For the second day in a row I have nothing to say.

I could just vomit some random bullshit, but even that seems like too much effort.

I feel like my life's entered the Summer rerun season, and with every thought I have, as Yogi Berra so famously said, "It's deja vu all over again."

So, dear readers, I invite you to take this opportunity to catch up on things you may have missed before. The entries that have received the most feedback are listed over to the side. I don't agree with all of these choices, but there they are anyway.

Alternatively, you could just start at the beginning and make youself feel better by reading about how boring and/or fucked up I am.

This dry spell, like all of my others, will end at some point. I've become much too reliant on these writings to simply stop. I've never understood how people can just stop, as so many of my favorites have done lately.

Perhaps they're out fixing problems instead of simply complaining about them. If that's the case, I certainly wish them all the luck in the world.

For me, I don't think that any solutions exist. Other than time, that is.

I'm having some trouble with 'bots again.

This time, however, it's my fault.

Basically, the 'bots are indexing the pages that contain dynamic 'blog entries.

For example, Google might index my index2.shtml page and note that it contains the word "Freeze" - but once I type a few more entries, the one about Polly's Freeze is no longer displayed on index2.shtml because it's not one of the ten newest entries anymore.

This means that somebody can Google the words "double poo-poo" and get led to my main page, but when they get there those words are nowhere on that page. That's just too much disappointment for me to want to take responsibility for. I mean, when you want to read about double poo-poo you just shouldn't have to wait.

What I need to do is have the 'bots follow the links on pages like index2.shtml, but not index those pages themselves.

That way the links to the single entries, like this one, are followed, and only those (static) single-entry pages are indexed.

So here's what I've done:

1. I put this line into the code for my non-static pages:

This tells the 'bots that honor this type of line to follow any links found on the page, but not to index the page itself.

2. I put this line on all of my single-entry pages:

This does the exact opposite - it tells the 'bots that it's okay to index the page but not to follow any further links. These pages are a dead-end, in other words.

Of course these modifications only work if the 'bots are well-behaved. The ones that aren't I try to take care of with my robots.txt and .htaccess files as described in this old entry.

The whole thing would make Rube Goldberg proud.

I really need to simplify my 'blog configurations when I do my next site redesign. Until then I'll probably just do some minor tweaks like the one I made tonight.

(A follow-up to this entry from last week.)

This entry will be a lot shorter than I originally planned. I must have written 10,000 words over the last week. Most of them are now obsolete, and many more I wrote without ever intending to publish them. I'm just going to provide some excerpts.

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Wow. Just...wow.

That may be it, folks. It may not get any more eloquent than that.

Sometime during the next several days, I'm not sure exactly when but sometime this week, she is coming back to visit.

...

Something will happen. It may last just a second. She may walk into the bar, spit in my face, and walk out. She may walk in and then ignore me. She may be the same sweet and innocent person she's always been. It doesn't matter, because regardless of what happens next, there will be that single moment, when I see her for the first time since all this shit started - there will be at least that single moment when everything is possible. When every terrible possibility and every wonderful possibility and every imaginable and unimaginable possibility in between come together...

Since this all started, I've been groping about in the dark. Sometime during the next few days that will change.

Sometime, during the next few days, I'll find either a light switch or an exit.

Sometime, during the next few days, there will be light.

...

I'm excited because when I see her and don't completely freak out or piss myself or have a heart attack or drop to one knee, that's when I'll know with certainty that I've managed to pull myself out of this Black Pit Of Despair And Fucking Woe Is Me Life Is So Unfair that I fell into when she left.

I want to see her, absolutely. I miss my friend dearly. But - and this is vastly more important - I want to be a person again. To myself and to everyone else I want to be a person instead of a collection of symptoms.

...

My heart is just trying to do what it thinks is right. It's trying to prepare itself. It's just jumping the gun a little, and if it gets all worked up and sad and angry over not seeing her, it will find itself woefully unprepared for the still-likely event that I do get to see her.

I want to document this entire week. It's important. Perhaps the most important few days of my life. If I don't succeed in making myself whole this week, well, I don't have a plan B. If I don't resolve things this week, I may never do it. I may spend the rest of my life not just alone, but feeling alone. I may spend the rest of my life missing something that I never wanted in the first place.

...

I'm actually not nervous at all. That's weird.

I am at a complete loss for words.

She's so fucking beautiful.

I did not freak out. I did not piss myself, or have a heart attack. I did not drop to one knee.

No, it was much worse than that.

Well that was an exciting day of disappointment piled upon bullshit.

Seems just like old times.

I started this period hoping, expecting really, to have a lot of my questions answered.

Didn't work out that way.

Oh, I got the one big question answered, and that answer was very surprising to me, but I'm still wondering about some other things.

Well I'm sure she'll be gone by the time I get off work.

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So, that's it. The end of an era.

Didn't get the closure I was hoping for. Kind of hard to get closure when there was never an opening I guess.

This will be the last entry on this subject. I have a promise to keep.

I read a lot of 'blogs.

There are maybe three dozen that I check daily, and another ten or so that I check at least once a week.

One of the things I've learned from these readings is that everyone and I mean everyone has problems.

A lot of people put up with a lot worse shit than I do. Lots of these people would kill to trade problems with me.

It's not the number or magnitude of my problems that makes me special.

There are also some fantastic writers out there. I often find myself sitting mouth agape at how well some people can express their thoughts and feelings.

So it's certainly not the writing that makes me special.

