A Public Service Announcement (of sorts).

So, I guess I really don't need to point this out, but I haven't actually posted in a while.

A long while.


Part of the problem is that I got sorta disenchanted with my blog.

Which, I will admit, is my own fault.


I am slightly obsessed with politics. The way politics functions, the way laws work, (and how they don't work).

But there are already too many political type blogs on the internet already.

Of course, I started blogging before I was totally into politics. I was realy into Finland then, but we're not going to get into that.

The point is, though, that I promised myself that I would never write about politics.


And, by a logical extension, I would never write about trains, either. That makes sense, to me, because I can look at the LIRR map on my wall aith the pencil scratches where the abandoned stations are, and the train schedules all around my bed, and I can say to myself that, okay, no one wants to read what I have to say about politics, and they really don't care about what I have to say about trains, either.


And that doesn't leave me very much to write about that still interests me.


So I'm going to cut this short. I'll be moving some of the archived posts over to a new subdomain, and I'll start writing about new things.

I may even do something to Sixty Percent.


Stay tuned.

Yay updates!

Break from the normal routine:

I actually bothered to update Sixty Percent Chance of Rain for the first time in nearly three months.

Also: There's 95 chapters now. Ninety-five. I gotta do something special when I hit a hundred. I dunno what yet, though.

But I can guarantee that it'll be special.

Quote of the Day

"So you have non-presidents talking about a non-war to cover up an actual president who is perpetrating an actually terrible war." -- The New Low News Show

"Privileged Information"

So, apparently, UMBC just found out that I'm not in Maryland.

I'm going to let that sink in.


If you go skimming through the archives, or if you know me personally, you'd know that I was kicked out of the dorms in February.

(Fun fact: it's currently November.)


The Bursar's office, and a handful of other bureaucratic-type people, had no idea that I had been forced out of my room, and had my classes cancelled -- and, in fact, insisted that I had done really well during the spring semester.

And they couldn't figure out why I wasn't answering mail -- specifically, notices about money that I didn't really end up owing them -- that they were sending to my dorm. Y'know, the dorm that they kicked me out of.


I mean, good God, how stupid can you be?

I know where the camera is.

My Grandmother has -- or, rather, had -- a Fuji Discovery 1000 Zoom.

I say she had it because, a number of years ago, she lent it to my dad.

She began to complain that, any time she lent us something, she wouldn't get it back, and that, like her dishes, it was lost forever. She sends us leftovers regularly, but now she sends them in disposable tupperware instead of on plates. On the other hand, three of her dishes are sitting in our dishrack, and see normal use.

A few years after she loaned us the camera, my mom, now sick of hearing about the damn camera, declared that she had found it, and we all had a good laugh, until about a month later, when nana went to use it, and found that mom hadn't bothered to look inside the case, and had instead returned an empty case.

Mom does not remember it this way, and, however many years later, insists she returned it.


It has become a point of contention.

So contentious a point of contention that mom managed to make nana cry over it today.


But I know -- for a fact -- where the camera is.


I'm dropping the film that was in it off to be processed tomorrow.

Have you ever heard of a cat who's afraid of the dark?

I have.

He's a ten-week old kitten named Rocket. His name is Rocket, by the way, 'cause Mom wouldn't let me call him Darth Vader.

Which, if you saw this cat, would be a perfect name.

Because he's tiny, and skittery, and nervous, and gives off this general air of helplessness; plus he's white and soft and fluffy. So, really, he's the antithesis of Lord Vader.


But Rocket works too.

I mean, you shoulda seen him dash under that wicker thing in the Studio. I mean, seriously. And when he did finally settle down for a nap, it was still kinda daylight, but when he woke up, it was dark out. And he freaked out and started yelping and crying -- and I had to set up a nightlight for him.

I had to set up a nightlight for a cat.

Don't worry. I'm still here.

I've been having an, um, interesting couple of weeks.

