(My kink is retranslating the Danish versions of Disney songs.)
The glittering snow decks the mountain at night No footprints show the way An entirely isolated realm and its queen. That’s me.
And the wind’s cry reflects the storm within I have lost everything to a terrible magic Shut no one in. Let no one see. Hold the facade that you are obligated to Shut off every day. Fold the cover down. Now shall they receive
Let it happen. Let them see I reveal myself as I am Let it happen. Let them see I shall no longer hide myself Never more will I listen to them
Yes it storms but The ice-cold mountain is my true home When one is at a bit of a distance All things become so small And my life in dreadful shackles Is finished, they must understand It becomes my great breakthrough Now I lose my inhibitions and let the line out Farewell to the tyrrany of duty I’m free
Let it happen. Let them see. The strength I’ve received Let it happen. It continues With shame and bitter tears Now I become that which I am The storm breaks loose
I shake the earth and sky like it’s nothing Ice crystals spring up and join in a gathering halo And like crystals rises a thought fairly clear I’m never going home Goodbye to that which was
Let it happen. Let them see. Now the gloves come off Ice and snow I want to see I’m ready for a whole new day And with that, light bursts forth Winter storms come, but The ice cold mountain is my true home
Ernie Smith over at Tedium somehow makes the most cogent argument yet for blogging in the 2020s, and he does it with pancakes. When viewed as contagion not content, one quickly grows as sick of hot takes as Kiki of pancakes. Quick, cheap and messy isn’t the highest expression of humanity, but it seems all we’re offered these days.
Remember when social media was fun? Facebook was great as “Your friends’ kid did this today;” at the end of last year, I literally lost a friend I’ve had since middle school over her weirdly violent anti-trans-child posts, as American Facebook seeks to radicalize everyone, as a business model, into something, into anything. The more post-IPO Reddit tries to juice “engagement” via the long-disgraced social media playbook, the better it does at curing my addiction. Twitter was fun until it became a Gen-X manchild’s disposable plaything. If true art can come from chasing the algorithm, Spotify and TikTok suggest otherwise.
The common thread? Billionaires. And pancakes. Cheap slop. The very speed at which it can be slung is meant to distract us from its hollow calories. (And we’re still talking human-made slop. Generative AI’s only profitable uses are spam and scams, and the billionaires can’t get enough of it–because, basically, that’s what they want to sell. And no, I’m never giving up my em dashes, clever-hans-machines be damned.)
Somehow, I’ve still got a blog. I mean, everyone my age (Xennial) has a blog, but most haven’t posted to it since 2015. (Checking some old bookmarks, most have actually been shut down by their hosting companies, or those who bought the assets of those who bought the assets. Billionaires love culture.)
I’ve owned SpaceToast.net since January 17, 2003. (SpaceToast.com was taken. It’s spent most of its life squatted.) I’ve been through four hosts and three software stacks. My most popular post was about making a bike light out of an old audiocassette case, and that was literally two decades ago. So why should I keep writing, and why should you read it?
Because this is me.
Legit.
Unpaid. Unprocessed. Glowed-down.
Whole.
A real person, not a brand or a product or a comforting lie or ragebait. I want you to be better for reading my words. They are what I have to offer this world.
Hugin hunts for what the hell is going on at the back of daddy’s mind
I’ve also got a baby boy (weirdly pretty), a nerdy wife (weirdly gorgeous) and a career (my bosses’ looks are about as mid as you’d expect). I have no time. But, I’m also way too precious about what I post. (Believe it or not.) So maybe there’s something to be said for quick, cheap and messy as a direction, as opposed to a destination, when you’re as self-serious, Asperger-ey and awkward a human being as Your Humble.
Not that I can just hit Publish now, an hour after my partner went to bed. I’ll have to reread this in the morning, edit it, go over the whole thing one more time, lest some (hypothetical, non-LLM-scraper) reader judge me on that semicolon.
It’s that time of year. Bootie’s 21st annual best mashups album has dropped. Twenty-one years. Over 450 tracks, plus bonus tracks, plus 47 theme albums.
…and I’m still fixing their goddamn ID3 tags, every goddamn year.
Picture a board book, with a round hole through the center. The hole grows smaller with each page, missing entirely on the last.
Page 1. Vague interior with “wallpaper” that looks like a cute diaper pattern. A painting is literally Photoshopped in. The hole IS the main character:
There once was a little butthole, who lived in a snug little home. It was warm, soft and carpeted. He even a Vermeer painting. (So I’m told. I’m pretty sure that’s a Cassatt.)
Page 2. The butthole tosses his Trilby hat onto the coatrack:
The butthole had a nice life. He did some work, usually every day, sometimes less, sometimes more. The work was boring, but it needed to be done.
Page 3. Buckets & flower pots are out catching leaks, but it’s not interruping his evening on the barcalounger:
True, sometimes his house would get a bit wet. But, into every life some rain must fall. He didn’t usually mind.
Page 4. He’s tiredly thrown the trilby, and missed the rack. The pots are in disarray. The Cassatt is crooked:
Usually. There came a time when the work got too much. No sooner did one job end when he’d be needed for another. And another. And another.
