Apropos of Nothing

In Which I Butcher A Friend's Name

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I have made a foolish promise to Alisande – Al-ih-sand? Ah-lee-zond? All Is Sandy? – that I would talk a li’l bit about Twitter avatars. Foolish, because it’s the death knell for any topic once I’ve made a promise to talk about it. It’s why I haven’t posted anything here in… um… carry the one… eleventy-onetweenillion years. But! Ali deserves respect. She’s the Intercontinental Pit Sloth Breeding Champion, y’know. So Ally-Shah-day, this one’s for you!

Twitter itself is a strange little beast. It lets you totally virtually eavesdrop on other people’s conversations with no repercussions. This is great for me, because it means I need no longer fear dropping from an eave onto my noggin from twelve storeys up, which is how I used to get my listening-in done. It’s also why I no longer have any memories of rice. You know that thing that cats do where they land on their feet after a fall, every time? I do that too, except instead of feet, it’s my skull. Evolution, right? It’s AWESOME.

But if Twitter itself is strange, the idea of the Twitter avatar may be even stranger. As your digital representation, it’s meant to tell the viewer something about who you are. Many people put up a photo of themselves, smiling or grimacing, depending on how they want to be perceived. These are people who feel good about themselves. People who have strong self-esteem, are unafraid of criticism, and have no problem with others judging them.

This is why I never put my face up there.

However, this affords me the opportunity to change my avatar based on my mood. When you’ve followed me long enough -- I’m @akelaa, by the way, nice to meet you, can I get you anything? Coffee? Tea? Laudanum? – you’ll see a varying selection of canids parade through your stream. Sometimes I like to mix it up and turn into other species. So far, I’ve been:

• Felines
• Avians
• A cephalopod
• A seal
• A dinosaur
• A corgilope
• An isopod
• An anteater
• Coyote, the Trickster God
• A hedgehog with his face stuck in a cardboard tube
• A kappa
• A megawalrus
• Edvard Munch’s screaming bridge walker
• A fruit bat
• A kobold
• A prinny
• A sackboy
• A Tauren
• And a thoat. If you don’t know what a thoat is, imagine a six-legged horselike creature, with another thoat inside its body, with another thoat inside that one. Yeah, I dunno either.

But as a shorthand for how I’m feeling, the Twitter avatar is wonderful. If only there was a real world analogue! If we lived in a society where we could wear masks all the time to put our general daily demeanors on display, it would be a vastly different atmosphere. And our faces would chafe, constantly.

Identity is important. We can’t always choose the outward appearance we want, one that reflects who we feel we truly are inside. Twitter grants us the ability to be who we want to be, and say exactly what we think. Anne Rice once wrote that being a vampire doesn’t change who a person is; it simply lets them become more truly who they already are. Going by that reasoning, who I am is a constantly changing entity of more than one guise, with many moods and a LOT to say. Just like every one of us.

Give your Twitter avatar some thought. Is it really you? What do you want people to think when they see it? Then think a bit about what it means to have an egg as your avatar. Seriously, what in the Hell of the Sloppy Seconds is that? When I said I wanted to get laid, this is NOT what I had in mind. I … … what? …….. oh, it’s… oh, it’s a theme thing…. Ohh, I get it. ‘Cause Twitter, birds, eggs, stupidity. Right, gotcha. Okay, well, that makes a LOT more sense than what I was thinking. Still, you know what would be a better default avatar? Something that’ll make people want to put their real selves up there? A photo of my nekkid body. ‘Cause trust me: Nobody wants to see that.

 I'm holding out 'til the rain is gone

Everything (I give in, I give out

Was put up with, then I was put down)

I curse it all when the pain is strong

Again (I give in, I give out

Was put up with, then I was put down)

EBO, "The Rain Song"

Epiphanies are wonderful

Pure_joy_by_Ferruti

I've just gotten off the phone (well, Skype, but it's pretty much the same thing) with The Amazing Jennifer Priest. Why is she so amazing? Because in the space of an hour, she brought me up from exhaustion to excitement; from depression to delight; from gnarly to gnostic! During our Skype call, she led me toward an epiphany, and it's put me on the path to something great.

