Back to School

Well, I figure I’d take a little time out of my orientation to blog about me starting a new chapter in my life: Going back to school.

As of today, I have officially begun my orientation as a student at Herkimer County Community College where I will be majoring in Radio and TV Broadcasting and so far it is going pretty good. Although it means that I may be focusing on school work more than my regular activities here on the web (I’ll still be doing Facebook and Twitter at work and at home via my mobile web), I think that it’s finally time for me to move on and I think that college may very well be what I need to help myself become an even bigger success on the web.

As of June, I am out of action indefinitely as far as making YouTube videos goes, primarily because I need new equipment that I can’t really afford right now. I was also trying to remedy some other matters closer to home as well which had been my goal all summer. And now here I am, a college student. Hey, it only took me fourteen years to come to the decision that I actually need college to succeed rather than my wits which I have been going by for years.

I know the road ahead will not be easy. Then again nothing in my life ever has been easy. I am only going part-time because of my job, so there’s the possibility that I might be going at least three years. But I have always met every challenge head on no matter how ill-equipped I was or how bad the situation was and I will get through this one.

Whatever happens, I will be ready, I will meet and I will rise up to the challenge as I always do. And I will give everyone reason to be proud of your friendly neighborhood Blackcatloner.

Q & A: Justin Beiber Dumped By Katy Perry at the Jersey Shore

Okay, everyone, I am back with my latest Q & A. However, all the questions I got asked this week were from Formspring.me because I didn’t really get asked anything on Myyearbook. So without further ado, let’s get started.

Q: Who’s the most overrated musician?

A: Definitely Justin Beiber.

Q: What’s your favorite type of flower?

A: Red rose.

Q: What was your favorite thing to do during recess at school?

A: Play outside.

Q: What do you fear?

A: Failure and rejection.

Q: What’s your favorite Marvel superhero?

A: Spider-Man, of course.

Q: Staring at women’s breasts can make you live longer!

A: Now this may not be a question, but I’ll respond anyway by saying, “SWEET!”

Q: Eminem is life! Don’t you agree?

A: Hell, yeah! Slim Shady FTW!

Q: Have you dated someone you met online?

A: Interestingly enough, I have met only two women in person that I initially met online. It didn’t work out with either one, but I still have them as friends.

Q: Would you ever move away from YouTube to another vlogging site such as LetsVlog?

A: I was planning to do some videos on LetsVlog when I signed up for it last year, but I never got around to it. I also tried BlogTV but that didn’t work. I have blip.tv where I upload The Adventures of Blackcatloner videos every Friday but other than that, I would have to say I’m gonna be sticking with YouTube for the time being.

Q: What do you think of Katy Perry’s “Teenage Dream” and “One of the Boys” albums? Which one did you like better?

A: “One of the Boys” was good, but “Teenage Dream” is even better, especially since I can’t get the title song out of my head.

Q: What hobbies do you have? Are you a gamer, a comic book nerd or a movie buff?

A: I’m gonna answer this in two parts. 1) I write, work out (although I have been slacking in that area because I work overnights but should get back into it again), and of course all my online activities (blogging, YouTube, social networking, etc.) 2) I’m not a gamer (mostly because I can’t afford it) but I collected comic books in high school and I am in fact a movie buff. In fact, last weekend, I saw the latest “Fast and the Furious” film, “Fast Five.” It was awesome.

Q: What are your thoughts on chivalry? Is it dead?

A: Unfortunately yes.

Q: Have you abandoned MySpace like almost everyone else has or do you still keep your MySpace page running out of sympathy?

A: I still have my Myspace (all three of them) up, but I’m not on there anymore. Thank you, Mark Zuckerberg. Facebook and Twitter FTW!

Q: Were you ever a teacher’s pet?

A: Not really.

Q: Did you ever have a teacher who picked on you?

A: I’ve had a couple.

Q: Adamantium is supposed to be unbreakable and can’t be destroyed. Therefore, could Superman break Wolverine’s skeleton? Or could Wolverine’s claws pierce Superman’s skin?

A: Probably one question that will never be answered, even by the most experienced comic book aficionado.

Q: Does the Dark Side really have cookies?

A: Yeah. Chocolate chip ones.

Q: What sort of cell phone do you have? If you don’t have one, which one would you like to have? What are the requirements that a phone must have for you to want to have it?

A: I have a Verizon Prepaid phone which I’ve had for just over a month and it is really awesome. I am able to hang out online (specifically Facebook and Twitter) whereever I am and it is also a camera phone. 🙂

Q: If you could drink only one thing for a year and it couldn’t be water, what would you drink?

