hello friends

I had no idea this was online. Maybe the Baen people only put it up recently.

A Logic Named Joe (click "Next" if you want to skip the bio) -- sci-fi story by one "Murray Leinster", about the Internet. Written in 1946. I have touted this story, and this author, before, but now no hunting down of dead trees is required.

First bit: It was on the third day of August that Joe come off the assembly line, and on the fifth Laurine come into town, an' that afternoon I saved civilization. That's what I figure, anyhow.

I don't think I've read any of the other stories in that collection besides The Fourth-Dimensional Demonstrator (which involves an unusually amiable kangaroo named Arthur), so this is just hardcore awesome all around.



(If anyone wants a more personal update, just go back and read the last few ones I did. Nothing really much changes -- I am trapped in a nightmare that doesn't end, where I am mocked by having lots of other things act like they might finally start to go right, while the one thing I wanted most dearly is now forever out of my reach. And my last words in this life to the man I loved so much that it hurt are still "eight pixels is not that much".

Reading things online is much more exciting.)

This one is going to be the hardest to write because it requires me to feel.

First of all, mecha. The results of one of his medical tests came back and said that, basically, the thing that was wrong with him for so long is now all better. We pretty much know what it was, why it was getting worse over time, though not why it started in the first place. He is still weakened and illish, but he is officially recovering.

Pity we don't get to be gallbladderless buddies, but then, at least he gets to avoid surgery this way.

I'm feeling relatively on top of school, at least so far. Of course, that may just be because as of yet I have had little in the way of assignments and no tests. The test that I expect to be awful is coming up Wednesday, and I guess then there will be either a shaky sense of "okay that is not so bad", or tears and terror. The professor told us that the usual score on his tests tends to be in the 60s, and that he curves "some but not that much". This is potentially worrying depending on whether he's talking about the mode or the mean. All I can really do for now is slog through the horrifically dry textbook and do my best to memorize the couple of hundred definitions of very similar-sounding terms, many of which are actually circular (such as the definition of "information system" starting out as "an information system that[...]").

Huh. That's lovely, that class's website has apparently decided that I am not allowed to log in anymore. Well, that's okay, there certainly haven't been enough things going wrong in my life lately. Let's have some more! Big problems, small problems, it doesn't matter, apparently, as long as I'm suffering.

Which of course leads into the part ( that is whiny enough to need a cut in case you want to skip it )

I had a counseling appointment scheduled yesterday. Got there at 1:30 for my 2:00 appointment, except then I found out that no, it was an 11:00 appointment. DUH IDIOT. I was able to reschedule for today but still, how stupid can a person be? This stupid, apparently. I wound up not going to my class either, because it wasn't until 4, which would have meant two hours sitting around doing nothing. And I'm currently unable to just sit around doing nothing, because when I try I just wind up sobbing miserably. So I gave up on the day. It was ruined anyway. I couldn't even make dinner without something going wrong; I had a pot full of meal-in-a-box jambalaya on the stove, went to stir it, and it spat boiling-hot jambalaya all over my hand, causing me to jump back in pain and send a spoonful of also boiling-hot jambalaya all over the kitchen and/or myself. It sucked.

About five hours ago I ran into a table and ripped my hand open (yes, seriously, I ran into a table. shut up.). There was a flap of skin hanging open and blood welling up underneath. I put neosporin and a bandage on it, got on with going to class and such, and didn't look at it again until after my shower a half-hour ago. Now the flap has plainly fused back to the rest of my hand. The human healing factor creeps me out sometimes.

Now it is about time to get ready to go back to campus and try this appointment again, and then hopefully have an appropriate amount of time between it and my 4:00 class. At least I have a nice new very warm coat that Quentin helped me pick out this weekend. It is Carhart brand which I guess is like really good or something? All I know is it is heck of warm and comfortable. Between it and my new half-fingerless Army-style gloves, I am ready to face the elements. Even if it scares me to think of facing much of anything else.

My day, more or less chronologically.

This morning the neighbors awoke me by slamming kitchen drawers open and shut, as they often do. Their kitchen is on the other side of an all-too-thin wall from my bedroom, you see. And they really seem to hate those drawers. So they woke me up, and I drifted off into more broken sleep, and then at some point looked at my alarm clock and it was almost 6 AM. So they were probably slamming those drawers at closer to 5. Thanks, guys. I hate you and wish you would move out and be replaced by a family of narcoleptic mimes.

