UPDATED - July 24: HAY PEOPLE! HELP SOMEONE NEEDY OUT!

is a dA friend of mine (okay, an acquaintance I watch who has done a couple really amazing commissions for me, but I call that a friend, so deal with the semantics on your own time) who is in some bad need of help to cover some rising medical bills.  Money's tight all around, but if you can spare a few bucks to get a commish from her, you'll get some primo art, she'll be much better off for it, and the money will go toward a good cause.  See RR's journal for details.

---

Christ, it's cold in here.  You never realize how much you miss spending the entirety of the summertime outside until you're backed into a situation where you're spending a ten hour shift in front of a computer screen in a 40 degree cooler and feeling the tips of your fingers become numb while you're taking time to write at work.  Could be a lot worse, I guess, and there are a bunch of people I know who would kill to be doing the same thing.  Course, many of them live on the Equator and think air-conditioning is a pleasant myth, but that's neither here nor there.

Anyway, a friend asked me a couple days ago, "Don't you keep a blog?", and was genuinely surprised that I didn't... because apparently every writer and artist worth his or her salt blogs somewhere. As some of you who have followed me for a while know, this journal is pretty much my blog.  This is where I talk about what excites me, what moves me, what raises my ire, or what I consider rant-worthy.  Some people have suggested that I probably do that too often, for that matter.  And I do sometimes try to tone myself down, but it's not like putting something touchy out in a public fora on the same Internets that have advertisements for Fleshlight and half of the crap on YouTube is some kind of major social gaffe, like if I belched "Amen" while I was receiving communion or something.  

(As an aside, a schoolfriend of mine did something like that in 5th grade.  Few things will get you on the the Bad And Quite Possibly Possessed List in Catholic school faster than belching in the momentary pause right after "hallowed be Thy name.")

But at any rate, if I had anything reasonably close to a blog, this would be it.  

That also explains why I only update this journal something like semi-annually... I lead a really boring life, and most of the happenings in my life that some people would consider momentous have pretty much passed me by.  I almost couldn't imagine finding something interesting to write about on a daily basis, unless I was just chucked to overflowing with ideas for a big story.  Or unless I won the lottery and suddenly had liquid time and money.  So I tend to space my journals out quite a bit and get a big bunch of happy/rant going before I commit them to virtual paper.

So why not just "blog" on MySpace, or LiveJournal, or FaceBook, or TwitTer, or WhattheFuh, where it's not interconnected with my art?  Glad you asked!  First off, see, I somewhat shamefully admit that I have a MySpace page.  It's been created and changed once, and has something like 23,000 friends, four of whom I actually know.  (The others are people I don't know who seem very interested in telling me that I can meet singles at their website, or see them do something wild and crazy in front of their webcam.) To put it a little lightly, I don't much care for MySpace or Facebook or most other social-circle gathering sites, because... well, I A) am antisocial, and B) had a social-circle gathering site at one time.  It was called high school, and the cliques were even more obnoxious.   To be bluntly honest, though, half the reason I don't spend time at them is that I can barely get myself to go to either page without feeling like a pedophile.  

Twitter's worse, because you really can't say anything worthwhile in 140 characters.  You know this if you've ever tried giving feedback on eBay:

Wow, I was extremely impressed with how quickly my seller got the product to me, and how closely its condition... (Counting) wait.   Uhm.   Shite.   I was happy to receive my product from my seller in tip-top condition, just as adverti... (Counting again) Futch.   Great Seller, A+ , Would buy again!!!!!!

I actually have a Twitter account, which I got out of a perverse sense of curiosity when dA linked up to it, and before I really knew what it was about.  And then I realized: Twitter is all about the things I most fear in life-- people knowing what I'm doing daily, and butchered English.   Serious.  People get on there to tweet that they're going to the mall, or mowing the yard, or playing with their dog, or whatever.  So it's like anti-blogging.  It's all about the minutiae in life that doesn't rate a real blog/journal entry, but apparently is worth keypunching all the same.  And since they're so limited in the number of characters they can use, many of the Twits (oh, come on.  If Star Trek geeks can be called Trekkies, don't you think that's a perfect name for Twitterphiles? ) adapt by using MMORP-speak-- formerly known as AOL-speak, until the merger.  

(Okay, maybe that's needlessly harsh.  But, man, nothing peeves me like seeing keystroke-saver speak and knowing there are kids out there reading it that stand a good chance of flunking remedial high school English.)

Anyway, when I got the account, I really wasn't thinking it through.  I mean, who the hell would want to see what I'm doing on a given day? I can generally place it on any one of five fingers: Work, Computer, Driving, Sleeping, and Etc, which sort of covers all the other everythings--like cooking, watching TV, yardwork, tabletop gaming or masturbation.  I mean, could you imagine if I really gave two shakes about tweeting?

RECENT TWEETS:
8:30 PM: GrandmaJackie is - Watching grandson - SO CUTE!
9:15 PM: Julie24591 is - Home from mall! LOL Bought 2 prs of shoes SALE! Heehee!
9:40 PM: LewdRazor is - WAITING 4 NEW EP OF LOST w/POPPCORN 8D
10:36 PM: Argo is - Furiously wanking to thoughts of jello-wrestling Nicole Eggert and the girl from the Arby's drive thru who asked me if I wanted Horsey Sauce.  

Some things, honestly, are probably left well enough alone.  Like privacy.  And your sanity.  

Oh, by the way.... no word on the desktop yet.  Will keep watching.  Now I'm letting my fingers thaw.

<sub>"Your moment of Zen:
This is the sound of one hand
not giving a fuck."

- Me, Haiku</sub>