(Image found on and courtesy of Uncyclopedia)

…and they think I should come in and swap it for a replacement. Great, new equipment for free, no questions asked, good deal. Problem is, this guy:

Well, he’s been with me since I first got broadband access in 2001. 6 years of my time online, more than half the time I’ve been online and certainly the most productive time I’ve spent, I’ve spent with the SB4100. It’s completely and utterly ridiculous to sentimentalize these things, but I’m totally going to miss him when he’s gone, and I feel like I’m throwing him under the bus for a newer, faster model. I kinda felt the same way about my G1 iPod Shuffle, only that was with me for far less time, and the device was nothing but trouble (went through 3 of them, and there was never quite enough space on it). This modem and I, well, we’ve been through hell together. We’ve seen some amazing things. Without going into too much detail here, some of the highlights among what seems like a lifetime of them included the “HOLY SHIT I JUST DOWNLOADED THAT IN SIX SECONDS!” moment to start off its storied career, the entire run of the radio show, the E2 incident, and of course, a moment in time that’ll be lost on most of you, but one that qDot will probably remember fondly along with me: Space Griffon. Yep, lots of memories.

I reset the connection on the modem a little while ago, and I’m honestly tempted to give it one more shot, just to see if perhaps it just needed a refresh, because I hate the idea of sending the little guy to an unknown and probably grim fate. Cross your fingers for both of us.

Update: The nice people at Cablevision didn’t need my old modem in trade. Since I paid for it outright when I got it, back when you still needed to do that, the SB4100 is mine for eternity. :D

Hey, you guys. Remember this, this and this? Or, perhaps more importantly, this?

Well, just so they haven’t all slipped your mind because they’ve fallen off the proverbial front page of the public consciousness, some updates.

Let’s go in chronological order here, from oldest to newest.

In reference to this:

“I’m having a really hard time seeing why I bother right now.

Show me why I bother, and do it really convincingly, or I’m going to stop. Do it here, do it in that mythical place known as “the real world” where I’m completely unable to function, do it wherever, but just do it, or the person so many people pay lip service to as the greatest thing since sliced bread (while acting in ways that betray their words) will simply cease to be, if he hasn’t already, and he’ll be replaced by someone far, far worse than me, which may be what the public wants, compelling television and all, but it’s not what I want.”

To begin on something of an up note, I’ve actually made some in-roads on my own on this one recently, in perhaps the last place I would have expected. Strangely, now that I’m not “alone” anymore, after 3 1/2 years of bemoaning the fact that I was, I’m starting to rediscover the joy and the necessity of being alone sometimes. That’s no knock whatsoever on my present company, and I want to be clear and affirmative about that. I think it’s just a side effect of living out of a bag for a year. It’s really nice to have the luxury (and while I’ve spent a lot of my life flush with it, it is a luxury) of being able to do things that I enjoy, even simple things, without having to worry about how my use of time will affect others who are in my company at that particular moment in time. Doing those sorts of things recently has helped me understand quite a bit about “why I bother”, because moments like that, whether they come when alone or with other people, do have a way of filling in the cracks in one’s will to live.

To quote Sheryl Roberts (who has remained patient with me despite my being exceptionally difficult to deal with at times), from this:

“Scott is in the midst of a crisis in his life. He is both physically and mentally bankrupt right now, and is having a great deal of trouble taking care of himself, dealing with the basics of living and seeing to his various projects.

<snip the part about people being a real presence in my life, because those of you who are have been great, and those of you who weren’t are gone now, at the risk of sounding crass>

If you would like to donate money to Scott, the PayPal button is on his MySpace page here:

http://www.myspace.com/scottcrawford”

Or, you could just click this thing:

I am still in totally dire financial straits. That I’m able to continue to even be online is a testament to a pretty insane level of thriftiness in some ways, because I loathe the idea of having certain people (call it a quirk of mine, but I just don’t feel that certain kinds of help should come from certain directions) pay for what should at least be paying for itself after 11 years and is largely a luxury item, even though it’s vital to my creative output. The donations have not been coming in heavily, nor have the music sales, and while people have been paying for about 2 pizzas a month by clicking the text ads on my site, amazingly, finally…the actual cost of maintaining my current level of presence online is up to approximately $106 per month, or about 14 pizzas if you buy them on Monday or Tuesday (“Pizza Days!”) at the pizza places near my house. That’s my broadband connection, web hosting, domain registration for the one domain I have to pay for (I get one free with hosting), my paid Second Life account, land use fees for my land in SL, and the Shoutcast stream I use in SL (which, even if I just use it to broadcast my own music, I probably shouldn’t even be talking about, because the hammer’s about to come down on that shit, and I don’t need any more fucking hassle than I have). There’s no paid LiveJournal or Flickr account there, or anything really frivolous like that. $106 per month covers the bare minimum I need to maintain the services directly tied to my creative output, which in turn is directly tied to my sanity. If I had absolutely no other cost-of-living issues aside from these right now, I could manage to cover everything but the cable modem by myself. I kinda need the cable modem to connect to all the other services though, don’t I?

