The webmaster stuff is driving me nuts. Putting together the Antelucan blog has been a pleasure; I discover that I really dig dragging widgets around!

But my Book Elves and Elf Life sites seem to be stubbornly resisting every attempt to fix. It probably looks like I’m neglecting them, now that I’m back, but I just can’t get them to work for me!

I’ve put a request in at Keenspot for a database. It’s pretty clear that I really do need to just change over to WordPress already. I’m sick sick sick of wrangling HTML and PHP. Let somebody else do all that messy web work so I can get back to drawing.

Antelucan: everyone else is still asleep

If you subscribe to the current Carsblog feed, you may not need to change it or add the new RSS. In the future, the old feed will simply pipe the new feed.

If you bookmark Antelucan, you will find that it also keeps track of my various accounts on the web: my Twitter (which was just hacked yesterday for porn purposes), my Flickr (I'm going to borrow Kai's digital camera and post some better photos), my Good Reads (what I'm reading from the library), and when I revive it, my DeviantArt.

Also: I hope to reclaim elflife.com.

I just downloaded 250 emails, and it all came in a flash. I used to wait longer for five emails to load. Wow. But there's so much to do now, all at once, it's a bit overwhelming.

I still feel somewhat off-balance from all the huge changes, lately. I guess my first plan of attack should be to resume the Faerie Melee art that got stalled out at the temp lodgings. There, what little I could do was drawn on the bed, while twisting uncomfortably from a chair. It's nice to have a drawing board.

And that leather recliner I wound up with -- it may make a good chair at the drawing board. It's more comfortable than the little stumps I usually have to sit on. It's not really meant for such work, but I only have to lean forward a little to make it work. It's not designed like one of those bulky recliners, but more like an office chair that tilts back.

Bah. Library's closed today, too.

Well, no, it was a nice day so I walked to the library. It's just down the street and around the corner, past some houses and churches and a meat market.

It was my first real visit to the local library with my brand new library card, and I was impressed. They had a very smart collection for a small town library, probably a better range of material per square foot than the Mesquite library that I'm used to.

I had to pass by many things to prevent myself from winding up with a stack of books too big to carry home. I got a book on home networking from The Missing Manual series just in case we have trouble when the ethernet cable gets here. I have to admit I couldn't find much that was helpful in the arts. I picked up a thin book of suggested manga techniques. I also picked up a couple of mangas for inspiration... an early Dragon Ball volume, when the series was cute, and some Cowboy Bebop. Next time I should expose myself to more unfamiliar series (to me), like Naruto and Bleach. Last I looked, the Mesquite library was really bulking up on manga. Must be a library trend.

The DVD selection was great, too. The Mesquite library jams a small selection into a tiny space that a dozen people want to look at all at the same time. This library has a better selection, spread out better in lower shelves, and it doesn't seem to be the sole focal point of every visitor. Most of the people at this library were looking at -- believe it or not -- books!

I also seem to be the only library patron not toting around a laptop. Ben Franklin invented laptops, didn't he? I remember the old cast iron Franklin Laptop.

So next week, we begin with a burlesque that may or may not lead straight back to Elf Life stuff. I have two primary goals for Elf Life: redoing Lake Froth's Bane, and finishing the Wedding. Priorities to be sure, but maybe I shouldn't be in too big a rush. Let's have some fun, first. The Viking Follies are guaranteed to be a complete waste of your time.

The ethernet cable is in transit; it was still in California yesterday, according to the tracker info, but it could be here by Saturday. But even if it's here Monday, whoopee! I'm looking forward to downloading all of my email and just generally opening up for business.

Here in the non-virtual world, I walked to the library yesterday, with a bright shining new library card burning a hole in my pocket, only to find that the library was closed for the day for a funeral. I may try again today, if it's not too hot. Reading is doing me a lot of good right now.

So hang on -- I'm back, but still putting stuff together. I've colored some nifty art that Kitsune procured for us, drawn by the terrific Fred Perry, and I've unpacked more of my art studio.

