Eight months between posts seems like kind of excessive, doesn't it? I almost held out for a full year but nah, I figure maybe people want proof that I yet live and breathe.

(for all the fuckin' good it'll do you; ain't like there's much to say)

I've been trying to hammer out my current Novel Concept into something that's less Concept and more Novel. It is a bitch and a half and I'm doing less with it than I really should be but Jesus when you spend four hours writing and erasing and writing and erasing and you realize that you've written approximately one word per thirty minutes it grates. It would be so much easier if I didn't give a damn how well the writing worked, if I could just lay the words out and have done, but no, I'm constantly editing myself as I write and it makes me want to jab a screwdriver through my eye.

Flathead or Phillips Head, it really doesn't matter.

Okay, it kinda matters a little. But I'm not going to tell you which I'd prefer. You'll have to guess. And like it.

Otherwise, the song remains the same. I cook. I (sort of) clean. I have a cactus now, that's new. His name is Vinnie. He is a fierce guard cactus that will slay intruders. Also, as my mother pointed out, I had a cactus that I named Vinnie in high school; I explained to her that when you find a good name for a cactus you don't waste it.

Seriously, though, he'll fuck you up. Vicious little bugger when he wants to be. Very spiny. Very sharp. Don't test him, man.

I have not yet embarked on a multistate murder spree, largely because I'd have to steal Sarah's car to do that and that would be rude. ...though come to think of it, even on foot I could probably make it to New Hampshire in an afternoon or so. Still, who ever heard of a pedestrian killing spree?

(By which I mean a killer who is a pedestrian, not a killer who kills pedestrians, that happens all the time)

Y'know the reason I never post to my LJ? I have no idea what the hell I have to say that anyone else might give a shit enough to read. Here, tell you what. You say 'write about X' and I'll write about it.

Let's see, what else. Pandora.com has recently laid claim to my soul. I'm so fucking out of touch, musically, on account of how all the radio stations around here blow (or the reception sucks) so I listen to NPR pretty much exclusively, which makes me feel smart. Feeling smart is never a bad thing.

It's baseball season. That always cheers me up. So many of my friends can't stand baseball and that's okay, there's a lot to not like about the game but I adore it, not least because it's one of the only things my Dad and I can actually converse about without me wanting to punch him.

I have a Twitter feed, which I also almost never use, but I promise I will never ever start posting my Tweets to LJ because shit, that's annoying, innit? If you care, it's dcb42 over there, just like it is here. 'Cause 'divinecoffeebinge' was too long for Twitter to accept. Fuckers.

I can never make fun of people who watch reality TV again because I was pointed at the episodes of RuPaul's Drag Race hosted on logoonline.com and that shit is oddly compelling. And yes, I am a secure enough individual to admit that publicly. I don't know what makes it compelling but it is.

Still here.

Still breathing.

Beats the alternative.

That's all for the moment.

Not dead.

Have put together comic review site. Will link once there's some actual content.

Otherwise, still not dead.

As you were.

I promised an entry, didn't I? Well, here it is. It has no point, other than to say that boycotts only work if the people being boycotted will A) notice and B) be hurt by them.

And that's that. Yay!

Yup. Still here.

I have decided that I will definitely post to my LJ tomorrow because apparently there's a boycott. Boycotts are cool in principle and all, but let's be honest, the way to tell a company you're mad at them is not to give them a full day of lower traffic and attendant reduced bandwidth costs. That's just dumb and counter-productive. Fuck that, if you wanna hurt 'em, start liveblogging. Hammer the servers so that their costs go up, not down.

Some people. Yeesh.

Anyways. Not dead. Remarkably little to report. Carry on.

...so, yeah, eleven weeks seemed like way too damn long without actually proving that I continue to breathe and otherwise exist.

...in other news, I continue to breathe. Also exist. That's pretty much the entirety of the news. I try really hard not to go into too much detail into what prompts my occasional trips off the edge of the Earth because really, it's all self-indulgent whining when you get down to it and I'm convinced no one actually gives a shit, really. But what the hell, let's give it a try and turn on the Emo Machine.

What it boils down to is, I fail to give a shit. About anything, really. I just kinda... exist. Things that should matter just... don't. You know, things like family obligations and taking care of my health and, oh, just as an example, eating. Seriously, I've gone without food for days at a time simply because I didn't care enough to eat. Not recently - I'm not living on my own, I can't get away with that, 'cause if I don't cook she won't eat. So I've been getting semi-regular meals, at least.

That's kind of sad, isn't it? That I should actually be proud that I've been remembering to eat food. Eating food should be somewhat instinctual, one would suppose, considering that it's sort of necessary to avoid death.

But, well, there it is.

So, yeah, that's where I've been at. Not-dying. Where I'm still at, in all honesty.

You know what's awesome, even if I can't do it right now because it's way too fucking cold outside? Walking around in the dead of night. Is it just me, or does everything seem bigger at night? I'm talking about two, three o' clock in the morning, with only the occasional signs of life to remind yourself that there are other people in the world. Everything's quiet and calm and peaceful and huge; none of the mad rushing about like you see everywhere in the daytime. Most people are asleep in their beds, and to those of us that are up there's something simultaneously alienating and liberating about all that dark, isn't there?