As for that other, slightly less important stuff known as “food, clothing, shelter and transportation”? Yeah, right. Like I’m able to pay for *any* of that. I am that horrible cliche, and perhaps the most oppressed minority known as “the guy in his 30′s who lives with family and can’t take care of himself, but is somehow paying for some pretty heavy duty ‘net access”, and while perhaps that’s not all I am by a long shot, it’s a pretty big part of it right now. No one who reads this site should have any illusions to the contrary at this point, and I’m sorry if you thought or expected more or better from me. I can also understand the point of view of that segment of the population who would have no sympathy for me in this situation, but I can’t really worry too much about pleasing them at the moment.

The reality of things is that quite often, people see how intelligent I am (and there are people way smarter than I am, but I do have a level of intelligence that makes me somewhat articulate and capable of figuring some things out) and mistake that intelligence for an ability to take care of one’s self. Nope, still haven’t figured that one out. To that end, I’ve given some thought to talking to a good disability lawyer, but beyond the ethical concerns related to being “on the dole”, as it were, I am concerned that doing any of the things I’ve talked about here would sabotage my case. I really do need to talk to a good lawyer and a good accountant some time soon, though, just to see what they think my options are.

Oh, and for those of you who donated when that comment was posted by Sheryl, if you’re wondering how the first round of donations was spent, I’ll tell you privately via email if you’re curious. In the interest of accountability, I did just look it up, and I do have it all spoken for. But enough about money. It’s a dirty, ugly, tired subject.

Onto my health and my “crisis”: I am getting just slightly better on the physical and mental exhaustion front, though that’s involved me putting a lot on the shelf both personally and professionally. I’ve pretty much had to put any outside work and some of the internal work (from my work helping Pretty In Velvet, to some DJing work, to my own live performance and studio recording schedule) on hold, but I’m resting and aside from some recent stomach problems I need to sort out, I’m starting to feel a little better. It’s still really easy for me to have a setback at this point, and to be honest, the compulsion I’ve had to write all this tonight will probably lead directly to one of those setbacks, but I need to get as much of this out as possible while I’m still in touch with it.

On this, there are a few points I can address:

“1. Either most people can’t show up in my life in the way I’d like them to, or they just don’t want to.”

I’m finding that, while beggars can’t be choosers, in some cases, I do need the people who want to help me to work with me and respect my wishes on how I’d like them to help me anywhere from a little to a lot more. I understand how hard that can be, because I tend to bulldoze through peoples’ wishes on these things sometimes too, just seeing a problem that needs a solution I can’t resist trying to solve rather than the feelings of the people connected to the problem. Regardless, the rest of the world and I both need to get a lot better at helping people in the ways that they actually want and need said help.

“4. While I feel I am in serious need of help, I possess a deep distrust of the professions who are in charge of “help” in this country, if not this entire world.”

I keep coming back to this point, but it keeps gets stronger by the minute. I’m finding that I really don’t need a bunch of quacks and their snake oil (or worse, their shock therapy; I don’t consider it a coincidence that shock therapy is a common denominator among people my friends and I have lost over the years) to help me with the excruciating task of self-discovery. Even the oft-suggested idea of “just” going to therapy seems like a greater waste for me every time I re-examine it. I lack the kinds of floodgates and filters a person needs to not talk about their thoughts, feelings and problems with virtually anyone in their path, so I’ve done that already, in some cases, even here, at great length. Someone I know once said (and I’m paraphrasing here) that “therapy is for people who don’t have friends that they feel like they can talk to”. Now, it’s been suggested to me by at least one of my friends (and readers) that unloading on my friends is unfair. Though that may be the case, my friends (and to some extent, my readership) are the only people on Earth who’d be able to grasp the context of anything I say without reading through 10 years of what I’ve written on the Internet. Can any of you imagine me trying to explain my entire life in therapy, even if I had a neatly organized, totally honest version of it all laid out in a totally businesslike, friendly, not-trying-to-dissect-the-listener way? I’d be 70 years old before we even got to “So, how do you feel today?”, and like I said, that’s if I really had my shit together and played ball.