I kept almost breaking into tears during my first class, which is obviously not an acceptable turn of events. While walking to the bus stop and waiting for the bus I kept wondering whether I should try a walk-in counseling session or whether I should try to hold out for the appointment I made for next Friday; finally the bus decided for me, by being one of the "limited" ones that only go to the library and then make everyone get off. The health center is just across both the streets from the library. So off I went, across the streets and up to the fourth floor, and managed to get in with a counselor after a minimal wait.

Since it was just a walk-in we didn't really have the time to go very in-depth (though I still managed to go overtime, but eh). Still, I talked some to a person and left feeling better, so that's something. I also canceled the appointment with the other person, and scheduled another oen with the woman I saw today, on Monday. I don't know how long I'll keep seeing her, but I guess "as long as it helps" is a good rubrick for now.

When I asked, she said that the very vague cut-off line between "still standard grieving" and "gone on into just plain depression" is about a year. It's also a total garbage number, because everybody is different, but. It is fucking terrifying feeling like this and having no idea when you might expect it to start getting better. It is a little easier having a number in front of you. A year. It is something solid. I can work with that.

After checking out of the health center I came home, had barely enough time to get a shower and grab some food, and had to go back to campus again. Sat and wrote a cheesy little C# program in lab, waited way too long for the bus to show up, came home again. Sat at the computer and talked to silly people for a while, including introducing someone to the wonders of Silent Garfield; also secured dinner for myself. Dinner was stuffing and canned green beans, which was the closest thing I had to fresh greens which is what I am desperately craving right now. Only the beans A) tasted like metal and B) crunched in a manner similar to getting a bit of bone in with your shredded/ground meat product. Um. Yeah, down the disposal with that, then. Canned green beans are not supposed to crunch. They just aren't. Fresh ones, sure, with that veggie-type crunch. But not canned ones and not like this. Yick.

I should go to bed right about now, but instead I am typing a post while listening to the gangsta rap portion of the GTA:SA soundtrack. I really can't go without listening to music because it helps keep my brain busy, but at the same time like 90% of my music collection is currently depressing in some way (genuinely depressing songs and/or songs of lost love; songs of non-lost love; bands I learned of through Chris; bands I enjoyed the music of with Chris; bands whose music I at any point associated with Chris in some way; &c). Radio Los Santos, though, is for some reason "safe" as it were. So is the Silence Of The Lambs musical, but that's only about 20 minutes long so it gets real old real fast if you leave it going.

EXCITEMENT ABOUNDS.

Today I went to campus an hour early, and stopped in at the Eigenmann bookstore for the "course packet" I need for tomorrow's class. They didn't have it. Then I walked to the library and sat there reading (Guards! Guards!; I am giving Pratchett another try) until Guy With The Cheap Textbook arrived. I gave him a picture of Jackson and five pictures of Washington; he gave me a heavy lump of mainly paper. Good deal.

Then I had about ten minutes to get halfway across campus, uphill much of the way (because this is IU; no matter WHAT way you're going, much of it is uphill), to the class that the textbook was for. On the way, I managed to fall, half on the sidewalk and half in the mud. Skinned my knee, though I didn't realize that till I got home and got changed; I was more concerned at the time with A) how long it took to get up and going again, and B) the fact that I hadn't worn those pants but two hours and already they needed to be washed. I did make it to class, though. Hooray.

Then I went through the student union on the way back to the bus stop, and checked the bookstore there while I was at it. No course packet. That's okay. I only have TWO ASSIGNMENTS DUE TODAY BASED ON IT, that's all. Thanks, instructor! Good job of not making enough copies! Sadly, you did not succeed in making me get two big fat 0s, as I went ahead and did the assignments anyway. All it actually took was memory from previous classes (ha ha, I already KNOW how to convert binary to decimal!) windows calc (which of these values is bigger? I believe I will click buttons on the screen and find out!) and Google (prefix encoding, eh? let's see what this webpage says about that!). This will of course not do as a permanent solution, and I plan to ask her what the fuck she's smoking when I'm in there tomorrow morning. I halfway expect to get the song and dance about how if I wanted access to necessary learning materials, I should've gotten to the bookstore earlier, thus depriving someone ELSE of necessary learning materials. Apparently college is a giant game of musical chairs I guess? Pardon me, but my government handout money is NOT paying for Shroedinger's Textbook¹, no matter what you might think. So neener.

This installment of Dinosaur Comics is so awesome that I saved a copy to add to my collection of things that I might print out and put on a wall someday. I used to have a wall of comics back in California. I should do that again here. I don't technically read Dinosaur Comics except I kind of do now because I have started reading Chris's friends list in addition to my own. There are things there that I had no idea he would be that interested in. It is kind of scary and sadmaking that that is so.

