i'm sending doc to WinCo this week. we need four packets of popcorn and a pound of dog biscuits. i've started giving Chewy more biscuits to reward him for good behavior. and he is good a lot, so he goes through a lot of biscuits. he has still shown no interest in his pigs ear or his greenie bone or his rawhide chew. instead going for a stuffed cat toy. this is okay, Vader and TeenyTulip like the pigs ear. and having the greenie around makes us look like good pet parents. this dog is too spoiled for his own good.
i actually wrote a funny poem in my marathon. I think i wrote around a dozen poems and commented on over a hundred written by others over the past two days. mostly today. though it is a blur and i really can't tell one day of this weekend from the other. i learned that the site gives a gold membership (if only for a limited time) to the biggest commenters each week. i spend roughly five minutes on each poem i read and comment on. so this is my new goal. gold memberships are expensive, even if i had money to spend on something like this i wouldn't have a gold membership. and gold members get their poems featured on the front page of the site. and they get to put pictures in their posts.
i'm currently having a conflict about pictures in posts. helpful if you use a photo as inspiration. there are a few girls who post selfies in their posts. i'm really torn about that. i can't make fun of it because it is something i would do just for the hell of it. but some people just go apeshit with this picture thing, putting one between each stanza and before and after the piece itself. too many. and most of the time, they have nothing to do with the piece, which i don't understand. it just detracts from the poem. there is also a habit with gold members to fuck with the font, just because they can. and they do the most awful shit with font size and highlighting, especially highlighting. change the color of the font, don't highlight for chrissakes. and don't highlight black with dark blue.
and i'm seeing this with poetry sites on the web.they are almost always cheap looking with "borrowed" graphics and pictures stacked up for no good reason than they appealed to the "designer" at some point or another. and questionable HTML skills. i have gone for a designed up site coming up because i don't plan to have the pages with the actual poetry all dressed up. the poetry should stand alone, with no distractions. plain text, easy to read color schemes, good formatting. and punctuation and spelling! i even have punctuation as a requirement on my contests. it drives me crazy when people don't punctuate their poems. the line breaks are random according to each poet, you need punctuation to guide the reader through the pauses and the stops, don't leave them to intuit it. i am guilty of this myself. it was only after i stopped reading so frequently and gathered more material than i could stay familiar with, did i realize the importance of punctuation.
that's why i'm re-editing the books. they are atrocious and i'm glad i didn't sell any copies. i would hate to have them out there. the new versions will be flawless. i am seeing to it. the punctuation is sporadic. and it turns out i'm doing some revising and rewriting. i've been reading more professional published poets and taking a clue from their editing fanaticism. maybe it's better i just do raw poetry. even when i change something it's never big. never big enough to change the tone or meaning or add to it or take away from it. just a preposition here and there, and extra descriptive word when it fits. this reminds, me, i wanted to edit a short story i wrote on allpoetry today. i'm going to go continue playing there. i like it when i comment on fifty people and then go to sleep and wake up to a hundred comment applause and comments on my own stuff. plus contests are ending today and i want to enter as many as my muse will allow.