I have been on this website for 3.3 years, according to my homenode. Joined August 18th, 2004. In this time, I've met quite an interesting set of people, read quite an interesting set of work, and seen, more recently, a set of interesting things happen.

I will not wave a flag and yell that we have died, we are dead, and we are dying. I am no god, I am no editor. I can't even cool writeups yet. 48 writeups (61 if you count Node Heaven) in 3.3 years, averaging about 15 writeups a year. I'm not exactly prolific.

I remember once, back in my first few months, I noded SA (don't look, it's dead now). I remember wondering why it had done so badly. I remember an editor (or god, perhaps -- at the time, they were the same to me) messaging me, informing me about some great conflict about gender neutral pronouns that was before my time. I remember nuking the writeup due to that. It seemed that standards were different, or that a decision had been made in the past about this sort of thing.

Everything, apparently, was not intended to contain everything.

Right now I am watching over two-word poem, the current hot-button node. And I am watching it go belly-up, nearly every writeup. The deletions are not what scare me. The reputations and chings on several of them do. When did e2 lose its ability to laugh at absurdity? It doesn't have to be smart to be funny, and it doesn't have to be smart to belong. That's the E2 that seemed to exist years ago. The Loud Node, Butterfinger McFlurry (the classic), the "customer :" series. Why the hell can't we write that anymore?

Two solutions come to mind, and one of them is more likely to happen than the other. One, we all lighten the fuck up. Seriously. Licking the bar. I'm not saying flood the database with crudely drawn ASCII penises, but there is a place for most of the writeups in two-word poem. It happens to be in the node they're in.

Second idea? I heard something about a tagging system instead of the drop down "person - place - thing - idea - whatever" list. Either with that, or a little checkbox when you make your node. It will be labeled "silly", "a joke", "quick" WHATEVER. Have your content and label it too. That or throw on a layer to voting so you can vote on "database appropriateness". Or is that what upvotes and downvotes have been for all along?

I want what E2 was before I was here -- I want what E2 was that got me here in the first place.

The holidays pretty much bite the big red one if you don't have a family. You've got all the ads and Hallmark holiday specials and heartwarming Christmas movies grinding the image of family get-togethers and festive reunions right into your face. 'Tis the season to feel lonely. Fa-la-la-la-la, la-la-la.

I used to really, really like Thanksgiving and Christmas. Now ... ah well. It's amazing what happens when you discover your real family amounts to just one person.

And I do have one person. I have my husband. And he only has me. So we'll be thankful for that, and the life we have together. After all, he or I could be in a scavenged refrigerator box under a bridge someplace, looking forward to a secondhand coat and some tinned turkey down at the Salvation Army. So I'll smile and nod when I hear people complaining about the long waits at the airports to go visit their loved ones in whatever warm, cozy homes they live in far away from here.

I love the winter.





The days are dark.

The sky is easy on the eyes.

And the air is crisp and cool.





When all is cold,

there will always be

a concentrated warmth

somewhere.





The young speak of "summer romances", but they are merely steamy lustful relationships triggered by the mindset of being free from academic responsibilities. The hot weather also has something to do with it, I believe. However, aren't you people more irritable when it gets hot? I guess this leads to one removing pieces of clothing which makes the summer that sexy, huh? How sad that the media makes us think such.


The season makes for some fine studying time indeed. It's got the perfect mix of cozy at-home relaxation time combined with the chilling stimulation needed to stay awake during those late hours with books.


Longer nights and darker days make for a happy and content /me.

In reply to greth:

It's not that the write-ups in two-word poem are bad. Some are quite clever.


It's that the joke was done once and was funny.

Then it was done twice and was less funny.

When it was done a third time it became dull.

The fourth time it was boring.

The fifth time it was irritating.

The sixth time it was obnoxious.

After the seventh I stopped reading.


I'll upvote things that make me laugh, but not things that make me shake my head and say something like, "Enough Already!"

I'm not decrying one of these things, but the idea isn't novel anymore. Sort of like how disaster movies are cool, until you realize they're all pretty much the same.

I could submit this to Brevity Quest, but it took no effort to write, so I won't. Hint, HINT.

The holidays are supposed to be a happy time, where family comes together to celebrate and spend time with one another. I find myself reflecting on holidays passed today for a number of reasons. I always associate Thanksgiving with my father, as he always took care of making the turkey and stuffing. I, of course, would always attempt sampling the food prior to dinnertime, at which point he would jokingly scold me and let me get away with a piece. I didn't get that last year, nor will I ever get that again. Last year I was still in shock over his passing, and this year I find myself reflecting on it. It gives me mixed feelings, because those were great times, yet I miss him terribly.

Prior to my divorce, holidays were mostly spent with the ex-wife's family. They were a nice group of people, however, I had wanted to spend time with my family as well. That didn't really happen too often, as she didn't really care for my family, and my family sensed it. Any time we would be at a gathering, we would not be there that long due to the tension. This year is a lot different. My wife-to-be loves my family, and the family loves her. We aren't returning to Pennsylvania for the holidays this year, but some of my family is coming here. We're excited to have them, and show them our home, and it should make for a wonderful Thanksgiving.

It seems Amazon.com has released the future. Kindle is a reading machine, lightweight, net capable portable ebook (or books, with enough capacity to replace one of my smaller bookshelves). Download your favorite book file, and read away. No more overstuffed bookshelves, and brightly covered paperbacks. All you need is your laptop, a big hard drive and the box. Maybe a hotspot and a credit card. Throw away those heavy old tomes! You're connected, you're reading. No trees required.

On one hand, I'm very much in favor of trees, even though books are mostly made from quick-growing soft woods rather than the exquisitely grained hardwoods that Gibson makes Les Paul's from. Moving writing from publishing to software removes a lot of the costs, printing and shipping what are very heavy objects (and thus energy intensive to move). Publishers are failing, authors can sell-direct even though all this democraticization might muddly the literary waters by putting amateurs on near-even footing with the real pros.

The thing is though, I like houses cluttered with books. I feel at home when I enter a home and find the walls lined with shelves. They feely comfy and well worn. You know if you're bored or your hostess is busy, all you have to do is browse. A nice book lined cottage in the forest sounds like an ideal life to me, a romanticized vision of human existence. I like the random access of paging through a book, the way the lay on your bed, ready to be picked up when you awake, they way they survive a fall off the bed when your lover wants something better than reading.

I like the clean, crisp printed text, so much nicer than any screen. I like the fact that you don't need batteries, just a nice sunny day and soft moss beneath a tree. Kindle denies that homey cottage, rather a sparsely furnished Bahaus, open but empty, sterile and cold.

But I probably won't need to light the light at night to read, and I might even be able to make my way to the bathroom with Avalon's misty light.

A short bit of old school tech support. Even books require customer service.

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