My life is *almost* normal...

A monk goes to a monastery and takes a vow of silence, but all of the brothers are allowed to speak two words to the Abbot every year.

After the first year, the monk says, "Bed cold," and he is given a blanket.

After the second year, the monk says, "Food bland", and is given a small bottle of hot sauce.

After the third year, the monk says, "I quit," and the Abbot replies, "Well, no big surprise there, you've done nothing but complain since you got here!"

----

It seems every year or two, some social media site will become yet worse (last time: Twitter, this time: Facebook), and I will say to myself, "Self, it's a shame all the major social media sites are owned by sociopathic billionaires, and I sure miss the days on LiveJournal where all my friends were sharing thoughtful posts and there weren't a billion spam bots."

And then I remember that Dreamwidth exists, certainly the most LiveJournalish a thing could be, and that I even have friends posting here (3, at least), so I should log in and consider using the site that I wish everyone was using. But then I do log in, and I remember that I have limited brainwidth to actually update anywhere regularly (see: I last updated my own RisingPun.com blog back in November) and realistically I'm only going to regularly update my newsletter and (increasingly begrudgingly) Facebook.

Anyway, I continue to salute you for using the best social media site, bid you less crappiness than expected in the new year, and if you're ever in the neighborhood when the weather's warm, let me know and I'd be delighted to join you for a walk.

"Post bad."

And no, that icon isn't the face of despair, it's my face. Forgot I had that eyebrows icon on here, and it amuses me.

But the news sure is causing a lot of despair lately. I know, maybe I should doomscroll less, but it seems like a constant stream of reasons to feel hopeless about the future, from the accelerating climate change we continue to do nothing about as we have for the past 50 years, to the steadily marching fascism which wants to make various types of people illegal, from trans people to democrats. AI is a powerful tool that I in no way trust  humanity with (since humanity is often what's lacking), and of course Covid is still a thing in spite of how most of society has decided to treat it.

So in the face of all this, I've mainly fallen back on an epicurean form of hedonism, less the drug-fueled orgies and more just trying to avoid pain as filling my life with small constant enjoyments like good food and video games and so forth. And of course, laughing at it whenever I can, like putting all my annoyances into a March Badness bracket.

But I was typing this, a tiny bird just walked under the bush in my side yard, the one buried under two feet of snow last week which we thought might fall over and die like the other tree in the side yard, but so far this bush though brown and withered remains standing, and tiny life is trying to keep existing beneath it, and that feels like a metaphor for something.

So yeah, I ended up not really using this site.

But with Elon Musk now buying Twitter, I'm reminded that I actually really liked LiveJournal, and Dreamwidth is only worse than LJ insofar as people don't use it. And I'm part of people, so that's partially my fault. Critical mass is a difficult problem to solve, and I dunno what would make people apparate here, but I'm going to maybe remember this exists.

Or maybe not I suppose. My reading list shows that of the hundred-odd people I ostensibly follow, @Kass is the only one who has posted recently enough to show up. It's possible I set it up wrong, since a few people I presumed I was following I actually wasn't, but then when I looked they hadn't posted in years anyway. I guess if you're reading this and you have posted recently and I'm not following you, feel free to let me know where you are so I can.

But I think until this hits a critical mass, I'll probably just be making my updates every two weeks in my mildly humorous and column-flogging newsletter.

First Dreamwidth post not imported from LJ-land!

So, I realize that while Dreamwidth ostensibly imported my friendlist, in actuality it imported personname.lj.com accesses, which is not terribly useful for building my friendslist here. I added the few people whose tags I recognized, but this entry will remain unlocked in the hopes that eventually my erstwhile LJ friends and I will find each other again, like star-crossed lovers, only not actually lovers, although there's a decent chance that I do love you.

Anyway, while I'd normally make this a separate (and locked) post, here's a thing I've been thinking about. Or rather, before we get to that, here's a thing that what I've been thinking about made me think about. Specifically, an old Emo Phillips joke that in one UK survey, was voted as the funniest joke about religion of all time. Obviously that's setting your expectations far too high, but anyway, here's Emo Phillips at his finest:



What made me think of that joke was the fact that I was about to get into an argument with someone I mostly agreed with, on Facebook. And sometimes when I do that, I feel bad for arguing with people I mostly agree with, when people spouting horrible ideas that I vehemently disagree with seem to be in abundance lately, and yet I do not tend to end up arguing with them. Because I feel like I'm not going to convince misogynists and racists to suddenly love people of all genders and colors and whatnot, nor do I have any interest in listening to what they have to say. Whereas I feel like there might be some actual dialogue to be had between me and a facebook friend who disagree on a small semantic issue like the definition of racism.

