Hello everybody. It's been a while. How are you doing?
This is just going to be a rambling of random things that I've been thinking of lately and stuff from my life. So do whatever you want with it. And I'm not going to bother with linking unless there's one or two things that I may want to make a point with.
I've been a bit scarce lately. It's been a busy and difficult summer. With the exception of the past few weeks, and the last week of July when I was vacation in Florida, I was inundated with a deluge of things at work, too much to keep up with almost. Things have died down now at work but I continue to be overwhelmed at home. And it shows. I need help but nobody can give it to me. I'm just stating that as a fact, it's not a desperate plea or anything. Really what I need I cannot afford: an entire crew of people to swoop in and organize and clean everything and get us caught up. Wouldn't that be nice?
Whatever spare free time I have, which is really none, I have been spending on a novel I'm working on, so no time for E2 stuff lately. I began it while on vacation and have done little on it since coming back. I really believe in this novel, more than any other I've ever worked on. I believe in its ability to be published. I think I've got something here. I've got to somehow find the time to work on it. I do have a few things for E2 that I will somehow push out at some point, like the latest Max Wood episode, which will directly follow the bloody good entry by eyeofthebeholder. There will be another Point/Counterpoint soon, much to the disappointment of the artman-haters. I have actually written three essays lately but none are on E2 and two of which aren't anywhere. I'm not sure where to put them. The first, entitled "Gay marriage is like Trix," I put on Facebook. I didn't know at first if I wanted to put it here or there, because here I would have been "preaching to the choir" but on Facebook, where I am friended by some hard core right-wingers, I was afraid of negative feedback. I know what you're thinking, but at least here I rarely, if ever, have to see any of them in person. On a daily basis. It is for the same reason that I haven't done anything with the other two, "Ideology is poison for the mind" and an untitled one about how if Jesus were to come back today the majority of the Religious Right would actually despise him. I actually get into quite heated debates with right-wingers on Facebook these days, like I used to get into with left-wingers here. My point is, though, Facebook is my new drug of choice; I spend a lot of time on it using my iPhone, which I got for my birthday in June (just about the coolest gadget EVER!). If only Everything2 had an iPhone app. I can catbox on E2 from it but that's about it. You can't really node from it because the field you type in doesn't scroll on the iPhone Safari browser so they have to be really short.
My son started Kindergarten last Wednesday. My boy is growing up! He seems to be doing all right in it so far. My babies are growing up as well, talking a little here and there, and they are getting harder to handle. I love 'em all, though, very dearly.
I recently found out my dad has cancer. Esophagus and stomach. He started chemotherapy yesterday. They are optimistic about the outcome so we'll see what happens.
I've been finally getting into some side work lately, which is good, anything that helps pay the bills. I have one in the works and two prospects, one of which I actually have a meeting scheduled for. I like getting to do some concepts, something I have not done a lot at work lately. It's starting to really bug me, actually. It's the only thing I don't like about my job lately. The two guys over me are also designers so I am in a situation where it's a huge unfair advantage: the two other people in the design department besides me are also project managers (one is the VP) so naturally they'll choose themselves over me on who does the concepts (I design other stuff, little things here and there, or concepts for subpages based on homepages they designed; plus I am doing all the HTML/CSS stuff, or "front-end production"). One of them is much younger than me, didn't have my education or nearly as much experience so of course it annoys me greatly when I am sitting here with nothing to do and he is extremely busy but yet decides he is going to be creative director AND main designer on the projects and I have been in this business for over 10 fucking years, he's been in it less than half that, and I've probably done about twice as many sites as he has, and... well, I'd better stop there. I try to keep myself in perspective, though, try to remind myself that in this economy I should be lucky to have such a good job - a job at all, really. But it still upsets me and I cannot help it.
Another thing that is pissing me off lately is politics. I am so fucking tired of these neocon nitwits at these town hall meetings, of these goddamn "tea baggers" (ha!), and, most of all, these racist backwards Birther dumbshits. I used to get annoyed at all the venomous Bush-hating that I saw here (I didn't vote for him, didn't like him all that much, but I wouldn't say I hated Dubya), but Jesus Tapdancing Christ, I don't think it ever approached the hatred I am seeing of Obama from these angry righties. Calm the hell down, everybody, sheesh, he's only been in office for about six months! He's not Harry Potter for fuck's sake, with a wand and a "Fix economy NOW" spell.
I get into about that, as I've already kinda said, with some right-wingers on Facebook. One of them I used to hang around back in high school. I didn't realize how much of a right-wing nutter he was until I found him on FB. It's weird, though, on there, how many people I have reconnected with from college and high school. It's a little surreal, actually. I feel sometimes, with the technology we have today, like with the iPhone and Facebook and the level of communication we can instantly have, uploading and sharing photos taken a few seconds ago, that I should be living in a science ficiton movie.
Speaking of which, I really want to see District 9.
What a movie-filled summer it's been, as they usually are. What a death-filled one, too. With all these celebrity deaths it seems like the Reaper had some catching up to do. The latest is Senator Ted Kennedy, but that one was pretty much expected. My wife's great uncle just died a few days ago and that one was expected, too. He was a nice guy, fun to play cards with. Cancer strikes another victim.
I've been listening to (not watching) a lot of Pat Condell using my iPhone (instead of using its iPod to listen to music) while doing household chores - which is usually late at night when kids can't interfere. Are things really that bad off, is freedom as threatened in the UK as he leads on? Is it REALLY becoming illegal in Europe to criticize religion (Islam in particular)? Of course Mr. Condell could be just an old fart who is a little off his rocker, but if there is ANY truth to it, any at all, or anything else that Pat rants about in regards to religious tolerance threatening freedom, then things are really fucked over there.
I think I'm done now. I think I'll go see if anybody has anything for me to actually do.