blogospherical

Or House of Blog or somesuch.
Here’s the list of creations:
Modblog, the domain version, which won’t be incorporating any of the content from this blog (officially the son of the son of modblog in my private nomenclature). That’ll have the basic daily rants and screeds and fluff, and update posts like this one. I’m committed to daily posting and may well crosspost between the three blogging platforms-blogger, wordpress, and my domain. It depends on how much I have to say each day.
I’m planning at the very least to do a lot more reviews-books and cds more so than movies, which I don’t watch much, and more sports content. Cubs, Bears, Blackhawks specifically. I get a lot of the Cub games on WGN, and the Bears have a few national games. The Hawks are rarely on tv, and the 160 bucks for a season’s worth of streaming is ridiculous. But I digress…next on the list is :

Fallen Earring, the eventual home for the edited first draft of the nanonovel. This version is radically different from the versions previously posted. The delivery system is all that I kept-otherwise it’s a complete rewrite and is causing retrocon ripples throughout my little pocket universe.
You’ll notice that the design is a little different…in that the background is the same gif that I made most of the old buttons from. I think it looks pretty good in that context, and I’ve chopped up the colored-pencil drawing some and used it for a header graphic as well as the “book cover”.

WordWorld, where I’m planning to post a good variety of my written work. That will include the revised versions as well as some first and second drafts as I wish to discuss the genesis of some of the pieces.
The content will change from time to time as I add and subtract pieces, depending on which segment of the overall continuity they’re slotted into at the moment.
The design has my usual starfield background and a bunch of desk tools, including the requisite cuppa joe.

Fear and Loathing In Innsmouth. This webcomic (including a portion that is envisioned as a graphic novel) will be starting around the New Year.
The greenish color scheme indicates the relation to the Letters from Outside anthology, due to start appearing around the same time.

There are also a couple of things I’m not prepared to unveil as yet. It seems that I found the key to my lethargy after all as my O2 converter experienced complete fail at @2 am, causing my dearest to be awakened and the on-call tech to be summoned. It had been sounding like a garbage truck in the driveway for most of the afternoon and night, and finally gave up the ghost.
Fortunately I had one last portable tank on hand and D put that together while I made the call. The whole process was handled very professionally, and Jose was here within the hour to change out the unit. I’d have to say that the old converter was probably failing for a while, and that’s why I was feeling so run-down that I was literally huffing and puffing just from getting up to go into the kitchen. Burning plastic fumes, air instead of straight oxygen, a combination of the two, those are likely culprits.
I’m feeling much better. My gigantic migraine has just about gone away. D has gone to work dspite having just a couple hours’ sleep, though she’s gonna go home early if allowed. Last Friday was pretty slow, or so I was led to understand. Let’s hope today is likewise. We could use the money but she has to be exhausted.

Advertisement

the Post-Fail Fail

Yep, that’s when you really know things are going wrong, when you are so full of fail that it spills out and makes a mess.
I failed to write a word for nanowrimo. I was tired, etc. I slacked, and what’s worse, I’m not real sorry. I basically took a day off, failed to do much at all. I was far advanced in my slothness. I was able to stir myself and prepare simple burgers for dinner but that’s about it.
Being tired makes me less able to process the oxygen I need. The less able to process, the less energy I have. Vicious cycle. I need sleep, but I’m in sleep/fail mode again. I haven’t had this long of a stretch of it since I lived in Rochester and was still slinging burgers for a “living”.
The most effort I had in me was to configure some of the widgets for my brand-damn spanking new website, which I’m working on as much as possible between the myriad of other projects I have running. The security stuff and like that, those things can’t wait. I’ll throw the urls up here soon, but not just yet.
There’s cool stuff coming up. I’ll just say that. The old pro gloss.
I just wish I had the energy to get it done quicker. There’s so much I want to do, but I keep coming around to this lack of energy.
Some of you may not know that I was sick earlier this year. I came down with pneumonia, and it went bad. Bad enough that I’m on oxygen, nine months after I first went to the hospital.
Kind of an inhale fail.
Anyway, I’m still feeling the effects of that illness. I almost didn’t make it–I’m thankful that I did, of course, but things can get frustrating.
I do have just over 10k done of the nanonovel, so I’m not so far behind, and I’m still keeping up with nablopomo. Just about finished with the music piece and voiceover I was due to turn in last week (my most abject apologies, S/D). It took three days for it to be quiet enough in here to consider recording voice and for me to have enough wind to do a good job of it. Some days are bad air days.
More later. 

