Because on this question column, we try out Genghis's proposed suggestion to write the full questions in the comments section to make it even easier for you to answer them ... Also, I was eating bitter herbs while I wrote this ... Man-eesh Ta-Na ...

1) NHL Hockey?

2) Bobbleheads?

3) New Music?

4) Tivo additions?

5) Laundromats?

6) Shopping?

7) Avant-garde parenting?

8) Corporal punishment?

9) Sterilization?

10) Liberal arts education?

Bonus Qs) Column? New Format?

The elections are finally over, and the world is starting to seem normal again. Kind of. We also have two new long-awaited bloggers, so I felt that it would be a good time to meta-post. When we started dagblog, we didn't have a clear idea where it was headed. Mostly, we wanted a forum to express ourselves and our wacky ideas about the world, but it was never meant to be just for us. We hoped to bring in a number of talented writers with diverse interests and ideas to share the space.

I plan to make State of the Day a semi-regular feature in which I offer brief commentary on the news of the day. If readers like it, I'll try to do it daily, but no promises.

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Ring the bell, school's back in, break it down ... Stop. Question time!

10) Ok, several days have passed. Are you still smiling and dancing, or do you find yourself suffering a bit from some sort of post-partum-like depression?

9) Not that I would know anything about this, but which is a more important element of looking good on the dance floor: Rhythm or self-confidence?

8) So I turned 35 this week. Is it lame that one of the things that most annoys me about this age is that I can no longer check off the 18-34 age group in surveys?

Happy Halloween all! Last week, I threw out a bunch of questions I had been asking myself lately, and people seemed to enjoy the post, responding with some incredibly wise and insightful, or at least terribly smartass, answers. So, I figured I'd do it again, maybe even make it a weekly thing. Without further ado ...

1) Will there be more Jokers or Joe the Plumbers out there tonight? (If you're answering this and Halloween is already over, reply with the actual answer)

Hey daggers. Today is dagblog's one month anniversary. We're off to a
great start. We've generated a lot of material in a short time (at the
expense of work and sleep). A few of our posts, including SarahPalinGrrrrl's Sarah Palin Tribute Page, have gone viral and generated a
lot of traffic. Discounting the big traffic spikes, we're now up to about
500 visitors a day, so thanks for reading us. If you like a post, you
can always help us to grow our readership by clicking any of the

Do conservatives read liberal blogs (I suppose this one qualifies) with as much disdain and condescension as I feel when I read right-wing blogs (hotair.com makes me wanna throw things every time I read it). For some reason, I feel like even the most liberal of blogs at least acknowledge the other side may have something of value to offer.

What is Genghis (not to mention SarahPalinGrrrrl) going to talk about after Nov. 4 (OK, I'll give them a week of post-game analysis posts, but what then)??

So, the market is down 555 points, almost 5 percent. Yet so far this is no October Black Monday, like when the market dropped 13 percent on October 28th, 1929 or when it dropped 22% on October 19, 1987. (Note: Things are moving fast, market down another 100 points since I started writing).

This is, in many ways, even worse - just another Gray Monday, where we get the continued, orderly drip-drip-drip of a market with no confidence, and no idea of where we are headed.

We just launched, and we're still working out kinks in the blog. The RSS feed on the main page was down, but it's back, baby. So get your DagBlog posts hot off the blog at http://dagblog.com/rss.

Hey folks. I think that I need a new handle to maintain parity with the other "men" at this site, and I'm taking suggestions. It doesn't have to start with G, but it would be nice to maintain some connection to the name of the blog

Current candidates:

• G-man
• Grooveyman
• Unman
• Gingerbreadman
• Gingerman

Unman is my fav, but it doesn't start with G. After that I like Gingerman for the gingerbread and literary references. I would probably use this image as my avatar:

I wrote this piece some years ago, before I was 30. I'm now probably in what could be called an on-schedule midlife crisis, but this article still seems relevant. I've updated it slightly to make it current with the times...

I didn't want to let go.

My brother and I were dropping off mom and dad at the airport, appreciating our last moments together after a wonderful week celebrating our cousin's wedding with a lot of other family members.

It was while I was hugging my parents, saying my goodbyes, that I felt a sudden, powerful twinge of sadness. And I realized I didn't want to let go.

Man* is an unbelievably resilient creature.

He can go from riches to rags and be OK, as long as he didn't lose his fortunes overnight. He can go from being happily married to bitterly divorced and manage, as long as his love wasn't betrayed in an instant.

I believe life can throw anything at us, and we will find a way to deal... as long as we have time to adapt.

It's amazing the ways a life can touch another.

Leroy Sievers was a respected and accomplished journalist, covering wars and conflicts all over the globe for CBS News and Nightline, winning a bunch of Emmys and a couple of Peabodys in the process, and yet I think it's fair to say that none of his work likely had as much of an impact as did his very public battle with cancer.

Is Google making us intellectually lazy?

That was the gist of a question financial wildman Jim Cramer asked Google's CEO Eric Schmidt on a CNBC interview this week. Cramer pointed out that one of his daughter's fifth-grade teachers banned the use of Google for an assignment she received. Schmidt seemed genuinely surprised by the anecdote, comparing it to how math teachers often ban the use of calculators.

So my girlfriend is moving in with me at the end of the week (oh yeah, I'm feeling a whole lot of 'YAY!' and just a little bit of '(gulp)'), and I was at her apartment yesterday waiting for a couple of guys from the Housing Works charity organization. They were going to pick up some furniture that she needed to get rid of and couldn't manage to sell.

I can't stand hypocrites. (Of course, I'm pretty sure I have some hypocritical beliefs, and I can stand myself, so I guess that makes me a hypocrite twice over).

But seriously, a little consistency when it comes to opinions is all I ask for.  Unfortunately, hypocrisy is everywhere. So before numbness to its existence permanently sets in, I wanted to express my outrage at two examples of hypocrisy that strike me as particularly galling.

1) Pro-choice folks who believe prostitution should be illegal (usually feminists).

My dad is an eternal optimist, one of those turn-lemons-into-lemonade people. And yeah, it sometimes annoys the living shit out of me.

I am, after all, an in-the-long-run-we're-all-dead type of guy, a devout half-empty man (I'd call myself an eternal pessimist, but I don't believe anything lasts forever :) )

Two month ago, John McCain challenged Barack Obama to visit Iraq, expecting him to decline, but Obama called the bluff. He saw McCain's Iraq and raised him Afghanistan, Israel, and three European nations. Never one to fold easily, McCain raised Obama right back.

So last Tuesday Larry King interviews Barack Obama and then three days later, he does a show debating the existence of UFOs. It's fucking nutty. (King, who i just found out has done these shows for years, apparently wants to be the first broadcaster to interview an alien).