The bad part is that works sucks. SUCKS. It’s the worse job I’ve had by a good long ways. I shouldn’t complain, because I knew what I was getting myself into – there’s only so good a contracting job at a defense company can be. One might find, in rare cases, a cool job at a defense company, but not as a contractor, I think.

What I tell myself, over and over, is that this is for a higher purpose. We needed cash, badly. In fact, my personal situation paralleled the American economy pretty nicely. Monica and I were the automakers with only a short while left before bankruptcy kicked in. The difference is that I got a job, and the automakers will get a government handout, or they’ll fold. The other difference is that if Monica and I went bankrupt nobody would give a shit.

Anyway, I’m here for a reason. And outside of work things are pretty cool – I rented a room from a lady whose friendly and kind and who spends most of her time out of the house. I can watch all the Celtics games on TV, in the time that I don’t have after going to the gym (which is well-equipped, though not the sunlit heaven that is Lifetime Fitness.)

And that’s the chief problem. The only way this works is if I use the circumstances to make progress in ways that I need to make progress. I’m writing every day, in an effort to win a contest against my loathsome Clarion colleagues, about which more later. I had other goals – goals for furthering my technical abilities even as they languish in this idiotic contracting gig – but there’s just no time. By the time I come home, cook, and eat, I’ve got two hours, tops, before bed. I can pick one thing. There’s no room for error.

Which is why LSH has suffered. I’m going to try mightily to pick up the pace – perhaps my collaborators can help with this – but the reality is that a post a day ain’t happening, and what posts there are will probably be heavily steeped in cat-blog flavor. This will doubtless be good news for some, so maybe that’s a silver lining of sorts. If you want to hear about my riveting life and times, well, do I have news for you, son.

Let’s step back a minute and describe what’s happened since June: I moved out of LA, went to Clarion, drove from Seattle to MN, found an apartment in MN, flew to LA with my dad and moved our shit back to MN, moved in, tried to get a job doing anything creative, failed, went to NYC, found a job in NH, flew to Mpls, drove to NH with Monica, found a temporary place, went to work, found a permanent place for the next year.  Monica, bless her little heart, is handling that move, while I’m here at work, where I shouldn’t be updating LSH but am anyway, and they can fire me if they don’t like it.  At least right now they can, because I’m really frustrated.

Anyway.  A couple months ago I posted something about how I was coming home, and wanted to reconnect with you all, and then did an absolutely horseshit job of reconnecting with you all, which makes me feel like a big hypocrite.  The previous paragraph is meant to mitigate this just a little bit: things have been fucking insane since June, even more insane than that paragraph indicates, because a lot of important stuff was left out because I don’t tell you guys EVERYTHING.  But even so, I could have done better, and should have, and now I’m in NH and it’s all on hold again.

So I apologize.  I apologize, particularly, to Dean and Wendy and Elly and Chad, even though the last three certainly don’t read the blog, and I’m not sure Dean does anymore, either.  I apologize to the rest of you, to whom I owe so much, and who deserve better than this watered down friendship that’s been passing for good enough for so long now.

I have not forgotten the post, and re-post, of Seth Godin’s idea about taking two hours a day to become the person you want to be.  I’ve been thinking about that A LOT since arriving here in NH and taking this job, which has brought things to the fore that I’d forgotten about.  I worked throughout USC, but it’s been awhile since I’ve had a _real_ job, one where they care about ‘acting professional’ and showing up at a certain time and the like.  In a lot of ways I feel like I’m saying hello to Shane circa-1997, when I worked at Lockheed, and wrestled with these notions the first time.

Anyway, I know I keep promising I’ll talk about this more, and I’ll have to promise that again because even though I’m heartily annoyed I don’t feel capable of indulging a full-on LSH self-examination.  But things will settle down in the next couple of days, as I move into my new place (complete with roomate!) and the nature of my life in NH solidifies.

Oh yeah, one other thing: everyone, for christ’s sake, get on FriendFeed.  Just do it.  It’s a finer-grained way of being online social, and you’ll be doing it within the next 18 months, so you might as well be ahead of the curve and do it now.  My username is shanusmagnus.

I don’t get this.  How are Bakker’s “rich, wondrous” life experiences untrue?  

No one else has a brain with your unique neuroprint, nor have they had the exact same experiences as you, so what exactly is the profound difference between “free will” (whatever that means) and the complex interaction between the chemicals in your head and your experiences?  And why are so many people bothered by this?

I find myself surfing a wave of strange feeling about this, since I haven’t actually read any of his books, although I own a few, and intend, have intended for years, to Get Around To It. I have, however, read some of his essays, and found them funny and compelling. This one, which is a beautiful rumination on the English language, its written form, and the politics and right usage thereof, called out powerfully to my regimented and language-lawyer nature; and perhaps for this reason I found this rebuttal petty and territorial, though others celebrated it as some kind of multi-cultural triumph. But whatever you think of his pretensions as a proscriptive linguist, he was obviously a smart guy; some respectable people have used the word genius, and when respectable people say that it should give one pause.

Anyway, McSweeny’s, the magazine published by Dave Eggers and others, is running a sort of memorium page here. People, including a couple of authors you might know, post remembrances of the man. I read a few; they are touching. And more than touching, they’re thought provoking. Now I feel curiously inspired to succeed in the way that he so grandly succeeded, not just in the literary realm but as a person.

I realize that those remembering the dead form a skewed sample, and that they will say things that people who are NOT moved to write on the McSweeny’s wall would not say; and that the act of writing imposes its own selection on theme and content.

Even so, I couldn’t say some of these things about a lot of people I know and like, no matter how much I’d want to. Everyone you like is not kind, even if you’d want them to be, or generous, or witty. So I’m guessing that DFW really was pretty special as a person, and not just a writer, and it makes me want to be special, too. This is a weird way to feel, under the circumstances: inspired by this guy’s death. Or by its fallout.

Anyway, take a look. Worth your time.