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A friend of mine made a great comment on twitter recently:

Sifting through my old journal entries has caused me to realize that I was basically intolerable until I had the age 15 years and 5 months.

And it reminded me to check out some of my old web sites and poetry that I host on GeoCities.  I’ve had http://www.geocities.com/kfgd since probably 1999 (when I was 13).  I made some really creative web sites, and it’s interesting to see what conventions I used.

I loved image rollovers. And I’m still pretty proud of this design.

And I stacked images all the time.  I don’t even remember how this works any more.

I figured out that huge graphics on the page look awesome, even if the mouseovers aren’t great or perfect.  And I may again use radioactivewriting as a brand – so let this be the copyright.

I made a nice opening page for the local neighborhood organization, but the internal pages are set in Courier and nearly impossible to read due to a heavy background. Blech!

I was also really weird.  I had an e-mail penpal in Iowa with whom I wrote a story about marshmallows that lived under a Wal-Mart and revolted against humans.  But my flame graphics are sweet – and a little ironic, considering one of the terrible crimes agains marshmallows is turning them into s’mores.  I don’t think the flames were on purpose, though.  Be sure to check out the ‘book’ page, where you can find the actual text of the story, and see the accompanying photo illustrations.  Pretty sure my dad helped me dye those marshmallows brown. Gross.

I also wrote lots of poetry from that time until I was about 18 or so, when I started writing songs for guitar.  I found some great excerpts:

You can’t expect me to bring home the bacon
If I’m always doing the cooking
Because I buy the drinks, the dinner, the tickets
And I don’t give a damn who’s looking

(Part of a poem I wrote when my girlfriend at the time refused to ever pay for dinner we went out to eat in public!)

“L is for the big word Love,
You’re the Big Bird I’m dreaming of”
Belted Oscar from the depths of his can

“And nine is for the times I cry
Each night that I can’t hold you tight”
Sang Big Bird, from far stage left

The two continued, harmonizing
Cameras rolling, just too surprising
100,000 eyes unblinking

“We’ll be together, no matter the norms,
Our eyes are open, now open yours,
Love should never be concealed”

They walked together, embraced each other
And turning away from facing each other,
They held hands and addressed the TV audience

“We’ve loved each other since Episode One,
And until last month, it was always fun,
But sharing’s best for everyone

“That’s why we’ve come to you today
We must do this, we have to say
We love each other and it’s staying that way”

(And this one is about a romance between Oscar the Grouch and Big Bird. But it has a nice message! I think I wrote this one three years ago.)

It’s nice to look back once in a while.  And hey, I guess that’s what blogs are for, too.