nerdyAnd why, oh why, can't someone put out a really nice Tolkien tarot deck? There are a couple available, but the art is ass. I mean an Alan Lee Tolkien tarot, or something comparable. But I digress.
Yesterday was mostly the sort of day that comes along in the wake of having met a Very Important Writing Goal, having finished a short story or novel or having met a pressing deadline. That is, a Very Goddamn Bad Day. It's one part post-pardem depression (to use that convenient, loathsome writing = childbirth metaphor), one part boredom, one part let-down and self-loathing, one part mind left free to wander off the rails to whatever vile climes it cannot help but wander, and so forth. So, I mixed kava, Klonopin, absinthe, Red Bull, chocolate, and coffee, which, helped for about half an hour. This is called taking a vacation. The irony is not lost on me. I do not love to write, but I hate idle hands, and what else am I to do but write? I mean besides "self-medicate"? I dislike that phrase, "self-medicate"? What's wrong with those good ol' fashioned turns of phrase, those that do not pussy-foot about with psychobabble and new-speak mealy-mouthedness? Is it not more honest to say that I got fucked up, because it helps me get through the interminable days on which I do not write because I am too exhausted (from writing) to write? Screw the medical model of psychology. Self-medication is when I choose to get through a bad cold with herbs and aspirin instead of paying a doctor half a fortune for pills. Self-medication is having Spooky stitch a cut instead of sitting for five hours in some nasty ER. Yesterday, I did not self-medicate. Anyway...
I would like to add my 2¢ regarding the recent LJ/Six Apart capitulations to the demands of one bat-shit insane dominionist Xtian by deleting everything from erotic fic to group-therapy/support communities to private journals to communities devoted to the discussion of the works of Vladimir Nabokov. It's a cowardly bit of business-as-usual American economics, it was censorship, and it a gross example of overreaction. It was a witch hunt prompted by the hysterics of this busy-body calling herself Warriors for Innocence. And I absolutely cannot believe that Warren Ellis, of all people, condoned and defended it. It only shows to go that if you build a big enough boogeyman, you can fool almost all the children of the revolution. There will always be at least one boogeyman to fill the bill. And yes, it surely fucking was an act of censorship:
Censorship: The use of the state and other legal or official means to restrict speech.
– Culture Wars, Documents from the Recent Controversies in the Arts (Richard Boltons, ed.)
Censor: One who supervises conduct and morals: as a) an official who examines materials (as publications or films) for objectionable matter; b) an official (as in time of war) who reads communications (as letters) and deletes material considered harmful to the interests of his organization. Censorship: The institution, system or practice of censoring; the actions or practices of censors; esp : censorial control exercised repressively.
– Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary
Did Six Apart have a legal right to do what they did? Yes. Does that make it right? No. Does that mean it isn't censorship? No. And can it be forgiven because, personally, slash gives you the willies? No. For my part, I am appalled. But I am always appalled. I think it's why I'm here, just to be chronically appalled at the idiotic actions of mankind.
Don't mind me. I'm just sitting here, waiting on the Big Space Rock to end the whole gorram farce.
Meanwhile, just as I was thinking about the dusty unopened bottle of rum in the pantry, I happened, yesterday, to once again stumble across Second Life, which is sort of like crack when you have a brain like mine. And this time I had the OS and the machine to actually handle Second Life. I spent six and a half straight hours there last night. I strolled on an abandoned pirate ship. I danced to bad '80s music. I visited furries. I flew. And sure, I didn't finish the Steinbeck bio like I'd hoped to do, but my mind quit racing, I didn't break anything, and I was amazed by what I saw. I will be going back today. If you happen to drop by, look me up. I'm the topless, penniless waif of an android named Nareth Nishi (that's Nareth, not Nar'eth). Sure, the place is way too obsessed with capitalism, but it's still an amazing little experiment and somehow quite exhilarating. And a good way to manage rest without driving myself any crazier.
Spooky finally pried me away from the iMac and read me another chapter of The Ersatz Elevator until I could sleep (because she is the best bear).