Day in the Life of an Idiot

 But for now, I will continue to update my hand-coded 1999 website using CuteFTP like the Neandertal I am. 

I mean, at least my website has a unique look, right?  And, you know, despite all this, it's up-to-date. I not only have all my publications and where to find them, but I also have all my up-coming convention appearances. So, I mean, if a person can get past the clunky look of it... 

Yeah, I should really do something about that.

Today was a general day for updating, which is why I thought of it. I sent out my ridiculous newsletter to all 9 subscribers and my Patreon update to all 8 subscribers. So, you know, it's the life of a popular author! Work, work, work!  :-)

 I need to be working on getting the sequel to Precinct 13 in order, but it is YET another rainy day and, right now, I don't wanna.

Mason is also home sick. He woke up with a migraine, though I suspect at least some of this is a need for more sleep. It's getting to be the end of the year and he's got a lot of heavy-duty projects all coming due. He's been staying up late to work on them. I don't doubt the migraine, but I think an element of stress may also be involved.

Last night, on my Discord server, there was some drama.

I feel far too old to even be uttering that sentence. Mason loves to tell his friends about his ridiculous parent: "My ima is on Discord. She's in a server for her Tumblr anime RP group." This pronouncement, apparently, can stutter the minds of the youth of today. NO PARENT on earth should be involved in any of those things! Certainly, not all of them at once.

But, not only is it true, but somehow I got roped into being an admin on my Discord server. (For those of you who know nothing of Discord, which frankly, is also me, an admin is basically what it sounds like, the person who has the power to create channels, enforce rules, invite people, kick them out, etc.)  

I should preface this with a note: this is NOT a larger server. There are... or rather, were, but I'll get to that in a moment, all of 8 people involved. So, even though Discord is not entirely familiar space to me, I felt comfortable saying "yes," to this role, if only because there is also another admin and a person who is one step down in authority called a mod. So, out of 8 people, we had three with fairly serious authority.

Yet somehow we had a troll.

Not just any old troll, either, but the kind who thinks it's "funny" to post anti-Semitic memes two days after a synagogue shooting. (Not that there is EVER a good time to post that crap, but the timing could not have been less sensitive.)  

Alas, because our Discord server did not have posted rules, there was some dithering from my fellow admin and the mod. Can we just kick this guy out? Should we delete the post?

The answers seemed pretty obvious to me, so I assumed (and I think rightly so) that the issue was that no one wanted to be the person to ACTUALLY do the work and confront this bad actor.

I'm 52 years old, a mom, and a veteran of many a writers' group conflict, so I took point. I deleted the post. I PM'd the guy to let him know we'd deleted the post and would be deleting him. He shot back the classic Nazi rhetoric of  "learn to take a joke" / "I was just a LITTLE edgy, but FINE I guess this is good-bye," and then he blocked further discussion (because OMG, I would have unloaded on him and I think he knew it.) That was that.

Drama llama ding-dong, don't let the door hit you on the way out.

The biggest hassle, really? The mod and the other admin's post-drama processing. Should we have given him a chance to apologize? My reply, "I'm sorry, but how does one apologize for suggesting killing people is in any way funny?" Also, our private discussion revealed that the others had been PMed by this guy a bunch, in ways that made them uncomfortable. Our other admin wasn't feeling comfortable about "going green" (the indication that you're currently on-line) because they wanted to avoid talking to this troll. 

To that, I said, "I don't know how y'all define harassment, but I feel like I'm looking at it." 

Because if you're so uncomfortable with the way someone is talking to you that you AVOID going to the place you made (the other admin is the founder of the group) something is wrong. AND IT'S NOT WITH YOU.

I also understand the impulse of "What if this guy is just lonely and attention seeking? Didn't we just send him straight to the Nazis of Reddit?" My reply to that was, "Okay, maybe we did, but don't you think he's already been dipping his toes in that cesspool, because it's not like those kinds of memes roll past MY FEED on the regular? You kind of have to already know some bigots to find bigoted humor funny!" And to post it on such a small group? Especially a group where he'd already participated in a "why do you people always have to make everyone gay?" debate, in which we were far more civil than I think we should should have been. So, frankly, we had ALREADY DONE our due diligence to attempt to "educate" this person. The fact that he would drop an anti-Semitic meme in a queer space already tells *me* that this is not someone who needs a whole lot of second chances.

