starbreaker.org NOW: November 2024

the starbreaker.org /now page, archived as a web zine in November 2024

The Short Version

This has been a wild month, especially if you live in the USA and have been paying attention to electoral politics. I’ve already said most of what I care to say about the elections. I will simply add that all I want for Christmas are a few dozen “faithless electors”.

In the meantime, I am...

This Month’s Grimoire Entries

TANELORN (Strike the Balance)
lyrics for a fictional single by Crowley’s Thoth for use in my fiction
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(filed under writing, poetasting, lyrics, heavy metal 🤘, sci-fi, and worldbuilding)
Are the Electors Paying Attention?
Is it foolish to hope that the Electoral College might ignore the popular vote?
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(filed under politics and news)
How to Ruin Your Franchise
“How to Train Your Dragon” needs a remaster, not a live-action remake.
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(filed under entertainment, movies, and video)
Your Body, Your Choice, Forever
Even an asshole like Nick Fuentes might sometimes manage to say something useful.
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(filed under recommended, rants, politics, Women’s Liberation, and Men’s Liberation)
The Sword: “Locomotive Breath”
This cover’s a pleasant surprise from a band I thought broken up.
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(filed under entertainment, music, and video)
Something Short...
...for a change. Thank or blame FlamedFury.
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(filed under shitposts)
Wearing Bigotry On One’s Sleeve
I won’t stop believing that hating people for their race, religion, nationality, sex, gender, sexual orientation, etc. is fundamentally un-American. Except Nazis. Nazis can fuck right off.
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(filed under rants, personal, politics, Women’s Liberation, Men’s Liberation, and trans rights)
Fortress of Solitude
I’m not Superman, or even Doc Savage, but I still need one of my own.
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(filed under recommended, personal, introversion, and autism)
Self-Care or Self-Indulgence?
Buying posters and tinkering with Debian GNU/Linux could be either.
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(filed under personal and UNIX®)
Blogging Collectives
Leon Paternoster is curious as to why there aren’t more of these.
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(filed under webcraft and parasocial media)
A Shield of Silence
There must be something I can do to help if we must endure a second Trump administration.
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(filed under personal, rants, politics, and resistance)
Not This Asshole Again
just what we need, a second term as President for America's bigoted uncle
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(filed under politics and rants)
I Voted (2024)
Both parties are bad. One party is worse. I vote accordingly.
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(filed under personal, politics, and rants)
Impact
Brace yourselves. This could get heavy.
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(filed under personal, memories, writing, books, and indiewebcarnival)
Freeing Time From Clocks
Can some billionaire please bribe Congresscritters to abolish Daylight Savings Time?
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(filed under politics and rants)
RE: Finding the Authentic Web
If you want to find the authentic web, you’ve got to think independently.
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(filed under technology, webcraft, and rants)

Posts I Read This Month

Personal Notes

I’m still getting used to the knowledge that I’ve been married to Catherine Gatt for twenty years. I know better than to ask where the time went. Nevertheless, I don’t feel like an aging man who’s spent two decades at his wife’s side. Nevertheless, this song from 2015 by The Great Discord comes to mind.

“The Aging Man” by The Great Discord (official video)
“The Aging Man” by The Great Discord (official video)

If somebody were to ask me how I stayed married to the same woman so long, my answer is that she isn’t the same woman. She’s a slightly different woman every day, but the changes are so subtle that they only become apparent over years. Thus, I get all the variety I can handle without straying.

Nevertheless, she is fundamentally the same. When I see her, I still see the ghost of the girl she had been when we first met, and I still hear the echo of who she had been when she speaks to me. Her caress still thrills me as it did all those years ago. I still crave the warmth of her body beside mine when I lay down to sleep, and the safety of her white arms around me as she plays the big spoon.

Neither of us feel much older than we had been when we met. Though Catherine has often pointed out that I was old long before my time; cynicism is a hell of a drug, rather like cocaine, but legal and much cheaper.

Adventures in Consumerism

a photo of my desk
a photo of my desk with a 4-way KVM switch, my work and personal laptops in stands, and new posters on the wall

I’ve got my “day job desk” in my study set up the way I like it, with my work computers and party computers sharing the same monitor, keyboard, and mouse via a KVM switch. I’m still no working on my party computers or partying on my work computers; the latter use VPNs and are thus somewhat isolated from the rest of my home network. However, my day job only lets employees choose between Dell and HP laptops, and both have lousy keyboards compared to my Unicomp New Model M. And it’s nice to have even one piece of computing equipment that was made in the USA, even if it’s just the keyboard.

If anybody’s curious, the posters are by Unlovely Frankenstein, and all inspired by the Blue Öyster Cult. The photos off to the right are pictures of my wife. They’re a reminder of why I put up with bullshit at my day job. And, yes, I have an Art Nouveau-themed Tarot deck.