Full disclosure: I may have Adult Attention Deficit Disorder (Adult ADD). All my life, I've had difficulty concentrating, been easily distracted, have never had a moment when snatches of songs weren't running through my mind, was extremely forgetful ... and these things have hurt me. Just as an example, Jennifer gave me a mutually agreed-upon task to help me pursue some of my goals. But two weeks have gone by, and I haven't been able to do them. Last night, I realized that my biggest obstacle is, in fact, my brain. It just doesn't work properly. So I asked Jennifer if we could spend today's session discussing ways to fix that.

We began talking about the different drugs that people with my problem take to alleviate their symptoms. But she said something that hit me like a bolt from the blue. I mentioned that I'm always recycling old song lyrics, great bits of writing from books I've read, things people say that I found particularly clever ... and yet I can't remember to do a simple thing like turn off the garden lights at night before I go to bed. Jennifer said that that's because experiencing pleasurable things lights up the part of the brain that helps me learn and remember things. Things that are onerous, like household chores, or doing taxes, or any of a thousand things, just don't stick with me; in fact, I tend to postpone them, or outright avoid them.

She likened it to sitting in a boring business meeting. You might start to twiddle your thumbs, or drum on the desk, or play with your cellphone -- anything you can do that will add just the tiniest bit of enjoyment to the proceedings. Because without that extra stimulus, you might as well not even be there.

And that concept struck such a deep chord with me, it literally woke me all the way up, and I got really excited. Do you understand how amazing it is to have a big piece of mystery suddenly come loose and fall away, like icebergs calving in the arctic seas? A huge part of my life suddenly made sense! All my life I've been told that I had to pay closer attention, to work harder, to have the right attitude. But it seems that some peculiarity of my brain has made that near-impossible ... and more than that: there's a way to fix it.

Now, I should say that as a whole, I've always had a certain reservation when it comes to drugs of any sort. I'm wary of their effects and side effects, I've seen their abuse lead to the loss of friends and family members ... they're a loaded topic for me. So to consider that I might gain some benefit from taking some kind of pharmaceutical was a huge step for me. But I'm doing it. I'm going to make a call soon to put me on the track to 1) Get myself diagnosed, and 2) To get the treatment I need.

You may be thinking "But it seems so obvious; you need drugs, you go get drugs." But the problem has always been my broken brain. I would always think to myself "Oh, I just need to do this", but 5 minutes later, and it's gone. There have been moments when I've nearly wept, or screamed in frustration at my inability to understand the simplest ideas, or remember the most common sense steps. In a lot of ways, my mind has been my biggest enemy my whole life.

But The Amazing Jennifer managed to turn that around, too. She said that even given that hurdle, that obstacle, what I have managed to accomplish is that much more laudable. Look how far I've come, even with a broken brain: I've managed to keep my First Job in this horrible economy, and am maintaining two secondary jobs at the same time, both of which involve the regular application of my thoughts. I've stuck with my difficult living situation, when others might have cut and run. I can honestly say that I'm thankful that I have my willpower in place, because without it, I might have given up long ago.

Just think what I'll be able to do when I fix my brain!

So there you have it: working with The Amazing Jennifer has been the smartest thing I've ever done. Sure, these steps were always there for me to figure out on my own, but that's the point: I never had. It's taken an outside voice to help me put it all in context, and help me understand why my life is the way it is, and what to do about it.

I'm going to get better, you just wait and see. I'm going to astonish you all.

Today I don't need a replacement
I'll tell them what the smile on my face meant
My heart going boom boom boom
Hey, I said
You can keep my things, they've come to take me home
-- "Solsbury Hill", Peter Gabriel

On drinking

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Drunk dialing Ralph on the porcelain phone

O the wonders and joys of drink! The epicurean delight to be had in a precisely-concocted formula of alcohol! The gastronomic pleasure inherent in every chilled sip and swallow! It is a consummation I shall never know. For I, dear friends and enemies, am an Abstainer. A teetotaler. A Man What Does Not Drink The Booze. Why? I’m glad you didn’t ask!

My earliest memory of alcohol is being offered beer by my then-stepfather. I was 12 years old. I looked at it (urine-like). I smelled it (stenchy). I rolled it about the glass (noisome). I took a sip. And… have you ever… eaten rotten, festering cardboard that’s been sitting in the backpack of a wetbrain hobo, alternatingly soaked by DT sweats and dried by the heat of his self-righteous indignation at the state of the world?

Better than that beer. I recommend it for whenever you’re in a terrible hurry to vomit.

