Well it’s Monday. Just like that. No getting around it. It’s November 30th, people I know have put up Xmas trees and we’re in the slide to the end of the year. Just like that. Soon people will put up endless lists, best of the year, best of the decade type stuff, and so on. What were the songs you loved most, the TV moments that you loved best the movies, books, orgasms, toes, viruses, scented wax candles and pastries that you remember the most fond over the last decade.

Of course we’ll also have the flurry of posts about how this was a bad year and thank god it’s over and next year will be better. There are always far too many of those, I think. And I never do check, but I always mean to – how many of the people posting those posts do you think posted them in the last five years? Ever wonder about that? How many people have generally fine years but remember them badly, all the time, and just declare them all spoiled? I bet it isn’t a very small number. But regardless, those posts will happen.

It’s like the turning of the leaves. There are seasons to the internet and they have their signs. You know winter is truly here once NaNoWriMo and its 50,000 spin-offs start. Fall arrives with the posts of going back to school, either by students or parents. We’re creatures of habit and our environment both, these are the things that force us to think and we voice those thoughts. We turn our lives into a clock.

I’m not sure if that’s good or bad. I’m certain, however, that it doesn’t matter if it is one or the other. Reality would suggest it’s neither. It’s what we make of it. And as we all turn our thoughts to looking back over the last year, and casting further, the last ten years let us remember that: It’s what we make of it.

Horrible, horrible things happened in the last decade. As well as magical, wonderful things. And what would life be without both those things? I don’t care about the horrible, anymore. The larger stuff we all know and have hashed out for years already. I’m not saying it doesn’t matter, some of it will always matter, I’m just saying we have already named it and given it our power. So let’s not give it more just this morning.

Instead I want to think about the good things. The inspired things that leave me in awe.

I met S.J. Tucker in the ’00s. I never see her, haven’t in many moons, we don’t talk, which is partly because she’s so busy it makes me look like the laziest bitch on the planet and then some, and partly because we don’t travel in the same circles really – but I still think of her almost every day. Her songs come up on my playlists, or stray thoughts or what have you. Her and K. It’s incredible to remember a time when a mutual friend said “You need to hear this woman sing and then invite her to a convention.” Boy was he right. I like to think I have helped her some, introduced her to a few folks, assisted her in shining her light, just the tiniest bit but that’s not really true. I, at best, helped hold open a door the tiniest bit – she was already stepping through it regardless of me. She is, now and for the foreseeable future, unironically, my rockstar.

I started writing professionally this decade, as well. Sometimes I forget that. TwoHeadedCat started in 2001, I sold my first short story not long after, worked for Too Much Coffee Magazine, where I met D.J. Kirkbride, all of this crazy writing goodness I deal with now – it’s about ten years old. Sure I prepared for it for most of my life before that, but it’s still new, really. I mean I can look at the chains from A to G on that and still see so many steps before Z it’s stunning. And inspiring and joyous.

I’ve met so very many people in the last ten years. So many who are dear to my heart. Some have since vanished from my life or circle, and some haven’t. Either way I cherish the time I had and will have with them, each and every one. People rule. I know I always say I don’t like people, and I mean it. I don’t. But I love people, too. A few folks understand that, and they nod when they read this. Some don’t and, well, that’s all right too.

Just this last year I started Legend of the Burrito Blade, my first webcomic. I met Renato and Lauren and we formed a team and friendships that have led to so many other things.

No this sort of list is endless and has too many names on it, too many events. Each one is amazing and special and wondrous. Not because my life is so ultra-magi-unicorn-special (though it is) but because I am willing to acknowledge all of the awesome it contains. Ten years is a long time. One year is a long time. Every year of my life I think “That last year had so many awesome things in it, surely I can’t cram more into another year!” and yet the number of them keeps going up. I really only say it to myself now while grinning. I know. I know how lucky I am, how hard I work and how amazing my friends and close ones are.

So here’s what I’m going to do about it, and what I am going to encourage you guys to do about it as well. This holiday season, whatever you celebrate, is a rough one for a lot of us in terms of money and stress. Instead of gifts I propose this:

Take the time to write the people closest to you. Send them an email, or a letter in the mail. Tell them how much they mean to you, and why. Share some history. Remind them of why they’re so close to your heart. Maybe they don’t know, maybe they do, either way a reminder is a magical thing. Thirty of them. Probably just scratching the surface for most of us. One email a day for the whole month. That’s it. Think of how much awesome and wonder we could spread. Between ourselves, our close ones and their close ones. Spread the idea, spread the joy. Thirty emails. That’s it. Think of the effect it can have on the people you love, and frankly, on yourself.

Thirty emails. We can all do it. Join me.

