Author: Dana Seilhan

I have almost all the articles moved (see previous posts), but it’s twenty minutes to five and I want to be out of here well before five. (I’m at my friend Carrie’s house right now.)

I will very likely do more soon, but I never make promises about that because we all know how I am.

This is not the end of it. I want to bring photos and videos in line with the articles, all in the blog-post section. I think I already mentioned that I doubt I will continue calling it a blog, but that’s not the most important thing right now.

But when I get it where I want it, it will be a lot like a scrapbook, which is the effect I want. Maybe even Rory will enjoy looking at it, I don’t know. It’ll need much more tweaking before I’m totally happy with it, but I’m closer to happy than I was.

Anyway. Gotta jet. Later, ‘gators.

I am in the middle of moving articles on the fan site, and it’s going slower than I would like, and the reason it’s going slower is because I’m adding in tags so that the tag cloud will work.

I just want to get things MOVED, so I think at this point I will just move the articles, and then I will go back in later and add the tags.

If I add the tags. I’ll think about it some more but, given that the site has a search bar, I may decide to ditch them entirely. I’ll have to look up what effect that has on SEO, however, because even though that site lands on page one of Rory McCann search results on Google, so far it’s mainly the page about his love life, which I’m not even sure I want to keep. I’d like to see more stuff about Rory hit that front page instead of the spam you see in half the fucking results list. If the tags help my rating, great. If they don’t help, there’s no use keeping them.

Anyway, just wanted to share that thought process. Back to it. This should go faster now.

FYI, I’m going to do the same with the photos and videos and so on. I’m debating whether I even want to keep calling the blog page a “blog.” Not an important debate just now but, as I’m changing what goes there, I’ll want to consider it later. If anyone out there is hard-linking to anything I’ve got on the site, you may want to check in from time to time. I doubt it, but I’m covering all my bases here.

[EDIT] I can never seem to just wait to find something out. Turns out tag pages are bad for SEO. Okay, I’m killing the tag system AND the tag page. If y’all want to learn about something, the search bar will more than suffice. Glad I got that sorted out.

If you follow the fan site I run, you know it’s back up. But I didn’t want to leave things hanging here. I hate leaving loose ends. Even if it’s pointless to pick them up. Haha.

Rory’s been quite a bit more active on social media than we are accustomed to seeing him. It’s an open question whether people have been nagging him to update with the new TV show he’s doing or whether he decided on his own to post more often. I can’t even predict how long this will continue. I know he reads at least some of his comments because actor Cary Elwes (yes, the Dread Pirate Roberts his own self) has been commenting on his posts and at least once, Rory has replied. I can’t see the big man becoming an Instagram addict, though. He’s got too many interesting things going on in his life. No moss growing on that one.

I need to finish refurbing the site. It’s been in a state of limbo for a couple years now other than my occasional updates. I like to say it’ll never be finished finished unless Rory passes away or I quit, but I can at least finish moving things around like I wanted to do and then improve the header area.

And when I get that done will very likely mark the end of my running commentary there. Because it’s not MY site. Sure, it’s my site in that I own the domain and I pay for the hosting space but it isn’t about me. If people are curious, I’ll still be on the About page over there with a link to this site here. And then the commentary I was doing there, I can do here instead. Self-serving? No more than it is when I post about my personal shit there. Probably a lot less so.

I also need to put in some time on this site. It needs rearranging too. Probably won’t get to it today though. Can make no promises on how soon.

I actually am not sure where that will go. I have had some ideas about where I might like to take my life and I’ll not go into them here but Scotland’s involved somewhere. I need a thing that I can be interested in and happy about. I have too many things I’m interested in that I am not happy about. And those things do need attention, but they shouldn’t consume my whole fucking life, you know? But anyway, if I pursue the Happy Ideas, that site’s likely the first step. I want to play with it a while and then see what next steps are possible.

That was nice and clear. Like mud. Don’t worry about it.

Okay. Enough procrastinating. ‘Later.

I’m at the library in Jennings momentarily to catch a few things up and then I will be going to Lafayette, because all the money I earned last week went to insurance, not including $20 that went to gas before I found out Dad is willing to foot my gasoline expenses. I am not going to ask him for that every single time. For instance, today I had to find a gas station that “takes mixed tender,” meaning cash and debit in the same transaction, because apparently there’s one Jennings gas station that doesn’t. Don’t get me started. But I figure $20 in gas should see me through for a little while. I want an early day to maximize my chances.

That was $20 I needed to renew the domain name for Rory’s fan site. I had had it stuck in my brain that that domain name comes up for renewal on the 23rd because I could have sworn that was when I started the site in the beginning: the day before Rory’s birthday. Now, I get brain glitches. Have since forever, so I’m not going to blame middle age. So possibly I forgot the actual renewal date. But this hosting service also sneaks in ridiculous price increases, so it’s not outside the realm of possibility that they shifted the due date when I moved the domain from my old host to this one five years ago this coming August or at some other time. Also don’t get me started. I’m tired of games in general. Except the ones on my phone and laptop, and even those piss me off sometimes.

The upshot is that I had been planning to use today to earn the domain renewal money, and now I absolutely have to. My wiggle room is all gone.

