OMG…I always forget my freaking blog’s birthday.  One August 15th WhatSomeWouldCallLies turned three!

My first post was This is the one that explains it all.  I started this website just a few months before I decided to pack up and move to Arizona.  So this page became a way to connect with friends that lived far away, and it helped me meet new friends in the desert.

Two years ago I started posting weekly affirmations like this one.  And then I would post quotations like this.  And I would post weekly pictures of kids using their middle fingers like this one.   But it was a lot of work, and nobody ever said that they enjoyed them…so I stopped.

A lot happens in a year…one year ago I was busy making the Mike Lawson font, and changing my Twitter Avatar.  And just over a year ago I started working at the Club that I work at now.

In 2008 I wrote a birthday post that included some of my favorite posts.  Check that birthday post out here.

Do you follow me on Twitter?  Are you a friend on Facebook?

Microblogging has kind of taken over, and sometimes I write pithier more direct things on these sites.  Sometimes I’m funnier there.  Sometimes I’m not.

Whatever.  Here’s a list of 20 of my favorite Facebook/Twitter updates that you may have or may have not seen this summer:

1.Twitter: I just realized that my website has a bug in Internet Explorer…and I kind of don’t care. Upgrade people. 11:12 AM Jun 8th

2. Twitter: At a house party, and I will be surprised if there is NOT a gang fight or drive by before I leave. 8:36 PM Jun 26th

3. Facebook:  A spoonful of sugar is sort of counterproductive when taking medicine for my type 1 diabetes. Thanks anyway, Ms. Poppins.

4. Twitter: hadababyitsaboy 11:37 PM Jun 25th

5. Facebook:  I’m filling out an online application and documenting my work experience. Under “Employer” I wrote “Disneyland.” Under “Brief description of the company” I’m tempted to write “Seriously, it’s fucking Disneyland.”

6. Twitter: I’m at Some random lady’s house (9035 E Blanche Dr, Scottsdale). http://4sq.com/9D5eoq 11:29 PM Jun 19th via foursquare

7. Facebook: Quote of the night…”so she started making out with this guy, well she thought he was a guy.”

8. Twitter: Once you go black, you’ll never go back…and I’m talking about carbon-copy paper that is left in a hot car. 10:09 AM Jul 24th

9. Facebook: When my coworker said “there are a lot of hot guys at my gym, and that makes it easy to come.” I giggled for an hour.

10. Twitter: During a game of “TELEPHONE” today an 8-year-old turned the phrase “I like dinosaurs” into “I like ball sacs” just to be funny. #FML 11:29 AM Jun 18th

11. Facebook: For the record, guys DO make passes at boys that wear glasses.

12. Facebook: If you’ve ever thought it would be okay to swim with contacts in and you’d just keep your eyes shut, don’t do it. I’m blind all day today.

13. Twitter:  I just saw two crazy homeless guys arguing at the library about waiters and enchiladas. Wtf? 1:11 PM Jul 25th

14. Facebook: Doubt what they say, and believe what they do.

15. Twitter: Do your best & forget the rest. 10:27 PM May 27th

16. Twitter: This place is gayer than Amsterdam on a Saturday. Just saying. (@ Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market) http://4sq.com/77eukP

17. Twitter: I may or may not be wearing a shirt that is too tight. 6:36 PM Jul 26th

18. Twitter: long story, but I just had to add the word “faggot” to my cell’s dictionary, kept trying to change it to fargo. 5:28 PM May 22nd

19. do you ever feel like some people talk loud and say nothing? 7:29 AM May 21st

20. Twitter: Going some place to do some thing…that’s all I know. 9:27 AM Jul 17th

This post is kind of a hodgepodge of topics that I’m throwing together.

Firstly, I want to say that Summer Camp is almost over.  If your’e counting, I’ve got two days left.  That means in two days I will have a bit more free time, and I won’t be at work from sun rise to sunset.  I really couldn’t be more happy about this.  Whenever our After School Program is ending and we’re gearing up for summer, I find myself thinking, “I’m so ready to be done with the After School Program.  Thank god summer is starting.”  And now that summer is winding down, I’m thinking the opposite.

Secondly I’m taking a group of teenagers to California’s Six Flags amusement park tonight.  We’re leaving around midnight and returning at 6 a.m. on Friday.  I’m quite certain I’ll be bored, so follow me on Twitter to converse with me on the trip.

I also finished two books in the past week (give or take).  The 33rd book I read this year was Lux The Poet by Martin Millar.  In ten words: Incredibly jarbled and choppy but it is a decent story.  The 34th book I read in 2010 was Indecision by Benjamin Kunkel.  I picked up the book because I heard Kunkel on a radio interview or podcast (I don’t remember where) and came across his new relase at the library.  In ten words: Convoluted and not worth the time it took to read.

