#awfulnogoodweek

So, forest park hiking is on hold while I recover from surgery. Saw bone doc last Thursday, and he recommended immediate surgery to correct persistent bone clicking in right elbow joint. Had surgery Friday because I thought it least bad choice out of several bad possibilities. Been recovering since then. Post-surgery pain super awful Saturday and Sunday. Threw up Friday night due to general anesthetic. Been grumpy and whiny since then. I may have more to say on this later, or maybe on my super secret alternate blog that no one knows about. On top of that had super horrifying dream about my horrible ex from reno tracking me down and worming her way back into my life and attempting to kill me that lasted seemingly forever.

On the bright side, the stargate SG-1 and stargate Universe marathons have been fun. SGU is fun, but so clearly a rip-off of BSG, attempting to ride the coattails of that show's success. Which doesn't bother me really because I like the end result in some ways a lot. And the SF element is much more to my liking, really fun, old-fashioned classic SF ideas. Any show that uses gravity wells a lot to speed up and slow down ships is A-OK in my book. I can't say my two favorite things out of respect for spoilers. Besides the BSG rip-off (DR. Rush is a really obvious rip-off of Gaius Baltar), my biggest nitpick is that very few of the characters are genuinely likeable. They're all very human, but in ways that make it hard to like them. Eli is the obvious everyman, but I have mixed feelings. He's your stereotypical gaming nerd, who dropped out of MIT, and joined the mission by beating a math puzzle in an MMO. I have MUCH more to say about this when my arm comes back, but I am only able to enjoy the character because he is clearly regarded as the least capable character on the show.

Anyway, I am now more tired and dizzy than when I started, so I'm going to go lie down. I shouldn't be, but I'm kinda surprised skateboarding led to this much drama.

Forest parking

On the assumption that my emotional life is more or less . . . contained, I have started tackling the thing that seems best right now, my sleep schedule. In the past, my spoiled prince sleep schedule has been the subject of much self loathing, and recrimination, which while satisfying to the conservative voice of judgement in my brain, isn't of much practical value. This time it proceeds more from a system of wants. I want to get up early enough to exercise or hike. When I get up late I feel the day is wasted and lost all drive to do anything. I want to get off of work to socialize when non-vampires want to (if they can overlook my thirst for human blood, I can overlook the tendency to go to bed at night).

Also, it has helped to kind of name why I don't like to go to bed. It's a greater symptom of my other mental problems, an inability to deal with the present moment, or to let go of moments that are past. I don't go to bed because I'm not ready to face tomorrow, or I'm not ready to let go of the fact that I've wasted another day. So I do nothing in a mental haze basically as a form of putting off uncomfortable situations that tomorrow will bring.

Anyway, between figuring out the cause, and wanting to get up badly enough, I've managed to keep a reasonable sleep schedule for the last 3 days. Not quite a personal best, but close enough (if you consider the last ten years or so). I've done this before, but haven't usually managed to keep it up for more than 2 weeks or so. We'll see how it goes. But for now, feeling good about getting up early. Actually made it out for a 3-mile, one hour hike/jog today too. Although I'd like to roll back the sleep schedule a little earlier so I can take longer hikes. I think ideally I'd like a 11pm bed time and a 7am wake-up, out the door by 8 to hike. Which seems ridiculous to the vampire in me, but eh, he's kind of a putz. All fake blood and counting.

#quirk

There's a certain level of closeness I can't handle right now. I can't manage really liking someone. End up being a prick to them. Kind of unfortunate.

State of the H

1). Fell offa my skateboard last Thursday. Find out Monday morning there are small compression fractures in the right elbow. Only today can I bend it far enough to feed myself. Hurts like hell. Pain management has been the prom them this week. Mostly irritated that the pain gets in the way of working and exercising. Still: FRAK.

2). Sleep schedule is completely out of control. Tangentially related to item 3. Bedtime last two mornings has been 6am+. It's like the better one part of my life gets, the more another has to deteriorate to maintain trainwreck status.

3). Playing WoW again. Mixed feelings. For the moment, it helps me forget about my confused head, and forget my arm hurts like hell. But it also delays dealing with the head stuff. Long term, it makes me feel like abandoning all my games, or 90% of them. Which is good, but dramatic. I'm sure it will surprise many of you that I can be dramatic.

4). Been socializing a bit more. That's good I guess. Still kind of unsure what I want out of a social life though. Like I'm completely indecisive about what "my crowd" is. Not so much because I want to fit in with them, more I just don't really understand what kind of person fits in with me.

5). The depression is moderately better. Still by no means resolved though. Still fuzzy about some crucial life issues I would dearly love to resolve. I don't know. Shrinking my world a bit until I can figure it out.

Just because I'm paranoid . . . .

yes, the four period ellipsis. Fear it.

Ahem.

Actual blog content aside (I generally assume I have never posted before this moment to save us all from the cognitive dissonance inherent in contradictions from previous posts, should they exist [you know what's fun about parenthetical digression? EVERYTHING]), I try not to actually buy into conspiracy theories. Even when it comes to rich bastards. But you know, it's hard not to see mysterious powers at be at work sometimes even when just perusing web sites. For instance, last week when the folk hero "take this job and shove it" stories were released (one of which turned out to be a fake, granted), CNN wasted almost no time in putting up a front page article about how the best way for everyone to quit is politely with a minimum of fuss, if you must quit at all. That's not nefarious, Doctor Doom level behavior obviously, but the timing, especially considering how popular those stories seemed to be with the general populace just gave me the distinct feeling someone was consciously trying to soothe the sheep lest anyone else get any more ideas about making waves.

Conform minions! Your liberation costs your overlords money! If you must cast off our shackles, have the decency to hang your head in shame and shuffle quietly out the door!

You know, sometimes when I write my thoughts down, they sound CRAZY.

We are very, very stupid

This whole "mosque 2 blocks from the trade center" "controversy" is just about the stupidest thing ever. The fact that people who know better are so able to rile so many americans (stupid, stupid and ignorant americans), is very depressing. There aren't two reasonable sides to this. Here is why it's obviously stupid:

1) The group in charge is a very moderate, pro-america muslim group with jews and christians on it's board. If we are actually serious about reducing terrorism, we want to make friends with muslims like this, and spread good will towards america by fostering good relations with moderate muslims who love living in this country.

2) We were not attacked by all of islam. We were attacked by the islamic version of our right-wing militias (roughly). Crazy people who do not speak for islam as a whole. Telling muslims they cannot live and worship near the trade center site is to conflate them with terrorists. Why does it hurt anyone's feelings that muslims exist close to the trade center? They had nothing to do with the attack. Tarring peaceful, moderate, fully american muslim community members with the deeds of fanatics who had nothing to do with them is frankly a little bigoted and fearful and kinda racist. The only thing they have in common is their religion and skin color. We didn't tell christians they can't build churches close to the Oklahoma federal building site for obvious reasons. If you can't see why it's equally wrong to prohibit muslims from building anything near the trade center site, then you have issues with arabs and muslims that are getting in the way of your good judgement.

3) Osama Bin Laden wants a clash of civilizations. Islam versus America. If he really is out to "destroy our freedoms" the stupidest, stupidest possible reaction to 9-11 is to take away the religious freedom of muslims in this country and pursue a clash of civilizations policy against muslims. Because that's explicitly what he said he wanted. I don't know about the mouth-breathing right in this country, but when a terrorist tells me to jump, I don't say "how high." The obvious high road, the obvious way to deny bin laden what he wants, is to continue to embrace moderate muslims at home and abroad. Indulging bin laden in his clash of civilizations fantasy is to sink to his level. We're better than that. Or we can be.

4) It's the first fucking amendment. Number one. Created specifically so mob rule couldn't bully minority religions or push them out of public life. "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . ." You goddamn idiots.

It boggles the mind that democrats aren't winning on this issue. Because the other side are raving lunatics who are so lost in their hatred of democrats and the president that they've lost sight of higher american values. You think Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich really think this is a wrong thing? Of course they don't. They're whipping up the mob by playing on their fears and prejudices for crass political gain. That democrats don't even have the spine to stand up for what's right on a 1st amendment issue is profoundly depressing. That the major news outlets treat raving anti-muslim hysteria as a reasonable opinion is reason to get angry.

Okay, no rants, starting . . .

NOW.

Interlude

Okay, after that last rant I clearly need to do more deep breathing.

Breathe in . . . . Breath out.