On the missing-Chris front I am basically just going on. Most of the time I feel like I'm phoning in existence, and just about all of the time I see little to no point. I just keep slogging ahead, hoping that someday things will not suck, because that is all I have ever done. I think I posted a similar thing a while ago, but it's still true. I just feel kind of empty and dead inside a lot, and I don't cry so much anymore, but I do spend a lot of time lying in bed staring at the ceiling unable to sleep or to feel anything but lost. I don't know if this means I'm getting better or worse.

And that is the obligatory Full, Long, Very Boring Update Thing. Tomorrow I will have to be gone from 8:30AM till 11:30ish, and 3PM till potentially after 9. Thursdays. Hope I get the hang of Thursdays this semester.

Yep.


1. See, because it might or might not be available to me -- I won't know till I hit the bookstore, thus collapsing the waveform.

Holy Zod I think that is the first time I have EVER made a Shroedinger's X joke where I was actually using the term halfway correctly. MAKE A NOTE OF IT.

It is cold and gray and raining, a state that usually I enjoy, though today it only makes me sad. I am all alone in the house, but for the gerbil and hamster, as I have been since Friday evening; mecha is still up in Indianapolis, being cared for by people with more energy and cheer than I can be relied on to muster. My friends list is utterly devoid of anyone to talk to, everyone either gone as they would usually be, or off doing holiday-related things. Half the Internet is more or less shut down for similar reasons.

It is Christmas, and my fifth anniversary, though my beloved is dead.

The Christmas miracle is an old, old trope in the stories we tell: the idea that something amazing must happen, whether it be the result of magic or of unusual generosity or simply blind but wonderful chance -- simply because, goshdarnit, some of us figure it to be the birthday of some guy who may or may not have existed. I have used the phrase countless times in jest, calling this or that a "Christmas miracle", no matter how ordinary the event might be. Well, now's about the time I could use one of those Christmas miracles for real. Come on, universe. I figure I'm about due now, if ever I will be. I'm not sure what sort of miracle I'm looking for, but we can certainly work that out in the next eleven hours or so.

I am still better off emotionally than I was up in Indy, with nothing to do except sit and fret over how miserable I was. All the same, this is shaping up to be my worst Christmas ever. I said something along those lines to mechamom a few days ago, and she scoffed and called it nonsense. You mean I'll have worse than this? Gods no. Let me believe it can only go up from here, please; let me cling to the illusion that someday I may be happy. It's a threadbare illusion for all the years it's had to last me, but again, won't I be due pretty soon? The happiness I thought I'd have someday has been ripped from me hard enough that the wound still bleeds, but can't I have something someday?

Boy, I'm emo. Maybe when I hit the optometrist in a few weeks, I should get some new glasses with those thick dark rims. Then I can dye my hair black and start hitting the thrift shops.

In my defense, though, I think I've kind of got a good reason.

Now that I no longer have a Chris to talk to as part of my daily activities, I have a lot of time to think. And since so many things remind me of him, most of that thinking is along one general line.

One thing I am thinking about a lot is the Jenny of, say, two months ago. The Jenny of mid-late-ish October. I fucking hate that bitch. She thought she was sad a lot of the time. She thought she was lonely. You don't know the first thing about lonely, you stupid bitch. Your Chris is still alive. Sure, you haven't laid eyes on him in years, and you sometimes despair of ever doing so again, but at least you've still got the chance. Quit whimpering about a few thousand miles of distance, a few more years of waiting. It's not that fucking bad.

At this point I have about a quarter to a half of each day's waking period where I feel more or less okay; the sadness never leaves, but it at least retreats and becomes distant, and I can honestly believe like I will get by okay in the years and decades and whatever to come. The rest of the time, of course, I hurt so bad that it gets hard to breathe, and it's all I can do to keep from crying and crying and crying. I talk to him a lot, in both states of mind. I do not fucking want to hear about how stupid that is. It helps. Let me have my mental placebo.

That, then, is where I am now. I have thus far looked thoughtfully at a knife only once, and it wasn't even a longing look. 'Cause really, that would be cheating. So I used it to cut a sandwich instead.

Back in earlyish 2000, my friend Becky and I were bored. We were bored and online and sitting in a MUX, which is basically a text-based universe that can be used for chat, immersive roleplaying, or anything in between. We were bored in the MUX and I had this crazy little webcomic about a girl and her snail, so we decided to post a blurb on the comic site, asking readers to come in and play with us.

