the moon is a harsh mistress

[freckles_and_doubt]

The Internet is a sticky fly-paper trap. It's a will-o'-the-wisp, leading you into noxious or beguiling bogs. It's a pot of honey, and you're the incautious bee. These admittedly lengthy and complicated workshop minutes are taking me forever to write because I have to keep checking names and dates and the inner historical skinner of my Cherished Institution on the internet, and every time I switch into the browser I wake up, blinking, twenty minutes later, having digressed into twelve different sites all completely unrelated to each other, other than tenuously and by happenstance, and certainly having nothing whatsoever to do with the work I'm doing. (On the upside, my excuses for non-submission are becoming daily more beauteous and pitiful in their artistry).

Part of this ongoing digression is because I don't really want to be doing this, and a lot is because my self-discipline is a small fluffy creature crouched under a rock somewhere refusing to do much beyond snarling when prodded with sticks. However, I think mostly it's because that's what the internet is, and no help for it. Not that I'd want help for it. The internet is humanity's electronic subconscious, all wayward impulses and odd imagery connected by extremely unlikely linkages, however hard we try to pretend it's about information and communication. It's what we spew forth when we're not really thinking. A lot of it's a cesspit, utterly without conscious discipline or moderation. Occasionally it's weirdly beautiful, like the better class of fever dream. I really can't imagine what we did without it: it's like imagining the world without the colour blue, or the concept of tune. Which means we're all going to be a bit screwed when the apocalypse comes and civilisation falls, but hey.

Speaking of dreams, last night I dreamed I'd woken up out of several hundred years of suspended animation to find myself in a bleakly beautiful but abandoned colony on the moon, without any memory of who I was, and unexpectedly married to a complete stranger. I completely decline to comment on this, on the grounds of good grief.

Tonight I'm going to a whisky tasting, courtesy of dicedcaret, who apparently won one. I am solemnly resolved to gravitate to the peaty ones, and not to mention aviation fuel.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Ah! My favourite Heinlein as I was growing up. I somehow acquired a copy (in German) and read it over and over. I remember firmly casting Michael J Fox as the main character, and was sure I also used a young Darryl Hannah. Yes, that was good.

Relevance?

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

Working out the tenuous relevance of my subject lines is left as an exercise to the reader.

... oh, all right. Mostly just last night's weird dream, but also moon, night, subconscious rather than conscious, yadda yadda yadda. No actual relevance to Heinlein intended, although you could probably find some kind of tenuous parallel if you dug hard enough.

flypaper

[(Anonymous)]

It is exactly that, I have the same problem. I hear there are clever little programs that will lock you out of the glorious interweb for a time of your choosing, allowing you to get some actual work done; unfortunately most of my work is online, so that's no good. Maybe some kind of bossy parental control thing that rapped me over the knuckles any time I attempted to access Google Reader or Ravelry would help, but I object on principle, even if such a thing exists.

It also means that I feel crippled, imprisoned and about five kinds of other unpleasant things when the blasted interweb stops working (as it did this weekend, for no apparent reason, and only on my machine; it's since revived, also for no apparent reason). It worries me that I am so very dependent. And to think, once upon a time I was quite the cybersceptic.

scroob

Re: flypaper

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

God, don't let's talk about internet withdrawal, I become borderline psychotic and eat random passers-by if my lawful bandwidth is denied me. No clever little programme is going to separate me from my internets, thank you very much! - I see we are in accord on that one. I prefer to embrace my candy-coated doom of internets, it is my problem equally with my pleasure. Like most things, actually.

[strawberryfrog.livejournal.com]

bleakly beautiful but abandoned colony on the moon, without any memory of who I was, and unexpectedly married to a complete stranger

Hm. Shades of Moon Shades of subterranean Lizard colonies and forgotten fiancées.

The Internet is a sticky fly-paper trap

Have you tried TVTropes yet?

I am solemnly resolved to gravitate to the peaty ones

The very peaty ones are the stronger-tasting ones. Sometimes as in "that oil refinery is malfunctioning" strong. The less peaty ones can be heathery and honeyed.