CrowSaga

joecrow @ 2025-01-24T22:26:00

2025-01-25T03:30:12Z

I realize it's a common problem, these days, discovering that the people in your life, in your family, in your world, hold beliefs and support policies and policy-makers that endanger you and the people you love. And I realize that there's no easy answer to it.

But still. It's both disappointing and frightening to realize that, yes, you can't actually trust your actual brother with the safety of your wife and child, or your family and friends. To know that he feels that his religious faith obliges him to support the people who by their every action and word oppose every aspect of the faith he claims to hold. To know that he thinks that the best exemplar of the desires and principles of his deity are people who work diligently and unceasingly to annihilate those principles as concepts and to crush and degrade the people that those principles are meant to protect and nourish.

I am not a Christian.

I was raised in the faith, by a woman who still believes in her god and in the book that his followers claim to be his inerrant word to humankind. I understand why she raised us the way that she did, and I understand the various traumas and scars and fears that shaped her into a woman who sought refuge in certainty and structure, and who continues to search for a way to reconcile her faith with a world where that faith is represented most vehemently by some of the worst humans in the world.

I stepped away from the faith in my teens, and she had the respect and integrity to allow me the freedom to do so, and I love and honor her for that, whatever else occurred prior to that acceptance. When I found my path, and tried to explain it to her, she listened and accepted it, while retaining her own struggles. I know she still hopes that at some point, I will come back into the fold, but she does not press.

I know and understand the problems and struggles that my brother has faced, that resulted in his need for structure and discipline, his desire for an external authority to keep him from the habits that led him into difficult places.

What I do not and cannot understand, what I do not know how to forgive, is why he has allowed those needs and desires to bring him to endorse some of the most monstrous and hate-filled politicians and organizations ever to hold positions of power in this nation. How he can say that his faith commands him to follow the directions of people whose every action is in direct opposition to the claimed words and directives of his deity. The double-think and hypocrisy that lets him say that the followers of a man who is so vile and hollow and repellent, who so closely embodies the description of the Antichrist that he occasionally makes me question my interpretation of John of Patmos as a poetic nutcase rather than a prophet, that these Mammon-cultists and predators and parasites are the exemplars of the Christian faith.

Do I try to explain this to him? Do I try to convince him of the horror I feel when I realize that I now see him as someone I could not seek refuge with, when the monsters he supports come to destroy me and the people I love?

When I no longer trust that he would not turn on me and my family, that he would not surrender us to people who would happily make us disappear from their Perfect World, who would build their New Jerusalem over our unmarked graves and mortar its walls with our blood and bones?

I have always been a believer in communication and reason, in the possibility of the improvement of the human mind, and of the quest for a better world, that understanding is possible and can reshape our worlds and lives. That belief, that faith, has grown so thin and fragile as I have grown older, and seen more and more of the corruption and rejection of these principles of reason and communication by the people who shape the world.

I do not know if I believe that I can have that conversation with him, and have it lead anywhere but strife and severance. Is that my failing, or his?

What do I do with that?

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joecrow @ 2025-01-14T00:16:00

2025-01-14T05:20:54Z

So, a new, longer and more detailed piece on the Neil sitch came out, (https://12ft.io/https://www.vulture.com/article/neil-gaiman-allegations-controversy-amanda-palmer-sandman-madoc.html) and it's getting a lot of circulation, coz its from an actual magazine (Vulture), and it's got a LOT more detail and interviews and suchlike, and yeah. More stuff on Neil's background and the abuse of his childhood growing up in a high ranking Scientology family, and all of that, and yeah. From all the evidence, he's not just a creep, he's an actual monster. Multiple accounts of rape and abuse, doing this shit around his kid so much that the kid starts referring to his victims as "slave" and demanding that they call him "master", raping people in the same hotel room as the kid, all that kind of horror show stuff. So, yeah, it looks like the self-insert character was Richard Madouc all along, not Morpheus.

I mean, I didn't have that much doubt about the charges when they first came out, just based on his response, but I didn't know exactly how totally fucked up the whole thing was. Yeah, there's the "abused people repeat the abuse" trip, but that's not universally true, is it. Lots of folks grow up in horror-show environments, and decide not to repeat the pattern. Lots of other folks catch themselves and stop, and remake themselves and try to repair the damage they've done. And then there's folks who either never realize or acknowledge what they've been doing, and keep repeating the patterns.

