that I like. An ex told me to listen to Owl City because the music reminds her of Ben Folds. Other people have recommended them on similar grounds, drawing comparisons to Folds, The Postal Service and even to Barenaked Ladies.

I don’t know, I get all of that, but I don’t get that ‘damn, I need to buy the album NOW’ feeling from any of the songs I heard. I’d kind of forgotten about them after that, but one of my friends Twittered about them last night, which led to me try to puzzle out whether “Fireflies” was cute or annoying, and I think that the answer might just be, “yes.” I sampled a few Owl City songs again, and I still am not sure if they’re for me. But I can be convinced.

So, I need your help. Listen to this selection and let me know if I’m just being obdurate.

I have been opining a lot lately about the consequences of living in public. It’s been on my mind.  It’s even made me mildly paranoid about blogging some personal thoughts on a few recent dates.  Which worries me.  People tell me they admire what I write because of its unflinching honesty, both about myself and my topic (which, sometimes, is myself).  I feel like forces have been conspiring against me to prevent that.  It started with what I will, in a bit of an on-the-nose manner, call an attack against me on my previous blog.  I didn’t want to deal with it, so I moved here and started fresh.  It’s worked, I think.

But earlier this week, I discovered that someone has been using my writing here and elsewhere online to snipe at a family member – a very dear family member who I may have referred to negatively on a very few occasions because of annoyance and don’t refer to positively enough because I am a curmudgeon and it is my natural bent to criticize instead of crow.  Essentially, comments I have made have been taken out of context and used as weapons in some petty office politics squabble.  It has made me seriously think about just calling it a day, at least on my current subject matter, and turning myself into a boring social media blogger or something.  Not, mind you, that social media bloggers are inherently boring (many of them are, though); I’m simply acknowledging that I’d be one of the boring ones.

No.

This space (in its varying forms over the past four and change years) has been too intellectually and too spiritually gratifying for me (which is weird, considering how much of my output is about popcult garbage).  This kept me sane in an unsane passage in my life.  This lets me connect with the people that I care about who live in diverse places.  This gives me a place to vent about how I shouldn’t still be hung up on women who clearly don’t give a damn about me* when I know that my friends don’t want me to talk about it to them.  It is a chronicle of my idiotic, Peter Pan complex-riddled life, and it is valuable to me.  If it is valuable to you too, that’s great, but also incidental.  This is what keeps me out of expensive, expensive therapy.

With that said, if you’re reading this because you’ve compulsively Googled me in a need to get back at me or at someone close to me, stop being a dick.  I’m not changing my behavior for you or because of you; I’ve done it once already, and I will not settle into a pattern of capitulations.  If you need ammo, you’re likely to find enough words to twist any way you want.  But at the end of the day, any damage that you cause is on you, not on me.

*I really need to repeat this to myself several times per day in a mirror.

So, I just posted about how I was going to buckle down and get in shape, right?

Not even 24 hours after that, I’m off the wagon.  I’m at work and I’m thirsty.  I head to the drink fountain without even thinking.  Wild Cherry Pepsi.  I take the first sip, think fleetingly that I should be drinking water, per my agreement with myself the previous night, and walk back to my desk with a shrug, Pepsi in hand.

This is my problem.  My utter indifference.  God help me.

I’ve been thinking lately about getting into better shape.  It is probably the first time that I’ve given the notion serious thought since last summer.  That it wasn’t on my mind was due to a lot of the personal drama that has gone down in the past year, the notion that I am pretty content with myself and am not ruled by body image issues, and the momentum I built up in my post-D-Day fit of “freedom means not giving a fuck about anything.”  I’ve known that the third point on that list isn’t necessarily true for some time now, the second one is still true, and the first one is likely never going to subside to a level that I want it to, so why the change?  Well, why not.

My reluctance in the past was born from the stubborn, indignant streak that I’ve got and instigated by a third party’s belief that I needed to be skinny to not be an embarrassment.  And from the fact that it’s so, like, difficult.

So really, the answer is that I don’t feel compelled to do it, and that compels me to do it.  This is how my mind works.  Besides, I tell myself now, it will be easy to do.  Just go out to eat less, stop drinking so much soda and stop snacking.

This can’t go badly, can it?

I will either apprise you of my progress, or never speak of this again.

Earlier, I conducted a quick poll as to whether or not I should make brownies.

The support for this initiative was unanimous.

So, I keep hearing from various corners about how blogging is dying, and about how microupdates and aggregation and lifecasting/lifestreaming are the new big things.

I’m not content with the new big things.  I want to think about what’s next, to pre-empt it and grasp it in my grasping hands.  That is to say that I want to take the new big thing and make it newer, bigger, more interactive.

Like those Choose Your Own Adventure books from when we were kids.

You know the ones, where you’re in a cave and there are crab-men and no matter what, the crab-men killed you but sometimes there was a girl and other times you died before the crab-men could kill you?  I’m thinking of turning my life into one of those.  Every time I come to some vital decision point, I’ll be turning control over to you, loyal readers.  Every meal I eat, every beverage I consume.  Whether or not I get gas in my car at this exit or press my luck.  Whether I shower, check the mail or do any number of other mundane tasks.  You can even decide which of my family members I’ll alienate, who I date and which of my friends I will inevitably disappoint horribly.  Will I change cell phone carriers?  Will I quit my job and become a costumed criminal?  I don’t know; you tell me.

I’m excited about this.  This cannot end poorly at all.