Your leaking thatched hut during the restoration of a pre-Enlightenment state.

 

Hello, my name is Judas Gutenberg and this is my blaag (pronounced as you would the vomit noise "hyroop-bleuach").



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got that wrong
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Like my brownhouse:
   wishing to flee
Saturday, November 29 1997
    It seemed as if the sky was waiting for something very interesting to happen.
    A

    gothic morning surrounded me as I walked back home from Abundance House along the railroad tracks. The sky was heavy and grey, though the air was warm and still. It looked as if it might snow, but of course it could only rain. Out of respect for me, it wasn't doing anything. It seemed as if the sky was waiting for something very interesting to happen. I was inspired. I wanted to run away from everything (Matthew Hart-induced housing troubles, mainly, but also my job, my lease, my social obligations) and become a hobo. I could smell that wandering thing in the air. At one time, before I had anything, I was free to roam. Now I have everything and my life is tightly scripted. Every time you buy an object you can't consume, you're chained more firmly to some specific place.

    He'd rather vanish and hide his face in whatever unquestioning contentment Angela brings him.
    B

    ack at Kappa Mutha Fucka, I was feeling extremely irritated with Matthew. He's smashed up my house and then moved out. He doesn't want to have to "deal" with me and Deya anymore. His being asked to repair the things he has broken is unbearable. He'd rather vanish and hide his face in whatever unquestioning contentment Angela brings him. She'll never bring up to him the fact that he's a ridiculous drunk, that he's let himself slide into a completely pathetic state. Instead, she'll slide further down with him, following a trend already begun. Earlier this summer, she'd actually stopped drinking. But under Matthew's influence, she's sunk to astounding lows without complaint. They are each others' death sentences.

    I'm left to deal with what Matthew has abandoned me to: smashed windows and doors, mute in their pointless injuries. I broke out the liquid nails and began fixing the bathroom door today. It's an important thing to do; I can't have the landlord seeing our house the way Matthew has cursed and abandoned it.

    I also went around the yard and picked up discarded bottles and broken cups left over from the Leah era, when an emotion was impossible to express unless something broke in the process. Back then, Matthew had seemed like the calm, collected one. Further back in history, in the days of Big Fun, Matthew had actually been one of the more rational people. I'd just assumed he'd make for a good housemate. I couldn't have known what demons lurked within him, waiting to destroy him and all around him.

    I napped until work time, which was 5pm.

    Tonight was the last home football game of the year, and since it was a remarkably warm evening, drunken versions of stereotypical Americana were out in force in their individually repulsive ways, stumbling like hobbled ants towards the football stadium. I rode through them on my bicycle on my way to work, very thankful that I am an individual, that I owe no loyalty to something so big, so garish.

    The backup was corrupted. It turned out to be the only Vishnu backup available.
    T

    hings were hectic at Comet when I arrived. From scratch, Steve was rebuilding Vishnu, one of the web servers. It had experienced a severe hard drive crash. Once Windows NT 3.51 was up and running on it, he and I attempted to restore a backup. Guess what? The backup was corrupted. It turned out to be the only Vishnu backup available. Panic swept over us. When I left that place at 1am, we were running a shareware NTFS disk recovery tool on the old drive hoping to coax data out of it. The recovery tool had already been running hours, logging thousands of errors, and was only 31 percent complete. I don't think I want to go back into that place for awhile. Good thing it's my weekend.

    He seemed surprised to hear me spouting ideals of responsibility, such as my desire to live alone.
    My childhood friend Nathan VanHooser visited me for awhile at Comet. He's been reading my musings, so he pretty much knew what was up with me. He seemed surprised to hear me spouting ideals of responsibility, such as my desire to live alone. He has no idea what Kappa Mutha Fucka has put me through.

    B

    ack again at home, nothing much was going on, as expected. I would have liked to do something cool, but when Deya stumbled in, it seemed she'd already had had her night's fun. So I surfed the web a bit and went to bed.

one year ago

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