And it's not like he's not aware, at least on some level. You can see it in the work, and you have to ask yourself, how can someone capable of such empathy and complexity in their expression be unaware of what it is they're actually doing? Is it just a failure to accept the responsibility for their actions? Is it just a lack of concern for the victims of their actions? How do you show such awareness in the work, and not in your life?

I don't know how to explain it to myself. I know that I've done shit that hurt people, and I can see where I failed to see it in the moment, and I can see the parts of my head that try to justify it after the fact, but I can also see the difference between those constructed justifications and the actual truth of what it was. I can see my failure to act correctly in the moment, and I can keep trying to remember those lessons and use them to guide my current actions. I can see the selfishness and the solopsistic myopia of my behavior. And I can at least model the damage that I did.

How do you not? How do you express this stuff in your work, and not see the connection between that work and your life? And not see, or care about, the damage that you see yourself doing? After a lifetime of it?

I don't know.

I mean, I remember learning about Warren and Joss, and the abusive and manipulative creepish shit they pulled, and I thought that was, i dunno, badwrong or whatever, and I had trouble reconciling the work with the artist's selfishness and dickishness. But then there's this utterly monstrous shit, and how the fuck do you incorporate that? How do you deal with it?

And this is just the parasocial fanboy shit. How are the folks in his life dealing with this? The ones who let themselves not see it, and the ones who genuinely didn't see it?

Poor Tori.

I dunno.

Sometimes I'm glad that I've never had the opportunity to see how I'd react with actual social power, you know? I know how badly I've failed with the tiny fragments of influence and power that I've had, and I don't know how badly I'd fuck up if I had the kind of mojo that these guys have had.

I just don't know.

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My Brightest Diamond at Cafe 939

2019-05-14T05:26:19Z

All right, so I just got back from Boston. Took the night off from work to check out My Brightest Diamond playing at Cafe 939’s Red Room, a small venue attached to Berklee. Damn fine show, that.

Just her on guitar and synth, and Jharis Yokley on drums (this dude is a monster on the skins BTW, an absolute beast), and they utterly killed it. She’s a showperson of stellar caliber, bouncing onstage after dancing through the audience with It’s Me On The Dance Floor, and she didn’t stop moving the entire show. And neither did I. A’course, now my legs are paying for it, but it was totally worth it.

The show was mostly stuff from the new album A Million To One, mixed with a few older songs like Dorian, This Is My Hand, and the encore show-ender Pressure, as well as a snappy cover of Bow Wow Wow’s I Want Candy. I have to say, she really packed a helluva lot of show into an hour and fifteen minutes. She got the audience up and going from start to finish, and yanked opener Tunde Olaniran on stage for Supernova. Just an excellent time, all around. Y’all should check her out, you get a chance.

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Skanafel the Devourer is here!

2019-05-07T02:29:00Z

Hey, the Villain Spotlight article I wrote for En5ider is up! Nice nice nice! Always interesting to see somebody else’s visual interpretation of Captain No-face; Mike Tenebrae went in a more abstracted direction with his illo. Neat!
But hey! This is the first freelance game writing I’ve done in about sixteen years, so yay!

http://www.enworld.org/forum/content.php?6271-EN5ider-270-Villain-Spotlight-Skanafel-the-Devourer

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joecrow @ 2019-05-04T12:25:00

2019-05-04T16:26:46Z

Hey, so I put the rest of the chapters up for Hunter's Web, over on Ao3. Total of 25K words of vampire hijinks and grumpy introspection, courtesy of everyone's favorite monstrous vampire death machine NPC, Spider, formerly known as Nathan Green. Don't call him that, though; he'll pull your head off.
So, check it out if you're interested, and lemme know what you think.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/18671770/chapters/44280175

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joecrow @ 2019-05-01T23:18:00

2019-05-02T03:22:05Z

For what it's worth, I just posted the first chapter of something over at Archive of Our Own, something I wrote an age and a half ago . Hunter's Web, chapter 1; from my old Vampire: the Requiem campaign, with Poppy and Jace and Mark Terry back in the day. I'll put the rest of it up in the next couple of days; the whole thing's about 25K words or so. That's a novella, innit?

Jeez, this thing's almost twelve years old now.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/18671770/chapters/44280175

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joecrow @ 2019-02-10T19:59:00

2019-02-11T01:27:36Z

Mahalo, cats and kittens. Been a while, no?

