Archives— August 2007

August 13—Welcome to Fuzzknot.com!

Welcome to fuzzknot.com! I used to be at fuzzknot.us and am finally back online after a one-year absence. The guys who were hosting the old URL were trying to charge me extra, so I got rid of the site. After a while, somebody else bought the URL and used it to sell—THE HORROR—back hair removal products. That apparently didn't make any money, though, for that URL is now selling porn instead, which I consider to be a vast improvement—even over the original content.

Anyway. Quite a bit has changed. I'll update properly later—and also change the look of the site—but right now I just wanted to get something on this index page other than pix of Freefall the cat. Anyway, I don't think all the kinks in the code are ironed out yet—I still have a lot of editing to do, especially in the stories section, but I just wanted to get this stuff up. So, without further ado, here is the new site . . . with the same old crappy files.

August 21—Updated the Main Page

I finally got the main page looking more or less how I want it. I'm still not completely happy with it; I'd like to have a banner of some kind. I don't want to recycle the one from the old site since it was too hard to read. I tried making a new banner, but all my efforts looked stupid, so I abandoned that idea. Anyway, right now I'm too pleased with myself for figuring out the crisis with my HTML tables without cheating by copying off someone else's site to care.

Anyway. Now for the promised proper update. I haven't had a website for a year, and in that time, a lot has changed. I don't feel like typing the really long version (this apathy is fueled by the annoyed knowledge that no one would read it), so, in a large-ish nutshell—I got sick of my one-time good friends Aron and Justin never returning my calls or emails; said irritation was deepened when each of them stood me up when we had plans to hang out. I abruptly quit calling and emailing them, and to date neither has been in touch. That means I will no longer have stories featuring them.

In August 2006—only a couple of weeks after I quit talking to them—I accepted a crappy part time job at the Houston Grand Opera (believing the false promise of soon working my way to a position backstage) and moved in with my grandfather. But the HGO job of course sucked, so I said fuck it, left, and just took calls for work through the stagehands' union, referred to me by a friend.

My grandfather, however, is such an asshole that I couldn't stand living with him any longer and figured I'd be better putting my career on hold and staying with my dad, so I moved back to Austin at the end of October/beginning of November. En route, my wheel bearing failed—again—in the middle of Interstate 290. I got out of the car and saw the wheel smoking. I seriously thought it was going to catch fire; it's been a long time since I was that scared. Anyway, I called my dad, and he picked me up, and we rented one of those U-Haul trailers designed for towing cars and hauled my car back to Austin. The Toyota dealership failed to fix my wheel bearing properly, since it failed again not long after. Also, they said the other wheel bearing was probably going to fail soon, and not long after, it started making noise. So—they say it's going to fail, and then it starts making noise. Call me suspicious, but I am never driving a Toyota again. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Work was slow in Austin, so in January I took a job working at the UT Co-Op. I really liked working in the textbook department, but it was only a temp job. At least I met a fellow sound person, now a good friend.

I spent all February sick with strep throat, but then I met the guy who is now my ex online during that time. In the beginning of March, we started going out. I really liked him, but after a couple of months, he started getting distant, at which point I dumped him.

But at least work picked up a bit in Austin. The union here, while not as well organized or busy as the one in Houston, gave me a few calls for work and asked me about membership. I turned it down since I might be moving back to Houston in a few weeks.

Oh yes oh yes—I may indeed be moving back to Houston, more permanently. A friend of one of my dad's coworkers is starting a business to be headquartered in Houston, and they want him to work for them. So, if it works out (I'm cautiously optimistic), then I'll likely be moving back quite soon. If it doesn't work out, then I take a shitty retail job here to pay the bills and then eventually move back of my own accord.

That's all for now. There's much work to be done on the site still, and I haven't even talked about Freefall the cat yet, but that'll have to wait. I've typed too much already, and I'm exhausted.

August 23—Changed the Stories Page

I've changed the stories section of the site. First I deleted the large "FUCK PARENTAL ADVISORY" that had been there for a while since, accurately though it may reflect my sentiments, was hardly representative of the vision I had in mind for this site. Having said that, I was distressed to note that the horribly offensive off-site link I posted as a suggestion for those who didn't like my site no longer works, so I had to find a new offensive link.

