Fringes of Lunacy

Compassion and usefulness

2010-02-10T13:50:00.000-08:00

A question I ask myself a lot is why? Why do people have such different points of view on the same subject? Why are they willing to side against each other, sometimes even violently, over an intangible thing such as an idea?
One of the things that sparks me a lot is religion. I'm not a religious person, but I try to be respectful of those that are while still being open about being agnostic. I know a great many intelligent, compassionate people who believe in a God who is personal and who directs the flow of the world. I am an intelligent, compassionate person who does not believe in a personal god. Why the difference?
I have a few theories. I could be very mistaken, so take them as a brainstorming session more than a statement of what I feel is right.
Belonging - People like to feel as if they matter. Church is something relatively positive to gather around. Let's face it; many things people gather around (nightclubs, parties, sporting events, concerts) are either impersonal or don't have much in the way of spiritual fulfillment. Nightclubs make me want to gag after about an hour; I love dancing, I hate the meat market aspect. As a society, we don't often get together to be around other people; they just happen to be there.
Purpose - Something I've had to confront as an agnostic is that everything that I love can be taken away for no good reason at all. Just accident, chance, stupid mistake. There's no force to keep that from happening. If you believe in a purpose for everything, then it's easier to believe that there's a meaning in it, that God wanted you to have a different job and that's why you were fired, that God took your mother home to Heaven and that's why you can't have her company here on Earth anymore. It's also damn reassuring to think you have a purpose when you're confronting the vastness of the world and wondering where you're supposed to fit. I think I've written about this before, so I'll leave it at that.
Usefulness - Tied into purpose, usefulness is the feeling of being fulfilled by what it is that you are doing. Not everyone can be famous; I suspect that most people wouldn't like it once they had it. However, there are a great many people with respect and love for those they know because they work hard for their families. God gives you a feeling of usefulness to the world. You can spread his message (or just his love) with your actions. Suddenly everything becomes a way for you to shine, from being patient at red lights to drudging through your job to come home at night and make sure your children are provided for.

These are all the positive things I've seen about religion, and I realize that the good comes with bad; people choose religion to justify their bad behavior, to feel better than other people, sometimes even to actively have enemies and feel morally just in persecuting them. (Don't think that last one is true? Try being an athiest in the South. Or gay. Or even just different.)

I'm searching for why people need God. I suspect it's for these reasons, but also because it's easier than searching out something new. Again, it doesn't make it good or bad; it just is.

Urge

2010-01-20T13:49:00.000-08:00

Sometimes the mood strikes me and I just want to get out and do - do what it is that I feel, stop sitting at a desk and working on things that aren't terribly important, just do what my heart desires. Go draw, go write, go dance in the rain, something...
But I realize, even if I go do those things, I still have to be the person who sits at this desk and gets those unimportant things done, and all I've done is delay coming back to it. There's such a thing as bills and credit scores that will always be there past when the feeling is gone.
Even if I pounced on that feeling like a wrestler putting on a half-nelson, I realize that I probably wouldn't know what to do once I'm out there, and the fear will confine me into other things I've already done. Suddenly that feeling would be lost just as surely as if I had sat at the desk, plus I'd have to explain myself, soaked and bewildered, to my coworkers.
But in my heart of hearts, for that one moment, it's the purest burst of passion that I have and I want to keep it, even though it makes the rest of the day drab and slightly uncomfortable like a hard chair or something in your shoe.
Because it reminds me that I'm alive, and I just might have more to give the world than I can accomplish sitting at a desk.

Do you ever wonder?

2010-01-11T14:31:00.000-08:00

"I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain."
~Frank Herbert - Dune

We live in a prison of fear. Every day we are told what to fear for us, our families, our children. What would happen if there wasn't an undercurrent of fear in our society? Would we be lawless and amoral? Would we be kinder and more open? What would you do if you had no fear?

Click

2009-11-20T11:33:00.000-08:00

What looks the strongest has outlived its term

The future lies with what's affirmed from under.