The reality has me as something of a cross between James Randi and the antiheroic protagonists in any one of Nick Cave’s better murder ballads (not to be confused with the songs on “Murder Ballads”, which was a pretty half-assed, pandering album of his…), with a side of “How hard would it be for me to sleep with my therapist?” if they’re attractive and female (with apologies to Brigid if she ever reads this, and apologies to the other ladies in the audience who find this concept kind of appalling, but I’m at least honest enough to admit that I think this way, and sensible enough to recognize it as a problem, not to mention a potential stumbling block in my therapy…), and maybe just a splash of truth, like the amaretto I used to throw in my Johnnie Walker Black back when I didn’t know any better. Is that really what people think would help me out? In addition, does anyone really think that going to therapy just to learn how to bottle up my feelings until “therapy day”, in the interest of “fairness”, would improve my mental health or make me any more pleasant to be around? Answer honestly.

If you ask me, I’m thinking that I just need to carefully manage and conserve my strength so I can handle the work of figuring myself out in the healthiest ways possible, and be as careful of the people around me as I’m capable of being, which admittedly is almost never careful enough. That’s probably the best I can do, upon some review of my situation.

“5. There’s a very strong chance that whatever I think would help me feel better will not.”

And as you saw here, it so totally fucking didn’t. Well, at least I’m sure now.

“6. No matter what’s going on, the world isn’t going to stop having its demands of me, demands that I really am in no condition to fill right now.”

I’m not sure if this is healthy or not, but I seem to be getting better at turning the world away when they come to my door with their demands. I’m at least trying my best to prioritize what I do, let the people making the demands know what kind of shape I’m in, and then I’m asking them if my involvement is still really going to be crucial. I don’t have it dicked yet, it’s an inexact science, and I do frequently ask myself whether I’m doing it more in the interest of avoidance and laziness than that of recuperation and self-preservation, I guess just to keep myself honest, but I feel like I’m making a little headway here.

“8. I really can’t talk openly about a lot of what’s going on in my life, even privately, because I am concerned about the adverse effect that it would have on my life and the lives of others that I care about.”

Still silent here on many fronts, though I’m sure that virtually anyone who has half a clue about me knows at least some of what’s up. To be crushingly cliche and quote Robert Smith, “it’s the loudest sound I ever heard”.

And, to get back to our final exhibit:

“I almost never make it through a single day anymore without thinking about killing myself at least once, despite so many recent examples of how precious life is, and knowing of people who’d probably give anything to have what I’m squandering.”

I really wish I could say that I’d made some sort of meaningful progress on this one, but I haven’t. Even on the good days and with the good things and people firmly in mind, with my life being what it is right now and the world being what it is right now, it’s pretty tough to shake off both the hopelessness I feel and the shame I feel for feeling so hopeless while being so privileged. I guess that the only thing I can do with this is to keep fighting, keep trying and keep working on figuring out how to live a stable, sustainable, relatively healthy existence, like so many of you do. All I keep thinking is “this is stuff I should’ve figured out as a teenager”.

And that, my friends, is what all that writing over the past few months, the events that spawned it, and the events that the writing itself spawned, have amounted to. Hopefully, I didn’t depress the shit out of you all like I usually do when I write about things like this, but I felt simultaneously like I owed you all an update, and like I still have a story to tell here that I didn’t want to have drowned out entirely by lolcats, as much as I love them.

I’m still in bad shape. I’m still workin’ on it. I am making some progress, but I do still need your help. However, if you can, be delicate about how you try to help, if you choose to. That’s the gist.

I think it’d be really cool if you could chat with the other people downloading or seeding whatever file you’re working on, even if just so you could say “Dude. We’re such fucking geeks for downloading this.” or “I feel dirty for even using bandwidth on this. I hope it speeds up.” or even “BOW TO ME, PISSLINGS, FOR I AM SEEDING THE HOLY FUCKING GRAIL OF TOTO BOOTLEGS, AND YOU ARE NOT!”

“Ernest Sets A Midget’s Vagina On Fire”

…who left a condom wrapper in the Ronald McDonald House donation box at the drive-thru of the Hazlet, NJ McDonald’s…

You’re a fuckin’ asshole, but I laughed anyway.