For those of you that still read this blog, thanks.  I’ll be giving it more attention in the near future.

I nerd out about website traffic stats from time-to-time, but I don’t obsess over how many of y’all are reading this silly site.  I did notice a few trends I thought I’d point out though.

Firstly, there has been a spike in readers that access this site from a local university (which will be censored so your boss won’t Google that and fire every last one of you).

Here is what your clicks look like, un-named University employees:

I should also note that Google brings in the most searches for this site, by far.  In a distant second is Yahoo.  And third place goes to AOL.  Fourth is Bing.  I’m serious…more people are using AOL than Bing.  Haha!

Here are a list of things that people have Googled to find this site.  My favorites are in bold.  The ones that creep me out are in red.

1. What Some Would Call Lies
2. Mike Lawson
3. Some Call it Lies
4. Carl Karcher net worth
5. Passive aggressive boyfriend
6. “Mike Lawson” horses
7. my paper to do list
8. aggressive boyfriend
9. ambiguous sign for sale
10. arizona photo enforcement
11. barista fetish
12. cool eye glasses ad
13. creative glasses ad
14. daniel karcher carl karcher
15. funny eye glasses ad
16. funny picture first day of summer
17. girl uses lighter to burn
18. glee is for drama fags
19. google reader vs
20. how to steal back mayorship
21. in what some call lies
22. internet witches
23. job, mom, call
24. many a true word oft spoke in jest
25. michael lawson in arizona
26. mike lawson blogger
27. mike lawson what some call lies
28. mike rowe
29. Mike Rowe pubic hair
30. my boss lies
31. nun figurines
32. passive aggressive wireless
33. scary internet stories for kids
34. syntactically ambiguous headlines
35. theater fag
36. witch kidnapping children

Don’t forget, kids.  Everything you do on the net can be seen by someone somewhere.



This post was inspired by a conversation I had recently with my friend Bethany who has a blog called Me With D.  She’s wonderful, and if you are interested in reading a diabetes blog, check her out.

The gist of our conversation was this: where does a blogger draw the line between blog readers and personal friends?  How does one…or I guess is it necessary to keep your two online identities separate?

I’m super connected.  My blog is linked to my Facebook which is linked to my twitter which is linked to my blog…etc, etc.  Some of my Facebook friends I met on twitter, or they are blog readers.

My personal point of view is this: if someone is reading my blog or following me on Twitter, they’re probably doing it because they (a) know me (b) also blog and twitter or (c) enjoy my insipid tales of writing to people in prison or singing songs at inappropriate times.  Whatever the case, I’m pretty confident that there aren’t any scary Internet stalkers out there that are going to hunt me down and carve their initials in my car or anything.

I guess this opinion is parallel to the one I wrote here called This is the one about scary Internet witches that want to kidnap your children and cook them. Ten years ago people feared that the Internet would find a way to intrude on their lives in the same way Ray Bradbury wrote about in Fahrenheit 451…that we would all eventually stop being the viewers and become the viewed.  Which if you think about it, has happened.  All of us broadcast to the world what we’re doing at any given moment.  But the prophetable (did I just make that word up??) words of Bradbury and Huxley never predicted the usefulness of being constantly watched…or at least constantly available to be watched.

It’s easy for us to say that over-sharing our information will lead to bad things.  Protect our privacy to protect ourselves…right?  The only problem with the privacy-is-so-important stuff is that we’re not giving value to mass sharing.  Just a couple of weeks ago, for example, I tweeted that I was going to see a show and had two extra tickets.  And Keesha and her husband, who I had not before met and know solely through blogging, responded and showed up…and the four of us had a lovely evening.

And I could even make the case that the most personal of stories I share here are the ones that get the most comments and affect people the most deeply.  I’ve received more comments and emails about the Diabetes Police video and my coming out story which are both SUPER personal, than any others.  Gay and straight.  Diabetic and non-diabetic.

So to cut to it…yes, I get personal here.  That’s why I do this.  If I had to somehow edit out details, it would almost not be worth doing.  Additionally, it’s too difficult for me to keep up two separate online identities.  Truthfully, it’s hard to squeeze in enough time to update one Facebook,twitter and blog.
So since I’m in the mood for over-sharing, here you go:

In the past couple of months I’ve found that I’m spending fewer idle hours on the internet.  Which is good, I guess.  But my Google Reader is full, and it’s making me a little anxious.

First, if there are any non-nerds reading, I should define Google Reader as a web-based aggregator, which is capable of reading Atom and RSS feeds on or offline.  Umm…still confused?  How about this: it’s one website where you can read all of your favorite websites when they are updated.

Good.

