They say that murder ain't the cause of the weapon

 I had to shut it down today. Woke up from yesterday's nap in a foul mood that only got worse as I knocked out last night's News. Woke up this morning even gloomier, as bad as I've been in a while. Just one of those days, you know?

 Thankfully, today's nap seems to have shaken things loose. I'm not exactly dancing on the ceiling but at the very least I don't have that black cloud sitting on my face. Every little bit helps, I suppose. Part of the reason I'm in such a squirrelly mood is because I am, at best, a neurotic mess. I may have mentioned it here, but I've got a possible job opportunity I'm working on. Long story short, I haven't heard back whether I have the gig or not and I cannot stand having to wait to hear back from people.

 It's perfectly natural I haven't heard back after a day, as they no doubt have more important things to worry about than my mood. The one thing I have learned from this whole big nothing is how much of my own mental well being I have wrapped up in being able to consider myself a writer. Whether that right there is healthy or not, well, that's the issue.

 For what it's worth, this whole blogging thing and all the different types of things I do, from this Gibberish to the News to whatever I wind up calling the Tumblr stuff, ain't really giving the rush I need. Back when I was a working journalist, I got a little buzz out of seeing my name in a byline or even when I wrote something anonymously. Knowing people seeing it was enough.

 Ego is one of the greatest reasons any sort of artist (writer, musician, dancer, etc.) does what they do where someone else can see it. It's not the sole reason but if anyone tells you otherwise, they are lying. Sure, people see this, or so the viewer counts tell me. I still haven't managed to garner more than 10 readers a day apart from once or twice. I don't know if I even have any regular readers. I'm not sure how to get them. By nature, I am not comfortable advertising myself.

 There's no reason to be blogging, really. I could just bang out some stuff on Google Docs or a writing app I've downloaded. Since getting back into writing, I've read a lot of stuff on the mindset of being a writer, how you're supposed to think of yourself to be one. Frankly, the best advice I've ever seen still comes from Billy Crystal's character in Throw Mama From The Train: "A writer writes. Always."

 I used to think - and still pretty much do - that three things define a writer: a need to tell a story, having a story that needs to be told, and just being enamored of the physical, mechanical process of writing. Somewhere in there, it becomes a way to make a living, and you become either a newspaper reporter (or content creator or medical transcription writer or what have you) or Philip K.Dick. When I got burnt on writing back years ago, I lost the third aspect. It got painful and caused much misery. I like telling stories, but I've always dug putting words together to make something coherent.

 And, as it turns out, when I stopped writing, I lost sight of what it meant to be me. I just drifted through the world. This all ties together, because once I quit writing and once my last relationship ended, all I did pretty much was work, sleep, smoke pot and start it all over again. The last four years in New Orleans are a serious blur and all I remember is working jobs I hated.

 So, now I'm thinking of myself as a writer but the total lack of success or feedback is an issue I need to figure out how to crawl over. I don't have to do this to make a living anymore. It's just for fun, and it has been a lot of fun. I keep telling anyone who pretends to care that this right here is the best part of my day. It occupies my entire interest for the day, what to let out for the Gibberish or what to pay attention to for the News. I'm having a good time, it'd just be nice if I was helping someone else have a good time. Ah, well.

 That's enough bellyaching. The lovely weather we've been having turned to rain this afternoon and it's supposed to get cooler, with more rain peeking in once in a while. I'm still working on the goddamn From Eternity To Here because it asks a whole hell of a lot. Last couple of days I've been revisiting Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen and it is a barrel of monkeys. Your standard high fantasy hack-and-slash third-person RPG, it's got some weird aspects that set it apart from the pack as well as a really fun combat system. It's a couple years old and starting to show it, but if you're into games like Skyrim or The Witcher, it might be worth checking out. I'd wait until it's on sale, though.

 Okay for now. I think that's enough. Sorry for the bellyaching, but sometimes it's necessary. Thanks for putting up with it.

Don't you know her when you see her? She grew up in your backyard.

