Ok, this page is something other. It’s not the blog, it’s also not my professional work. No one wants to read training materials, business plans, or requirements documents anyway (although, they’re pretty good). This is where I drop stuff—stories, pictures, illustrations… whatever I feel like sharing. Everything will be Creative Commons licensed in one form or another; I don’t know why, it just seems like a good thing to do. Anyway, I’ll break the sections down if needs be. Otherwise, enjoy, critique, or laugh. It’s all up to you.

Rose of Sharon
This is a story I wrote, the first draft of which was finished 14 Oct 1997. Quality aside, the story is one with personal interest to me as I vividly remember the Vice Principal sticking his head in my class and whispering “The shuttle blew up” in my teachers ear (he had a problem controlling the volume of his voice). For nothing but sentimentality, this is one of my favorite compositions.

Chumbawamba – Pass It Along (MP3)
Talk about a band that got short shrift in the States. Chumbawamba was known as a one-hit-wonder this side of the pond. On the other side of the Atlantic, however, they are (not were) a huge club band. They’re fanatically anarchistic (but what anarchist isn’t, right?), but they actually have some decent music. This track is a slap in the face of the music industry. More tracks here.

Inspiration

Man cannot live by his own mind alone on an island, or something like that. Below are some things that inspire me. Some of these are Creative Commons licensed.

Cory Doctorow – Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom
How will you spend your life if you’re immortal?

The Witch’s Hand – Patrick O’Leary
Ghost stories always come true.

The Factwhore Proposition – Charles Coleman Finlay [author’s website]
Life’s a bitch; then you get a nemesis.

Note: This story originally appeared on Futurismic, but is gone now. If anyone finds it online again, drop me a line and I’ll update this page.

Our house is for sale (call our agent if you’re interested!). This is Day 50 of it being on the market. We thought we had plumbed the depths of ennui before this process began but we were so very, very wrong.

To date, we’ve had about 12 showings, 2 open houses, and almost no interaction with our agent once she figured out we couldn’t finance another family car. We had to drop the price on our home, which was something that had to be done Right Now because the new price had to fan out for the second open house. Except it didn’t. The second open house was staffed by not-our-agent with not-the-right-price and barely signs telling buyers where they could find the house itself. (Yes, we drove around.)

It’s a disillusioning process and experience for a house, frankly, we just want to be out of but can’t unless the right price comes in. We expect to lose money on the sale. We expect pointed criticism about the house; hell, we’d provide it if needed.

What we didn’t expect was the awful feeling of living in a house that is no longer your home. Our things, the comforts of our non-working lives, are stuffed in a 5×10 storage unit (to the ceiling) so that other people can maybe picture their stuff in our house. Our pets suffer because other agents can’t be trusted (or, we’re told, shouldn’t be trusted) to either not let them outside or to not mistreat them in their own home.

Owing this home continues to be a terrible experience. I know there’s some Dream That Must Be Had in owning a home. I don’t get it. There’s nothing particularly wrong with the house, but it’s… I don’t know… over? And it seems fitting that one of the most frustrating parts of owning it is getting rid of it.