Vitriol Cocktail

Today is a wonderful newsday. Usually I don’t write anything having to do with politics but several things in the political arena are interesting me today. There are other things that are *cough* interesting me today also, and we may touch upon them, but let’s first go with the politspeak.
First-Herman Cain is a liar, and an amateur. He doesn’t seem to remember what he’s said from one interview to the next. At least that’s the opinion one forms when watching/reading coverage of his unfolding sex scandal. It seems that he has twice (maybe thrice according to some reports) been sued for some variety of sexual harassment, and has settled in both cases, entering into confidentiality agreements during the settlements.
Once the cases broke, he outed himself and has been uttering his variety of doublespeak since. I don’t think I have to find any links for this-they’re everywhere. His camp is blaming the equally stupefying Rick Perry campaign group for putting this information out there.
Gee. Cain has become the frontrunner for the Republican nomination, and suddenly there’s some closet-raking going on. This is likely to be the least of the skeletons, the smallest hurdle he has to clear. The Dems haven’t even gotten into it yet.
It’s just laughable. The three top GOP candidates are engaging in nutcutting contests already, having reduced Michelle Bachman to the afterthought she should have always been and marginalizing the rest of the field. I find myself loving this circus just as much as I enjoyed the Dem circus five years ago. There’s just something about the Presidential race that exposes the essential charm in our national character.
Speaking of national characters, let’s talk about the Occupy people and their complete lack of any realistic political agenda. It’s fantastic that they want to get involved in the political process and vote with their asses. Sit-ins worked during the civil rights movement, and occupations did things during the Yippie times. Hard to remember anything lasting or really positive that came of it all, but I’d be happy to be reminded of such if indeed there was anything. The money people aren’t going anywhere, no matter how many places these people occupy and screech their objections in.
The other great stuff….well, I live in Arizona, which is presently under (and has been for quite a while) Republican rule. Here’s an example of how the legislature works-A bipartisan commission (2 Dems, 2 Pubs, an Indy) was appointed to redistrict the state so that no one party is able to zone things to their advantage.
Governor Jan Brewer liked the results so much that she engineered the dismissal of the chairwoman of the committee and did her level best to disqualify its results. This is SOP here in the land of McCain and Jon Kyl, who have bucked the system so much and so often that the state doesn’t receive most of the federal benefit money that it otherwise would be entitled to (as I’ve found out firsthand in the last couple of years).
I love the weather, but the political weatherman calls for persistent stupid occasionally punctuated by cynical manipulation.
I’m a voter. I feel powerless too. I think that most folks want the things I want, but they sure don’t vote for anyone who has the slightest idea of how to act for their constituency (in most cases). Reality never sets in.

Speaking of reality disconnects, I’ve joined this thing called NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month)-the idea is to make a blogpost every day during the month of November. I did this for two reasons-one, to see if I could (in 2009, I successfully finished NaNoWriMo and NaSoAlMo but didn’t finish NaBloPoMo…which has been moved to some place called Blogher. A cursory scan of the blog titles says that I’m completely in the wrong place. I should have figured that out from the blogHER addy (I googled and find that blogher is some kinda secondrate iVillage imitation). I’m still gonna do the posting, and am not going to withdraw, but I’m a bit hacked off at the folks that run the thing-today, when I tried to access the portal, I was told that my username and password were not recognized, even though I signed in three days in a row previously and am on the blogroll (#617). I won’t be back to claim my merit badge. There’s enough stupid on the front page (which claims it is about Life Well-Said and then goes on to belie that statement in the very first article) to put me off, before I get to the article about Kim Kardashian.
Then, back to the political side of things…I’m on the federal tit. I was stricken with pneumonia that got complicated (as some of you know), almost died. There’s an agency that coordinates/determines benefits. Their representative is upset that social security benefits of a certain dollar amount were conferred upon me (22$ over what they call their limit) and wants to examine my bank statements. If I don’t comply, then my supply of oxygen tanks and other such necessary things will be cut off. I don’t think I want to comply-I don’t believe they have a right to that information, but I don’t see how I can avoid it. It isn’t right, it isn’t fair, and I really have a problem with the rep’s attitude (she craps gold pieces that smell rosy) which is demanding as he’ll-she says I NEED rather than I’d like, which betrays her perspective-it isn’t about me, and what I need to conduct any semblance of a normal existence, it’s about HER.
Forgive me if some of this doesn’t make complete sense. I am a chronic insomniac and have slept maybe seventeen hours since last Monday. On the plus side, I’ve written 5280 mostly-coherent words of my nanowrimo novel in two days, am just about to finish two new songs, and am halfway through the complete Cowboy Bebop.