Sinking

When it rains, it pours, it seems. In my case, though, it seems like it's not simply what is happening at the moment, but the accumulation of things over time. A whole lot of little things, each individually something that might otherwise be blown off, can add up until each one just makes me want to curl up. This morning, for example, I missed a turn. I only needed to go around the block to get back on track, but even that was enough to leave me whimpering and wishing I were somewhere else.

I know I should probably see a psychologist about all this, but trying to set up something like that is nearly impossible.

I need a hug again. :(

In addition to all the work-related stuff that happened today, I had one person decide to message me out of the blue, after several months of no contact, just to ask me if I'm still a miserable person. On top of that, due to losing so much time trying to find parking, I wasn't able to spend much time at all chatting or otherwise interacting with a few people with whom I really, really wanted to. One in particular I'm feeling close to, but don't want to say anything because, among a lot of other reasons, I know he can do a whole lot better.

All this has me very, very shaken, to say the least. I'm trying not to cry right now. I'm not physically shaking, like I was perhaps an hour ago, but I'm finding it extremely difficult to maintain the energy to even type this. The only thing I have going for me at the moment is that I can get eight hours of sleep tonight if I fall asleep immediately after posting this.

I am now a twit

Since I had absolutely nothing constructive to do yesterday, I ended up signing up for twitter. You can follow my twitter page here, if you want. I'm not going to use that in lieu of this blog, though; instead, I'm going to use it to either keep in touch with people when I'm bored and don't have a computer handy, for short things that aren't worth actually writing a full blog post about, and as a notepad for random thoughts and ideas. I'll probably set up a widget on here as well, so there's one place that people can look at everything, but I'm not going to simply copy and paste my tweets over here, since I prefer to be much more verbose when composing blog posts.

Twenty-three and 1/365

My birthday was yesterday, hence the title of the post. The day itself was rather dull and uneventful; the only thing of real significance was listening to the inauguration on the radio. Only four people even said happy birthday, including my family; even they didn't call until shortly before I went to bed. I was rather scarce yesterday mostly due to work; by the time I got everything sorted out I was too tired to do anything but sleep. More than a little depressing, really; I don't expect to have anyone make a particularly big deal about the day (not much point counting past 21, after all), but feeling generally neglected is particularly upsetting.

I was online much of the day today, with little success on pretty much any front, though I did get one belated happy happy from someone. The real highlight, though, was getting to see a local fur in Charlotte that I'd not heard from in a while. We got a nice dinner, among other things, before he left about fifteen minutes ago. Very much enjoyed the company, for quite a few reasons. Made up for yesterday being rather crappy.

One thing that I've come to think about, though, is that quite a bit has already happened. I've been witness to the dawning of the Internet age, a significant terrorist attack on US soil, and the inauguration of our first black President. Makes me wonder just how many more huge events are going to happen in whatever lifetime I'm fortunate enough to have.

Today's comics

Penny arcade: Witchaloks are hermaphroditic androgynites
2P Start: Do a barrel roll!

And... I'm done hurting myself laughing now.

Welcome to POTUS #44

All hail to President Barack Obama. Seriously, though, I don't see how he could make things much worse, so even if you hate him, at least give it a chance. :p

I listened to most of the coverage of the inauguration on the radio, though I must agree with one thing: the poem reading was, by far, the worst part of the festivities. I thought the prayer by that gay-bashing asshole was bad, but I'd rather listen to the preacher than suffer through another poetry reading like that. Couldn't they come up with something less abstract?

To Pres. Bush

Dear Mr. President Bush,

Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out. Please go kill yourself.

Without love,

The United States of America

So much for the Fourth Amendment

A guy who was arrested based on an expired warrant has had his conviction upheld by the US Supreme Court. I really wish I had something clever or witty to say bout this, but I can't express anything but disgust and horror over this. He should never have even been arrested, and yet he's going to jail over an illegal arrest and illegally obtained evidence; if the arrest warrant expired, there almost certainly wasn't a valid search warrant either. Even if he were breaking the law, there are still rules that the police have to follow, to protect people from being falsely charged or arrested.

I think Justice Ginsburg said it well by pointing out that this "leaves Herring, and others like him, with no remedy for violations of their constitutional rights."

Sometimes, radio stations do listen.

This American Life is running their annual drive to fund their podcast. They claim to have 400,000 people a week download the free episode and cite the bandwidth cost as a whopping $150,000. Assuming an average episode is 25 MB, that means they burn through 10 terabytes a week. Since there are better solutions, though, I suggested they try using BitTorrent to take some of that load off their servers. I, for one, would happily seed an awesome public radio show, were such a thing available. I was hardly expecting this response, though:

"Thanks for the feedback! Actually, we're always investigating new options for hosting the podcast, and are currently considering peer-to-peer networks such as BitTorrent. We'll keep you updated!"