So, yeah, been trying to get back into the DW swing after wandering in the howling void of FuckBook and Tromblr and such; still kind of a [MUCH] quieter vibe here. Most likely a consequence of my LJ expectations. I had a decade plus of folks that I'd connected with over there, and only a minute fraction of them ended up here. FB's got the numbers, but it's got a shit ton of evil noise and algorhythmic post interference as well, so connections and conversations are pretty challenging, most days. And Tumbltown is pretty and all, and busy and all, but it's virtually impossible to maintain a conversation there.
I miss forums, you know? The WEF, especially. And I miss the way LJ used to be.

So, been trying to get back to the art thing, lately. And here's a selection of the stuff that I did last year, for that whole Art Vs. Artist meme thing.

So, how y'all been doing?

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All right, all right, all right, FINE.

2017-04-08T00:38:31Z

I'm here again, happy?

Well hell, man, what kind of question is that?

Yeah, so I haven't posted here in fucking ages, but I haven't really done much anyplace (except for the festering pit that is FB), so don't feel like it's me abandoning y'all specifically, it's really more of a general abandonment of responsibilities, y'know? But I'm back, for the infinitesimal fraction of y'all that noticed I was gone. So, y'know, hi and stuff.

So what am I up to, these days? Well, got laid off from the store, after a series of musical owners switching chairs in what I'm pretty sure was some kind of tax dodge bullshit, so now I'm riding the unemployment train for a bit while I try and rewire my head and all that good shit. Couple thousand words into the finale of Betrayal, the Barak the Axe origin story that I've been desultorily picking at for fucking years now. So we'll see what happens with that. Like prying nails outta my own head, really. Once I finish that, the plan is to start another one of BtA's early formative bits, the excitingly originally named Ghost Tower, and see where that goes. Hopefully, it'll go to finished-land a wee bit sooner than fucking Betrayal, 'ey?

The infernal child is frighteningly tall, and becoming an inspiringly disciplined digital artist, and has just recently finished a several thousand word bit of FNAF fan-fic. She's fucking 13, for fuck's sake. She makes me feel like a slug.

Also, just deleted the LJ. Fuck it, long past time for that shit. Fuck 'em and the whores they rode in on.

So hey, good to see y'all; I'll try not to be such a stranger.

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Wa-salaam and like that.

2017-04-08T00:10:16Z

And how are you all, this fine and furry morning? Long see no time, etc., etc.

My, it has been some time since I graced these pleasant shores of Journalíste-ism. But I'm on vacation this week, and I thought I'd poke around, see how the old homestead is doing.

While we're on the subject of strange and wondrous occurrences, I have evidently been far too static in my stylistic choices of late, and have just given myself a mohawk. I get bored, see...

Been doing more art stuff on occasion, which all gets posted up on my DeviantArt page if anybody wanted to check it out. Other than that, just work and kidness and the like. Started running a Pathfinder game for the crew, essentially a reverse version of the old "Against the Giants!" campaign. Had them all make up CR 6-7 equivalent humanoid monster characters, and now I've got them infiltrating the human lands to go sack temples and loot wizard's towers and burn down the filthy pink-skins disturbingly square hive-towns. Right now, they're in Hommlet, avenging the death of Lareth the Beautiful (mostly because they need to retrieve the mysterious box he was holding for their patron, and the adventurers that cleaned out the Moathouse took it back with them). Should be interesting.

So, what's new with you fine and feathered folks?

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Community and the gods: an introspection

2013-06-16T04:13:14Z

Teal deer warning: inside paganism baseball, finest kind

Finding myself drifting back into that whole polytheist/pagan/occultist argument. Dunno why, except that it's really annoying watching what I've usually considered "my community" flailing around in mutual bitchcraft bullshit. Some of it's my ingrained suspicion of unquestioning reverence for "the gods" and insistence that the only appropriate response to them is kneeling and worshiping them as they demand. For me, as an agnostic animist who operates in a primarily heathen cosmological construct, "the gods" are most usefully described as non-physical entities that present themselves to humans as certain personas, similar to ones that humans have described interacting with in the past. Whether these are the same entities that originally presented themselves as these personas is impossible to reliably state, and is not terribly important to me. As a matter of courtesy, I try and treat them as though they were the entities they present themselves as. I interpret our interactions with the tools I have, my mind and my emotions, and the available historical and communal data.

