#84: I'm Done

Well, as you can see from the title, I'm done. "With what?" you may ask, sincerely or sarcastically. Your question may be birthed from a genuine enjoyment of my work (unlikely), an abiding fascination with my sometimes witty, more often digressive and distracting parenthetical asides (equally unlikely, but touching and endearing), or perhaps (most likely, in my opinion), a sincere desire to know what I could profess to be "done" with. It couldn't be this blog, this blog that I've been writing for these two and a half years.

For those of you interested in statistics, I've decided to give you some, in order to save you the trouble that you might otherwise have to incur. This blog has been alive for 891 beautiful, wonderful days. For these 891 days, I shared some of myself with you. Not all of myself, and for several days, I pretended to be someone else. I was ashamed of this record of myself for a period, but I ultimately returned.

As you should have guessed by now, Solomon Libertius was a pseudonym. It was a fake name that I came up with in order to gain some form of notoriety. You should also have guessed that I am somewhat younger than twenty-five years old, although I may have fooled some.

But I digress. Over these past 891 days, I wrote a total of nearly ninety posts, but sadly publishing only 84 of them. I disproved the myth to myself that I would never be able to write anything of value, but I did not succeed in convincing the spirit of self-doubt in myself that my writings would never amount to anything in anyone else's eyes, that this blog would not achieve a fame of any sort. On average, I published a post every 10 and a half days, although the non-existant adherents of this blog (or the two people who check it every month or so) should know that this is merely an average; I have gone far longer between posts than a mere ten days (by my count, the record is only a few days short of fifteen months, back in '07-'08 [which is odd, by my count, but this isn't the time for unnecessary calculations]).

This blog, this font of superfluous words of gratuitous length that reads more like an SAT prep course or a young person trying to sound much older than he is will not be missed by many, but one, the author, will miss it dearly. This blog has helped me to grow, and it has played an overly large part in making me the man I am today. It has helped me change from an overeager college student into a confident political consultant. With it, I always know that I am addressing the world, although the world may not be listening.

So here, on February 20, 2010, at midnight, I will lay to rest the bombastic, overconfident, vulgar character of Solomon Libertius in the populous, yet constantly expanding graveyard of internet infamy. My only hope is that he will achieve the notoriety and fame in the afterlife that always eluded him in this one.

But before I go, I want to make a couple predictions for the next decade, since I missed that whole wave. In fact, let me make ten.

1. China will do something.

2. Canada will not hit their medal quota.

3. Somebody will make a self-referential hyperlink.

4. America will degenerate into mild anarchy or become a mild police state, instead of the state of loose order that we are currently in.

5. Some country will start a war.

6. Someone will hedge their bets.

7. More than one billion people will die.

8. The world might end.

9. The media will make a big fuss over nothing (I was going to do the each word a link thing again, but that takes way too long).

10. Somebody will become undeservedly famous and rich, but not necessarily the same person.

So. That's it. I'm done. Good luck to you all, and have fun. By the way, if I turn out to be right with the predictions, please leave a comment or two. Maybe one comparing me to Nostradamus. Okay, thanks.

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I was never good at endings. Or goodbyes.

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Fuck this. Bye.

#83: Planned Move to WordPress

Wow. Go a week without writing and a four post backlog can go away pretty quickly.

Anyway, like you shouldn't know, (because I didn't tell you [by the way, I need to learn how to do punctuation around parens correctly. I always feel like the comma or semicolon is going in the wrong place no matter where I put it. Like some words always feel like they're being spelled wrong {y'know, back when we actually wrote stuff on paper} or how some songs always feel like a note is missing or wrong], even though I was going to yesterday) I was planning to move the blog to Wordpress, based on the advice of a Mr. Greiner, or something, over at The Social Path, but more specifically, this post on how we should stop letting social media stress you out (I've essentially summarized it so you don't have to stop reading. And yes, I know I'm a prick [Who says this? Outside of the UK], but I'm kind of working on it).