Seamus Heaney

The quote above I stole from a report (Jaime Kalven's Garden Conversations) because it finally caused something that I've wondered about to click in.

The reason why we give back is because fate is a wheel - it's undeniable that we will not be permanent, and that someone else will come to power. That is the way of things. So when you give back to others and guide them, you make your world better and enhance the chances that the person at the top will not only be sympathetic to your causes but will treat you the same way you treated them and build in the way that you taught them. It's almost the same aspects as religious-type tenets, but more forward thinking than I've ever heard put forth. You literally build the world you live in.

Idealistic, of course. But it makes sense!

Walmart isn't the end-all of evil

2009-11-09T10:45:00.000-08:00

I was just reading a post about a couple that was detained at Wal-mart and very crudely treated. Mind you, this isn't the only report of Big Business© causing issues with customers. United was spotted for their kerfluffle with a musician who decided to write a song about the affair - United Breaks Guitars , which has apparently actually caught their attention finally and prodded them to do something about it. There are probably only about several thousand stories such as these that I haven't read.
My point - now is not the time to mistreat customers, or to allow employees who do so to continue working for you. Unemployment is the highest it's been since the early 90's - find someone else to do the job you pay them to do, which is treat your customers with respect and dignity regardless of everything else. Any one who has worked retail/sales/etc. knows that there are complete jerks who come into the store just to abuse you and make themselves feel better about their shitty lives, but guess what? You're still paid to do the job of helping customers. Good clerks still find a way to do that and then mutter under their breaths or in the breakroom. It's the way of it. It's why you get an education and move to a job that doesn't require you to be looked down upon.
Also, Big Business©, you might think about treating your workers better and paying them more. Otherwise, it's your name that gets trashed, not the worker's name.

Detachable head

2009-11-04T11:40:00.000-08:00

I've been watching the free TED talks today, which are fabulous by the way, and one of the talks struck me. The talk is by Sir Ken Robinson and it's about how schools kill creativity. (link) I think the title is a little broad for what he's actually talking about (and a little misleading as to the main point of the talk) but he says something about university professors to the gist of their bodies becoming transports for their heads. It's quite funny when he says it (the whole talk is very entertaining) but it got me - that's exactly how I feel now in law school.
I am not independently wealthy, no parental support, so law school is a reach for me. I am extremely lucky to have a scholarship that I hope I get to keep (it's based on scholarship, and law school is beyond competitive.) I work full-time as well, which is the only way I would be able to support myself. Some days are harder than others. I must honestly say this is the most homework I've ever done, and the most hours ever spent on class work. It's fun, sometimes, too; I suppose I'd be in the wrong school if it wasn't.
Consequently, I really have become a machine to move my head around. In the morning I wake up and go to work where I sit at a desk and let my head read lists for databases, talk on the phone, and snack on stuff that is terrible for me. Then I get in my car and drive my head to school, where it listens intently, instructs my hands to take notes, and generally tries to give a coherent answer to the questions in class. After that, I drive my head home where it hits the pillow and sleeps (hopefully.) If not, it reads a bit. On the weekend my head reads cases and does homework. Honestly, if I were to be changed over to a roofing job or some kind of physical labor, I think my body would die of shock - "What? You're using me? Gasp!" Which is not to say that I don't miss physical activity. I pine when it's sunny outside and I'd like to be out walking or hiking or something that requires a decent amount of effort. It would almost be wonderful to have a detachable head so that it could do all this reading and whatnot and my body could go do body-things like dance or lift things. Of course, body would need supervision, so that probably wouldn't work out as well as I'd like, but overall seems like it would be healthier.
Another thing that Sir Robinson spoke about was that education was built to serve industry - what the industry's needs were rather than our own as humans. Isn't that profound when you really think about it? You get one go on this planet and you're conditioned to serve in a system that doesn't serve you.
All in all, I can't complain. I have a lot of anxiety and a lot of sitting around, but my life is good and fulfilling for the most part. But ah the days when I wish that I didn't need structure and could just run away from it all...those days happen quite frequently now. Do me a favor and go to the park and just soak in the atmosphere - the green (or red) of the leaves, the grass, the kids going crazy. My head will thank you.

