Does Anyone Do This Anymore?

I used to love blogging. Spewing my nonsense out there for the world to see was exciting. Now I wonder why I ever did it. A few years back I basically stopped posting anything online. On occasion I might post a picture on Instagram or even a comment on someone else's post, but nothing else. Everyone is so angry now and it's tiring having to tiptoe around everything. I always freak out a little when someone leaves a comment on one of my rare Instagram posts.

(I'm @dvoyy on Instagram.)

A River Runs Through It

Way back in ancient times before I was online, my sister and I used to exchange strange letters. They weren't just letters, they were collages, cartoons, etc. Sometimes there were even physical objects like the big rock she gave me one time that has "BITE ME" written on it in indelible ink. And speaking of ink, when writing letters that you intend to be kept for many years, maybe you shouldn't use shitty pink ink in your fountain pen.

The above illustration is a letter from my sister circa 1992. I kept a lot of these letters in a box under my bed. Last night a river decided it needed to come to existence in my bedroom. (Heavy rain, old basement wall with a crack in it.) Luckily most of the letters were fine, but there were a couple that looked like the one above.

Plot Generator

I was just over at http://www.plot-generator.org.uk/ playing with the short story generator. This is what it spat out.

The Drizzle that Rained like Sitting Mice

A Short Story
by T. Barrel Shittington

Melanie Porridge looked at the silver blade in her hands and felt cross.

She walked over to the window and reflected on her cold surroundings. She had always loved grey McDonald's with its colossal, crispy crowded. It was a place that encouraged her tendency to feel cross.

Then she saw something in the distance, or rather someone. It was the figure of Owen Merriam.
Owen was a caring academic with vast fingernails and blonde feet.

Melanie gulped. She glanced at her own reflection. She was a witty, considerate, tea drinker with dirty fingernails and curvaceous feet. Her friends saw her as a muddy, magnificent monster. Once, she had even helped a manky enormously fat man cross the road.

But not even a witty person who had once helped a manky enormously fat man cross the road, was prepared for what Owen had in store today.

The drizzle rained like sitting mice, making Melanie surprised.

As Melanie stepped outside and Owen came closer, she could see the weak smile on his face.
Owen gazed with the affection of 8606 sweet late lizards. He said, in hushed tones, "I love you and I want an invitation."

Melanie looked back, even more surprised and still fingering the silver blade. "Owen, It's in the mail," she replied.

They looked at each other with ambivalent feelings, like two giant, gentle gerbils laughing at a very ruthless snow storm, which had classical music playing in the background and two lovable uncles singing to the beat.

Melanie studied Owen's vast fingernails and blonde feet. Eventually, she took a deep breath. "I'm sorry," began Melanie in apologetic tones, "but I don't feel the same way, and I never will. I just don't love you Owen."

Owen looked confident, his emotions raw like a rapid, rare record.

Melanie could actually hear Owen's emotions shatter into 3419 pieces. Then the caring academic hurried away into the distance.

Not even a cup of tea would calm Melanie's nerves tonight.

THE END

I forgot to post in 2015

I put this blog on ice a few years back but I still like to post something at least once a year to let anyone know who may have read this thing in the past that even the though the blog's dead, I'm still puttering around. But I forgot to do that last year. My typical posts go something like, "I can't believe my blog's been around for thirteen years. It's easy to have a blog that lasts for years and years if you never post anything har har har har." I'll spare you such nonsense. Har har har har.

Twelve Long Years

My blog had its twelfth anniversary a couple of weeks ago. I almost missed it, but I remembered this morning in a flash of pointlessness. And as I say each time I post about my blog anniversary, it's easy for your blog to be around a long, long time if you never post anything in it.

When I first posted this I was under the mistaken impression that my blog was fourteen years old. As always, I'm really bad at math.

I'm sick

It's time for an annual blog post but there's nothing to write about other than I have a bad cold. And my cat is incurably insane.

Annual Post! (I Think.)

Yep, I decided to actually post something here just to prove to the internet that I'm not dead ( I just smell that way). My blog's eleven years old, but since I never post anything that's kind of irrelevant.

So, you ask, what have I been up to? Nothing. It's not like I've been posting loads of awesome stuff at some other place and you're missing out. Nope. I don't do much posting of anything much on the internet, but since I got a nice used DSLR on Ebay I've been taking loads more pictures of my stupid cat, Cheeto, and posting some of them on Flickr. The one above is one of my favorites; Cheeto on top of the fridge mesmerized by a bug in a ceiling light. And I've been known to post videos of Cheeto on YouTube in vain hope that he'll take the internet by storm. So far the internet doesn't give a rat's ass about Cheeto. I guess it doesn't matter because Cheeto's kind of a dick.

This is now a cat picture blog

Here's Cheeto suckling a pair of hedgehogs.Weirdo.

New Post!