I'm still unemployed, because, apparently, being able to lace a woman into a corset isn't what most people consider a "marketable skill".

I had a fish -- a crowntail betta -- named Sophocles, and he died recently. And it sucked because his tankmates that died before him are buried in Maryland, and he had to be buried here in New York.

Then, we got a call from my aunt, telling us that my grandfather had died. So we had to drive out to Southampton, for the funeral -- she had moved my grandparents out there, near her -- and it was kinda weird, 'cause he already had a plot in Queens. And he was all gaunt and pale and shit.

And they had to get the funeral director to pry the casket open at the cemetary so they could send him off with cigarettes and a lighter, because, "if there's any justice in this world, he won't be near an open flame."

Quote of the Day

"Jack decided to submit some gay porn to a U.S. District Court Judge last week and the judge didn’t seem to find the anal pounding relevant."

What ever happened to Acid Rain?

You remember acid rain? It was all anyone ever complained about, right?

It was caused by pollution, and it had, I think it was sodium in it.


I remember one of my elelmentary school teachers telling us that the sky turned the color of chocolate milk during an acid rain storm. And someone else told us that if you strung a tee-shirt across a thing, so that it's flat, and parallel to the ground, the acid rain would eat through it.

I think Linda Ellerbee may have even done a special Nick News on acid rain.


Now, some how, I don't think that Acid Rain simply stopped happening.

I mean, where'd it go?

Did it stop?

Or did just stop being trendy?

I think I figured out this whole God mess.

I've been thinking alot about God lately.

I kept coming back to what everyone likes to call the "problem of evil". It's fairly self explanitory, really; if there is a god, and if he/she/it is, in fact, omniprescient and omnipotent, then there shouldn't be evil in the world. But there is evil, so either (a) god isn't as powerful as we say he/she/it is, (b) he/she/it is unable, unwilling, or outright malevelent, or (c) there is no god.

So.

I've been thinking about that a lot lately.

I started doing some reading about different theories about god.

One group, the deists, beleive that, although god did exist at one point, there isn't a god now. Or, at least, he isn't around in a way that he can be reached.

Then, there's the pandeists, who hold that the universe is all that's left of god.

It's all incredibly convoluted, I assure you.


So, last night I had some trouble sleeping.

Sometime around three, or two, or so, I got to thinking about religion again.

I was thinking about that pandeism thing.

About how there was a god, but there isn't anymore.

I mean, where'd he go?

What'd he do after he created everything?

What, did he just leave, to go create another eveything?

Well, yeah.

He created another everything. And anotherone after that. And so on, infinitely.

And all that's left of him, in this universe, is, well, this universe.

So, theoretically, he's everywhere, and nowhere, simultatneously.


It's Schrödinger's God.

Quote of the Day

"Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?" -- Socrates, Euthyphro

And I have now, somewhat officially, lost track of how many disturbing dreams I have had.

Okay. It's been a while since I've written about a fucked up dream.


This time, though, it wasn't about the Public Affairs Scholarship, and there were no zombies. No stained glass floor, no mask, and no British guy offering spurious advice.


Because this time, I was Lorelei.

Why, I don't know. But it was me, and Midge, and Pierpont, and we were hanging out at a dingy amusement park. It was kinda like how I remember Adventureland being, only dirtier. And with a wood rollercoaster, because I don't remember offhand if their rollercoaster is wood or not, but this rollercoaster was specifically made of wood.

So, anyways, we're hanging out, at this dingy, delapidated amusement park, and we meet up with this guy. And it's the guy who took over writing Sixty Percent after I stopped writing it.

Let me rephrase that: I -- as Lorelei -- was talking to the man who took over writing the story that I had stopped writing -- as Kinezumi-Risu.


So, Midge started to give him a hard time, about how he was taking himself too seriously -- her exact words were "you need to get the stick out of your ass". Pierpont just asked hime a bunch of questions about upcoming chapters, most of which had to do with Chet, and all of which he refused to answer.


It was pretty surreal.