October 27, 2023

I have recently been discussing with a few other noders about a possible idea for a writeup or maybe even a quest. (see Up My Street (A Quest for Local Knowledge))

As we all know E2 doesn't allow for images other than home nodes. Personally I've always been intrigued by E2's text only format. However, I think that a site with such colorful people (especially fiction and poetry writers) should be connected to other parts of the internet.

I had the idea of noders taking pictures of their front yards/front walk/etc. which would be posted to an image hosting site such as Imgur, and then other noders could "put" poetry to it (on E2). Tem42 improved the idea (due to possible privacy concerns) by suggesting that the photos would instead be of a "favorite spot" due to potential privacy issues. I understand there may be privacy concerns but I still stand by my original idea (front yards/front walks/etc.) and can't part with it. Instead of stubbornly sticking to just that I'd like to encourage people to do whichever one (or even both) they feel comfortable providing.

Having the images elsewhere on the internet might be quite helpful in attracting people elsewhere on the internet to become noders. Even if it didn't there could still be benefit to E2 by having the connection to other sites. Aside from seducing, excuse me, attracting new people to E2, there would be a number of other benefits. Reluctant as I am to be the first to dip my toes into the photo side of things, I have done so. That whole "don't expect others to do what you won't do yourself" thing. If anyone can produce some poetry based on it you're a better man/woman/etc. than I am. So here.

Any feedback would be much appreciated.

Note: As always, stay vigilant and watch out for porch pirates.

It's been a while since I've been active here. I still log on every day, but I just haven't engaged with this place lately. I want to, but I just have other things going on to the point that it's difficult for me to want to spend energy doing absolutely anything at all other than just numb out and waste time and think about nothing.

Stasik was really my best friend on here, we corresponded every day for multiple months. I don't know if he felt the same way, I think he rather disliked me. But that's how interpersonal relationships work I guess, people don't feel the same way about each other.

Anyway, insomnia is hitting me as hard as ever. I know I've complained about it here numerous times, though I don't know how many of those logs survive and how many I've nuked. Whatever the case, I had to drop a class, and my grade in latin is a C. I would quite like to get it back up but I don't know if I will be able to just given how little focus I have in a day. It sounds so self-indulgent to complain about, but I think it's a valid complaint; I sleep 4-5 hours each night, I feel ill throughout the day from not sleeping, it's affecting my grades. I hate it so much, but there's not really anything I can do, so I suppose there's no point in complaining about something I can't control. Still, though, it's hard.

My podcast co-host says we should take a "hiatus". He has been unreliable for a while, and this honestly was unsurprising but still annoying. I understand that life is kicking him in the butt, it is also kicking me in the butt, but he hasn't really communicated with me as to why he is constantly unavailable. "It's my work schedule", he says, but he has worked multiple jobs and been unemployed for a time. "It's my school schedule," but what about summer break? Spring break? Winter break? He also transferred from a university to a community college. And like, I have a lot going on too; that is fine, all I want is just for him to communicate. Just communicate. I have to prompt him multiple times to get a time figured out to record.

Regardless, I am considering doing a podcast of my own; it would be commentary on ancient theater and story. This idea was mainly born of the fact that I read a lot of commentaries on ancient tragedy, including Euripides' Bacchae, and posted a wu about it. It would be a good amalgum of interest and knowledge for me. The only problem is that my insomnia is awful and I likely would not be able to post frequently. If I have to pay $13 a month, I want to be able to have episodes frequently. It would be limited by how long it takes me to read something and commentaries regarding that thing, which could be a month or two or three between recordings.

Latin is happening. I have three declensions to memorize, four conjugations, forms of sum, it's awful. I feel like I'm genuinely going to lose my mind, just how much sheer memorization it is. When I learned that latin has cases, I thought there was only one declension. I did not realize that there would be FIVE, and that masculine/feminine/neuters decline differently, and that the same suffixes exist for multiple cases or even between declensions. Not to mention having to memorize four principal parts for each verb, two for each noun. Latin is really cool but it's a huge pain in the ass to learn.