Even after I get back direct access to the site, I'm still considering retiring Kipper, my content management system, in favor of something more mainstream (like Wordpress). Kipper's organizational structure is based on -- well, dialup. It assumes the user can't always access the internet. See, when you write directly into Wordpress and post your output to the web, your own work becomes inaccessible for long periods of time if your internet access is intermittent. You can go to the extra trouble of making copies of your work, but you don't automatically retain the structure of the posts. Kipper generates pages from structured batches of files that you can keep on hand, a purposeful redundancy for this former dialup user.

But if my internet access is more constant and dependable, that redundancy is no longer needed. I will be able to make better use of already-existing resources, and spend less time cobbling sad workarounds.

Meanwhile, on the non-virtual front (the real world), I mowed the new lawn for the first time last night (borrowed mower), and we may soon get some help getting a refrigerator. We're currently eating out of cans. Last night, Sweet Sue's chicken and dumplings, the night before Spaghetti-O's. Vienna saugages and crackers for lunch! And we ordered a new hose (seems to be missing) for the washing machine. For now, I'm going to have to tote some dirty duds down to the laundromat.

Wherefore art thou internet?

As I'm writing this, we're still waiting on internet, but if you're reading this that means that I've uploaded it and we're finally in business. The guy from AT&T came out Friday, but for some reason or other couldn't get it going. He's scheduled to come out again today, Monday, here on the last day of August.

Update: The AT&T guy came out and climbed all over the house and tested this and that, and finally determined there was a problem at both ends of the line. He fixed it all, and we are now back online!

So, what's new?

I've got a bajillion things to tell you guys, but I'm not sure exactly what form updates will take this week, and much of it will relate to reorganizing for the weeks and months ahead.

The AT&T modem will not directly work with my computer, so I will have to carry my updates over to Kai's computer for a while. Once I'm back online, I can look into some options. Could I find a modem on eBay that would work with both AT&T and my outdated but otherwise OK 98ME system? Should I try to update to the minimum required system, Windows 2000?

The Antelucan Lounge

I tried to set up something like an art studio at the old place, but it was more like a couple of tables in the corner of the kitchen. Now I have a bigger room which is going to be mostly dedicated to studio work. At last! I have dubbed it the Antelucan Lounge because it now boasts a relatively comfortable leather recliner in front of the art table.

So there will probably be a pinup-a-day for updates, at least this week. I've got a lot of art, a lot of old business that needs to be caught up, and you'll be hearing about it here. Meanwhile, I'd like to start a dialogue with friends and readers before I get myself committed to anything long-term. I've been living in a box in the wilderness this past year.

I'm coming out of the box and blinking at the sunlight.

There's no way to fix the car, so we've had to get a rental. We can't really afford the expense, but there's just no other way. We need to find a new place to live today. In any case, the computer and everything else is going back into storage, so when I see you guys again is going to depend on success today, and how fast we can move in and set up.

Your donations during this extremely difficult time have been a lifesaver. There's no way we would have kept our heads above water, otherwise. I must invoke a cliche, but it's the best way to put it: thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Once the car is rolling again, we will find a place to live again, ASAP. Things are still kind of rough until then.

One story, Toga Party by John Barth left me a bit disappointed. The characters, a bored and aging couple, were a little less intriguing than guests at one of Fraser Crane's house parties and in the end committed suicide jointly.

Eh. Am I too demanding? What do I want from fiction anyway? The couple opting for joint termination weren't unfaithful to life, just unsatisfying as protagonists. The ending was not instructive or heroic; nor did it seem particular sad or uplifting. It just happened, after a friend mourning the first anniversary of the death of his wife made a good stab (ouch) at committing hari kari at a party. Say, honey, Doc's on to something there -- let's kill ourselves, shall we?

