Watering: Food Backlog, Comments, Invitations

Watering entries are personal diaries, alluding to this post's conclusion. They are a potpourri of recent thoughts and experiences (one might even call them a blog, if one were to be so common), published when I have no other projects to work on, in order to ensure I've written something for the day.

Too much to cover. I'd like to get the pictures in first.

One egg over a toasted slice of peanut butter bread. The way the light of my lamp hits my plate in this picture makes it the closest I've come to food porn or at least reminiscent of a Deus Ex: Human Revolution screenshot.

Far less tantalizing, canned chicken with mayonnaise and pickles over toasted peanut butter bread. Tasted nicer and more in-focus than it looks.

This morning's breakfast. Two Gordon Ramsay eggs (sour cream gone off) over toasted peanut butter bread.

The bread. See it a lot on r/keto and finally made it. I believe I screwed up the preparation by mixing all the ingredients at once until it simply became a slightly eggier peanut butter, which was so adhesive that I ended up eating too much off of my fingers while trying to get it in the pan. Possibly made myself sick ingesting so much raw egg, possibly placebo. Should mix the peanut butter and eggs until liquid, not further to thickening, then add rest. Should look thin and with sediments. I am not a sedimental man, but it might have helped in this case.

It rose more than I expected it to, but not enough to function for sandwiches. Good as a little plate for servings like this. Nice taste and texture contrast. Got a baker's dozen slices from it, could have narrowed them even further.

Last Player Character column got hotter than I could have imagined on N4G, which was a double-edged sword. It drew some comments and one was pretty negative, although the person who wrote it clearly didn't read the article carefully or fully. I am pleased with how I responded. Remember: priority in running my site is accessibility. I must pride myself on taking criticism, even kowtowing to it. My ego wasn't too bruised. Then linked the comments to the chat chums; Ben's criticism of the column, while mostly fair and polite, was too difficult to swallow.

Couple of nights ago, dreamed of Shiva. Very odd, that. I remembered her exactly as she looked at fourteen. Perfectly beautiful, in a bright blue shirt. Dreamed that I had tried to blackmail or threaten her, then was trying to avoid her in the streets of Forest Hills, walking with Serj.

Found her on Facebook. Friends with Serj. Amazingly, I always knew her last name - I was never certain. She's married now, possibly a mother.

Perhaps I dreamed of her because it was 4/20, and my earliest memory of the day was having Serj tell me that she had been saying "Love you plenty, happy 4/20" to people. I quoted that on Sans Pants. I've never forgotten it. Don't know. Tangential.

Two nights ago sucked badly. Then the love affair which dare not speak its name became more engrossing with the introduction of sexual pictures sent to my phone; you know, like what happens in the movies. Then it sucked amazingly.

Reviewing the pictures this morning, they were adjacent to old pictures of Verse. Trying to find her screen name, I made the minatory mistake of venturing into my AIM logs. Some conversations later, I found myself reading through always painfully pleasant chats I had with Mary. My memory of us barely speaking in 2004 is wrong. We spoke, then and afterwards, and were close.

Two things:

Autumn 2005.

Mary: Dude

Mary: Bella came out

Jason: Just now?

Mary: Well, I dunno when. Clark told me

Jason: I see.

Mary: HAHAHA, I SO KNEW IT

Jason: Fucking Charles made me gay too.

Mary: OH MAN

Mary: hahahaha

Mary: you're funny

Jason: It was a very easy joke.

Mary: I know, but you executed it with such panache

That was a good joke. I don't know if I knew it at the time and just played miserable to be distant or if I've fallen so far by now that my standards for myself have lowered. I had to stop reading there. I feel as though I've let so much slip through my fingers.

To whit:

Spring 2004.

Mary: Hey, you doing anything tonight?

Mary: Robin and Charles and Bella and Lenny and I are all going out to party. Wanna come?

Jason: No.

Mary: Ya sure?

Jason: Very.

Mary: Dammit, Jason!

Mary: You would totally have fun

Mary: Probablly

Jason: First: I wouldn't. Second: I already have a date for tonight.

Mary: Oooooh...

Mary: Nice.

Mary: Have fun, okay? I'm signing off. Bye.

I notice myself acting very cold to her in these conversations. Could be lover's spurn. Could be depression. Could be confidence. I would never act like that to someone now, and I wonder if that's a good thing. I do sound cool, but only by her grace was I tolerated.

