11:58 pm? in A small but passable life.

Okay, first of all. The open diary re-launch. Forget it. OD was dying before it was dead and now Bruce is trying to re-animate the corpse. Fuck him.

A metaphor may be called for here. Take a city. A city of hundreds of thousands. A city where everybody either squats or rents. Now, the owner of the entire city tells everyone to get out and somehow physically prevents everyone from being there. Years pass and now he says you can return, but only by paying rent. I’m thinking only the desperate will return. Everyone else will have moved on with their lives.

The “community”, if there ever was one, is gone. Communities are made of people, not places. It’s always been that way. Loose knit shifting swirling groups of people.

Bruce pulled the plug on OD. People went to lame book, easy diary, here, or maybe just said fuck it and went back to a real handwritten private diary, or said to hell with writing and just went on with life without it.

Me? I’ve written a journal off and on since I was in elementary school. It was contained in various notebooks, handwritten. And then came the computer. Remember that TV show about the kid doctor? (Hang on . . . gotta google . . . ) Doogie Howser, M.D.! 1989 to 1993. He kept a diary on his computer. So, as soon as I had my first laptop that’s what I did. I jumped from paper to digital. And then I transcribed old entries from paper to digital.

(Odd coincidence how that series ended the same month the World Wide Web was launched.)

And then somewhere around the turn of the century I stumbled upon OD. I wrote an entry and almost immediately I received a note on that entry. I started reading other diaries and leaving my own notes.

My personal private diary had morphed into something completely different with no known description. It was no longer a diary.

When OD shut down the residents scattered to the four winds. I followed some here.

I do wonder about people I once read. But hey, it’s just like people “in real life” that just fade away, right? Only more of them?

Anyway, enough about resurrecting dead worlds. Time to continue on with this one.

Where was I? Oh yeah, I think Wednesday. I spent the greater part of Wednesday afternoon wandering around Walmart while Mom got her mani-pedi. After I delivered her to Da-Vinci Nails I went back out and ventured across the parking lot on foot to Bed, Bath & Beyond on a quest for Mom a new showerhead. I had a mailer with a picture of it and a coupon for 20% off. I found it and bought it. Mission complete. I headed back over to Walmart.

I found myself in the camping section. I perused the odds and ends. There really was a good variety of useful stuff. I had a gift card that had a balance of $2.76 on it that Daughter had foisted off on me. I used it and $6.15 cash out of pocket to buy fifty feet of black 550 paracord. two small carabiners, and a 16oz. red silicone collapsible cup.

There was a lot of stuff there that I wished I’d had while living in the van. Like a Mr. Buddy heater, a 12 volt fan, and a few other luxury items. But whatever.

Thursday I made it to the pool for a few hours for a lie-about to listen to NPR on the headphones.

Yesterday I spent the day sitting right here in this chair.

Today, if it warms up a bit more, I may return to the pool.

It is now “Two Minutes Until Midnight”.

Life expectancy in the United States has decreased two years in a row.

More people die of drug overdose than car wrecks in the United States.

A sign at the latest women’s march:

“I’d call Trump a cunt, but he lacks depth and warmth!”

Gotta love this country!

Last updated January 27, 2018