do something nifty with my website

Wow. I’m not sure quite why (actually, the catalyst was an offhand comment about that domain name from a long-lost NYC-era friend who recently tracked me down again over the internet), but the spirit moved me last night, and I sat down and did a Photoshop mockup of the site, and started doing the actual web design to turn it into something, well, functional. I think in its new incarnation it’s going to be kind of an e-zine, which seems like it could be sort of noxious, except that I’m pretty cool, and most of the people I befriend or who have befriended me are pretty cool, and they generally write well and have interesting things to say. So.

That’s going to be the real challenge, actually—obtaining and/or generating content. Once I’ve got a skeleton site up there, though, I think I’ll send out an email to all the smart and articulate people I know and tell them that, if they have something to say, I’ll put it up there. And then, hopefully, the thing will fill up, and it’ll take on a life of its own.

It’s sort of fun, though, however it turns out, to be getting going with this goal. It’s been kind of on my “things to do” list since 1998, in one way or another, and it seems like it’s actually going to get realized, at least in its initial implementation, imminently. So. Right on.

Funny. Partly because I put this up here as a goal, partly because it’s been burbling around in the back of my brain for years, partly because of recent stupid politics with the literary review that NAU puts out (in theory, anyway) every year, I found myself mentioning my ownership of this domain to some of my colleagues here at the U, and noting that given the domain name, it would make a kick-ass online literary ‘zine. And folks have agreed with me, and have even gotten on board, philosophically, with the idea of doing a ‘zine that has nothing to do with the U, but exists as kind of a more aesthetically worthy and far less politically complicated and annoying endeavor. So. We shall see. More as this develops.

I’ve had the damn thing since 1998, when I started this freelance graphic design business in NYC. I put up a placeholder page, and, well, never got around to doing anything more. I don’t live in the Big Apple anymore, and I don’t do freelance design anymore, but the domain name is pretty cool—”wordandimage(dot)com”, and especially given that I’m all about the writing these days, I feel like I should put some sort of ‘zine up there or something.