Title 11

The year is almost done now, as is Nanowrimo, and I'm left with the disconcerting realization that I've actually only written 10 entries for all of 2007. 11 if you count this one (thus the title) which certainly doesn't do anything for my reputation as a prolific writer, a reputation that I have concocted all on my own without any evidence to back it up. It resides in no imagination but mine, which I suppose is what happens when you dream up reputations for badassery and don't bother to flesh them out with anything. It's like buying suits from Goodwill. They look good in concept, but in practice they're just too much work to fill.

Imagine if the real world were like that, in which you could create your own persona in your mind and force other people to accept the reality of them -- rather like MMORPGs, though given the apparently intolerable need of young men to believe in fantasies of their own terrifying prowess in the domain of their choice, I imagine social interactions would start to take on a monotonous sameness. Testosterone punishes its victims by inflicting delusions; reasonable men who privately think polygamy would be a great idea -- multiple wives! Woo hoo! -- blithely overlook the fact that only the top 2 or 3% of men (among whom they would likely not number) actually get any wives at all, while the rest scrabble forlornly on the outskirts, hoping desperately that someone will take pity on them and move the entire society back to monogamy. Men, like women, are never so cruel to others as they are to each other.

Imagine the weediness of two young sprouts encountering each other in a comic book store for the first time. Introductions, always an awkward business, would take on the quality of farce.

"Doombringer142. What's yours?"

"Doomslayer66."

At which point they would ritualistically wave their swords or, lacking those, drop their pants and wave other things instead. We are not homophobic here in the Bay Area, as the overt misogyny that's extant in Silicon Valley is less a byproduct of philanthropy than it is of generalized social terror. There's something humorously tragic about the idea of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates dropping trou to wave peckers at each other, although ... now that I think about it, I think that might be the only thing that's keeping our economy afloat right now. Metaphorically speaking.

For the record, if I ever play an MMORPG, my character's name is going to be 'Totally Chapstick.' This way, when someone asks me the inevitable, 'a/s/l?' I can answer quite honestly, "Lubrication in search of Recreation."

I have no idea what the hell I'm talking about either. There's a weirdly Carrollian quality to my writing today. Maybe I should start over....

...or maybe not.

I finished Nanowrimo early, which was a result of (prudent) front-loading on my part. There wasn't a lot of it that is worth keeping, but I'm continuing work on it nonetheless; it resides on my work laptop, which is one of those really stupid things that they tell you not to do in 'Being a grownup 101.' I never took that class. I missed the syllabus and the study guide, which is why I still occasionally drop red underwear in with the whites when I'm doing laundry, and forget to rinse dirty dishes before dropping them in the dishwasher.

We're leaving for Seattle tomorrow afternoon. Every year I dread the visit, and every year I wish I could have stayed longer. You'd think expectations would eventually catch up with reality, but positive reinforcement can't seem to break even with pessimism. Given that I'm not really that cynical, you wouldn't think I'd expect the worst from my mother, but there you go.

No, I don't have any Mom stories. I have no idea why. They continue to happen at the same rate, but the narrative flow has fallen by the wayside. Give me some time. It'll come back to me, I'm sure.

I'm all over the place today. Carrollian and subatomic. That's me.

I didn't bother to finish posting the rest of my Nano, because it's being revised and finished anyway, and to be honest, I got bored with uploading it all the time. So it will be taken down.

See you in Seattle.