GS Update

I updated the site last night.  For four years I’ve chosen to ignore the little WordPress messages that say, oh my God, upgrade today, because I have a weird fear of computers. Even the simplest of projects exhausts me.

My theory is that I’m just like all the elderly fucks who call me at work all day and can’t figure out how to use a three-pronged plug.  Computers were not part of my youth. Or, if they were, they were those comical 80’s computers – The Atari 800, the Commodore, the Apple II. The sort of computers that, even when you got comfortable using them, you were thinking, gosh, a typewriter would be easier.

I like the idea that the Atari 800 was, briefly, the Xbox of its day. Time to play Oblivion!  It comes on 14 million floppy discs and you have to hire someone to rapid change them if you want to leave the prison cell.

Then came those early PC’s and Macs when I hit high school.  Computers I would probably throw out the window now if I had to work on them.

By 1995, my world had changed.  But, by then, I was also on the tail-end of college.  I didn’t have time for my world to change.  The only reason I was thrust into the land of the internet was because I was banned from the college library after intervening on behalf of a female student who was being, at best, molested by the night librarian.  My last year of school had to be spent researching as best I could online, and ordering books from other school libraries to be delivered to the city library down in town.

By the way, the head librarian who banned me literally delivered a death bed apology in 2004.  I recently found out that, after cornering me during a visit that year and apologizing for what he did, he went off and died suddenly.  Something I find rather uplifting.  I have a long list of people that I want a personal, face-to-face apology from, just before their sudden death.

I’d print that list here, but my girlfriend says I’m too bitter and GS should be more constructive.  So I’ll do what she says because she feeds me and has girl parts.  And a sawed-off shotgun.

What inspired me to update the site was not the WordPress warnings, but part of my overall life-goals that I want to achieve before I’m 40.  Yes, one of my life goals is doing a 5-minute update of WordPress on a blog where I use a nickname I had in high school to rant unfairly about people and freak-out whenever someone calls me on it.  What?  Like you have better life goals?

I feel like I’ve already had it all, so it’s quite difficult to put together a list of goals. With four years to go, then, I ended up creating an easy list.

First: Learn some basic shit about these fucking computers so I can put up a webcam and see if my landlord is sniffing my underwear while I’m at work. Because I know she is!

Second: Learn Spanish so I can actually make it through a day in DC.  For 20 years I’ve worked with Hispanic caterers every weekend and, yet, the limit of my Spanish language skills is roughly akin to Speedy Gonzalez. Which makes me feel guilty and is also just damned inconvenient. The older I get in that fucking job, the more I want to say, look, Hector, stop fucking around so I can go home and go to fucking sleep.  (Twenty years ago I just drank and watched them wide-eyed and then stayed an extra hour to clean up what they missed.)

Third: I need to get back to my serious traveling. Every year since 2000 I’ve taken 4-6 weeks off and just lost myself somewhere.  For the last three years, though, I’ve failed at that…thanks to money, time, etc. No more excuses!  (Though 2010 looks like a wash, so this’ll start in 2011.)

My list then devolves into beer-making and travel-related adventures.  There’s a note about taking the four books I published onto the soul-sucking festival circuit, and then there’s my “survivalist” set of goals.  I really want to kill, clean, cook, and eat something. And I want to do more outdoorsy things even though I’m the guy who trips on a rock and breaks his leg the moment I step off the concrete.

This is all building towards my ultimate goal:  To live on a mountaintop in a trailer, prepare my own food, and update blogs in Spanish about my vacation where I hiked around Iceland’s volcanoes.

So, the GS update. You won’t notice anything different, except that I unfucked the sidebar.  Sidebars aren’t cool anymore, apparently.  Today, while I sit at work debating the merits of driving a screwdriver into my brain, I’ll probably re-fuck the sidebar with useless shit… Because I just don’t care.  In the end, 80% of my readers are angry people who leave nasty comments complaining about every single post since, apparently, they’re trapped here.  GS is their Lost finale purgatory… Which is sad.  Instead of the all-faith church and heavenward ending, all you get is Archbishop Gilbert Deya:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JU8OcuLt_Zw&]