By coincidence, a headline in today's paper:

With Help, Conductor and Wife Ended Lives

The controversy over the ethical and legal issues surrounding assisted suicide for the terminally ill was thrown into stark relief on Tuesday with the announcement that one of Britain’s most distinguished orchestra conductors, Sir Edward Downes, had flown to Switzerland last week with his wife and joined her in drinking a lethal cocktail of barbiturates provided by an assisted-suicide clinic.

Although friends who spoke to the British news media said Sir Edward was not known to have been terminally ill, they said he wanted to die with his ailing wife, who had been his partner for more than half a century.

The couple’s children said in an interview with the London Evening Standard that on Tuesday of last week they accompanied their father, 85, and their mother, Joan, 74, on the flight from London to Zurich, where the Swiss group Dignitas helped arrange the suicides. On Friday, the children said, they watched, weeping, as their parents drank “a small quantity of clear liquid” before lying down on adjacent beds, holding hands.

“Within a couple of minutes they were asleep, and died within 10 minutes,” Caractacus Downes, the couple’s 41-year-old son, said in the interview after his return to Britain.

So Barth's story (from a 2007 story collection) is certainly timely. An aging couple with all the advantages of life, riches and respect, decide to jointly end it all rather than contemplate life without each other. You want to sympathize with them; they cannot bear the thought of growing old alone. How sweet.

Perhaps I am a little less sympathetic than most, since I have been alone most of my life. Although it must be sad to lose a lifemate, there is something that strikes me as weak and immature as well as particularly cruel about this act. For one thing, I can't help but think that in a relationship, there is always one partner who is more easily swayed. Does your partner really want to commit suicide just because you do? Really? And what about everybody else? Is the indulgence of your own self-pity more important than charity? If your partner dies, how about dedicating the rest of your life to making other lonely people feel wanted. Is this really to be a world of babies until the last baby boomer is dead?

Richard, the aging man in Barth's story was given an easy out; his growing unease about the future, despite a relatively wonderful life, was paired with his wife Susan's aggressive vows to take her own life the day he dies. So when he pulls the car into the garage and leaves the engine running, and makes his intentions clear, she consents rather quickly.

It might have made a far more satisfying story if, when faced with the dreadful reality of actually taking her life, Susan had second thoughts despite her repeated vows. You know, a complication. There was no complication in this story, though; just complicity. Along the way, Barth often references the Hurricane Katrina disaster, for some effect, but the contrast between real disaster and the boredom of his couple never really seems to gel. Katrina just seems to be happening for no apparent reason.

Am I asking for my fiction to be too ham-fisted? Would it have been too lacking in subtlety to show a bit of the life of a Katrina-victim couple thanking God for life, while a privileged couple squanders theirs? I needed somebody to root for.

In view of (literally) today's headlines, Barth certainly can't be faulted for faithfulness to life. But just the same I ended up despising the people in his story, and felt that I had wasted a portion of my own life with what turned out to be the waste of two selfish and ungrateful upper-crust dullards.

Don't get me wrong; it's not that the fictional couple commits fictional suicide that upsets me. It's that they are clearly the only ones available to root for. Or to feel sad for. Or to feel empathy for. Maybe today's fiction works a little too hard to not be judgemental? I would have liked to have seen less of Richard's ponderous hand wringing and more of the after effects of his loutish decision. Some irony or unintended consequence. Or even justification. But the end was just an end:

The car engine quietly idled on.

"Shouldn't we at least leave them a note, send them an e-mail, something?..."

"So go do that, if you want to. Me, I'm staying put."

He heard her exhale. "Me too, I guess." Then inhale, deeply.

And, finally:

The overhead garage light timed out.

I am left with more sympathy for the overhead garage light than Susan and Richard. The overhead garage light, unlike Susan and Richard, will come back on. It does not take for granted its usefulness, its place, its function in life. It will not give up the ghost until it burns out. It won't unscrew itself and fall screaming to the floor because it misses the flourescents, or shatter itself because it feels vaguely discontented since somebody sold the Porsche.

Hmm... Britey the Overhead Garage Light; the story of a survivor...