I give you no content for this Hammerpants quote via IM just now:

Hammerpants: Ya know, I always wondered what was under those balls. There had to be SOMETHING!

Tune in next time for an episode we hope won’t have to be called “Hammerpants Gets Something Foreign Removed From Down There.”

No, they’re not kidding. The “Christian side hug” – because “front hugs is sinful.” Yep. Did you know if you hug someone normally you will end up fucking them? NOW YOU KNOW!

Also they’re “Rough riders, filled up with Christ’s love,” if you were curious.

These are the easy rules so pay attention, it’s essential
This ain’t no front hug zone. You ain’t that fly (something).
Stop. And listen. No front hugs and no kissin’.

Sometimes I wonder about the people I meet. On the surface so many of them seem fine. So many of them then turn out to be batshit crazy. Expecting up to be down, demanding that an emotional state is unique to them, that an insight is theirs alone, that how they feel a story should end should actually influence a story …

And then I remember that most of these people are from the internet.

There’s a thing about the internet, isn’t there? I mean back in ‘93 or so it was all the rage to bemoan our fate that AOL users might have access to USENet and drag everything down. It’s always something, always an outsider at the gates, or something new that will “ruin” things for everyone.

There’s this great disconnect out there. People seem to want whatever they do and say on the internet to be applicable only there (or here, I suppose I should say) because “it’s the internet” and they feel betrayed or violated in some sense when that isn’t the case. When the veil, that isn’t even there in the first place, is lifted they panic. But at the same time people gather, the same people, in small groups and imagine they have influence over things outside of that group. They don’t see the problem with that.

How many Facebook groups are there about how if X number of people join then they can change something? How often do you think that works? Well, sure, you can say it is an outlet for their feelings but if that cause is something they believe in wouldn’t it be just as easy and more productive to do something meaningful about it? Don’t collect a million people in a group to support your cause: write a letter, make a call, do something real about it. It’s often as easy and might actually achieve something.

Or how many people do you see in a group about a show or movie they claim to love and yet bitch about endlessly saying how they should’ve done X Y or Z instead? And worse they often claim that “everyone wants it” when everyone is a bunch of internet people. Look, if 10,000 people across 40 forums want a plot point for a show that has 8 million viewers why do they think that they are somehow the majority? I’m not saying people shouldn’t think things, say things or feel certain ways but adding anger that they’re being ignored is just silly.

Of course they’re being ignored! This is a group that spends as much time attacking things as harshly as possible as they do complaining that no one listens. Yelling fire in a crowded theatre is a bad idea, yelling about invisible flying mongooses in a theatre is just odd. Yelling either gets you ignored after a while.

When your first move is to insult people as a way to express your displeasure, don’t be surprised you aren’t being listened to. No one listens to a mob screaming their heads off for blood about things they can’t really tend to affect. There are saner ways to effect change. They’re not used half as often.

One of my favorite recent ones was Dollhouse. Before the show started the hardcore Whedon fans started a movement to save the show. Before they had seen it, before it aired. Because they knew that the world was against the show, somehow, or something. And then it aired. And a lot of people didn’t like it. It didn’t get good ratings. Was it a good show? Eh, that doesn’t actually matter, you see.

And so even a lot of the people that didn’t like it wanted to make sure it got back for a second season, because it was done by their favorite creator and they thought it would get better. They got the second season. More people bailed on it. They didn’t like it. Ratings didn’t go up. So it was cancelled. And then the bitching started about how the network screwed Whedon up. Reality has no place here.

You always hear about those shows “no one likes” around the internet. Those shows that are “somehow” still on, despite the “fact” that “no one” likes them. Except, well, they have ratings, don’t they? People are obviously watching them. Just not people you know. Not people you, apparently, think have valid opinions.

The internet is a hell of a place, isn’t it? Just full of crazy motherfuckers shouting into the night, demanding that they be heard and not actually doing anything that would truly get them heard.

And don’t get me wrong, I love the internet. Quite obviously, given the amount of crap I put into it every week. But, man, it’s a clusterfuck of a town hall isn’t it? See, I don’t say anything here I wouldn’t say to someone’s face. It keeps me honest. It keeps me sane.

So try it. Next time you want to shout about what a fuckup a creator is, consider what you would say to their face. If you want to effect change in policy, law or gopher treatment, do it in a way that would work outside of the confines of your monitor. Maybe, if we all tried that a while, real change could happen and real voices could be heard. Until then the internet is largely a wild pack of children just waiting to start eating each other and claiming that the internet stole the plot from some bad made-for-TV movie while missing the Lord of the Flies reference.

D.J. Kirkbride and I decided to write and draw two special comics for you this holiday.

The Abominable Snowman Attacks!

