A Bureaucracy of One

On ADHD and Wikipedia and the Ridiculous Optimism of Post-Apocalyptic Fiction

A nice little graph showing page views for my blog always pops up as soon as I open the dashboard. It's a nice bit of ego-boosting, or would be if I ever got more that barely-double digit pageviews in a day. I bring it up because the graph of the past week of traffic nicely mirrors my own feelings about this 30 Day Challenge; nothing on the first day, followed by a slow rise over the next two days, which leads into a sharp climb for two days. And then comes the inevitable crash when readers/I realize there isn't anything of interest going on. Then there is a small bounce over the last two days indicating a low-level interest still burning in a few die-hards.

Masochists, the lot of us.

Now, once more I was going to try and write a poetry-centric post, using some of the many fragments of poems I have written over the past months, but rather than finish the one I had been working on at work, or transcribing the rest, I allowed myself to get distracted by a post over on io9.com about an abandoned Russian airfield.

This led to an ADHD-fueled tour of Wikipedia starting with the Tu-22 bomber, and ending with the KS-1 Komet. Stops along the way also included the entries for the bouncing bomb; the definition of a "fleet in being"; and the Tallboy, a precursor to today's bunker buster bombs.

The pictures of the Russian airfield, and pictures from the West Coast mothball fleet, also put me in mind of just how optimistic so many apocalyptic stories are when it comes to technology. Nearly all of them have the plucky survivors of whatever flavor armageddon is popular at the time finding and salvaging weapons and technology from hidden bunkers that have survived the ravages of time. The most egregious example of which is the the Fallout series of games.

Seriously, take a close look at the decrepit hulks of those ships, and the empty shells of those Russian aircraft, and tell me with a straight face that anything made in the last fifty years would last twenty years unattended, nevermind one hundred and fifty!

Also, enjoy this Tiny Desk Concert by the Kopecky Family Band.

 

Enter Genius...sub-Genius...sorta genius...

A very good friend of mine has finally taken the plunge into blogging.  Like me he is an idea-man, full of potential but sadly lacking on the follow-through and one who is poised to take the world by storm!

Hopefully I can convince him to post some of the stories he used to tell me; stories that would have me clutching my sides and wheezing from laughter, with tears streaming down my cheeks as I begged him to stop so I could breathe.

Seriously, my friend has that particular gift for turning tragedy and pain into laughter.  Please welcome to the blogging scene He Who Need Not Be Named and It Makes Sense to Me!

Intestinal Bug:4 Grumpy Blogger: 0

If anybody ever says to you, "Hey, you know what would be fun, if we experienced sever dehydration brought on by uncontrollable vomiting and diarrhea!", you must a promptly kill this person as he, or she, is no friend of yours.  Trust me, no court in the land would convict you.

Uhhhh...four days later, and I still have the intestinal fortitude of an epileptic kitten.

Now, where was I?  Links!  Lots of Links!  Well, at least two, maybe three.

First up is two links for Nina Paley, and her Sita Sings the Blues site.  The first link is to Nina Paley's blog wherein you can read up on her continuing efforts to bring Sita to the big screen.  The second link is to the official site for Sita Sings the Blues, and while there are no clips hosted there, it is chock full of information about the upcoming movie, has a link to the movie trailer, stills, and much more!  And if anyone wants to get me the dvd when it comes out, I would of course happily repay them by either A) making sure they had a swift and painless death when I inevitably take over the world, or B) allow them to bloodily execute their worst enemy during said revolution, but just before their regular, not-so-quick-or-painless execution.  Because I'm good like that.

Do you have a dog?  Have you ever felt like dressing it up in cute costumes on Halloween, or just in general?  Well, know that I have my eye on you, and that you will not find life so comfy and easy-going under my Iron-fisted Rule of Righteousness!!! {Ahem} Sorry.  Got a bit carried away.  Well, at least you will have it easer than these people who so horribly abuse their animals.

And finally, we have the Song of the Count - Lemon Demon Version.