As part of that interpretation, I find myself remembering that the available historical and mythological data repeatedly says that the gods will often screw over humans for what appear to objective analysis as foolish or petty reasons, and will often engage in what appear to be destructive and malicious acts without explanation. I admit the strong possibility that these actions may in fact have nothing whatsoever to do with us, and may bear the same level of personal animosity towards us as I do to the occasional ant that I sweep up when I'm cleaning the store. But that doesn't mean that I'd expect that ant to worship me, and grovel and thank me for my beneficence. But then, I'm not a god.

I suppose that does kinda mean that I'm not a "true polytheist" in the sense that my relationship with the gods is a combination of utilitarian occultnik quid-pro-quo, investigative mysticism, and friendly/familial social interaction. I suppose that also means that I'm not really an integral part of the community at large, given that my deific relationships are so far outside of what seems to be the norm.

To be more realistic, I'm probably going to be more comfortable defining myself as part of the chaos magic community than as part of the pagan community. That's more or less where I started.

I began my ...whatever this is... journey as a tentative wiccan back in the late eighties. I faded more towards a vague eclectic paganish path, with strong hermetic/Golden Dawn/Thelemic influences, and then took a detour into heathenland. I kinda wandered into Asatru country, and then wandered back out towards the outskirts of heathenland. But while all this wandering was going on, I was always part of the Zee crew. That's probably been my longest running social interaction with an occult network. There's people in the Zee that I've been friends with for close to twenty years. And they've never rejected me because I thought the wrong things, or practiced the wrong way, or didn't have the same kind of unquestioning faith that they do. The Zee and the MOC are the groups that I've been continuously connected to for the longest time, and the ones that I continue to feel most at home with. And I'm pretty happy with that.

I'd like to think that I'm at least a peripheral part of the overall heathen community, even if it's just as one of those untrustworthy Lokean weirdos in the corner of the hall, but who can say, really?

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Mellow Greets, més amis!

2013-06-09T09:30:30Z

Hey folkxxen. Yeah, it's been a time and a time since I was here at the old DeeDub, hasn't it? How y'all doing?

I've been kind of puttering around, mostly. Finished up a long-term runic meditation project about a month ago, and have been kind of desultorily working my way up to a month-long Djehwty invocation project, prompted by the lovely and talented Andrieh Vitimus and his 30 Day Challenge. Unfortunately, the runic work seems to have been a major factor in sparking my artistic output, and since I ended that, I seem to have stalled out on the arting end. Hmh.

In other news, been trying to work on the whole "increasing general fitness" thing ever since the heart attack. Been back and forth on the exercise thing, trying to get back into a regular practice. Currently trying to drag myself out of a slump. Been doing fairly well on the weight-loss end; down to 184 from my max of 215 at the time of ticker-crash. That's mostly down to calorie control.

Got myself an iPad Mini a few months ago, been filling it with books ever since. Mostly replicating my existing physical library. Not doing so much with the apps and all that. Mostly just using it as a shinier e-reader.

Been noticing with some distress that some folks whose opinions I generally respect as practitioners, theorists, and priests seem to be on a crusade to cleanse the polytheist/pagan realm of all who are less than absolutely devoted to one very specific view of the nature of polytheist practice. As a Wilsonian reality agnostic, I can't help feeling that I'm one of those unfortunates that they're trying to define out of a stream that I've been a part of for decades. Folks, there are substantial parts of the culture-at-large that are still convinced that we're all baby-eating devil-worshipping eschaton-immanentizing dope-smoking fiends from the wrong side of the tracks. (And they're right about some of us. But let's not talk about that in public.) Y'all might want to step back from your doctrinal purity witch-hunt a bit and take a look around. This is not the time for this kind of petty self-rightiousness. Really, it's NEVER the time for this kind of petty self-rightiousness. What the fuck, folks?

So, yeah. That's me for right now. Good to be back.

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Ceci n'est pas un New Years Entry

2013-01-01T02:20:48Z

(trigger warning - kind of introspective and mope-y)

Fucking New Year's Eve. Here's to another year of fuckery and grumbling, of incessant despair and pathetic failure, of utter lack of achievement. Or, just possibly, the beginning of a new thing. It's been a year since the heart attack. Since then, I've gotten my first degree. I've ...done very little else. This has not been a year of achievement. What has this been a year of?

