You just call out my name

That's depressing. A Livejournal friend (I'm circumspect about naming who because the original post was friends-locked) reports that a mutual friend killed himself. I hope it turns out to be a mistake, but I suppose that's not realistic. He was someone I liked a great deal, and talked with when I could, and whose friendship I enjoyed. I hadn't seen him (virtually) in a few months, but chalked that up to the routine uncertainty of seeing friends online. It happens I'd sent him an e-mail about a week and a half ago, which is now locked up wherever e-mail to the dead goes. He killed himself the last week of February.

There's something weird about Internet connectedness. I can have essentially live conversations with people from every continent simultaneously. But then there's this, where important news doesn't reach anyone for a month and a half ... that's the sort of lag you saw in the days of sailing ships and before there was a telegraph system, when a monarch could be dead half a year before all his governors heard. The reliance on the Internet for so many of my friendships -- and the twelve-hour time difference to home -- leaves me accustomed to not hearing from people for months, maybe years, at a time ... and that feels wrong, like I'm wasting friendships.

Everyone out there ... you're doing all right, aren't you?

Trivia: The Number Two oxygen tank on Apollo 13 had Beech Aircraft Corporation serial number 10024XTA0008, the eighth Block II cryogenic oxygen tank built. The Number One tank had serial number 10024XTA0009. Source: Report of the Apollo 13 Review Board (The Cortright Commission).

Currently Reading: Asimov's New Guide to Science, Isaac Asimov.