Plural of Anecdotes

Jan 23

At 11:30 pm Central Time, January 21, the internet went away.

On Jan 22rd, it was still gone.

There was no warning. There was no explanation.

Well, there probably was an explanation, if you looked online, but the internet? Was gone.

Residents of the disaster zone did their best to cope. Paintings were begun. Dishes were washed; floors were swept. But the thin veneer of normalcy was shattered when, with many letters written, there proved no way to quickly transmit or deliver them, or indeed, to check on incoming correspondence

It was a dark time.

At 12:30 pm Central Time, January 23,the internet was restored. And while those who survived the nightmare struggle to move on, none can ever know what this temporary service interruption cost them in boredom, productivity, or personal correspondence.

So, you know. If you emailed me something in the last couple of days, you should probably send it again.

Also?

Never Forget. Or the idiots who managed not to process my payments will have won.

A valuable lesson in ethnocentrism, spoken in accents I can readily identify as Not Texan But American, Possibly Northwestern or Something, spoken in tones of hushed wonderment, in of all places a barbecue restaurant:

Woman: Did you see that nice young lady? She looked so mean, but she was so friendly!

Man: What did I tell you? Everyone's like that around here. You know, if you get a flat or something, and you pull over, people here will actually stop and see if they can help you?!?

Woman: No! Really? Like….like the police?

Man: Like anybody! Total strangers! Scared me the first time, I though I was being carjacked, but...(food arrives)

Woman: Oh my goodness, that's a lot of food.

Man: TEXAS size portions! I love the food here! And you get free refills on tea!

Woman: Oh my, it's good!

Man: That too! I haven't had any bad food here! And there's these little restaurants everywhere, you never have to eat at a McDonald's. Oh! When we get breakfast, I have to take you to one of these places, um, they're always painted really bright colors, and they never have people in them who speak English, but oh, wow, the food! They have these little rolled things, right? And they serve ‘em on this flat bread, it’s called..um.. Something French or something..

Me, over my shoulder: Tortillas?

Man: Yes! Thank you! (back to woman) TORtillas!* I swear, everyone in this state is bilingual!

Me: *chokes on the sheer volume of comments built up in my throat, dies and is dead*

***

Who this is a lesson for remains to be discovered.


* What is this? I have a friend from Wisconsin who pronounces it "Gone-zaliss". What’s with the weird syllabic stress, northerners?

I have a comic (a couple, actually).

They're young, and inexperienced, and I've been very careful about who I introduce them to.

And so it is a shock to go to my stats page and see, consistently, triple the hits it should be getting.

Mystery people are reading my comic. Which is ok, it's up as an experiment, I'm open to comments even from strangers, but...

Even more unnerving, they aren't saying anything.

It's like finding out I've got stalkers, fercryinoutloud.

Or, given my own lurkery tendencies, like a really hammery Aesop.

The comments section of every blog, comic and Wiki I read now has readers 6-12 to thank for an explosion of nattery. Good job, Mystery Eyes.

I've got another comic going over at WCN:

http://www.webcomicsnation.com/carapace/anecdata/series.php

It even shares a name with this blog, so it should be easy to find from here. Nifty? Nifty.


So, yeah, the thing with the bugs...

Last year, about mid-March, a few weird flies got into the house. I say weird, because they were fat, black, and prone to, indeed, hover, making the most hideous noise while they did so. Like Japanese cicadas in a food processor. They were also slow, and so easy to smack. So smack them we did, one or two at a time, and not worry too much, because hey, we're in the country, a few flies come in every time the door opens.

Until one day, we woke up, and every window in the hosue was painted black with the monsters.

Then followed an epic battle, lasting nigh four months, the details of which I will not dwell upon, except to say that it took four bottles vinegar to clean the windows again, ate away what little sanity I had left, and gave the *cat* a complex about flies.

Hornets... well, hornets. Under the house. Unfun. But guess what! I don't react to hornet venom! I still do not like being poked with needles in my face!

Ladybug Apocalypse:

This makes even less sense than the flies. A week after Christmas, I woke up, walked into the living room, and looked up.

There's a reason people in superhero films never look up. They're afraid they'll find, not the hero, not even the villain, but a red seething blanket of ladybugs, emanating from the light source and drawing themselves across the entire room.

True to their name, the ladybugs have been more polite than the flies, hovering around the ceiling and corners, making almost no noise, never ever getting in our food except when they die. Which they do. A lot. And then fall into whatever comestible is close at hand.

Also, they fly towards the light when they die. Every day I have to wash off the bulb, or I'd be sitting in the dark right now.

I feel I have angered a small, small, petty, small god of small things.

I have to give credit to the local weather patterns; they’re doing their dangedest to make January worth surviving.

January is pretty much a crap month. One good holiday, (well, good if you live in the middle of nowhere and have access to explosives), but that’s gotten out of the way early. And then there’s nothing to look forward to except the first annual All Chocolate’s Eve in February, and, if you are on the standard academic calendar, the return to the academic or employment routine. And I like my job and all, but it ain’t exactly a festive occasion.

All this lack of anything, coming after the color and noise and sheer sensory overload of Xmas,* makes January a bit of a wrist-slitter. But the weather’s really trying to make up for that, in the way it does sometimes in central Texas, being excessively bright and cheery and about 76 degress in the day, with that special golden sunlight that only happens when the earth is angled just right and there are no clouds.

On the one hand, this sort of weather makes me feel all motivated and cheery, despite the total lack of excitement inherent in the idea of January. On the other hand, what I’m motivated to do is lots of brainless physical work, which is a shockingly bad idea for me. And nice winter weather takes away one of the few really satisfying parts of being homebound, which is looking at really awful weather and rejoicing that I have no reason whatsoever to be in it. So I’m torn.

On the plus side, I now have a resurfaced sink. Yay?


* Perhaps you are one of those people who believes Xmas is an abomination. But there’s no Christ in my mas, and never has been. For my purposes, X is part of an equation, as in X + mas = massive party, where X equals something awesome enough to celebrate, but not so sacred it can’t be honored with an MST3K marathon.

Dear Brain:

What the fuck was that? You know what I’m talking about; that three day cascade of extremely abnormal migraines you just barfed out there. I know you’re trying to get out of work, but when have I given you any actual work this month? We were having fun, hanging out, making comics, actually reading some books… and then you go and decide we don’t need the a sense of balance, or the ability to move anything below the neck, or rcognize obscure symbols, like the letters of the language you’ve been using your whole entire life. Haha! Funny!

Do it again, and I will make you watch televised sport fishing.

I have just opened my calendar for 2008. Much to my delight, it's full of semiobscure birthdays. Since I am a person who would and does celebrate anything I can make a dinner entree for**, I am melodiously happy over the prospect of having a tiny party every week for my favorite authors, inventors, and social figures. Sausage and Gingerbread for Brothers Grimm days! Peanut Chicken to honor George Washington Carver! Hurling canned meat to the floor and writing my congressman in disgust on the birthday of Upton Sinclair!

What's your favorite personal celebration? Forget the big Xmas-Halloween-Birthday stuff. What's the best weird local or cult event in your year? Local harvest festival? Talk Like An Anachronism Day? The Streetwide Food Fight? What helps you mark the year?



*Note that this is non-alcoholic Nog. I just really love nutmeg.

** Especially if it involves revolutions, failed or otherwise(1). Our household already celebrates Texas Independence Day, Bastille Day, and the Fourth of July, and we're adding the Ides of March and the Boxer Rebellion this year.

(1) But not if they're Russian. The only thing to celebrate about Russian history, so far as I can see, is the fact that I wasn't there.