Movies

I was able to take Catherine to see Wicked on opening weekend. Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande proved worthy successors to Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth from the original Broadway cast, whom Catherine and I had gotten to see back in 2004 just before we got married. Hopefully Wicked, Part 2 improves upon the second act of the original musical, which was I thought was fairly weak with only two standout songs: “As Long As You’re Mine” and “No Good Deed”. And, yes, I know the first is a love song. You never heard the one about the chronically pissed-off metalhead who also likes showtunes?

poster for <cite>Wicked</cite> (2024)
poster for Wicked (2024)

We also got to see Godzilla Minus One on a big screen again. We had seen it in 2023, but Toho did another theatrical run for the 70th anniversary of the original 1954 Godzilla directed by Ishirō Honda. Toho still hasn’t provided an English dub, but Catherine and I were fine with the subtitles, and even without subtitles or fluency in Japanese I think the movie’s story and themes might still be clear. And Godzilla was never subtle. There goes Tokyo, again.

Japanese poster for Godzilla Minus One
Japanese poster for Godzilla Minus One

Web Craft

November was supposed to be the month that I finished redesigning my website. I had even taken a whole week off from work for the Thanksgiving holiday (since the company was giving everybody three days off anyway). I made a shitload of progress. I’ve updated the directory structure. I’ve got a bunch of new slash pages. The site even builds at least 30 seconds faster (which will become more important as I add more material). But tagging over 380 blog posts to create topic indexes proved to be a lot more time-intensive than I had expected. And I still haven’t gotten around to breaking up my fiction into per-chapter pages as I had wanted to do.

a screenshot of the new version of my website
a screenshot of the new version of my website

Also, when I launch the new version, you’re going to end up with a metric shitload of unread posts in your RSS feed that you’ve actually read because the permalinks weren’t so perma. I know cool URLs never change, but I was never cool.

Also, I’m trying something different with this /now page. I’m making it a monthly webzine, mirrored in my blog/grimoire so that I can easily list previous issues. On the new version of starbreaker.org, each issue of the /now page will list the month’s grimoire entries and a postroll for the month. It might even serve as the basis for a monthly $5/year newsletter, too, for people who aren’t into web feeds. We’ll see.

Katzen Katzen Katz...

Of course, I had also tried to do all of this while sitting in the living room with my wife, so that I could be with her. There was just one little problem. If by little one means a problem that weighs a little over twelve pounds and purrs like a motorcycle. You see, there’s room on my lap for a laptop computer, or a lap cat, but not both.

It would be cruel to put my laptop on top of Smudge when he settles into my lap, purrs, and occasionally tilts his head back to look at me if he isn’t currently facing me. He’s a good cat, though often kneady, and he still hasn’t accepted the necessity of periodic veterinarian visits. From the moment I get him into his carrier to the minute I bring him back inside, it’s nothing but “meow meow meow”. He’s a querulous coeurl, Smudge is. Not that my other cat Purrseus is much better; he’s a big pussy. But they’re both in good health for their respective ages (13 and 7) and have all their vaccinations.

Reading

As a result, I read quite a bit while on vacation. Got through David Simon’s Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets. You might have seen the TV series adapted from the book. Or you might have seen the HBO series that Simon wrote afterward, The Wire. But this is what I call true crime.

I’m still sitting on Catherynne Valente’s Space Oddity, which dropped on 24 September, mainly because I never finished my reread of Space Opera. I will probably get on that soon. Then again, I never finished Michael Moorcock’s The Citadel of Forgotten Myths, and I’ve had that in the crapper all year.

Gaming

I also played a lot of Dragon Quest. Mainly the HD 2D remake of Dragon Quest III. But I’ve also got the director’s cut of Dragon Quest XI. It’s a break from Final Fantasy and Shin Megami Tensei, something different, more colorful and cheerful where the dark moments aren’t completely fucking bleak.

À bientôt

Though the month had been mostly mild, the cold finally came. A few last roses were opening on Thanksgiving, but they came too late. 

November's last roses
defiant scarlet blooms stilled
by overdue frost

Now winter is finally here, and there will be no more roses until the spring. But you’ll hear more from me sooner than that, like at the end of December. Even if I haven’t finished rebuilding this site by then despite having two weeks off around Xmas and New Years.

In the meantime, stay safe, and keep Yule heathen! There is, after all, a war on Christmas — and I’m doing my part.

I’m humbuggin’ all the way, and if the ghosts that bedeviled Ebenezer Scrooge show up at my house I know exactly who I’m gonna call: The same guys I called last year. Just dial 1-800-XORCISM; they’re ready to believe you!