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Lately, what with the New Year approaching, the big "just making conversation" question people have been asking has been "So, what are you doing for New Year's Eve?" Lately, I've been saying, "Sitting on the roof of my house with a long-bore rifle, shooting looters.". Just as a note, the common response to date is nervous laughter.

The joke is, of course, that I don't even own a gun, and I certainly hope that if people are doing any looting NYE, that they'll have the sense to pick somewhere other than my neighborhood. The Marines and police officers who live on our cul-de-sac would probably be a little put out.

The thing is, every now and then I get so cynical that I feel a bit like the crazed loner, out in a shack in Montana. No no no, I'm not making bombs or anything, but sometimes I feel a little hyper about things that other people barely even notice (those of you out there in the reading audience thinking that I'm always at least a little hyper are hurting my feelings. ;-) ).

For example, a week or so ago, right before Christmas, Pamie wrote an entry about how she missed her younger sister right around Christmas and recounted some of the touching memories of their childhood together. It was quite nice, and I thought about my memories of my younger brother. And then, about 30 seconds later, I thought "Well, there's Pamie's entry for next quarter's Diarist.net awards.".

Aiieee! I don't even read diary-l any more. Diary-l, in case you're fortunate enough to not be familiar with it, is a listserver that purports to be about writing online diaries, but is, in fact, populated by drunk, egotistical kindergarteners with email accounts who never actually talk about writing journal articles, but about the pop news topics of the day, eighty new insipid webrings that people want to form because they put value in their hit counters, a couple simmering flame wars, and what another journaler said about them that has so devastated and ruined their life that they're going to shut their journal down for a couple weeks until the sympathy runs out and they decide to re-start their journal again. Diary-l is such a complete failure in discussing its topic that I understand there's a new list that was formed to actually discuss online diaries (or I think it's now called journals, so the boys don't feel threatened).

I tried reading diary-l for a couple days several months ago, and left it after a couple days when I realized that I loathed checking my mail because I'd have to see whatever they were talking about.

It's things like that. I mean, I know on some semi-rational level of my mind that Pamie actually didn't mean her entry that way, but... *sigh* I dunno. Check back in three months or so, or whenever the next Diarist awards are given, and see what the nominees are.

When I mentally writing this in my head as I was going to sleep last night, I was going to try to include some humorous anecdote about a crazed loner of a character I used to play in a Heroes Unlimited game years ago (Zeros Unlimited, to its erstwhile detractors), but I can't think of one that really fits, so I think I'll just stop.