Bad energy in . . . . good energy out.

There, better.

They control the horizontal and the vertical

Join me as we take a journey in the darkest inner mind and . . . the outer limits.

So, I've been without a phone for a few weeks since I lost my iphone on the plane. While I secretly enjoyed being off the grid, off all the technological shackles I encumber myself with, the phone was arguably the most practical, and people were starting to complain it was impossible to reach me. So, impulsive consumer that I am, I decided to buy a new one.

I had publicly hemmed and hawed over the iphone 4 or the HTC evo 4g for a couple weeks, and when the moment finally came where I was irritated enough to just go get a phone, and decide on the evo, I find that it's sold out everywhere. And because I have OCD and have already been without a phone for a few weeks, I decide I can't wait until they have more in stock. Thus begins 24 hours (3 days ago) of OCD smartphone research. I literally could not do anything else outside of basic survival except figure out which phone I wanted, because I needed one now. But I've had bad phones before and refused to settle for a lemon. The iphone lost early on, because while the new iphone is probably the best overall piece of hardware on the market right now, I'm absolutely irritated with the iOS and the lack of basic functionality because steve jobs doesn't think it's ready yet.

So: to android! But which android phone? There are approximately a million. Luckily, there are approximately a million reviews of each of them. The lead contenders of course right now were the Droid incredible, the HTC evo (which we already know I can't find), and the Samsung Galaxy S series. I really, really like the HTC Sense UI, so I focused on that initially. But sprint doesn't have another HTC phone near as good as the evo, and I'll be damned if I sign up for the "death by a thousand micro-charges" model of verizon, so the incredible was out too. The samsung phones are actually pretty sharp, but I hate the UI and didn't want to have to spend days fiddling to get an HTC rip-off that I probably wouldn't be satisfied with. And then I stumbled across a review for the AT&T HTC Aria. I wouldn't have to change carriers and it's reviewed very well. Yes, the hardware specs pale in comparison to the evo, incredible and galaxy, but every single review went out of their way to point out how fast and smooth everything ran on the 600Mhz processor. Quibbles with AT&T bloatware aside, I decided on the Aria, about 22 hours after I had initially started researching it. After much more hemming and hawing and last minute guffawing and fondling of demo phones at Radio Shack (I had to have it NOW remember, so no mail order) I walked out (2 hours after I went in, it took half an hour just to ring me up. Thanks RAdio Shack!) with an HTC Aria and with 2 years more servitude to AT&T in my future.

I'm pleased with the purchase. It is indeed fast, more than fast for what I need a phone for, and it's light and sturdy and reasonably sized (it's not a brick in your pocket). And best of all it saved me $100 off of the latest and greatest thing that I don't really need because I already have an ipad for an ereader/portable movie viewer (although jailbroken because Apple refused to add crucial features or allow others to supply them). So I picked a phone that matches my needs and cost me less that I feel good about.

That was not the rant. That was just the story of shopping for a phone, with highlights on how much I need to get the OCD over things that don't really matter to me under control. The rant starts a little slowly, but goes like this:

In some versions of Douglas Adam's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, he chronicles a world who's entire industry was slowly overrun by shoe stores, eventually killing them all and leaving only sedimentary layers filled with shoes for future archeologists to find and marvel over. If he'd written it a few years later, it would have been Starbucks stores, and if he wrote it today, it would be cell phone stores. In shopping for my cell phone it was really hard to escape the idea that we're batshit crazy over cell phones.

Whole and non-trivial portions of our population obsess with each new phone that's coming out, how it rates compared to the last, what the specs are, what's bad about it, what's great about it, why it proves your favorite company really IS worthy of your undying devotion, why it proves your favorite companies rival really IS satan's mechanical machine factory and just exactly how, each little pixel is going to make you sublimely happy. There are reviews from 5 to 10 major websites for each new phone that comes out, laying out the hardware in excruciating detail, how responsive the OS is, what features it has, how the benchmarks compare to other recent phones, why you should buy it, why you should hate it, how it completes you, how it will compare to the phone (quite literally) released next month that will probably be better. There's even a SEPARATE video review type for simply unboxing your phone, which I can only describe as technopornography. Is there any other reason to watch your favorite phone being unpackaged other than a perverse form of technolust? Do you really need a preview of how fucking opening your package is going to go? "Ooh yeah, slide it out. Take that wrapper off. Take it off. Oh, baby." Jesus.

It's a goddamn phone (and please keep in mind I'm yelling at me more than any of you). It will do the EXACT thing you need it to do, no matter which model you buy. It will take calls, it will get email, it will SMS, it will stream youtube. Who the fuck wants to spend their life obsessing over the phones that are out now and the phones that are on the horizon other than completely blinkered consumers? It's a labor saving device, it's supposed to free up your time so you can focus your life on more important things, not be the thing you focus your life on (which is really the whole essential sickness of consumer culture and corporate branding).

And don't even get me started on the complexity of the phone billing system. At what point does the amount of cognitive processing power needed to buy my phone and rate plan negate the gains in convenience provided by the phones features? At this point, I feel I could fairly quickly convince myself that I'd be better off not worrying about what type of phone I get at all. Next time I think I'm alotting myself ten minutes to the decision. Because it doesn't fucking matter.

And in the far future, as they dig down through the remains to our civilization and arrive at the sedimentary layers of the cell phone epoch (they will be able to tell because it will be comprised largely of petrified cell phones and shoes), they will find the remains of iphones and android phones, and write papers on what the choice of each phone must have meant for the people of the time. Just to piss me off.

On ranting

I don't know if you've noticed, but I tend to rant a lot. I wouldn't call the post below this one a rant, (although we can use whiny and self-indulgent and emotional exhibitionist if you like), but I've written a few recently, and said a few verbally and out of nowhere realized that I want to stop doing it. Well, maybe not entirely, but less. It's just a very negative state to go into, akin to a political talk show host on the radio on a vengeful, irrational tirade.

Yes, I think that's what I don't like about it. It's irrational. My brain feels fuzzy when I do it, like it's incapable of processing new information clearly.

Anyway, I don't like it. I don't think I ultimately need to do it except when I really do just need to vent steam. I think it will hurt my attempt to make new friends if I'm doing it with people I meet all the time. I say that not judgementally. Things seem to go better when I'm not tirading about some trivial thing that really doesn't need to be hated on in the given moment. And I've just realized it's something my father does, so, you know, sigh.

Having said that, the next post is going to be a righteous rant. I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to decide if it makes me sound like a crazy person.

You put your right brain in, you take your left brain out . . .

One of the self help books I read recently talked about left brain versus right brain dominance. I'm probably going to slaughter the recollection but that's okay. Basically the author had had patients who were more or less detached from their body and their emotional states. The conclusion was that they processed everything through the left brain. The left part of your brain is the logical problem solver, and the right controls emotions, implicit memory, bodily sensations (I think). They were living their lives more or left using only their left brain, and had a hard time processing strong emotions, and had no bio-feedback at all. They would be unaware of how tense their muscles were for instance. They just paid no attention to what type of signals their body sent and at the same time had a hard time incorporating emotional elements into their thinking and even their memories. When pressed upon things like their childhood, they would give a brief summary and say things like "Oh it was normal. Perfectly ordinary. It was fine." but with a distinct lack of detail and a tendency to leave it alone at that. Whereas right-brained people would have more stories, richer in detail, fluid in narrative and more rich with emotion. Right-brained may not be the right word. People who had integrated their right-brain into their daily experience better.

"Left-brained thinker" more or less describes me. I have a very authoritative left brain that tries to micromanage my emotions and memories. Or organize them, dismiss them, whatever. They aren't allowed to simply be. Which is probably why I have such a hard time controlling my emotional states right now; I've never really learned to integrate them into my daily experience in a fluid manner. I bring it up though, because I can kind of see it in my writing too. In much the same way the author's patients could not recall memories in detail, so too do I have trouble writing with a good narrative and emotional depth. My thoughts feel like they come too fast, and too scattered. I have a hard time writing out a memory or a story with a rich description of the place and the emotions I or a character is feeling because I don't experience my life like that. I'm never really in ANY moment myself, letting myself experience what I'm feeling, really noticing the surroundings. And even in those times when I think I'm more or less present, it feels much more like the left brain cataloging and analyzing the experience, rather than actually being in it.

