I came here to delete my LJ account and started reading the old entries and decided that it's a bit of external memory that I really ought to hang onto.
I wish FB and Tumblr allowed you to pick an icon for each entry instead of a profile pic that gets changed for all entries.
I dunno. I put jokes and memes on FB. I put my pictures on Tumblr and DeviantArt. I don't really post new content on Reddit, I just comment on other peoples' stuff.
What to do with LJ? Everyone who's connected to me here is connected to me in at least one of those platforms, so it's a dumb idea to post My Secret Thoughts. And I don't often have Secret Thoughts that I want to share, that's why they're Secret.
Well, I'll leave it live for now. Maybe I'll go back through it and see if there's anything worth following up.
So, what does LJ offer that I don't already do on FB, Tumblr, and Reddit? I can't offhand think of anyone here who I'm not seeing on one or more of those platforms. What do you do to make this worth using?
Spending the long weekend working backstage at the Dickens Christmas Fair. And by 'working', I mean 'taking pictures of new costumes and doorwarding the Costume Shop'.
The Dickens Christmas Fair is going on until the weekend before Christmas. The Cow Palace Annex has become Victorian London, with Mr Scrooge and young Mr. Nickleby and the dance party at Fezziwig's Shop and the lowlifes around Fagin's den. Think of the ultimate literary cosplay. There are over 900 cast, vendors, and crew, in costume. The Costume Shop has to approve all clothing for the proper era, fabric, construction and look. And we record every one of them. So I've been sitting in the breeze, every weekend since Halloween, taking pictures and taking names. It's been a lot of work to a good purpose. I'll be happy to get warm again someday, though.
We got the check from the insurance company for the car that got totaled August 2012, when a real estate agent on her way to a deal pushed my son off the road (with my wife and her two-months-out-of-surgery ankle in the passenger seat). Two and a half years of the agents for four different companies playing circle jerk, and we got $616 for the car.
Which was just a little more than enough to pay for the plumber to come out on Sunday morning and snake out the main drain line, and his buddy the other plumber to come out on Wednesday night and replace the hot water bib for the washing machine, which had come loose from the pipe while I was trying to remove the old hose.
So I got my plumbing bills paid, with enough left over for a tank of gas. I suppose I should be grateful. Let the record show that I am sufficiently grateful.
I think it was Steve Wright who said, you know when you're walking down stairs and there's one more stair than you thought, so you step out and for an instant you're balancing for your life on nothing? I'm like that all the time.
Well, it's something like that, and it's true.
Happy Easter.
Current Music
For my next trick I'll need a volunteer - Warren Zevon
The truth: I did all my grieving for Spock when 'Wrath of Khan' came out.
There was no promise of a 'genesis planet', no 'Spock saves the whales'. This was the end of the movie, and as far as I knew, the end of all Trek movies. I mean, how could they do more movies if Spock wasn't in them? So Spock was dead.
I was in middle school in 1966. Spock was who I wanted to be and could never be. Spock was able to take all McCoy's insults and suspicions and racism and let them bounce off. When someone tried to beat up Spock, they got their ass handed to them. He had the answers to the questions. He wasn't the hero, but he was there, and boy was his sex life a cosmic screwup, but that wasn't till later.
So my idol was dead. Heroically, which was great, but dead. And I had to deal with that.
Then, a few years later, they came up with another movie to regrow his body and shove him back in.
I was furious. They had killed him, and then they had the GALL to say, "Ha, ha, just kidding, look, here he is!" I still have never watched STIII from one end to another. It's got some great scenes, but I can't stand it.
After 'Spock Saves the Whales', I got used to him being around again. And I could see that Leonard Nimoy was a hell of a lot better Spock than William Shatner was a Kirk.
So having Leonard Nimoy and Spock around again was kind of a freebie. He had been gone, he was back, and he was still pretty cool. Kelley and Doohan passed on, and I mourned them appropriately, but I had never wanted to be a mad genius engineer as badly as I wanted to be a Vulcan.
STL:TNG did a damn good job of giving Ambassador Spock a way to be left behind but not forgotten. I consider the two new ST movies just another crude ST timey-wimey hack, and have not seen them. The car commercial was hilarious, though.
So, here we are again, and I am not mourning Leonard Nimoy, I'm grateful for having my Yoda back for a couple more decades.
A lie can be a short-term way of handling the world until you're ready to deal with the truth. "F*ck it all, I don't care any more" is just such a lie. You care, you know you care, and you know that lying about it isn't going to work very long. But the utility of the lie is that maybe it will let you keep going until you are ready to deal with the truth.
It doesn't work for long. Maybe it will work just long enough.