I'm in the thinking about it stage of deciding to mothball this blog and start a different one. But don't worry, I'm not taking it down. My Postum entry alone deserves to be available for all eternity.

This new blog I mentioned? It'll be totally different at first, but then after I get bored it'll end up the same way with either gloomily wacky entries or no entries. I don't know when I'll do it, or even if I'll do it.

This is what ruined my life

Back in August a couple of kittens showed up and I got the bright idea to adopt the orange one. How bad can a cat be, I thought. Cheeto's a bad, bad kitty. Oh, well, I had a good run.

Also, the tenth anniversary of this sad blog passed a couple of weeks ago. Ten years! It's ancient! But it's easy to reach your tenth anniversary in the blogging world if you never post anything anymore. When's the last time I posted something? January? When's the last time I posted regularly? 2008?

(And I have no idea how the photo of Cheeto got glitched. It was fine when I uploaded it. Maybe it's the pure evil rattling around in his little doorknob head.)

This is what ruined Christmas

Grady

This is my sister's seventeen pound ocicat, Grady, sleeping on top of my fridge.

Time for my annual post

It's been a year since I last posted. Some of you, or at least one or two of you, probably wonder what I've been up to. I wish I could tell you that I've been engrossed in several exciting projects, but I've pretty much just been dicking around.

Pointless New Post About Nothing

I keep saying that I'm going to do a new post, but then I don't. I'm too lazy, too disinterested in blogging, and I fell off the video game wagon a month or so back. After fifteen or so years of not playing video games, I'm now spending endless amounts of time playing Minecraft. And it's not even like the game's all that great either. My Minecraft life is about as dull as my real life, but at least I get to mine for stuff and build things.

Here's a clip of someone playing on YouTube if you aren't familiar with how this game looks.



------------

On November 10, this blog turns eight years old. All the blogs I read back when I started are dead except for Dooce. I feel like the old guy at the nursing home with no more family and friends because they all died years ago.

So, on that morbid note, I'm mothballing Volume 22. I have no plans to post anything else, but who knows what I'll do.

A Turtle

“Want to see my turtle?”

“Is that some kind of euphemism?”

“Why is it that when a man talks to a woman all of a sudden everything is fraught with double meanings? It’s not all about me trying to get in your pants.”

“So it’s not a euphemism?”

“No.”

“It’s a real turtle? And not something weird like you wearing a big fake turtle shell on your back and crawling around?”

“No, it’s a real turtle. Would you like to see it?”

“I don’t like turtles.”

That's the cover, huh? Yikes.

For six months I've been planning on posting some rather racist covers from old issues of Cracked back when it was a marginally amusing magazine rather than a marginally amusing website. I knew they were laying on my desk, but it was too much trouble to scan or photograph them, so I just left them there. Now with Gary Coleman dying today I figure it's a good time to post these since he's on both covers.

On the first cover, Gary Coleman and Sylvester P. Smythe are boxing. Smythe has a black eye and Coleman has a white eye. Yeah. This was 1982. On the second cover (from 1980), Gary Coleman and Todd Bridges happily smear shoe polish on Sylvester P. Smythe.

I was fairly shocked at these covers when I dug them out of an ancient stack of magazines months ago. I know that these were most likely unintentionally offensive, but I still can't fathom this type of stuff being published on the cover of a national magazine in the early 80's.

[Pointless explanatory notes: The white guy on both covers, Sylvester P. Smythe, was (is?) Cracked's mascot. He's no Alfred E. Neuman. (I didn't link to the Alfred E. Neuman Wikipedia page because you should know who he is. And if you don't, then you should be flung onto a huge anthill.)

Both covers were drawn by the legendary John Severin.]

I know I put it somewhere!

You ever lose money in your house? Isn't fun wracking your brain trying to figure out where you put it? Asking yourself, "Did I accidentally throw it away?" This is exactly what I've been doing on and off since maybe October or November.

My money got mislaid after I had to move several tons of crap during some quasi-renovations. What was so annoying was the shear quantity of money that I mislaid: $170,185,000,000,001. I'm totally serious.

Of course it was Zimbabwean currency, which is basically worthless, but I paid money for it on Ebay and I was pissed that I might have accidentally thrown it out.

Earlier, I took a book off the shelf and the bills fell out. There's only ten of them. Why I decided to stick them in a book I rarely look at escapes me.

Now maybe I can find that 8GB USB thumb drive that got lost in the same quasi-renovation.

Sunday Thoughts

A couple of weeks ago I was thinking about time travel and how if I went back in time to before the wheel existed I could invent it myself. Then I started to realize how difficult it would be to make a wheel, let alone an axle to put it on. I'd be completely useless back then. So, in conclusion, I vow not to travel back in time.

More Lurching

Here's a short story type thing I wrote last year that was based on a scam email I got multiple times. I was going to submit this some online literary magazine, but then I decided not to bother since I could just as easily have no one read it here.