As for the invitation, I'd completely forgotten that. I remember Oswald asking me, noncommittally, once if I'd be interested in going to a party. That's mostly all I think of when I reference turning down invitations back then. Apparently, I did better than that. There was no date, obviously. I got to fard myself in fantasy instead of partaking in an experience which could have been pivotal. I wonder what would have happened if I'd gone. If I'd still know them now. If it would have gotten me closer to Allison.

When I still pine for Allison, I wonder what I could have done to break through to her back then. Obviously, there's the old stalwarts of not being fat and being more outgoing. This is something concrete. I could have tried to mingle, to party. I could have gotten invited more often.

But it's a lie to say I still don't feel a certain pride that I didn't. Pride, along with a pain of missed opportunities and forsaken memories that almost has me in tears.

Perhaps it was a lie to say I am not sedimental.

Watering: Legendary, Chicken and Spinach

Watering entries are personal diaries, alluding to this post's conclusion. They are a potpourri of recent thoughts and experiences (one might even call them a blog, if one were to be so common), published when I have no other projects to work on, in order to ensure I've written something for the day.

Damn, I'd meant to write this all damn day and now it's tomorrow.

First off: The book was finally closed on Annie. An arduous Band-Aid to pull, but the pain is lessening fairly quickly. Was quivering following our final, typically vitriolic conversation. All I can do is hope that I hurt her. My desperate to do so was probably obvious. She was passive aggressively vindictive and all I can do now is hope that the pain of those last two conversations eventually dulls to the point that I can masturbate to her again without the sadness becoming prohibitive.

I immediately started crushing on Sarah even harder, when it was done. That's the cycle. Enormous suffering transposed into infatuation, yielding enormous suffering, and so on. What must it be like to live unhindered by women? I remember wishing for saltpeter when I was young and desperately making sense of my sex drive. Now I wish I could keep my sex drive compartmentalized by pornography and stop looking for love.

I want my heart castrated.

Sarah is so charmingly gregarious and approachably sexy. I feel uncharacteristically capable of winning her affections if I could just find the opportunity.

About that. I think I'm - well, let's not say confident. Let's say my mind is projecting itself into the future. I am thinking from that perspective. No longer staring at the light at the end of the tunnel of weight loss. I am mentally inhabiting the light, ahead of my body. I began at 330. I aim at 180. I am nearly 230. I am two-thirds there.

Maybe that is it. Or, maybe the news that I've slipped under Paul is what did it. I knew I was no longer the fattest person I know, on account of Jeremy. Now, I'm no longer the fattest person I've met. And he's a couple of inches shorter. That makes the loss real. That makes it transcend fantasy. It is the change of one's number on the roster that is the bona fides of progress.

Two eggs and a tablespoon of heavy cream. No flip, which allowed a nicely formed circumference. The bottom did not burn before the top had cooked. No rawness.

Becoming standard. I am no longer embarrassed by the spinach's luster, having had it affirmed by friends in prior images. This is a good dinner. The salad could go.

Watering: Pressures, Scene of the Crime

Watering entries are personal diaries, alluding to this post's conclusion. They are a potpourri of recent thoughts and experiences (one might even call them a blog, if one were to be so common), published when I have no other projects to work on, in order to ensure I've written something for the day.


You know, talking about the banality of social media is extremely tired. Despite having never partaken in it until this month, I never found stand-up comedy jokes about the uselessness of "twittering" very funny or relatable. What is fertile ground: the utter anxiety of it. Wondering if you're saying too much, too frequently. Trying to glean the best way to acknowledge another person without feeling like an encumbrance on their feed. Reconnoitering the appropriate etiquette is made all the more difficult by those people who probably feel similarly cavalier when it comes to actual socialization, who insist that there's nothing to worry about.

Yeah, that'll keep Sarah from thinking I'm a big ol' goof.

Head is clearer today than yesterday, in which it was clearer than the day before. Weight stalled, teased lower. Dinner plans have changed for tonight. Could improvise portion adjustment? Dinner past two nights has been good: chicken coated reasonably well and a complete meal.

The spinach has made a commendable comeback in taste. And while it will never truly bedizen my plate, it doesn't necessarily look disgusting.

