Salutations, comrades. This is Monday Morning Commute by way of Tuesday Late Evening. Greetings, friends. I apologize for the tardiness, I’m just. I don’t know. Busy? Tired? Tired and Busy? Busy and Tired? Sure, sure. But if I’m being doubly honest, and let’s admit that I’ve written for nearly seven years an embarrassing amount of personal information, I’ve been a bit maudlin about OL.

Pillaging the archives makes me yearn for the days of commenters gone by, of days that were grad school, filled with too much caffeine, and a head full of ideas. I miss the folks who have drifted, I miss my own initiative.

What can you do?

Sally forth, I suppose. But it’s tinged with nostalgia when I know some of the old folk ain’t gonna comment.

What can you do?

Sally forth, I suppose. But it’s tinged with melancholy when I’m penning this shortly after grading papers for three hours, and shortly before I must slumber.

What can you do?

Sally forth, I suppose.

I’m still here, dammit.

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Western Civilization seems to be flinging itself to pieces in 2016, friends. But unfortunately, Professor Faber, we can’t stand back from the Centrifuge. We’re stuffed inside it, together. It’s hard to believe, maybe it really isn’t happening, who knows. I live a Privileged Life, stuffed in a suburb in a leafy part of the Empire. It’s easy to believe, maybe it really is happening, as I work with students whose tales make me blanch, make me grateful, make wish I could do more. I don’t know. I know few things and understand even less. What I do know, what I do believe in, are what Vonnegut urged us to create. You know, I believe him when he said that the “daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured“, and that is why Weekend Open Bar exists.

Across the two-dimensional plane of the three-dimensional Metaverse within one small speck of the omni-dimensional Universe, we can gather. Spend the Weekend together.

It’s small, and its minute, but it’s what we got. If we’re lucky.

A conjuring of a hopeful gathering sparred on by words and technologies and expressions.

It’s small, and its minute, but it’s what we got. If we’re lucky.

So join me, this Weekend, friends. Let’s shoot the shit about what we’re up to. The food we’re eating (so much goddamn pizza, so much goddamn ice cream), the games we’re playing (DOOM and The Last of Us), the books we’re reading (Nemesis Games). Anything and everything, really. Here aboard the Space-Ship Omega is an attempt at generating one of them communities. ‘Cause Space is cold, Life is Short, and it All seems to be better when spent with kind, like-minded individuals.

So join me this Weekend, friends.

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To perceive oblivion is to invite your own doom. Ignore Yog-Soggoth’s dark, piercing clarion call. Turn your eyes away from his enticements. Do the same for the other Elder Ones. They whisper promises that shall only fill their bellies with your psychic-vomit, as your ears bleed and your ocular holes find themselves filled to the brim with gelatinous, former-eyes. Yeah, I know. It’s a letdown. The limitations of our meat-sacks. But hey! Until the great Transhumanism Movement of 20XX, we can spend our time bound in these rot-vessels together! Hanging out at the Weekend Open Bar.

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