Tag Archives: archive

Skipped out…

Posted on by

So yeah, I skipped yesterday. It doesn’t happen very often and while I make no apologies for taking a day off now and then, I like to think I’m delivering you some great old posts this morning by way of making up for being a lazy sod yesterday.

This week’s archive posts include one of my favorite rants – one about economics, freeloaders, and expectations. You might be able to imagine that it’s a topic about which I feel rather passionate. The good news is that while so much of the world has changed since May 2008, my own opinions have remained remarkably stable. There’s just something to be said about consistency over time.

The other four posts are entertaining in their own right, of course, but the rant on May 6th is the one you’re going to want to read if you don’t have time to look them all over this Sunday morning. So go forth, enjoy, and be back tomorrow evening when we once again go live with fresh material and I do my part to be a voice of sanity in a world gone mad.

Old school Sunday…

Posted on by

This week’s posts from ye olde MySpace blog come to you from April 2008. All things considered it must have been a pretty average slice of life. By that I mean I wasn’t ranting and raving about anything in particular – although I should point out that there was a fun little piece about the ridiculous complaints we were hearing on the news way back the. Think stock market, gas prices, etc.

Every Sunday I see the number of posts waiting in the queue dropping and I’m almost a little sad that these Sunday posts will be coming to an end sooner rather than later. We’re under 10,000 words in the unpublished archive as of this morning. It looks like we’re down to another 12 weeks of these Sunday posts before I’m going to need to come up with something new and interesting to say on Sunday mornings. There look like enough posts to carry Sunday’s through the end of the year at this point. After that, the field of topics will again be wide open. I guess the new year is as good a time as any to kick of in a new direction.

Until we burn that bridge, I hope you’ll continue to enjoy old school Sunday.

A few extra…

Posted on by

This Sunday’s archive posts were a little light on content and a little long on lack of sleep if I don’t miss my mark. These were all from the week or two immediately after Winston joined the family, so puppy patrol was the order of the day and the blog definitely suffered as a result. Since I’m a good guy, I’ve added a few extra posts to the usual Sunday Five this week. Hopefully you’ll consider volume a sufficient substitute for lack of depth this week.

Posts from March and April 2008 are up and available for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy this week’s no-strings-attached trip down memory lane.

Traditions…

Posted on by

In keeping with my now long-standing Sunday tradition, I’m pleased to present this week’s installment of Sunday morning archive posts. Today’s selections come to you live and unedited via tape delay direct from March 2008. From Spring snow in Memphis to contemplating the end of a major stage of my career, we’re covering a lot of ground this week. There weren’t any epic rants in mid-March, so apparently most things were right with the world. I guess even I have weeks like that now and then. I suspect I’ll look back on more recent posts in five or six years and find that I’ve gotten more jaded an cynical over time. Some people would argue that’s a bad thing. I’d argue that it just makes for more entertaining writing.

Check back tomorrow when I’ll be blogging in the present day. I haven’t picked out a topic yet, but I’m sure someone, somewhere will do something ridiculous that will need commentary. One of the great perks of being an observer by nature is that it leaves you with an almost limitless supply of material. Even though I avoid people as a matter of principle, I do appreciate them as a source of content. I’ll be waiting for my Humanitarian of the Year award.

Defining “normal”…

Posted on by

I’m glad I’ve got this backlog of old posts to work through on Sunday mornings, because quite frankly I’m nowhere near caffeinated enough yet to be all that coherent. Loading you up with old posts from MySpace is a convenient crutch for a brain that’s probably an hour or two from firing on all cylinders. That won’t last forever, but I’ll lean on it as long as possible.

This week’s archive selections feature posts originally made in February and March 2008, a time when I was contemplating getting a dog and changing career trajectory. Honestly it’s so far from today’s “normal” that it doesn’t even feel like the same life… and of course that leads to the inevitable questions about if life five years ago was so different, how different will life be five year from now. It’s a fun question in theory, but let’s just say I’m not ready to spend alot of time pondering 2018 and life after 40 just yet. I’m not sure there’s enough caffein in the country to get me to go there yet.