Maintenance. Just keep paddling. Just keep swimming. What else is there? Swim til you drown.
I keep thinking that I can pull myself free if I just, y'know, DO it. But that's the rub, innit, it's just an act of will, will that I apparently don't have.

Read a post by somebody, I forget who, who said there's no shame in admitting that you're not the artist you think you should be, and that it's ok to just acknowledge that and do something else with your life. If you don't art, if you don't write, then you're not an artist/writer/creative. You're just a regular person who consumes art, appreciates it, and goes on with their life.

That's really the most depressing thing I can think of, right now. Because I've got nothing else to be. Yeah, there's the family, and I love them, and I'll keep pushing and working to keep them fed and sheltered and loved til I drop, but that's just the stuff I do because it's the stuff I do. It's not who I am. Is it? Yeah, I'm the husband and the dad. That's part of me. But it's not all of me. Is it? Do I have anything else to be?

I have these abilities. I'm a decent writer, I'm a semi-competent artist, or at least I've produced decent written work and decent visual work. I still trickle bits out, here and there. I'd be better if I did the work more often and kept in productive shape. I didn't earn them, these abilities, not really. They've always been there, at least the rudiments. As long as I can remember, anyway. But part of me feels like they're not really true, maybe. They're just things I've lucked into, that I've shaped my life around the expectation of doing, despite the fact that I've never been able to make myself do them consistently and reliably.

It's probably a bit late to rework my life around something else. It's not like I've got the skills for anything else.

I wanted to be a scientist when I was young. (Actually, I wanted to be a mad scientist, but whatever.) I'm still interested in the sciences, but that's a long and difficult road to climb onto at the best of times. Trying to do it at my age, that's a whole other level of not-at-all-likely to happen.

I wanted to be a historian. I'd still like to be one, really. I'd probably really enjoy teaching history, under other social circumstances. But with the academic environment as it is, and the cost of entry climbing ever higher, I'd end up bankrupting myself again for something that would never pay off and would probably break my heart. I like reading and learning about history, and talking about it, and sharing neat ideas, and finding a way to get paid to do that would be excellent. But I can't really see a way to do that from here.

So, what I have left are the arts. Or the rest of a lifetime of drudgery and drone-work. I love story. Capital S Story. I love making the pictures in my head a reality. (Well, I love the IDEA of making the pictures in my head a reality. I hate the inevitable disappointment of what comes out of my hands.) I love the idea of taking the stories in my had out and showing them to people, even though they never look like what they looked like in my head.

Is it that attachment to the ideal that kills my drive to create? That expectation of disappointment with the result, the divide between what I think of as the "real version", the one in my head, and the Actually Real Version, the one on the page? Or is it just laziness? Is that a useful descriptor? Are these useful questions to ask?

...Fucked if I know, really.

So, that's how I start the new year. Asking myself the same questions I always do. Am I gonna get the same answers? Am I gonna get any answers?

Are there any answers?

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Happiness is ...

2012-12-15T19:37:33Z

So, I had to pull away from Facebook for the weekend. Too many posts about the Connecticut thing making me angry.

Maggie Koerth-Baker over at Wired has written the only post on the recent unpleasantness that didn't make me grind my teeth with rage. Most discussions online about gun control/gun violence/the 2nd amendment seem to inevitably polarize into "Yeah-hunh!"/"Nuh-unh!" shouting matches within seconds. An infinitude of heat combined with the antithesis of light. These discussions get infinitely worse after one of these periodic freakouts.

The general tone here on EllJay has been a bit more reasonable (a BIT). Maybe it's just quieter here, I dunno. There's a discussion over at sleigh's place that seems like it might not spiral into the usual shitshow.

Part of the problem I have with a lot of the pro-gun-control arguments I hear is that I live in a state where all of the stuff the moderates claim to want is already the law. Licensing, pre-license training program, severe restrictions on what kinds of guns you can buy and how large a magazine your gun can have, pretty much everything except individual registration for each gun is already in place here in the People's Republic of Massachusetts. As a result, I don't own a gun. The severe limitations prices them out of my reach, and the arbitratiness of the licensing process (essentially, you get your license at the whim of the police chief of your town, and there's no appeal or argument if he decides he doesn't like you) means that I haven't been able to justify dropping 100 bucks on a license fee for something I have no guarantee of getting.

So, when I hear folks talking about making the laws stronger, pretty much the only place I can see them going is doing the whole-hog English thing and trying to round up ALL the guns and throw them in the nearest recycling furnace. And an awful lot of the folks who're talking about gun control are very explicit about wanting that to happen.