So my first experience was formative. My next attempt at alcohol consumption came when I was 16 years of age, at a New Year’s Eve party. I was handed a glass of champagne by a pretty girl, and when that happens to you, you drink. In fact, I was so smitten by her that I failed to realize until it was too late that my hormone-addled brain had decided it was okay to release a swarm of fire ants into my esophagus. I only gradually became aware of this when I registered the look of alarm on the sweet girl’s face, followed by the sound of someone strangling a dyspeptic moose, which turned out to be me. The inability to breathe soon followed, joined by an unpleasant buzzing sensation in my head that sounded and felt like the world’s tiniest jackhammer being wielded by the cutest damned bee you’ve ever seen, cursing at me in Esperanto.

Eventually the whole suite of impressions died down, and I was left with a warmth in my stomach that was jealous of its space, rebuffing my every attempt to put anything else in there that might help with my sudden feelings of confusion and nausea. When I was finally able to speak again, I saw that the girl in front of me looked worried. Still hoping that I could salvage some shred of dignity, and perhaps steal away with her to a less-populated area of the party for muchas smooches, I summoned up my last reserves of suaveitude and looked her in the eyes. “Smooth,” I croaked.

You can see a pattern here, I think. Some of you might be thinking, “Well, drinking, like smoking and perhaps serial killing, is something that you just have to keep doing until you get used to it.” You might be right. That which doesn’t kill you… leaves you debilitated and in a coma. Look, it’s not as though I don’t “get” the drinking thing. It looks like great fun to sample all these different flavors, and reap the relaxation and loss of inhibition that comes with inebriation. I mean, just looking at Drinks After Dark makes me really yearn for a new hobby. And I live in San Francisco, one of the great Foodie meccas of the world! If I can’t do my experimentation here, I can’t do it anywhere!

But sadly, my body just seems to find alcohol – in whatever strength – poisonous. I’ve tried, oh how I’ve tried! There was that one time a “friend” handed to me something that smelled JUST like a vanilla shake, a drink of which I’m enamoured. Of course he neglected to mention that it was alcoholic, which should have been obvious to me by the way that it conducted electricity and glowed with a fierce crimson light. But, you know, vanilla. You know? So I took a hearty swig. For the record, let me just say this:

I love gravity. I think it’s great the way it keeps me and all of my toys from floating into space. However, I’m not such a fan of it when it decides it’s time to force me to make out with the floor. Remember that old game “stop hitting yourself”? It’s like that, only with a lot more swearing. A LOT more.

Now, I’m not sure exactly why alcohol affects me the way it does. I suspect my mother had a run-in with an old Gypsy woman before I was born, causing her offspring to be cursed. Fortunately for me, the Gypsy was a little unclear with the stipulations of the curse when she said “Afflicted by spirits”. But, you know, it’s too late now, no do-overs in the world of Gypsy curses! Could be a lot worse. I could’ve ended up like Haley Joel Osment and see dead folks everywhere. And it wouldn’t be the cool dead dudes, either, like Jimmy Hendrix, or Jim Henson, or… Benjamin Disraeli. No. Instead, it’d be that annoying woman down the street who always yelled at you for walking across her lawn when you were a kid. Or the high school gym teacher who always picked on you with screams of “C’mon, I said HUSTLE!” Oh man, can you imagine a crowd of loud, obnoxious creatures following you around all day making life miserable? It’d be like… being Octomom. Haha! ZING! Who says I can’t be relevant and edgy!

But I digress. The next time you have a drink of your favorite liquor, please think of the children. And by “children”, I mean me. Poor little Akela, standing alone at a party, clutching his glass of Coke to himself, watching with hungry eyes the rest of the room mingle, dance, flirt, and generally have some worry-free fun, fueled by free-flowing libations. Do him favor. Send a cute drunk girl over to him. There’s something to be said for the “contact high”, especially when it leads to a next morning of recriminations and awkward disentanglements. Thank you, alcohol! Awwwwwwww, YEAH.