A: Pepsi.

Q: Where’d you find out about formspring.me?

A: My YouTube peeps.

Q: Who’s the sexiest woman alive?

A: Definitely not an easy question…

Q: Would you rather be a famous musician or a famous actor?

A: Famous actor. Can’t sing to save my life.

Q: Would you rather get up early or sleep late?

A: Sleep late.

Q: What was the last book you read?

A: “A Shore Thing” by Snooki. Yes, I’m a Jersey Shore fan. Deal with it. Plus a little tidbit: I come from the same area of NY (Hudson Valley/Poughkeepsie area) as Snooki.

Q: What’s the most unselfish thing you’ve ever done?

A:  Well, last week I gave a dollar to a diabetic woman for a soda because she looked like she was about to have a stroke.

Q: What would your dream vacation be?

A: A return trip to Puerto Rico.

Q:What’s the oldest piece of clothing you still own and wear?

A: My Terminator shades from high school.

Q: Who’s your favorite character on The Office?

A: Michael Scott. Good luck, Steve Carell. 🙂

Q: Do you believe there’s intelligent life on other planets?

A: I’m sure there is.

Q: What’s the furthest place you’ve ever traveled to?

A: Puerto Rico.

Q: If you could date any celebrity, who would it be?

A: I have to pick one? That’s a hard one. lol

Q: If you could have the starring role in one movie what would it be?

A: An action movie.

And the last question comes from a question-asking Facebook app, friend.ly:

Q: If you opened a restaurant, what would your house specialty be?

A: Anything Italian, mainly because I love Italian food.

And there you have it. The latest Q & A is now officially in the books. Remember, if you want to ask me anything and don’t have a Formspring account, you can ask in the comment section either here on the blog or on the YouTube video page. Remember, no offensive comments will be accepted.

The Cobra Always Tweets On Friday

An Egyptian Cobra very much like the one who escaped from the Bronx Zoo.

This blog is a bit of a departure from what I usually do on here. But for today we’re gonna make the most of it. So anyway, here we go.

First, an update on my HCCC endeavors. I went to the open house up there last week and I got a bunch of information on what I need to do and I also finally signed up for placement testing. I officially have to go up there for testing on April 21 which is the last day I can go up for placement testing. Luckily, I was able to take a personal day off from work that day because I will probably be up there for about a few hours.  I know that because my brother took a similar test last year. And also, how would I be able to sleep enough to go to work that night if I didn’t take the personal day? But either way, I am good to go as far as that goes.

Now on to the cobra story since I already put in my two cents about Rebecca Black and the bullied kid in Oz last blog. During the week, an Egyptian cobra escaped from its tank at the Bronx Zoo. Once that happened, the zoo closed down the Reptile House until the cobra could be recovered. After all, cobras are very dangerous animals. In reality, it was too cold for the snake to venture far but that didn’t stop someone from creating a Twitter account for the wayward snake. The Twitter feed was full of tweets that described the cobra as tweeting from an iPhone going on a sightseeing tour of New York City, including a trip via ferry to Ellis Island to see the Immigrant museum. It also had some snake-themed tweets that included a new twist on an iconic line from “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” You remember that scene where Indiana Jones says, “Snakes. Why does it have to be snakes?” Well the cobra’s take on that line: “Indiana Jones. Why does it have to be Indiana Jones?” I laughed so loud at that when I was reading that on my phone at work that I decided to retweet that to my followers.

In fact the feed proved to be so popular that the feed acquired over 222,000 followers. (It could be more by the time this goes up.) However, all good things must come to an end for the snake was finally recovered and put back in his tank as of Thursday night. Will the cobra continue her tweets? Well stay tuned.

The whole cobra thing reminded me of an incident that happened to me when I went to a Reptile museum in Catskill while I was growing up (it was about 1989 or 1990). I remember I was doing a project on snakes at the time and I was looking at a snake in a tank. And then all of a sudden, I hear this rattling noise. I wasn’t sure where it was coming from at first but then I looked up and I see this rattlesnake in the tank above the snake I was looking at all coiled up and rattling at me. Apparently it was pissed off at me because I was wearing a Batman hat with the giant Batman logo on it. After all, it was the year of Batman (thanks to the Tim Burton movie.) The snake must have thought that the bat was real. On the plus side though, I was never in any danger because the rattler was in his tank and those tanks were pretty secure. However, I do find it funny that a snake can get riled up by what a person wears. I wonder what he would think about my skull and crossbones hat.

