truefiction.org

It took a little while (and a lot of the details are still being worked out, like an actual, I dunno, design for this page), but truefiction.org is back online after languishing in the wilderness for a while. Corresponding with the fact that we have a new hosting provider and finally managed to switch over to Wordpress, there are going to be some changes coming in the next few weeks. First: there are going to be new writers. Give a warm welcome to Kevin Bostic, who’s signed on already; there will hopefully be a few other writers signing on before too long.

Second: there’s something to be said for actually updating regularly. I make promises on this count far too often for my word to mean anything, but using WordPress is such a huge leap over the (very old version) of MovableType that I was using that writing in it is almost–dare I say it?–fun.

Third: I’m currently having trouble importing my old content into the new format. Apparently, I’m going to have to go through the old stuff post by post and replace the quotation marks and the formatting. This qualifies as a pain in the ass. But it should be done by the end of the month.

Anyway, welcome back to the site. I mean you by this, dad.

It was bound to happen eventually. I’d finally get sick of not having the website to procrastinate with, and I’d finally put it back up. So we’re back, with a layout that doesn’t work in Microsoft IE at the moment, only a vague understanding of what I’m going to be writing about, and a solid worry that every word I write will be analyzed by the administration’s web-spider.

There’s a couple of reasons I pulled the site in the first place. First, I had my hands full working on the Dec, which didn’t leave a lot of time for writing on my own. Second, there wasn’t nearly enough schoolwork for me to procrastinate. And third, I needed to take a break after the disaster that was the year surrounding the 2004 election. It’s really the third that drove me off the internet, though.

I mean, think back to a year and a half ago, to the apocalyptic imagery that was getting tossed about on both sides: the fear of a draft, the fear of a totalitarian state, the fear that Bush was going to do something really crazy, like attack Iran and start World War III–and all of this had absurd religious overtones. Even the atheist, hard-core lefties were throwing out arguments with the certainity of the true believer. Shit, the Red Sox winning the Series felt like it was predicted in Revelation. (It was after the locusts and before the seas boiled.) The undercurrent of religion–and, along with it, the imminent end of the world if things didn’t go exactly your way–wound up being so strong that you would drown if you tried to struggle against it.

Well, I was drowned. I think it was the Schiavo case that was the final straw. I finally threw up my hands, withdrew into the sanity of alcohol and friends and just getting my two jobs done. And then that lead to me working myself into the ground last fall, finally coming up for air a few months ago and wondering what had happened.

I didn’t wind up dropping out of school and owning a record store. I didn’t wake up to find myself living on a beach in the Caribbean, working menial jobs at a hotel to pay the bills. All I’d done had been to watch a lot of TV, not to do any writing beyond a few short music and book reviews, and to learn how football worked. Oh, and got three credits closer to graduating. Woot.

So it’s 2006 now, I’m doing all right, and you can breathe in without getting all that crazy apocalyptic dust back in your lungs. Sure, there’s a lot that’s wrong at the moment–the Teflon Administration, the torture that Congress can’t put an end to, people still listening to The Killers–and I’ll get to that stuff, eventually. But The Rapture’s back to being a too-trendy band and a bar downtown, instead of being right around the corner. That’s something I can live with. That’s something I can puzzle fight.