Yes, I am still here (sort of). Post break-up, it's been a pretty bleak last few months emotion-wise. So I've abstained from barfing all those ugly emotions on to you, gentle reader. Things have gotten better, although I'm still way lonely and isolated and buying and playing far too many video games. I've been getting out some and am back into a regular exercise regimen, which helps. Now to lose the 12-15 lbs I gained over the last 6 months!!!

Anyways, I may try vlogging later today after I finish installing Windows 7 on this machine. If I do I'll post that vid here too. No idea what I'll say tho. I'll have to give it some thought. If you have ideas, please let me know.

So this post has been exciting, huh? Wow, perhaps I shouldn't try to write 5 minutes after waking up on a Saturday morning...

FYI: if you are using Google Wave, feel free to look me up under: disobedientlibrarian

Amazon Imbroglio

The recent and on-going imbroglio over Amazon's seemingly intentional censorship of LGBT books (despite their claims denying it) got me thinking: what else might the mega-information companies (Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, our Government, the telecoms, etc.) that we all now pretty much depend on, be influencing/censoring/favoring based on political/social beliefs, that we don't even know about yet?

Kind of scary, isn't it? On the other hand, the fact that this Amazon thing (which I won't discuss, as far more knowledgeable people than me have done that already here, here) was caught so early and then publicized so widely and loudly by the blogosphere, gives me hope that there is power in the collective intelligence potential of web 2.0 (and beyond) technologies.

Messin' with the body-chem Sasquatch

So I've been on a different hormone regimen for about a month now. I switched from straight estrogen to doing estrotest, which is a mix of estro and testosterone. I've had a low sex-drive ever since my surgery 2 years ago and putting some of the icky male stuff back into my body is an effort to combat that. I can't say it's been a success yet, but I generally do feel it has helped give me some much needed everyday energy (I've gotten back into regular workouts sustained over a period of weeks!) and lifted me a little out of my depression.

I also finally got my new gaming desktop computer to work, and have dipped my toe into the zombie-infested world of Left 4 Dead. What an amazing game! And I haven't even done multiplayer mode yet (I have only played for about an hour total so far). I've also been thinking of either renewing my subscription to City of Heroes, since they've added the option to design and make available your own missions. But I was getting sick of that game when I left and am not sure I want to go back. I could also try WoW again, I'm not sure. Anything else I should look into game-wise?

Cosmetic Shift

I'm sitting here watching "Doomsday" on DVD and I realize, wow, we actually, with today's arrival of my Woot-bought home theater system, have a pretty kick-ass multimedia/entertainment system!

And then, obviously influenced by watching the movie, this question pops into my head, and I realize, while it's a great question, it also might make a cool idea for a book/movie:

What if there were an airborne pandemic; symptoms started out with quick, painful death but mutated, once about 75% of population had been wiped out (virus survival mechanism kicking in?). Switch to only outcome of disease is basically making every human uglier according to dominant species standards (perhaps severe and constant skin rashes and discoloration, and severe acne, or something similar that did not affect physiology or physical abilities in any other way). No cure or inoculation can be found.

A universal cosmetic shift in human appearance, in other words.

How would uninfected humans react to that 2nd stage of the virus? How extreme might the measures still taken to halt the virus, quarantine those infected, go? How many would die, be systematically killed, in the name of stopping an infection that simply changed our appearance? Would it simply be better to let the virus infect all? Could you make such a decision?

Now back to the movie and my beer...