 I am sick to the teeth of writing on COVID-19. I am exhausted about writing how the president is a callous moron. I am tired, tired, tired of writing about how he might actually be the president this country deserves because this country's full of complete bastards who get off on watching people get ground under the hell of corporate boots. So, hopefully, that's got that out of my system.

 Granted, I've been staring at the rest of this screen for the past half hour and nothing else comes to mind but the blind, seething rage at the world's stupidity and awfulness and mean dumbness, followed by resignation to our fate of never traveling the stars because we need science to focus on making pills that get flaccid cocks hard. And while that may make for interesting prose, it's tough to keep going for too long. Besides, half the point of this whole affair is working on making my overall mood as something other than Plath-esque gloom and righteous indignation.

 Well, this isn't going well. On top of the first paragraph up there, I'm pretty tired as in "exhausted and weary". I'm still not getting enough rest, CPAP machine or no. I don't understand why I'm so sleepy all the time, but there you go. This is all very interesting, isn't it? Okay, moving along.

 I finally dug into Nexus: The Jupiter Incident which I'd picked up on sale at Good Old Games yonks ago. It's pretty neat, a real-time strategy space conflict-type game. Something like Homeworld if that's at all familiar. If not, you play a captain of a big ol' space freighter-type thing, more like a Star Destroyer than an X-Wing fighter. Instead of concentrating on blowing up the opponent, your problem is managing power, issuing orders, transfering repairs to different parts of the ship, that sort of thing.

 The backstory is fairly interesting, too. Rather than being part of a military like in most of these types of games, the various factions are powerful corporations. I'm not sure if it's my leanings towards anarchism or just basic cynicism, if we ever make it to space travel, I see us getting by less on centralized governments or even federations, and geared more towards corporations and business interests. Ever seen the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode that took on the '60s Hammer space film Moon Zero Two, which actually wasn't that bad? Something like that. I'm not saying it's a primo outcome, that's just how I see things.

 Anyhow, while not rock hard, the science is a little better than the usual fantastic stuff. Humanity's only colonized the solar system to, far as I can tell, Jupiter. A trip from Phobos to Europa takes eight months, that sort of thing. I do like hard science fiction, but far too often creators, especially authors, think that means "really boring". This is more along the lines of Cowboy Bebop than Star Trek, though I do think some sort of faster-than-light drive comes into play. No aliens, either, but I've already recovered some fantastically advanced technology, so I reckon it's only a matter of time.

 I don't know if I've made a full shift from sword-&-sorcery fantasy to science fiction, though it's looking that way. I do that when it comes to video games, my interest shifts not between types of games so much as types of background stories. Science fiction, fantasy, and true crime, with the odd Western thrown in. There are very few good Western games. I'm told the Red Dead Redemption games are killer bee, but the only one available for PC is $60 and 140-plus gigs. I'm in no hurry. Maybe when I get a little more money coming in, I'll buy a console.

 Okay, what else, since I have nothing interesting going on in my brain. Days like this really makes me wish I had a bit of the good smoke, if for no other reason than I find it stimulates creative thinking. Still working on From Eternity To Here by Sean Carroll and still enjoying it. It's still in the "let's go over this very complicated if mundane physics knowledge that makes up the background for the really wild shit later in the book" stage of things, but it's doing that very well. Maybe it's because I haven't read any of this type of book in ages but I am thoroughly enjoying it.

 I guess that's plenty for now. Maybe more later, maybe not.

What goes on in the dark will soon come to light.

 I'm not seeing anything in the News that's exactly sitting my soul on fire, so we'll just fiddle around here until we run out our word count. I think we might give the Project a shot this week just for the hell of it. That's the fun thing about writing when no one's paying for it (or reading it, let's be honest), you can do pretty much what you damn well please.

