Howard Hughes and the Little White Pills
Last night...no, this morning, the insomnia laughed at enough pills to put a horse in a coma. I finally got to sleep sometime after four ayem.
Yesterday was the sort of last-minute tedium I'd expected, getting the galley pages of The Red Tree ready to go back to Manhattan, the long letter I had to write detailing why I'd made the changes that I'm ( Read more... )
Yesterday was the sort of last-minute tedium I'd expected, getting the galley pages of The Red Tree ready to go back to Manhattan, the long letter I had to write detailing why I'd made the changes that I'm ( Read more... )
Always quick to present an unpopular view, I have to say that I miss the good ol' CRK Usenet Group.
I'll give you a moment to stop vomiting.
There was an immediacy about it. One could see at a glance which threads were active, who was talking to whom. No "log-in". No navigating behind the scenes to comment. Just pop in, pick a thread or two, lay down two-cents, and pop out. Fans could get caught up in their own little knots that didn't always even involve you directly.
I don't know. Maybe it's still possible to have that sort of experience in a venue like this, but I'm betting it's a little more difficult.
I also think that we've gotten too used to the privilege: this Internet connection between celebrity and fans. I remember writing my first e-mail to you -- and being thunderstruck to receive a reply a few hours later. The gods speak to the mortals now! Used to be, the best one could do is send a postal Fan Letter and wonder if the recipient ever even got it, let alone actually read it.
My personal excuse is more, of course. I've always been a comics fan. The Dreaming. That's where I discovered you and what held my interest most strongly. There was one issue in particular: Dreams the Burning Dream -- still one of my favorite single issues in any comics series I've ever followed. (I even managed to meet you and get you to sign my copy at a little book shop in L.A., once upon a time.)
Wish you'd still do a comics mini-series, now and again.
--cleve
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I have to say that I miss the good ol' CRK Usenet Group.
Truly, I don't. The death of the Usenet group was long overdue. I simply could not abide the fact of trolls, or the fact that there was, ultimately, no way to combat trolling.
(I even managed to meet you and get you to sign my copy at a little book shop in L.A., once upon a time.)
Gods, I don't recall the name of that shop, but it was in late Oct. '98, or very early November, and I read from Silk. I clearly remember meeting you.
Wish you'd still do a comics mini-series, now and again.
Sometimes I miss doing comics. Mostly, I don't.
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You and Vince could do something short for Sirenia?
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You and Vince could do something short for Sirenia?
I've thought about this recently, actually. It's mostly an issue of time on his end. I can produce a script fairly quickly, but then he has to draw and ink it, and that would require more of his time, probably, than I could afford. I'd love to do a story over several issues, two or three pages per. I just don't know if it's feasible.
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Could you write the script now and have the comic itself come out at the end of the summer or even in the fall, so it wouldn't be the same kind of time-crunch as a month's illustration, or is it literally a matter of affording?
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Could you write the script now and have the comic itself come out at the end of the summer or even in the fall, so it wouldn't be the same kind of time-crunch as a month's illustration, or is it literally a matter of affording?
A little of both. Vince is at least as busy as I am. And I can only afford to pay him so much, and he can only afford to work for me so much. I haven't spoken with him about this, and I'm sure he'd love the idea of doing it, but I think there's just no way to make if affordable for either of us.
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Wow. What a memory. My memory is enhanced by some text files I saved concerning your California events. It was A Different Light, on Thursday, November 05, 1998. Your entourage consisted of Jennifer, Christina Faust, David J. Schow, and David J. Skal.
My brother came along, too. On the drive to L.A., I remember we saw a hell of a meteor, near the horizon -- one of the best I've ever seen.
You read from Silk. In attempting to choose a "safe" passage, you unfortunately selected the beginning of chapter 5 (Robin), which almost immediately describes her as still horny, even after the hour she'd spent in bed, masturbating with a dildo. I thought it was a most entertaining choice.
--cleve
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It was A Different Light, on Thursday, November 05, 1998. Your entourage consisted of Jennifer, Christina Faust, David J. Schow, and David J. Skal.
Bingo!
You read from Silk. In attempting to choose a "safe" passage, you unfortunately selected the beginning of chapter 5 (Robin), which almost immediately describes her as still horny, even after the hour she'd spent in bed, masturbating with a dildo.
sigh
Yeah, "safe passages" are almost impossible for me. Worse now than back then, I suspect.
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Caitlin, I've been seeing some of the same issues (I hope they're not trends) as you, and it does feel as if there's less communication in general, whether it's on blogs or in e-mails. Obviously it's not body odor or something repelling people when there's less back-and-forth online, but me being paranoid I wonder if I'm being off-putting somehow. Then, if I may have an ego moment, I feel that my blogging got better late last year/early this year, but getting responses (even to direct guestions) got harder.