...shit, that sounds awfully bleak. It's not meant to be. I just can't think of a better way to express it. There's something very liberating about that sort of solitude, because it forces you to look inside of yourself for stimuli. I think introspection can be a good thing, though like any good thing, it's easy to overindulge.

I'm not sure if the two halves of this entry have any connection to one another. Maybe. Maybe not, too. I dunno.

I'm gonna go and start preheating the oven now, because, you know. Not-dying.

...this would be a good way to do it.

I'm just sayin'.

So every now and again I remember that I have a LiveJournal and should, you know, use it or something. Posts from me are a bit like solar eclipses - you don't see 'em often, but when you do, it's something kinda special, right?

So. Yeah. Life continues apace. Life makes me want to dash my brains out upon rocks sometimes, but it continues apace nevertheless. I suppose what gets to me is the knowledge that things could, even should, be better, but it seems like every time I get my feet back under me Ye Olde Melancholy strikes again and I lie back down for a bit (and incidentally, that'd be a good name for a band, huh? Ye Olde Melancholy, life tonight at the Middle East! Is it just me?). This is not a new thing. This is in fact an ancient thing, one I've lived with my whole life. I remain at a loss as to how to deal with it.

But instead of whining about that, I'mma tell you a story.

I was asked, the other day, why Orion is my favorite of all the constellations - and it is, seriously. Every time I look up and I see Orion in the sky I smile. Every single time, life seems a little better when I see those stars. So here's the story.

Way, way back in the day - I was, like, seven or so, I think - my family goes out to eat. We did this maybe once every other week, going out to eat. Mom had a big old Dodge Caravan in those days, and on the way back from the restaurant I always laid down in the back seat and fell asleep (this is how I know the story was forever ago, because I could stretch out in that big bench seat, no curling up or anything). And we get home and my folks wake me up and I say I'll be right in. This is not unusual; I always took a minute or so to wake up and find whatever book I'd brought to the restaurant and follow 'em inside.

Ten minutes later I'm still not inside, so my Mom comes out, figuring I went back to sleep in the car or something. And there I am, standing in the driveway with no jacket on - and this was one of your classic New England autumn nights, the air was crisp and cool and there was no light pollution because the Wal-Mart down the road hadn't been built yet so everything was just so crisp, you know, sharp and vivid, and the leaves were falling from the trees all vibrant orange and gold the way no where else in the world can make them look and the wind, oh, man the wind was like a knife, the way a New England wind can get, just cutting right through you and seeming to chill you from the inside out, but clean, the sort of wind you think only happens on mountaintops or deep in the forest but it's all over the place out here, cold but clean and full of life... and there I am, in my T-shirt, just staring up open-mouthed at the stars. Just... staring. Right at Orion, as it happens.

And what was going through my seven-year-old head? Wonder. Just the sheer unbounded possibility of life, of the universe, the feeling of connection with all of humanity back in a single unbroken line back to when we were living in caves, mankind has looked up at those stars with wonder. What is out there? What stories can be found, what wonders can be beheld, what dreams will arise? I looked up at them all and I felt small but I didn't feel insignificant. I was lost in the void but the void was a part of me, it reached into my soul and whispered a secret that I may never quite untangle, and the stars twinkled the way they do on one of those perfect, brilliant nights when you can feel the Earth breathing around you and I could have stayed like that forever. And Mom took me inside, but I've never forgotten that feeling and that wonder and that night, and Orion makes me remember it so vividly, and it always makes me smile. Every time.

So that's my story. Isn't that better than whining?

So "fandom" (Christ I hate that word) is up in arms again. Some good reasons, some shitty reasons, a whole lotta wankery. Everyone else appears to be sharing their opinions, so why don't I? A lot of these opinions have been prefaced with "This is sure to be an unpopular opinion, but..."

Fuck that. ( I WANT this to be an unpopular opinion. Unpopular opinions make people think.Collapse )

So over on cadhla's LJ there's a bit of a kerfuffle. And a lot of it is coming from anonymous posters.

This is not shocking to me. Anonymity has always been part and parcel of the Internet. What bugs me is that its powers are so rarely used for Good.

I mean, seriously. Sure, folks that read my journal know a bit about me. My name's Shawn, I live in Massachusetts, yadda yadda. But most folks on the Internet, you don't even know that much about. Shit, if I hadn't gone and said that stuff, all you'd have to go on is 'dcb42'. Five little characters.

If you're on the Internet, you are already anonymous. You have as much or as little anonymity as you want. You have the freedom to create a persona which may or may not have any real connection to your actual offline life and personality.

So why, then, in an environment with such extant anonymity... would people be afraid to attach their persona - their made-up and artificial labels which need have no actual bearing on their true identities - to their opinion? Why would someone be that much of a wuss? I just don't get it. You have ingrained anonymity and you can't even stand up and use that?

Can someone explain this to me, why I should listen to anything said by anyone who doesn't have the intestinal fortitude to step up and at least use their fake name?

I am all meh. Seriously. Like, made of meh.

Just a depression spike. No big. Still. Merits saying.