Enjoy this morning’s archive posts and I’ll be back with a “live” tomorrow for your reading pleasure.

Winter in the archives…

Posted on by

We’re well into winter in the jeffreytharp.com archives. This Sunday’s update comes to you from January and February 2008. Grad school was wrapping up, home improvements were happening, it was before things went off the rails for me in Memphis. It’s so strange to read these old posts and relive the experience, especially when I’m looking at it through hindsight’s lens and knowing that a few years later the neighbor’s questionable approach to lawn care would drop precipitously down the list of things I cared about. Early 2008 was still good times in the Mid-South. And if this little blast of nostalgia is any indication, apparently I’ve added enough distance now to start looking back on some of that time a little fondly.

It’s a new year…

Posted on by

It’s a new year, or at least it’s a new year in the archives. This morning the calendar rolled forward to 2008 and I’m happy to deliver up for you the first five posts from January. If I’m remembering the year right, it was one of those perfect storms of family obligations, trying to slog through to the end of grad school, slowly starting to realize that I wasn’t as in love with work as I thought I was, and the usual malcontentery that you find here on a regular basis. Not all of those themes come through in this first set of posts, but that should give you the flavor of what was banging around in my head when they first appeared on ye olde MySpace blog.

Each of today’s archive posts first appeared over five years ago now. It’s remarkable how some things change and some feel like they’re in exactly the same place they were 2000 days ago. Life’s funny like that.

Without any further suspense, go ahead and check out the archive for January 2008.

A short December…

Posted on by

Yeah in and year out, December regularly has the lowest readership of any month of the year. Everyone is busy and that’s to be expected while they’re attempting to fill the world with their personal version of holiday cheer. I mean, I can’t really expect everyone to drop their Christmas planning just because a new post or two show up on the internet. The logical result is that December became something of a dumping ground around here. Since the numbers weren’t on my side, posts got less frequent, shorter, and weren’t exactly “A” level material in a lot of cases. I like to think more recent Decembers have seen that trend reverse a bit as I try to keep the focus on delivering quality pith every day of the year.

December 2007 was seriously short on posts. It looks like I was only managing to get my act together every three or four days back then… and what did show up was often super short and lacked the snark that I think helps define jeffreytharp.com.

What does that mean to you? Well, instead of dribbling them out over two weeks, I’ve taken the unprecedented step of posting the entire month’s worth of material in one go. With these 10 posts, we can bring 2007 to an end. Next sunday, I hope you’ll join me as we launch headlong into 2008. With only ten months and 14,000 words of archive material left to post, this little project is closer to its end than its beginning. I still think it’s been a worthwhile effort if only to remind me about how ridiculous our own pasts can sound when we have the benefit of hindsight.

Racing towards the end of the year…

Posted on by

I’ve spent the last twenty minutes blowing the dust of five posts from the archives and couldn’t help but notice that we’ve worked almost all of the way through 2007. The last of the November posts are up and December has made it’s first appearance. Time flies when you’re having fun. Especially when you’re posting material from before the point when you got the ridiculous idea that posting every day was a good idea.

This week is the usual assortment of minutia, complaints about the onrushing Christmas holiday, and a fun little post from a time in my life when I was still professionally ambitious. Those always make me smile. It never ceases to amaze me how much your Give-a-Shit level can change in six short years.

Enjoy the archive posts and be sure to check back tomorrow for brand new gripes and complaints.

Why I like Sundays…

Posted on by

The best part of these little Sunday trips down memory lane is that every now and then you run across a post describing an experience you completely forgot about. This morning was one of Its_Dead_Jimthose days. After posting four admittedly mundane posts from 2007, the fifth turned out to be a real gem: The saga of my first flat screen TV purchase and the hilarity that ensued. Sure, it sounds like another run of the mill “what I did today” posts, but give it a look and I think you’ll agree that it’s worth the read.

Without the need for further introduction, I give you mid-November 2007 from the Archives.