About Law School

2009-10-12T11:15:00.001-07:00

Hello internet - it's been a while. After yet another personal infringement, I'm back. Details are not to be forthcoming because I feel my time is better spent looking forward, rather than backwards.
So, I'm in law school now. It's really got a lot in common with being in the military in that the best way they've found to teach you is to throw cases and law and questions at you until you learn to dodge or weave accordingly. It's a very good atmosphere at my law school, very positive and supportive. Perhaps this is because I'm in the evening program with a bunch of other people who have jobs and kids and everything else happening in their life as well. It's very challenging...this week moreso than others. I'm not as diligent in my 10 hours of homework this week. I will pay the price for it by being absent in class so that I can get another assignment done that's worth 60% of my grade, and by absent I mean sitting in the seat and marked absent because I can't brief 70 pages worth of cases before Tuesday.
Just thought I'd give an update. I hate coming here and having nothing to say, which I've done several times since the last post. I try not to be negative here; I look at this more of a place of intellectualism than feelings. However, it's been very hard so bear with me if it's a little at a time. The trust-building process is slow, and it will be a while before you get the real me again.

Information Security

2009-07-27T11:43:00.000-07:00

Some random thoughts I wanted to set down about information security in the light of the Black Hat conference in Las Vegas:

Maybe information security is obsolete. People spout off information constantly. Listen in for five minutes at Starbucks while they yammer on their cell phone and you have their kids' names (and probably part of most of their passwords.) Make a J. Smith account at Facebook and add them, and you'll know their schedules, including when they leave for vacations. Information should not be what guards the gates to what we're really trying to protect - bank accounts, jobs, lives, etc. The more you make it the key to something, the more it gets targeted. The more you safeguard it, the more targets there are left out. There are too many thieves and too many easy ways to steal information. So far the key component has always been that - information, but in this overloaded age, it's not profitable to have to sift through information. If it was out there, then there wouldn't be this unfounded sense of complacency.
But how to protect what's important without resorting to passwords, PINs, etc? RSA uses a combination of private and public to make their keys impenetrable to most yet useful. How could we do this? DNA recognition? Fingerprinting?
The simplest way is to bring it back down to people. People are the ultimate in facial and voice recognition. It used to be common to arrange introductions. Problem is, people can be corrupted. People are sometimes less than competent on bad days.
Hiding in plain sight. The army of regular transactions that banks watch for anomalies. Perhaps giving people more vigilance over their transactions - no, that's been tried. People get bored of monotony. They forget or get busy.
It's troubling. There's got to be a way to make the information unguarded, and the important things still guarded.

Where's the instruction manual?

2009-07-23T21:09:00.000-07:00

It's a beautiful Southern California night. It's almost worth the searing summer day just to be able to sit outside, a breeze blowing the cool night air, and listen to the airplanes fly overhead. The helicopters are annoying as hell, but tonight they seem to be on hiatus for the most part.
I'm two weeks away from changing my life. I've had to make decisions on my own and hope they were the best. People are moving out of my life. More will move in but for me everytime I love someone, the world gets a little smaller. I'm never able to open up quite as much again. I guess that's how it goes.
Here's to a quiet night marking the start of drastic change.

TV Tropes will Ruin Your Life!

