Wow. Since I went away, LJ has implemented Snapshots. Man, they suck. Oh, Lordy. Wordpress tried to pull this shit on me and I slapped it RIGHT down. Now it's here. My God, my God, why have u forsaken me?



In case you are lucky enough to have not noticed, Snapshots is that thing where you put your cursor over a link and suddenly a pop-up appears telling you where you would go if you wanted to hit that link.... as if you were too dense to read the text and know what is being linked to in context, or for that matter just hit the link (generally speaking, you can always go back, y'know). I'm with spacecowb0y that Snapshots is permeating the internets "like a nasty fart in an elevator." Thankfully, at that link you can also find out how to get rid of it.



Snapshots = tha SUCK!!!

Recent reading: Christa Faust's Money Shot, which comes out in January from Hard Case Crime. It rocks. My review will appear Tuesday in Eros Zine.



Also Richard Aleas's Songs of Innocence, his second John Blake novel. Aleas is, er, an alias for Hard Case Crime founder Charles Ardai, who was a contributor to my first Noirotica anthology. (Faust was another contributor to that antique volume). Despite having enjoyed about eight Hard Case Crime books, somehow I failed to read his Little Girl Lost even though it won both the Edgar and the Shamus awards. Will remedy this shortly, as any pulp-noir based around a William Blake allusion gets oodles of badass points, and I like Innocence quite a bit so far.



Oh, and Jules Verne's An Antarctic Mystery, with mixed results. Damn, Chapter 20 is slow.

Fuck a duck! Looks like I've been bought by the Russians, along with the rest of all y'all, according to rhiannonstone. I go away for six damn months and next thing you know the whole world has gone to hell. What's next, is Myspace going to go corporate or Good Vibrations sell out? Yeah right, and the seas are probably rising, or something.



(headline from waytorussia.net.)

Hey, guess what? I'm back on Livejournal, beeyatches. Not that you necessarily care, but I have found that I miss all the warm cuddly cozy touchy-feely comments I get from my LJ friends, like "I think you're off your rocker, Roche" and "Stop smoking CRACK." I also miss the fact that I can friendslock stuff. Thirdmost & finally, I forgot when I moved over to Thomasroche.com that in those hallowed halls I would be reimagining myself as a real blogger-slash-journalist, posting things that vaguely resemble articles and links to places I've experienced something sort of like "publication," maintaining this idea that I'm not unlike a professional. Here at LJ I can, you know, sort of let my hair down, smoke a joint, pop some quaaludes, turn on the lava lamp, snort some undistinguishable white powder off the ass of a girl named Becky, talk in disjointed runons about the philosophical connections between Andy Warhol, Philip Roth and philosophers I've never read, and just hey, be myself, which I'm sure is of great comfort to those of you reading this.



Incidentally, I may be reposting stuff from thomasroche.com, in the event that postings belong both places (I have a complicated method of determining whether this is the case, involving my ass and at least one hand). Please comment if this bores you, provides an unnecessary burden on your RSS feeds, or otherwise bugs the bejeezus out of you.



In fact, comment in general, because my whole reason for coming back to Live Journal is that once upon a time it was a useful tool for staying in touch with my friends; now 6 months on, in return for leaving LJ behind I have a cool banner with a skull and crossbones, plus a few JPGs of John Lennon and Bigfoot. Not much to show for having so aggressively utilized the communications tool that's letting the 21st century reimagine itself.



This is Web 2.0, friends, and it's almost as cool as the first one, only without America Online. So, please: add me, comment, ridicule me. Pour a drink, light a smoke, expect mayhem, or at least occasional misbehavior and a rather large amount of cat dander.

Hello Friends -- As you've probably notice, I've been double-posting most stuff from my new blog at thomasroche.com to my existing LJ, which has been in existence since August of '03. Since a four-year anniversary seems as good a time as any to call it quits, and it's easier to consolidate everything at my main URL, thomasroche.livejournal.com (ie, this address) will no longer be updated after August.



If you want to continue to receive all my important updates on cryptozoology, the mob, Tom Swift, Mickey Spillane, and porn, you'll need to add my new syndicated LJ feed to your friendslist. That address is http://syndicated.livejournal.com/thomas_roche/.



If you prefer to subscribe in a different newsreader (Bloglines, etc), that address is http://www.thomasroche.com/feed/. To subscribe for email updates, visit my subscribe page at Feedburner.com and you'll get a shiny new email each morning with my posts for the day (if I made any).



Thanks to everyone for reading, and hope to catch up with you all in person some day.