It's been a long time, hasn't it? Sorry guys, just... been boring, really. Nothing to say. I've been in what I suppose one could call a creative rut, not so much lacking in ideas as lacking in the spirit to put them down. I was drawing for a bit, but as always I'm impatient with my abilities... my drawing skills are severely stunted, actually. Part of it is that I'm constantly erasing and starting over or drawing over something because it's not quite what I see in my head, until I screw it up beyond repair. The other part is twofold: that my fingers seem to be too big to make the lines I want to make, and I don't know where THAT sensation comes from, but there you are. The other is that my hands are so damn shaky. It's not a clinical condition, there's nothing fucking WRONG with me, at least not with my hands, they're just... really unsteady. Used to be the most steady hands in the world, I used to bead things and do little craft projects with tiny fragments and pieces. Then I got older and sometime around eighth grade my hands started to shake, and haven't stopped. So when I'm trying to draw with, say, pastels or charcoal, something that I try to use delicately, the line goes all over the place. Problematic. 
So, actually, I've tired of the one irritating thing about SG: that the people I really WANT to hear insights on my daily (semi-weekly?) musings from, to wit, my friends, are not members and probably won't pay some thirty dollars just to be able to respond to my various mental forays. Not that that would be a waste of money or anything. I mean, it's a verified fucking fact that my ideas are worth their weight in... like, cheetos or something. And given how little cheetos weigh, that's a bloody lot of cheetos. 
In order to solve this problem, I have relocated myself to a more customizable forum with commenting privileges available to all, to be found at the end of the following Fiber-Optic-Yellow-Brick-Road: http://intheinterim.blogspot.com/
I encourage all those who have any interest in my goings-on or who have (for whatever reason) enjoyed my previous presence in this format to look there, where I have a) made an attempt to reproduce all of my foregoing entries, just for my OCD chronological-continuity peace of mind, and b) am making my meager, proto-geeky attempts to make the space "mine." I test its limits. I prod them with broom handles. And I've got more to say, but now I'm going over THERE *points off in the direction of the aforementioned Road*, so follow me down, follow me down, follow me down, and we'll continue this after I slip into a more comfortable URL.
Okay, I couldn’t possibly even begin to fathom why my connection is being screwy right now, but it is. The little lights on the modem are blinking, blinking away in their normally reassuring cheery little way… but still, time and time and timeout again I am unable to access the lifelines of my geek psyche. Even the illustrious Suicide Girls (yes, I am talking about YOU!) is down for maintenance, so to save time and get me into bed by my bedtime (that would be 4:30 am, a’thankyou…) I am typing this jaunty missive in Word and henceforth shall employ a function well known to you all as Ctrl-C to bring it to all who care (and all who don’t, so suck it up or else!). As may be excruciatingly obvious, I am in a mood of both high good humor and also what I term Vocabulary Apoplexy, a rush not unlike adrenaline, delineated, not by a speeding pulse and flushed skin, but by an irrepressible impulse to mercilessly use and then callously drop each and every single solitary multi-syllabic word that pops into my heavily overcaffeinated brain. This is what an afternoon nap and liter of Dr. Pepper will do to ya, kids. Be thou warned.
To continue. Dual epiphanies have struck my brain with the force of small but fiercely-wielded ball-peen hammers, each with their tiny shiny heads wrapped in fragrant, luscious rose petals. Just chew on that image for a moment. CHEW ON IT I SAY! These aforementioned epiphanies, in opposition to inspiration’s traditional practice when it comes to Yours Truly, are not spread willy-nilly over areas of my creative life that either require no inspirational support or are not currently “On the Workbench” as we say here in the Factory O’ Perversions and Oversized Dreams: Rhain’s Parietal Lobe Branch. Nay, these epiphanies, in a rare and oh-so-gratifying stroke of fairy-dust luck, are both in the area where they will do the most good: that of my ever-growing obsession, my monstrosity of a book. Now, I can’t share them with you, since both are related to the end environs and reveals of this multivolume leviathan, and I wouldn’t want to spoil any delicious surprises and thus dilute the inevitable (yes, yes) showering of me with your compliments, flattery, gifts, rains of money, awe and reverence, whatever. For that reason you will all (with the exception of Katrina, my Constant Reader and Rutabaga In The Garden of My Heart) just have to take my word for it that these brainwaves are not only gargantuan in size, scope and application, but also gleaming and scintillating in their every pulsating square millimeter. I have butterscotch pudding awaiting me in the fridge, 'scuse me.
You know what sucks about pudding? That it takes so long to become pudding, and that before it does, it’s merely attractively-colored glop sitting there in the bowl not even getting any chillier. Anyway.
Back on track, I still don’t know what the devil is wrong with the connection, but it continues to waver and flicker like a tenuous thread of food-coloring diffusing in a rippling pool of fiber-optic static.