And as much as I love LiveJournal, in the five years I've been on it I've rarely had much luck getting a genuine conversation going. It's likely to be post, comment, reply, and an unrelated comment: on to the next really short thread. And there's always the risk of someone not really reading what I wrote: earlier this year I wrote a rather raw entry inspired by the Buffy episode "The Body," where I'm keying off of a TV show to talk about emotions and death, and the one reply I got was Hey, you seen Dollhouse yet? And I was surprised at how much that bothered me. I'm using a TV show to talk about death and this reader (a friend and a good guy, by the way) is using this to talk about another TV show. We talked off-LJ about that, so I could process why I felt that way instead of just stewing about it. (I'm too good at stewing.)
So, I'm craving back-and-forth, and it's been harder to get that online lately.
To get to something larger than the me-related issues, the past several months have been difficult for many friends of mine. (Two divorces already this year, for instance, and another breakup of a longtime couple I've known who were going to get married, but were having the sorts of problems that would usually doom a marriage.) Tough all around, as you know, and sometimes the most you can say to someone blogging about crises and the tumultuous are "*hugs*" and "I read the whole thing," letting people know you're reading them, because sometimes that's all you can do. I'm lucky in that my (still actively blogging) friends and acquaintances mostly try to find what's positive -- we've done good works and helped others -- but it's been easy to be cynical and worn-down lately. And I think people are worn out. I've needed rest, so I've blogged a little less. I'm not the only one who's done that.
I hope Star Trek will be a good dose of non-cynicism for y'all. I had a blast at a Saturday screening of it.
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Are you sure that was me? That doesn't ring a bell. I used to be a chemist. And I love cats. But I don't remember any "ringing hair". Possibly some other Cleve. Or, possibly, this Cleve has forgotten; that wouldn't be too surprising, either. But, hey. If it was a good one, I'll take the credit.
> And as much as I love LiveJournal, in the five years I've been on it I've rarely had much luck getting a genuine conversation going. <
Very understandable, to me. The mechanics of conversing are harder in a format like this. You have to click behind the scenes, find your post, and carefully check for replies. The system seems to e-mail people when they get replies -- that's the only way I discovered that you had replied to my comments. Then I came looking, dug for it, and found it. And now I have to "log in" if I want to post -- which means looking up my user-name and password if I haven't posted in awhile. Cripes. That's a lot of work, compared to Usenet News Groups. Everything in the old CRK news group was instantly apparent: which threads had changed, who had replied to whom -- just visually obvious, and it was SO simple to jump in at any particular point in any conversation. Now it's harder, and thus less spontaneous, and continued conversations are much less likely to occur.
But Cleve is getting older, now, and crankier, and all things past are starting to become The Good Ol' Days (because he remembers the good parts and has forgotten most of the bad).
And Cait is going to start deleting his posts if he mentions Usenet one more time, or persists in referring to himself in third-person.
--cleve
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See if this rings a bell: talking about a cat that had fallen into some chemical fertilizer or similar thing that you don't want on your loved ones. The cat trying to shake off the disgusting moistness, and its hair ringing when it happened. A quick washing to make sure the cat was okay, then a quick vet trip to find out if the cat was okay, and the poor thing recovering but temporarily losing its hair because of what it had fallen into.
And the punchline "Not my favorite kind of shaved p--..."
And Caitlin reacting (wow, I can still quote this) "Cleve! I'm...um...I'm...um...oh yeah, I'm appalled! I knew I had a word for that somewhere dusty."
...aaaaaaand that's what I remember. Of course, I also remember running so fast in third grade that my feet stopped touching the ground for a few steps, so maybe my memory isn't, um, REMEMBERING TRUTH, so take it with that grain of salt. Or maybe you do remember now.
Onward.
The mechanics of conversing are harder in a format like this.
To an extent, yes, but I'm very used to this format and my friends are also very used to this format. We stay logged on, and I get the notifications, and I try to respond interestingly. So do my friends. Usually. It can be more interactive, is what I'm saying.
Peace.
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Yikes. Cleve suffers a Senior Moment. (Yes, I've qualified as a Senior (for some things) for almost two years now; I'm approaching 57.)
Our cat, Fluffy (the god of all cats, if I haven't mentioned that before), was treated by an unfriendly local grower to a bath in a drum of weed-killer, and his wet, non-water soaked fur did indeed "ring" when he shook it. The vet said the immediate cleaning we gave him saved his life. He lost all his fur, but it eventually came back, fortunately (because a furless cat is gray, and scaly-dry, and smells like -- like only a furless cat can smell; it's unique; and we'd have had to change his name).
Apparently, this is a classic farmer's stunt; I heard my cousin's friend mention (unprompted) that her father used to do that to cats. Assholes. They probably don't realized it can be a death sentence (or they really don't care).
And, yes, I now remember the "shaved" joke.
Cripes. My posts are immortal in people's heads?
By the way, Google appears to be "forgetting" Usenet posts before about 1999. This may interest Cait, who, as I recall, was not fond of the idea that Google was preserving posts Forever. I went looking for a very early one of mine and could no longer find it.
Anyway, Chris, thanks for jogging my Senior memory.
(When you're 17, being a Senior is the coolest. Not so much at 55.)
--cleve
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