Went to Arisia last weekend.  Sat on a few panels, in exchange for which I got free admission to the con & a ticket to the free food in the Green Room (which is a suite on the third floor where all the exalted panelists & guests get to hang out. It's generally pretty messy and filled with people I don't know who all know each other.) The con was pretty interesting and fun. By some definition of "pretty" and "interesting" and "fun." Otherwise it was "meh", but not in a bad way. I did spend time with a writer whose work I like, so that was a plus.

Micro report inside.

As Kellnerin and
Cheeseburger will be happy yet very skeptical to hear, I have a book coming out sometime in the recent future. Plus, I'm always trying to pimp my old ones. Plus, I'm always trying to pimp my site.

So, I've been considering whether to get more involved in these newfangled things all the young kids have today, like facebook, myspace, second life, and the boring boring boring linkedin.

Only, I think they all suck, I don't understand them; their privacy policies scare me & plus I'm paranoid about everybody on earth disclosing their social networks, making it that much easier for NSA/Skynet to take over the world.

That's how older daughter used to say "happy new year" about 25 years ago.

Today I would like to make a lot of new year's revolutions and also figure out a way to make a living this year and also maybe watch a football game. And also there is a party to which Dear Wife Betty tells me I must go in mid-afternoon.

Astute readers of this precious blog know that I got laid off a few weeks ago.  Today I put a bunch of books that I don't need no more on the freebie bookswap shelf at the library. Nothing too exotic here--in the first place, I don't do much exotic stuff, and in the second place, I only put out books that I thought likely to interest buyers at $.25/copy. It would be rude to "donate" recherche books that nobody's likely to want anyway. (That just means that somebody else would have to dispose of them eventually)

LM's confessional diary has inspired me to relate this tale of of truly embarrassing behavior. I offer it in the spirit of self-debasement, so that you can heap scorn upon me, or turn away in silent pity, as you choose.

One night, nearly thirty years ago, while drunk, I wrote a letter to the writers of a quasi-popular, quasi-cult comic book. Their response, two months later, immortalizes me in bathrooms all over North America (and for all I know, all over the world).

Got laid off by phone call at 8:00 last night. Dear wife was at work. Gave her the news this morning.

The Pains go ever on and on, out from the door where they began. And you must read them if you can. . .

Another two chapters of the nanoscopically famous novella written by me, edited by a waitress, and illustrated by a Cheeseburger are now up Wetmachine.

Paraphrasing me, perhaps it's fitting that a story about a humble human of common decency but no particular kozmic talent who is evidently picked by the universe to redeem the world through his own suffering should turn out to be a colossal root-canal to finish writing.

Anyway I'm pretty happy with how it's going so far, modulo the snail pace, and I still adore the illustrations.  For any of y'all as may be innarested, yes, there are a few more chapters right behind (yeah, yeah, I've heard that before) just almost kinda-sorta maybe-really ready to go off to the editor any day now. . .

johnny, in other words, is going to debug this novella or die trying.

Your so-called "Lou Gehrig's Disease" is a feeble troll unworthy of Kuro5hin, and your "stage three brain cancer" is some script-kiddie's pathetic idea of a clever hack. Mankind invented Auschwitz, and this is the best you can do? Horrible diseases that maim and torture one person at a time? Now that is what I call pathetic. Basically, you suck ("suxxor" if you insist). So why don't you put your long stringy hair into a ponytail, put on your black trench coat and your baggy black pants with all the zippers, pull on your black gloves with the fake chain-mail accents and sling your black backpack with the skull and crossbones and Ubuntu sticker over your shoulder and CLEAR THE FUCK OUT; go down to the 7-Eleven or the comic book store or wherever it is you like to hang out. Buy a pack of cigarettes and tap it on a hard surface before opening it in that white trash ritual you learned osmotically from the losers in your loserville arrondisement and take a long drag from a Marlboro and turn your head up to exhale dramatically, cupping the cigarette military style like some enlisted loser. And get lost. Just clear the fuck out, OK? You bore me and irritate me, and we grownups would prefer to be left alone for a few minutes. Look, here's five bucks. Take it, God. And just go. Get out of here. Fuck off.

Inside: watching "Everest"

Whenever I'm going to post something about Cory Doctorow, which happens from time to time, I get this thing stuck in my head, the ol' movie Tora! Tora! Tora!, which I'll bet few of y'all have even heard of, much lest remember. I can't say "Cory", I have to say "Cory! Cory! Cory!"

Which then gets me thinking of the stock phrase Marsha ! Marsha! Marsha!.

Anywho, my ol pal Cory is in town for this deal and we're gonna hang out for an hour down at the coffe shop. If you have any quexions you would like me to put to the esteemed zeitgeitian, speak in comments.

27 years today.