Several of the stories I read are funny as hell. Way funnier than anything I could ever write.

Definitely not the humor that makes me special.

What does make me special is that, of all of the people I read about, I am by far the stupidest.

I imagine that somewhere out there, perhaps on some remote island, perhaps somewhere in the vastness of outer space, there is a civilization of stupid people. People who value stupidity above all else.

I need to find this civilization.

They would worship me like a god.

I wonder if I can get Floyd County to put this sign up in front of my house:

I've written before about Dino, my neighbor's dog that helps me mow my lawn.

Well today I mowed my lawn for the first time this Spring, and of course Dino came running (hobbling actually - he's got arthritis) to help and ran right in front of a car.

He didn't get hit, just maybe startled a little.

After a while, Dino decided to go swimming so he went back across the street, and walked right in front of another car.

Once again, he didn't get hit.

Are you sensing a pattern yet?

No less than five times total did Dino tempt fate by walking straight across the road without even thinking about checking for traffic first.

Eventually I suppose he'll get hit and killed. I hope I'm not there when it happens.

He's a good boy, just a little dumb.

(response to message)

Let me get this straight. I'm supposed to try anyway?

That proverbial fucking ant has a better chance of picking his fucking rubber tree up and twirling it like a baton than I have of even getting close to anything even remotely feasible, but I'm supposed to try anyway?

Fuck that ant and fuck his high apple pie in the sky hopes.

I hope he has a fucking heart attack from the strain.

Do ants even have hearts?

I sure as shit do. So does she.

I don't know who you fucking are. You may know me and you may know her, but you don't know shit else.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained, you say? Fuck you. Ever hear of loss? Ever hear of failure? How about heartbreak, sorrow, or grief?

Damn I'm pissed.

So this is the new me.

How do you like me so far?

Twenty-five weeks, five days, twenty-two hours, twenty minutes and fifty-five seconds...

Twenty-five weeks, five days, twenty-two hours, twenty minutes and fifty-four seconds...

Twenty-five weeks, five days, twenty-two hours, twenty minutes and fifty-three seconds...

Twenty-five weeks, five days, twenty-two hours, twenty minutes and fifty-two seconds...

...

...

...

Motherfuck shit piss double poo-poo.

One second...

Two seconds...

Three seconds...

I've written before about some of the funny things I see in my weblogs. Things that people type into Google and get led to my site.

Today I got another doozy:

dave having a poo face

Whatever, dude.

A while ago I wrote about how anxious I was to become whole again.

I'd completely evaporated in the Fall, and I was finally starting to see some semblance of a personality develop in me. No more would I be a walking, talking, collection of symptoms. I'd be an actual person.

Well, that coalescence has finally happened. I finally feel whole again.

That's the good news.

The bad new is: I think I might be kind of a dick.

Allow me to 'splain.

I'm finding everything funny. Even things that are decidedly not funny. And it's not just that I'm laughing on the inside all the time, it's the kind of laughing that I'm doing. It's like inside my head are those guys from Mystery Science Theater. Everything I do and say is accompanied by this running internal commentary of sarcasm and dark humor.

Another thing is that I'm very quick to irritation. I seem to be unable to keep anything bottled up at all. People piss me off without even trying, and I take the most innocent actions and words as personal attacks. And the guys in my head crack jokes about them, their shortcomings, their heritage, whatever.

This irritation, this mocking attitude - these are not attributes that I thought I'd end up with.

My God, I've turned into my grandfather after all! My sister was right!

When I start calling my nieces and nephews "damn brat" and wearing coveralls every single day of my life then I'll know for sure.

Oh well, from what I understand PaPaw got a lot of action. So I guess I have that to look forward to. Plus, I get to keep accumulating old electronic junk and never ever get rid of anything.

So yesterday I was sitting at Polly's Freeze, enjoying my lunch and thinking about my childhood.

I grew up 200 yards from Polly's. My mom and my aunt worked at Polly's. My best friend's parents owned the place. My grandmother's house sat between my house and Polly's. My uncle's family lived back by the woods. They had a pool.

There are an awful lot of memories crammed into that quarter-mile stretch of highway 62. I like to sit at Polly's and let them come flooding back to me.

Anyway, yesterday I was eating my lunch and this school bus pulled up to MaMaw's old house and a bunch of kids got off.

Got off the bus, you pervert.

It was just weird.

I know that new people, strangers to me, are in that house now. I just never really thought of them as living there until I saw those kids. To those kids, that is their house.

Those kids have no inkling of all the fun my sisters and cousins and I had in that house when we were kids, no inkling of the love that my grandmother had for all of us. They're too busy making their own memories.

I wonder if they ever get scared of the upstairs like we used to.

I wonder if they've discovered how to get in to the attic, or that you can squeeze through the vent and get from an upstairs bedroom to the living room without going down the stairs.

I wonder if they look at that huge Maple tree in the front yard and wonder, "Could I build a treehouse there?"

I hope they do all those things. I hope they appreciate where they're living. I hope they make that house a home.

My own childhood home is long gone, a victim of death and deceit. My old yard has reverted back to being just another field. My woods have been leveled to make room for even more houses. My grandfather's propane business, later my uncle's nursery, those are gone too.

All those memories, crammed into a quarter-mile stretch of road. That's all most of them are anymore, just memories.

But two things remain. Polly's Freeze and MaMaw's house. They stand as they always have, watching over that stretch of road.

And where they stand, a part of me stands.