Dreamed last night of confirmation that CM Punk is a Republican. It's probably moot at this point. Whether he is or isn't, he's good friends with a devout one. Speaks ill of his character either way. And it's not like he was as admirable as I ever wished him to be in the first place.

In boarding school, we had an English assignment to write a week's journal entries for a fictional character. I attempted to write a man who had committed a murder. A really insightful take on the criminal mind, I'd intended. It was garbage, and I had to go with something else, but I remember one entry. It read, probably exclusively: "Don't return to the scene of the crime. Don't return to the scene of the crime. Don't return to the scene of the crime."

Follow by the next day's "I returned to the scene of the crime."

I remember when Jon's website was discovered, because he'd tweeted a Dragon Ball Z reference. He said he understood criminals now, how they make the mistakes they make, how maybe they want to get caught.

I don't want to get caught, but I also want to write down that I recently had a conversation turn sexual in slow motion. I should have stopped it, but I didn't, and it was a mistake. That's the funny thing about trying to actually do that thing people are supposed to do, ceasing flirtation. It's really difficult, not only on account of one's libido, but also just out of care for the partner. You don't want to hurt them by doing the right thing. He or she must have felt the same way too. It is so sensitive that I can't even use the person's alias. A lot of fears are hovering. It would be silly to expect that this will remain forever a secret. How wonderful it is to be such a weak-willed toy of consanguineous lust.

I must update this blog tomorrow in order to push this entry from prime viewing.

Funny how getting involved in a terrible situation like this makes the sexual aspects of the media I watch seem so much more empathetic. Maybe this is how everyone feels, and why people don't mind them as much as I do. The last Mad Men was just something else. It makes me think of that one episode of Sopranos I watched in bed in college, which will someday be recounted in Life in Song.

Wardrox was helpful in correspondence regarding The Player Character, which I am currently neglecting. News is going to get harder the longer I put it off. I'll go check my feeds now.

Life in Song: The Everglow

Life in Song is a series which will likely never finish. It is not, as originally conceived, a span of my hundred favorite songs; rather, each post covers one song randomly selected from a list of those which immediately evoke a memory or other emotional response. Entries will likely be uncomfortably candid and melancholic, as they attempt to recount a song's personal significance and also its context in my psychotically detailed fantasy life.


Song: Mae - The Everglow

Thoughts: This song, and the whole album, is deeply collegiate, so it's coincidental that it came up today, as I've been recuperating from a strong dream of college this morning, featuring Billy and, more distressingly, Sally. The Everglow predates my love for her, as I was still transfixed by my high school idols (more on that with future Mae songs). The dream involved me forgetting lines and screwing up in a musical theater performance. Billy comforted without dulling the truth, and Victoria (and, curiously, Andrea [Mary's friend]) entered my room while I was alone, still the laughingstock of campus. Both were naked. It was both a consolation and a taunt. "Can I take a picture?" I asked. They refused. Victoria's breasts looked worse than I believe they would in reality.


Defining Era: 2005, spring.


Vital Lyric: "I think that we've got what it takes to get this heart to start beating again."


First Exposure: The title track to Mae's second album, which I discovered when Jay is Games covered the Flash game made to promote it. I'd heard earlier Mae songs, probably what prompted me to investigate, and was instantly taken with the album.


Prominent Memory: Jay is Games was a constant in the latter half of my freshman year, not merely as a tool of procrastination or unoccupied satiation but eventually a companion during generally bleak emotional periods. I've never been able to reunite with it since. It's difficult to pinpoint which Everglow songs were which nights, as the album was a caparison for a couple of weeks, but the title track vaguely covers all.


Alternate Memories: I remember walking down my home street, the path from the bus, on my way home. This memory could easily be fabricated. It would have had to occur in the early winter of 2006, during that year's museum internship. I was thinking about its place in the Night at H Street set, see below.


Fantasy: "The Everglow" isn't firmly within our song roster anymore, but for a moment it seemed crucial. A Night at H Street (or One Night in H Street) is the six or more hour special aired on a premium cable channel that launches Artist on Artist into mainstream consciousness. Our set becomes legendary. The encore is usually a combination of "The Buzz Kill," "The World You Love" (perhaps in the first set), and "Searching for a Former Clarity." For at least one day, I considered "The Everglow" for the big, blow-away number immediately preceding or following "Searching." This is now likely the position of "The World You Love," as I could never tease enough meaning into "Everglow"'s lyrics to give the big chorus as much impact.


