bugs

[devi]

Oops. I have killed the internet in my house. Or rather, web access died on Tuesday night, and in an effort to resuscitate it (desperate to submit a review of a play to Daily Info; you've got to write it the night you see the play and have it in by 10am the next day) I seem to have made it even deader. The huge sprawling diagram I drew in pink felt-tip of all the machines and how they interconnect didn't help, but it looks pretty. I am going to have to eat some serious humble pie when wimble comes back from Cuba next week. In the meantime, the best way to get in touch with me is by phone. This week, incidentally, I've got mountains of work done. I wonder why.

I'll be posting the comics out on Monday. It's great that so many of you asked for one. (Last call before I print! - if you missed the original post, it's here.)

But in reply to those who asked why I'm not doing a webcomic, there are a couple of reasons:



1. I am a luddite. It gives me huge satisfaction to have made an object that I can hold in my hand. Not to belittle the efforts of anyone who makes webcomics at all, but to me making something out of paper feels like Doing Something, whereas putting it online feels like Pissing About on the Internet.

2. If it was a webcomic I'd have to put up a page a week, or similar small regular deadlines. I can manage larger, chunkier deadlines, like for example twelve pages quarterly. They make more sense to my head, and even if I was a bit late for one of them it wouldn't matter so much because there would be more Stuff to balance out the lateness. Whereas if I had to make weekly deadlines I know I would inevitably let them slide. Maybe by a few days at first, but then I'd leave it for longer and be embarrassed and know that people were giving up checking the webpage because nothing was happening and I would get all avoidant about it and not want to think about it and thus let it slide still further, and it would become something I would be apologetic about to people at parties, and something that would turn into a little mocking voice in my head giving me the lie whenever I pledged to do anything else, and then eventually it would subside to join the other unfinished or abandoned things (eg Wodehouse Experiment, Penny Dreadfuls etc etc) that lie like jumbled wreckage in the boxroom of my head, rising up to haunt me when I'm feeling insecure, FOREVERMORE. *pant* *pant*

I read a little comic strip by the talented Neill Cameron called Blippy The Space Baby recently. Blippy is an alien baby from the fifth dimension who pops out of nowhere and tells you terrible, nihilistic things while you clutch your head and yell "MAKE IT STOP!". One of the things Blippy says is that personal growth is an illusion; that failings never really go away, we just learn to paper over the cracks. I was talking to Dan about this and we concluded that that's probably true, but that it's not necessarily such a bad thing; that maybe a lot of growth isn't about making your failings and weaknesses disappear, but about recognising them and finding better and better workarounds. Not about struggling with gritted teeth to suppress your feelings that make no sense, but about being brave enough to admit you feel stupid things and then finding ways to avoid situations in which you feel the stupid things. (Or sometimes, though this doesn't apply to my attitude to deadlines, examining the stupid things and realising they're not so stupid after all.)

So, well, that's why.



But. Several cool things I've been meaning to tell you about.

Nearly a year and a half after I abandoned Michael Ende's Momo on the bookcrossing shelf of a cafe in Cambridge, it turns up in Vietnam!

Remember the pebble competition from July? gnimmel was one of the winners. She got a pebble with holes in it from the coast of Clare and a photo of where I found it. Recently I got a small parcel from her. It had a picture of my pebble where she's left it sitting on a beach by the Indian Ocean, and a shell from that same beach. gnimmel rocks.

And I had an email a couple of weeks ago from a guy I was on a mailing list called Cybermind with nearly ten years ago. It was a list about the internet and society; I was on it to research my BA thesis. This guy is an academic in Australia. He googled for me and started his mail with "I don't know if you're the same [realname] I used to know, but..." He's putting together an anthology and, incredibly, wants to publish a chapter of my ten-year-old thesis in it.

Okay, I start a lot of stuff I don't finish. But there's also stuff like this, which I start and forget about, and which makes its own way in the world while I'm not looking.

