My Whole Expanse I Cannot See…

I’m almost back. I rested today, I just feel weak. I’ll perk up tomorrow.

The Brothers Cabal by Jonathan L. Howard came out today, which helped my perking. I really love looking in on the life of Johannes Cabal every few years, just to make sure he hasn’t run afoul of some firing-squad, or lynch-mob, or some dark god so old and obscure that people forget to be afraid that such a being is watching… watching right now. Living life as a Necromancer of some little infamy, Cabal is more prepared than most to face such trials, but I still like knowing he’s okay. I’ll know soon enough, then post a review.

I’ve always loved timepieces, clocks, watches, they can be so beautiful. I enjoy them more as art than just a utilitarian way to measure time. I have this pocket-watch in my travel bag, I can’t physically use the thing myself, but I love watching other people use it. I really just love knowing it’s with me, I’ve had it over ten years. Pocket-watches aren’t exactly “in,” but I’ll take elegant over “in” any day. Smart watches are in, but I wouldn’t take to carrying one, even if I was paid to carry it. Sure, they’re all running shoddy operating systems, that’s awful enough, but even worse, they’re flat out ugly. There’s no sophistication, no sense of style. They’re too clunky for fitness-wear, or too gaudy to be worn by a used-car salesmen, let alone a high-end executive. Smart watches aren’t smart, and are hardly passable as watches. At least, such was the case before today.

Today saw the announcement and impending release of the Apple Watch, and it’s spectacular. No, I’m not some Apple snob, but I’m absolutely a watch snob. If Apple happened to give us a hideous, stupid smart watch, I’d totally say so. The Apple Watch is gorgeous, and it’s running on iOS 8, the world’s most advanced mobile operating system. I’m excited, I want one in my bag.

So, I’ve been using this totally antiquated theme (the way a WordPress blog looks) since 2008, since Day One. On the one hand, it’s home, it’s become me. It’s so obscure, I’m probably pretty much the only person using it, I don’t think it’s even available anywhere anymore. On the other hand, it really is old. Themes are so much more lush now, cleaner, fancier layouts and what-not. Behind-the-scenes, the blog gets more sophisticated, while its public face doesn’t. Then again, there’s something to be said for consistency, it’s kind of soothing to have at least this one thing as a constant. I’m torn.

A few months ago I dropped fifty dollars on a “pro theme,” I actually saw it on Cherie Priest’s blog. I started looking for header/footer images, and at color schemes, but as I got into it, no matter what, it always looked like Cherie Priest’s blog. Sometimes it was just the skeleton of her blog, but still, it was always and would always be someone else’s blog. I’m not out to copy someone else’s look, especially another writer’s. After that failed experiment, I’m done buying “pro themes.” I mean, if some design firm sells ten thousand copies of a theme, you have ten thousand blogs that look like cousins.

I’m thinking, IF I do change my look, it’ll have to be to some obscure freebie theme, or… I’ll invest in a totally unique theme… right after I sell my unicorn farm (yes, farm, unicorns aren’t stabled, they’re more of a free-range animal).

So, after much waiting, we are now running WordPress 4.0! The update is pretty interesting, it mainly centers around making adding media to posts a much better experience. Basically, I never used to know how an embedded video or music clip would look in a post until I actually posted it. I don’t post a ton of media, but at least now, doing so will be way less annoying.

Let’s try…

Nice! It worded…

Wake Up, off of Jagged Little Pill, is one of my favorite Alanis Morissette songs, I always think of it when I’m doing something that really scares me. It helps me remember that it’s always easier not to do that scary thing, it’s easier not to risk anything, but if you don’t go and do and risk, you’ll never have anything that’s worth anything.

Anyway, this is WordPress 4.0.

This song just came up in my mix after a really really long time. When you’re shuffling four-hundred songs that suit a melancholy mood, you get surprises.

It’s amazing how a song can take you to an exact moment, can make something that happened years ago feel like it’s happening right now.

Let Me Know by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs is one of those songs…

Okay, this is probably pointless to even try, but I’m a sucker for lost causes…

Many, many years ago, this company, StudioZee, made a USB IR remote for Macs, the ZephIR. It is a spectacular device, so of course, StudioZEE died and so did the ZephIR. bet365 arabic  The ZephIR software has a built-in database of user recorded remotes, it stayed active up until the AppleTV 2, but now, nothing. Anyways, enough history. I have a crazy question…

Does anybody reading actually have a ZephIR AND a recorded remote for Logitech z906 surround sound speakers? I’m having trouble recording my own.

