Hyperlinking Down Memory Lane

Part one of a special hyperlink trip down The Tim Times memory hole, made possible by the Internet Archive. using their web archival search engine, aka The WaybackMachine. If not for the courage of that fearless crew, The Tim Times would almost certainly be lost.

The Adventure Begins

I figured it might be fun to look back at the history and development of my website over the last decade.  My online scribblings begin somewhat earlier than 2001, but that is the earliest I can document via the WaybackMachine at this time.  I cannot explain my early fascination (nor my present obsession) with blogging, but it seems to serve as both a way of preserving my ephemeral experiences as well as a vehicle for practicing and improving my personal writing and blogging skills.  I have invested a lifetime acquiring a broad category of expertise in a wide range of subjects, and then blogging it into the sui generis salad you see in your browsers today.

A Blog is Born

My first foray into what is now called blogging began using server space provided by my original internet service provider back in the 1990′s.  My web address included the very clumsy inclusion of a tilde symbol in the URL, making it an obnoxious blotch of a thing to try to easily disseminate.  All web posting was done through FTP protocols, and all web design was primitive.  Bandwidth dribbled.  Lack of blog management software exacerbated an already complex process.  Particularly challenging to me was the proper archiving of old posts and display of new blog posts.  Each new blog update was so difficult to incorporate properly into my existing mix, that it limited my ability to update my blog.  Databases?  Fuhgeddaboudit.

Then, along came Pyra Labs with the very blog management solution I needed.  I was blogging on Pyra Labs software long before Google bought them in 2003.  As early as 2001, I was an already an official dot commie, self-hosting my own web domain at http://www.thetimtimes.com.

The Tim Times 2001:

From top to bottom.

The Birth of a Logo

My home-made logo incorporated a silhouette profile that obscured my radiant youthful beauty ( I didn’t want to be successful just for my ruggedly handsome good looks) and doubled as a link to an actual profile photo of me (that fully supports my self assessment.  The Gravatar-ready silhouette portion of the header served as my online avatar until I replaced it with the caricature than Bob Pennebaker drew for me.  Here is Bob working his magic in a YouTube video.

My Profile Picture

There’s just enough of a touch of gray in my hair to exude the proper gravitas necessary to be taken seriously, but the carnival background belies my true spirit.

The Birth of a Slogan

I coined the phrase: Sensibility Without the Static to use as my web slogan.

The Forum

This was a link to a long abandoned forum that I set up back then.  Those were the days when having your own web forum was sorta like having a mini-Facebook.  It was also another way of offering a web service that was outsourced to a free third party provider.

The Nasa Moon Hoax

Given the “tinfoil hat” nature of the early internet, is it any wonder that this link got the most traffic of any of my early on-line postings?  Click the link or the graphic to see evidence I presented to back up my claim that NASA faked the moon landings.

The Blogs

Those permanent links running down the left hand side of the page allowed me to incorporate the features of automated Pyra blogging without having to update my website (via FTP), while simultaneously adding a nice stylish column design to my site.

My early attempts at site branding are obvious in my selection of blog names.  I still have all those early blogs. and I often tag posts these days using #timplates for food and #timages (or #timpix) for photos.

Since most all my actual content was being hosted by Pyra, my homepage loaded like lightning, even in the days of “Timmy and the Tin-Can telephone” internet speeds.

Animated Graphics

       

I embraced the visual panache that animated gifs brought to web design, but I used only a few small ones to keep my page-loads fast.

Missing Antler Publishing

Version of logo I plan to use when I go into the retail book writing business.  “Antler” is an amalgamation of last names. Mine, and an early writing collaborator friend from high school, John Antolik, who was killed (re: “Missing”) working his way through college at a factory job.

End part one.

Stay tuned (subscribe) so you won’t miss Part Two of  the series wherein The Tim Times continues the move towards the big time.

Enjoy.

Visiting Day at the Pet Penitentiary

Lizzy and Bandit console a captive fluffy-eared miscreant.

Blaming Xenu

Despite creationist protestations to the contrary , I understand that I can’t “prove” that Jeebus “speaks” to me with any kind of scientific rigor, (at least not the kind that actual scientists “believe in“).

In the hazy shadows provided by the dictates of “non overlapping magisteria“, Jeebus has every right to reach out to anybody he wants and to tag any old reprobate as his messenger, making me as logical a choice as anybody, now that Hitch is dead.

The message Jeebus seems to be beaming to me lately is, like the visions of TV show psychics and spiritualists, a tad lacking in specifics.  If you don’t keep that foremost in your mind, you could end up as crazy as a teenage kid bent on digging around a forest for mysterious Golden Plates.