Homestar Runner is unreachable, to my chagrin, as I was looking forward all day to their weekly update (and if, when I finally rest my feet on the dear dry land of their positively voluptuous URL, they have not even yet updated, there will be an explosion of wrath hitherto undreamed of in the minds of Flash-animating nerds everywhere. I know whereof I speak, for this demon, it lingers in my very soul, and I feel its harrowing presence staring out through my eyes, waiting for its moment to rise and consume the world in a firestorm of Un-Homestar-Runner’d agony.). Slashdot is reachable, but I’ve already read every last geeky character on the page. The only remaining bone being thrown in my direction (and isn’t that a delicious alliteration?) comes from my beloved
Penny Arcade. For this reason I have not torn my hair in internet frustration. Penny Arcade can, and has, keep/kept me entertained for weeks on end. And while I read the convoluted and equally vocabulary intensive musings of one Tycho Brahe and the mysterious Gabriel, I click away on my guilty pleasure: the subtle, underappreciated function on all of your Windowed compys: Minesweeper. I am the fully-witting, consciously-accepting victim of Minesweeper addiction. No, I’m not talking about you people who just open up Intermediate difficulty and click a few times at random and maybe flag a tile or two. No, no. For my Minesweeper pleasure I am obliged to both increase the field size to its maximum (24x30) and Overclock (so to speak) the number of mines to truly awe-inspiring totals. Each time I win I add another ten or (dare I say it? Dare, dare.) twenty mines to the threatening total. I am up to and knocking my head against the brutal brick wall of 190 mines. For any who can beat the game at these settings within, say… a day, I will give you…. a sub sandwich. I have one here. It’s hot and juicy and lovely and comes from Quizno’s, that purveyor of joyously perverse commercials courtesy of Joel Veitch and Rathergood.com. So I challenge ye all faithful to go and do thou likewise: battle the demons, trace a delicate clicky path through the mines, dance ye on tiptoe through the tulips, and come back with a full report. And I shall deliver unto thou brave and resourceful brethren this sandwich. But it’s going to get cold if you don’t go and do it now, okay? Come on, turn off your browser, tear yourself away from the (admittedly lovely) nakedness, and spend some time with that deceptively simplistic grey box. I recommend some music and a couple hours of free time. I think you’ll be surprised… it’s like… a very methodical, low-tech meditation. A mantra in clicks. Click….
Click…
Click…
Labels: Rants, Technology
Maybe I need to clarify for those unrefined neanderthals out there who can't see why libraries rock so much: because, while their CD collections generally suck, I have very idiosyncratic musical tastes, which means that I can find all kinds of things that normal people wouldn't be interested in but just make ME oogie all over myself, to be perfectly frank. Then I check these things out on my thrice-weekly trips to the Y (which is right across from the library) and burn them to my computer. VOILA! Free fucking CD. Rock on. 
That on top of the wide selection of more reading material than I could reasonably hope to get through in a year.
I've recently acquired from that source such luminaries as:
-Chango Malo's Alas Poor Lucy (By the by, if anyone in Tucson hasn't heard of/seen them, go do it. One of their members works with me, and both he and his band rock in a deeply geological manner. These guys aren't just rockin', they're like... whole stratigraphic LAYERS of igneous sediment. I kid you not.)
-Leo Kottke Live (Have yet to listen to this, but I'm told it's good, and hell... it's free.)
-The Producers soundtrack (I don't care if you don't like musicals; you just CAN'T hate any musical made by Mel Brooks that incorporates such songs as "Springtime for Hitler.")
-R.E.M. Around the Sun Not been a large consumer of R.E.M.'s media in the past, but have recently encountered them and discovered that, the piteously overplayed "Losing My Religion" aside, they also rock pretty damn well.
And these are just the highlights! I say unto thee again: How canst thou not absolutely fucking love the library?
So.... new picture. Though the quality is not quite as sexy as it has the potential to be, still, lovely in a mummy-shoud sort of way. Have I mentioned that I have a thing for shrouds and otherwise diaphenous or unsecured clothing? Yeah, apparently I do.
Hmm, what else. The pinkeye has left the building, thank fucking god. That was miserable and a half. As of this new month, we (that would be the royal we) are:
-a little worried about the rent
-working on getting a new job
-trying to do better in anthropology
-working on a new drawing which I could show to all y'all if I had a scanner, but I don't, so it'll have to wait till I get to a Kinko's or something.
-going to the Y to get skinny and swim three times a week (go me! For those of you who know what a slug I am, that's a major, MAJOR accomplishment. I'm gonna be so hot they're gonna hunt me down and make me a model. Or a Suicide Girl, that would be better. 
)
-Having a really irritating creative failure with regards to The Damn Book (I've decided that's its working title). I have to go back and rewrite a whole chunk, which I very rarely have to do. UGH.
-Missing My Beloved Far Away and hoping he'll work a little less hard so I can talk to him more.
-Missing my Damned Mysterious Invisible Absentee Phantom, who is not going to know WHAT hit him when he gets back to Aetolia. There will be roleplay hijinks of the most dire and dubious sort. I'm making plots, so be warned, wherever you are.
-Hoping my roommate brings home an attractive boxer or two for me to flirt with.
-And that's about it.
There's the rundown, folks. We'll see how all these things play out. Oh, and I just want to issue an opinion here: LIBRARIES ROCK. They rock so hard it's nearly fucking geological. They are so cool you could keep a steak in them for a MONTH. Got me? Libraries are awesome. 
