Hello and good morning.  It’s the first Thursday of a new month.  Back in the day, you’d have been able to look forward to next week’s episode of “My heroes have always been villains.”  Of course, it seems that I was the only person who ever looked forward to those episodes, which is why I stopped writing them (insert sigh here).  I guess the title, which I thought was a mildly clever play on the old Willie Nelson song title, was worrisome for most people.  Oh, well.  These things happen.

We’re into November, anyway.  Halloween, and October generally—which should include my two best days of the year, integrating over my whole life—is over.  It wasn’t much of an October, though.  Halloween was quite a disappointment.  I was one of three people who dressed up where I work…two, really, since one of the three just brought a mask that he put on occasionally.  And a total of only two trick-or-treaters came ‘round my neighborhood in the evening.  A separate, less universally noted occasion (which should have been a major life milestone) happened eleven days prior to Halloween and was also a thorough anticlimax.  In fact, it barely avoiding being a non-event.

And now, like many others, I’m irritated by the time change enacted last weekend.  It gets light “earlier” in the morning, which ought to be good, but this tends just to make me feel as though I must have overslept.  As someone who prefers to be early, I find this disquieting.  And, of course, the premature nightfall is irritating as well.  You wouldn’t think that someone who writes horror stories would be bothered by darkness coming sooner, but unfortunately, I tend to be rather strongly affected by the seasonal decrease in daylight.  Once October is over, I’d really prefer to sleep until the vernal equinox, and maybe longer.  By the time the winter the solstice arrives, I’m often so mired in gloom that it seems that it really could take three months of incessant bathing to wash it off.  Don’t worry, though, I’ll try not to let my blog posts become too much of a downer if I can help it.

Let’s see, what else is going on in my thoroughly exciting and captivating life?  Well, as always, I’m moving steadily along with the editing of Unanimity.  The trimming of the fat* from a novel is rather satisfying in a curious way.  It’s a little like when one carefully inks over a pencil sketch and then erases the underlying graphite once the ink is dry.  The product is so much neater and sharper…though occasionally, to my dismay, the inked drawing feels less alive and interesting than did the sketch beforehand.

I don’t know whether I’m really talking about drawing or writing here, or about something else entirely.

As for everything else, well…my life is really just too full and exciting to begin enumerating all the many events that unfold in it, but I’ll try.  First of all, I’m indulging my weakness for breathing on an almost continuous basis, despite all the air pollution to which I know I’m exposing myself.  What can I say?  I live on the edge.  I’ve also continued to go to work five or six days a week, since I’ve yet to be able to kick the habit of eating at least once a day, and that’s an expensive foible.  They say people with addictions will do insane and inexplicable things to satisfy their joneses, and I guess I’m a case in point.  Thankfully, I’ve at least been able to avoid the dangerous compulsion of socializing with other human beings.  That’s a vice that causes much trouble to many; I’m lucky not to be prone to it.

Sarcasm, now…that’s a craving I’ve not gotten under control at all.

Oh, I did write another blog post on Iterations of Zero, for those of you who haven’t followed it.  It’s basically about the joy and necessity of learning at least something of the wonders of math and science, which I wish received more respect than they do here in the U.S.  Unfortunately, their status seems only to be diminishing, though our lives are ever more dominated by technologies that are deeply dependent upon them. It’s disheartening to see a population so peculiarly averse to understanding the very things that underlie and maintain their lives and well-being (such as it is), but humans never have been particularly foresightful or insightful, have they?  Honestly, I don’t know what anyone sees in them.  Humans, I mean.

And with that, perhaps it’s a good time to call this week’s blog post to a close.  I know I haven’t really said much about much of any real substance, and one would think that such an exemplar of vacuity would be more at home in IoZ than here.  Still, the concept of iterations of zero is more than just a website title.  It’s a philosophy.  It’s a way of life.

I hope you are all as well as you can possibly be.  Though I may seem misanthropic at times, I’m really not.  I want you all to thrive and excel and succeed and grow and play your parts in an ever-improving world.

Maybe that’s just the fantasy writer in me.

TTFN

*Which sounds a little like some esoteric cultural or religious event.