I'm an urban hermit, a hiker, a rationalist, a skeptic, a freethinker, an empiricist, a materialist, a naturalist, a scientist, a bibliophile, an INTJ, a white hat hacker, a secular humanist, a teetotaler, a social-liberal civil-libertarian monarchist, a furry fan, a playtester, a licensed amateur radio operator, an ordained minister of the First Church of Atheism, a card-carrying pirate, the Star Lord, a Lord of the Rose, and a proud member of the Bayesian Conspiracy.

I try to operate by Crocker's Rules.

I'm still struggling to escape the black dog of long-term depression, and as dormant parts of my psyche are gradually reviving, some odd results arise.

For the first time in a very long time, today I found myself /wanting/ a thing. Usually, I'm quite content with what I have, and classically stoic about what I can't; after all, my life is much better than, say, a 16th-century French peasant's. But my browsing has just brought me to the two rodent Venetian masks shown at https://www.flickr.com/photos/flatworldsedge/5255475917/sizes/l and at https://www.flickr.com/photos/flatworldsedge/5123591774/sizes/l/ , and I can't stop my thoughts from turning back to them again and again.

Those pictures are eight years old, and those particular masks aren't listed on the store's website ( http://www.cadelsolmascherevenezia.com/en/masks/27 ); and I have neither access to a 3D printer nor the skills to turn those jpegs into a 3d-printable file; nor the social network to get in touch with anyone who could do anything of the sort.

And yet, I want.

It's been long enough since I wanted something I don't have that it feels like a new emotion to me, and I suspect I'm wallowing more in the experience-of-wanting than I actually want a mask. But hey, there are lots of worse things that could happen to me than that, so I figure it's still a win. :)