Now, Mr. Griner usually does good work, in fact, almost always, so, as usual, the error is mine. I minsinterpreted his statement "So what if you're still using Blogger instead of WordPress?" to mean that I should move immediately to WordPress. So I tried. In fact, this blog now exists up to the last post on WordPress. But I couldn't use it. I found the website sterile and busy at the same time (Like if New York City was an operating room [which would be the fucking best] or if a subway at rush hour was like a clean room). Anyway, the point is, I couldn't find anything I wanted. I appreciated some features, like the built-in hitcounter, which would have rendered my whole hitcounter odyssey on this site completely unnecessary.
Or the Technocrati profile they gave me for free as well, which would have made this adventure completely superfluous. And they also gave me apps. Like a search bar for posts, so readers could look for posts on, say, cavemen or money or things movie villains should never do. (I miss hyperlinking. Can you tell? I did it so much in my HTML days back in 2005 or so. It was my favorite part of coding. But anyway. . .) The point is that . . . damn, I forgot where I was going. So . . . I'm just going to say that although . . . oh right, I remember now. But WordPress also had some bad stuff. Like making it absurdly difficult to look through layouts, even though they had like a thousand or some ridiculous number. Or the large fonts that made me feel blind(er).

But ok. WordPress wasn't for me. You may like it, but I didn't. So I'll stick with Blogger, even though it doesn't do some things, like all that stuff I wrote in the two paragraphs above. It's clear, and easy, and I get it. And I've been with it for more than two years, which is longer than I've known most of my Facebook friends, so I think we'll stay together. And that, I think, is what Mr. Griner's post was all about.

#82: Writing Posts In Advance

So I have discovered that Blogger allows you to schedule posts in advance. So that's what I'm doing. And it makes me happy. Oh so happy. Because now I won't have any excuses (at all, mind you) for not doing one on time (or at least having it look like I didn't do one on time).

In fact, this post was written and ready for publication to the general public on January 29, even though it was published February ??. I find that extremely awesome. And I believe I have that right.

In other news, J.D. Salinger died last Wednesday (it feels so weird to be writing this two days after his death, in the same week). And for those of you who have read some of my previous posts (or the select and special few who will go back and read every single on of my posts after you finish reading this one), the serial that I wrote on Monday, The Man Bartók, is somewhat inspired by J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye (of course). So yeah. It's almost kind of personal for me now that he's died. I almost care. Not that I knew the man, or was aware that he was alive until the announcements of his death came out. But now that he's dead, I feel some slight feeling of what might be the beginnings of sadness if made ten times stronger.

I wonder what he's doing. Probably up (or down) there looking down (or up) at us and just laughing (or crying) at us (or for us).

#81: The Eight Sides of Bartók Iduc

Part One:
I Am Born

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He hefts the knife and comes at me, hatred in his eyes. I cringe, my body obviously electing to take the "flight" response. But before my life finishes flashing before my eyes, he drops the knife and elects to simply punch me instead. I let it hit me, and grab his arm before he can draw it back again. He flails with his left arm, trying to get me to release him, but I seize this arm too, and pin both of them. He breaks free and moves back several feet. I follow him, wanting to get away from the window before he does something he might regret.

We enter the dining room and he swings at me again. He hits me, but again, I grab both of his arms and pin them, dragging him to the couch. He glares at me with unrestrained anger, and tells me to get off of him. I refuse to do so until he calms down.

Hello. My name is Bartók Iduc and I am twenty five years old.

I am a schizophrenic and possible psychopath. I also have several hypochondriac tendencies.

Before the author finishes with my story, I am going to kill someone.

Have a nice day.

#80: World Set Afire

So there's this book, American Mischief, by Alan Lelchuk, that I finished reading about two weeks ago. Even after having this time to reflect upon it, I still don't feel up to the task of reflecting upon it. It was entertaining, I feel equipped to say. But despite my belief that most writers don't insert hidden messages into their books, I feel as if Mr. Lelchuk did and I missed it.
Perhaps it was something along the lines of "No matter how much a person shakes the world, once he is gone, it will eventually return to it's normal state of inertia." This makes sense, and applies some sort of physics. But I don't like it. I know that the world will go on whether you've lived or not, and will probably not miss your passing (Apologies to Mr. Bailey, but I'm sure that some other man [possibly Harry] would have taken over the Building and Loan and saved it from Mr. Potter) or absence.

Anyway, this book inspired me. The scene about Norman Mailer's death (Oops, spoiler), in addition to other literature has inspired me to write a serial. I will not promise any regularity or consistency in publishing (since that always works out so well here), but it will come out at least three times before the end of the year. That reasonable? Ok then.