So I subscribe to 124 feeds.  And I’ve got everything categorized into fifteen folders:

* Blogs (written by people I know…virtually or otherwise)
* Local (local food and news)
* Productivity (ironically one of the biggest time-sucks)
* Design & Coding (web stuff)
* Android (phone stuff)
* Orange County Politics
* Diabetes Blogs
* Design (like interior design)
* Technology
* Entertainment
* LGBT
* Blogging
* Links to me (I created a feed that shares links when someone links to this website)
* Work (things related to my profession)

I easily get over 1,000 articles a day in my reader.  And when I was reading things every day, that wasn’t a huge deal.  Granted I used to breeze past a lot of stuff…or just mark entire folders as read if I wasn’t interested that day.  But I kind of feel like now I’m overfed – too much to read, not enough time to read it.  So what goes?

I’m kind of impressed with my abilities this afternoon.  Today, with two sharpies and about fifteen pieces of paper, I re-worked What Some Would Call Lies.

If you’re reading in a reader, click through.

This scribbled, doodled, kind of look had been something I wanted to throw together for some time.  It was inspired, actually by a valentine card from a few years ago.  Anyway.  It’s new.  It’s cute.  Enjoy it.

The only thing that I don’t love is that depending on your screen resolution, you may not be able to see ALL of the doodles in the background.  So click here to see the image full-sized.

I love you guys.  All five of you that read this blog regularly.  In fact, I love you so much that each time I pass one of those pesky speed cameras on the freeway, I smile.  Or I make a silly face.  Or I flip the bird.

If you’re not familiar, Arizona’s freeways have speed cameras that flash your picture if you’re going 12 mph over the speed limit.  And then they mail you a ticket with your photograph.

I’m a pretty good driver, and I don’t normally speed.  But each time that I pass one of the cameras I think of you guys…and how fun it would be to post the picture that would go with the ticket.

First off, I bought a Speedo.  Don’t judge.  I just put it on in the locker room, and prance out to the pool.  Nobody has time to see how I’ve inelegantly squished my junk into it.  This does, however, call for some serious manscaping.  And since I’ve started seeing results at the gym I’m not all embarrassed to be seen in the speedo.  The one area that really needs some of my attention tanning.  Why are gay men so superficial, btw? (There was a lot of TMI in that paragraph…sorry.)

Since my guest post on SixUntilMe.com, I’ve received a lot of really supportive emails, tweets, comments.  Thanks to everyone that read it and sent me support in any form.  Additionally, I should mention that I wrote the post soon after we hit splitsville and just posted recently – so I’ve done some serious healing since then.  And if you liked the post, you might also like the comments that people posted (at the time of this writing there are 31 comments).  The majority of them are supportive, but there’s also a few criticisms of my diabetes v.s. cancer comparison.

I’ve been pretty religious about the my gym routine.  Sure there is the obvious benefits…I use less insulin in a day after I’ve run a couple of miles, my energy level is higher, etc.  Those are all really great reasons, but the main reason I’ve gone six or seven times a week is to keep up the foursquare mayorship.  Since the last time I obsessively blogged about foursquare, I have earned a Photogenic badge for checking in at three locations that have photo booths (?!) and a Bravo Newbie badge when I ate dinner the other night at Fez…which, like Bravo, is clearly gay but straight people don’t always realize it.

My reading has slowed down a bit.  I blogged about the bizzaro couple of days where I was starting books and then deciding not to reading them.  If I’ve ever made fun of you for starting books and never finishing them, I take it all back.  It’s really not something that I do…and it has kind of ruined some of my momentum.  But then I found a James Patterson book (so?!) that gave me my mojo back, and I’ll be posting about the 22nd and 23rd book I’ve read this year pretty soon, I’m sure.

I’m listening to a lot of podcasts now.  A lot.  Like close to a dozen.  Since I’ve last updated y’all on my podcast listening, I’ve added The Big Gay News Podcast (daily gay-related news), Democracy Now! (daily political talk show that I used to listen to on Pacifica when I lived in LA), Johnjay and Rich (it’s a cut up version of their local radio show), Jordan, Jesse GO! (nerdy weekly podcast by two straight guys), NPR: Fresh Air (daily interview show), Pod Is My Copilot (weekly shoot-the-shit podcast), Stuff You Should Know (they pick one topic and break it down so even us stupids could understand it), The NerdistThe Q Cast Connection (which is Chris Hardwick’s podcast), (a bunch of homos from Florida sit around and talk).  My iPod has basically been turned into a podcast-listening device.  Music is for emotional people.

Devout readers of my insipid blog may remember back in August 2009 when I created a font of my own handwriting and made it available for download here.

It’s the same font that I use in the header of this page.  Well recently, Brian from CheapBlueGuitar.com re-designed his blog’s header and used my handwriting.  Look:

Yeah!!  I’m famous.