Anyway.

I actually suspect that the other two were worried about backlash. To be fair to them both, they, as I suggested above, are both queer--though they're definitely both in the more marginalized sections of queer than I am, so I get it. Even Shawn asked me, "Are you using a handle on Discord?" I'm not. I'm using my real name. I would not be hard to find. 

But, I've decided that I now know that my t-shirt would read: "Social Justice Main Tank."

Clearly, my job is to put up the shield and march forward to draw the fire so the rest of the team can do their work.

 Do you ever have mornings where one dumb thing sets you off?  

Today, I was a big jerk to my family because, as we were getting ready to leave for the day, I could NOT find the bag that I keep all my pen pal correspondence stuff in. Normally, I wouldn't even be looking for it at 6:45 am, but I had to take Shawn to a dermatology appointment and the idea of sitting in the waiting room staring at the walls annoyed me no end. I thought that if I could at least write a letter or something, it wouldn't feel like wasted time.  I have a book I could read, but I couldn't find that either, because... well, probably because last night I gave away one of my lucky coins to the "good neighbors" that stole my pen at Wyrdsmiths last night, but that's another story which I will get to momentarily.

Suffice to say, I was a grouch-bag about my bag the entire way into to school.  As it happened we arrived to the appointment early enough that Shawn told me that I might as well do some of the errands I was annoyed at not being able to get a jump on, and I even had enough time to go back home and find the stupid bag. 

I got back just as Shawn was finishing, so did I get to write that letter? No.  In fact, when I got home and went to take the bag out of the back seat in order to move it somewhere safe in doors, I managed to spill the contents onto the icy street... possibly ruining all the unused stationary.

Yeah, after that I decided I needed to appease some gods, so the first thing I did was post a cat picture to the internet:



And, so, I posted this with the tag line: "Because everyone needs a cat in a basket today." Now, if I saw someone's picture of their cat doing something cute, I would totally write "Wow!" or "Adorable!" or "Kitty!" in the comments.  It seems kind of a natural response to me.  My friends, apparently, don't think that way. My first comment was a joking tease that maybe bird people don't need a cat in a basket, the second was another tease (a little rougher) with some kind of joke about today, when I could really use a basket! What am I to do with all the stuff that needs a basket?  The last comment so far is, "That cat looks pissed."

I mean, I'm getting happy hearts and likes and whatnot, but literally no one can say anything nice about my cat.

So, those are my friends.

When I could use some cheering up and thought to myself, "Hey, I'll post a nice cat picture so people can tell me how great my cat looks and I can feel better about today," I get a bunch of not terribly funny jokes and "That cat looks pissed."

So I'm going to change my luck again. Back to the bit where I gave up one of my lucky coins to the f-a-i-r-i-e.  Yesterday night, at Wyrdsmiths, I put my pen somewhere and could NOT for the life of me find it again.  I joked that it was stolen by the fairy, but it was weird. Completely gone, it seemed.  Naomi said, "To bad you don't have anything shiny to trade." But I always do, I keep 5 coins in that little, otherwise useless pocket in my jeans. It's something some Feng Shui book told me to do once.  I never worry about losing them because I figure that when I do, I just need to grab another coin and "change my luck." So, I left a coin out on the table. The instant I did, Naomi said, "Oh! I see it!" I had, APPARENTLY, stuck it in the collar of my shirt.

I took the coin back, which might have been my mistake.  I'll have to give them one as I leave today, so make it clear we're square.

Wow, I had one of those weekends where I totally disappeared from the universe. Sorry, here I am. How are you?

I think I got buried in the snow. It was cool, wasn't it? After slipping and sliding our way to Mason's second to last swim class, Mason and I played snowballs. Much wet fun was had.

I've been having dreams about forgetting my flight back from Europe and driving without breaks. I think that means I need to get more writing done. Or I should check to make sure I'm not forgetting other gigs.

Okay, Mason's bored now (he has off for Thanksgiving, etc.) and we went back to out old coffee shop, and for some reason he gets bored here a LOT quicker than at the new place. Plus the prices have gone up. I won't be coming back here any time soon, alas.