LiveJournal

I think LiveJournal finally succeeded in snuffing out my torch for my longtime blogging home. I knew it was bad when it was sold to the Russians. That is, after all, what prompted me to start an account at Dreamwidth and to transport all my old LJ entries, preparing for the worst. That was close to four years ago. Most Western LJers cleared out right away, but I do not easily change my ways until I am practically beaten and chased away in tar and feathers. A few days ago, the last straw floated down that finally broke my back.

I woke up last Tuesday morning, proceeded with my routine, firing up the laptop, logging on to my accounts, opening my pages, when it suddenly felt like a bad stench was assaulting my nose. My LJ entries had a sidebar stuck onto them, containing all my tags and navigational links and such, cluttering my journal and making it look ugly. I checked my settings, and, no, the sidebar should not be there. I opened up a request for technical support. I suspected from the start that this was an assault on non-paying users.

At first, they tried to tell me that I probably just needed to clear my browser, that I was probably looking at an old cached page. I pushed the matter, and Mr. Astronewt sent me a screencap that he took, demonstrating that he does not see any sidebar there. I was struck dumb by the picture, but then it hit me, and I suggested that he look at my page when he is logged out of his privileged account. I was right! Those of us at the back of the bus are being made to suffer harder. They said that they will take the problem to the developers, as though it might only be a technical oversight. I doubt I will be hearing anything more from them, and I am not expecting this to be fixed. I am not expecting anything to be okay again. The Russians do business like the Kremlin does government.

I have finally accepted the reality that I have been trying to play and make friends on a Russian website. You can really see this when you look at the page of support requests and find that over 95% of the clients are Russians. I am such a ... I am debating which word would describe me better, a fool or an idiot? I suppose it is a nuance that doesn't really change the score. Well, it is not as though I would have been welcomed at any cool party that is happening on Facebook or Twitter or AnywhereElse.com. There is no longer a Melissa urging me to move to LiveJournal, or a Christie teasing me to join MySpace. I pretty much lost all my friends and crushes long before the Russians came along.

So, I am no longer posting at LiveJournal. I was thinking about giving them my original poetry, if only to keep the account active, but I am doubtful about even that. The only business that I have there now is to skim through my 'friends page' for keepsakes, and that is largely just for the celebrity news and gossip of the 'Oh No They Didn't' community. Maybe I will grab a little something from time to time from the political communities, what floundering life lingers there. Maybe I will occasionally find a good music video or a poem from those few old men that are still active on my 'friends list'. But I am done. A big era of my life is over. My e-life has finally fizzled out, like a stinky fart.

My e-life, my e-life ... when I started connecting with people, really connecting, it felt like I was given a second chance at life, and I ended up failing anyway. The answer is both, I guess, both a fool and an idiot. A strange and sad fellow, this Monkey-Knight.

Dean Martin

In Tosches’s artful depiction of Dino’s deep, even dark, introversion, I am reminded of Jack.

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

His schoolmates had never really known him. Even his loving family could not tell for sure what lay within this kid who moseyed around among them with a hat on, singing. There was pin-tumbler sidebar lock on his guts that no one could pick. That was just the way he was, and it was just the way he always would be.

[...]

Those close to him could sense it: He was there, but he was not really there; a part of them, but apart from them as well. The glint in his eye was disarming, so captivating and so chilling at once, like lantern-light gleaming on nighttime sea: the tiny soft twinkling so gaily inviting, belying for an instant, then illuminating, a vast unseen cold blackness beneath and beyond. The secret in its depth seemed to be the most horrible secret of all: that there was no secret, no mystery other than that which resides, not as a puzzle to be solved or a revelation to be discovered, but as a blank immanence, in emptiness itself.

There was a picnic in Beatty Park. Roozi had gotten hold of an eight-millimeter movie camera, and they were all going to be in pictures. No one who saw that movie ever forgot it. The camera captured the silent laughter of the Crocettis and the Barrs. It followed Dino’s friends back and forth as they ran and fumbled, threw and jumped in a makeshift football game. There was merriment everywhere, but there was no Dino. Then the camera scanned to the right, to a tree of in the distance, and there he was by himself under the tree, away from it all, caught unawares and expressionless, abstractedly toying with a twig, sort of mind-whittling it. That was Dino, all right; the Dino inside the Dino who sang and swore and loafed and laughed.

He was born alone. He would die alone. These truths, he, like every punk, took to heart. But in him they framed another truth, another solitary, stubborn stone in the eye of nothing. There was something, a knowing, in him that others did not apprehend. He was born alone, and he would die along, yes. But in between - somehow - the world in all its glory would hunker down before him like a sweet-lipped High Street whore.

-- Nick Tosches, “Dino: Living High in the Dirty Business of Dreams”

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Jack, too, was like someone with a secret buried in his soul, like a black hole; there was no getting to it, no chance to understand it; and it appeared to others as a void. Do not dare to even ask him about it! He probably didn’t understand it either. It was a force that he simply trusted, his secret daemon. Maybe it is apt to be present in someone with the power of a pretty face and the weakness of a simple mind.

Weekend Fun

"Breaking Benjamin - Failure (Official Video)" (Watch on YouTube)

ONTD

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