Ramblings at the Gate

It's a pensive evening and I'm sitting around thinking about nothing. How is that? I'm not sure. It's a cool, crisp, and a bit rainy July evening that is perfect for letting the mind drift into new places. But somehow it's not. Hmmm...

I want to write a couple of more comics strips tonight but I'm not sure if I'll get to it. I've been writing and illustrating about five strips a week in advance of setting up a web site to display them. I've been putting off setting up the website because it's something I don't enjoy too much.

It really is a lot of work making a functional and good looking web site. It involves a lot of moving things over an eighth of an inch and contemplating how it looks there as opposed to there. Endless minutia and endless contemplation of boring-ass gradients. It really is dull stuff. It's much more interesting making the strips. Plus the website probably doesn't even matter. Who's ever going to see it?

For me the joy in making anything is the making of it. The odds of any creative endeavor making anyone money or bringing them fame is slim to none. If that is your expectation then prepare to be disappointed. And most of us get disappointed. So I enjoy the act of adding something to the world. Even if the world doesn't know it.

Of course I generally don't care what the world knows. It matters to me more what I know. That's what I'm in charge of. Plus the world cares about way too many things that I don't care about. Mostly pop culture stuff. I have no interest in the latest hit movie, song, or TV show. I can find my own things of that nature to like. It's pretty easy. They broadcast them right into our homes.

Now I'm rambling. Where was I? Contemplating the nature of contemplating? That's little odd.

I was just contemplating the NFL's announcement that next year they are moving the NFL draft to prime time. I'm against the idea. It ruins the good time my friends and I have on draft day.

For the last few years we'd hang out on a spring Saturday afternoon (the draft continued on Sunday but we were done with it by then) while the NFL draft was going on and have some pizza and shoot the breeze. It was an oasis of football in the off season and an excuse to get together and hang out. Not a ton of "Watching the draft" really went on because there is not much to watch.

Next year the draft will be on a Thursday night at 8 PM. They want to get a bigger TV audience but I think it will be a smaller audience. No one will be getting together on a Thursday night and consequently anyone who watches the draft will actually have to watch the draft. You really don't want to do that. The draft is long and boring. And I'm one of the people who likes it.

I think there is no way that as many people will be interested in the draft on a Thursday and Friday night. A Saturday afternoon is one thing but after a long day at work who wants to sit by themselves and be bored by talking heads killing time between draft picks? Bad move NFL. Way to spoil my good time.

I'm in the mood for some video game football now. Too bad there are no football games I like. I'm not a Madden fan which is the last of the officially licensed NFL games since Electronic Arts payed for the exclusive rights to use NFL players and teams. I still have my older NFL 2K games and do like them okay but they are far from perfect. I want to play a near perfect NFL football video game. Sucks for me that it doesn't exist. Such is life.

I'll sign off now before I ramble on any more about another topic completely unrelated to anything that has gone before. It's that kind of night. Think I'll write those comic strips now. Maybe I can pull something out of my brain.