Back in the cry room. I can’t cry in the other room. I have to be by myself. I have to allow myself this grief. But it hurts so damn bad.
I’ve tried the lesser reasoning – “He’s just a dog.” But that doesn’t do anything for me. He was such a big part of my life for the last five years. He was the best dog I’ve ever had; so smart, so sweet, so protective, so entertaining. But tonight he had to go.
Greetings friends and family of the Crater…
The Moon’s Crater Network has been alive and prosperous on the web for ten years now. It started as a single page on an AOL account and graduated to a tilde account at a dialup company in Abilene. Upon my discharge from the Air Force, I slid into a position at a web hosting company where I was given a dedicated Proliant 1850 Server with a RAID 5 and a meg pipe to the Internet. All for my own site. I thereby registered spacebrew.com for my humble online home. It’s gone through many changes and has seen many faces over the years. I once even turned it into a Star Wars fan site, though I’ll never publicly admit that. Many writers have come and gone, many columns have been posted and stolen and posted elsewhere. Many visitors came to visit and many memories were made here. During the Crater23 days, the site took more than 2000 unique visitor hits per week. Okay, I’m exaggerating a little bit. But not much.
The site(s) have seen many colors, have spawned many ideas, and have brought about inspiration in many other people to do the same thing. Some of these sites went on to become well known hard-hitters in the industry. Microsoft, Google, Amazon and FatXXX.com come to mind. Some of the writers here went on to pursue their own projects, never to be heard from again. For instance, none of you remember the catastrophe that was stellasite.com. I think I even paid for that domain name.
I haven’t had a puppy in so long I almost don’t remember what their breath smells like. But now again, I’m constantly reminded. Gracie was thrown in a dumpster by someone who didn’t want Gracie, and when my uncle went to take the trash out he saw Gracie in said dumpster, and thus now Gracie belongs to me. How anyone can throw a dog away is beyond me entirely, but I’ve tried to look at this from two sides.
The one side is the obvious: someone was a heartless asshole who hates animals and has no love for anything other than himself. He threw a little bitty Iranian Sandalhound puppy into a garbage dump to be killed by trash and dumped in a foul-smelling pit. Anyone who could do this should be shot and thrown into a garbage dump to be killed by trash and dumped in a foul-smelling pit.
Here’s my bitch: that 43-year-old woman in the UK who wants to die is petitioning on the Internet, trying to get the law changed because assisted suicide is illegal in the UK. You can get up to 14 years in the pen for helping someone kill themselves. But here’s the funny thing… Suicide is legal. What the what? Can I hear that again? Sure thing, Space. Suicide is legal. Woooohooo!!! Whoa! Thank God for that!
Yeah, well I quoted that from this article. Here’s the syntax, for those who don’t want to leave the site. “Suicide is legal in England, but helping someone else kill themselves is a crime under the 1961 Suicide Act, punishable by up to 14 years in prison.”
It seems everyone is doing it these days. It’s the cool thing to do. Become a legend and rake in the money and the women and the fans and the love, then give it all to an addiction. It’s cool, it’s fun, it feels good. Hey, everyone else is doing it!
What’s this, number ten in as many years? It not only pisses me off, but it saddens me deeply that we keep losing the best ones to the worst enemy. Drugs. I can think of at least ten in the business who we could lose and not count as loss. But Layne?
A great light went out this weekend. Douglas Adams died at his home in Santa Barbara on Friday, May 11. He was 49 years young.
He brought us such books as the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, and Last Chance to See. All his books were superb. He brought ideas into the world, the likes of which have never been paralleled. He practically invented the Internet back in 1979 in his radio show, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
Have you ever noticed the silence that fills an elevator when more than one stranger boards together? A nervous tension is evident in the air, and it’s like a vow of silence would be breached if someone were to open his mouth for a simple, “hi”. Why is this? In most cases, if you pass someone on the street, a simple nod, or a “hey, what’s up?” is usually in order. So why does this not carry over into a crowded elevator? It is beyond me. It seems the strangers around you would rather not even look directly at you. Everyone plays the quiet game, and stands as still as possible, staring at his shoes. An occasional glance at the floor indicator is the only sign of life among these passengers.
I have to ride the elevators to the fifth floor every day on my way to my office. As a rule of good measure, I generally try to start up some weird ass off-the-wall conversation, just to break some ice, as well as to observe people’s reactions. You would be amazed at how shy these people are. They treat everything you say like a yes or no question. I have been known to bring up such conversations as “Did you hear about the bicyclist on the freeway this morning?” or “What ever happened to that baby that was trapped in the elevator last week?” It really doesn’t matter what I ask. I sometimes ask the same question for a week. And since I never forget a face, I can tell if I have used it on them before.