4 November 2005: Meanwhile and Sooner or Later

My journal-writing time has largely been eaten by school, and will continue to be for the next five weeks (during which I have to produce about thirty pages of good writing for my Fiction Writing class, a paper for my Intro to Humanities class, and a paper for my Child Psychology class). I plan to do a whole bunch of entries and other updates on this site in December, though.

No telling what will happen in January, when I start attending CIIS. Just yesterday, Zann wrote in a blog entry:

Blogging has really changed. I used to upload each entry over dialup via ftp. There were no comments. We would write email to comment on each others blogs, and they weren't blogs, they were online journals (dammit). Now it is all so push button pretty.

And I wrote back, in the newfangled Comments section of the entry:

There are still genuine old-school online journals out there: one entry per page, layout created from scratch by the journaller, no RSS feeds, email if you want to comment. Mine is still going strong. I've thought from time to time of switching over to blogging, but I haven't found sufficient reason to go through the hassle of making such a switch.

But it's possible that I will make the switch from journalling to blogging next year, because it occurs to me that the blogging format lends itself better to brief, quick updates - if I'd been working in that format, there would probably have been a lot more entries these past several months. Lila’s been talking about integrating some newfangled pushbutton blogging software into her site sometime soon; if she does that, and I like the look of the results, maybe I’ll get her to show me how to do it.

Meanwhile, despite the infrequency of my updates recently, my server logs show that this site continues to get more visitors every month. Of the two thousand or so visitors last month, over sixty of them stuck around and read for an hour or more. Wow. There’s no accounting for taste.

While you’re waiting for me to find the time to post more entries, when was the last time you checked out the many fine links on my Tribe page? Anthem’s Thieves in the Temple blog, back in action with a brand new host, continues to be the best site I know for timely updates and commentary on the latest crashes, clatterings, and explosions in the endless slow-motion train wreck that the U.S. Government has become. Zann’s reminisences about her studies with Shinichi Suzuki Sensei are beautiful lessons in aikido and sorcery. Kathleen Seidel’s Neurodiversity Weblog is a must-read for those of you who were drawn to my journal by the Autism angle. Yoko continues to post charming entries almost daily. Lila’s X-rated Guttergaunt blog continues to serve as a reminder that Yoko is more dangerous than her own blog might lead one to suspect. Argus finally started posting blog entries again a couple of weeks ago; if you start reading and commenting on them, maybe you’ll help persuade him to continue.

One of my aikido students is a professor of Religious Studies at San Jose State University. She teaches a class called “Magic, Science, and Religion.” This coming Tuesday evening, I’ll be visiting the class as a guest lecturer. It’s a 3-hour class. I’ll be showing the entire 90-minute-or-so Orphans of Delirium DVD, and lecturing on my paratheatrical experiences and on whatever else the students’ questions inspire me to talk about.

This coming Thursday evening, the 10th, is the public premiere of The Greater Circulation. Come see it! 8:00 pm sharp, at 21 Grand in Oakland. Note that 21 Grand is located at 416 25th Street, not at 21 Grand (don’t ask me, I didn’t do it). Q&A session afterward with writer/director Sherpa and some of us performers, followed by a performance by Loops' band Loop!Station.

The Clown Lab is turning out to be every bit as wild, fun, and bizarre as you might expect from anything that’s called “The Clown Lab.” More on that and other fun sooner or later.