Why can’t we not be sober?
I just want to start this over
Why can’t we sleep forever?
I just want to start this over
-- "Sober", Tool

Friday the 13th: the Luckiest Day of the Year

JayV

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According to lore -- and by "lore", of course, I mean "Wikipedia" -- there really is no supportable reason behind the fact that traditionally, Friday the 13th is considered a day of bad luck. Mostly, it's a concatenation of the belief that Fridays are unlucky, and that the number Thirteen is similarly unlucky. But you have to admit: it's been pretty unlucky for Jason Voorhees' victims. And as a side note: Jason, look, I get the whole "iconic" thing, okay? But c'mon, that hockey mask is SO 80's! Kick it to the curb, man! Update your look. I'm thinking... Michael Jackson mask. Now THAT dude is scary! Wha -- no, I'm not taking a dig at the guy's music -- hell no! I love Off the Wall! ... WHAT? "Man In the Mirror"? Man, Michael would FREAK OUT if he ever saw a man in HIS mirror!

Hold up, hold up. I gotta audiocast to do. I'll talk to you later, Jason. Mm-kay. Give my love to your sister. Bye.

Anyway: Friday the 13th. Like so much of what passes for culture these days, this phenomenon seems to exist simply because people expect it to exist. It's like not wearing green on St. Patrick's day -- suddenly, everyone's Irish, and out to pinch the holy hell outta you. It's assumed behavior, based on nothing more than hearsay, and a ton of media behind it. Take your favorite sitcom, for example. Writers stuck for ideas? Base an episode around Friday the 13th, have one of your characters take it so seriously that they refuse to go outside for fear of something awful happening, and boom! HILARITY AND HIJINKS!

But I'm here to tell you: Friday the 13th is, in fact, the luckiest day of the year. Why? Because of Newton's Third Law of Motion that states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Lemme 'splain, Loosy.

There is something insidious and powerful to the adage "Opposites attract". People who are allergic to cats find themselves constantly at the center of feline attention.

Allergic human: Crap, you didn't tell me you have a cat -- I'm totally allergic!
Cat owner: Oh, don't worry about Mr. Squinkles, he's afraid of people. He'll never even come near you. He just runs away when -- oh, wow, look at that, he's coming right for you!
Cat: I LOVE YOU!
Allergic Human: *explodes*

That guy you've had a crush on for months now, who you just know is absolutely perfect for you, is going to end up getting together with that unbelievably skanky cougar the next cubicle over, even though they have absolutely nothing in common except MAYBE biology based on the carbon atom. It's like rain on your wedding day, Alanis.

This kind of thing happens all the time, and we just write it off to silly bad luck. However, it applies in spades during Friday the 13th, because of everyone running around in dread of some form of bad luck that's going to strike them like a greasy lightning bolt from the sky, Danny Zuko-style. By fearing it, these people attract bad luck! But you, O fortunate one, can take advantage of this fact by observing the Third Law.

It's all about energy. Positive energy and negative energy are constantly swirling around you in flux. Push some positivity this way, and negativity rushes in to fill the void. The universe maintains balance. So, it should naturally follow that while everyone's out there drawing in all this negative Friday the 13th energy, you're in a position to reap the benefits of the concomitant positive energy flow rushing in to fill the void! Don't know how? Here's what you do:

Although this might go against everything you've come to expect from life, go ahead and expect the best to happen. Make reservations for that restaurant you've always wanted to visit, yet is always booked solid. On Friday the 13th, you can get in. Drive downtown for a packed event: you'll find parking. Take that extra-long lunch: your boss will be too busy to notice. On Friday the 13th, pay close attention to your life. Happy accidents will occur, but you need to be in a receptive state to observe them! Take it from me. I was once an oblivious consumer, joylessly wandering through life, unaware that the entire time the universe was simply itching to give me gifts if only I'd been aware enough to recognize them. And now look at me! I have an amazing son who is already a Nathan Fillion times smarter than I'll ever be. I have this audiocast with which I'm free to express my pent-up ideas, and I have a thriving network of friends via Twitter!

It's all about expectations, kids. If you expect today to be horrible, then congratulations -- lemme know how that works out for you. But if you let yourself soak up the positive energy carelessly pushed away be so many people on a daily basis, then the world will roll in ecstasy at your feet.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to make a call to the Fab Five. We're planning a Very Special Episode of Queer Eye: Friday the 13th Part VIII.2: Jason Takes Manhattan... BY STORM. Freak Chic, baby! The new Voorhees line? It'll MURDER you.

I don't know why I feel this way
I don't know if it's right or wrong to laugh at misfortune
Darkness can never last too long
When you laugh in its face

-- "Only Makes Me Laugh", Oingo Boingo

Being about the origin of cherubs as instruments of failed relationships

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C.H.E.R.U.B.