In any given moment, I tend not to be experiencing it honestly, but experiencing it as my left brain tells me I should, based on what's expected of me. And the expectations my left brain is processing my experiences through are rarely MY expectations. I think the baggage I carry around with me are, in part, these expectations. And I rarely live up to these expectations because they're nothing I want. They're stuff I've passively picked up from people around me. The expectations I judge myself so harshly for not meeting are mostly from the church I grew up in, my parents, the bizarre anti-feminine expectations of masculine culture even my most sensitive friends enforce to some degree, my job, and a bunch of crap I just MADE UP because I thought it might be the expectation of someone around me (I often find myself cringing at stores or at the coffee shop. Did that joke I make go over flat? Am I being obnoxious? What do they want from me? Sigh.). I carry all of those around with me and try to live up to them and judge myself harshly for not meeting them.

I find this extremely tiring. I'm tired of it. And I'm irritated that I've never developed a better sense of my own expectations for my life and then pushed back against expectations that disagreed with that. Of all the things I'm working on, this one is probably key. Among at least 2 other key problems :). 3. 3. Key problems, and an almost fanatical devotion to the pope.

Anyway, I'm going to work on paying attention to what I really want, and more or less discarding any expectation that has no place in my life (because I made it up, or it's really someone else's). This will probably cause friction with some people I know, but it can't be helped. I gotta live my life, not someone else's. If I can only figure out what kind of life I want to lead that is.

This is scary to me of course. If I just go about being who I want, it will likely turn people off. I'm going to have to retrain myself to consider this the ideal response, in that if they don't like who I am we aren't going to get along very well, best to recognize that and move on separately. And then have faith that who I am will seem appealing to someone at some point. I think this is the part I don't really, deep down believe, evidence to the contrary.

God, don't you love how this blog has turned to all drama, all day? I do. I chose the Soylent Green parody theme for a reason you know.

Facebook, more like "talk to the hand book"

Scho, I suspended my facebook account a few days ago. I feel pretty good about it for now. I suppose there were a few people on there I enjoyed following and talking to once in a blue moon. Perhaps 6. But overall it felt too much like church. My parents were there (all of my extended relatives in fact). And unless I wanted to get into drama-generating arguments with various people because my life and lifestyle conflict with their own I had to watch what I said and the type of pictures I posted. Which is just stupid. Ideally I should just be who I am without taking crap from friend or family about it, but until that point, I'm just avoiding environments I don't feel free in. Which was facebook. And that's leaving aside the whole, massive invasion of privacy thing they have going on. Anyway, it was just time for a change and cleaner headspace and facebook wasn't helping. So it's off for a while. For now, I feel good about that.

Speaking of privacy invasion, I'm super pessimistic about giant corporations right now. The Google/Verizon net neutrality issue is disgusting, but am I really wiling to stop using google search, or gmail or any of the other google products I enjoy? No, and that's largely because there aren't really good alternatives. Alternatives certainly exist, I simply don't enjoy using them. And what are my options? The cell carriers are all equally soulless, Apple already has a logo stamped on my brain and Microsoft products are not pleasant to use (even if they are turning out to be the white knight on social/privacy issues). I suppose I could just go open source, install ubuntu and somehow put together all the functionality I get currently from my google/apple universe. My gut feeling is this will involve far more tinkering and ongoing maintenance than I care to perform. And to top it all off, I don't think my boycott of google or apple or anyone is really going to change things.

So I'm going to buy a google phone, and make the best use of it I can. Net neutrality may or may not crumble. I suspect it will, but I'm feeling pessimistic, money is power and it's not like your average joe is swimming in money right now. The balance of power shifts ever more to the enfranchised as far as I can see. In the meantime, Apple will continue to dumb down their devices to big friendly icons that make happy things when we press them. Eventually I suspect the icons will fill the whole screen and you will just smack it with your full palm to turn it on and flip through applications by swiping (pawing) at the screen. In short, all I see ahead of us is an internet finally carved up by the powerful and dumb, chubby, incurious people consuming the resulting corporate entertainment flows on devices they barely understand but are simple enough for two-year-olds to navigate (Seriously, WATCH idiocracy. All the machines essentially run an iOS). And I say this as a chubby ipad owner (projection much? I KNOW).

It's like some bizarre alternate universe where idiocracy and WALL-E were taken as guideposts for the future instead of gentle satire about places we probably don't want to go.

How the fuck is it Thursday?

Where the hell did I lose the ability to keep up with the flow of time? I think there comes a point where the baggage you accumulate completely grounds you. Or at least slows you to a glacial pace, heavy iron chains dragging the emotional weight anchors behind you (and maliciously mixes your metaphors). And you watch as people and things and events dance around you and pass on by.

Discarding my baggage so I can once again flow and dance and CHANGE is the great work of our time, dear reader.

Well, MY time.

My odd, unchanging bubble of time.

Thursday? You're fucking kidding me.

And for the moment I can only pretend the "Aug" on my calendar is a horrible mistake. How terrible. Really, what a colossal error in time-keeping.

How dare they.

I blog the argh

I'm not sure what it's going to take to shift my schedule earlier. I want to do it for work, but I stayed until 1:30 at the office last night trying to finish work, which, in turn, did not help with the wake up time this morning. So here I am, at the Spunky Monkey, fresh and ready to tackle the day at 2:18 pm. Like i have been every day for months.

Really people, I have so much conflicting drama I'm not sure which to tackle first. It's times like this I really wish freezing myself for a year were a viable option. But I suppose that's the type of thinking that led to my great stagnation in the first place innit?

Oh hypocrisy, you are me.

So, after writing the blow tirade on facebook posted more than I have in a while, and even got into a little bit of drama with my brother offline! Exciting. While I enjoyed getting opinions on what my next phone should be (currently going back and forth between iphone 4 and HTC eve 4g), I really need to let it go.

I have this weird tendency to avoid things by watching the same things over and over, and obsessing about the same people constantly. I think my desire to quit facebook is more or less an effort to break out of that cycle. I am searching for new ways of being and interacting with people and different types of people and facebook feels more or less like the things and (in some cases people) that I'm trying to get away from (not everyone on facebook, those of you who read this blog AND that my facebook page are likely not a problem for me).

Sigh, I am still a drama factory.

To facebook or not to facebook

I am increasingly hitting the point where I'm ready to quit facebook. I'm a little impulsive, so I've had to restrain myself from canceling my facebook account altogether (I see some nominal value in having a place where people can contact me if they've lost touch). But I find myself hiding more and more feeds. And l'm less and less interested in posting updates. Twitter accomplishes the same thing and I find it feels the same to send updates screaming into a silent void (twitter) as it does to toss them into a maelstrom of daily humdrum (Facebook).

Also, there's just too much drama involved with it for me. I have a couple of past love interests I need to get past, and I can't really do that if I see them chatting with mutual friends every day. Yes, I've hidden their feeds, but facebook "helpfully" shows me their chats with mutual friends. I was actually so annoyed with it last night that I de-friended someone (although I don't think she'll notice). I think the solution is to just stop checking it every day. And, uh, maybe to stop obsessing about people I used to see potential with, because they've long since stopped thinking about me.

Stupid facebook.

Stupid obsessions.

mentat's catechism

My version of the chant the mentat says in Dune, because Lynch's version is flawed. Cheesy, I know. There's a reason this didn't go on facebook.

I set my mind in motion.
The mind is a tool, emotions are fuel, the fuel feeds the storm, the storm is a warning
Anxiety breeds fear, fear is the mind-killer.
Logic breeds detachment, detachment is the soul-killer
The soul is the core that directs the mind and feeds on the heart
The mind is adept, the heart is resilient, the soul is balance
it is not by will alone that I set my self in motion

Politics, feh,

I am increasingly paying less and less attention to the news and politics right now. Partly because I've been following politics obsessively since, well, 9-11 I suppose. So I need a break. I'm starting to get a little numb. Plus, it's just so damn depressing right now. The BP oil spill, the bizarre and inexplicable hostility to the merest idea that we could be dumping enough carbon into the atmosphere to induce a climate change . . . really I'm just feeling like there's a certain fucked-upedness that isn't going to go away. Ten years from now we're still going to have the wealthy shitting on the rest of us, we'll still have tea partyish ignorance shouting down anything that challenges their world view, and we're still going to have them (whoever THEY are) cutting corners poisoning and impoverishing the rest of us and skating away from it responsibility-free. I'll be genuinely surprised if BP isn't, in ten years, going to be basically pursuing profit with the same reckless disregard for safety it displayed up until the oil spill. The banksters who nearly toppled the economy a year ago have apparently learned nothing, and have funneled all the money they nearly lost and had the tax-payer repay into schemes of nearly identical insanity. I don't know where they will be in ten years, but I imagine still finding a way to screw the rest of us over for massive personal gain.