I've been working on a short story. I hope to someday be published in a magazine -- my dream is the Apex Magazine, which is a webzine. George R.R. Martin claims that his secret weapon is that he writes everything in Wordstar 4.0. I got Wordstar up and running on my PC. I've been writing in it. It's no different from any other text editor, in my opinion, but it has charm to it. It's bare-bones, it's pragmatic. The only issue is that I will need to use a conversion utility to convert it to text that modern computers can understand.

I have a non-functional old DOS machine. if I wanted to I could get an IDE hard drive and a USB floppy drive, and some floppy disks. Burn MS DOS to three, burn Wordstar to three more, stick em in, get MS DOS running, install wordstar, and it will be authentic. The only problem is that I don't have a monitor that would work with the thing. I know in the past I have pined in these daylogs about the death of VGA and DVI, but my modern-day gpu doesn't take either; therefore, I have neither anymore. I do not have enough money for all these sheninegans, so I will not do any of this. It's fun to think about.

In other news, I've been playing a lot of chess again, and losing miserably. It's amazing how much skill I've lost just by not playing. I don't know if I'll ever get to blindfold levels, it sure would be nice. 

I've been talking to a lot of people about dating. It seems that every generation is set different challenges. The young (and I'm talking university-age students here) are unsettled, away from the familiar and thrust into new life challenges. Many of them feel unlike taking risks, it seems. For those of my generation (I'm 67, FFS) it's different. For me, all the women I meet in my acceptable dating range are all either married, gay or mad (in one case, all three). The older people get it seems, the more unsettling dating is because they seek the familiar, they want stability and are equally afraid of new life challenges. No-one seems willing to take the risk of a relationship without a protracted courtship.

I'm not talking about hooking up for sex. Not "friends with benefits". I'm talking about a long-term relationship. When I met Christine, and especially after her cancer diagnosis, I quickly made the leap of faith. Three days after it became clear this was Serious Stuff, I flew over with the intention of marrying her and settling down, helping her to raise her daughter. This leap of faith was based on my love for her, and hers for me. It was based on our mutual trust and her daughter's trust. Two months later, we married, and whilst we didn't quite make our seventh wedding anniversary, we did have over seven years of joyful, loving relationship even amidst the worry and trauma of cancer treatments.

No-one, it seems, is willing to make that leap of faith any more. Unless I'm missing some serious cues. Yesterday I was talking to a young woman (well, late 30s!) who's finding exactly the same problem I'm facing. Men, she says, are saying one thing and doing another. What is happening? In a way I miss the 70s. Meet someone, get a phone number, dinner-and-a-movie or fuck. Sometimes skip the phone number. Things happened, we took chances. Life is short, carpe diem and all that.

I have what mature women say they want, but I don't have the physical trappings they say are not important to them. It's dishonest. As a result I've occasionally wound up in bed with women in their mid-20s into 30s and it's not what I most want. I can get sex and snuggles, but I want to dance in the kitchen and read a good book with them too.

I'm willing to take the rose by the thorns and have a sense of humour about it. At the farmers' market I even put up a sign reading

SINGLES NEEDED

ALSO DOLLAR BILLS ☺

A photo can be found on Imgur. I'm not actually fishing for phone numbers (but I have gotten a lot of laughs, a few questions and a couple of phone numbers), it's really there for laughs. But the serious side remains. Living in a university town is tough for me. The young are, well, too young. The "rule of dating" says the acceptable range for me is half my age plus seven years. That means a lower bound of 41, and the women of that age are just not available or suitable because (to reiterate) they're all married, gay or mad. Or they're hidden in places I can't find them.

Light a candle for me, please!

I seem to be writing more daylogs lately. Thank goodness Iron Noder month is approaching. I've signed up.

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