And there you go. What better way to end this than with a little trip into Blackcatloner’s secret past.

Constant Whitewater

Okay, I am going to start this off by saying that I can’t believe that it’s October already. Wow, 2010 is now less than three months away. It’s like, where did 2009 go? I missed about two months of blogging mainly because of the fact that I have so much going on in my life right now, both online as well as off.

In many ways, while I got a sudden spike of creativity as far as my YouTube career goes. In the last two months alone, I put my channel through so many changes, mainly taking down some videos that either didn’t attract too many comments or videos I felt could be done better, such as the video I shot at Ilion Little Theater back in March and the Walk in the Park video. I originally intended for the latter video to be my first HD video. I have since reposted both.

Also I figured I try my hand at news reporting by doing a series of news videos that I called “The Black Cat Weekly,” but that turned out to be a disaster. First off, it got more and more difficult to get news stories that I could do a video about, not to mention that the videos brought the haters out in record droves. I didn’t expect to be that badly received as far as that goes. However, I have decided to adopt other YouTuber’s methods and attack the haters in reply comments, because it’s pretty fun to do because they’re a group of losers who either don’t do videos and are only on there to cause trouble or they’re a group who have only a handful of videos and have very few or no friends or subscribers.

Now don’t take this the wrong way. Just because I stopped doing the news videos doesn’t mean I’m gonna stop making videos or give up on YouTube like very few people do. I’m too well established on YouTube for that. Plus there are other factors than that at work. I have been meeting more and more people online, not to mention people sending me IM requests and app invites on Facebook to keep up with them all. It’s like constant whitewater for me. It does get overwhelming after a while.

In some ways, YouTube and Twitter have led to me not being able to blog so much, mainly because it is starting to get easier for me to make videos and Twitter is basically the in thing for bloggers, not to mention some personal things I am going through right now. So I have to get back into the habit of blogging again because that was how I got started on the web.

But on the bright side, October is a pretty big month for me, most notably the fact that at the end of the month is my three-year anniversary on YouTube. Clearly something to look forward to. But for now, I just wanted to touch base with everyone to show that I am still committed to this blog.

Blackcatloner Forever

I’ve spent some time trying to come up with a story to mark the 100th blog on this site, “The Adventures of Blackcatloner” and I decided that I would salvage this story from my old blog site on the soon to be extinct Yahoo 360. This story answers the question in which how I came up with my prestigious and rather unique username, Blackcatloner. Well anyway here goes.

Prior to the fall of 2005, I had been surfing the web primarily to check out upcoming movies and other things. In 2005, when I became involved in the Gillette case, I asked the public library in Herkimer if I could set up an email address there because I did not have a computer or Internet access at that time. I decided to set up my email account with Yahoo because it was free to set up an email address. When it came time to select my Yahoo name, I was a little confused. I wanted something that was dark and mysterious mainly because of the fact that I am dark and mysterious. Then I remembered that one of my favorite groups was the 80’s band the Stray Cats. That mixed with the fact that I had two black cats and the fact that I have been a loner pretty much all of my life got the wheels set in motion. As soon as I knew it, I typed in “blackcatloner.” The reason I had to type it in as one word was the fact that email addresses could not be broken up into three separate words unless separated by an underscore.

At that time I was only creating an email address for a project but little did I realize that I was creating a whole new identity for myself. And the rest is history.

Then three months after opening my email address, I started my career as a blogger on Yahoo 360 with the site that was originally called “The World of Blackcatloner” but I later called it “Ultimate Blackcatloner.” While I was blogging, I became integrated into the whole Internet social networking scene which at that time included Myyearbook, Myspace and some other sites, and it’s led to some pretty wild and exciting adventures and of course chances are I posted them online. The more I blogged and integrated myself into the social networking scene the more my popularity increased. In time I would add making videos on YouTube and even furthering my adventures on Twitter to my resume.

I have no regrets about my time on the Internet. My time on the Internet has been a very pleasant one. As long as it continues to be fun, I will be around for a very long time. There’s still so many more adventures from my past, present and future to be had so I can post them up on either here, YouTube, or Twitter. Not bad for someone who is truly “one lone cat against a big bad world.”

And so ladies and gentlemen, there you have it. My 100th blog on this site is now officially in the books. I hope you had a great time reading it as I had writing it. It’s never the end. It’s only the beginning.