It's so funny, this information age we're living in. Other than my wife, I'm finding that the people I converse with most often are, for all intents and purposes, imaginary. Or at least invisible. The Cult community keeps me in touch with dozens of people that, if I'm lucky, I met maybe once. Then there's my family, who lives hundreds of miles away. I talk to them quite regularly especially now that the Steelers are on their way to Detroit (I'm a bandwagon fan, but I've been that way since their last Superbowl trip ten years ago, so that counts for... something). Then there are people who I worked with years ago but they left the company for other opportunities. I hear from them every so often and it's always a pleasure. But the people all around me, I somehow never find time for them. My own fault, so busy all the time with these crazy schemes and ideas. It's so funny, this information age, where you can now reach out for people in ways that weren't even possible back when the Steelers went to their last Superbowl.

It's like the opportunity becomes obligation - given the choice to talk to someone a few blocks away, or in another country, which would you choose? It's all so new that it still feels like you might not get the chance again if you don't take it now. Of course, that's bullshit. The opportunities keep multiplying. God help me if I ever cave in and get a myspace page.

The funny thing about getting older is that instead of feeling like you're missing out on some hot new trendy @*%#, you feel superior that you don't give a @*%#.

So I'm writing this because I got a call from a friend who moved to Boston, just a way for him to kill some time on a long drive home, and for me to avoid doing any actual work on this thing. I started to talk about what's going on here, and it hit me that I never really explained why I picked "colored chalk" as a name. At least, not here.

Back when I was just doing a site for my band, back before 2000, back before the term 'blog' was floating around, I had this weird idea that maybe I should just jot down random thoughts while I'm waiting for my programs to compile at work. I figured I should put these little snippets into individual HTML files and save them and annoy my friends with them. I called that part of the website "colored chalk". I had invented my own version of this evil known as "the blog" without realizing it. And since I did all my HTML by hand back then, it was too much of a pain in the ass to keep going.

At the time, my favorite show was the Simpsons. I had seen every episode at least twice and could come up with a Simpsons quote for any occasion. Of all the episodes I'd seen, my second favorite episode was "Lisa the Vegetarian". That's the episode where Lisa started questioning eating meat, and many other things with it. These questions caused the faculty to trigger "independent thought alarms". After just two of these alarms, Principal Skinner got nervous.

Fearing the students were getting hyper, he ordered Groundskeeper Willie to remove all the colored chalk from the classrooms. Willie, of course, saw this coming. "Didn't I warn ya?!?! That colored chalk was forged by Lucifer himself!!!"

When I checked the registry and saw that the name was still available, I had to take it.

I still love the name. And I still think that episode was the second best of all time, except I can't claim I've seen them all anymore. Regardless, I still think that "Duffless" was the Best. Episode. Ever.

I don't watch the new episodes now. I guess it makes me feel superior, since I'm older and don't give a @*%#.

Stay tuned. Thanks for listening.