I left The Onion for a few years. After a bit, it’s brand of fake news, while always amusing, generally seemed re-hashed. How many times can one read an article about “Local Man” and think it’s hilarious? Then they started Onion Network News and the variety of shows from morning news, to cable talk to a CSPAN spoof completely blew me away. High production values combined with smart jokes drew me back in. Now, they’ve added reality TV in the form of a clip on their morning news show. It doesn’t get much better than this

Autoworkers Compete to Keep Jobs, Livelihoods on New Reality Show

There’s something deeply disturbing about this as, well, it just doesn’t seem too far off the truth considering the day’s headlines. But man it’s funny, and smart.

A friend who noticed that I hadn’t posted anything here since April 7 asked me that question yesterday. It’s a fair one. If I were you, I’d sure wonder why I hate my blog so much. I haven’t posted in awhile, it’s true.

Now, I could come up with a litany of excuses having to do with being busy, having no time, and feeling uninspired to write in a timely manner about any of the real-life adventures I’ve had lately, but you’ve heard it all before. What it boils down to is this: I’ve used all of the above combined with the power of social networking, as one uber-reason to focus on Twitter. Yes. I know. Twitter. I feel dirty just saying it. But maybe it helps a little knowing that I had a Twitter account long ago, before it was popular.

Still though, Twitter is stupid. Ans it’s stupid because it’s easy. That’s probably why I’ve liked it so much lately. One does not have to think about what one is writing or linking to, one just has to throw together 140 characters and it’s off into the world. There’s no need for excuses about being lazy or uninspired there, because if you can’t find something interesting to say in 140 characters at least once a day, you’re likely just dead.

You know what the worst part of it is? I started a new category on this blog called Apropos of Nothing to hold posts that I was writing quickly about things I saw online that I would normally tweet because my blog feeds headlines to my Twitter. Then I quickly started ignoring it. (Actually, I forgot about it because I got busy, but that’s just another excuse.) Guess I need to try and get back to that at least because, you know what? I don’t hate my blog. I just get lazy.

But I can hear you all clamoring for more. At least in my mind’s ear I can hear that, so tell me if you give a shit. Do you care what kinds of posts I put here? Do you want tales of real life adventures? If so, do they need to be timely? Often I want to post pictures/video and thoughts about my weekend, but by the time Wednesday comes around and I have time to, I figure, “who the fuck cares anymore?” Is that true?

Or would you rather I just put something, anything, here and let you find it via my twitter feed, my Facebook page or my RSS feed? It’s a busy, busy world out there and I want to give you the amount and type of Charlie-related content you demand in the form you want it. So tell me dear reader, what do you want and how do you want it?

I haven’t written for Seattlest in a long time. My work days are just too busy. But an incident Sunday prompted me to send  a missive he turned into an Op-Ed called Charles Redell Lays out a Case Against Fixies:

…when a bike rider ran into my car on Sunday, it was particularly disturbing. It also made me think about how the accident could have been avoided.

Check it out and let me know what you think, either here, or there.

It’s not the OED or anything, yet, but an article I wrote on Dead Malls is being used by Double-Tongued Dictionary as a reference for a new word entering the language: greyfield.

Dead malls, referred to as “greyfields” in the New Urbanist community, are formally defined as failing malls with sales less than $150 per square foot, according to the non-profit Congress for New Urbanism (CNU).

It’s completely geeky, but for a writer like me, it’s way cool!