INTO THE COVE
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Below are the 10 most recent journal entries recorded in the "Randy" journal:[<< Previous 10 entries]
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09:22 am
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Friends-Only
My journal is friends-only. If you'd like to be friended, please comment here. If you are a student at Aquinas College, your graduation present will be access to my online blog. :)
Because I am an educator, I take professional boundaries between educator and student seriously. This is not to keep students at arms length, but rather to keep the focus on what is essential in our relationship without personal issues becoming an unnecessary distraction. Thanks for understanding.
There are a few posts in my LJ I've kept open. They are about my obsession with cartoons. Hope you enjoy.
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03:46 pm
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OPENING NIGHT--ISLE OF MARVELS
MUNBAR: There is a saying: "Leave the artists to beauty, leave the scientists to reality." I hope that here, in this culmination of dreams, there need be no such division.
Tags: opening, opening night
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03:56 pm
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OPENING NIGHT--AMPERSAND
BARRY: I think maybe I really do. After all. Deserve better.
Tags: opening, opening night
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12:21 pm
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OPENING NIGHT--XANADU
"To love someone and to create art--that is Xanadu!"--Zeus
(Just wanted to keep up my little tradition re: opening nights here.)
Tags: opening, opening night
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06:40 pm
[Link] | My new blog is here: lostinthecove.blogspot.com.
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11:11 pm
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All Good Things
My first LJ post was July 30th, 2001.
Ten years and one day ago.
It was before 9-11. It was before anything I had published. Before grad degrees, before teaching college full time, before traveling the country in a one-dollar car.
It was before being a bear, or knowing virtually anybody in my life right now.
This is the first line I ever wrote in LiveJournal:
"I begin this journal unsure of my future, in a way I have never been unsure of my future before."
My plans to become someone in Austin had been shattered, and I was living at a friend's house for the summer, waiting to figure out what was next. I had something like sixty bucks to my name. Some online bear I was semi-flirting with gave me a free pass to this site. I wasn't sure I was going to use it. I mean, I didn't know anybody on it. But maybe I'd just tap out my life, and someone would notice.
Before finishing SAID AND MEANT, or ANTICIPATING MILES, or SYNONYMY or MINT or HARMONY.
Before Columbus, or Mankato, or Chicago, or Aquinas.
Before Fiesta de los Osos, or Bear Pride, or Provincetown, or the Castro, or Denver, or Greenville, or Dallas, or Hot Springs, or DC, or San Antonio, or Atlanta, or Sarasota, or Toronto, or half a million other places.
This journal has seen me through some hard days. I remember tapping away at it on a computer in the crackhouse after duct taping one of my shoes back together. I remember tapping away on it at a computer in a library in Niles after my car had broken down. I remember journaling after the Great Storage Fiasco, and not getting into Towson, and from Will's apartment after the third round of resumes. But I also remember tapping away when Said and Meant got published, or after my parents' divorce was final, or happy times with friends too numerous to count. I remember using my cell phone to leave audio entries from all over the place, backstage, on the road, in new cities.
I don't know what LJ has been to other people. For me, it has been a constant lifeline to the people in my chosen family. It has also been a tremendous record of all of the many people, places and events I've bumbled myself through in the past ten years.
I mean, ten years. Holy cow. I was about to turn 30. And I didn't have a home, a job, a family structure, or really all sorts of things someone who is turning thirty should lay claim to. But I remember joking that as long as I had my cell phone, my one-dollar car, my bank card, my laptop and LiveJournal, I could pretty much make anything happen.
And frankly, I kinda did. Go me.
Yes, I'm speaking in the past tense. As I'm turning 40, I've decided that I need to consolidate the many online venues I've got, partially so I start journaling effectively again. And I've decided that ten years is a good round number to have on LiveJournal. It's a good place to end this chapter.
It's not all about the mass exodus from LJ. Writing here has never been chiefly about "readership". LJ was for me, my sounding board.
I won't end journaling. I'll be moving to another site soon and re-organizing how I interact online. (I'm evaluating sites. I'll post where I'm going when I know.)
I can't say I'm not just a little nervous about the stability of this site, and that's a factor in my decision. Hell, I have ten years of honest-to-goodness journal entries here. I'll be backing this sucker up three times over. There's a lot of history here.