So, I woke up at 4:30 am totally scared. I don’t remember dreaming anything bad, I just woke up feeling like something bad was happening, or was ready to happen. After that, I couldn’t sleep again. I didn’t want to sleep again. I always immediately go to wake up my display (I never sleep my computer, just the display. I run the thing like a fucking server.), the day-bright LED is reassuring. The past few months I wake up and just read for at least three hours, sometimes longer. It’s calming to go wherever some book wants me to go, even a post-apocalyptic vampire world.

The idea of apocalypse is actually soothing to me. At the end of everything, tedious stress is out the window; schedules, money, Goddamn politics. All that matters is the stuff that really matters, being alive, being close to at least one person you love. Perhaps I’m taking a romantic view, but I honestly think that’s how it’ll generally go when the zombies come. There’ll be brutality, it’s not like sociopaths will snap out of it and become armed guards for nuns, but good people will remain good people, and will remain trying to find goodness in whatever nightmare is happening. This isn’t a just from fiction, the emotional connection we feel to scenes in fiction happens because those scenes are based in reality.

A writer doesn’t sit down and just make shit up, not everything, not the visceral emotions being evoked by their fiction. The words are different, but the ideas within the fiction that make us feel joy, fear, sorrow, love, are as old as language. There’s nothing new under the sun, fiction comes from things that actually happen. I once kissed Sara in a park, under a gazebo, just as a torrential, Tsunami-esque downpour started slamming onto the wood above. We’re making out, as mist and sideways rain is cast into our pocket-universe. It sounds like the fucking Notebook, or any John Cusack 80s movie, but it was real. Tom Hanks died for others in Saving Private Ryan, fiction, sure, but every single Hell-on-Earth war has countless documented acts of selflessness. There’s a reason “life imitates art” isn’t the way that phrase goes, it’s not true. Art imitates life, in some way, always.

No, I don’t think my post-apocalype is saccharine at all. I think that when the zombies come, the most valuable resource will be time, and people will stop wasting it on shit that doesn’t matter. At the end of everything, I love you will be one of the easiest, least terrifying things to say to another person, kind of the opposite of now. We blow through so much time just being afraid to say those three words, let alone a thousand other things.

The way we waste time scares me. I feel time, I feel the clicking wheels wearing me, everyone, everything away. I know it’s happening, I know that no matter what, we all run out of time, and a thing that scares me is that too often I feel pretty much alone in how I feel the wearing away of all. There’s always tomorrow to do something I’d rather do now. I want to go, and see, and experience, because I know that time isn’t some wallet full of unlimited cash. Still, even knowing, I’ve forgotten, and THAT really scares me. 

Thinking that tomorrow is a guarantee is a trap, there’s such a cost to pay for that kind of thinking. I’ve paid it, I fucked up. I lost someone I love, and she’s never coming back. I just assumed her clock was wound way better than mine. She was so vivid, I felt like she’d be around as long as the sun. A stupid accident, and she wore away in a blink. I didn’t get to tay good-bye, didn’t get to say plainly how much she meant to me. I took time for granted, it was so unnecessary. t never want to pay that cost again, it’s something I regret every single day. I don’t understand how anybody could pay that cost, then pay it again, and again, and again, but it happens. That also scares me.

Lately, I’m scared a lot, I feel time pressing harder, moving faster.

Anyway, enough of me for now.

So, I started running this blog in 2008, with whatever version of WordPress that existed way back then. I think it was version 2.5, possibly 2.6, either way, it was lots of upgrades ago. In all those upgrades, I’ve yet to back anything up (as recommended), and yet to destroy the blog. I don’t worry, the blog’s going to end when it’s supposed to, it’s all up to WordPress Jesus. He’s like Kitty Jesus, or People Jesus, but for WordPress, He decides which blogs go to WordPress Heaven. Anyway, yes, my blog has come quite a way from its humble 2.x beginning.

Right now, I’m not-so-patiently waiting for WordPress 4.0. Why? Because I’m weird and I like new software. It gets dull looking at the same interface every day. No, I don’t write every day, but I do at least log in.

Every year, today, I listen to Aimee Mann sing 4th of July, and every year it sounds truer than the year before. There’s a line that I’ll likely get tattooed on me before I’m done…

“It’s one of my faults that I can’t quell my past, I ought to have gotten it gone…”

That line hits me, all I want to do anymore is to go back, which is absolutely the worst kind of want, a completely impossible want.

So, it’s Friday the 13th, an evil, profane, Godless day, during which anything can happen. Except, nothing really happened, especially nothing evil and/or Godless.

I’ll write something better tomorrow. I’ve been a little under the weather for the past few days, but I’m finally on the mend. I suppose Friday the 13th isn’t too bad.

Still, tonight was supposed to be something different, something like going home after a long bad dream. I’m tired.