Page 5. Flooded! He’s in a rowboat, with his coatrack and his soaked Cassatt. The trilby floats:
Worse, his home was CONSTANTLY flooded!
He started to get tired. He started to get sore. He started to get angry. Pretty soon he was angry, and sore, and tired, and...
Page 6. Big radiating anger lines, on a page of solid:
RED!
There was only one thing to do. Nothing else could make the butthole happy again. He needed to leave his snug little home. He needed to go out into the big, windy world. He needed...
Page 7: Two page spread of a gorgeous, sunny landscape, bursting with color. A couple of chubby back legs and heels are visible below:
Naked Time!
Page 8: Art gallery, with a Vermeer and a Cassatt in background. Midground, the bottom 2/3 of a woman, turning around startled. Foreground, the backside of a man, his unseen butthole where the tiny hole on the previous page would have been:
This story, from my own butthole, happened a long time ago. As we all know, every butthole has a story to tell. Often quite loudly.
The firm signature put Bain in mind of Mrs. Lurlin’s elegant, pale look; and he spent most of the intervening evening and night and morning in a reverie of nearly forgotten faces, men he had alienated by his negligence or his improvidence, women he had found hollow or who had found him exasperating. None of these ever thought of him now, even when dreaming before the fire. And why should they?
*****
She looked at him steadily. “I believe you’re decent. I have no friends, and I hate to be solitary here, day on day. I’m afraid to be alone.”
“I wouldn’t take you to be timid, Mrs. Lurlin.”
“Don’t you understand? I thought you’d guessed.” She came a trifle closer to Bain; and she said, in her low sweet voice, “I’m afraid of my husband.”
Bain stared at her. “Your husband? I understood–I thought that he’s dead.”
“Quite,” said Ann Lurlin.
Somewhere in that Minoan maze of a house, a board or table creaked; the wind rattled a sash; and this little room at the stairfoot was musty. “You know, don’t you?” Mrs. Lurlin whispered. “You know something’s near.”
*****
“It will be a year next Friday. Now I’m going to confess something.” She turned her little body so that her eyes looked directly into Bain’s. “When I saw you in the square, I wondered if I could use you. I had some notion that I might stick a life between myself and… You looked no better than a dare-devil. Do you mind my saying that? Something in me whispered, ‘He was made to take chances; that’s what he’s good for.’ I meant you to come to see me. I don’t suppose it flatters you, Ralph, to have been snared by a madwoman.”
“I tell these things as accurately as I can, and with no theories to blur the history. Theories are poor things at the best, and the bulk of mine have perished long ago.” -W. B. Yeats
Where the houses ended, the woods began. Neither had a name. The houses didn’t merit one, and the woods could not be encompassed by one. The woods were not merely deep–one might think, endless–but defied one’s sense of scale and order. Wonders were meant to cease. Down the very first path lay a cathedral of pines, tall, solemn and breathless, forever dissolving into the faintest haze. Not far along, three chattering falls met like a fleur-de-lis to run laughing away down a narrow, secretive gorge. Above, a hillside rose, so vast and even that the trees seemed to grow sideways. At the top, a great ledge of quartz split apart to form a silent, mossy inner sanctum. Wander deeper and discover more. The wood’s imagination was never exhausted. The only limits were endurance, and how much one’s heart could hold. Spring, summer and fall, all walked the woods as if in a shared dream. But in winter, no one entered the woods.
In winter, when the shadows of the trees stretched toward them even at midday, the houses became lighted bastions. Visits were begun by early dusk, and lasted until the late light of morning. Candles burned in windows all night long. Snug and warm, these were the hilights of the children’s year, the winter sleepovers with cousins and friends. Good things were exchanged: Principally sweets for the kids, knitwear for babies, and alcohol for adults. Parents stayed up late to sing and toast. If snow fell overnight, it was a good sign for the turning of the year.
Martin and his family didn’t live in one of the old houses, whose small-paned windows scraped the very edges of the forest. Their sashes were of wood, not iron. Their walls were plastered brick, not lichened stone. A boy his age needn’t duck under heavy timbers to move from room to room. The path up their garden bore only a single loop, long overgrown. A hawthorn could be found above the hedge gate, but it was only a carving.
Several houses (which his father called new) faced the roundabout, inside of which had grown up a small stand of beech trees, sparse enough that the lights of the facing houses showed clearly through their paper-white trunks. Whether it was a wood or not, it was here that Martin had first seen her.
She was white, pale as the frost on the grass. “I’m your sister,” she’d said. Her breath didn’t show in the cold.
“I don’t have a sister.”
That’s what he would have said, but Martin knew she’d have shot back, “Are you calling me a liar?”
“Why is your face painted like a fox?”
This, too, he hadn’t asked, but it was just as well. “It’s NOT painted,” she’d have replied.
So little had passed between them. Had he said anything at all? He could remember almost nothing. Questions had been answered without being asked.
A boy other than Martin might have wondered how this could be. A boy other than Martin would have been afraid, or cautious, or at least intrigued. A boy other than Martin would have hesitated to tell his mother.
“You shouldn’t have been out past dark,” she said.
