What Is The Sound of One Hand Typing?

I decided to rewrite my About page, for a couple of reasons: one, all the old one was attracting was spam, and two, it’s the original About page that was actually one of the first posts that I wrote way back in 2012, back when I had delusions of writing fiction. See, after a while I realized that I don’t even like to read fiction, let alone write it. I really should have rewritten this page a long time ago, but, well, you know how that goes.

About Me

I’m John Holton, retired because of disability in 2014, living in the Southeast with my wonderful, understanding, and especially patient wife Mary, with whom I’ve been married since January 1978. After many years of having many cats, we’re down to our last, Molly, who enjoys being an only cat. We’ve agreed to wait at least a year after she departs before considering a new cat. I used to think that cats were no work at all. Joke’s on me!

Why I blog

Back in the days when I thought I was the next Hemingway or Lee Child, I heard someone say that if you wanted to be a successful, published author, you had to have a blog to promote yourself. So I started because, hey, it beat actually writing. Not that there isn’t a lot of writing here, but it’s basically just blather. Some of the posts you’ll see here are candidates to be sold, but on the whole, it’s just me being a smartass.

Blog Hops

One of the other reasons I started to blog is so that I could participate in the many blog challenges and blog hops that exist on the Internet. The first, and maybe the most fun, is the Blogging From A To Z Challenge, which takes place in April. On each of the non-Sundays in April (there are rules for years when there are five Sundays), we blog on a specific topic, starting with a word that begins with A on the 1st and ending with a word that begins with Z on the 30th. It’s a lot of fun, you meet some interesting people and read a lot of interesting posts.

Weekly blog hops include:

Song Lyric Sunday: Run by Jim Adams. He provides us with the prompts and we go out and find a song that goes with them, sharing both the song and its lyrics.
Monday’s Music Moves Me: Run by Marie Moody, better known as Xmas Dolly. Marie or one of the "guest conductors" chooses a theme (e.g. "songs about dogs") and we participants share one or a dozen songs that fit the theme. Every other week is a "freebie," where we can share whatever we want.
Share Your World: Run by Melanie B Cee, who gives us three or four questions that we answer and post our answers on our blog.
One-Liner Wednesday: Run by Linda Hill. We either share a quote, an aphorism, a cartoon, a funny one-liner or whatever with the other participants and comment on theirs.
Mama Kat’s Pretty Much World-Famous Writer’s Workshop: Run by Kat Bouska, also known as Mama Kat. She shares six (more or less) prompts, we choose one and write about it.
Stream of Consciousness Saturday: Another Linda Hill blog hop. She provides a prompt, we sit down for 5 or 10 minutes and write about it with little or no editing, and share it.

Annual blog hops, besides the A to Z Challenge, are:

Just Jot-It January: Another Linda hop, it’s like 31 days of Stream of Consciousness Saturday.
Rocktober Music Fest: Run by Mary B. Participants post a rock song every day in October.

Other Regular Features

The Week That Was: A weekly summary of all that went on here at The Sound Of One Hand Typing in the previous week, along with a list of people who were kind enough to comment.
Song of the Day: After participating in Rocktober in 2019, several people asked if I’d continue, so I did. We’re now in our 14th month.
Top Ten Tuesday: Every week, I choose a radio station survey that I found on The Airheads Radio Survey Archive, Oldiesloon, Pinterest or someplace else, and count down its Top Ten using the videos on YouTube.
Five For Friday: My oldest regular feature, originally Two For Tuesday. I choose a musical artist or band and play five songs by them. I usually use a theme for a couple of months and choose my artists accordingly.
Battle of the Bands: On the 1st and 15th of each month, I join with several other bloggers and hold a Battle of the Bands, where I choose a song and two or more artists who have done that song, and open it to a vote on who did it better. I then announce the winner the following week.

Miscellany

Music: Yes, there’s a lot of music on the blog. I love music.

Television: I don’t watch a whole lot of current television. What TV I watch fits into one of three categories:

Classic TV such as that found on MeTV, Cozi TV, or Buzzr.
Commercial breaks, interstitials, station breaks, news breaks, signons, signoffs, EBS and EAS tests, PSA’s, etc. In other words, TV that isn’t the actual programs.
Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy!.

Several times a week, I will either start or end my post with a commercial. I don’t get paid for doing this. In fact, frequently the product isn’t sold any more. The commercials are just there for fun.

You’ll see a lot of radio and TV lingo from the pre-digital days (e.g. "the lines are now open," "stay tuned" etc.). This is intentional.

Research Sources: I’ve given Wikipedia the sobriquet "The Blogger’s Best Friend™," because in my case it is. I also use IMDb, AllMusic, Discogs, and others. I don’t profess to know all this stuff. I’m with Albert Einstein, "if I have it written down, I don’t have to know it."