(response to message)

I've replied here. The city is your password.

This morning, for about the zillionth time in a row, I wrote about half an entry, realized how pointless and boring and stupid it was, then deleted it.

So I am writing, I'm just not writing anything that provides any interest whatsoever. Not even to myself.

I am (holding two fingers about an inch apart) this close to imploding. To becoming a singularity from which nothing can escape.

This 'blog is supposed to be an outlet for me, but it's not supposed to be this hard to squeeze my thoughts out. Reminds me of an old poem.

Here I sit, broken hearted. Tried to shit, but only farted.

Well I'm told that I have to write something.

I don't feel like it, but I will comply. I'll write about Saturday night.

Yippee.

Rich O's was almost empty for most of the night. NotGeorge and I sat in the living room area and bullshitted for a while.

I had two pints of NABC Noble Smoker.

At one point some stupid people came and sat with us so I got irritated.

Right when they were getting ready to close up my friend Eric called - he was in the parking lot. Since Rich O's was closing Eric and I went to the bar next door and shot some pool for a while.

There is...Nothing.

Blackness and silence surround him, seep into him.

He wonders how long it has been. A minute? A day? A million years?

Even the familiar thump thump of his heart has stopped. He ponders this, and reaches his hand to his chest, but he finds that he has no hand, and that he has no chest.

He simply exists, seeing, hearing, feeling nothing.

He waits for something to happen, and wonders if he is dead.

Last night I should have stayed home.

But I didn't.

I should have left when I saw how crowded Rich O's was.

But I didn't.

I should have kept my big mouth shut.

But I didn't.

I definitely shouldn't have had that De Dolle Oerbier.

But I did.

So the whole night was pretty much a waste of time. My time as well as the time of those unfortunate to have to listen to me.

My hidden agenda, as near as I can figure it (because it's hidden even from me) is to completely alienate everyone so they'll STOP ASKING ME THE SAME FUCKING QUESTION OVER AND OVER.

The answer is NO.

But I ramble.

I drank my usual NABC Noble Smoker then, for some reason that I cannot fathom, I had the aforementioned De Dolle Oerbier.

I've had this before and I didn't like it. I still don't like it.

It doesn't like me either.

After I left Rich O's I went to listen to some karaoke but they were closing up so I just helped my uncle pack his things up in his trailer.

Then I came home and shot some pool.

Just fixed a stupid bug where a search for the category general matched all entries because the 'blog name is general.

That was the highlight of my day.

For the second day in a row I have nothing to say.

I could just vomit some random bullshit, but even that seems like too much effort.

I feel like my life's entered the Summer rerun season, and with every thought I have, as Yogi Berra so famously said, "It's deja vu all over again."

So, dear readers, I invite you to take this opportunity to catch up on things you may have missed before. The entries that have received the most feedback are listed over to the side. I don't agree with all of these choices, but there they are anyway.

Alternatively, you could just start at the beginning and make youself feel better by reading about how boring and/or fucked up I am.

This dry spell, like all of my others, will end at some point. I've become much too reliant on these writings to simply stop. I've never understood how people can just stop, as so many of my favorites have done lately.

Perhaps they're out fixing problems instead of simply complaining about them. If that's the case, I certainly wish them all the luck in the world.

For me, I don't think that any solutions exist. Other than time, that is.

I'm having some trouble with 'bots again.

This time, however, it's my fault.

Basically, the 'bots are indexing the pages that contain dynamic 'blog entries.

For example, Google might index my index2.shtml page and note that it contains the word "Freeze" - but once I type a few more entries, the one about Polly's Freeze is no longer displayed on index2.shtml because it's not one of the ten newest entries anymore.

This means that somebody can Google the words "double poo-poo" and get led to my main page, but when they get there those words are nowhere on that page. That's just too much disappointment for me to want to take responsibility for. I mean, when you want to read about double poo-poo you just shouldn't have to wait.

What I need to do is have the 'bots follow the links on pages like index2.shtml, but not index those pages themselves.

That way the links to the single entries, like this one, are followed, and only those (static) single-entry pages are indexed.

So here's what I've done:

1. I put this line into the code for my non-static pages:

This tells the 'bots that honor this type of line to follow any links found on the page, but not to index the page itself.