And that's the point at which we have an actual open war on our hands.

Most of the civilian guns owned in the US belong to about 20% of the population. Most of that 20% correspond strongly with the most culturally conservative/reactionary elements in the US. One of the only things that's kept them from freaking out and starting the war is that so far, the national government hasn't tried to take their guns away. That's pretty much the trigger point. Thing is, the people we'd be relying on to enact this whole "take their guns away" program have much much more in common with the folks they'll be fighting with than they do with the folks who'll be telling them to do the fighting, and that's a recipe for social badness on a level that I don't think anybody sane wants to see.

Over the last 100 years or so, the progressive left has pretty systematically disarmed itself, both externally and internally. That's why nobody in power listens to us. There's no consequence to ignoring us, so they're not scared of us. They don't even need to throw us the occasional bone. Rural conservative whackjobs get catered to, because they've got guns. Urban black folks get superficial acknowledgement, because when shit gets too heinous they still get together and set shit on fire. But Latinos get the shaft, because they still think they need to be polite, and they haven't got the political muscle together yet. The only reason that the LGBT folks have been getting the play they have is because they've been pretty clear that they can and will out all of those closeted politicians that keep having sex with them.

But we've got nothing to threaten them with. We've got no guns. Our protests are all rattle and no bite. We let the rich folks take all the money. And voting doesn't mean shit if there's nobody to vote for who isn't already bought by the folks at the top.

Yeah, so that was a bit bleak. Just kinda hadda get it out there.

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Mellow greetings, kidnikis!

2012-12-11T02:12:15Z

So, hey, fruit-nappers, long see, no time.

I've been doing this 750Words thing for the last week or so, pretty steadily, so it occurred to me that I should probably think about starting to do the online journal community thing again too. Give me something to do with this crap I've been spewing into the formless void, anyway.

So, pretty soon, I'll start posting occasional rants and whatnot, mostly probably compiled from my daily exer-typing sessions. Dunno how frequent they'll be, or anything, but they'll exist.

I'll do a proper update post and all that, too.

But, this is just to say "hey" and see what you folks have been up to.

So, what've you been up to?

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Bear and Lynch Are Friends

2012-04-22T06:42:55Z

From Bear and Lynch Are Friends

So, this was my evening. Got to see matociquala and scott_lynch in action at Pandemonium. Good time; got to get some of my questions about both their works answered and chat a bit. First time I've gotten FTF with Scott, despite an online acquaintance going back to the dark days of the Fantastic Metropolis forum. Hell, I think I've known him longer than I've known Bear, and I've known Bear since she was putting promo bits for Blood and Iron up on LJ back in the day.

"Known", of course, in the traditional Internetistanian sense of the word as someone with whom I've occasionally exchanged online conversation.

Click on the pic and you'll see me on the far right edge of the full pic, long hair, earrings, moustache, etc. Apparently embedding twitpics clips the edges off.

Second time I've been down to Boston in the last month. Went to PAXEast a couple of weeks ago. I forget how much I like Boston when I'm not there for a while; and it's been a while.

So there's a quick squawk from Crow Country. P'raps there'll be more later.

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2012: Don't Look Back, Something Might Be Gaining On You

2011-12-31T22:27:45Z

So, what's the plan for the new year?

Urg. Resolutions. Those always end well.

First off: Get in better shape. Not sure how much of that's gonna be constrained by the recent cardiac unpleasantness. I've got some fairly high expectations of what I can do, exercise-wise, and now I hafta clear all of that with some fucking doctor or other. 'Spose I should start off slow, then. Daily walks, light yoga and/or tai chi, eat less. Guess that's not gonna be much of a problem, now. Food without animal fat in it doesn't smell like food to me. tezzkatt's doing her best to keep me interested, and the veggie/healthy stuff she's cooking tastes interesting and whatnot, but it just doesn't smell like capital F food to my reptile brain. It's stuff I eat because I'm hungry and it's there. There's tiny bits of foodness in some of it, but skinless chicken breast and lean pork are like diluted methadone, compared to the full-color speedball acid trip of roasted greasy dark meat skin-on chicken and dripping ham marrow.