This first is a classic case of man versus beast. The abominable snowman silently stalks a man in a blizzard, waiting for the right moment to attack and devour his prey. Silently now, Mister Abominable. Silently.

Ninja are Always Lurking!

Late at night, in your house, all the lights are off. But right there, can you see them? No, over there! Fucking Ninja! Beware! OH NO!

My family is a bit odd. I think I’ve mentioned that before. But that’s the family I know about. See, there is a whole huge side of my family I don’t know. It’s a bit strange. Lemme explain.

My father didn’t get along with his family at all, and I don’t think his mother did with hers either. So on that side of the family there was my father, his brother (my uncle) and his brother’s family and my grandmother. That was it.

That was always it. I wondered, sometimes, why my mother’s side of the family had way more people but then you never met my grandmother. I Could see why people didn’t want to hang out with her much. So all right.

Except once, this one single time, my father tells me we’re going to a birthday party. Who whom, I wonder. My great-aunt, he tells me. On his side of the family. Wait, what? What aunt, great or not, could he be talking about? Hattie, it turns out, was her name.

Well, sure, if you say so. Ok, I can have a great-aunt Hattie. Why not?! It turned out it was like her 101st birthday, so there was going to be a party and we were going. I never quite found out why we were going. I mean sure, she was old, hooray, but these were people I had literally never heard of. So where did this come from. Fuck only knows.

So we go to this party. It was upstate somewhere, in a huge house that backed into a giant rolling hill with a lake at the bottom. What. The. Fuck. It was sort of like walking onto the set of Gone With The Wind, without the slaves or fires.

So we get there and there are no less than 100 people there. All of them, you see, related to me. Yeah. All right. Wham! 100 new relatives in one blow. This was a bit strange, you can imagine.

I met some of them, I couldn’t tell you any of their names, at all. Also that side of the family has a penchant for changing their last names, no really. So who the fuck knows who these people were. Actors? A huge prank? Perhaps! But I doubt it.

Anyway we went, we left, I have never seen these people since. I don’t know any of their names, or faces. I have no idea who they could be. But sometimes…

I mean when I date, ever since this, so most of my life, I wonder, in the back of my head, if the person could possibly be a cousin. There were a 100 of these fuckers, and most of them lived in the NY area! So every time I wanted to ask someone out, I mean this hasn’t gone away either, I have to wonder…

I wouldn’t ever know until we had little French Royalty inbred kids! You can’t just ask someone if they ever had a great-aunt Hattie, either. This is NY. Everyone had a great-aunt Hattie, I think. It’s a requirement. And worse yet “Were you ever at a party for that great-aunt we all had named Hattie once, in the 80s? Somewhere big? It had a lake?” This does not work.

I’m going to have to start getting DNA tests with everyone I meet, I fear. I mean how else will I ever know? These are the kinds of fears that, while they don’t keep me up at night, certainly make life a bit more interesting.

So yes. If you are related to me, let me know. I don’t know how you would know, either, mind. I mean … did you have a great-aunt Hattie? Shit. Yeah this is going to continue to be a problem.

Well it’s almost 2am. What better time to record and release the first ghetto edition of my new podcast. So here you go, enjoy it. It’s recorded for crap and features zero production values! Hooray! It also features a lot of cursing. And insanity.

It’s like 12, almost 13 minutes long.

Right click and save to listen! (Playing it directly from the server seems to burp and skip it some…)

Time for a new Talking Heads with Shatner and Feldman: http://bit.ly/5hLioh

Not much to say today, honestly. Kinda caught under the gun here and will be spending most of the next five days writing at speed. So for now, for the few who haven’t seen it, Muppet Bohemian Rhapsody. Henson Studios had a bit of fun. Enjoy.

You see, I’m crazy. Anyway. Since Talking Heads moved to its ongoing Wednesday @ noon slot (catch it tomorrow) on Mamapop.com they had this Tuesday @ 3 slow still open and, well, one thing led to another.

So welcome to the ongoing column: Interpretive Dunce! A weekly column where I will be interpreting song lyrics. In strange ways, of course. But there is something else to it. After this initial column, the readers get to pick the songs I interpret. Leave a comment on the column’s post and I will randomly pick one of the songs named to use for the next column.

Please note: Only comments left on the actual column (follow this this link here) will be considered. Comments for songs here will be ignored.

There you go. So it now works like this:

Monday – New Burrito Blade page

Tuesday – New Things Wrong With Me episode, Interpretive Dunce (@3pm)

Wednesday – New Burrito Blade page, Talking Heads (@noon)

Thursday – New Things Wrong With Me episode

Friday – New Burrito Blade page

And every day M-F I will try to update this place at least once.