Categories
family life

John-John, c. 2001 – 2020

mde

Today I had my best friend in the world euthenized.

We adopted him in 2008. I don’t know from what sad, terrible hell he came, but he had a bad case of PTSD the whole twelve years we had him. He was missing his whole entire top row of front teeth. He flinched so hard whenever a hand would suddenly come into his sight. Even after twelve years, he still expected the worst.

I think we only ever had to scold that boy maybe a happy dozen times in all those years, and he never got more than a firm pat on his little butt.

He and I didn’t really bond that first year or two. We adopted his little young wife Zooey with him, and she was gregarious and outgoing. Little John was bashful and meek. But over the years we grew closer together, especially after our first dog Speck died, and not long after that John’s little companion Zooey.

It would be an understatement to say that we were merely best friends these last few years. We were very, very close. He was my heart.

But he was very, very old, and he had become mostly blind and deaf, and his trachea was collapsing, and he had a mass pressing on his little lungs.

He hung in there for so long for us, but in the end, his little tiny body could only handle so much. He wasn’t having a very good time, and had even begin to refuse food. Unthinkable for him.

So today we let him go.

I am devastated beyond words. I am planning on drinking until my mind is gone.

Goodbye, Honey Bear. We’ll be best friends forever.

saying goodbye forever to my very best friend

Categories
uncategorized

rip me

old me
not to scale, time-wise

So this was another fun little experiment, albeit a morbid one. Check back tomorrow for an update on my progress. Will i get better?

Categories
creative internets web design

random background colors experiment

random bg php/css experiment screenshot

A while back i made a random background color generator. What was cool about that was it took a random color (actually, three) and determined whether it was generally visually dark or light, then used that determination to color the text accordingly light or dark gray for contrast.

So today, after not really working with PHP (or much code at all) for several years, i decided to revisit my experiment. Instead of either light or dark gray, i wanted to take the random colors i generated and lighten or darken them up, so they’re the same hue, just darker or lighter depending on the value of the generated color. The contrast is a lot more subtle, however. Maybe next i’ll see if i can add a contrast switcher to it.

Here’s that experiment.

Here’s the source code in either pretty HTML or plain text format.

Categories
current events life local

Dayton mass shooting

Shoes piled up after mass shooting in Dayton, Ohio (AP Photo/John Minchillo)
Shoes piled up after mass shooting in Dayton, Ohio (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

So yeah, I live in Dayton. I mean, a suburb bordering right on city limits. I’ve lived in and around Dayton pretty much my whole life.

This shit has been surreal. You always think, in your most cynical moments, ‘yeah it’ll happen here some day’ – then that day suddenly becomes TODAY. And everything suddenly fucks itself up tremendously.

I know at least 2 people who were there. Not terribly well, but I worked with them for some time and one I got on with pretty well while we worked together. (The other one was a right-wing type who was active on something awful and loved griefing – be interesting if his ‘outlook’ changes, though I doubt it.) Neither injured.

I’m angry and sad and weirded out and frustrated and anxious and depressed, but I’ve also had plenty of (99% unrelated) laughs today, praise “Bob”.

Fuck guns and violence and selfishness and nastiness and death. Fuck hate. Fuck fear. Fuck the news. Fuck Mitch McConnell and fuck Wayne LaPierre and fuck Trump and all the ghouls and goons who perpetuate this moloch-worshipping culture of fear and seething hatred.

Fuck your spouse or partner. Fuck like rabbits.

I think it’s past time we have a general strike in the USA, for this and several other reasons. We should really be rioting in the fucking streets. Global warming. Treason in the White House and Senate. White nationalism, xenophobia, the normalization of bigotry in general. We’re going down hard and it’s gonna hurt like hell unless we act real quick.

But we won’t.

Tomorrow: 252

Categories
current events internets life

bridge burning and social media

"user no longer exists"

The other day, Twitter suspended my account temporarily because of a post i made where i was mean to President Donald J. Trump, who is a member of a protected class: bigots. I appealed the suspension and lost, so i’m appealing again. They won’t unblock my account unless i delete the tweet, which i am unwilling to do.

twitter screenshot of my suspension notification including offending text

In a weird rage, i threw my phone against the door. Lately, any little thing has been setting me off. i don’t even remember what this time involved, but i’ve vowed to stop taking my prescriptions and just drop them all off at a drug drop-off. I also called the mental health clinic i go to and canceled an upcoming appointment. They asked why, so i told them i’m sick of being fucked up and nothing was working so i didn’t want to even try anymore. They responded by asking if i wanted to close my case so i said yes. I quickly hung up once she confirmed.

Honestly, i was a little weirded out that they didn’t try to help somebody obviously having a mental health crisis.

Anyway, at some point i finally got the nerve to look at my phone, and sure enough i saw bad screen damage in the corner, so i threw it into the garbage, logged into my mobile account, and deactivated my phone.

Then i deactivated my Facebook account. Previously, i had begun the process of deleting all my posts, comments, likes, and photos, and it was still ongoing, so it doesn’t really matter that it’s all gone now.

Oh, i almost forgot: i figured out how to delete my Instagram too, so i went ahead and did that.

At some point i heard a notification sound coming from the garbage so i fished out my phone and took the SIM and flash storage out. Out of curiosity, i peeled off the tempered glass screen protector. Apparently it did a great job, because i really whacked that thing against a metal door from about 15 feet away and the screen was actually undamaged.

So i guess all i’m saying here is that i’m having a crisis and burning every fucking bridge i can burn.

Almost cut my hair

Almost sharpened a knife

Told my wife to go ahead and call the cops because even though i knew i couldn’t hurt another living thing, i figured it would probably have been a good idea anyway. She didn’t.

Anyway, i’m still on Diaspora and Mastodon.

And the universe won’t survive Heat Death, so not a single bit of any of this even matters in the slightest.