I updated the site last night.\u00a0 For four years I\u2019ve 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.<\/p>\n
\nMy theory is that I\u2019m just like all the elderly fucks who call me at work all day and can\u2019t figure out how to use a three-pronged plug.\u00a0 Computers were not part of my youth. Or, if they were, they were those comical 80\u2019s computers \u2013 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.<\/p>\n
I like the idea that the Atari 800 was, briefly, the Xbox of its day. Time to play Oblivion<\/em>!\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n Then came those early PC\u2019s and Macs when I hit high school.\u00a0 Computers I would probably throw out the window now if I had to work on them.<\/p>\n By 1995, my world had changed.\u00a0 But, by then, I was also on the tail-end of college.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t have time for my world to change.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n By the way, the head librarian who banned me literally delivered a death bed apology in 2004.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Something I find rather uplifting.\u00a0 I have a long list of people that I want a personal, face-to-face apology from, just before their sudden death.<\/p>\n I\u2019d print that list here, but my girlfriend says I\u2019m too bitter and GS should be more constructive.\u00a0 So I\u2019ll do what she says because she feeds me and has girl parts.\u00a0 And a sawed-off shotgun.<\/p>\n 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\u2019m 40.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 What?\u00a0 Like you have better life goals?<\/p>\n I feel like I\u2019ve already had it all, so it\u2019s quite difficult to put together a list of goals. With four years to go, then, I ended up creating an easy list.<\/p>\n 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\u2019m at work. Because I know she is!<\/p>\n Second: Learn Spanish so I can actually make it through a day in DC.\u00a0 For 20 years I\u2019ve 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.\u00a0 (Twenty years ago I just drank and watched them wide-eyed and then stayed an extra hour to clean up what they missed.)<\/p>\n Third: I need to get back to my serious traveling. Every year since 2000 I\u2019ve taken 4-6 weeks off and just lost myself somewhere.\u00a0 For the last three years, though, I\u2019ve failed at that\u2026thanks to money, time, etc. No more excuses!\u00a0 (Though 2010 looks like a wash, so this\u2019ll start in 2011.)<\/p>\n My list then devolves into beer-making and travel-related adventures.\u00a0 There\u2019s a note about taking the four books I published onto the soul-sucking festival circuit, and then there\u2019s my \u201csurvivalist\u201d set of goals.\u00a0 I really want to kill, clean, cook, and eat something. And I want to do more outdoorsy things even though I\u2019m the guy who trips on a rock and breaks his leg the moment I step off the concrete.<\/p>\n This is all building towards my ultimate goal:\u00a0 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\u2019s volcanoes.<\/p>\n So, the GS update. You won\u2019t notice anything different, except that I unfucked the sidebar.\u00a0 Sidebars aren\u2019t cool anymore, apparently.\u00a0 Today, while I sit at work debating the merits of driving a screwdriver into my brain, I\u2019ll probably re-fuck the sidebar with useless shit\u2026 Because I just don\u2019t care.\u00a0 In the end, 80% of my readers are angry people who leave nasty comments complaining about every single post since, apparently, they\u2019re trapped here.\u00a0 GS is their Lost <\/em>finale purgatory\u2026 Which is sad.\u00a0 Instead of the all-faith church and heavenward ending, all you get is Archbishop Gilbert Deya:<\/p>\n [youtube=http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=JU8OcuLt_Zw&]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I updated the site last night.\u00a0 For four years I\u2019ve 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[398],"class_list":["post-667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gs-news","tag-gs-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=667"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/667\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":675,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/667\/revisions\/675"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}