feeling like a failure

And for no good reason. This is the strange aftereffect of a long, exhausting workout. All results in and/or from poor self esteem, no doubt. A few minutes on the gaming forums to read how much fans hate my various decisions (oh, never by name -- they don't know my name). I know those things come down to a handful of loud online users whose opinions are expressed more extremely than they ought to be (and aren't they all part of the Xtreme generation?). I know that they are upset about changes only because they are familiar with the originals and know what _they_ would have wanted to do. I also know this is very abstract nonsense I'm writing right now. Sorry, but I don't feel like being specific.

Small criticisms from other fronts (not even criticisms -- corrections at best) are having more effect than they ought, weakening my already weak sense of righteousness, or at least, of authority.

And I so hate "making friends." I'm terrible at it. When I find people I like, people I feel I can trust, I want to skip the awkward getting-to-know-you nonsense and move on with being friends. Ditching the nonsense altogether. You know, I'm not much for astrology -- Well, to be honest, I think it's all a steaming pile of poop -- but I entered scant personal information into Alabe and got some very telling and specific results that reflected, in a very specific way, things I'd been thinking about. I'll just cut and paste examples:

At times, you are lazy and difficult to motivate. Overcoming inertia is a problem for you and, because you are not by nature a self-starter, it is often necessary for you to receive stimuli from others in order to get moving.

You like to be very close to other people. You need emotional support yourself and are willing to give it to others. When you feel unloved and insecure, you can be very jealous and possessive. You are not interested in casual or superficial relationships -- only deep emotional involvements interest you. Your faithful devotion is one of your greatest gifts, but be careful not to become too dependent on others.

You consider it a personal weakness to be wrong about anything. This makes you appropriately cautious. You are very efficient but you tend to be cool and detached.

Now, these are all things that have been on my mind a lot lately -- motivation, friendship, character flaws, things like that. My take on astrology (at least insofar as I've seen it in the newspapers, right?) is that its information is so generalized as to apply to just about anyone. But this stuff, it seems dead on to me. Dead on to what I've been thinking about, dead on to what's been bothering me. Dead on creepy.

Doesn't mean I believe it.

dark and long

The scent of rain still hangs in the air, and the asphalt outslide reflects a blackened yellow from the streetlamps. I see it all from my office window, looking down across the cul-de-sac -- pools of light on the slick road, pearly grey in the sky, streaked with scattered clouds and reflecting ashen moonlight. It's a quiet night, and soft piano midi loop repeats itself, imbedded in the Criminal English code. I'm not tired, but I'm not really awake anymore, either -- a half-lidded fugue state, and once I just hit post, all this goes live online, and maybe someone is still reading all this even now. Hi there. Come visit. It's been a mild winter.

My weblog is trying on new clothes. I'm not sure they fit, but we'll see how I feel in the morning.

OPi8

OPi8 is sorta back up and running, after a slight downtime brought about by a server change. With any luck, the forums will start up again soon, as well.

Right now, when you do a search for my name on Amazon, you find an out-of-print book on marine biology for which my mother crafted the illustrations and you find a book on medieval literacy and the public and private act of reading written by my sister. You do not, however, find this: Shaolin Sisters, on which I served as editor of the fine translation by Alex Smith. It's a silly thing, a martial arts book with the occasional panty flash, in traditional and somewhat generic manga style. However, I'm proud of my little bit. It's funny how long it takes to go from translation to edit to printing, though -- I haven't touched that thing in AGES, and then, suddenly, here it is, crawling from the back-files of my poorly organized memory and straight into plain sight.

Go figure. I gots me a book.

reading: The Perfect Heresy: it's about the Cathar heresy. Now THAT is a religion I could believe in -- all worldly matter is evil and fallen from a state of grace. There is no hell, no judgement. Just an endless cycle of returns until we finally wise up, each on his own, and life a quiet, peaceful life in denial of all things worldly. Good times.

drinking: Jameson's -- two fingers, clean and neat.
listening: Underworld's Born Slippy remix CD, now that I've finished ripping another mountain of discs for transfer to the iPod. Oh, I love my iPod so very much.
thinking: I'm really lonely. It's not all consuming tonight, but I hunger for friends, fresh blood, conversation. That's why I've been online so often lately. I've gotten into a habit of seeking out and talking to my closer friends online, and when that's absent, it's me and my computer. Or it feels that way, at any rate.

bonus nonsense: I got swag at work today -- a nice paper scroll featuring the opening prints from Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. It comes with two large plastic spool/handles for storage, but it's a remarkably nice little bit of cruft to fill my house.

Full Hunger Moon

Another quiet day. Bought .hack for the PS2. It's interesting, in a sort of meta- way. It's a game in which you play a gamer in the future interacting with his computer to play in an online RPG. .hack itself is offline, mind you. So the world is filled with NPCs running around saying things that real players would be saying in, say, Everquest or Phantasy Star Online -- when you're in the hub worlds, you're listening in on all these out-of-character conversations about creatures, items, resupplying, things like that.

I have only one beef with the game at this point: it has an inconsistent narrative approach. If I'm a gamer playing in an RPG, then the whole game should be seen "through my eyes." However, several cutscenes have taken place in areas my character cannot see. It's a small thing, and I only feel it's a little unfortunate that the developers couldn't find a way to make a consistent narrative perspective drive their story. I'm only a few hours into it now, but I'm taken with how much the game replicates my online RPG experience, in which I log on, run around avoiding other humans, listen to them saying stupid things out of character, and then go slaughter critters for a while. Strange, but fun.