Back with the insomnirants!

I wish NaNoWriMo was not the same month as Zach-Gets-An-Xbox-360.  I am battling twin impulses of winter time creative time urges, and wanting to save the Universe in Mass Effect, or at least reconnecting Miranda Lawson to her sister.

Update: I reconnected Miranda.  It was kinda Meh. I just don’t like her, as a person.  She’s boring, like a badly done science experiment.  MASS EFFECT FANS YOU KNOW WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT!  RIGHT?  RIGHT?

But yes, October was a crazy month for me.  I was at the shop by myself and working like crazy.  I enacted a new financial plan, so that I would be less retarded-money wise.  Spiritual Successor had our concert, and before that  we had three weeks of frantically rehearsing and writing songs so we’d have something for the concert, and i got a new game machine plus wireless internet at the same time.

Now it’s November and all’s back to normal and it’s dark and rainy most of the time and it’s at this time that remnants of Alaska Cabin Fever come roaring back and  I start to get all itchy creative wise, and it’s uncomfortable unless I do something.  My gift is a rash!

I have an odd distrust and distaste for NaNoWriMo.  For one, I don’t like internet holidays.  Also, It’s similar to Valentine’s day where part of me feels there should be no celebration to writing, it should be done year round.  It also feels weird to have events and tests and websites around writing but just for this month.  An influx of overly vocal, overly excited folks talking about their wordcount, when i’ve been struggling at this bitch the whole year!  All this makes me feel pompous though, as if my slow ass novel writing is somehow pure and creative, and the nanowrimo stuff is self-satistfied drivel.  My stuff is just slow going self-satistfied drivel, and I’m mostly unhappy because I know there’s some imaginary word count i’m not reachig every night that I decide to play a video game or ignoring the various works in progress I am working and progressing on, and writing a blog post to you fine folks instead.

enough of this, onward!

I know you guys know this, but wireless internet is awesome!  It’s great at coffeeshops and such, but in the home, with multiple internet devices, the thing is amazing!  Lindsey and I can finally watch netflix on our TV, which means watch TV on our TV.  and I can rate movies on my computer, sitting on the couch, and watch the recommendations change on the xbox screen.
Part of what’s nice is to be of the moment, at least for a little bit.  I was so obsessed with video game culture, without beaiong able to play the games I was obsessed with.  Now i can read a review and play the game within the same day just by downloading it.  I can join in the zeitgeist.

I am thinking of distributing funwater awesome online.  Not this blog, but the zines-making them kindle and ipad ready.  This means learning html.  So that’s winter project number one.  I’ve been giving myself lessons with a html book set up like a comic, and i think it’s working well.  Perhaps by the beginning of the year you could buy funwater awesome 1 on amazon.  This mostly excites me, but I don’t know what it  means about my  principles,  or how FA holds up to zine/punk standards.  If it’s still handmade, personally written, and the code is written up by me, can it still be considered a zine?

I realized something about the criticism towards kindles.  Most folks say print will live on because  you can’t read kindle in a bathtub, or curl up to a kindle next to a roaring fire.  But who the fuck bathes anymore, or reads by firelight?  You’re defending books using even more arcane examples.  I don’t use a kindle because the jostle of the streetcar, as it takes me to the nickelodeon, would break the glass screen.  A book can be trampled by horse and still be read, so take that machines!

My main issue is that the love of print is not the love of words.  Nabokov is amazing whether it’s water-stained or pixelated.  the sentences don’t change, only the sentence carriers.    There is something beautiful about letter pressed books done on old machines, except most of these books are poetry chapbooks by angry, bearded men(with greek fishing hats)  filled with veiled sex stories about their wives or writing students.  And yes there is something uniquely  beautiful about handmade things, but the video game Super Meat Boy is handmade, by two friends, coded carefully at their desks line by line, and it too is beautiful.

you just realize at some point that the love of books, of tattered paperbacks, is not righteous but aesthetic.  As a writer, right now, thinking i could code up my zine, and have it be read by thousands immediately, with a greater profit margin than i’d ever get handmailing each one, and that most of the  people denouncing the internet do so because they feel they spend too much time on it, the way you denounce how delicious cake is…print does start to make less sense.

I’m not making any definite statements.  Maybe the next blog post will be sent out as a letter, because I broke all machines in my house and denounced the internet forever.  i’m at a crossroads, is all i’m saying.

other things!

The movie pandorum is great!  You should watch it!

This post is long!  I should end it soon.

I want to talk about aliens.  A lot!  So expect that.  It may become an issue.  I know i’ve spent too long as of late looking at alien case files and videos.  It was a halloween charmer that became an obsession.

Last bit of news.  I switched banks this month.  Or added banks really.  This new bank I go to multiple times a day, as soon as I have enough to deposit.  They have the same tellers each time, and they all know my name and such and that’s charming and all, but they will only talk about the weather.

At first I thought it was just awkward, automatic small talk.  but it’s been three weeks of multiple,daily visits.  the weather talk has become a crippling obsession.  I go in the morning, it’s sunny, they say good thing it’s sunny hope it doesn’t rain.  In the afternoon, still sunny, they say, “good thing it’s still this way, but tomorrow morning it could still rain.”  If it does rain, they ask how i’m doing braving the weather.  i say that i spend my day inside and it doesn’t bother me.

I try to bring up other topics, ask about weekend plans, they say it depends on how the weather acts. I ask how their day goes besides work, they say it’s fine nothing plan.   I asked all of them about their halloween plans and all three of them said they were going to lay low.  What are they laying low from?  Judging from their talks, they lay at about coffee table height at ALL TIMES.  Is their weekend just looking through venetian blinds at an aggressively gray cloud and trembling?

One teller said she had no halloween plans except to maybe go fishing.  If it didn’t rain.  I ask her about this today, and she said she didn’t go fishing, she didn’t know why, the weather was nice, she just didn’t do it.   Then she  said this weather has been weird, and I cracked a little inside.

Not only is this shit depressing, but it is monotonous to the point that paranoid me starts thinking their making fun of me.  They see me as so boring that I’d have nothing else to offer except weather and they don’t even deign to talk about the cool stuff they bring up with other customers.   I  feel like I’m talking to an ELIZA program.  Pretty soon i’ll just try to make all the tellers say, “elaborate BOOOBS more.  PENIS PENIS issues?” like I did on the Apple IIe when I was little.

Today a teller just complained about the week, how one day it rains the next it’s sunny.  It’s hard to make plans, she says.  I ask what her plans were.  She said she had none, but hopes the weather would cooperate more.  I said, “WE MANAGE!  we always find a way to manage!” then left.

the writer’s life!