It seems oddly fitting that a few local bloggers, tweeters, and folks from local media outlets got together at Juanita Greenberg’s downtown, sat outside, and talked about — what else? — hashtags. These aren’t your ordinary hashtags, though — these tags are designed to standardize news tweeting in Charleston. This way, we can keep things like breaking news, weather, and other news types separate from each other so that — if the tags are adopted the way we hope — people can find news faster. Dan has a great explanation of our meeting today (the culmination of the #chshash conversation you may have seen over the last couple days). Expect to see more written on these hashtags soon.

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I just ordered a three-disc set that may rival G.I. Joe The Movie in terms of overall inanity; yes, for a mere $14, I’ll receive the three Thunder in Paradise “movies” with Hulk Hogan. (The term “movie,” as indicated by the quotes, is used loosely; the final two “movies” are actually episodes spliced together into a continuous storyline.) In the tradition of the RealmCon, I really am thinking about getting people together so that we can laugh at the over-the-top babeage, the so-ridiculous-even-I-can-imitate-it voice of Thunder (the Knight Rider-esque boat that I totally dug as a kid), and bizarre technical-sounding phrases that make zero sense, such as “Full Thrust Commitment” (which I cannot find on Google and thus will likely be the first and only result for said term) and “ROC for Hyperspeed” (ROC? WTF!). This time around, too, we can have beer. I think that would be pretty hilarious; but then again, I have an unusual sense of humor.

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Musical notes

Gary Cherone is back with his new band hurtsmile. Gary, brother Markus, Joe Pessia, and Dana Spellman have collaborated on a few tracks and released them for free in high-quality MP3 format. The songs are great straight-ahead rock — my favorite is “Just War Theory.” In other music news, I see Travis Meeks is bringing Days of the New to Hilton Head on the 2nd. That’s a tempting show. He’s had some issues in the past, and it’s nice to see him overcoming them and getting back out there. Rumor has it there’s going to be a Days of the New “Purple” album in a year or two, really depending on when DOTN is signed to a label again. Let’s hope that’s sooner rather than later, because Meeks really is a musical genius.

/etc/weekend

I went to Relay for Life in Summerville on Friday night into Saturday morning. It’s a 12-hour relay designed to raise money for the American Cancer Society. It was a lot of fun, though I found one of the Proud Sponsors incredibly amusing:

You just can’t make some of this stuff up. Interestingly enough, a few laps later when I decided I needed a better picture of the sign, it had been taken down. I’m not sure who nabbed it or what, but it was gone. Too hilarious.

Saturday brought an immense recovery period (I didn’t get home until about 7:30, and I slept until 3:30 PM) and then some Guitar Hero and ribs at Ale’s. Predictably, I was destroyed at Guitar Hero (no time to play games in the last, oh, six months) despite my best efforts to focus and not get too crazy with the music. I do think there is something different in the Xbox 360 version’s gameplay…I can’t put my finger on it. Perhaps I’m reaching for excuses for my latest round of GH suckitude. Oh well.

Sunday was the blogger meetup — we had a lot of new faces this time, including Patrick, Kit, and Kevin, to name a few. It was a great time. I didn’t realize 10-17 — located in The Quadrangle in West Ashley where Piggly Wiggly and CiCis is, within a few hundred feet of the 526 on-ramp — was even there. It’s a neat venue, though, and the owner was gracious enough to come in and introduce himself (and even cook for us!). They’ll be seeing more of me, I think. I ended the evening with a pretty hilarious sendoff for Tim, CofC’s uber-server genius, who is probably still on a plane headed for Scotland as I write this. Good, good times.

And finally…

Anyone want to see Barack Obama this week? He’ll be holding a town hall forum at Burke High School at 2:30 on Friday. I’ll be there. Click here to reserve your spot — it’s free and open to the public, but a ticket is required. This should be quite, quite interesting.

Off to bed now…I’m still messed up from the Relay a few days ago. This does not bode well for my 8am exams. Haha.

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Also, I met Ad from Agricola today at Kudu Coffee, and he’s a fantastic, fantastic guy. We made great conversation for an hour about things ranging from experiences returning to a college classroom to the advent of technology, and a lot in between. It was great, enlightening conversation, and I look forward to meeting again.

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