2. I put this line on all of my single-entry pages:

This does the exact opposite - it tells the 'bots that it's okay to index the page but not to follow any further links. These pages are a dead-end, in other words.

Of course these modifications only work if the 'bots are well-behaved. The ones that aren't I try to take care of with my robots.txt and .htaccess files as described in this old entry.

The whole thing would make Rube Goldberg proud.

I really need to simplify my 'blog configurations when I do my next site redesign. Until then I'll probably just do some minor tweaks like the one I made tonight.

(A follow-up to this entry from last week.)

This entry will be a lot shorter than I originally planned. I must have written 10,000 words over the last week. Most of them are now obsolete, and many more I wrote without ever intending to publish them. I'm just going to provide some excerpts.

-----------------------------------------------------------

Wow. Just...wow.

That may be it, folks. It may not get any more eloquent than that.

Sometime during the next several days, I'm not sure exactly when but sometime this week, she is coming back to visit.

...

Something will happen. It may last just a second. She may walk into the bar, spit in my face, and walk out. She may walk in and then ignore me. She may be the same sweet and innocent person she's always been. It doesn't matter, because regardless of what happens next, there will be that single moment, when I see her for the first time since all this shit started - there will be at least that single moment when everything is possible. When every terrible possibility and every wonderful possibility and every imaginable and unimaginable possibility in between come together...

Since this all started, I've been groping about in the dark. Sometime during the next few days that will change.

Sometime, during the next few days, I'll find either a light switch or an exit.

Sometime, during the next few days, there will be light.

...

I'm excited because when I see her and don't completely freak out or piss myself or have a heart attack or drop to one knee, that's when I'll know with certainty that I've managed to pull myself out of this Black Pit Of Despair And Fucking Woe Is Me Life Is So Unfair that I fell into when she left.

I want to see her, absolutely. I miss my friend dearly. But - and this is vastly more important - I want to be a person again. To myself and to everyone else I want to be a person instead of a collection of symptoms.

...

My heart is just trying to do what it thinks is right. It's trying to prepare itself. It's just jumping the gun a little, and if it gets all worked up and sad and angry over not seeing her, it will find itself woefully unprepared for the still-likely event that I do get to see her.

I want to document this entire week. It's important. Perhaps the most important few days of my life. If I don't succeed in making myself whole this week, well, I don't have a plan B. If I don't resolve things this week, I may never do it. I may spend the rest of my life not just alone, but feeling alone. I may spend the rest of my life missing something that I never wanted in the first place.

...

I'm actually not nervous at all. That's weird.

I am at a complete loss for words.

She's so fucking beautiful.

I did not freak out. I did not piss myself, or have a heart attack. I did not drop to one knee.

No, it was much worse than that.

Well that was an exciting day of disappointment piled upon bullshit.

Seems just like old times.

I started this period hoping, expecting really, to have a lot of my questions answered.

Didn't work out that way.

Oh, I got the one big question answered, and that answer was very surprising to me, but I'm still wondering about some other things.

Well I'm sure she'll be gone by the time I get off work.

-----------------------------------------------------------

So, that's it. The end of an era.

Didn't get the closure I was hoping for. Kind of hard to get closure when there was never an opening I guess.

This will be the last entry on this subject. I have a promise to keep.

I read a lot of 'blogs.

There are maybe three dozen that I check daily, and another ten or so that I check at least once a week.

One of the things I've learned from these readings is that everyone and I mean everyone has problems.

A lot of people put up with a lot worse shit than I do. Lots of these people would kill to trade problems with me.

It's not the number or magnitude of my problems that makes me special.

There are also some fantastic writers out there. I often find myself sitting mouth agape at how well some people can express their thoughts and feelings.

So it's certainly not the writing that makes me special.

Several of the stories I read are funny as hell. Way funnier than anything I could ever write.

Definitely not the humor that makes me special.

What does make me special is that, of all of the people I read about, I am by far the stupidest.

I imagine that somewhere out there, perhaps on some remote island, perhaps somewhere in the vastness of outer space, there is a civilization of stupid people. People who value stupidity above all else.

I need to find this civilization.

They would worship me like a god.