We got a few folks trickling in... not sure how many, but probably not more than six. Only a couple stayed around for very long, though, and over the years we all sort of vaguely stayed in the same circle of mutualish e-friends. One of those fellows was vxo, radio-obsessed urban-exploring human lightning rod extraordinaire. The other was chrisxk.

I have been informed tonight that Chris died early last month. There's an obit here, though you may have to use bugmenot.com to actually get at it; basically on November 7th he was found dead. His brother says that the doctor types couldn't find a reason, and so they chalked it up to Chris just dying in his sleep. At the age of 22. What the hell, universe.

Now, I knew that Chris had disappeared off the Internet, but I wasn't actually all that concerned for a while. People just sometimes lose connectivity... hell, mecha and I lost it for like a month and a half when we forgot to pay that Comcast bill, and if I hadn't been a paid LJ user and/or had access to mechamom's apartment with its crappy dialup, I would've been e-silent for all that time. So I figured he would show up again eventually, and that maybe in another few weeks I would investigate, but not yet. Then someone contacted me on his AIM name while I was asleep and left without saying anything useful. That sort of piqued my concern, so I got ahold of Ken, his best meatspace friend, who got ahold of his (Chris's) brother on DeviantArt, who delivered the bad news. And then there's that obit, which seems to seal the deal. Chris is dead.

It was all very low-key, but I know that a couple of you knew that Chris and I were involved. Dating. Something. Whatever you call it when for most of it you're separated by a timezone or three. He asked me once if I would marry him, and I said yes. This Christmas would have been our anniversary. There is a very snarky, very angry part of me that is basically saying "congratulations everyone who said that an online relationship would never last; turns out you were right". The rest of me just wishes it could have not-lasted in a way that resulted in his still being alive and happy somewhere in the world, whether or not I was still involved.

I've taken about three hours to write this post, mainly because it's hard to write so I keep going off and doing other things instead. After Ken pasted me what Chris's brother wrote, I was kind of calm and numb about the whole thing, but the numbness is starting to wear off, possibly in part because I'm extremely tired. Probably mainly because I'm going to have some grievin' to get on. There is a Chris-shaped hole inside me right about now, and it's never going to be filled; everything's just going to have to kind of be rerouted around it. So it goes.

Goodbye, Chris. Rest in peace; as much as I love you, I'll still be forced to headshot you if you come back as a zombie.

Friends-locked post about how it's okay to insult me behind my back if I dare to change my mind about something based on someone else's input.

Log in to read, or just ask me about it on AIM/through email. I just can't post it public because ZOMG COMPLETE STRANGERS ON THE INTERNET MIGHT READ A POST THAT MENTIONS SOMEONE IN AN UNFLATTERING LIGHT. I do not need a repeat of the (still-ongoing) "Moe, Larry and Curly" fiasco.

Y'know what's fun?

Waking up at five in the goddamn morning so exhausted it hurts but not able to sleep any more anyway...

Finally going back to bed with the mistaken impression that you might be able to sleep some more, at 10:30...

Tossing and turning until 12:15...

And then juuuust as you're starting to doze off...

Poof! Your nose starts gushing blood for no reason. Naturally getting on your feather pillow which takes several hours to wash and dry (the same one that used to be kind of special and symbolic of Your Own Personal Space to you, until people started fucking with it without permission, thus ruining it forever, but that is a different story), and ensuring that you will get no sleep any time soon, whether or not you have a clean pillow to sleep on. Seeing as how you sleep with your face propped up on your arms, which puts funky pressure on your nose and always pops nosebleed clots, unless those clots have been in place for at least a few hours.

Oh wait. No, that's not fun. That's FUCKING ANNOYING.

There are several words in this post that I can't even get to look right, no matter how I spell them they still look wrong. So I am leaving them however I last typed them which is probably wrong. And my head hurts, hell, my EVERYTHING hurts, and it's hard to get my eyes to focus, and even when they do focus I keep seeing these kind of blobby flashing white things, and I am just. So. Tired. But I don't get to sleep, apparently. Hooray!

Also annoying: when you explain the thing about how the position in which you sleep does not play nice with nosebleeds... and the answer you get is 'well just wait until it stops and then you can go back to sleep!' BECAUSE DESPITE THE HUNDREDS OF TIMES I HAVE LEARNED OTHERWISE, ONCE A NOSEBLEED STOPS NOTHING WILL START IT AGAIN

Now to sit here trying not to cry from weariness and frustration, all the while being told every five minutes to eat lunch, when I AM NOT FUCKING HUNGRY OKAY.

La.