About

About Mental Dimensions and Political Dimensions
By Andy Alt / Mental Dimensions / Political Dimensions
July 29, 2008

[Last updated Oct 13, 2008]

I’m a freelance writer, self-taught from practice and reference books, or from people yelling at me. Some people enjoy what I write, or they believe I don’t exist and worry that they are imagining me. I passed ¾ of ninth grade English and ¾ of tenth grade English in an American high school. Explaining the fractions would be time-consuming and contain very little historical interest to the general public. “Drugs are usually bad” is all I’ll say about that.

For the record, I’m not against medication or using it to treat the various types of existing mental illnesses. I understand and recognize that many people have benefited greatly from medication. What I’m against, in a nutshell, is over-prescribing, under-diagnosing, half-ass treatment, and against deceptive or intentionally misleading marketing practices. What I’m for is capitalism and a free market, but not by means of preying on people’s misfortunes, medical, or mental conditions. Honest and fair trade of goods and services helps create competition, and it’s competition which forces improvements to products and services.

Many people will misinterpret my writing, or attempt to kill me when I plant flowers and bushes in their yard without permission. That’s fine. Different interpretations are inferred because of poor writing on my part, lack of concentration at the time, or I was just having fun. If you get offended or disagree based on how you’ve interpreted an article, offer a different viewpoint which contains more than two to five words (hopefully a perspective from which others may learn); otherwise, might I recommend one of the millions of other web sites available on the Internet?

This site contains many different forms of writing, most all by me. Some articles I would completely rewrite, other articles I wouldn’t have written at all if I “had it to do all over again.” How and what I’ve written is based on the personality, opinions, education, or writing skills I had at the moment in time when I wrote them. Older articles are more crude, and have more errors, but still have value to some people somewhere, so I still leave them scattered on the site. On occasion I change a thing or two, but otherwise leave them untouched. I don’t always polish the work I publish on my web sites. Whether or not I spend much time perfecting my work depends on my opinion regarding the overall quality of the article subject and substance.

I started Mental Dimensions in December of 2000. I’ve had it up and down based on my moods, needs, or desires at the time. My original domain is no longer under my control. In the seven-year span the highest number of visitors at the peak of Mental Dimensions “popularity” has averaged roughly around 3000 per month. The site having been up and down, I was often starting from scratch each time as far as viewership and promotion. I signed up for a WordPress blog under a month ago.

I started Political Dimensions on August 26, 2008.

There are many articles on this site, and I have still more articles in my backups and will add them… sometime. Sooner than sometime if I get requests from visitors.

For more boring information about me, read the articles Meditation and Computer and Internet Addiction or Treat Yourself to Depression, Anxiety, or other Mental Illness Today

Thank you visiting Mental Dimensions and Political Dimensions. I hope you enjoy stuff and things from it. Below is a copy of my last About page.

10/08/2005

I’ve been wondering for a while what I should do for an “About” page. I was inspired today by a drug-induced hallucination, shortly after I received the full review from my HumorFeed application. I think the review is fair and accurate, except for where they insulted my grandmother and choice of laundry detergent. Many people are familiar with “About” pages, and here is one of the most objective ever written. I think it will provide a very comprehensive overview on what can be found on Mental Dimensions, and what’s it all about. The only one of my personal opinions I would like to preface with, is that I believe that many of my articles are more than just “amusing” (noted by one of the three reviewers below).

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To: “Andy Alkaline”
Subject: Re: HumorFeed Application Decision
Date: Sat, 08 Oct 2005 10:02:37 -0700

Andy,

Here are the full forms per your request. As noted in our policies,
each reviewer prepares his comments independently and is not made aware
of who else has been assigned to review the site. Please let me know if
you have any further questions.

Sincerely
E.F. Watley

REVIEWER #1

Overall: NOT ACCEPTABLE, but PROMISING

Overall Content: Fair

Navigation: Good

Writing: Fair

Appearance: Fair

Technological Execution: Good

Comments: While Mental Dimensions has its moments, I feel the content
is a little too observational and story based for HumorFeed. A lot of
the articles are Seinfeld-like commentaries on pop cultural subjects,
like Happy Meals, Christopher Columbus or Mrs. Butterworth Syrup,
reading like a High School literary journal, where seniors submit poems,
short stories and humorous rants. In general the site is written more
like someone interested in stand up than web humor. I think what would
make this site more compatible with HumorFeed would be to work on more
articles like “Star Trek TOS Resume’s.“

As for the site’s design, while it is extremely usable: lots of self
explanatory links that take the user exactly to what they want, visually
the design is lacking. The site becomes overwhelming within a few
articles as the content is really loaded with text and nothing else to
buffer.

I would suggest that if Mental Dimensions does decide to resubmit they
work on making they’re content more diverse, adding more to the site
than just Andy Rooney type rants and that they also look at working on
the site’s design. In the end, I would certainly consider this site for
the feed if they at least had more articles like the Star Trek resumes.
REVIEWER #2
Overall: NOT ACCEPTABLE

Overall Content: Poor

Navigation: Good

Writing: Fair

Appearance: Fair

Technological Execution: Fair

Comments: The site appears to be a series of columns by an author. The
articles are works of fiction, but don’t appear to be in the mold of
humor feed. I don’t have any problems with the site, but it doesn’t
appear appropriate for humor feed.

REVIEWER #3
Overall: NOT ACCEPTABLE

Overall Content: Poor

Navigation: Good

Writing: Fair

Appearance: Fair

Technological Execution: Good

Comments: The writing on this site is more in the vein of observational
humor than satire. While there’s nothing wrong with this format, it’s
not consistent with the material HumorFeed tends to run. The author
tends to take a single point of departure and run with it in a
stream-of-consciousness sort of way. Consequently, most of the articles
wander: they could probably be cut by 50% to be honest. I am wondering
if he has a background in standup. The flow of his writing seems to
reflect a spoken style rather than a written one.

Satire has an edge, news has a current events focus, and this site has
neither, though there is some amusing material here. Actually, I can see
this writer as a successful syndicated columnist. I just don’t think
Mental Dimensions is a good fit for HumorFeed.

The design and layout are fine: visually, it’s kind of on the
understated side, but the organization is very good; articles are sorted
by category, and there seems to be a number of categories each with
several articles. I know a few sites that could use an archiving
structure like this.