Out of Ten: 5.4


Audiosurf Score: 116,956 (Nearby: 2, Global: 2)


Some Levity: Spring of 2005, then. Let's see. I can summon one which I need to save for another song. Instead, I'll retrieve one of my more cherished memories, a talk I gave in that semester's computer science class for which I was completely unprepared. I relied on humor and, maybe, charm instead and for once it worked. I impressed and was commended, was almost picaresque. I can remember one joke, a complaint about Frogger (having no actual computing insight, I talked about games on the Mac II) which I excused with the thought that, as it was made in the eighties, people weren't as highly evolved back then. Derivative, and I thought so at the time, but it went over.

Give anything to get that morning back.

Life in Song: Dressed to Kill

Life in Song is a series which will likely never finish. It is not, as originally conceived, a span of my hundred favorite songs; rather, each post covers one song randomly selected from a list of those which immediately evoke a memory or other emotional response. Entries will likely be uncomfortably candid and melancholic, as they attempt to recount a song's personal significance and also its context in my psychotically detailed fantasy life.


Song: New Found Glory - Dressed to Kill

Thoughts: Still catchy after all these years (this may be something I end up saying a lot). This was a good song to come up, although it will be difficult to determine what to write for this and what to write for its sister track.


Defining Era: 2001, season unknown.


Vital Lyric: "'Cheer up,' my friends all say. You're better alone anyway."


First Exposure: After their cover of "My Heart Will Go On" first led me to New Found Glory, it was "Better Off Dead" and "Dressed to Kill" that seemed to arise arbitrarily from Napster. This was the era where I, as a young and ignorant ephebe, saw my musical triumvirate transition from "Weird Al, showtunes, and Japanese techno," to "New Found Glory, Less Than Jake, and the Bloodhound Gang." Not necessarily a change for the better, but it did allow a few more options.


Prominent Memory: This one is highly connected to its fantasy. In ninth grade I was still dream-pining for Shiva, whom this song transports me to quickly, and the first zygote of my imaginary band was taking shape. Thus, "Dressed to Kill" is one of its first songs, along with some others I'll write about and many that I won't. I contextualized this one a degree further than most others. This takes us all the way back to performing at my summer camp as the Cliché Teenagers. (To go further back than this, which I don't think I'll have to do for Life in Song, would be to reach the Naked Oompa-Loompas).


Alternate Memories: It was in boarding school that I got my first New Found Glory CD, New Found Glory (aha). I suppose I should first recount that initial work program in which I had the audacity to bring my portable CD player with me and listen, visually rocking out, to the disc while standing in formation to chuck chopped wood down the basement. Dolores noticed (everyone noticed, but I noticed her noticing), asked what I was listening and was not visually disgusted when I told her. Sink would condemn me for my taste in the band.


Fantasy: So, the lyrics do sort of lend themselves to fantasy. The singer references going on tour (no, he references being always on tour, which I've mentally changed for so long that I forget what it was originally), which I applied to myself as, I suppose, the Cliché Teenagers began their burgeoning success and I dealt with the ramifications of that in my rocky relationship with Shiva. The lyric "I'm always dressed to kill" is still pertinent, as Artist on Artist favors that kind of ironic cockalorum. That said, I doubt this is actually one of my songs in that universe; if so, it is a vestige.


"I can't dream anymore," the song repeats (I think I heard this once as "can't train anymore"), which I suppose struck me as too poorly poetic even then, so I conjured up Shiva being a sort of mentoring songwriter for me, at camp, who called the process of writing "dreaming." Dumb, but there's something that seems, to me, lovely and innocent about it, which was endemic of my fantasy loves at the time.


It's too bad that "Dressed to Kill" seems neolithic to me now, as lyrics such as "And I can't stop pretending that you're forever mine" could be plucked from any modern Artist on Artist number. Perhaps this was one of our songs in our early, faltering days at H Street.


Out of Ten: 6.1


Audiosurf Score: 163,694 (Nearby: 1, Global: 1)


Some Levity: Many memories arise from the self-titled album on which this song appeared, the brightest one forever being its indelible and inarguable sticker declaring the CD "catchy pop punk from the heart." More than a decennium stands between it and me but it remains unforgettable.

On Audiosurf, someone called Atma commented "I listened to this when I was still happy." I don't know if that counts.

