And then you take that baby to the Evil Baby Orphanage.

Current results from my Nerdfighter Songbook survey. Is it more weird that Alex Day has been consistently 1-2 votes ahead of Charlie and Chameleon Circuit every time I’ve checked, or that I totally would not have called that?

Someone tagged this video as “Wise”! Yeah, I’m all like a cartoon owl and shit.

I was totally congested this day and for some reason those few traces of Midwestern accent I picked up in Michigan started leaking out. I wonder if that somehow made me sound even wiser?

In John Green’s mid-tour “Thoughts From Places” video, he made the following comment:

“Writing is something you do alone. It’s a profession for introverts who want to tell you a story but don’t want to make eye contact while telling it.”

I know John didn’t say that writing can ONLY be done alone, or that it’s a profession ONLY for introverts, but I got the impression that that is what he meant, and that’s the message I’d like to address.

It’s true that many writers are introverts. The idea of the “reclusive writer” is so common as to be a trope in film, television, and books, and it is of course based partly on reality.

But it is far from true that all writers prefer to write alone, are introverts, and prefer to tell their stories without looking someone in the eye.

For example: I am a writer. Anyone who knows me will tell you I am far from introverted. And I love to tell stories, whether that’s face-to-face or through the written word. I love to tell the sort of story that’s just “Oh man, I met this guy this one time and,” and I love to read my written stories out loud.

So why do I write stories down? I want to tell my stories to more people than I can ever get face-to-face. I want to tell my stories to people who aren’t yet alive. I want to keep telling stories after I’m dead, and no longer capable of doing so face-to-face, or eye-to-eye.

So, there’s the other side of that coin.

Donate to help a nerd couple in the most difficult of times. Wash Pratt-King has terminal brain cancer, and his wife Tashi is his full-time caregiver. He was given 9-12 months to live two years ago, but nerds are fighters. Help make their last days together more awesome and less sucky by donating to cover care and end-of-life expenses.

If you can’t donate, boost the signal!

Confidential to Nerdfighters: I’m trying to get Hank and John to consider making a donation from the Foundation to Decrease Worldsuck. Try tweeting them something like this:

@realjohngreen @hankgreen This is an excellent candidate for the Foundation to Decrease Worldsuck! http://savewash.com

At the Nerdfighter gathering today. Yeah, I have some peanut butter frosting on my face…it’s kind of hard to explain.

Man, ultimate-guitar.com’s targeted ads are REALLY targeted.

As if I didn’t have enough on my plate with recording an album and booking a ukulele show and working on a solo project and starting a second band, I’ve got a new piece of braincrack.

I want to create a Nerdfighter Songbook.

This would be a collection of songs that Nerdfighters love, with lyrics and chords, to facilitate jam/session/singalongs at Nerdfighter gatherings. I’m thinking I’d create a PDF for people to download and print out themselves, but if enough people take an interest in the project, physical copies could be a possibility (providing cooperation from DFTBA and the involved artists, of course).

But first, what I need is information! There’s no point in making a songbook if it’s not full of songs Nerdfighters want most, and the first step is to narrow the field to artists. Please take the following survey and include your voice in this process!

Click here to take survey now!

The Tour de Nerdfighting Vlog
or: An Awful Lot of Screaming

In the flurry of finishing this video and getting it up on YouTube, I forgot to mention it here. This is by far the most complicated project I’ve undertaken since I started dabbling in video-editing this year, and I’m pretty pleased with the results. The only aspects of the video I do not look on with a satisfied eye are due mostly to the limitations of iMovie.

My new Thing is not letting myself just say “I wish I knew how to do that.” I wished I knew how to edit video, and my laptop came with free video-editing software, so why not? I don’t expect to become an amazing editor, or for video-editing to be my new hobby, but I’m enjoying the learning. Plus, it’s a useful skill to have as an independent artist relying on the Internet for promotion.

What do you want to learn?

I’ve finally completed and uploaded the collaborative vlog I did with my friend Brigid, aka Birghita13 on YouTube. It’s posted on her channel because, y’know, she actually vlogs and has twice the subscribers I do.

I’ve just gotten interested in video editing in the last six months (“Learn to use imovie” is on my list of 29 Things To Do Before I Turn 30), and this is definitely the most complicated project I’ve tackled thus far. I’m pretty pleased with it; in fact, the only aspects of it that I do not regard with pleasure are due mostly to the limitations of imovie, and perhaps the fact that Brigid does not have access to a good microphone.

The Seattle stop of the Tour de Nerdfighting was a pretty magical event, and so definitely deserved to be preserved in vlog form.