future plans crystallizing

I've scheduled blog posts through the end of August, so if I die before then, you'll have to put up with an embarrassing period during which the blog continues to generate posts. In consideration of that, I hope to have something I can stick in my wallet in case I'm found face-down and rotting in my own shit somewhere—a list of contacts who will need to know I'm gone, and who might need to know what to do. I'd like to be able to fit everything onto a single, printed card, but that might not be possible. I have an idea, though: lay out everything that needs to be said in a series of email drafts, then make a card telling how to access my email after I'm gone. Someone's going to have to cancel a lot of subscriptions.

Meanwhile, I try to live. Later today, I need to call my building's plumbing service to take a look at my toilet again: I can smell the wet, dank odor of musty concrete and tile, probably from a leak around the toilet's wax ring. (My own tube of sealant, bought a couple years ago, is long past its use-by date.) And I also wanted to talk, in this post, about some ideas I have for my online presence. Let's start with axioms.

First axiom: no more unoriginal content (i.e., pass-alongs where I just plug in other people's material and call it a day). This, all by itself, is going to institute a radical change in blogging content. So starting on September 1 (God, I can't wait to get through August... fuck this heat), there will be no more YouTube videos unless there's a lengthy reaction written beneath (as is already the case with some of the videos I put up). It also means no more memes unless I add my own content to them, like reactions to the awful quality of the English and explanations of how to do better. In fact, that sort of content will likely end up on one of my Substack pages, especially now that I'm aware you can divide a single Substack publication into "sections." It also means that this blog will continue (just as I will continue doing my walk blogs on Blogspot since I have something of a system in place now), but I'll no longer feel obliged to put out five to ten posts a day. My core audience is only five semi-faithful readers who comment only occasionally; they're the ones I serve.

Second axiom: most of my free content will remain on this blog. Yes, I've decided the most practical thing to do is simply to keep this blog. There is simply no need to create a free-content Substack page to accommodate new material—aside from certain language- or teaching-related content that I make to satisfy my non-paying subscribers. It'll be a relief, I think, no longer to write about politics which, based on a glance at my archives, I've been writing about since 2004, back when I was more of a naively true centrist and hadn't yet figured out that true centrism just means a lack of real principles. Events like the Iraq War and Trump's election—not to mention the left's plunge into insanity—pushed me more explicitly rightward, and I'm not ashamed to talk about where I stand anymore. Haven't been for years. I do still think I'm at the edges of centrism, though: as righties go, I'm fairly moderate, and I've documented my views and their evolution here for all to see and judge. Anyway, no more politics, no more mere slapping-up of YouTube videos without comment, and no more quoting news articles without adding thoughts and reactions of my own.

What's going on with Substack? I now have only two Substack publications, both devoted to language (mostly grammar), and both of which are going to end up subdivided into sections like free content, text, and video. The free content will be mainly things that I can't monetize because they're copyrighted, e.g., reactions to the poor English in memes (copyrighted) and/or egregious mistakes that I see online in news articles (also copyrighted), other people's blog posts (technically copyrighted), etc. The first Substack remains bighominid.substack.com; the second, a more intense, nasty/naughty version of the first (with a steeper subscription rate to screen out the faint of heart), can be found at dirtygrammar.substack.com. Neither of these sites has any content yet, so do wait for my announcement that I've added content (and created apps) before you decide to subscribe.

As for my Shopify store, that can be found at the domain I bought—bighominid.net. If I get more code-savvy, I might use bighominid.net for more things. We'll see. Meanwhile, the Shopify store will eventually end up loaded up with various types of physical merchandise—dead-tree versions of books (ebooks will be available via Amazon), various works of art (painting, sculpture, etc.—the trick to making Shopify like Etsy is to list unique works as having only 1 item in stock. That way, there's no danger of more than one person buying the item. (I do have to make sure that the "keep selling even if out of stock" option is turned off, though! I have the option turned on for the one item currently on sale in the store; I'll have to be mindful of that option for the next items I slap up.) Expect various other hard copies of books to appear in the store: the newest edition of Water from a Skull, the return of my old filthy-humor book Scary Spasms in Hairy Chasms (whence this blog's title), the sequel to that humor book (probably Scarier Spasms in Hairier Chasms), a possible followup to my homeschooling book (already linked to above) detailing the how and why of curriculum and and lesson planning (no title as of yet), a second edition of the homeschooling book with some added remarks, and eventually, an autobiographical account of my various walks across Korea from 2017 to now. Will I be still be alive by the end of this? Frankly: probably not. But this gives me something to work toward, to look forward to.

So that's an update on where my head is at the moment. My computer is no longer serving as a decent WiFi hotspot for some reason, so I'm using this as an excuse to go out and change my phone's policy to unlimited data—something I should've one years ago. This means no more needing to bring along my portable WiFi hotspot (which uses LTE, so I have to buy expensive packets of data for it), and no more relying on my computer for phone WiFi when I'm in my place. I look forward to the lifting of this burden even though it means a more expensive phone bill every month. Oh, and in a few days, I can pick up my new F4 visa.