But maybe there's no utility to be had. I'll admit, writing this post has sapped my interest in going back and commenting on her post, perhaps because my need to write something has petered out, perhaps because my previous foray into discussion with a facebook friend where we disagreed somewhat (on the issue of face-punching) did not end terribly well, perhaps because I'm increasingly seeing the Internet as shouting into (the void // echo chamber // room of angry bees) and none of those seem terribly useful, so it's much easier to not engage, and most people don't seem to appreciate anyone disagreeing with them on their own page anyway, and who cares what I think anyway (well, presumably you three, if you've read this far, but not people just posting their own memes and red meat on their own pages).

Anyway, I welcome your disagreement as always, but more importantly, Hi, I'm on Dreamwidth!

Welp, haven't posted here in a while. Perhaps because I have nothing to say. Although I guess it's been so long that LJ has not seen mention that I moved from my house of 13 years, to another house in town.

Since then, for the past half-year, my life has remained largely defined by:

A pair of irksome Negatives:
1) I have not yet managed to sell the old house (which is preposterously underpriced).
2) I cannot seem to get people to pay me for my writing (which is also probably somewhat underpriced).

Overwhelming Positives:
1) My days are filled with love and laughter that completely dwarf the negatives above, so I remain quite happy.
2) Smaller things (regular gaming, D's job at the library, our new house) are also sources of happiness.

So basically, I am happy with my life but worried about money looking future-wards.

My old friend Lex and I have launched a new humorous advice podcast called:

Problem Solvers ...ish

We've just posted our fifth episode, so you can follow that link to hear us solve listener problems ranging from racism to dick pics. And we'd especially love if you have any problems for us to solve, if you click through on the site and leave us an anonymous voice message online with your problem for us to use in a future episode. Don't leave your name, because we want to play the voice message on the podcast. Truth be told, our queue of listener messages is now empty, so it would be awesome to have that not be the case when we go to record next week.

Do please feel free (encouraged, even!) to share the link with your friends and acquaintances who might enjoy such a thing.

I've heard the phrase before, but it does seem like lately, a lot of people on the far-left want to savage some left-wing people for not being far left enough.

( This gets rambly. )

the_star_fish has been heroically taking her free days off of work to drive me all over Western Mass. You can get a vague sense of how that goes in my most recent column.

I should probably write some new jokes, since I'm hosting a comedy open mic on the 15th and then apparently the entertainment for a Halloween party later in the month. My problem is that the jokes I find funniest tend to be funny only to me, and occasionally Debbie. Example: On our road trips, every time we entered Hadley, I said in my best Harvey Korman impression, "It's Hadley." As this is not funny to anyone who isn't a Blazing Saddles fan, and doesn't really translate to print, I couldn't put it in my column. But it made us laugh. And much as I enjoy performing comedy for a room full of people, sometimes the most rewarding thing is to make one person you love laugh a lot.

I don't mean to post so much about being happy and in love; I could also mention my back has hurt somewhat of late and my lack of income remains a looming issue.

Yep, once again we're taking a few days to play 26 boardgames, one for each letter of the alphabet! You can watch Debbie tweet it with pictures @StarfishKnits, and/or watch me geeklist it with write-ups and bad puns at BoardGameGeek.

We just finished playing Kingdom Hearts CCG, and now Debbie's considering whether we are playing Lord of the Rings: the Duel next, or something more classic like Louis XIV.

This is my favorite thing.

Between poetry, comedy, and stories, it turns out I have some stage time this summer. Been doing a bit of each, finally qualified for the WordxWord poetry slam over the weekend, so I'll be doing more poetry in August.

Meanwhilst, I'm hosting a FREE comedy open mic this Thursday evening (7pm) at the Parlor Cafe in North Adams, preparing for my appearance at a show in Northampton next month.

Sunday I'm competing in a WordxWord story slam qualifier in North Adams, and then on Monday I plan to compete in a Story Slam in Williamstown.


Recent columns:
Marriage and Rainbows

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