Anyway. After finding out I had badly miscalculated things, I had $9 in cash that, had I been able to deposit it to my Chime over at Walgreens, I would have been able to use in addition to my existing Chime balance to have the domain name paid up yesterday. I was informed, after wasting gas I couldn’t spare to drive all the way to Jennings for the deposit, that Walgreens only accepts a minimum of $20 at a time. What the actual motherfucking fuck. I don’t remember if I have ever tried putting in less than that in the past and now the rules have changed or if I have always put in $20 or more and so this is just catching me unawares. I can’t even keep track of this shit anymore. Certainly Chime never warned me about it, either way.

(I am running out of reasons to stay with them. They’re not bad overall, just, I’m not seeing the benefit. Too much to get into here. You don’t care. Moving on now.)

So. BASICALLY. I need to go to Lafayette today, make $20, save the fucking fan site if I can, and if I can then fine, and if not, I’ll be in a good-signal zone and you’ll hear (read) my wailing and gnashing of teeth all the way over in fucking Belarus. Sorry about that. But you will know one way or the other by the end of the day. Look on my social media to keep up until I can post here again, because in my current situation social media is easier for real-time (or nearly so) updates. Instagram or Facebook. Could be either, might be both.

It’ll be a $40 minimum day, too, because I’m going to want to put gas back into the car after I have burnt it trying to save a website that maybe 50 of you a day ever look at. On a good day.

I did say, numerous times, that I will keep it going as long as I enjoy the situation. I still mostly do, so if I can keep it going, I will. But I’m also a-gonna grouse about bullshit, not because I enjoy grousing about bullshit, but because… well… it’s me. Sorry.

There is somewhat of a chance I may not be able to save the site. Depends on my hosting service’s policies. I know I already said that, but I want to make sure you read it and understand it. I warned you. I don’t know what I will do besides bitch endlessly if I fail to save it. If I think of something, I’ll let you know.

P.S. Tangentially related: The afanoficeandfire.com domain may be kaput forever. I like the IDEA of what I wanted to do, but I am not finding the REASONS to pursue it when I have more important things to do. This isn’t sour grapes; I really do have more important things to do, like rescuing the big man’s fan site and improving it, and also cleaning up the trainwreck that is my life generally, and various other things. I cannot keep all those balls in the air at once, which is why I’ve not done anything with the AFOIAF domain the entire time I’ve had it. Though admittedly part of my looking askance at the whole endeavor is I can’t see the point when Martin hasn’t even finished the fucking books. And, frankly, I’ve read the excerpts from The Winds of Winter, and… his writing “voice” is so different versus A Game of Thrones or even Dancing with Dragons that I’m actually not sure I can immerse myself anymore. I will try if he actually gets it published because I want to know what happens next, but I’d bet you the twenty bucks I wish I had right fucking now that it’s going to feel like a completely different story and also like I just wasted time I will never get back.

This is why you don’t wait literal decades between writing books in a series, kids. We had the same problem with Stephen King’s Dark Tower story. I have no doubt that a significant portion of the reading public does not notice the change in voice or tone or whatever and won’t catch errors. It might take me a few re-reads, but I do catch that shit. It takes me right out of the story, as surely as a misspelling or grammatical error does, and I found quite a few of the latter in Martin’s books as it is.

Shame. Shame. Shame. [ding]

My other issue with Martin (well… besides his unseemly fascination with big older men fucking little girls… someone please check his hard drive) is that he doesn’t have much theory of mind going for him. For instance: The reason the fandom debated for so long about which side of the Hound’s face got burned is because Martin didn’t think about what it sounded like when he wrote the sentence The left side of his face was a ruin. What he meant there was SANSA’s left as she faced Sandor and looked at his burn scars. That is not how most people parsed it, including me, because that is not how most people talk or think about right versus left as applied to the body. (I honestly believe the only reason the makeup artists got the burn side correct on Rory’s stage makeup was because they asked George directly. Or David and Dan did, and then passed the edict down to Makeup.) I’ve seen this sort of error before in writing, and Martin’s not the only one guilty of it — if you have ever seen a character say “I am from the nearby village,” you have just encountered this phenomenon — but between this and all the glaring errors with commas vs semicolons vs colons in Martin’s books, only the story itself kept me reading sometimes. When I read fiction, I want an immersive experience, not to be yanked back to reality every other paragraph because the guy I’m reading doesn’t know that “Myrish swamp” is not a complimentary comparison to female genitalia.

(Jesus Christ, GEORGE.)

It really is a good story. It probably could have stood to be in better hands. I felt the same way about the Twilight “saga.” I am loath to compare George R. R. Martin to Stephenie Meyer here, but that’s what I’m a-gonna do, because it is a fair comparison. Go ahead and hate me. I honestly can’t be fucked. Those of you who would be angry, incredulous, or mocking at what I have just said have no fucking idea what I’m talking about anyway. I learned long ago it’s pointless to have debates with unprepared people.

Also, if any writers out there would like to hire a last-minute proofreader to catch all the shit your previous editor(s) and proofreader(s) missed, I’m down. Beats the hell out of driving around Lafayette, Louisiana (and Breaux Bridge… and Carencro… and Abbeville… and Rayne) for six hours only to earn forty bucks if I’m lucky, let me tell YOU. My contact info is on this site. I won’t bite if you don’t.