From Mrs. Rebecca Williams

NO 112 Rue Des Martyrs Cocody

Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire

ATTN:

DEAREST ONE OF GOD

I am the above named person from Kuwait. I am married to Mr. Benson Williams, who worked with Kuwait embassy in Ivory Coast for nine years before he died in the year 2004. We were married for eleven years without a child because I don’t like children. He died after contacting a rare disease from illegally imported kangaroo meat. I know it was foolish to make a stew with something as potentially hazardous as illegally imported kangaroo meat, but if you’ve ever eaten kangaroo meat you would understand. The outcome was tragic, yes, but still, sometimes I think it was worth it. There really is nothing quite like kangaroo meat.

Before his death we were both born again Christians. Since his death I have come under the influence of a necromancer named Steve. I have decided not to remarry or get a child outside my matrimonial home which the Steve is against. I asked why he was against it, but he just shrugged and said he didn’t need a reason. I guess that’s his business, but I would kind of like to have a reason. Sometimes Steve is so obstinate. Don’t you hate that kind of behavior in a person? I know he has a lot on his mind what with raising the dead for his own nefarious purposes, but he doesn’t have to be so uncommunicative and brusque.

When my late husband was alive he deposited the sum of $2.5 Million (Two Million Five Hundred U.S. Dollars) in the bank here in Abidjan in suspense account. After he died he no longer deposited any more money in the bank. Some of my fondest memories of my husband are of him rolling naked in piles of money, screaming, “It’s all mine! It’s all mine!” Everyone has their curious peccadilloes and rolling naked in money was my husband’s. The funny thing was I never grew tired of watching him rolling and screaming while flinging armfuls of cash into the air. And he also never grew tired of rolling and screaming in piles of money. You would think it would get old after a while, but I guess it didn’t lose its appeal for him. The odd thing about all of this is I never had any real desire to roll in the money myself. Now I kind of regret not at least trying it out, who knows, I may have enjoyed it, but it’s too late now.

Presently, the fund is still with the bank. Recently, my Doctor told me that I have serious sickness which as far as can be determined wasn’t caused in any way by the illegally imported kangaroo meat or by my activities as an apprentice necromancer. The doctor thinks that I have what’s called psychic monkey fever, which is a rare condition where the infected person can communicate psychically with primates. I know it sounds exciting, but I tell you it’s no adventure having to psychically communicate with monkeys whenever they are within a 100 meter radius of me. The monkeys think only of food, sex, and territory. There’s no romance among the primates, so you can leave your sentimentalism about the animal kingdom in the First World. The one thing that disturbs me most is my knowledge that the monkeys know I can communicate with them psychically. I don’t think the monkeys like the idea of someone being in psychic communication with them, but it’s hard to tell what with their obsessions with food, sex, and territory.

You may ask why I don’t simply get my friend Steve the necromancer to reanimate my corpse after I die of psychic monkey fever. The answer is that I don’t wish to spend all eternity on earth as a member of the undead. No, it is best that I simply be allowed to die.

Having known my condition, I decided to donate this fund to an individual that will utilize this money the way I am going to instruct herein. I want a space ship built so that underprivileged astronauts can leave the earth just like those rich NASA people who think they’re so special. Also, I want enough of it set aside so that my corpse can be launched into outer space. It has to break the bonds of the earth’s gravitational pull. I won’t settle for being shot into a low level orbit only to reenter the earth’s atmosphere and burn up like so much space junk.

The Bible made us to understand that blessed is the hand that giveth. I took this decision because I don’t have any child that will inherit this money because I don’t like children and my husband’s relatives are not progressives and I don’t want my husband’s efforts to be used by unbelievers in affordable space travel for all. I don’t want a situation where this money will be used in a ridiculous way. Those relatives of his will use the money to pay for vaccinations for the poor, I just know it. This is why I am taking this decision. I am not afraid of death hence I know where I am going--into space! I know that I am going to be in the bosom of the galaxy. My dead body will be my space ship and it will travel for all eternity. Well, it will travel for all eternity unless it crashes into another planet or gets hit by an asteroid, but let us hope such a thing does not happen.

I don’t need any telephone communication in this regard because of my health hence the presence of my husband’s relatives is around me always I don't want them to know about this development. They will for sure foil my plans to launch my body into outer space if they found out about it. Why they’re so against space travel I will never know. With sufficient rocket power all things are possible. As soon as I receive your reply I shall give you the contact of the bank here in Abidjan. My happiness is that I lived a life of a worthy space-traveling necromancer. Whoever that wants to travel in space should be able to do it affordably, be they pauper, necromancer, or even electrician.

Contact me on the above e-mail address for more information; any delay in your reply will give me room in sourcing another individual for this same purpose. Please assure me that you will act accordingly as I stated herein. Hoping to receive your reply.

Remain blessed in the quest for affordable space travel.

Yours truly,

Mrs. Rebecca Williams.

Lurching Down Memory Lane

Here's a collage I made back in the mid 90's.