for whom the baja blasts

In late March I was fortunate enough to attend a rare speaking event featuring the author of House of Leaves , Mark Z. Danielewski. Anyone familiar with my work and interests knows how significant this was to me. The event was hosted at Bryn Mawr College near Philadelphia and an online friend of many years sent the announcement to me in passing. It wasn't highly advertised. I never would have known about it for this message and I'm eternally grateful for their thinking of me.  The host of the event, a professor, had an idea for a project (of which I'm curious to see how it turns out) by providing a litany of secondhand books to attendees of the events. We were to jot down notes and thoughts in the books as we listened to Z. speak, and then the books would be turned into a massive, physical piece of art. At a certain point though, I stopped taking notes that would contribute to this interesting piece and took out my phone to write down things I found significant for myself t...

This was always an odd topic. It was hard to discuss in passing conversations or posts online, because it invariably left out literal years of context and would absolutely, without fail, create more issues than it was worth due to people latching onto things that they perceived as slights and offensives towards them. The greatest and worst comedy was that the most vocal and upset responses to any such commentary were generally never even a component of that initial conversation. People would see commentary from those with online audiences and would immediately get upset, since they were a part of an online audience. Well, that's a part of why I am writing this now. I don't need to go punch for punch with someone already incensed on something that they misinterpreted. Even with this attempt, this text won't be comprehensive and will likely yield further, similar posts in the future as I recall more experiences.  But this is important to me as it has absolutely affected every...