I just have a general pessimism about where things are going right now. This may be due to other crap going in my life but I think it's true that right now I need to focus less on the negative and more on the positive. And since politics and environmental issues seem overwhelmingly negative to me right now I should probably take a break from them. So I'm going to try. But can I make it even a single day without obsessively checking the political blogs I have been reading more or less daily for 9 years? We shall see.

H

video of the day

This is really good advice on how to talk to someone about any behavior you consider unacceptable. Focus on what happened, not what it says about them as a person. I guess I knew this but sometimes forget. Also, his video on Roman Polanski is worth watching. And yes, he focuses on what he did, not what kind of person that must make him. But this is actually a good example. I'm having a hard time not demonizing Roman Polanski for doing a very bad thing. But I think this is at the core of a lot of our muddled arguments and constant finger-pointing in this culture. There's not a lot of "you did this specific thing that I think was bad" and a lot more of "you are all bad people for doing this one thing I don't like" and there's nothing to be gained from the second conversation, as people just get defensive and the tribe forms up to defend each side. I don't know how to bust this down though, I'm just tired of the people in charge getting away with bad and immoral decisions because no one wants to say someone else is a bad person in Washington. It's not about whether they are good people, it's about whether the actions they take and the words they say are acceptable behavior.

State of the H

It is a remarkably confusing time for your hero. Most of this is probably better left for my therapy sessions, but here are a few things I don't quite get right now:

I don't think I really understand what I want or even need from my relationships with people. From friendships to romantic relationships to sex. Like on a fundamental level I don't understand why I want/need them. Even though I'm totally craving contact with people right now. I'm more or less okay with all of my long-time friends. I still feel pretty comfortable around most of you. What I don't get is why it's so hard to set up a local social circle, with the same kinds of people I've been friends with for ages. And part of that is a complete lack of understanding about what I want from my relationships with people. I am simultaneously desperately craving a social circle in Portland and completely uninterested in forming one and tend to isolate myself from the couple friends I have left without knowing why. And even if I were interested in forming a social circle I don't know where to start. Do you have to do it organically just from being out and about and meeting people or is it something you can actually pursue consciously? The only life instinct I feel and understand right now is that I want to be a dad. But I'd like to be a father in the context of not being a train wreck and a having a stable relationship and/or social circle. I have a couple remaining (literally two) close friends left in portland, and they both put up with a lot of drama from me (and are otherwise occupied with their own goals right now which I support them in pursuing). So I kind of putter around from day to day not understanding what my goals are, why I'm unhappy, what I want to change and how I'm going to go about doing it. it's a very strange state to be in at my age. Getting used to solitude and hiding from the world for 10 years may not have been my best choice.

Another way of looking at it is I constantly feel like I'm being pulled in two directions. Like I oscillate dramatically from total left-brain "why are emotions and friendships important again?" survival mode to total right-brain out of control drama. It's very odd. I keep hoping it's a chemical imbalance or a tumor or something, and then have a panic attack because what if I have a tumor or a chemical imbalance?

Strange days, dear reader. Strange days.

Now we are here in Xanadu

*originally meant to be posted on Facebook but was too long. Hmm, maybe I'll cross-post as a note*

Xanadu is kind of a funny song. The lyrics are ridiculously trite. Lady GaGa is Maya Angelou by comparison. The chorus goes: "Xanadu, Xanadu, now we are here, in Xanadu." And what's great about Xanadu is it has some neon lights and a roller rink. In the same way that it's not great writing to just have your characters just state how they're feeling ("That makes me angry!" - Robot devil from Futurama), it's not great musical writing to just state what you're doing. "we are walking", "we have arrived", "now we are dancing and singing." is not really great song writing either. I cringe every time I see a musical with those kinds of lyrics. Um, and that's all I have to say about that.

Integration

One of the things that always frustrated me about adventism was how it roped off fundamental aspects of the human experience as undesirable or deviant. The first one I always think of is dancing. Dancing, of course, leads to arousal which may lead to unauthorized sex, so better to just not let kids dance together at all. Sex itself is horrible, sinful, debasing and wrong . . . Unless you get proper village approval and blessed by the pastor, in which case it is a joyful union between you, god and your spouse. Why any Adventist might have baggage about sex remains a mystery to the church at large. And then there's music. Ideally, most music should put you in a contemplative mood to reflect upon god. Because he gets cranky if you don't spend all day thinking about him. Music that makes you want to tap your foot, or god forbid gyrate your hips in some fashion, is the devil's work and should be treated as such. If, unaccountably, good Christian music makes you want to move, please limit yourself to standing and clapping ( seriously, it's what they do).
It's ridiculous and asinine. They limit self expression and call it joy.
But this is a symptom of our larger culture as well. I recently read a book that asserted the greatest amount of fulfillment and happiness stems firm being an integrated person, meaning you have equal access to your emotional and intellectual brain without one riding rampant over the other. In other words, your right and left brain communicate well in most situations.
But that's not what our culture seems to prize. We prize restraint and logic and minimum display of emotion. We elevate the logical left brain, and view displays of emotion as distasteful. Someone today described crying as a response to something powerfully beautiful as "insane.". The epitome of cool is the appearance of not giving a shit about any goddamn thing that happens. These are not the expectations of fully integrated people. We do ourselves and others a disservice by scorning them for displaying genuine emotion in public settings.
I am not sure where I'm going with this, except to say I would someday like to be an integrated person and able to engage the full realm of human experience, without my baggage getting in the way.

snippets of my holiday weekend

Being with family is tough for me. It's probably tough for everybody in one way or another. As time goes on I realize I have less and less in common with most of them (as most of them are devout Adventists), but I still love them. But loving your family and wanting them to be involved in your life are two different things for me. I love them, but the differentness and how they react to it puts me on edge. They don't understand who I am, or why I'm different, and the way they choose to express that often grates. And then 5 minutes later they're making sure I know I'm still part of the clan and that they love me even if they think I've "strayed." Anyway, here are a few snippets of experience that stood out at me this weekend.

**

My grandfather in a wheelchair. He is still thick with the years of muscle he built up as a farmer/rancher, but it is slowly melting away the more he sits in his wheelchair (although I think his arms still get a workout). He spent his whole life working with his hands, riding horses, fixing combines, baling hay and otherwise kicking ass with as few words as possible. And now his body has completely betrayed him. Some sort of mysterious nerve disease he contracted shortly after his stroke has left him too weak in the legs to stand and he's having to live with not being the strongest one in the family anymore. I remember him always sitting quietly, watching the rest of us, joining in the conversation periodically in his classic mumble, but mostly just relaxing and listening at the end of a long day. And now he sits all the time, with more or less the same stoicism, but less animated, more often than not staring off into the distance, coming to terms with chronic pain and new circumstances that aren't likely to ever be reversed.
My grandmother takes care of him exclusively, but I can tell it wears on her too. Sunday night, just before the fireworks, she joins me as I stare out over the RV camp we're hanging out at for the day.
"How are you? Are you doing okay?" I ask, genuinely interested.
She kind of sighs, seems to consider saying something, then simply says "What can you do but keep going on?" before turning around to go back inside.

**

Hanging out with friends of my parents from the Adventist school system. It's not an environment I'm comfortable with. My blue hair and tattoos don't get a big reaction, but I catch looks from some of the men which says they WANT to say something about it. to lecture me maybe about what Ellen white might say about such a thing. But they don't, because of the look in my eye or because it's ultimately not a big deal to them I don't know.
I have a rare proud moment where my dad proudly displays the tattoos, insists I not hide them, and enthusiastically describes where they came from. Five minutes later I'm leaving the scene as nonchalantly as I can. He's talking politics and what's really wrong with poor people and I have to go. I love him for the tattoo thing, but we're still never going to be able to discuss politics in a civil manner.
Later, the patriarch of the home we're at, starts psychoanalyzing why me and my mom's friend are still single. I am apparently "too set in my ways". The subtext seems to be I have not been open enough to instruction from God or the church or the community and have not done my duty by settling down and procreating before I figured out who I was. Amusingly, the unrealized assumption there seems to be "it's a shame I didn't settle down before I realized I didn't need a woman or the church to feel like a complete person." It will not be the first time I hear this message during the weekend.
The good moments were talking about my vibram shoes, going on a walk, and looking at all the fantastic stitching on the quilts hanging from the walls of the home. The woman of the house has an amazing machine in the basement that lets her essentially draw stitch work on quilts and she's quite good at it and even generates a steady income with it. Which is all the better since the machine itself cost $20,000.
I try to ignore the poster size picture of Jesus on the basement wall.

