Dear Diary

I could'a shown more sympathy for the families and survivors of the latest nastiness in New Zealand. I could'a written a thing about this mad state of affairs and done my take on it... but...

Sir Terry Pratchett (GNU) said it all so much better in a footnote:

Every society needs a cry like [”Remember Koom Valley“], but only in a very few do they come out with the complete, unvarnished version, which is ‘Remember-the-atrocity-committed-against-us-last-time-that-will-excuse-the-atrocity-that-we’re-about-to-commit-today! And so on! Hurrah!’ — Thief of Time

This is going to give a group of agitated young men [it's almost always young men. I am perfectly willing to be surprised] an excuse to go do horrible things to otherwise innocent groups of their particular Other [pick and Other, any Other, it doesn't matter as long as they're not Us, but rather Them] which will cause a different group to think, Those Them. How dare They? How would They like it if we did horrible things to Their people?

Around and around it goes. The Terror Cycle has no brakes and can only accelerate further downhill. I just wish the Media would take all these particular agitated agitators and lump them all under one banner: cowards.

That's what they are. Cowards. They group together or gather their arms separately and attack groups of people unable to defend themselves because they are cowards.

The next angry white man to shoot up a school full of children isn't a "lone wolf with suspected mental issues", he is a coward. The next Muslim with "potential ties to [INSERT TERRORIST GROUP DU JOUR]" isn't a "suspected member of [WHATEVER]" or a "dangerous member of a [NAME] terrorist cell", he is a coward.

A coward attacks children. A coward attacks people at their place of worship. A coward blows up medical clinics, hospitals, schools, school busses, shopping malls...

They are nothing more than base, disgusting cowards. End of discussion. Call them "Some coward" and move on to the thoughts and prayers speeches as you roll a tribute tape of the victims and their names. I bet that this particular quote-unquote 'tactic' will die off once the notoriety they get for doing it ends.

That's the "could'a".

I would'a written more of my pet projects or got more done on learning Java or any NUMBER of things I have on my multitude of backburners were it not for my intense desire to just faff off in the evenings once all my work was done.

Don't get me wrong, I love writing the daily flash fiction and my flash fanfictions over on Tumblr, but... After that much mental exercise I need a mental kip.

Tune in to something I don't have to think about, turn on some newsfeed, scroll and read and just... drop out of life for a while.

I dunno. Maybe late 40's is the stage of my life where I'm more easily exhausted. Maybe I should turn off my newsfeed or stay out of Tumblr after 3PM. Maybe I'm turning into a bitter and twisted old coot... but by crikey, I'm not turning into a conservative.

Gross.

Heaven forfend.

I'll keep the laptop shut and focus on playing casual games on my phone while the White Noise TV runs. See if that improves my attitude.

That's the "would'a".

I should'a been doing a squidge more for getting my shiznit out there. Sure, I do have a way to earn a little on the daily through Steemit, but I should'a been putting my stuff out on Wattpad [last seen as a bastion of tweenage One Direction fanfic and mocked for the same on YouTube] and getting a mailing list together.

After some toodling about, I now know that RSS feeds can be linked to email. I have a subscribe link WAY down the bottom of my menu.

Maybe I should'a been linking that in my tagscript.

Nope. Turns out that button is nonfunctional and needs a tweak or fifteen. Shall have to wait for my grand fixer-upperer to help me out with that so I don't do anything that'll get me shipped off to Numptyland.

Once that's running, I could get up to the mythical one thousand supporters fairly quickly. Previously, I've had NO idea who amongst my followers is real, nor if any of them were really reading my stuff. You know, apart from the people who complain. They're few and far between and I'm kind'a glad. Most of the time, it's about typoes.

Like all things I should'a, I'll be discussing the full gamut of potential with Beloved, best-fit options and what running a mailing list could mean for me as a daily task.

I have over seven hundred followers on Steemit and almost five hundred on Tumblr. Even if most of those are the same people, I could still be damn close to having that legendary thousand. That would be amazing, to be honest.

Then, I might even get Noticed.

But first - a day of relative rest.