Plans within plans. Gears withing gears.

So today I came to a few big decisions. The first one is to put off building my website ’til next Spring, maybe even Summer. Why? Well that’s the other decisions, though in truth they all boil down to one overarching decision.

The rest of this year is going to be about building up enough content to make a website worthwhile.

I started blogging again this week; it felt good to be writing in that style again. So I’m intending to write at minimum one 1,000 word post here per week, and look at that! A second one this week.

I’m going to get back to video blogging as well. I’m planning one short 5-20 minute blog a week for the time being, and once I get faster at editing, building up to Monday, Wednesday, Friday.

I finally found the right modpack for a series of Minecraft Lets Play videos, so I’m planning to do one 1 hour session per week (edit everything in one session) and put it out in 20 minute segments Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. The idea will be that once I have a basic base built I’ll ask the viewers what I should do next, all the while riffing on whatever sparkly topic catches my eye on that given day.

Finally I plan to keep working on my drawing skills, and speed up my page updates. I’ve been struggling with it lately because my my migraines, but I think I’ve hit on a way of working that allows for those. This is in part with the intention of having my skills at a point where it becomes worthwhile to start sourcing a secondhand (though hopefully relatively recent vintage) Wacom Cintiq.

So yeah, that’s the plan. Of course the blogging has started, the next two pages of my webcomic are getting there, and video blogging will start as soon as I work some kinks out of my equipment (most notably the sound and video not synching without a shedload of jiggery pokery), Minecrafting…as soon as I figure out how in the hell the program for recording it works…*sigh*

I’ve an awful lot of work ahead of me; but I feel at peace with this plan of action. It feels like the right amount of output, while leaving me enough time for writing, rewriting, and gaming. So wish me luck folks, after all when I pull this off it’ll end with all my stuff on one site, and a lot more of my weirdness for you all to enjoy.

Whitney Houston’s dead…Why the hell would I care?

So am I the only one who simply couldn’t give a fuck about Whitney Houston dying? Fine, she was an okay singer. But I really couldn’t give a flying fuck about her either her life, or death.

Since she died I’ve read so many Facebook comments to the tune of “It’s so sad her life ended up that way…” Yeah it’s so sad that she had a huge music, and acting career. It’s terrible that in doing so she lived what is undoubtedly the greatest dream held by millions of people around the world. It’s just awful that she was a multi-millionaire.

Now at this point someone reading this is rolling their eyes, and muttering under their breath “They mean the drugs, and the bad marriage nimrod.” Really? Did someone physically shove her face first into a pile of cocaine? I kind of doubt it. The bad marriage? Was she trapped in an abusive relationship by not having enough money to flee? Was she lacking in people she could call on to physically protect her, you know like bodyguards, hired with the millions of dollars…See where I’m going with this?

Here are the facts as I see them.

Everyday millions, probably hundreds of millions, of people live lives of quiet desperation. Lives filled with fear, filled with pain, filled with despair and hopelessness.

Everyday women with no resources to fall back on are beaten almost to death by the men (and yes sometimes the women) who they are supposed to be able to rely on the most. Their spouse.

Everyday those women despair at ever getting away from their torturous lives. Because dumb luck, stupid random chance has not bestowed upon them the means they need to be able to escape successfully.

Everyday uncountable numbers of people die of starvation, violence, disease, and neglect. They often enough die unremarked, perhaps even unnoticed.

But one rich American, who abused drugs by choice, who stayed with an abusive spouse when she could easily have just walked away dies, and the world cries.

This is not the death of a respected author who lived a normal life, then struggled for a decade with dementia before passing, all the while bringing joy to millions. Nor is it the death of an actress at a surprisingly young age, one who had only just really achieved her potential, due to a long battle with cancer. Nope this is the death of someone who had it all, and then threw it all away for some chemicals to make her brain fizz, and a man to make her ribs ache.

I guess that saying is really true, especially if the one death is someone with a global audience.

One death is a tragedy, one million is just a statistic.

So while her family has my sympathies for their loss, let’s not pretend the world has lost something extraordinary. The world lost a rich, and by some accounts a remarkably spoilt, self centered singer. That’s all.