So... wow. I feel kinda special right now for having provided an intelligent idea. How often is it that you get one of the largest public radio stations in the country, producing one of the most popular public radio shows, to acknowledge an individual listener's idea and look into it? I know I can't possibly have been the only person to suggest that - I'm not nearly that arrogant or delusional - but I definitely am feeling special right now. :)

A few words about ads

For anyone who is subscribed to the RSS feeds for this or my work blog - and I highly encourage it, since you don't have to actively keep coming back here to see if I've posted something - you might notice ads at the bottom of some of my posts now. Google's finally integrated Feedburner and AdSense so I thought I'd give it a test drive. I'm using a relatively inoffensive combination of rules, though: ads that appear in the feed will be text only and will only appear at the bottom of posts that are longer than "about 100 words." At least, that's what the dashboard says; I presume this means that any entry less than roughly 512 bytes won't have an advertisement attached to it. My work blog uses an even higher threshold. Why? I find it obnoxious when the ad is bigger than the content and, this way, you'll get plenty to read even before you see an ad.

If you don't like it for whatever reason (or don't like the ads I have on the blog page itself), please leave a comment explaining why. Also, if you hate ads and aren't already using AdBlock Plus, I highly recommend installing it and using the EasyList subscription. I'll be pleasantly surprised if I ever actually collect enough revenue from this to get a check, so it's not like I'm relying on this for income and, as such, really don't care if half the people reading this block everything. ;)

One of those days

Right now, I can't even begin to describe my emotional state. I'm somewhere between wanting to beat someone into a coma, wanting to beat myself into a coma, and simply curling up into a ball and crying myself to sleep. In addition to all the crap that happened with work today (which I'm not reposting here), I had plenty of stuff come up on the side, as if the fates themselves decided to see just how much crap I can tolerate before snap.

For one, there's the trouble I've been having with Yiffstar. I have to jump through an ever-increasingly absurd series of flaming hoops just to get a story approved on there, and even then it ends up tagged in such a way that very few people are going to read it. Someone else I know is auto-approved and the stuff he's writes in an afternoon ends up in the weekly most popular listing. Meanwhile, I put a ton of work into my stuff and can't even make the daily top 20 on a day where only 25 stories were posted. A 4.5/5 rating sounds good until you realize that it's from only two votes. I'm trying to post a quickie I wrote one afternoon to the site, though it'll probably take two days before it even gets approved, and since anything involving a herm suddenly has to be tagged as "other" (unless, of course, the reviewers like you), nobody's going to read it.

For another, I've been having a steadily growing list of health concerns. I've actually hurt myself from pawing off too much (I'll spare everyone details). I have a cut on my hand that's refused to heal for more than a month. I feel like I've been fighting a cold since MFF and, on at least three occasions in the last two weeks, I've gotten ten or more hours of sleep to try and fight it off. If I get less than eight hours rest, I feel like complete crap; tonight, I know I can only get about four. The only reason I'm even considering that is the ability to catch up on sleep tomorrow, if needed, and the necessary changes to my sleep pattern to accommodate work.

Third, it seems like I'm having a hard time finding people to do anything with. I did get to meet someone while in Massachusetts the other night, but otherwise I've not seen anyone since coming back out on the road after Christmas. Getting together with the local furs back home isn't much of an option, either: it's practically impossible to get anyone to even respond to the messages I send to our local e-mail group. I've offered free food and transportation, for fuck's sake, and I've actually had people say NO to that because they felt like just sitting in front of the computer as they do every night. More often, though, Yomi's the only one who replies; like me, it seems like he just wants some excuse to go out and do something. I imagine that, when I head home for a break in early February, I'm just going to spend a lot of time lazing around a hotel room.

Finally, on a group I'm in, there are people actually trying to defend a rapist. One person is arguing that, because the two people involved have had consensual sex in the past, it can't possibly be rape. Another - and the one who started the discussion - is someone who really should just be keeping his jaws shut, as he's lucky I didn't press charges for something he did. Not going to name names, as I know he'll know I'm talking about him if he happens across this blog, but yes, you, oh anonymous one, are a rapist yourself.

Need a reminder of what happened that Monday morning? Rolling me over without warning and ramming your dick in without lube, even after I've told you that I can't take you when you're being gentle, is rape. And the sick part is that, as I'm lying there and whimpering in pain, you start fucking someone else as if it doesn't matter that I'm bleeding internally. I didn't press charges because I didn't feel like ruining your life over what I presumed at the time was an isolated incident, but since then, I've found out that you've pulled similar shit with other people in the past and your abusive, carelessly dominant sexual attitude has led to situations that, while not illegal, are completely inexcusable. One of these days, you're going to either get someone pregnant or actually get charged with sexual assault by someone who either knows about your past or doesn't care about your future. When that happens, I'll be glad to testify for the prosecution.

Also, I really don't give a damn about whatever drama posting the above paragraph causes. I needed to get that out there. So flame on; I've got a jumbo size bag of marshmallows handy and a craving for s'mores.

Sleeping in

I knew that I was kinda tired, due to fighting a cold, but I've gotten more than 12 hours of sleep two nights in the last week. Last night, for example, I got a whopping fourteen hours of rest. Tonight, I plan on leaving myself enough time for about ten hours of sleep, but I hope that I'm getting over whatever illness is leaving me so tired. Needing this much sleep is rather worrisome. :(