Angry Robot

Joy Robot and Destroy Robot

As you can probably tell from the URL I like robots.

My daughter “wrote” two “books”. By “wrote” I mean she drew a series of pictures, and by “book” they are probably more like a zine comic book, as put together by a six-year-old, of course. But she read them to us, decoding the pictures as if they contained words, sometimes getting mixed up and backtracking. Let me try to summarize the plot:

Once upon a time there was a robot, called Joy Robot. (Note: this robot contains a little girl in its belly that looks awfully similar to my daughter.) But then… a terrible robot appeared! This is Destroy Robot (who contains a little boy, identity unknown). The two robots had a war. They fought and fought, until the Queen of the Mermaids appeared. She tried to help. But Destroy Robot used Mind Control! And then the Queen and Joy Robot fought. But after a while, Joy Robot remembered who she was, and she and the Queen fought Destroy Robot. And Destroy Robot was destroyed!

I’ve never told my daughter about this site. It’s quite possible, however, that she witnessed my love of robots first hand, and thus her behavior was guided. Or, it could be in her DNA.

But one way or the other, I’ve never wanted to change the name of my site more than I do now.

Once Again Back Is the Incredible…

… blog post about how the blogger hasn’t been posting a lot lately.

I have Many Thoughts about blogging, about this blog, about whether I should keep doing it. These range from disinterest to a species of Zuckerberg-inflected despair to “I miss it”. In many ways I started blogging because writing helped me clarify my thoughts, which were often muddled. I have other ways of doing this now. And let’s face a facsimile of facts, I had a lot more free time when I started. Now I have two kids and two jobs so the idea that I might put a few hours into polishing a blog post that will do nothing other than clarify my thoughts, make me feel a fleeting sense of accomplishment, and mean something to a handful of people is basically laughable? But in a sad way, so sort of a broken-up chortle, where maybe I cough out a mouthful of hamburger, reflect for a minute, and then begin sobbing into the sloppy food waste that lies in front of me.

Also these are dark times for the internet. I’m sure the reader can infer from my references to old school blogging, the time stamp of this article along with recent events in history like the growth of Facebook and Twitter, and their destabilization of whole governments, never mind their sabotage of the open internet… hey hey! I was supposed to let you infer all that.

So yeah, no time, dark times. Another thing that afflicts me from time to time is that I pretend to know what this site is about. Mostly I try to guide it toward subjects of tech, nerd stuff, video games, or film/TV stuff, because I tell myself that’s what I’m into. But then for long stretches I’m not into that stuff, so I feel like the things I am into aren’t suitable material to post about. Which is just another example of how the most effective jails are our own minds.

Well then! I’m returning to this thing, because I’m not giving up on this yet, because even if it’s just a catalogue of my thoughts and valuable only to me, that’s still of value. I’m also returning because I can’t figure out why I do it, and maybe I don’t have to know that. Maybe I should just do it. Maybe if there are rules or explanations or expectations I should ignore them. Maybe this site needs to become whatever it becomes.

That was a lot of fancy talk for: I’m a try posting here again.