Looks like I just made the entire third column of the blog disappear somehow.

Hoping it’ll be back to normal soon…chalk this up to growing pains. If you can’t log in as a commenter…give us time.

I blame Vladimir Putin.

And I might be afraid to do any fancy posting (pics, video, etc.) till I figure out what I did.

Yeah, so…we’ve altered things just a little bit around these parts. Click around and check it out.

If you loved the old site – it’s still here, under the heading of “Everything Else.” In time, those pages may be incorporated into the new design, but for now, they’re still as they were.

I know there are vocal haters of the white text on black background. Trust me, I know…but there’s no easy fix. We’re working on figuring out a way to let you change colors like you could before, but it won’t be happening today or tomorrow. Highlighting the text with your cursor might have to be the fallback option.

Comments on the blog have changed – regulars are encouraged to sign in and create a profile. This is not mandatory, but if you want to leave a comment without registering, you’ll have to do one of those “capcha” things where you write down the letters you see in a picture.

Also, any entries more than 90 days old will be closed to comments.

If you are a friend of mine who’s in a position to get scripts made, please note that I have made the first ten pages of four of my scripts available for download on the writing page. I dare you to read just ten pages; when you’re hooked, I’ll give you the rest.

The right sidebar now features links to my stuff all around the web – check E! online every Friday, check the others out if you like…please note that on social networks, I only tend to add people I actually know.

Oh, and if you understand the whole “Digg” thing and all those little logos at the bottom of each post, please go to town and promote the posts you like.

Any questions?

Just a heads-up to all you readers that will be some remodeling going on around these parts. Mostly subtle stuff, but some things will be more obvious. We’ve heard the feedback over the years, and also taken stock of what exactly the site needs to do.

Don’t worry, the blog will not be going away, or changing content. I hope it will better integrate everything – Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, my various presences on other sites. You may have noticed I haven’t bothered to link the last few E! Online reviews here, though I have been busy linking them elsewhere (fans of the E! stuff should simply bookmark THIS PAGE and check it every Friday).

You might also have noticed we eliminated most of the rainbow-hair imagery. I know several of you would like me to do that again, and in many ways I do miss it, but it ain’t happening for a while…as I push myself into the acting realm, I need a more versatile look than that. And I do tire of people thinking I still look that way when I don’t.

Biggest change, though, is that the Message Board is going to stop. The existing board may continue to exist, frozen in cyberspace…but it will no longer be active. It simply isn’t serving its purpose any more. To compensate, I will occasionally post “Open Threads” here where you can be free to start conversations on any topic.

Don’t fear the hope and change.

I hear a variation of this argument all the time:

“If health care is free, what’s to stop people drinking and smoking and eating bad food just so the government can pay for all their excesses later?”

So many fallacies on this one.

First, the person asking should realize that there is no cure for lung cancer, or heart attacks. They can be treated if detected early, but that’s a big if, and life is not fun afterwards.

Second, we already have huge rates of alcoholism, smoking, and crappy eating among broke-ass poor in this country, who have no insurance. Maybe it can get worse, but not by much.

Third, this argument assumes that getting really sick is simply no big deal. Hell, we’ll roll with heart disease, because government’ll fix us right back up! Liver and lung transplants? No problemo, ever?

NOBODY wants to get sick. Even if it’s paid for. Being sick sucks, by definition.

We just don’t want people to let us die if the pockets are empty.