I’ve been self-canceled or…

A metacognitive metapolitical hot take on whatever and then some

I don’t know about this. I’ve been self-canceled for quite a long while now. Self-canceled? Yup. I read the room. I mostly shut up. Turns out, no emperor appreciates having their nudity pointed out. And, unapologetically, there’s just some poison pills I can’t swallow. Other people have theirs. I have mine. I’ve not yet been persuaded that I may not have the same autonomy of poison-pill choosing.

Some of those may appear trifles with semantics, but damn. If one has read any of my previous navel gazings, one might know I’m the worst kind of skeptic, of the Pyrrhonian variety. I don’t think we have a club, and if we did I doubt I’d join it. … I’ll see myself out now.

Signal boosting because…well, damn.

Worldbuilding from Scratch

First things first, I’ll start with Artifexian. He sings high praise of a couple of other serious worldbuilders, but honestly, Artifexian’s method is more than detailed enough for my purposes. His demonstrations and explanations are clear and thorough. I’ve been watching his videos for years, but I kept wanting to find a different method. So far, nothing else has really satisfied me. Every method has serious pros then some dealbreaker for me. At long last, I’ve come round full circle. It’s time to commit. There’s other methods I’ll explore, but those will be their own projects. To think how far along I’d be had I simply picked up the gauntlet back then.

Meta-reposting with 100% more repostiness

This is the wordy waxing about which I spoke before. File this under: slice of life. Or the circular file. It’s cool. I won’t know. “And really,” the narrator gazed at the imaginary audience askance, “would it matter if I did?”

It’s been a minute, hasn’t it? Last I left off, I was screaming, wasn’t I? I’ll get back to the memoir-related stuff in due course. Then again, since this is about the present, maybe this is, too? What do I know? For now, I just felt really compelled to check in. With whom, I’m not sure. It just seems sporting if I’m going to neglect the blog for a while, as I do. Huh. Three months to the day since I posted that last one (before the last one, that is). Fancy that.

It was as fine a day of work as I could have hoped. Thank you for asking, dear. All the finer for letting out nearly an hour before the end of the day to get a wee jump start on what, for me, will be a relatively rare guilt-free and maybe even enjoyable three-day weekend, the first since the end of the year. There have been plenty of others, some mix of scattered guilt with acute and intermittent joylessness. If I didn’t know better, someone out there has a doll with my name on it and a collection of needles they’re dying to try out. I’ll venture this much…if you believe in poetic justice and what goes around, comes around, and you feel the need to vent, do NOT call anyone a boil on the ass of society. Just sayin. If there is someone with a heap of needles (a problem heap if ever there were one), I’m not giving ’em any more ideas of where they can stick ’em.

Then I got home to the kittehs. I do love the little (little?) bastards, fur goblins though they be. There have been times where they’ve been my anchor, moreso that I maybe even realized at the time. I ain’t going anywhere because these little shitheads rely on me, and it turns out they perform a bigger service than acting like a couple of needy, squishable doofuses. Thanks, Sam and Dean. You assholes.

Re-posting with a minor update

I’ll wax wordy about more later, but for the moment I thought this deserved a re-post if only because things are better. That, and I’d omitted a significant bit of the title which, while I hope the opener served its purpose (and may do so again), the underlying purpose was a slice o’ life from an existential crisis sort of perspective. I know my style isn’t everyone’s cup o’ tea, and I’m okay with that. As I read this now with a mere four months between me and it, I quite like it. This is maybe as authentic as I can be. The voice rings true. In places it’s a minefield of conclusions ripe for leaping, but I’m okay with that because the leaps would be innocent error. Mostly, though, I’m happy with the outcome. Spoiler alert: keep on going. Go for the going of it, and customize it to your heart’s content.

PSA: Suicide Prevention Awareness & Trigger Warning, or This Slice o’ Life Ain’t for Everyone

Memory, or remembering memory? Or: Let the screaming commence

Rubber, cracked. Red. Ball of spongy rubber, skin cracked and peeling, crumbly interior exposed. Thin rubbery mold line to pick at with tiny nails. Trailer door. Hand slammed in door. Snow. Sea foam green room, cradle. Creepy with the smell of age. No faces. Nothing else.

That’s it. Time’s a muddle. Time? New place, Gentilly apartments, likely a no-tell motel with day rates. Sitting on walkway, dried brown leaves on gravel drive, hand’s reach. Pick up, crinkle. Snap. Crisp. Tear. Peel the flesh from the veins. Crumble in my hands and grind to fine flakes. Mother’s alarm. What am I doing? Palms chapped and bleeding.

Or was it beach on the right, and water? A lighthouse. A road, trains alongside. White water tower. Missisuburbia in washed out 1960’s postcard tones, even in real life. Grampa’s house. Ornamental structural brick carport. Was this first? I think. Maybe. Yes, it comes back to me now, a conversation with Mom many years hence. We’d stopped there with hopes that Grampa would take me in. Apparently the answer was hell no. More here later, but when? Or did I ever remember this moment at all, only to hear about it later, and then to build a false memory built on the bricks of later memory.

How much of my memory today is memory of times recalled, and how much is just remembering what I think I remembered the last time I remembered something? Even then, don’t I likely remember even less, else I’d maybe also remember the setting in which I remembered? Each new memory of a memory seen as a later generation, each losing resolution like photocopied photographs.

New old music & this was a surprise

Now with Saturday (and Sunday) morning cartoons, vampires, yodeling, Greek gods, a single Python of the Monty variety, and cultural appropriation.

I like to expand my musical horizons now and again by using allmusic.com‘s advanced search. For giggles tonight, I thought I’d start at the beginning, as it were. Goal: see where the music starts before I start getting picky about genres and ratings and see what rings a bell. Follow that rabbit down the hole and see where it goes. See what, if anything, satisfies my hankering for nostalgia.

Manifest divinity

16:9 aspect ratio 4k image for wallpaper or printing free for download here.

Where to begin? How about the beginning?

I wrote the following back in 2007, or, rather shockingly to me as I think about it now, about 20 years ago.

I was born on April Fool’s Day at 4:50 in the morning at a VA hospital to one helluva character, rest her blessed soul, which makes me, to those who care about such things, an Aries with Pisces rising, a screwed up combination if ever there was one. My planets align in such a way that just coincidentally the things the astrologers say about such matters appear to be true of me.

4:50 in the morning was not a pleasant time at any hospital, much less the VA hospital where I was born, populated as it probably was, I’m sure, largely with wounded and recovering veterans who sustained injury in service to country for whatever their reasons. 4:50 in the morning is generally not a good time anywhere, unless one is either fast asleep, or lost in passionate embrace, or drunk to the rafters, perhaps the first subsequent to the rest.

WIP: A first crack at sculpture

It’s not much to look at yet, but here’s a work in progress.