**

My great uncles tease me relentlessly about the hair, not unkindly but not approvingly either. They clearly think it's unserious of me. But eventually they shrug and with a last, pointed joke let it be. And later, during the fireworks, hang out with me at the railing to let me know I'm still part of the family.
My mom's cousins seem a bit more put off by me than I would have expected. Their jokes have considerably more barb to them. At one point, one looks at me as I walk by, shaking his head sadly, saying "Man H, I thought for sure you would have figured it out by now." From previous conversations I know he means I should have a submissive wife and good standing in the church by now. I give him the arched eyebrow and let it pass. Later, his brother hooks me up with some vitamin D which I'm actually interested in because I really don't get sun. My family is really good with supplements as they are very interested in "Things That are Killing You" and "Things That Will Stave off the Icy Spectre of Death." But I appreciate that they have a working knowledge about how to be healthy.

**

I have forgotten how angry everyone in conservative towns in Idaho and Montana seem. Well, I'm projecting just the teensiest amount here. I saw many happy families. But I also so a fair amount of young redneck asshole. Or frustrated young father. People who like to get real mad at people that look different enough. I had someone yell "faggot" or something like that out their car window while I was putting on sunscreen. It didn't really bother me, but I don't like that energy. That frustrated, pent up aggression looking for an outlet. I was glad to leave it behind me.

**

I could go on. and on. and on. But will stop there. It was the usual visit with family. Full of disapproval and love and passive aggressive jokes. I am glad I went to see them, and I am glad to have some time and space to myself again. In short, I am happy to be away, away from conservative land and back in Portland. Viva la PDX!

And now, time to tell my good friend Kevin Philips ALL about it.

A confederacy of bastards

As an addendum the post below, please don't assume, dear reader, that i have not noticed the ignatious j reilly in the post below. I am ALL too aware.

No Hulu for you

You know, I want to like Hulu. In general, I really like on-demand TV. I get a tremendous amount of use of the netflix streaming feature for a very reasonable price. When I feel like paying more for a proper digital version, I have never been unhappy with TV shows or movies from iTunes. What I can't frakking stand are commercials. I tolerate them on the free, browser-version of Hulu because I sold all my robotech videos and I like to stream Robotech while I work. But trust me, if it were available on Netflix, I'd never touch Hulu again. Or even youtube sans commercials.

Which is why the Hulu app for iPad is bullshit. It's not an unknown paradigm, I'll grant, cable TV has been charging for the service while relentlessly plying users with commercials for many, many years. But setting aside what revenue the company actually needs to bring in to survive, it's bullshit. I was actually stunned when I learned from my friends as a child that cable channels still had commercials. What was the goddamn point in paying outright when you're still going to be assaulted every 12 minutes by snake oil salesmen? My essential view on this has not changed. As an adult (ostensibly) I paid for cable access for a while for the Syfy channel and the daily show and Dexter. The first 2 were only possible to enjoy through the magic of Tivo, with Dexter a glorious, commercial-free oasis of loveable psychopath. But I didn't even bother even setting up an antenna once I moved to Portland. The price was just too high.

Not the monetary price, of course, although I was looking to save money. I just can't tolerate commercials. I'm perfectly willing to pay american cash dollars for TV programs I find entertaining and/or stimulating. What I'm not willing to do is to subject myself to the psychological manipulations of a bunch of bastards paid to find ever more invasive and creepy ways of insuring my brand loyalty, whether I need it or not.

My heretical vision of capitalism is one where advertising is confined to the marketplace. When I need a product, I go to the marketplace that sells such a product (be it online, or an actual physical location) and there happily subject myself to a bunch of dishonest shysters eager to make sale, with the low hope that someone may have actually decided on the "build a quality product to ensure repeat customers" business model. Meta-review sites are probably actually better for this, but let's generously allow that there is a place and a time for a business to advertise at me.

I imagine this was more or less the pattern in the glorious past. It was probably not, but I feel like there is at least SOME truth to the idea that commerce used to be limited to a marketplace. Somewhere along the way, some goddamn evil genius decided that he could make MORE money by aggressively hawking his or her wares outside of the marketplace, to people who would be bound by the social conventions of politeness and decency to at least hear people out when they accost them out of the blue and try to sell them things. Note: this is still the favored technique of door-to-door salesmen, abusing social contracts to be polite to strangers in order to guilt you into selling something, anything.

This aggressive marketing would have obviously been super exciting to other merchants as well, who also decided to move their aggressive sales tactics beyond the actual marketplace. And soon, horrifyingly, before anyone knew what was going on, it became a holy tenet of capitalism that anyone who sells goods, has the right, NAY, has the divine capitalist obligation to attempt to sell you their goods by any means possible, no matter where you are or what you happen to be doing. You want a nice drive in the country? It's only reasonable to put up an ad for Coke next to your view of the Sierra mountains. And why waste all that mental energy planning your day while commuting to work when you can see a new ad with every new building? Don't you want to support your local economy? It's your patriotic duty. Having a nice dinner? Perhaps you'd like to take a moment from spending time with your family to buy some crap from the guy who just phoned you up for no reason. Would you like to research on the internet? Perhaps look at local news headlines? Why would you want to do that without also seeing 10 ads on the same page for things you never knew you needed. More than that, they've been tracking your internet habits and have tailored some exciting deals just for you? More than that, how can you you go more than 12 minutes into a television program without knowing where to buy the products they use? Rest assured, there will be periodic reminders about where to consume all the things that will make you better.

My oh-so-suble and well-considered point is that somewhere we crossed the line from "capitalism as healthy engine of production" to "capitalism as the Lord your God who will be listened to when he talks to you." and it's 10-degrees of fucked up. If you can't stay afloat as a business unless you're free to advertise at me at any time of day no matter where I am whether I want it or not, then you have a goddamn atrocious business model and deserve a speedy descent into failure. We are worth enough as humans to assert our rights for "manipulation free spaces" where we know we aren't going to be subjected to a sales pitch. Perhaps we could confine such things to some sort of marketplace, where people who are interested in purchasing a type of product could actually go to shop for one. My quality of life has dramatically improved the further I've gotten from commercials and I don't think it's just an odd quirk of your host. The free market has it's place, and it's place is NOT bombarding me with ads in every facet of my life in order to turn me into a consumer drone. I think we are worth enough as people to insist that we have the right to insist businesses can't advertise at us against our will. And I find it astonishing that we've put up with invasive advertising tactics for as long as we have. It boggles the mind.

Which brings us back to the Hulu Plus iPad app, which, is bullshit. Because not only do I get the pleasure of paying them 10 dollars a month to watch crap on my iPad that I can view online for "free", they're still going to subject me to commercial advertising, which immediately kills almost all of the enjoyment I got from the previous 12 minutes of programming. And there's the rub, "almost all" of my enjoyment. There's still enough there in some programs to sit through a commercial or two. So, of course, I'm a big goddamned hypocrite. But I endure the occasional commercial under protest, fully aware of how they're trying to manipulate me and how much dumber I am after watching one. I MAY even be such a huge hypocrite that I buy Hulu Plus for a month so I can finish watching Robotech. But it's bullshit that my only choices to watch it are varying degrees of bullshit advertising.

Look, I know my hypocrisy is large. I wrote this on an iPad which is created by a company with one of the largest consumer cults in the country right now. I know I'm trapped in the matrix, I'm just calling bullshit and looking for a way out. There have to be better worlds than these.

Location:NE 20th Ave,Portland,United States

TMI

Most of my boxers are YEARS old at this point, and i tire of them, so this morning i went to Ross and bought a bunch of new underwear. I really like what i bought and am looking forward to that pleased feeling i always get when wearing new underwear. Am i the only one who still likes that?

Urban guilt

I nearly ran into a homeless guy on my skateboard as I was heading back to the apartment to grab my helmet. I gave him a friendly smile and a "sorry." He asked me for a quarter and I gave him a dollar. He thanked me, and as I was riding away, told me to look out for people like him. Or was he warning me to look out for people like him because the donation of a dollar was the only thing that kept him from wearing my skull as a trophy?

