December 15, 2003

Despite the supremely asstacular performance of Winblows 2000 I managed to get this fairly decent shot of the Baptist church in the center of town (circa 1810) from my telephone-camera-bottle opener into my PC and thence to my website with very little trouble, aside from having to kill one of the cats as an appropriate sacrifice to Gozer and turning myself into an undead servant of evil for the next 4,287 years already.

Do note the artistic cheapital merits of the shot; namely, how the snow on the roof blends seamlessly with the winter-pale sky, making it appear as though the roof has severe structural problems. This counterbalances nicely with the pretty twinkly lights on the tree and the overwhelming presence of the Baptists since the nineteenth century, who have presided over this sinful little village and kept it from the squalor which I, the insurgent ex-urbanite, represent so willfully and well.

As I write now in the midnight depths of a Californian merlot stupor, the snow we have been so generously blanketed with for the second weekend in a row has turned to lovely freezing drizzle which, on the morrow, should make for some postcard-pretty sparkling ice on the tree-twigs photos, and, if all goes well, might also provide a decent surface for the piloting of my zippy remote-control hovercraft. As I am a low-level master of all things technological and rechargeable, the longer-running of its three battery packs is even now sitting in its charger, eagerly sucking up current from the mains in anticipation of a good twenty minutes of wintery hovery goodness on the morrow.

This, in turn, brings me rather forcibly to the contemplation of my misanthropy which, if you've read this far, is no doubt of supreme interest to you. Such ill will--if I can call it that, for it is not so strong--has been much on my mind of late, as it is every year when the sky turns to slate and the ground becomes hard with frosty frozen fortitude. It is in this season that I turn ever further inward, but as I grow older I realize that it is in this season that I give full vent and force to my year-round inclination, which is to remain indoors and away from others as much as possible, and to comment firmly and with conviction upon the failure of most every member of the race to meet my most worthy expections.

This, in short, makes me a bastard with no manners. But have at you for that, because there are still a slight few held in my noble hand that make "the cut," so-called, whose company or correspondence I can maintain despite my arrogant perception of imperfection. This is made doubly notable, or even more so, by my keen awareness of my own wretchedness; no one is so harsh a critic of myself as I.

Not that you would know that, Dear Reader, because like all in this sphere I pretend to some degree of impervious, well-founded conviction, and although I cannot speak for others I can, for myself, claim that I know for certain not one single goddamned thing and, furthermore, that my continual pouring forth upon these virtual pages is a neurotic symptom of utmost insecurity.

Be that as it may: now is the winter of my contentment. Next year, I will enter the time of life that Our Lord saw fit within his own to begin his ministry, a year that ended with Himself banged in the wood and slit up a treat.

With luck, I shall avoid this.

But if! If I shoud turn out, by God's grace and infinitely compassionate cruelty, to be something other than the miserable soul that I am; if! by some queer turn of fate I should become briefly notable; then! it is here on these pixelated pages that those who seek to know of me shall read of my warts and farts and idiocies.

Hoo-ha!

Take that, posterity, and here, have this face-full of mud and this kick in the testes.

Asshead!

And so forth.