Life in Song: Walter Reed

Life in Song is a series which will likely never finish. It is not, as originally conceived, a span of my hundred favorite songs; rather, each post covers one song randomly selected from a list of those which immediately evoke a memory or other emotional response. Entries will likely be uncomfortably candid and melancholic, as they attempt to recount a song's personal significance and also its context in my psychotically detailed fantasy life.

Song: Michael Penn - Walter Reed

Thoughts: This is the very first episode of Life in Song. I'd considered starting yesterday but chose not to for reasons of time. Additionally, just as finding the perfect song on my iPod with which to begin my walk in the morning is often a fifty-skip struggle, none of the songs that came up then were just right to be number one. Today, as though blessed, this song was the number drawn and I immediately knew it was the right place to begin.


Defining Era: 2007, winter.


Vital Lyric: "Tell me now what more do you need? Take me to Walter Reed tonight."


First Exposure: Home from college for the winter, I was able to catch up on the third season of House. This song plays at the end of "Fools for Love," which began the Michael Tritter arc. (It is also featured the medical mystery resolution of the two lovers actually being half-siblings, which struck me quite sadly that this was apparently devastating for them). Featuring a nice hook and somewhat ambiguous historical allusions, two things which will captivate me quite reliably, it transformed the otherwise dull scene of House's arrest into something that seemed fairly momentous.


Prominent Memory: I had had an online romance with Flower since the summer of 2006. She was at that point and possibly still the most attractive woman I'd conned into undressing for me, while lying about my weight and identity. That December, learning I'd returned to New York, she was insistent that we finally meet. I resisted at first. She wanted me to come on the thirtieth, claiming she was lonely, being sexually explicit, threatening that I would no longer see her on camera if I didn't. I caved, but it was too late by then. We agreed I'd come the next day, the thirty-first, the last day of the year. She was having a New Year's Eve party that night, but I could arrive, make love and leave before then.

She was staying alone in her father's apartment in the Battery Park Ritz-Carlton (half-hotel, half-apartment building). I spent the subway ride staring at my reflection in the opposite window, trying to convince myself that I wasn't too fat, that my hair wasn't too unkempt and haphazardly dyed, that my clothes weren't too poor. Thinking it totally sensible that she could grok me in person as she had over the Internet. Disembarking in a section of Manhattan to which I'd never before been, I considered trying to buy condoms at a Rite Aid, but was running late and lost.

"What a way to conclude 2006," I thought, wondering if everything could really work out.

I found the building hours after I should have. She was becoming frustrated waiting for me. The door man let me in. I still believe he thought I was a drug dealer, on account of my appearance and the brevity of my stay. I did not belong there. The apartment was the greatest I've ever entered, worth millions of dollars, window-walls overlooking the water south of Manhattan. This changed everything from that point of my life onward.

We sat. I felt the sexual tremors of imminence. She was not outwardly disgusted with me, but she didn't initiate anything either. Then, so quickly, the first of her friends arrived. I will never be convinced that she didn't have some silent way to signal them, once she saw me. They were courteous; they offered me marijuana, which I declined with the persistent lie that a friend and I had a contest to see who could stay sober longest. That sounded plausible to me, at the time. I left. I went home.

I listened to "Walter Reed," affixing my pain and turmoil to it. Days later I pressed her until she admitted that she found me unattractive. We never spoke much after that. Our differing interpretations of the events caused a rift between me and Kate. I skipped work (having just begun my internship two days prior), prompting my stepmother to grow enraged and complain that she needed space, and other things. I relayed her ranting to anyone I could reach on AIM, none of whom should have been told. It was a mistake. Later, in the gap of time before our first show, I sat on a bench with Leo and told him how much I love songs that allude to history, despite my lack of historical knowledge. It must have been apparent that I was bothered. He asked and I stayed coy. It was a good moment.

To grouse: I feel that this memory may set an inaccurate precedent for the Life in Song series. I believe very few will actually have such relatively meaningful stories. More will just be the soundtrack to my depression in various rooms.


Alternate Memories: "Walter Reed" came up twice more. Once, the drive home from college. ("All I want to die is hide, it's graduation day.") Of course, it wasn't meant to be the drive home, it was meant to be the drive to Philadelphia, but that's another story. I believe I chose it manually before shuffling the rest. "There's nothing here worth saving," the song said, reflecting on how fleeting I saw college by its end. Then, years later, I began the move to California with this song. I don't know if I chose it. I thought I would play music, but we switched to comedy and podcasts immediately afterward. My father asked about the aforementioned lyric. Of course it was intentional. The song was funereal then, as I looked back at my home for what has remained the final time.