I find my compassion for people in a bad spot is more or less always at war with my assumption that the homeless are mentally ill and therefore potentially dangerous.

I'm not sure what that says about me.

Things I am learning

Thinking a lot about how I interact with people these days (yes, more navel-gazing dear reader [omphaloskepsis? was that the word?], but it's my blog and I can cry if I want to). Largely because interacting with people just seems painful to me right now. I have finally gone back into therapy with a promising Hakomi practitioner, so I can spare you too much emotional out-pouring, but I feel like writing something out and I might as well put it on my blog.

Here are the things I've learned about myself and interacting with people in the last year:

- It is very difficult to let people you care about distance themselves when they clearly need to.

- It is very difficult to become estranged from a friend.

- There is a big difference between understanding my relationships intellectually and understanding them emotionally.

- Not only is it hard to lose a friend, it is hard to lose all the friends that came with them.

- Not only is it hard to lose a friend, it is hard to be fair to mutual friends (emotionally speaking) who still like both of you.

- It is hard to watch your former social circle whirl merrily on without you, even when everyone recognizes (even me) that it's reasonable and appropriate for me not to be in it.

- It is hard to relate to people in any good way when you can't get through a conversation without feeling hurt.

- It's really easy to distance yourself from all your close friends and leave yourself feeling lonely and isolated.

- it's really hard to pick yourself back up and get out there when you've left yourself lonely and isolated.

- I'm really super good at making myself miserable.

- There is nothing more constant about friendships and people than that they are always changing.

- it seems wise to me to learn to adapt to the every-changing closeness/distance with my friends without letting it cause me suffering but I don't know where to begin.

- I'm a little bit of a drama factory right now.

- I have a hard time managing a social life emotionally. I largely attribute this to lack of practice.

- I someday hope to deal with all of this much better than I do now.

What is. . . IS

Oh sweet blog, your hero does not normally subscribe to half-baked philosophy from comic books, especially from Marvel who wrote the following ideas around the same time they thought evil/good/boring clones were the foundation of all good storytelling. In any case, they also wrote about a fictional tribe in the future called the askani (as part of one of their less egregious clone story lines of course) who lived, also of course, in a future ravaged by war. Because any and all of them could die horribly in any given moment, they had a very pragmatic outlook on life: what is, is.

This is pseudo philosophical mumbo jumbo I know, or at least written in that spirit. But, I have been thinking about this a lot today, oh dear, sweet blog, because my biggest struggle this week is to accept what is. Sometimes doing the right thing leads to sadness in the short term, sometimes doing some wrong things leads to the same place, and sometimes things just ARE sad and you just have to get through it. And sometimes those 3 things happen all at once. And there's nothing to do about it but accept what is, and try to build a better life going forward than you have so far.

To accept what is and hope for better is oftentimes hard for our hero.

For the record

Oh, sweet blog, it's been a roller coaster few weeks. An awful weekend, followed by an awful weekend, followed by a good few days, followed by a good weekend.

I am grateful for my friends.

Soylent Reminder

It cannot be overstated how much the banner personifies my internal emotional life.

an old favorite

What has two thumbs and a hard time focusing on work?

THIS GUY.

RIP Max

Max
Originally uploaded by hbot3000

Max was only my pet while I was with my ex in Reno. And for about a year after that (it's a CRAZY story). Anyway, he apparently died today and as I was genuinely fond of him, I'll post the best picture I have. He was smart, affectionate and good-natured. He cheered me up a lot. I'm sad he's gone, even though he's long since been my responsibility.

The crazy email from the ex, blaming his death on me and insisting he lost the will to live since I left her (or she left me) I could have done without however.

Report Card

So, in the last year since I moved to Portland, I have manage to alienate the 4 women I reconnected with, and hurt the one I cared about the most, and somehow distance myself from my traditional confidants.

Yay fucking me. It doesn't matter where I move to, the problem is me.

Therapy here I come.

Moving

I'm moving this weekend, and am super stressed out. I'm going to go into the office tomorrow and hope to recruit more help. Gah. Moving sucks.

But rest assured my dear, sweet blog, I plan to add to you more soon. To create. I am slowly coming around to the idea that creation is happiness-making compared to consuming which is more "time-abiding". I have a longer post on that, that I'm sure you will ALL be fascinated by. Later. When there is time.

For now, I pack. And pack. Oh god the packing.

On GaGa

Ah yes, the title of my college thesis finds new life again. Anyway, via amphigory, comes this link to a good feminist article on Lady Gaga. Says everything I would want to say I think, such as:

The clip is just one more thing catering to pornographic male fantasies, part of a broader cultural story being read by young people forming their understanding of relationships and sexuality.

And also

This is not about being edgy. It's about playing to sex industry-inspired scripts. Fetishising sexual violence isn't all that imaginative. It's standard fare.

And now, I'm off to think about less annoying things.

Oldness and evidence thereof

I find it terribly amusing that new pop music videos are generally greeted by young people as an artistic breakthrough ("it's someone scantily clad and pretty singing and dancing in formation!!! Again!!!") and greeted by old fogies like me as a sign of the apocalypse. I'm not always so irritated by these things. The last Lady Gaga video (Bad Romance) was kind of interesting, if vapid, shallow and completely self-indulgent and self-absorbed.

Her new video though, ye gods. I hates it. I want those 9 minutes of my life back. There's no narrative, gratuitous product placement, has no relation to the song she's singing along to and is only shocking if you're 18 and easily titillated. Complete and utter train wreck. I'm not sure how the other dancers fit on the screen between Gaga and Beyonce's ginormous egos. I generally hate most pop music videos, but this is by far the worst piece of trash I've ever seen. That said, the song itself is tolerable if not inspired (would whoever is calling Gaga at the club please stop? she is busy dancing and doing fashion).

I know, I know, pop music is a young person's mug. Oldsters have the luxury of picking and choosing the good parts and dismissing the rest with no social stigma. Still, it irritates me. It's like mass training on how to be as stupid and vapid as possible. I guess I listed to songs like "unskinny bop" and "Rico Suave'" though, and I turned out okay. Right?

Also, you kids, off my lawn.

Comics! Comics! Comics!

SO, a brief break from work while I discuss something of vital importance. Comics! Well, we'll get to that in a second.

I'm in another vital round of "who do I want to be?" grappling with questions like "what do I want to let go of? and "what do I want to hang on to?" While these questions basically encompass every plane of my life, of specific interest to me as far as this post is concerned is the amount of STUFF I lug around with me. Some of it will be going and/or gone before I move. This we know. What I haven't had the time to figure out due to work stress is WHAT specifically will go and what will stay. It's thunderdome for pack rats! Two tchotchkes enter, one leaves!

ANYWAY, to return to the point which was fast drifting sideways at 80 miles an hour across the Australian desert, I think my 16 boxes of comics will not be trailing me for all time. I'd like to slim it down to a more manageable 4 or 5 or so. Or maybe none (I would love to have my entire collection be digital or in trades). So I will probably be getting rid of them soon. I'm pretty sure I don't have the patience to try and get "top dollar" for them on ebay and I've seen good arguments that they ain't worth that much in reality anyway. So I will either be selling them as bundles on craigslist or donating them to some people or just flat out recycling them.

This is where you come in. For those of you who know my collection and have any interest in it, shoot me an email and, depending on what you want, am likely to just donate it to you. If anyone wants a more detailed list, I'll see what I can do. But one way or another most of them will be gone in about a month and a half so now's the time to speak up if you're interested.

Just so you know.

one quick thing

I know I'm supposed to be fixing my server, but I have a moment while something is running in which I want to say:

Of COURSE the guy who crashed his plane into a building in Austin was a terrorist. He just wasn't an ISLAMIC terrorist. Terrorists can have skin other than brown and be things other than Arab! What kind of idiotic society is confused by this idea?

one more thing

I think part of what inspired the post just below, is, I took physics as an undergraduate major so I could get into astronomy. And it never happened. And I recently read that one of the physics majors from my very small physics school (there were only ever about 4 of us in the program at one time) is now working at NASA studying the moon Titan. I totally could have done that. I completely failed to even remotely get it together enough to even figure out how to pursue my dream. I don't even know how he got there. And it's a shame, because i was fucking great at orbital mechanics. Anyway, a piece of my soul bared for the internet. My life isn't so bad now you understand, atmospherics physics for our good old earth ain't so bad, but I could have made more of myself. I just never bothered to.

