Honestly though, Neon Genesis Evangelion feels really relatable right now. Hedgehog dilemas all over the damn place.

*agressively baricades self in room*

Tired: Stress-impulse-buying myself a LEGO set I don't need while out shopping on an unrealistic deadline I set for myself.

Hired: Impulse-buy LEGO baseplate fifteen inches to a side. (This one's not the set, they're separate items.)

If, months or years down the line, I start identifying as "agender" (or similarly NB) -- I'm going to say that I first knew it back in October of 2017, I just didn't know that I knew it yet.

Potato

(Content note for implied gore)

Checkpoint!

My brother hit a new threshold on his relationship script the other night. He got engaged!

Politics later. (And they apply and I could talk about them. If I had to.) This is worth celebrating.

Don't get your hopes up

If you're reading this, it means I haven't been by my blog for a full year. I find it extremely unlikely that I'd do such a thing, unless I was doing it on purpose, in which case I imagine I would have disabled this thing.

Given that's the case, I'd like you to assume that I haven't been able to do something about it. In fact, go ahead and assume I'm dead.

Unless the post right before this is about me going away for a while. Then you should yell at me for being such an idiot.

Mom said something which–to her–seemed completely innocuous to me when I came downstairs just now. She said, "You can bring whatever you're doing downstairs and just do it down here." Which really just shows kinda the misunderstanding going on.

As a general idea, that's a fine idea. But "what I was doing" was inextricably tied to the computer. A lot of what I do is, for better or for worse. And since the computer I use currently is a fixed-location type, that means I couldn't bring it down. Which I'm not terribly fond of either, I'd prefer more-mobile access, but it is what it is.

Which brings me in a roundabout way to paper, I guess. Paper's good as an artifact for consumption, as reading fiction (but not certain kinds of scholarly/intellectual-type work); and for certain kinds of reference; and at least some kinds of note-taking— I rather like editing with pen on paper, honestly. Not saying that it's efficient, but that's how things are. But paper's crummy for arguing, a halfway-decent internet discussion thread is much better, so long as the people involved aren't dicks— and if they are, the chance of a decent argument is right out no matter what. And paper's terrible for storage, as my recent experience with using both version-control and paper on the same writing project has shown me. Dear god is that a nightmare-in-waiting.

Now where did my point meander off to OH YE— no, wait, false alarm, I don't actually remember. Drat. Well, I guess this is just a drivel anyways. I dunno.

Jazz hands?

I recall hearing somewhere (at least, I'm pretty sure I heard it from someone in-person, as opposed to reading it) about a guy whos name had an asterisk in it. The decided-on pronounceation was to say the first part, pause and do "jazz hands", and say the second part. Who'd I hear that from, and what was the name?

Stuff I've read this week

Maps in a Mirror (center): 675 pages. Read cover to cover in eight days. I think there may be something wrong with strange about me. Contains a whole mess of Orson Scott Card fiction, and bits of him commenting on it. Quality is all over the map, because this spans his entire career at least up until publication. (But does not cover his entire career. It's only a collection.) I could probably comment on individual stories, if asked.

Epic (left): 364 pages. Read in a day or two, but certainly under 48 hours. Took a break from Maps in a Mirror to read this. Set on a distant planet where economic life and a large fraction of the economy are based around a video game. YA, but there are strong undercurrents of moral and economic philosophy.

The art of Thinking Clearly (right, open): around halfway through, I've read something like 150-160 pages. A collection of short essays (generally 3-5 pages) on thinking errors. Each prevents the error in a colloquial way, some evidence and/or arguments for it, and usually some clues for how to avoid it. I'm not sure how useful it is. It's generally not perscriptivist, but I don't know whether that's a good thing. Though it probably is.

Not mentioned: the large amount of internet reading and downloaded computer-only reading I did this week. Nor the chunks of magazines I read.

Also not mentioned: The first three episodes of season one of Star Trek: Voyager I watched, the first three episodes of BBC's latest Sherlock I watched, or the episode or two of Star Trek: TNG I watched. I'm pretty sure I watched a bit of TNG, anyways. I liked Voyager better, so that's what I stuck with.

Social time: last.fm

Alright, social time:

Why would one want to use last.fm? I'm sure there are reasons, I just don't know what they are.

But I'd like to. I've got a last.fm account, but no real idea why. I think I use it as a "junk I've listened to" list, currently; but I don't think that's a 'good' use of it/ think that's under-using it.

I saw Amber Dow today.
Not so much I "really saw" her, as literally saw her. I spotted her crossing the street as I was driving out to pick up my brother. She was probably on her way home, but beyond that, I really don't know anything.

