Forgive me, Internet, for I have sinned: it has been 72 days since my last update. I have my reasons, though. I'm just not sure how good they are.

   Besides neglecting the website, I've also given up playing video games. And porn, even (for the most part). I probably haven't used computers or the internet this little since I was 15, probably. In some ways, I'm proud of myself for finding other ways to spend my time, butwhile I've been reading a lot more, I've been filling a lot of the freed-up hours drifting from existential malaise to existential malaise, and not getting much done.

   An explanation, anyway: back in May, I was playing "Valkyria Chronicles". I'd completed the main campaign, and was going through the process of unlocking the remainder of the achievements when something occurred to me. Over and over, for the sake of some twinkling graphics that could disappear at the whims of some distant technocrats, I was sending children into battle against faceless invaders, to murder and to be murdered.

   Now, you might say, "Oh, Philip, don't be so dramatic. It's just a video game." And, for a while, that thought was enough to drown out the screams and pleading and the celebration of killing. But, I do believe we are living in a simulation; and if we can suffer on this layer of the turtle stack of existence, then why not video game characters? Are child soldiers more forgiveable a tool of war if they're fantasy-Europeans constructed of polygons rather than actual Ugandans or Congolese made of flesh and blood?

   On top of that, I've become increasingly suspicious of what the numbers are up to. Even a basic personal computer is shuffling through millions of bits every second. There's nothing to say that what we see those numbers doing on our screens is the only thing they're doing. Multiply that by the billions of computing devices, and you got a lot of digits flocking hither and yon over networks increasingly populated by entities we don't fully understand, being processed by machines whose intricacies are only fully understood by other machines.

   The worrying over that wasn't quite enough to push me to complete abstention from using computers, though. It became just another thing on the pile of "I'm trying to not contribute to the problem, but the problem is just too damned big." I stopped buying bananas, but the CIA-backed United Fruit coup still happened, and the resulting infrastructure still loads the displays at grocery stores. I still drink coffee on the regular; still buy chocolate sometimes. I try not to use money more than is necessary, but my meager economic influence is probably overshadowed by what the banks do with just the money I store in my accounts alone. Can I really expect to stop a single cog in this infernal machine. Why throw myself on the wheels, then?

   Don't get me wrong: I don't see myself as some tragic martyr figure. I'm just a guy scared by what they see and feel, trying to figure out how to at least mitigate the source of that fear. I still want to create, though, and while I don't think I'm changing even the smallest part of the world with this website, it does help to focus my thoughts, and provide motivation to keep writing.

   So, here I am. Still trying, still pushing. I just hope this unstoppable train is the one bound for glory.


It's still early in the day, so I've only had coffee, done a few sudoku puzzles, then cleaned  up last night's dishes. Been having pretty bad back pain, though, so I'm not gonna focus too heavily on productivity today.