Comments

[parallelgirl.livejournal.com]

maybe a lot of growth isn't about making your failings and weaknesses disappear, but about recognising them and finding better and better workarounds. Not about struggling with gritted teeth to suppress your feelings that make no sense, but about being brave enough to admit you feel stupid things and then finding ways to avoid situations in which you feel the stupid things.

O, I am so brewing a post on just this very thing. We really must meet up for that beer sometime! I so thought of you when I finally made it over to the Rollrights this week.

FWIW, so many of the things you do are, IMHO, cool in and of themselves, and don't necessarily need to be finished and done and properly established, in order to have value. Like the Wodehouse project- whatever happened to that, it was still bloody cool, and the fact it's fallen by the wayside now in no way detracts from its excellence. :-)

[parallelgirl.livejournal.com]

o, I forgot my italics! You know where they go, though. ;-)

[the-elyan.livejournal.com]

Well, perhaps both you and gnimmel rock. Or pebble. Or something ;-)

Would the Cambridge cafe in question be CB2?

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

It would indeed. CB2 also rocks, or pebbles.

[verlaine.livejournal.com]

maybe a lot of growth isn't about making your failings and weaknesses disappear, but about recognising them and finding better and better workarounds

These are the thoughts of a wise head!

[the-elyan.livejournal.com]

True. I haven't been there for a while, and really should.

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

Thank you for that.

I do hope that it might still be resurrected. All this wading through social research makes me want to do it properly, under more controlled conditions...

[gothwalk.livejournal.com]

Was the Cyberminder JM? You should resub to CM, I think you'd like it these days. It's not insanely high volume.

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

Yup, it's him. And I was thinking I should resub. I've been going through some phone-book-sized spiral-bound printouts I did back in 1998 of the Greatest Hits of CM, for bits to use in the revamped chapter, and I came over all nostalgic.

You don't somehow still have that essay that Caitlin did that I sent to you to tempt you on to the list, do you? "Shells Singing"? Long shot, but it doesn't seem to exist online...

[gothwalk.livejournal.com]

That was quite a number of email addresses ago, so unfortunately, no. I'll see if my google-fu can find anything, though.

[gothwalk.livejournal.com]

My google-fu, and several sekrit tools have all failed me. Unless someone has a private backup of the archives, or has just had the same email address since then, or is Caitlin herself, I think it could be tough to find.

[gothwalk.livejournal.com]

And as for the resub: CYBERMIND-subscribe-request at LISTSERV dot AOL dot COM will get you there.

[mr_magicfingers]

I'd never heard of book crossing. That's an awesome idea, I think I'm going to have to start doing some of that. Thanks for the heads up.

Did you ever get round to writing up your burning man experiences? I"d love to read those. Are you likely to make it down to Planet Angel any time in the next few months? I haven't been since the burn and I'm desperate to go again. November is a certainty.

[mzdt.livejournal.com]

We really must meet up for that beer sometime!

an evening I'd very much like to gatecrash... ;-)

[al-fruitbat.livejournal.com]

Ooh! Momo! I read that years ago, and loved it!
[scampers off to Amazon]

[parallelgirl.livejournal.com]

Sounds like an excellent plan! :-)

[mollydot.livejournal.com]

that maybe a lot of growth isn't about making your failings and weaknesses disappear, but about recognising them and finding better and better workarounds. Not about struggling with gritted teeth to suppress your feelings that make no sense, but about being brave enough to admit you feel stupid things and then finding ways to avoid situations in which you feel the stupid things.

*ponders*
Makes a lot of sense, in some areas at least. (An exception would be phobias and the like, methinks. Avoidance makes the fear grow bigger).

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

Yes! So, meeting up in London's probably the best idea, then?

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

I'd love to go back to Planet Angel. But I try not to have too many Big Nights Out Dancing - once a month seems about right - and my pesky clubbing friends keep filling up the slots with plans to go elsewhere ;)

Perhaps it's time I instigated a plan of my own...

I do still mean to post about BM. It will happen. Eventually. It's nice that you're interested.