So! Valentine's Day, huh? Am I right? Huh? Yeah! Hearts! Flowers! Candy! Ha-haaaaa, ugh. Now that it's safely past us for another year, I gotta question. Whether you're a dyed-in-the-wool romanticist, all luvvy-duvvy boo-boo kitty nummymuffincoocoobutter, or a hard-nosed, bitterpants, my-heart-is-a-black-cinder, Gothy/Emo Morrissey mumbleynose, there is one thing we all wonder about: What the hell is up with all those cherubs?

These little winged refugees from a Van Halen album cover are always seen flitting about with bow and arrows at the ready, intent upon riddling some poor innocent sap with their barbed shafts of lurve. Okay, first of all, who's arming these flying menaces? Listen, I know that in Russia, love makes YOU, but here in America, you need to be at least 21 years of age and require a permit before you're allowed to own a projectile weapon. Unless you're talking Nerf weaponry, in which case, there's a little warning story for you to hear elsewhere on this blog.

Second of all, doesn't it concern anyone else that these ambulatory celestial rats just kinda meander around dispensing their own brand of indeterminate matchmaking, with no apparent brief or mandate as to which two people might actually be compatible?

Location: San Francisco. Seen sitting across from each other on the local transit, a man and a woman, each absorbed in their own little pursuits. He's into multiple piercings, facial tattoos, hardcore thrashgrindsloppunk, and, curiously, needlepoint. She likes Jane Austen, bob-do's, O magazine, and the collected works of Shostakovich. In floats a frisky little cherub with sheer simple-minded perversity on its face. Twang! He's gut-shot! Twong! She caught a hot one to the neck! And now it's all over. Somehow, these two are now doomed to try to mesh their individual social, familial, professional, philosophical, and emotional worlds together, and heaven help them both. I give it two months.

And third of all, speaking of heaven, do we even know for sure that these things have divine backing? Tiny mutant wings and a bioluminescent cranial light source do not the beatific make. So we're talking either infernal origin or mad science. I'll tell you which I'd prefer.

If I were an undersexed over-brainy nerd/dork type with full government funding (I've got two of those covered already; guess which two!), this is what I'd do. Under the guise of Valentine's Day, I'd release into the unsuspecting populace droves of genetically-engineered flying babies, outfitted with Olympic marksman-level sharpshooting skills, the very latest in miniature sniper technology, and the pheromone-sensing knack for finding two people cosmically unsuited for each other. Then, having embedded the both of them with light-bent heat-seeking projectiles containing a potent cocktail of pair-bond selective-antigen orgonetropevores combined with sophisticated tracking nanobots, these Cross-pollinating Heuristic Explore-and-attack Recombinant Uncanny Blasphemies (or C.H.E.R.U.Bs) would keep tabs on the resultant hook-up, break-up, and wash-up pattern that typically occurs over the succeeding couple of months, weeding out the chaff from the wheat until at last my perfect mate rises to the top of the heap of broken, disillusioned, ready-to-settle-for-less women, and I STRIKE!

The question you have to ask yourself now, is: does this pattern sound familiar to you? Have you gone through this experience already? Have you lowered your standards to the point where they're already met? Now you know. Oh yes... you know.

So, yeah. Valentine's Day, huh?

It was late last night in the red barlight
And she looked all right
Oh no
She had a slutty kind of appeal and there was definitely something to her
And you could think of friends of yours who if you knew if they could they would do her
She had a dirty sock kind of appeal
Oh God, NO
-- "Billy's", The Billy Nayer Show

Only YOU can stop your head from exploding

KABOOMY!

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If you’re like me, or even like him, or her, but not her or her, and totally not like that guy, ‘cause eww, what the hell is wrong with his ears, he doesn’t know the business end of a loofah from a turkey’s wattle and MAN he needs the services of a manicurist like WHOA… then you’re concerned about supramandibular cranial detonation, or headexplodeytude.

Headexplodeytude, or HET, is a syndrome suffered by millions of decent government-fearing folk daily. Doctors diagnose headexplodeytude in 4 ½ out of 67% of sufferer…ers every month, and new cases are on the rise. What causes HET, and how can we hunt down and lynch those responsible?