2009-07-13T10:40:00.000-07:00

I got my title from an actual page on TV Tropes. Before I link to it though, here is an excellent warning cartoon from Randall Munroe at XKCD: http://www.xkcd.com/609/

And now the title: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TVTropesWillRuinYourLife

Don't say I didn't warn you! (damn, I just got sucked back in...*click*)

Living (or dead) symbols

2009-07-06T09:45:00.000-07:00

I'm sure everyone has heard about the memorial for Michael Jackson drawing so much international attention that they've had to resort to a lottery in order to distribute a limited number of tickets. This isn't the level of fame that most singers or performers achieve. This is epic levels of adoration - and for a man that a year ago was considered a bit of a joke and probably a pedophile.
The truth of it is that Michael Jackson, even while alive, was no longer a human to most people. He had reached the point where people didn't think of him as a person with needs, but as a flag, a banner that united them with music. Something a coworker told me today triggered this - she said that he begged for anesthesia from doctors just to feel at peace, and that they're looking into that as a trigger for his death. What price do we extract from those who are our symbols?
True fame is the transcendence of even being human and becoming a symbol. Look at Elvis - he wasn't the greatest singer ever or the best performer - but he was the symbol of those things, of sexual revolution, of something different in the merging of the white South and black music.
Once we lose those symbols, we mourn heavily. Perhaps now is the time to look past that though - to look at the toll it takes upon the people we turn into symbols and wonder if the cost is too high for those who must pay it.

I wrote this a few days ago and happened across an article on the Huffington Post that I think describes this as well. Here's the link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cynthia-boaz/why-michael-jacksons-deat_b_227434.html

Poem: Substance

2009-06-26T10:52:00.000-07:00

Pleasant memories come to me
adrift on the wind like jasmine
to have loved and lost
and loved again
I turn my thoughts to the past
And nostalgia breaks over me like a wave
the hard lessons of never again

what does it mean to wish for the days to pass?
to be buoyed along by weekends and holidays
time is the substance of life
to waste it godlessness
to only have the memories of what has been
instead of the plans for what might be
and the reality of what is now

To be fully living is embracing the present
suffering, hurting, laughing
allowing the self to be violated
the brave path of truth
that I do not walk.

Frustrating (RANT)

2009-06-22T15:44:00.000-07:00

I have an idea for an internet business. I am in an MBA program. You would think these two things would be compatible, but you would, at least in my case, be wrong.
For years I spent my life going through school doing things because it was what the school gave as an assignment, not because I expected it to apply to reality (hint: it didn't, most of the time.) So I got used to the idea that school work was, well, for school - with no other application. Then comes a Master's Degree, and one of the things I was told throughout my coursework was, "You should be doing things in mind for your Master's Degree project so that it's less work for you once you get to the project stage." What, more than one application, not just busy work? Hmm, I need to wrap my mind around this.
Now that I'm at the Master's Degree project stage, the bar keeps changing. I've been through 3 project ideas and 3 advisors. I dropped out for a year due to personal reasons. Now that I'm back and ready to kick this into gear before I start law school, the bar continues to change. I'm not exaggerating - I received a "conditional pass" on a document with the only note being that I needed to present it in Word...and today I was told I need to do a feasibility study to see if my project will work before my plan will pass. I wish I could convey to you in words how frustrating that last sentence is... here I am, after telling my idea over and over to people at the school even before I came back from my leave of absence, meeting with more than one advisor about it - being shunted off to do a "project plan" before anyone will even consider looking at my idea - and now being told to do a feasibility study. On top of the fact that I'm in the course that you're already supposed to be working on the project. On top of the fact that I've already had an approved project plan that didn't have any of this shit. On top of the fact that I greatly suspect this is motivated by a personal dislike on the part of the dean.
This is month 3 for me...could no one in 3 months take the damn time to tell me to do a feasibility study, or did they just dream this up? I've asked for examples - I get research plans, not project plans (until today of course! nothing ahead of time!). Plus it's been implied that I plagarized and/or had an inappropriate relationship with my teacher. I am at the end of my rope with this place.
Is it fucking fitting that I'm contemplating dropping out of an MBA so I can actually get something done? I hate this fucking school. My only link to sanity in the whole place is someone I can't talk to anymore without getting hatemail from their girlfriend.
Fuck the fucking fuckers.

