Teel McClanahan

(This post is in reference to this.)

I would probably have communicated with you in some way, but food for thought:

That feeling you think you would have had if W:PS disappeared totally from ME with no warning?

I had that years ago when you moved all your blogging and posting off ME and onto DC.

I’m basically holding a grudge against you for it, except that every time I look at my website and every time I click a link to read a post you made and every time I look at your site, I am reminded that it’s not so much a grudge as a continually ongoing offense. Same with Zoe and Marie; it’s not just you.

So the fact that I built a site intended to be a “community” site for me and my friends to post on that now every single one of my friends has forsaken for their own (or totally faceless sites run by people they don’t know) is a constant thorn in my side. And if/when each/any of your sites stops being interesting or starts polluting my site (a la Iain’s spam comments, which you may note no longer appear on ME) that’s just too much, you’re gone.

Sorry if that upsets you. You’ll always be welcome to post ON MODERN EVIL if you so choose, just let me know. It’s all this goddamned posting in other places and feeling like you’re owed the right to appear here anyway. It’s a privelidge, something I spent dozens of hours programming into my site, not the normal order of things or a natural right.

…

Gha. At this point I hardly care. Look at the front page. It’s a disgrace. One, maybe two posts a day actually ON Modern Evil, most of them ME24. What’s the point? The site nearly boils down to an easy set of links to posts my friends made so I can keep up with their blogs. Which, if you consider to be the case, means that if I lose interest in reading a blog (becuase 7/8 of the posts are not worth reading, for example) it has no place on my “personal set of links”. And anyone who thinks differently can refer themselves to the name of this blog.

A storm, brewing on the
horizon. That’s what they say,
but this storm seems to
be brewing across and around
the entire sky moving and
growing and threatening to
overcome the relatively calm
patch of sky directly above
me. Lightning strikes far

enough in the distance that
the corresponding thunder
is silence behind the clamor
of traffic all around. Yet
it too surrounds me, flashes
out its warning, claims to
be approaching or otherwise
menacing without ever leaving
the furthest corner of my eye.
The air itself rushes back
and forth and all around me,
giving notion of desperate
destinations for plastic sacks
and dry leaves seeking shelter
from the enclosing gloominess.

Pages practically pulled
plainly from my hands, chasing
the wind after its own
imagined fancies, forgetting
the planned purpose for them
was to capture that very magic.
I breathe a subtle perfume,
hidden on the underneaths
and folded corners of the
city smells – exhausted
fumes carrying lightest
fragrant proof of life and
health in this oft-desert
not just of the senses:
that familiar scent that means

rain. I see it coming
down at the edge of the
sky. Purple clouds blurred
as though stretched and
pulled vertically to the earth
giving new depth to redder
clouds absorbing and relaying
the diminishing rays of a
hidden sunset, together
creating a once-in-a-lifetime
color that no brush can
reproduce and my memory
can do no justice, rain
falling before clouds glowing
before sunset unseen.

Night falling too, taking with
it the distinction between storms,
between clouds, between here
and there. Darkness now
punctuated not by breathtaking
blues and reds and flying and
flitting objects in the wind,
but by light bursting
up and down in and out
behind clouds so fast you
cannot turn to see it,
you can only see it by
staying still: motion so fast
it can only be matched
by stillness equally fast.

Ought to be sleeping.

How many of my posts start that way?

How many of my days start that way?

. . . all the life I’ve lived when I ought to have been sleeping . . .

Work is back to where I like it most, where I do one thing, the same thing, all day long. Less thinking about what I’m going to do when I run out of tickets, more just processing tickets. Counting five by five, counting bucket by bucket, hundreds of tickets back and forth and up and down and mind numbing nicely.

People are still interrupting me with questions about their computers at home, with questions I’m too asleep and too out-of-practise to really answer properly.

And my own mind keeps running. Which is a good thing.

That I have a job that while requiring focus doesn’t require 100% of my mental capacity is a very nice thing. Working on this or that, thinking about whatever. Trying to develop an idea from a glimpse to a screenplay and from a dream to a business proposal to a business. Trying to come up with ideas for comics. And working on ideas for things to do in Second Life. And on and on and daydreaming and . . .