But I'm a different guy than that guy back in 2001. Well, good, right? I should be.
Going back through my journal is kind of incredible. I've succeeded in capturing a whole lot. That was the idea. Through words, mostly. And I'll keep doing it, but I don't think LJ is the place to do it anymore.
So.
Dear LiveJournal.
Thank you.
Thank you for all of the times when typing out my semi-histrionic feelings on you was all I had going for me. Thank you for connecting me to thoughtful, interesting, erudite and sometimes ridiculously hot guys, allowing me to circumvent the bar as a meeting place. Thank you for allowing me to work out some major clusterfucks in my head, so that interaction in real life was controlled and sane. Here I could be hyperbolic and insane. I could test stuff out. I felt like I got to experiment with lots of methods of capturing memories. Thank you for being on every computer in the world, because I never knew which one I'd have available to me.
Thank you for making sense when little else did.
It's OK that you outed me to people, that maybe I showed more of my cards to strangers than I should have, that sometimes I was frustratingly mysterious. I forgive you all the memes, and the constant debates over which season of Buffy I was. I forgive you for the fake accounts and the deaths of boyfriends who weren't. All of that was worth what I got out of it, which frankly, is immeasurable.
Time to jump to a new playground. Cuz this covishbear ain't so lost these days.
Much love,
Randy
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01:11 am
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Get your own valentinr
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12:14 am
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tattoo day! 043
Hey, guess what I did today?
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02:41 am
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Segismundo in chains
Here's a shot from LIFE IS A DREAM, one of the central images of the show. Nothing like a black man in chains to instantly evoke white guilt. I put up a couple other shots, so clicky if interested.
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01:41 am
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my chat with Comcast this evening
EMELIA: Hi, thank you for contacting Comcast Support Services. What can I help you with today?
ME: Why hello Emelia. Enchanting name. This marks my fourth instance of contacting your service to get my internet functional at my home.
EMELIA: I understand you have a connectivity issue. Is that right, Randall?
ME: I guess that would be an excellent way to sum up the problem that I am having, Emelia. You could also have guessed this by the way I inputted all of the details of my problem in help screens just to get here. Which now I know were meaningless hoops to jump through, but hey, if one AM at a coffeehouse isn't the place to jump through meaningless hoops, I don't know where is.
EMELIA: I am sorry for your inconvenience, Randall.
ME: As am I, Emelia, as am I. I would very much like to schedule a tech visit to my home to fix my problem which, if you've forgotten already, I will refresh you: my internet is down. And has been for going on a month now. In some ways, it's felt like an eternity, but in others, it feels like only yesterday.
EMELIA: Internet connection issues can be frustrating.
ME: Thank you for validating my feelings. Just to illuminate where I am on the "I need help" continuum, and to cut you off before you hit the appropriate macro, I have already tried the online FAQ, the Comcast Doctor program, the internet-based help comment boards--alternatively known as The Most Ironic Internet Connectivity Help Resource Ever, computer configurations, firewalls and security programs, reset buttons that aren't actually there, software installs, hardware cycling, unplugging the modem for various amounts of time between two minutes and overnight, dusting the keyboard, checking all cable connections, black magick rituals and mystic incantations. Nothing has worked.
EMELIA: I am opening a ticket for a technician visit, Randall.
RANDALL: Gosh, this is exactly what I wanted, Emelia. Thank you so much.
EMELIA: You're very welcome, Randall. Is there any other issue I can help you with today?
ME: You know, now that you mention it, something does in fact come to mind, Emelia. I have been without internet service for about a month now. I've incorporated late night coffeeshop visits into my daily schedule, not just because I'm a sucker for hot chai before bed, but also because, with all the earnestness of a child on Christmas morning, I have excitedly run to my computer nightly to see if Comcast has chosen today to be the day when I merit internet service from them. Imagine my daily disappointment, but I understand it builds character. I feel like I have been an exemplary customer and a very good boy, and I would sorely appreciate a month's credit on my bill.
EMELIA: I will send a message to the billing department to credit you for unused services.
ME: Emelia, you are beguiling. Thank you very much. I can't wait for tomorrow night when I will undoubtedly contact you or one of your colleagues to continue, or rather, re-initiate, this very conversation.
EMELIA: Have a great night, Randall!
Tags: comcast, rants, ridiculousness
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lostncove's journal