It is undoubtedly just part of Jeebus‘ mysterious ways that the messages people get from him are so often mixed and garbled.  With all those caveats in mind, the BEST I can sort out of Jeebus’ message to me, because of background chatter from the Xenu Inter-Galactic Network, is this:

Whenever anybody “likes”, “retweets”, “follows”, “favorites” or “subscribes” to any of my web posts, Jeebus bends down and pats his dog on the head, baby bunnies smile, and at least one old man gets a tingle in his nether regions.

So it is written. So it shall be done.

Enjoy.

Obscure References

Click for larger view.

Click for larger view.

Enjoy.

Handling Hecklers

Gaby Dunn is an aspiring female comedian who came to my attention because she recently posted about an onstage experience with an aggressive heckler.  This is the kind of thing that normally files under my news radar, but I follow several comedians on (Dam You!!) Twitter, so I get more “inside baseball” news from that scene that the average Tim.  I am attracted to the humor and quick witted intellect of comedians because I recognize those same traits in myself.  My family and friends think I would find myself in a crises of cognitive dissonance if I took a census regarding the collective mindset on the aforementioned trait similarities, so don’t look for a Poll Daddy link in that regard any time soon.  But I digress.

Gaby is crabby.  Outtakes from her story:

Then, I start my actual set and do my first two jokes, which go pretty okay. I start another joke that is vaguely sexual – not crude, not crass – mainly silly and that goes well too. The next joke I do is about my boyfriend.

Rim shot! So far so good….

As I start the joke, someone yells, “Does your boyfriend know?” referring to the sexuality joke I’d just told.

I gotta go listen to these jokes, but I digress.

I start to tell the joke about my boyfriend again, and at the midway point, the same voice yells something else derogatory about my boyfriend, homophobic and misogynistic towards me

Who the hell does this guy think he is, trying to get away with such politically incorrect bullshit? A Republican presidential candidate?  Or a comedian? Seriously though, it isn’t  suppose to be his act.

“Sir, if you’re gonna talk to me, you need to come to the front because I can’t see you.” I think calling him out like this will shut him up.

Yeah, and half the country thinks Jeebus is gonna come riding down on a unicorn and sweep them all up to Heaven before Obama gets re-elected (they pray), but we have reality to deal with.  After all, this is comedy we’re dealing with. Next time think “Danger Will Robinson, Danger!”

NOPE. Instead, he marches to the front and now I see he’s a TERRIFYING looking crazy man I hadn’t noticed in the crowd. He comes way too close to the stage and in my fear, I gesture that he needs to sit in the front, not come on stage with me which seems to be his plan.

He comes to the front when you told him to?  What kind of special crazy is that?  Is this a comedy show or The Price is Right?  But I digress.

I am horrified. He’s completely derailed the act I’ve worked hard on, ruined a night of me doing my job which I’d spent all day looking forward to (and I’d waited an hour to get on stage), embarrassed me and made me feel worthless in front of my friends at the show and my fellow comics and is really, really scaring me.

The hurt of that extra lonely hour waiting to get onstage really put the story in perspective for me.  Inviting this nutjob to the fore, instead of evicting him and mocking him relentlessly as they tazed his whimpering ass on the way out, cost you street cred and the adulation of the crowd.  Google Youtube for proper comedic responses in similar situations.  Gaby buckles to the pressure and leaves the stage without finishing her set.

“Now, because of you, no one’s gonna hear the punchline of that joke. ”Then, I get off stage.

Believe it or not, this is the point in the story where things started to go truly wrong for Gaby.  Something that makes even her interminable one hour green-room delay pale in comparison.

The creepy guy is waiting for me at the bar.

There is no way for me to get to the door without him seeing me. I am supposed to meet my boyfriend at a cafe four blocks away, but if I walk out alone, he’ll follow me. I am trapped.

I prefer a large, friendly-yet protective canine as a travel companion in those situations, but a gun, tazer, pepper-spray or swift kick in the balls is obviously more widely employed.  While pepper spray and tazers hardly ever shit on the carpet, neither will greet you with rapturous affections at every opportunity like the aforementioned.  Advice to Gaby and any other females, comedian or otherwise, man up.  Not to be confused with “my man is four blocks away and can’t help me”.  Please take this opportunity to assume personal responsibility for own personal protection Gaby!  This is not an advertisement for the NRA, because as I mentioned, I prefer dogs to guns.  Dogs sleep lighter than guns.

Best wishes on Gaby Dunn’s future success in comedy.

Enjoy.