And wishing I had an iPod.

Every day that I have to sit between two people, each playing their own stereo tuned to a different station and neither one playing music I would have chosen, is another day that reinforces in me the need for my own personal portable music experience. Seriously, I just want to put a pair of white earbuds into my ears, pull up one of my smart playlists, and listen to my own collection of music instead of … two disparate selections at once and never a song I really like. Sigh.

The money will be there eventually.

I’ve just got to be careful, and be sure I understand my own priorities.

If I had the money for the iBook I want, I could get an iPod for a real steal with one of their current promotions. But I haven’t got that money saved up/paid back yet. And by the time I do, that promotion will be over. And my desire for an iPod will be excessive.

Got to have money for Florida.

Got to have money for bills and food and internet.

Like to save up (ie: pay back debtors so I can afford to spend more) for nice things like iBook, iPod, new iMac (hah! I don’t get paid that much!). Like to save up for Nintendo DS and some games for it. Like to have money for Fable next month. (Fable, the game that made me choose XBox over PS2 originally, finally arriving.)

Like to go on a cruise – I can get a sweet deal while I work for ICE, but I’ve got to have the vacation money available, obviously.

Can’t buy a car. Just can’t.

Like, if someone gifted me a fully functional car with reasonable gas mileage, I might be able to afford the insurance, gas, and maintenance on it. But car payments on top of that? Right out.

Probably something to do with my car-loan-sized outstanding debt and the payments I have to make on that and the ridiculous interest I pay on it.

I must suck.

…

My wrists are going bad from all the repetitive tickets business. And my right bicep is going crazy. Maybe it’ll get bigger or something. It’s all sore and tired. At the very least I suspect that it’ll be really really good at a couple of very particular motions repeated hundreds of times a day.

…

Somehow still not sleeping. But I will. Go. Try that. Now.

Everyone else seems to be doing the food journaling thing right now, so I thought I’d join in. Hopefully I’ll start feeling more into taking care of myself in the coming days, and get back onto my diet, but the last few days I’ve been bringing some bad choices home with me from the grocery store.

Today started out good. I had 2oz of Kellog’s Raisin Bran with 12oz of Skim Milk.

But I got up late, so breakfast was around noon. By the time I was hungry again I was at a movie theatre to watch A Door in the Floor, so I got a (refill size) diet Pepsi and the free popcorn (thanks Zoe) without butter. I ate about half of the popcorn, which equates to around 40oz.

On the way home from shopping and movie-watching and more shopping, Angela wanted to get some Krispy Kreme donuts. We went in and I ate one glazed (the sample) and ordered half of the dozen she bought. Then we went next door to the In-N-Out burger for real food. I had a #1, which is a double cheeseburger, fries, medium drink. Diet again on the soda (I’m going to need more water tomorrow, I think), but you can imagine how many calories the burger and fries have.

Actually, I’ll look it up… 670 calories for the burger, 400 for thr fries. So, 1070 total. 270 calories for breakfast. Around 200-300 calories in the popcorn. Hard to say. 200 calorie donut. So 1740-1840 calories so far today. Supposed to have 2000-2200, so I guess I’m doing okay. A little too much fat in the burger, too much sugar in the donut, but … not too bad.

And I’m full.

Sigh. Even when I “cheat” I don’t seem to go overboard anymore. I suppose I’ve trained myself pretty well. Probably I’ll have another donut before sleep. Oh, and my fibre supplements. That’s 30 calories.

Okie-dokie.

All the pages you get when you click on the top-most row at Modern Evil (ie: blogs, Art, Comics, Poetry, Prose, Reviews) have been updated and modifed not only to remove errors and things from the recent purge, but to make them easier to use and read and all that.

Also, all the comics archives or all 13 comics remaining on Modern Evil have been modified to include convenient links to the “first” and “last comics in each archive, as well as links to the next and previous comics and to the archive page for that comic. The bio page for ME24 has been made standalone, and is linked to from its main page, and every other ME24 page. Carrot’s brother, carrot, has been added to the ME24 bios page.

That’s right, I just spent half a day updating my website.

Enjoy.