I feel weird, kinda bad about this. In school she was one of those kids, the odd ones who're social outcasts and seem to possibly even like it that way. Not that that really means anything, I was one too. Part of me feels like maybe I should try to re-connect with her. Just kind of a hey, how're you doing, hang out kind of thing. I don't really know what the purpose of that would be, though. It's not like I know we share much in the way of interests, and she's probably an 'All Grown Up' Actual Official Adult by now (unlike me, who's faking it). It'd probably entirely be just for nostalgia (or even pseudo-nostalgia) purposes.

Maybe it's just me, but I feel a little depressed these past couple days. I should retract that; I know some people who have had "actual" depression -- don't go pedantic on me, I know, I know -- and I know I don't have that.

I'm making a new blog tag, undrafted. It'll probably be something like "this never went through any drafts, so it may be incoherent / logically inconsistent / not spellchecked &| grammar-checked / otherwise generally wrong". Maybe I should make a "here's what the tags mean" post.

Using the Mac

I discovered today that I can't use the Mac effectively. I can kinda use it, but only the same way I can 'kinda' drive a stick shift: I can steer and stop, and even hit the gas, but ask me to change gears and we are done.

Thing is, all the problems have to do with the keyboard. First is the command key. Through long training, I have become accustomed to using the 'control' key. This one isn't really Apple's fault... much the same way it's not the carmaker's fault if they put the turn signal controls in the middle of the dash instead of on the stem, or Ford's fault that the Model T doesn't even have turn signals. I don't blame them for it, I just hate it.

Then there's the keyboard itself. I might have more success with macs if I used Mac keyboards. All Macs these days have those chiclet laptop-type keyboards, though. When I'm at a desktop, like our Mac, I really prefer the old-style key-travel 'klacky' keyboards. They feel better. And no, my older Mac keyboard won't cut it. It doesn't have quite the right feel to the keys.

The real insult, though, is emacs. I'm used to the Alt key sending emacs' `meta`, but for the life of me I can't seem to find the `meta` key on the Mac. This forces me to use `Esc`, a real problem because just about everything I love about emacs is on the `meta` key. Those of you who've never used the power of emacs might feel this is a little like complaining about a car not having a steering-wheel cover. Which is true as far as it goes, but it's more like complaining about a car not having a steering wheel.

A Quick Followup Note on God

There's a C.S. Lewis quote I love about Lewis's time as an atheist. Basically, Lewis didn't believe in God, and at the same time was angry at God for not exiting. I'm not exactly angry per say, but that's pretty much where I think I am right now. I'm not entirely sure that I think God doesn't exist, but in that case...

8093 Celestia

If I were a writer, I would write about Celestia in order to ask my questions about God. Since I'm not doing that, I conclude that I'm not that much of a writer.

Which I suppose is a pity, since I love books and all, but what are you going to do, y'know?

a journal

Day three. Or maybe Day 4. I really can't tell. I haven't been keeping track. It's too late now.

The space warping is starting to leak out. I'd swear I turned both alarms off last night. But instead the cd played straight through once and stopped. I figure this had to be a warp, because the alarm that stayed on is between the off one and the cd control.

Then again, maybe I'm just fatigued.

I'd made a deal with myself, of sorts. That's not a book you read at night. So of course, recently I've been up past one-thirty, two-thirty AM reading bits and pieces of it. The footnotes are sometimes the worst parts. It had never occurred to me that you could refer to a footnote that was on a previous page, or hadn't happened yet. And that's just the numbers.

I can do a reasonable job of faking being well-adjusted in the evenings if I've been away from the book all day. Then I go back and pick it up and it all falls apart.

---

It's funny, but this book is something of a microcosm of my life the past year. descending, deteriorating, obsessed. ending up strange places there can be no return from because they were never there. I think I need to get out.

I've been reading bits of the book out of order, but I discovered that Navidson has a book titled House of Leaves with him. I wonder at that. What manner of recursion is this? but because I read out of order I know almost nothing else about it. Only the page count, which differs from the page numbers in my version. I feel compelled to tally up all the pages in mine and compare.

The last thing to disturb me this much was Everything is Fine, where Fluttershy 'is' Johnny and the Minotaur.

A promise to blog is a curious thing/ Makes one man crazy, another man sing

A promise to blog is a curious thing.

I'm bashing this out on a borrowed computer in a browser other than my typical one, while a movie I'd love to catch plays in the other room. And the whole reason I'm doing this, is because I comited to updating every day, and don't have anything else set up to cover for today.

I'll try to put up two things for tomorrow to make up for it.

There's a grand total of one comment on my blog...

...And it's this guy:

Wait, that didn't really convey why this is a big deal. Let me clarify, with the help of some linked images.
It's this guy:

I've been following this guy off and on ever since I discovered him -- I forget how, probably through a Linux forum somewhere -- because he's practically always right. And out of entire internet, he comments on my blog?