Second: Get my damn degree finished. Gotta spend the next 3 weeks until school starts up finishing the projects for last semester. Shouldn't be too much of a problem. After that? Get through the portfolio class; the ease of which depends entirely on who's teaching it [For the love of Allah, Kdapt, and Finagle, please do not be fucking Juan. PLEASE.] After that? Fucked if I know.

Third: Start writing again. Something. ANYTHING. Daily, you lazy fuck.

Fourth: Keep arting regularly. Produce at least one piece of complete visual art every week.

Fifth: Start working on Arabic again.

Sixth: Post more. [Hey, while we're dreaming…]

Let's see how this one turns out.

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2011: Goodbye to Bad Rubbish

2011-12-31T21:47:54Z

Fucking 2011. It was a filthy year. [Ptui!] Let us never speak of it.

Well, except for a few shiny bits, which follow in photographic form:

Monkey opening her Christmas loot.

Monkey reveling in her favorite piece of Christmas loot, a Minecraft creeper t-shirt.

Monkey playing with her second favorite piece of Christmas loot, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of the Sky.

And MY favorite piece of Christmas loot, The One Ring, the new Lord of the Rings rpg. Really a beautiful bit of work, this. Now all I need is a crew of folks interested in playing a game that actually replicates the world of Arda as the professor wrote it.

Yeah, that'll happen.

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Wassail and whassup

2011-12-24T03:29:59Z

So, Squamous Cephalopodmas, Rational Newtonmas, Glad Jul, Happy Solstice, Merry Christmas, Furious Festivus, and generally joy-filled winter holidays of your specific chosen cultural slash religious modality, buckaroos and bachelorettes. How you folks doing out there in DeeDub slash EllJay land?

Things proceed apace, as they are wont to do, here in Crowville. Doc sez I can go back to work on the 1st. Got in touch with my teachers, and all are ok with me handing in the final project at the beginning of next semester, so that's all good. Supposed to start cardio rehab next month; not sure what-all that's gonna be about.

Hooked up with my pal Jay this week and played some Deadlands Classic with the crew. That was good, finally getting back to the table. Deadlands is hella fun, and I really missed playing.

Trying to get a better picture of what I wanna do with myself. Getting closer to graduation, but I dunno what that really means for me. Thinking about seeing if Salem State will take the Associates Degree in Illustration as the equivalent of a minor in Art, so I'll only have 4 classes to do to finish up my BA in History. Or should I try and see if I can get into a 4 year art school? Or should I focus on trying to do the freelance illustrator thing?

I don't really know what I want, is what the problem is.

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Home is the hunter

2011-12-11T13:55:46Z

So, I'm home now. Outta work for the next two weeks, and beginning negotiations with this semesters teachers regarding the final classwork. The monkey is overjoyed to have me back; the cat, somewhat less so.

Good to be home.

Am massively irritated by my body's failure to just shut up and do what I tell it. Am aware that this is probably not the healthiest of attitudes, and may in fact have contributed to my current health status.

Beloved wife has suggested that I've been a much angrier person in the last few years, especially since working at IMEC. This may be the case. I've always tended towards a degree of surliness, and working at IMEC just triggered a lot of anger in me. Not entirely sure why. Doing the no-job thing for a year and a half afterward probably didn't help. I've always kinda defined myself as the guy who just fucking does the job. I've been working since I was sixteen, and that long stretch of joblessness may have affected my mood more than I realized.

So, all of this stress bullshit probably hasn't been real good for me, health-wise. Not entirely sure how to pry myself outta this headspace, though.

Need to start meditating again, for one. Getting back into tai chi would probably help, too, until I can start doing yoga again.

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Heartattack and Vine

2011-12-09T09:13:22Z

Still in the hospital. Docs have been less than crystalline regarding long-term prognosis or even short-term prognosis. Looks like I'm gonna hafta take incompletes in all my classes and then make up the work later. Which fucks my school plans all to hell, really. I also need to find out when I can go back to work. (IF I can go back to work.) I have no idea what sort of impact this whole thing is gonna have on my ability to perform basic functions. I mean, folks have heart attacks all the time, and they keep doing the usual stuff, right? I assume there's some kind of recovery time, but the docs have yet to explain any of that to me.

I dunno. Just kind of flailing, right now.

Mother-in-law brought Popstar and the kid by a couple of times, so that's been nice. A couple of other folks have swung by, too.

Maybe this is why I've been so tired all the time, last few months. I thought it was just the work/school/life combo.

