Category: Allegrasloman.com

more server notes

Previously, we announced that on Wednesday, August 2nd, our server admins would begin restarting some VPS servers as part of a maintenance to improve stability of your VPS service. This is still the case, however due to an additional issue that requires the host machine’s BIOS to be upgraded as well, our original service disruption estimate has been increased. We now expect the disruption to your service to last for about 45-60 minutes on average.

The full maintenance process is scheduled to begin at 7:30AM PST and is expected to last for approximately 8 hours.

Shifting emphasis

I’m thinking keep the blog but make it just the release point for a podcast (with a complete and accurate transcript so visually impaired and deaf people can consume it) on a regular schedule. I have some ideas. LOL. I am, after all, an idea factory. I’m making a list of episode subjects and am considering various formats.

I don’t know why, but I’m thinking of a film made in Africa (I was 18, forgive me if I didn’t keep my class notes about which country it was filmed in and I can’t find anything in Wikipedia.) In it, the present day in a bustling city is depicted in colour; but his fantasies about becoming rich and immigrating are in black and white. I remember at the time being much struck by the emotional resonance of this; that your fantasies are so shopworn as to no longer be vibrant, and as a visual metaphor for the protagonist’s internal life I’ve rarely seen the equal.

We finished “One Day as a Lion”. mOm, picture Totally Boned if it was a het couple and set in the hottest ass end of Oklahoma (and people get shot…). I personally loved it (there were so many little beaut touches), Jeff was so so and said the script needed a punch up and the ending was too abrupt (both valid comments.) It is TOTALLY an ‘instant family Harlequin Romance with dead bodies.”

I forgive Scott Caan (son of James) his ‘career’ as a rapper (I believe I have made CLEAR my opinion of white rappers who did not come up in the business credibly integrated with Black ones) if he can produce little bloodstained film confections like this.

I have to do my Lumosity and get dressed, Jeff wants to do a schlep this morning. We don’t normally go on the weekend. Just checked to make sure they’re open at 7, since we hardly ever go on Sunday (the organic homo is usually all gone.)

As predicted air quality (the Alberta fires) is moderately bad (60 and variable) and today’s going to be the hottest day of this heat wave so don’t do a goddamned thing outside today. Just sayin.

Efforts to teach Buster to count to three are going badly. All he does is start salivating when I count to three, since that means I’m about to drop some treats on his little tuffet. Considering that other people’s pets do things like speculate as to whether a new human baby brother will cry when being stuck in the car seat I feel sad until he commands me to pet him, at which point I calm down.

 

whatzit

Why would I stop pubbing this blog? Because it costs money and I can send it out as a newsletter digest, once a week to the N people who want to read it, for free. I need to reduce expenditures, especially those nibbly, come-out-of-your-bank-account-quietly-month-after-month expenditures, because harder times yet are coming and the world is shifting again.

I’m tired of it. I have said all I’m going to about any of the things that I find important and all the new things look like a subset of the old things, only this time they’re 33% microfibres and 67% self-involvement. Everything is shiny until you scuff it. I’m tired of shouting into the void. I’m tired of it being an increasingly onerous duty and an increasingly obvious failure to connect. I’m tired of its vanity and its assumptions. I’ve never expected anyone else to care that much, and I’ve finally caught up to the rest of the world.

I know that what I do (all of it, from stand-up to kid’s songs) isn’t something monetizable and I knew it when I first started to spend money on it. Even so, I look at the millions of words I’ve written and see nothing of lasting interest or value to the larger world. To certain very dear, delightful people, yes, and to myself, yes, no question. But it doesn’t have to be in this format, and probably never should have been. It’s a hobby and should be private.

This also means that John’s memorial site will be coming down. I will try to get someone else to take that on but it may not happen. Bitrot, folks. ‘sgonna happen anyway, may as well try to roll with it.

And that’s why. You were right pOp, you were always right.

It’s not disabling ‘depression’ making me do this. (I thought, okay, I’ll fill out a depression questionnaire. Here’s my result: Use clinical judgment about treatment, based on patient’s duration of symptoms and functional impairment. Yes I answered honestly. Not ready for meds I reckon.) I’m not giving up because of any fanciful (or genuine) feelings of self-harm because I haven’t had those feelings in more than a decade and I have a much easier time fending them off now that I have grandchildren – it’s caution. Other factors feed in, but they aren’t for public consumption for the same reason I don’t post my street address.

I leave you with one of the people who did her best to face down Hitler’s fascism:

“The real damage is done by those millions who want to ‘survive.’ The honest men who just want to be left in peace. Those who don’t want their little lives disturbed by anything bigger than themselves. Those with no sides and no causes. Those who won’t take measure of their own strength, for fear of antagonizing their own weakness. Those who don’t like to make waves—or enemies. Those for whom freedom, honour, truth, and principles are only literature. Those who live small, mate small, die small. It’s the reductionist approach to life: if you keep it small, you’ll keep it under control. If you don’t make any noise, the bogeyman won’t find you. But it’s all an illusion, because they die too, those people who roll up their spirits into tiny little balls so as to be safe. Safe?! From what? Life is always on the edge of death; narrow streets lead to the same place as wide avenues, and a little candle burns itself out just like a flaming torch does. I choose my own way to burn.” –– Sophie Scholl

not exactly as counted

I imagine I will post approximately two hundred songs this year, so it won’t be a song a day. That said, I’ve got 98 songs in already and an additional 47 for which I must either make recordings, or make new recordings, or find the recordings I already have. I keep stumbling upon songs and then forgetting to write down the names to prompt myself later, and a couple of times I’ve caught myself trying to post the same song under different names.

So it won’t be 365 songs unless I turn myself into an avatar of Billy “Song a Day” Hughes. These days I’d rather write fiction. I love my little family (daaawwwww)

Forgot to report that Dave D has had another publication! Congrats Dave.

Jeff got pizza. It’s quite good.

Fagradalsfjall is erupting.

We are now referring to them as the Olympox.

That’s a royal we, not a literal we.

I don’t share my opinions with others, in the sense that my opinions are commonly held.  In the other sense, why, look, I’m coming up on 6 years of blogging on a daily basis.  It’s been peace of mind inducing, because I can actually see progress, even at this late date.  Yes, it has quite a bit, now I think on it.  It’s been useful, with recipes and background deets for KittyKate’s ongoing relationship woes, and dammit, the source of MUCH amusement in retrospect and in PROSPECT, because so far I’ve lived to blog the tale, and yes, the worst of the bad bits aren’t here, but that’s cause my mother doesn’t want to read them.

You know, I don’t go back into the non wordpress archives unless I’m looking for a quote or a specific event.  I was looking for a dream description last week (took me a blazing age to find the damned thing, too, the archives are a bear to search) but I can’t remember the time I looked before last.  Might have been… oh yeah, I remember, I wanted to know the date we first watched Heroes of the East (Shaolin vs. Ninja).

I do look at the more recent archives more.  Easier to search.  It’s always about usability.