Anyway, more significantly, I thought it was high time I drastically changed the look of the whole stories page. Instead of having to scroll down to get to the newer stories, I made a table layout instead, with images for each KP book, that, when clicked, take you farther down the page to a table of contents for that book. "Href" and "name" tags, to those HTML savvy among you.

And of course included in the process of editing the stories section I went through and deleted a lot of favorable references to Aron and Justin. They were good friends of mine once, and I mentioned them frequently in the stories, but . . . well, not anymore.

Anyway, now that that's all changed, I can re-start work on the Splatwarts story. Before anyone comments on how horrific that sounds, it's a story about a group of (admittedly twisted) children and their various misadventures in early 1990s southeast Houston. I have plans to turn it into a series following them through their college years and just beyond their graduation. I got the idea a couple of years ago, but between moving and no longer having a site, work on it fizzled. But I really want to finish it, so it'll be up in a few weeks.

August 27—Ideas for New Sections

This site already has quite a bit of content—I remember, back in the day, Aron commenting on how it had grown over the years; it used to be just poetry and stories, and then I added the lists, and then came the rants and recipes (which reminds me, I'm going to be posting a few new recipes soon), etc. But I think perhaps the time has come to add more. For some time now it's bothered me that the "work" section only has audio stuff in it, when audio is only part of what I do; the majority of my work is generic stagecraft. So I'd like to create a new page devoted to theatre work, probably including pictures and info about the various venues I've worked, together with descriptions of what I do and what the union I'm always talking about is.

I also thought I'd create a disturbingly dorky section for my cats, past and present, especially Fuzzknot and Freefall. Fuzzknot of course is long dead, but she was the site's namesake. Freefall is my current cat, and I'm quite proud of how he's come on since he was a scrawny stray. He's also much more photogenic than the late Fuzzknot, who is regrettably rather mangy-looking in all the photos I have of her. Freefall is simply adorable.

And, speaking of disturbingly dorky obsessions, I was considering creating a section devoted to some of my many useless pastimes, such as Dvorak and shorthand. I remapped my keyboard to Dvorak some time ago and love it, even if I'm not as fast yet as I was on Qwerty. But the day is coming. As for the shorthand part—I've been interested in stenography for some time, probably for a number of reasons: My mother was a secretary, I watch a lot of Are You Being Served? (which features secretaries taking shorthand), and writing it is just plain cool. Like a code, too. It's another hobby of mine, even if I'm not yet much good at it. But anyway, the problem I have in creating a section for dorky/useless stuff is, doesn't the entire rest of the site rather fall into that category too? Oh well.

August 31—Games for the Stories Section?

I was looking through my stories section the other day, which usually leads to the same conclusion: I'm a cliché-ridden hack. I have a distinctive writing style and am given to using certain plot twists or turns of phrase much more often than others. I thought it might be fun to increase readership and/or get new ideas for characters by introducing a couple of self-parodying games in the stories section. The first thought I had was for a kind of cliché bingo, worryingly titled Kinky Bingo, which will have a few variants. Then I thought a useless trivia quiz, and possibly also some kind of scavenger hunt. I'm not sure what I'd offer as the prizes for these games—I thought perhaps the winner could receive a major role in an upcoming story, or maybe I could mail out a knitted hat or cookies or something. Maybe the role in the story would be first prize and the others could be awarded to the runners up. Anyway, I definitely want to do it, but it's still very much in the formative stages.

In the meantime, I'm working on creating a bunch of style sheets for the site. This will either save me tremendous time in the long run or, more likely, I will simply become frustrated with the crappy free tutorials I found online that teach me more about copying and pasting than actually teaching, decide it was a stupid idea, abandon the project, and spend hours manually undoing all the damage I did in my overexuberant amateur efforts. Stay tuned for the predictable result. It will probably provide abundant fodder for mockery the next time I make a snide remark about how people who don't understand web design shouldn't do it.