Okay, so it's time for my answers to Val's three questions. It's just like the Friday Five, except minus two! Here goes...

1. Has this year been going by quickly for you?

I think it's interesting that, in answering this question, most people have commented that the years seem to go by more quickly for them as they grow older. For me, the reverse is true. This year has been going very, very slowly -- as I've experienced it, anyway. In retrospect it seems to have gone by pretty quickly, but that's because my memory is nearly nonexistent. I have very little recollection of the past, so while I have nothing in time to which I can compare the present moment and say to myself, "Damn, I can't believe that just happened a few months ago! Why, it feels like it's been years...," or, "Wow! I can't believe that just happened a few months ago! Feels like it was just last week," I do remember things that have happened (the beginning of this blog, the opening of Scary-Crayon, starting work at the bookstore, etc.) and, since I can't place them in time but know that they happened, it seems to me as if they took place in some lengthy form of the present -- and therefore it feels as if, in retrospect, as I've said, this year has gone by very quickly. (Yes, that's the style of the novel, and I'm totally stealing that passage for it. MORE WORDS!)

2. Has this been a good or bad year for you to date?

As my years seem to pass more slowly as I grow older, they also get worse as the time drags on. So no, this has not been a good year. Some good things have happened -- I finally got SC off the ground after much preliminary thinking and work on the site, I've made a few 'net contacts, I'm not totally broke -- but for the most part my year has sucked, what with my awful home/family situation and not having any friends and, most recently, spending the vast majority of my time working shit jobs and hardly having the time to do the things that I do enjoy. And with this being an election year, I've been more attentive as far as politics go... and I can't say that I'm happy with a lot of what's been going on on both sides.

3. What would you like to see improved for next year?

It really doesn't matter, since none of the things I would really like to see improve will come to pass -- definitely not in the next year, and probably not even in my lifetime (if ever). I may someday get a better job, I may someday be able to move out of this area, but no matter where I go -- at least in America -- I will always be ignored and mistreated, even by those whom I would not call my enemies. I am quite certain that I will never be treated and/or respected as an individual. That saddens me. I'm not even sure it would be worth it to discuss it here, so I'll spare you the lengthy analysis. Suffice it to say that I will always be a phantom, invisible to others -- though they will see my shade, and curse/fear/jeer it, according to their manners -- and drifting in solitude about the sad, dark rooms that I call home. My life will continue to be miserable until I am dead -- so perhaps my death is the only way that things could ever really improve. Maybe I should look forward to that.

There; I've answered Val's questions. Ja.