ActiCons

BETA – This is the live Beta version of the ActiCons.com website. Activist Conservatism Online is sorely lacking. We can only transform that by simply getting out here and doing the work. This site will feature activism projects, blogs, video, and graphics made by and for conservatives who are activists on the internet, and hope to turn their work into real world results. Stand by for more information.

I realize it’s pretentious to try and start a hashtag based on one’s own accomplishments, but in this case I feel OK. I know what I’ve given my wife. I don’t know what you’ve given yours.

The best received gift I ever gave my wife was a necklace.

Sotheby’s sometimes holds auctions at eBay. Over the course of a year, they held several for the London Museum. Among the items for sale were beads and fragments. Items, in other words, found in tombs and digs which weren’t suitable for display. Over the course of a year, I won several auctions for beads, including some from ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, and ancient Rome.

I took those beads to Jewelology. For four hours I stood there and threaded those beads into a four strand necklace of 14k gold. In the end, she got a necklace that was comprised, in equal parts, of history, and love. It looks amazing on her, and when she wears it she knows she’s wearing 5 thousand years of history.

It was only one gift, yet it took me nearly 8 months to create. I didn’t do it to get into her pants. I did it because that’s what she deserves. Effort. Dedication. Care.

The #bestgift I ever RECEIVED was when she had my girlies make me a wall hanging comprised of their signatures, their doodles, and their handprints. For exactly the same reason.

Ah, blogging. It’s so … bloggy. Snarky. Tasty.

… repetitious.

The time has come to discuss the elephant in the room.

Everything is faster these days. The world wide web has made the world a smaller place. In so doing, it has created in us, the bloggers, a new and, in many ways, more powerful force for change than ever has been seen before on the face of God’s green earth or in the history of the known universe!!

How is it, then, that change is so laborious, so plodding, so delayed?

“With my mighty robot powers, I can get sick of things much quicker than you humans.” Bender – Futurama

Clichés: They surround us, envelope us, suffocate us.

Now, I realize some clichés will never leave us, so I’m not trying to stir up a hornet’s nest. I also realize I use clichés in my blogs and comments like anyone else; I won’t ignore the beam in my own eye. But like Bender, bloggers can get sick of things quicker than normal offline folks. We can ruin things faster too. The collision of blogs with political and popular culture is the perfect storm of bad writing. The fact of the matter is, it’s high time to address some clichés that have become so overdone as to be positively grating. Faint heart never won fair maiden, and so I will shoulder this onerous burden.

But, let us mince words no more. It’s time to take this to the next level. I have put together a list which I believe represents the worst of the worst. The absolute, blogtastic and spectacular list of abused words, phrases, idioms, analogies, synonyms, and good old fashioned red-blooded clichés.

I bring to you now, in all its glory … Read the rest of this entry »