Life in progress, Day 12209. Twist endings to serial dreams, leaving certain online groups, Warrant borrows, and Righthaven updates...

BLOT: (02 Nov 2011 - 07:18:26 PM)

Life in progress, Day 12209. Twist endings to serial dreams, leaving certain online groups, Warrant borrows, and Righthaven updates...

I am thinking about leaving the Livejournal group: Society for Librarians who Say Motherfucker. I probably should have confirmed you were sitting down first. It is a shock I know. I think, though, part of my issue is simply this: the unique set of truly annoying issues that arise in a librarian's environment are heavily finite. One might say "limited". You got printer issues, and people refusing to pay fines, and people confused by technology [see also option 1], and people on cellphones, and people who damage books, and otherwise unsavory people who refuse to vacate space [see also options 4 and 5], and coworkers who just don't "get it". To ape/disagree-with Tolstoy, who was wrong about happy and sad households in the original, every library problem is NOT a problem in its own way. They are largely summed up with a un/willful disregard to the way things are: whether it be ignoring the error message given by Word 2010 or thinking that no one should ever have to pay for printing. A group designed around hashing and rehashing mildly different sets of these problems is humorous, but often feels a bit at odds with itself. Commiseration sometimes presupposes misery.

In less librarian motherfuckery, here is Speculate!'s podcast/interview with Laird Barron and John Hornor Jacobs. In which they ask probing questions like: "Why do you Kathooloo?" I was more in it for Barron than Jacobs (the latter whose Southern Gods I gave a mildly tepid review) but there are fascinating things out of both (all four, including the hosts) mouths. Jacobs' discussion of his writing style and his personal kathooloos fit almost exactly the four caveats I gave: mostly that he doesn't really seem to be all that Mythosian and he cared more about getting his characters to point B and less about his supposed setting and backdrop. In part of a longer response to Laird Barron's G+ stream, I wrote this, and I think this says all I need to say about my current thoughts on things:

What about it, sports fans? Which gut punches your spine? A universe that doesn't deign to notice you, or one that sees you, and wants to crush you? This is not a trick question. There may be a wrong answer. And, well, in 5 billion years our Sun will burn away everything right up to the Earth's radius and so it probably doesn't really matter. I mean, the average human gets less than a thousand full moons in their life. See? Happy belated Halloween.

What else? I had another chapter in a serial dream where the overall plot has involved me (and a pair of females that I think are kind of based on Sarah and Alicia personality-wise but who are also not them in significant ways, including both being more around the 16-18 years of age range (in the dream, I'm about 20 at the oldest), both being a tad more backwoods, and the relationship being more of a platonic threesome with no one related to anyone) interrupting some big-bad unstable sort in the midst of a crime, getting him in lots of trouble, and him plotting revenge. This chapter was a year or two later, and the big-bad had fulfilled his promise to get out of prison and had stolen a weapon and so much of the dream was like a nightmare. The three of us were doomed and being hunted. Then I remembered that my family tends to have a lot of guns, I'm a great shot, and other boons in my favor and this series of dreams that has involved increasing amounts of dreads with each chapter (there have been two or three previous) ended with me laughing at the guy while my brother Shawn (or, well, someone Shawn-like) shot him in the back.

That's right. My brain decided it didn't like the nightmare format anymore. Oh, and I might have a *tinsy* bit of a violent side in my subconscious. Don't worry, if I ever become a serial killer, I'll be sure to write a children's book.

Two other quick shares. First, heard the band Steel Panther (not for the first time) last night. Heard their song "Fat Girl (thar she blows)". At no point should you feel compelled to click that link. The title is somewhat self-explanatory, in more ways than one, and can be thought of as a musical version of the joke that ends with the punch line, "Because she is hungry!" and there you go. At any rate, listening to it I couldn't shake the impression that I had heard most of this song before, in a slightly different meter. And I had. Now I'm forced to ask, is that a joyous borrowing, what Jonathan Lethem might call the ecstacy of influence [do click this link, and read, though it is quite long], a coincidence, or a full-on rip-off assuming no one gives a rat's [RATT?] ass about Warrant? Or all three?

Finally, a few months back I mentioned Righthaven, a copyright-trolling firm that was semi-acquring copyright and then using that to scare people into paying off lawsuits. At the time, I said if it went to court it would go against Righthaven, because "they are going to have to prove that A) they own the work in a real, legal sense and B) they suffered damages over the work," and, well, it's like I was freaking psychic. Personally, I hope this gets squashed because copyright law is already horribly complicated, and having content creators, copyright owners, and copyright litigators [aka owners for the purposes of litigation] as three common layers is going to be one more nail in the concept's coffin.

Alright, go have fun. I'm done!

OTHER BLOTS THIS MONTH: November 2011