HET begins as a throttled impulse. We’ve all experienced moments of feeling frustrated at a co-worker’s cheerfully ignorant ineptitude when filling out a TPS report, or the inability of a customer service representative to understand that it’s impossible for you to go to the website to fill out a problem ticket when lack of Internet service is the reason you’re calling in the first place. DID YOU GET THAT, COMCAST? STOP PLAYING BEJEWELED AND PAY ATTENTION TO THE SOUND OF MY VOICE!

However, as well-raised, polite, and intelligent people, we understand that we can’t just say whatever rage-fueled magma-like invective we’d like to let spew forth from our mouths, so we push our anger way down deep inside and try to conduct ourselves with decorum. Unfortunately, that anger doesn’t just go away. Instead, it mixes with the digestive juices, deeply-held resentment, and fears of mimes we all harbor inside and causes pressure to build up from within. Over time, that pressure can travel up the esophagus and fill the sinuses, causing a horrendous explosion, showering everyone nearby with viscera and bits of the previous night’s Haagen-Dazs Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Ice Cream binge.

So what can be done to arrest the effects of headexplodeytude? Well, you could try yoga and meditation! No, no, seriously, science has long ago debunked the myth of cultivating a healthy philosophy of tolerance, acceptance, and inner peace as a method of managing the kinds of stress that leads to HET, and instead turns to biopharmaceuticals for help.

Introducing Noboomitor. Carefully developed over the course of 5 years by a team of caring, respected scientists from various third world yet totally clean and broadband-enabled countries, Noboomitor has been proven effective in over a thousand Phase IV clinical trials as compared to placebo. Noboomitor is quick-acting, totally more purple than that other purple pill, won’t stain your teeth, and is effective for over 12 minutes before requiring another dose. Noboomitor isn’t for everyone – please check with your physician if you are:

•    Pregnant
•    Thinking of becoming pregnant
•    Terrified you’re already pregnant
•    Arnold Schwarzenegger in “Junior”
•    Currently taking anything for anything
•    Over 5 feet tall
•    Were born in a month ending in “ember”
•    Bipedal
•    Have a face
•    Or have recently been possessed by Shreeknolgth, Dread Monarch of Styrofoam Peanuts and All Related Packing Material That Makes That Nerve-Shredding Squeaky Sound When They Rub Together, I Hate That

Side effects may include nausea, vomiting, vomiting out of someone else’s mouth, inability to say the letter “ “, plague of frogs, Reaganomics, mudtongue, inverted nipples, slight headache, and loss of appetite. Ask for Noboomitor at your local pharmacy. Please remember to provide adequate credit references, and any documentation concerning mortgages, trust funds, and off-shore bank accounts. After all, if it’s expensive, it probably works!

Noboomitor is your best choice for temporarily staving off the inevitability of supramandibular cranial detonation. Remember: only you can prevent your head from exploding. Please, think of the children. If they go to school with pieces of their daddy’s noggin plastered all over their precious little faces, you can bet they’ll be picked last for dodgeball. And no one wants that. Noboomitor: it works, bitches.

Having every question answered isn't gonna help at all
Having every question answered isn't gonna help at all
Having every question answered isn't gonna help at all
Having every question answered doesn't help
When you're not supposed to know
You're not supposed to know
You're not supposed to know
Anything

-- "Textbook", We Are Scientists

CyLOLns

'Nuff said.

Icanhasplan

Telegraph? Whoa, I didn't see THAT coming!

the Noble Telegraph

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Of all the abandoned, obsolete technologies we've discarded over the years, the one most deserving of a second chance is the noble telegraph. Think about it -- when we're at our computers everyday, visiting our favorite wicker porn sites, what are we already doing? That's right: clicking. Clicking away on our mice, slowly tapping out messages to the Ether. I guarantee you, somewhere out there is a vast, diffuse machine intelligence that's listening in, slowly deciphering our subconscious dots-and-dashes message, transmitted quite without our knowledge through our everyday Internet usage. And at some point, it will have collected enough clicks to make sense of that message, and respond with a disgusted 'That's nasty', and shut itself down forever.

Do you see how powerful the telegraph is? If it can cause a barely-cognizant hardware-constrained cloud of virtual neurons to kill itself in horrified, existential anomie, surely it can revitalize our modern way of life! How, you say? I'm glad you asked, you mouth-breathing mendicant!

Imagine the following scenario: it's late. You're lonely. You have no lover that doesn't run on batteries, and those Flipper reruns don't come on until 3 AM. You crave a direct connection with another human being, someone with whom you can share your innermost goulash recipes. Someone with whom you can be truly intimate. Looking around your cell, your fevered gaze alights upon your telegraph device, coiled and smug within its mahogany-and-cheese berth.

