Author Archives: David Crampton
Shit my kids say
Me: “Are you watching me stand on the porch?”
Acelyn: “I like watching people.”
Me: “You like watching people?”
Acelyn: “I’m a spy.”
Me: “I think part of being a spy is not telling people that you’re a spy.”
Acelyn: “You can tell your parents.”
Breakup
Listen, pizza, I think it’s time we started seeing other people. I mean, I still love you, but you’ve become really bad for me. I just think it’s better this way.
When it rains…
I feel like I’ve just finished migrating my blog off of LiveJournal and onto my WordPress blog. Now I need to find a Flickr substitute.
Yahoo!, I can’t brag about having worked for you any more. It’d be like bragging about when I worked for Comcast. I mean, Verizon? Really?
Contradiction
“There’s a drought of talent in open source projects. We cant get enough talent to contribute.”
“We have no need to change the way we deal with reviewing code, interacting with our peers, or mentoring up-and-comers.”
Same email thread.
This fear is no accident.
The Culture War is not a real thing. There is no army of alt-right Pepes, and there is no army of SJWs.
There are people.
Some people believe that there is finally a chance that their way of life might not be constantly threatened any more. Some people believe that their way of life has suddenly come under threat. Some people are gradients between, or completely outside.
Scared people.
Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is so strong that conversation, rather than shouting matches, is incredibly difficult. It doesn’t even matter where the fear came from any more. We have allowed ourselves to be whipped into a frightened frenzy that rather than hearing what others are saying, we’re repeating self-contradictory talking points that range into objectively nonsensical.
What is happening isn’t noble. None of us are soldiers on the battlefield. None of our clutching of pearls or name-calling or looking down our noses is winning anything. It’s telling others that their fear and dismissal is founded.
Afraid people becoming entrenched in fear.
Fighting fear is exhausting, but important. I want to keep trying.
Net Neutrality… again.
Net neutrality is under fire again. The FCC is reviewing whether Title 1 (before, trust that net neutrality is in the ISPs’ shareholders’ best interests) or Title 2 (current enforceable regulation) is the best way to achieve an open and free internet. This time, the public commentary is pretty hidden, so John Oliver helped out:
Equal access to online information is once again under serious threat. John Oliver encourages internet commenters to voice their displeasure to the FCC by visiting www.gofccyourself.com.
Writing Thoughts
Originally written on 21 April 2017.
I’m avoiding writing fiction. I’m also avoiding working on re-doing the speech bubbles for the beginning of Fight or Flight. The gaming video and the blog and the shutting down of my LiveJournal have had my focus, not to mention the Disney trip and work and blah, blah, blah.
Second time I’ve sat in Fleetwood this weekend, and I haven’t written a word of fiction. Most of Friday was spent working, and the rest was finalizing the new home network.
Today, though, I’ve just been draining my phone’s battery “making sure videos and posts got to social networks.” That’s not another way of saying getting sucked into Facebook. Not at all.
And here I am, phone down, laptop put away, notebook open, and I’m putting down words, but none are fiction. Am I harshing on myself too much? Am I afraid to keep pushing at recovering my love for making stories? Am I just too distracted by shiny things?
That reminds me. Since it doesn’t look like I’ll have a pressing need to be in Chicago coming up, I’ll need to pick a weekend to roam the Detroit area. Holy cow, are a lot of my old people holed up int he suburban Detroit sprawl.
Should I put up in a hotel in downtown D-town, or should I couch surf, or a combination of the two? Guess I’ve got to pick dates first, before I even know who will be available. A three-day weekend, I’m thinking. Either take a day off, or work the Friday with Paul.
I can’t say that I’ll start writing on my little jaunt, either. It’s too long to put off writing until then, and it’ll put a ton of pressure on me to write, and that is kind of the opposite of the point of a vacation. On the other hand, there are a lot of places I’d love to sit and write in Detroit proper.
Shit, I think it’s time to start the Chicago Adam’s Name over and re-write it, now that I know who Susan is, and what kind of conflicts drive her. I may not know enough about real-world Chicago to know enough about my fake Chicago. I think it’s time to pester some Chicagoans I know, so they can school me on the Windy City. Research and world building are the answer, because of course they are.