Okay, there may be a new life rule #2 in my journal, which is: No posting after beers.

Waiting to exhale sobriety

No, that's not meant to be artistic. I just had 3 beers at the bar (2 bars actually) instead of the one I was initially aiming for, so I'm at work waiting to sober up, typing on my new netbook and decided to make a blog post. Plus my license is expired and I'm not sure DUI plus expired license would end particularly happily. I could talk about my new netbook but I think I'll save it for another time. It involves an operating system other than OS X that rhymes with "schmindows" so you can see it will be a post that sparks many strong feelings.

I have a new rule for my life that I wrote in bold letters in one of my journals that I still violate a little too frequently. That rule is: no more gaming blogs to watch the train wreck that is gaming forums. It is a waste of my life to spend time reading about all those other people wasting their lives. And yet, I can't look away. Probably because I am still working out what role gaming can have in the life of someone who is still growing, and working to be better than he/she is. I feel like the two things are largely incompatible. Like you can spend your life feeling good about new accomplishments like learning new languages, skills, or artistic outlets, or you can play games which give you an illusion of accomplishment, but that in no way actually made you smarter or has a lasting impact on you or the world at large. There are some good counter arguments to be made, namely that games are no worse than movies as an entertainment choice, but my counter would be watching movies as your sole leisure time activity would not necessarily be a fulfilling lifestyle either (although I think well crafted movies can inspire deeper though if they are genuinely artistic).

Anyway, that's a topic that can be argued later. What I want to talk about in particular is the arguments themselves. I constantly see arguments that are well thought out, and eloquent, and passionate . . . and it's about something like whether the death penalty is harsh enough in the game. Or whether the publisher did a good enough job marketing. Or whether the game mechanics are quality or not quality. And a lot of it about whether the game as a whole is good enough to suck them in from real life entirely. Like the lot of them are heroin addicts who have given up on real life entirely, and are now just bickering over which drug is the best destroyer of their potential. Like they've established what they are, they're just arguing about dosage. I'm being too harsh, I know. I just feel like if some of those guys could put the same amount of passion into their job, or their relationship, or anything with lasting and edifying effects whatsoever, it would be a really good thing. It just bothers me to see a whole bunch of men (maybe more teenagers than I think?) arguing about video game mechanics, with all the full-on alpha male posturing and seriousness of real-world debates. Like it's a symptom of the fall of the empire. Like we have a population and voting public full of people who make a great show of being very knowledgeable about tabloid fluff (because it's way easier to have strong opinions and involved theories about celebrity gossip and video games than it is about bridge engineering or governmental policy), and fewer and fewer who bother to learn hard things, which the real world is necessarily made of.

Okay, rant over. A lot of this is just projection on my part I know. Because I have mostly been the type of person to master easy things (games, comic book lore) instead of hard things (physics, astronomy) even though I have really good mental hardware and could do so much more with the resources I have. It bothers me. And it bothers me that it doesn't seem to bother anyone else.

I do like clever things.

Dolphins are Clever

Cat's Cradle review

So I'm trying out goodreads. Blogging some of my reviews. Most of my web presence recently has been twitter or goodreads reviews, hoping to change that, but in the meantime at least I can add those things to my blog.

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I am unsure how I arrived at the ripe old age of 33 without ever having read this book. Or even heard of it. I believe was deprived for the lack. Ignatius J. Reilly may be the most interesting and entertaining protagonist I've ever encountered in a novel. He is both right and decent and introduced me to all that is proper in theology and geometry as well as the importance of being in touch with one's valve. Actually he's awful, but in the most entertaining way possible. And it's not just him, the whole book is full of extremely unique characters with plot threads that dance around ignatius as he stumbles around town in search of employment. Gah, my meager words don't even begin to do it justice. If you like great dialogue, if you like interesting and crazy protagonists, then read this book immediately. And then hug it. and love it. And keep it. It's so good.

As a side note, in the character of Ignatius John Kennedy Toole manages to lampoon just about every arrogant internet nerd with absolutely no self-awareness wallowing in online forums that I've ever come across. Either he is a mad prophet of the future, or he distills a personality type that probably always exists in the male population in some percentage, just in the 60's all they had were big chief notebooks with which to scrawl their grandiose ideas in between masturbation sessions. Read the book, you'll see what I mean.

goodreads

Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Again, I'm not sure how I got to be 33 without reading Kurt Vonnegut. I think I've been living under a rock. This was a great book, kinda weird, well written, in a sub-genre I have an affinity for. Who could have thought that the people who are acclaimed as great writers are actually great writers?

Ricky Gervais singing to Elmo.

Cute and funny.

Real guys don't look at explosions

Beatboxing flautist

hat-tip to andrew Sullivan

This is totally awesome.

Movie Dump Tuesday

First, an oddly charming nicely done version of some teenager singing a split-screen duet with himself. Nicely timed and charming. Ish. I kind of think everyone would do a little better doing something completely narcissistic as a way of helping you like yourself. Well, at least the people who struggle with that sort of thing (cough, cough)



Second, but not least, Devin Townsend in Vampira, which is one of my favorite songs right now and a very funny, Oingo Boingoish video (and yes, the oingo boingo vibe is one reason he appeals to me). Anyway, only anti-matt seems to like devin that I know of, but I feel compelled to share anyway.

Oh John Ringo NO

Dont' actually read this book review, if you don't want to be nauseated by what some men get off on, but "Oh John Ringo NO" or variations thereupon may be my new favorite reaction to bizarre, misogynistic men.

mandelbrot in 3D

Via Amphigory,

the Mandelbulb for all your 3D fractal needs.

Praise be the tweet

Cancelled!

So, after doing my bills last night and getting very depressed not only over the state of my debt in general and how much I've spent just this month, I decided to cancel my Tivo services, which I wasn't using anyway since I haven't even plugged in so much as an antenna since I moved to Portland, and also my Champions Online subscription which I'm not using. And then started looking around my house for things I could sell. And then got depressed reading about how hard it is to make any money I have from selling the comics I have right now. Anyway, long story short, money sucks.

All Nerd

This one probably won't mean much to anyone but me. Well, most poetry doesn't mean much except to the author. Anyway, enjoy. Or claw your eyes out to save your soul. Whichever you prefer.

All Nerd
by Soylent H

Spinning in my head, swirling:

all doubt
all pain
all sad

Scratching lines on the door, howling:

all rage
all angst
all despair

Standing on the roof, shining:

all fear
all hope
all brave

Coruscating bands of energy, singing:

all creation
all destruction
all change

Shimmering waves of power, humming:

All Potential
All Nothing
All Things

A beacon of omniscience, becoming:

All I want
to be
is the universe

Great Falls to Portland

For those of you who enjoy motion sickness, here's a really bad video of my drive from Great Falls to Walla Walla to Portland. There's lots of shaking due to poor camera work in some parts and it's just my digital camera's movie function so it doesn't look great, but I took quite a bit of footage and figured I should at least show some of it. Share and enjoy.

OMG

Oh my god, I just found they released a sixth book in the Hitchhiker's Guide series under a new author. And he's signing books this Thursday night at powells. Oh my god! I don't know how I feel about an authorized sequel by another author . . . it's all just happening so fast.

Oh my god!

no words

I don't know what to add to this little old man's statement about gay rights, years and years after seeing action in every major engagement in the second world war.

My least favorite word

Okay, time to punish you all with some poetry. Believe it or not this didn't come from a particular place of angst. I had just finished having a conversation about how much the feeling mentioned at the end of the poem sucks and then decided to write a poem exploring different reactions to that feeling/situation. I think I'm posting it now because it's not particularly relevant to my current situation so I'm not giving anyway any secrets. Anyway, like it or not, here it is. As for me, I kinda like it.

My Least Favorite Word

There is a swamp
where black things romp
and the air is thick and dank

There is a spot
where things drop to rot
impressions where they sank

There is a pole
in this dark hole
with a sign that's old and blighted

“This is the muck
where I get stuck
when XX XXXX XX XXXXXXXXXX*”

*I am afraid these words are covered in goo

There is a forest
where bullfrogs chorus
and the wind is soft and gentle

There are flowers and bees
the grass sways in the breeze
and the redwoods rise monumental

There is a sign
all covered in vines
not written by someone excited

“This is where I go
where I learn to grow
when XX XXXX XX XXXXXXXXXX**”

**The same words as before, they are covered here too

There is a moon
that you won't get to soon
it's as far as a rocket can travel

There's a simple clear dome
more outpost than home
with a yard of regolith and gravel

There is a flickering display
inside the landing bay
next to scorch marks of engines ignited

“This is where I stay
because I must get away
when my love is unrequited.”