 I really don't understand why, but since moving straight to WordPress... the Blogger site still gets more hits. Who knows. Yeah, there's nothing pouring out today. It's raining out, so me and Otis can't take our constitutional. Bounce has a pretty nasty mark on his back where the hair's stripped off and there are some cuts. It's inflamed and hurts him, as well. I'm pretty sure it's from the tomcat that keeps coming up through the woods. They've fought before and Bounce is kind of a wimp. He's not a happy kitty right now but there's nothing I can do out here until tomorrow, and that's only if the veterinarian is open for business.

 All right. The rain stopped so me, Otis and Coy took us a nice little constitutional and cleared my head up a bit. I think starting tomorrow we will implement the Project. Do a weekend round-up on Monday, another news piece on Wednesday, and cap it off with a Friday grab-bag. Plus, keep the Gibberish here. It won't be as easy as one thinks, because sometimes that logjam takes hours to unplug. Still, no one's paying me for this, so there you go.

 We're now a week into this coronavirus "self distancing" business and it's interesting to see how it's all washing out. Just my two cents, so grain of salt, but I think life is coming to an equilibrium if we can figure out a way to make sure everyone who can't work doesn't starve to death and isn't thrown out on the street by their asshole landlord. Beyond that, yeah, it's smooth sailing right along, Matt.

 Anyhow, I've been watching people deal with their new reality with great interest, given my own heavy thirst for Splendid Isolation. We're not quite a week into it and people are bouncing off the walls already. It's going to be hell on them if this goes on for months. For me, it's just an excellent excuse to cancel the very few social obligations I have, so I can't really relate. I'm trying to remember back when I was a bit more sociable and put my mind of those kids who're doing Spring Break and Saint Patrick's Day whatnots.

 I guess I can understand it. I did plenty of dumb shit in my 20s that could've killed me and none of it involved a global pandemic I'm not saying it's a good or smart thing those kids are doing; I'm saying I understand. I wonder if these kids are at all plugged in politically. Most of the Gen Z kids that used to cross my radar (working in a kitchen, you get to know a lot of young folks) were generally hip and kept an eye on things even if it wasn't their sole focus. Of course, most of them were musicians or artists, or they were members of some group the Status Quo wants kept in a closet. LGBT folks, that sort of thing.

 Okay, what else. Finally getting around to listening to Flogging Molly. On their Swagger album as we speak. It's... okay, I guess, sort of a natural progression of Celtic folk-punk from a band influenced by the Pogues. Not really my cup of meat anymore, but not unlistenable and I can see the appeal. Also got around to actually playing Dungeon Siege unvarnished last night. I bought it yonks ago so I could run the Ultima V: Lazarus. I've fooled around with that a bit - it's not any easier and it's full of bugs, but fun - but never really messed with the base game. Not bad, but I'm inclined to those High Fantasy sword-and-sorcery joints. I also have the two sequels and I'll try those tonight. They're all massively on sale for the rest of the month at Steam, like three bucks for the lot. You can't beat that with a stick.

 I'm also finally getting deep into Sean Carroll's From Eternity To Here. I bought it not long after it came out, but that was about the time I quit reading. It was just too dense for me then. Now, I'm sort of surprised at how swiftly it's moving along. I like Dr. Carroll's take on science and think he does a good job explaining things, and I'm about ready to get into his latest book Something Deeply Hidden. That's his take on my latest fascination, Many-Worlds Theory. It's not only nice to be reading again, it's nice to be fascinated by various things again.

 So enough of all that.

Saturday, January 11, 2020

 Had a dream where I was doing something like this, except I was writing it out by hand and it was always about musicians. I don't know why either, I didn't explain it to myself in the dream. In particular I was writing about Neil Young and my handwriting - which anyone who knows me will tell you is perfectly wretched at best - was getting worse the more I wrote. Plus, I was trying to finish up so I could go back to Brazil for some reason. Dreams are weird, man. Anyhow.

Sunday, October 13, 2019

 Lazy Sunday coming down. Lazy week ending, now that I think about it. That's not a bad thing.

Tuesday, October 8, 2019

 Man, hasn't it been a weird day? In among the never-ending parade of, admittedly, "weird days", this one has been particularly hard on the nerves. Not so much mind-breaking, just petulantly unpleasant.