Fantasy: While not a showstopper, "Walter Reed" is a reliable weapon in fantasy band Artist on Artist's arsenal. Its use of historical and military references make it characteristic of my more painful lyrics. Probably early-mid tenure at H Street, retired and used sparingly in later years.


Out of Ten: 8.3


Audiosurf Score: 58,553 (Nearby: 1, Global: 5)


Some Levity: I bet this space will be the hardest of any to fill. Let's see: "Walter Reed" led me to look up its namesake and his hospitals on Wikipedia. For some reason, he came up in conversation during my internship. I was able to note his influence in treating yellow fever, or something. Criminy, who brought up the person, seemed dubious - I think he had a different concept of Reed. That's not the levity. The levity is the time, at the same job, I sat on the couch as I did often and one of the other employees didn't realize that my arm was between his and the armrest, and failed to realize it for a long moment as it slowly downed on everyone that he had embraced me in this minor way. Barton commented something to the effect of: "When ten seconds lasts a lifetime."

Watering: Namecheap, WrestleMania lethargy.

Watering entries are personal diaries, alluding to this post's conclusion. They are a potpourri of recent thoughts and experiences (one might even call them a blog, if one were to be so common), published when I have no other projects to work on, in order to ensure I've written something for the day.

I woke up this morning expecting to find an email from Namecheap stating that "propagation" had completed and I was now free to access my website via their hosting interface. No such email had arrived, although propagation was indeed finished, and I did not have access to my cPanel. How curious.

Once, in first grade, we had an assignment to make papier-mâché (Did you like that? My first attempt was "paper machete.") masks or something. We had to stand in front of the class and describe their creation. I went on in such detail, recounting every pitfall and dead end, that I was told to resile to my seat and allow all the other students to go before I could continue. I often think of that day when I realize I'm belaboring my point.

Suffice it to say, I was able to deduce, in conversation with fake-American tech support girl Mary, that having web hosting for theplayercharacter.com overwrote the email forwarding from its domain service. After that, not only were my problems rectified, but the installation of WordPress went dubiously smoothly. Literally, in seconds. I am still skeptical that the site is up and not just cached on my browser.

I made a Mass Effect-like decision to apply both of my WhoisGuard vouchers to The Player Character instead of one to that and one to 1-uprising. I'll have to wait until the end of the trilogy to see if that was the right call. In consolation, I can probably assume the difference will not be dramatic, but merely a matter of War Assets.

Time constraints and all. We're dealing with a lot of variables.

I also woke up hoping for another message, one that I really shouldn't have been. Signs of life, overtly erotic, from Storm which immediately sunk my heart. I've done a good job today keeping that issue from occupying my thoughts, but it's not night yet. Sunday will be harshest.

That is to say: Sunday, tomorrow, there's a date to Skype. It began with my suggestion, later imploration, to that we all purchase and watch the special two dollar Dragon Gate USA iPPV being streamed, featuring Low Ki vs. PAC in the main event. I've heard many good things about PAC, only seeing him live once in a match the crowd mired, and Ki is always a favorite of mine, so I really think I'd have enjoyed the show. Plus, there is still something to be said for supporting a product and not obtaining what little independent wrestling I'm still exposed to like a brigand.

Instead, it was decided that we should instead watch WrestleMania together, for spectacle's sake. The big deal is John Cena and The Rock. I never saw X8, so I've nothing to compare this to. I like Rock in theory. Eh. Tim and Jeremy projected last night that the show will open with CM Punk's title match, which, man, how could my excitement for the show be further extinguished? No Money in the Bank, as that's its own desperate thing now, so the only gimmick match is Triple H and Undertaker, both of whom are so old that it is assured nothing outrageous will happen.

I'm relieved that no wrestling fans (or anyone) will ever read this post. Were my heart into it, I imagine I could write about the art without sounding like a stereotypical (unfairly so, of course) indie smark, or hokey gimmick fan, but frankly, I just feel generally languid about the whole event. The only boon of the situation is getting to spend it socially with the Skype chums and I am past certain that I'll feel sheepish for having written that come Monday.