Awesome?

I find this site oddly moving. I must be over 30.

Typhoooon!

Stolen again from Andrew Sullivan, a time lapse video of a typhoon passing through Hong Kong. Gorgeous.

Who the hell is Alan Grayson?

Okay, this pic of a member of congress, somewhat insane according to Matt Taibbi, grilling a representative of the federal reserve on how much of their activities are on the up and up is extremely awesome. I've never heard of this guy, but he's like a deranged congressional vigilante. I love him.

Green Lantern Lives!

Okay, so after all my complaining, I finally got around to reading, in this order:

Green Lantern: Rebirth
Green Lantern: No Fear
Green Lantern Corps: recharge.

If you've ever been the least bit interested in green lantern stuff, now is the time. These new stories blow away anything that came before. Great characters, great plots, fantastic artwork, epic SF, it's beautiful. Everything I've been wanting out of Green Lantern but have never had. I was giddy while reading them in certain parts. A fantastic reboot of the franchise. Well worth your time and hard earned dollars. If you are at all interested in the new Green Lantern Stuff, start here. The best stuff DC has put out in years.

Delayed Gratification

Stolen from Andrew Sullivan's blog (I've stolen several from him), a video of very young, cute children struggling with the concept of delayed gratification and marshmellows.

Oh, The Temptation from Steve V on Vimeo.

Calling Captain Obvious

Calling Captain Obvious
Originally uploaded by hbot3000

This made me laugh out loud. Posted on the review section for the barenaked ladies album "Snack Time"


Adding: Since the image is so small, I'll type it out:

"To the guy who lamented that this album 'seems like an album for children': This IS an album for children."

Awesome

The middle part with the vector graphics is especially good.

this blog is not a journal

It is unbelievably tempting to use this blog as a journal sometimes. I have things to process and scream into the void that no one else wants to hear but I still need to say. And I have difficulty not using this blog for that purpose. For instance I just spent 5 minutes with my fingers twitching about to pour out my current fuck-ups . . . but it's not a good idea. Neither is dumping this on my friends I guess. Perhaps it's time for a proper paper and pen journal?

a Minotaur too far?

Sometimes it really does seem like this is the debate we're having. The degree to which this society seems to embrace torturing and revenge killing these days really does startle me from time to time. With that in mind, this onion video is hilarious.


Is Using A Minotaur To Gore Detainees A Form Of Torture?

the cocaine of the games world

Having experienced what this guy is talking about, this article about psychiatrists venturing into world of warcraft to try and help pull addicted gamers back into the real world is interesting (as linked to me by my friend D in Aus). Basically a team of guys going in to try and help people realize that there is a larger perspective that they're missing. I'm not sure if these guys are going in proselytizing or only going in with patients who are paying them to help them, but I overall really support any effort by grown ups who know better to reach a hand in to people (usually young men) lost in digital worlds or unhealthy hobbies with the goal of simply helping them realize there is a larger world and perspective that they're missing out on. Although it would be fairly amusing if these therapists, in the process of trying to reach out to people, end up addicted to the game themselves.

I especially like the language he used of how they just want to point out that when you spend 400+ days (of TOTAL playing time) out of the last 4 years in the game, it means you aren't spending that time making friends, learning skills, or otherwise interacting with the world in ways that, whether you know it or not, are ultimately going to be more fulfilling. I'm sure it's going to raise some hackles, as young and not-so-young men seem oddly resistant to the notion that an escapist lifestyle filled only with play and with little to no responsibility is not healthy for anyone involved. But the fact is, while it's certainly okay to escape some times, ultimately you're only going to be happy when you are being true to yourself and not running from your problems, which means forming a social group and contributing to it and making challenges for yourself and meeting them, in the real world. Learning a new language (computer or otherwise) is ultimately way more fulfilling than any video game goal, and until the people filling their lives almost solely with meeting video game goals admit this to themselves, they're going to hop from video game to video game completing goals . . . and wondering why they still feel unhappy.

I'm still struggling with this a little myself so don't think I'm on too high of a horse. I believe everything I just wrote, but I still end up gaming to self soothe when I bollux up my personal life in new and exciting ways, but while the temptation is still there to lose myself in it, it's really hard to when I know beyond all doubt that it doesn't make me happy, even if I'm not sure what DOES make me happy in a given moment.

So anyway, I support this whole endeavor of drawing people out of the recreation they try to turn into lifestyle, be it games, or drugs, or anything else. Because spending your life running away from it is sad.

Hmm, can't put my finger on it

Spot the difference between these two links . . . if you can!

Microsoft page in English

Microsoft page in Polish

Nostalgia Alert

This is the best lego/commodore 64/nintendo music video of all time.

Autotune the news #5

They're all good, but I really like this one.

While I'm at it

I think this movie is something I can enjoy:

God this is a good video

Two Weeks - Grizzly Bear from Gabe Askew on Vimeo.

Edit:

By request, a you tube version. The you tube version is actually the official video. Good, but not as artistic as the vimeo one above. Anyway, the song is the same and it is still good. And the official video isn't bad either.

The perils of standing out

Normally when I go swimming at the community center, I get a pretty good reaction from the kids to my blue hair. Boys tend to comment on it loudly, with awe, followed by questioning their parents why someone would do that, and if they could do that, and one time followed by a parent saying "teenagers do crazy things". Today, as I'm walking in, I got the "wow, that guy has blue hair!" from a little girl, walking in with her brother and her mom to the community center. I look over to see her brother gazing at my hair with that lopsided, boyish grin that says blue hair is the best thing ever, his sister who is analyzing my hair with her head cocked, and his mom who seems mostly disinterested, before running down the stairs ahead of them. The disinterest of their mom quickly turned to embarrassment as I hear behind me, loudly, the same little girl saying "Mom, I HATE blue hair!" which made me laugh out loud. To each their own I suppose.

Green Lantern Part 2

Okay, the issues started picking up after issue 98 or so. I may keep them from that point on. The art especially picks up. But the writing is still not great. They have a series of issues where Kyle's girlfriend Jade is Green Lantern for a bit and they do a story on her coming across a guy who tried to sexually abuse her as a child. The writing was okay, a little heavy-handed but okay, I appreciated that he was trying to tackle a tough subject. But Jade is drawn throughout the issue as a tarted up sex object which mixes the message more than a little. I mean, they have a full page picture of her looking over her shoulder and sticking her butt out at her would-be molester (she kidnaps him and ties him up and threatens to kill him) which just made no sense to me. And if memory serves, a few issues ahead Kyle gets a gay assistant after saving him from a beating. But he serves no purpose to any of the long running plots or to Kyle as anything other than a token gay character so DC can claim diversity. I think the writer, Ron Marz, really tried to make Green Lantern a character driven comic, but he did so as someone who doesn't know how to create interesting characters. I mean, I like Green Lantern because of the costume, the ring and he goes to outer space a lot. Do good adventure stories based on those 3 concepts and I'm happy. But through most of his run Marz did very few of those things. Yes the costume and powers were there, but there are at least 3 "I'm breaking up with my girlfriend issues" where the formulaic break-up conversation takes up at least half the comic. Which would be find if there were anything interesting about it to begin with, but there isn't. The villains have no background and no personality, and in one issue, after defeating russian arms dealers, and restraining ALL of them, he then sinks their massive cargo tanker boat in the middle of a busy New York harbor for no apparent reason, and flies off declaring how the authorities are just going to have to deal with this mess because he has a date. It's just so dumb. What was I thinking when I bought these?

Edited to add in:

This article on the inconsistency of Green Lantern comics is pretty good if you're at all interested (he said, knowing he was the only one interested). Basically no one has known what to do with the character long term and he's been constantly and consistently revamped to revitalize sales. Reading it kind of exhausts me. Comics and their fans exhaust me. I think I'm just going to stick with trades mostly from now on, so I can pick and choose the good stuff.

Oh, and reading that article reminded me, I only ever really liked GL as he was written in JLA, starting with Grant Morrison. If anyone is at all interested in GL, I recommend starting there.