Trembling, your hand reaches toward it, fingers already pre-tapping, anxiously awaiting that tactile, subdermal feedback. You don your headphones, heartrate jumping at the mere hiss of the static issuing forth. You begin to code your message: dot-dash... dot-dot-dot... dot-dash-dot-dot... dot-dot-dash-dash-dot-dot.

Suddenly, you're in the thick of it! Messages crowd in, staccato sweet nothings filling your headspace like the drilling of overly-amorous woodpeckers!  Drum roll missives of lust peppering your eardrums with the emotional force of a thousand tiny jackhammers of love! Engorged with excitement... EWW... you hurriedly attach and activate the Press-Your-Sensitive™ Teledildonics NubbinNotch ("Now with telegraph support!") and continue your perversely promiscuous pressings.

With each dot and dash of your partner's message delivered as a jolt of current to your sex toy, and calibrated to be sensitive enough to register pressure, the harder you tap, the stronger the impulses. As you race closer to the eventual conclusion, your frenzied pounding begins to set up a powerful feedback loop, like shouting into a series of megaphones, both of you crying out for release, hands feverishly slamming into the receiver until finally the final spasm hits, both hands clenched tightly around the telegraph machine, blissed and mindless...

...until you electrocute yourself on an exposed wire. But UNTIL then! Transformative! Revolutionary! Apocalyptic! Superfluous! Yes, gentle sentients, the telegraph must return! If not for yourselves, then think of the children! Do you really want them to grow up in a society where debased adult sexmongers aren't regularly destroyed by their own fiendish devices? Look deep into your hearts; you already know the answer: dash-dot... dash-dash-dash.

I wanna be free... just me... oh baby...
EWW
-- "Easy", Faith No More

No go boho

A_Capella_Bohemian_Rhapsody

Here's where we separate the strong-stomached from the squeamish. I give you: Bohemian Rhapsody, a capella. One of the lyrics is wrong, but damned if I was going to re-record that.

History will judge me.

Nothing left to lose

Freefalling

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It’s been a long December, and there’s reason to believe maybe this year will be better than the last. But how much better? What has kept it from being better before this? Have you been unable to do everything you wanted to, due to scheduling restraints, personality conflicts, or plain old fear? I don’t know you, and you don’t know me, but I can tell you that a lot of people fail to accomplish their goals because they’re afraid. Not just of failure, but also of success.

Neil Gaiman once published a Sandman short story called ‘Fear of Falling’ for a collection of DC Vertigo preview comics. The story concerned itself with one man’s recurring nightmares, linked to his pulling out of a stage play he had written and was producing. He had become cripplingly afraid of being unable to perform to the expectations of the audience, even though the show had yet to begin. He likened it to nightmares in which he would climb to a great height, fall, and try to wake up before he hit the ground, which he was certain would kill him. This fear is common. Stage fright, just like Writer’s block, can take many forms. It’s natural and normal to worry over reactions to anything you create, but the most important thing to remember is just to get your creation out there in the world, without regard to how it may be received.

How often has worry over not having something worthwhile to say kept you from writing? How many times have you shrunk from trying something new because you were frightened of looking foolish? How much time do you spend regretting that which you’ve not done? And here I’m not just talking about creation – I’m talking about taking that trip you’ve been meaning to take, asking for that raise, or telling someone how you really feel. At the end of your life, will you be able to total up your successes and your failures and find that you’ve got more to regret than to be proud of?

At the end of ‘Fear of Falling’, our protagonist, having returned to helm the show, tells a friend what he’s come to realize: “Sometimes you fall. Sometimes the fall kills you. And sometimes, when you fall, you fly.” This is my New Year’s reminder to you. Take everything you’re afraid will happen, and throw it all away. Don’t even give it a second thought. Put into the world what you want to experience. If you don’t, it will never happen. If you don’t release what’s inside you, what’s inside you will kill you. If you release what’s inside you, what’s inside you will save you. Sometimes, when you fall, you fly.

Come on and we'll sing, like we were free
Push the pedal down watch the world around fly by us
Come on and we'll try, one last time
I'm off the floor one more time to find you
And here we go there's nothing left to choose
And here we go there's nothing left to lose
-- "Nothing Left to Lose", Mat Kearney