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health is bullshit

2011-12-07T18:22:52Z

So, I get a decent amount of exercise, I don't eat a lot of shitty food, I don't smoke, I don't drink hardly at all.

And this is where it gets me at 42: the CCU in Holy Family Hospital, after having a severe heart attack last night. Now I have 2 stents in my arteries, and an oncoming assault of freakish medications and whatnot to deal with for the rest of my life. Kinda depressing, that.

This'll put a damper on my final projects for ALL my classes, which are due next week. Fuckery.

...so, how YOU folks doing?

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driveby artening

2011-12-04T11:26:46Z

Hey folks.

So, this is a piece I did a couple of weeks ago for my Figure Drawing class. Me at my laptop, story of my life. Bigger than I'm usually comfortable working, which is the idea, I suppose.

Self-Portrait, in charcoal by ~JoeCrow9 on deviantART

Further bulletins as energy levels warrant.

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Monkeynooz (1/30)

2011-09-02T00:19:38Z

The monkey is OBSESSED with Minecraft. She watches tutorial vids on Youtube all the time; at this point, she probably knows more about the game than I or tezzkatt do (yes, I got the wife into it, too). Half the time, if I have a question about the game, I can just ask her, and she'll walk me through whatever it is.

Guess the nerd gene breeds true.

We took the monkey to the beach last week. Well, actually, mother-in-law took us, as we are currently (and for the forseeable future) sans car. She had a blast, as did we. Lots of running around in the waves, and all that. Found some small crabs to show her in the tidepools, she was appropriately enthused by their wee cuteness.

I've got some pics, which I will attempt to post later.

School starts next week. Had to lose the Advanced Digital Photo class, as I'm currently way over the max number of credits for my degree, and can only take classes directly required for the degree if I want any financial aid. So I'm in for Illustration II, Figure Drawing, and Photoshop. Should be interesting. Next semester is my last, only one class (Portfolio for Illustration. Not sure what I'm gonna do then.

So, how're y'all doing?

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mopery with intent

2011-06-19T16:49:03Z

So, hey out there, folks. Long time no post, hey?

Working again. Got a gig doing the 3rd shift at the convenience store down the street. Sadly, it pays less than I was getting on unemployment. Even more sadly, this is the place I worked at doing the exact same thing 23 years ago. How far we've completely failed to come, hey?

Father's Day, innit? Just got an unintentionally depressing email from my mother-in-law, congratulating me on being "the best father I know". I'm just doing my best not to fuck the kid up too badly. I'd try and teach her how to be happy, healthy, and productive, but I'm none of those things.

Never met my dad. Never really felt the urge to try very hard to find him. I dunno, never really missed having one. Weird, that. I seem to have completely missed the "daddy issues" train. Maybe that's why an awful lot of fictional drama doesn't really resonate with me in any noticeable way.

In a really bad headspace lately. Not sure how much of it's the job, the massive financial crunch, or all the other stuff. Haven't made anything or written anything since school got out about a month ago. (Did ok, grade-wise. As in all the studio classes, B in the online Intro Astronomy class. Keep planning to post pics of some the work from my Painting and Digital Photo classes, but I keep planning lots of stuff that doesn't happen.)

So there's my self-pitying bullshit update. How're you folks doing?

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they say it's your birthday, it's my birthday too, yeah

2011-03-05T04:32:19Z

Salaam, cats and kittens.

42th birthday today. I'd do some kind of yearly retrospective deal, but then I'd just get depressed.

The lurvely and talented wyrdkat made me an excellent valknot wall hanging, and some muy delish applesauce cake. Mom came over with some apple/rhubarb pie, and the kid made me a card. So that was all heartwarming and yummy and suchlike.

Semester's going well enough. Intro to Digital Photo is not particularly challenging, but entertaining enough in its own way. Painting I is instructive, if mostly in how much I suck at shading and tonal variation. Computer Illustration is a good review of Illustrator techniques, and useful discipline as well. Astronomy is pretty much banging numbers together and stuffing them in the appropriate boxes. Not particularly educational or really that interesting, but the math review is decent mental exercise.

Eventually, I'll get around to scanning in some of the better projects from the Painting class for y'all to politely pretend you're interested in.

Other than that, not a lot happening. veedub's '11 online Feri class has started up, and I'm running it again after crash-and-burning early on in the '09 class. Gonna try and do a FTF meet up with some local Feri folks down in Malden tomorrow. See how that goes.

How y'all doing?

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