My Whole Expanse I Cannot See…

So, in January I got to go see The Both (my brother’s birthday present to me), a band started by Aimee Mann and Ted Leo as a side-project to their solo work. It’s a good band, their self-titled debut record, The Both, is a great record. It’s a good mix of dark and light, you can hear Aimee and Ted’s individual styles, yet they blend so well. If you’re looking for something new, check out The Both, you won’t be let down.

They played lots of good stuff that cold January evening, but Aimee’s stuff will always be my favorite. Their joint rendition of Goodbye Caroline, off of Aimee’s fifth studio record, The Forgotten Arm, was SPECTACULAR.

First, I apologize. For MOST readers this will be a BORING post.

So, after some doing, I hit 500 wins with one of my HearthStone characters, Uther Lightbringer. He’s a Paladin, a Holy Warrior, defender the Light. Playing him is very chess-like, methodical. He’s my favorite, no two games are ever the same, but they’re never easy either, which I like.

500 Ranked Wins!

Now my character portrait’s all fancy, lined in gold, animated. I was stupidly excited to get it.

So, there’s this online card game, HearthStone, it’s based in the lore of Warcraft. All the cards are characters from the Warcraft universe, as are the Heroes. Basically, you use your cards to protect your Hero, while trying to ultimately kill the enemy Hero. It’s a game that’s brilliantly simple to learn, yet has astonishing depth. It quickly joined the ranks of eSports, games that people quite literally play professionally… for money. Lots of money. For example. November 2015 is the HearthStone World Championship, where players battle it out for $100,000, and a snazzy trophy. No, I didn’t accidentally add a few zeroes, the stakes are that high. There’s a live audience, and online viewers around the world. I’m aware, it’s crazy… and I’ve made it my goal to qualify.

Me winning a match:

It’s definitely a bold goal, deranged even, but it’s also totally possible. I’ll post videos as I rank higher… or I’ll just fail spectacularly and note that too.

So, TLC is possibly the most intellectually bankrupt network on tv. They have not one but TWO shows about dudes with multiple wives. There’s 19 Kids and Counting, a show about the Dugger family, Michelle & Jim-Bob, raising 19 kids. Aside from being boring to watch, the Duggers regularly use their “fame” to spearhead anti-gay and lesbian campaigns, including a state-wide robo-call against marriage equality in Arkansas. They have a late-night talk show, All About Sex, during which the hostesses seem to go on and on about how they mostly try to avoid sex with their spouses/lovers. Well, except Margaret Cho, she’s down for anything. All these shows have pseudo-intellectual catch phrases, “We just love each other,” “Love should be multiplied, not divided,” “…somehow, we just make things work,” “Dirty, filthy, fucking.” Okay, maybe that last one isn’t so intellectual, pseudo or otherwise, but the others are just things stupid people say to sound smart or profound, or to make their lives sound provocative. These are all pretty spectacular, in an awful sort of way. Dirty, filthy, fucking just might go on my epitaph. However, we might have a new top of the heap from one of TLC’s new reality train-wreck, My Big Fat Beautiful Life, it’s a show about this lady who’s overweight because of a medical condition. but loving life just the same. Now, anybody who puts their life on tv, or on a blog… is open to criticism, medical condition or no. Myself included. THAT SAID… This lady’s, sort of, life motto, just strikes me as totally vacuous, “I only have this one life to live, and it damn sure better count.”

I only have this one life to live, and it damn sure better count, it’s so… motivational speaker-esque. It’s just a bunch of words that add up to nothing. Yes, we only get one shot at life, so far as we know, that’s true enough. It’s the second half of her motivational gold that bothers me. See, every life counts, for good or ill, every life counts, no damn sure betters about it. We leave footprints in the world, it happens without even trying. Whether you’re Steve Jobs, or someone’s crazy cat-lady aunt, you’re remembered, you affect the people around you. Our worry should be that at the end of our everything, we left the world a little brighter than when we entered it, not whether or not we made life “count.”

So, it’s 2015, I’m thirty-four years, eleven days older. Yay. Am I supposed to feel wiser? If I am, I don’t. Mostly, I just feel… down… melancholy. كازنو 2015 has to be something good, not that it could just magically be something good. كيف تلعب القمار I have to endeavor to make it something good. I know I can… I can. I still have some fight in me, and when I don’t feel like fighting, that’s obviously when I have to fight harder.

I kind of just let 2014 happen to me, I can’t let 2015 go the same way. كيف تربح المال من الالعاب

So, we are now running WordPress 4.1, and like usual, this means pretty much nothing for readers, but for me… WordPress 4.1 has some nice interface changes on my end that make for a better writing and posting experience. I may post more! Who knows? My moods are capricious and dark, of late. We shall see.

I think I’m only going to post on days divisible by 4…

Why?

Why not?

So, I haven’t written in awhile, a long while. I won’t say that I needed the break, but I took it just the same. I just haven’t felt like writing, or maybe, I haven’t felt like anything in my head is worth writing. I’ve been really down, way down… and nervous. I haven’t felt this kind of nervous in a really long time. I have so much worry and lonely in my head, I just, I don’t know. I just want to be with the one person who makes everything okay, she pushes away all the dark, but I’m here and she’s not, and I’m scared. Everything’s so fucked. I made her go because I thought I was in the way, I felt like she would be better without me. I said it, I made her go, but it’s not what I wanted, I don’t think it’s fucking true at all. We fit, I know we fit because when we’re alone, when it’s just us, it’s easy. We’re better together, we feel like we can breathe… and I fucked everything.

Zombie Club Girl…

My brother and I, the Conehead and the Zombie…

So, this year we had a pretty sizable Halloween party, I had to dress… big. Hence, Zombie Club Girl… in a bit of a contrast to my brother’s Conehead. I think we both pulled off our respective costumes with flare.  Yet… I’m pretty gorgeous, no?

I lost a subscriber… Too much technology? Too much politics? Just not enough good writing? I don’t know. There should be some sort of exit survey.

I like turtles!