The War on Xmas is over.

I was accused in comments on the last entry of posting the worst kind of flame-mongering post that gives blogs a bad name. And the poster who shall not be named had a valid point. I will never hear the end of admitting that, more than likely. But to get this blog away from such comic book guy (“there is no emoticon for what I am feeling”) type posts this will be a simple, belated holiday wishes post. Hoping everyone who is reading this had a good whatever holiday it is their particular faith or ethnic group decided to commercialize.

I know I did. I was surrounded for the most part by really good friends and family and this was the first holiday season sam really got into it.

Putting on my geek hat for a moment.

Going to take a break from my busy work week and my chrismhanukawanulevus preparations and shut down a little misinformation floating around the world geek web this week. It seems ./ picked up on a story from Entertainment Weekly that said Joss Whedon is killing the Firefly universe. For those of you who don’t know what Firefly is you can stop reading now. The rest of this is boring.

I ignored this story (as it seemed contradictory to what Joss had said in previous interviews) until a friend of a friend posted it as gospel on his blog. Loads of people have been commenting on the interwebs about how this is true and ‘how could Joss do this’ and ‘oh I saw it coming’ etc. etc.

So for those of you concerned about this ‘verse and its fate I recommend you go read this thread on whedonesque. which has a post from the man himself.

I will also leave you with a quote from Joss in the Toronto Star:

“I’m never satisfied,â€? Whedon confesses. “I do feel some closure. But closure doesn’t mean closing the book, on those characters, on those actors, on that universe. I always want more. I am a rabid fan. And so, while I’m happy to lay down my arms for a while, if somebody said, `Pick ‘em up, let’s do more!’ I wouldn’t hesitate.â€?

Now back to your regularly scheduled inactive blog.

PS: Nick, if you are going to post a *MAJOR* spoiler in a blog entry that comes across RSS please invistext it or flag it or something. There are those of us who are pretty big Firefly fans who for whatever reason hadn’t seen Serenity yet. You killed a big part of the movie for them (me).

Internal vs. External.

Came to a realization the last few days that probably won’t shock some of you. I used to be perceived, and actually used to be, more of an extrovert than I am. I am actually becoming quite the introvert. This transformation has been happening over the last few years I think but it is more pronounced to me lately. I can’t count how many social functions, parties, bar crawls, etc. that I have declined over the last few months. This is not necessarily me becoming more anti-social as I have a handful of people that I enjoy hanging out with. I still talk enthusiastically with these people. I will still attend social functions with them, but the number of people can be counted on one, maybe one and a half hands.

The interesting thing about this was at the end of my marriage (which I have avoided talking about here, but it was a major change in my life and deserves at least a little screen time here) I was hanging out with a lot of people at that time. Going out to clubs, parties, being social. It felt empty to me. Maybe at one point I needed that. But I don’t seem to anymore. For example the Sage Francis/Sole show was awesome. But I wasn’t there to hang out with the crowd, I was there to hear the music and hang out with the people I always hang out with. The four people I would probably be hanging out with if there were no show that night. I find myself hanging out alone, or with one or two other people a lot these days. I find it to be the most rewarding times. I am not to the point of having panic attacks when I am in crowds but I do find myself wanting to leave the crowded place. Having one or two people over, eating, drinking, shooting the shit, making music, or doing whatever it is that person and I usually do, that is what I find myself interested in these days.

How does this get a whole (much too long) post all to itself? Is this an interesting enough subject to carry a post? Probably not to you. But it is an interesting enough change for me that I have decided to expound on it.

catching up.

It has been an amazing and exhausting couple of weeks since i have posted here. Much too much has happened to me to possibly post here. barring a few unfortunate things happening there have been some rather unexpected and rather great things going on in my life lately. i was contemplating this as i ate probably the best bread I have ever eaten with really decent honey. I forget how much I love the winter and while it is busy and insane at times there are also really special magical moments that seem to only happen when the air is crisp. I think this winter has been more magical for me than past ones.

comments.

Because of some comment spam and some generally weird comments from some people I don’t know I have turned on comments moderation. I hate to do that because it creates more work for me and probably stifles communication. Hopefully it is not necessary and the offenses will slow down. Back to your regularly scheduled blog.

blogging less again.

I find that I am blogging less again. But I don’t know that this is a return the the blogging drought of 2005. I think I find I write less when I am happy. Lately I have actually been quite happy. One reason I don’t blog about happiness is because I don’t want to over analyze it. If I do it becomes a balancing act to avoid finding holes in the happiness or to avoid some cynical explanation for it. I prefer to leave happiness alone. Not write about it, not tell too many people about it. Maybe this makes me a paranoid skeptic who believes all happiness is fleeting.

This doesn’t keep me from enjoying the moments though. The last few days have been happy ones for me. For example this morning, despite wasting time for a paranoid door check (I always have some nag in the mornings that makes me go back. I should just allow for it) and running late, maybe it was my already peaceful state, maybe it was the wind blowing the just past fall peak leaves around, or the train siren in the distance or the acid house pumping from my ipod. Not sure what it was but the running late, the moron who had parked almost all the way in the sidewalk causing me to almost have to jump into traffic, the abnormally hot weather, none of this bothered me. And I could write three more paragraphs why but I am going to leave it alone now.

Afternoons off…

Are weird for me. For example I am taking the rest of this afternoon off but here I am still in the office. Of course I am blogging this, but it is interesting to see how I define myself through work sometimes. Add to this I have filled my afternoon off with errands and tasks and it is interesting stuff. Hopefully here’s to slacking just a little, and maybe finishing watching the 3 movies I have in my to be watched pile. Maybe also getting some quality blogging time in.

Working man’s not-blues.

So yesterday because of some important projects going on at work I put in an obscenely long day. Most people would be crying about this. “Oh boo-hoo it was long” or “Oh boo-hoo I am on salary so no overtime”. But I didn’t. I am a bit of a workholic. I get energy from workohol. Now granted at some point during the day the exhaustion hit me like a ton of bricks. But there is something satisfying about working hard, and working a full day. A sense of pride, a sense of accomplishment, not sure what it is. I am also glad to have a job where I can actually work, plug away, and accomplish something. I have been doing that in the short month I have been here. It is the reason I really haven’t been writing as much, but that seems to finally be looking up too.

A return to snobbery?

So hopefully some of the cultural snobbery and pretention that made the old blog great will seep its way back into this one. but you can’t force it. That kind of thing comes naturally.

One pretention I have decided to do away with is the all lower case letters thing. There was actually a philosphy behind it (beyond laziness) which I will not get into here. Shedding some pretentions will hopefully give me room for many more. It’s kind of a snob zen I think.

my little musical genius.

since it has been a while since i have blogged it has been a while since any of you wonderful people have seen sam pics. so here are a few from a recent time when she wanted to play with some of the musical equipment i had in my apartment. she was surprisingly gentle with it and just really really cute. for the rest of them you can visit my flickr page (username the erratic ninja).