Er, sorry. I'm just going to go dance around like a maniac and then collapse from the awesome.

You Ever Walk Into a War Zone? My Shoulder Angle Sits Left.

"You ever walk into a war zone?"

What?

"Yeah, yeah, I know that's a bit of a weird question, coming from me. I'm a namby-pamby coddled kid from some anonymous place in the northern united states, who's never had to deal with shortage or hunger or fighting or even something as simple as life-threatening illness. Bear with me for a moment. You ever walk into a war zone?"

Uh, not really. I mean, I'm… how'd you put it… a namby-pamby coddled kid from some anonymous place in the northern united states &c &c.

"That's not true, and you know it."

Like feck it's not. What are you talking about?

*Smack!* "Tonight. May 10 2013. Fish fry kitchen. Any bells?"

That wasn't a war zone.

"Like feck it wasn't. Okay, maybe not a conventional war zone. On the pure atoms-photons-and-eyeballs level it was just a dozen or so people standing around with their eyes closed. But you know. You know. You saw. That was as much a war zone as anything your most miscalibrated imagination can come up with."

---

So yeah, I walked into a war zone tonight. Tail end of fish fry, a whole bunch of adults (well, older adults I should say holy crap I'm twenty) gathered in the kitchen. From what I overheard, 'he' (whoever he was) had bleeding nose and ears, broken ribs, ruptured spleen, and was being airlifted. Bad s***.

I'm standing just outside the door to the kitchen. Maybe I'm in the doorway; at any rate I moved just inside the kitchen and then back to just out over the next 30-60 seconds. Anyway, I'm standing in the entryway to the kitchen, and all these adults just start praying. Now, there's nothing particularly weird about this. We were at a church event, prayer happens, especially when it looks like things have gone south¹. But this is a little different. This time, almost in overlay, I can see this battlefield going on, as they're praying. I wish I had better terms to describe what I actually saw, I only saw it for a very brief flash. That was just enough for part of me (much the same part that goes in for surface flash/'coolness', the part that self-inserts into, say, Star Wars to hijack the plot by Saving The World with Really Cool Stuff) to want to jump into the fray, complete with Cool Ninja Moves and stab this and save that; luckily, the rest of me was like "dude?" It's about this point that my angle showed up.

Now, at this point, I have to pause to say that I don't want you thinking I'm one of those angle kooks. Granted, this pause probably doesn't appear to help my case. My point is that I'm not sure whether I actaully believe in angles, much the same way I'm not sure whether I actually believe in God. According to a fair number of people around me they do, most notably including one lady who, assuming there's truth such matters, is absolutely right about these things. Sort of the Albert Einstein or Eliezer Yudkowsky of this area.²

Anyways, my angle shows up. I'm not in the kitchen anymore, I'm just outside the door by now, so he's leaning in to get a better view. And he's all antsy, he's got this – not look, exactly, that's normally what it's called, it's more like feel – he's got this feel about him like "uhg, man, I really should be in there". Because he's an angle, and this is spirit warfare, and this is, like, why he exists, it's what (well, the other thing; still assuming that all this is true) he's good at, it's what he's for. So he looks at me like "dude." And I'm like "Dude, don't let me stop you. This is your thing. Go do what you gotta do." He didn't, of course, I guess I shoulda been explicitly sending him by joining in. I don't really know why. So I told him "You gotta go, go," and he's there antsing, and at this point I turn and go around the kitchen ('cause I'm not going through the kitchen when it's full like that) and back outside. And that's the sixty seconds or thereabouts.

Right, so my angle. He's left. You know the whole shoulder angle/shoulder demon deal³? My shoulder angle sits left. Which isn't a very accurate word picture, since it makes me think they're, y'know, little guys, six or nine or eighteen inches roughly. They're not. But I could literally feel him leaning in on my left shoulder. Yes, I mean literally.

Anyways. That's my story.

---

Footnotes:

¹ That's a really crappy turn-of-phrase, come to think of it. Why is 'going south' a bad thing? We went to Florida earlier this year, and that was great – well, the two days or thereabouts we actually spent in Florida, rather than in the car. (A road trip is quite a different proposition.)

² She says my angle's name is Erasmus (I really hope I got that spelled correctly). Apparently he's got one of those mortarboard-style professor hats. I wonder if he sports it like just kind of chill?

³ Which, apparently, in the original version wasn't angles and demons, but angles of [good|light] and angles of [evil|darkness].

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twitter

I give up on twitter. Twitter's not long enough to contain my nonsanity. I'm just going to dump here, instead.

20

With my birthday coming soon, I realized something:

I'm twenty. (Give or take birthday rounding error.) This is the most free time I will EVER have.

And it's not nearly enough as much as I'd like.

Blargh.