Nathan Phelps and the right of self

2009-06-09T10:52:00.000-07:00

I just read the speech that Nathan Phelps gave the American Athiest convention in 2009 (http://atheistnexus.org/page/nate-phelps-2009-aa-speech) and I am stunned. It addresses a few things that I hadn't realized were present in my own life, such as the discomfort that Christians feel around a person once they know that they are not speaking with a fellow Christian, the terrible crushing feeling that he describes his own children having when they realize they don't want to go to hell, the questioning of why goodness can't just be a part of who we choose to be. The biggest one was letting go of the security of faith. That touches a lot of what I have faced in my life.
Often I have told my friends that I wish I could have faith because then I wouldn't worry. Why worry when you have a free ticket to the afterlife? What could be more reassuring that no matter how craptactular your life becomes, you will be in Heaven forever once you shuffle off this mortal coil? What is 80 or so years compared to forever?
I know this isn't as coherent as it should be, but the other thing that it touched on is my own unwillingness to associate with my own conflicts. I think the reason I can be an advocate for equality and free speech is because those concepts don't hit as close to home. The defense of athiesm promotes a strong reaction in me, probably because of the old guilt and shame associated with "turning away from God." Rationally, I'm at peace with it - if God exists, then he made me and understands. Viscerally, I'm not. Athiesm means owning your sins. There is no forgiveness, no blessings. Bad things happen to good people, and the best way to avoid most of them is not to single yourself out of the herd, not to become a target, yet that's what an advocate does is stand up for something that is not widely accepted. Even now, as I write this, I wonder how it will come to haunt me...if I run for a judicial position, will my agnostic beliefs ruin my chances? Will the fact of who I am keep me from who I want to be?
I don't think that other people should have to hide who they are. Perhaps its time I trust in that belief for myself.

A quick thought...

2009-05-28T13:32:00.000-07:00

Everything seems to be working out for me today...I keep wondering if I'm going to die or something....if so, IT WAS ALL WORTH IT! ha ha :)

(Seriously though, I'm having a great day. I hope everyone else gets one of these.)

Bach and the floor piano from Big join forces

2009-05-28T09:55:00.000-07:00

This is awesome!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhAiDiHYP9k&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.boingboing.net%2F&feature=player_embedded

It makes my childhood go, "Yay!"

Being a judge ties your hands

2009-05-26T20:10:00.000-07:00

Forget all those "activist judges" - as if a judge has a real ability to make laws (nope, that's the legislation) or to even request that certain cases come to them (that's the will of the people/law enforcement), Californians are ready to hang the judges on the California Supreme Court for upholding Proposition 8. It's convenient to make the justices into the bad guys; after all, they didn't find for what was right (in my and many others points of view), they found for the procedure of the law. And as much as I dislike it, I have to agree.
52% of Californians voted for Proposition 8, and made it into law. Granted, it was an extremely well-placed blow, coming with the Presidential election that was guaranteed to motivate the traditionally-undervoting segments of society who also just so happen to represent the majority of the church-going, Bible-as-law conservatives. Three steps forward, two steps back. Had a marriage equality amendment been in any other election, it would have passed. Seriously - the people who vote in non-presidential elections are usually those with a dog in the fight, and I believe California is liberal enough to make that happen. Problem is that it can't be made into a religious choice, it must be a moral one - if Joe Voter walks into a booth and reads "Marriage Equality," he's going to vote yes. It makes him seem like a good guy - equality and all that jazz. Now, with that same scenario, after his church and the media and everyone else has said "This is against God" he's not going to vote against God, after all. Hence, Proposition 8 was passed.
Now if I understand it correctly, the challenge made on Proposition 8 was that the legislature should have had to approve it first. The court could not find that this was so without destroying the way the California Constitution functions.
That being said, why the hell didn't they pick a better argument? Get this - this is the next challenge:

Prominent lawyers Theodore B. Olson and David Boies filed a lawsuit Friday in U.S. District Court on behalf of two gay men and two gay women, arguing that Proposition 8 violates the U.S. constitutional guarantee of equal protection and due process.

Olson said he hopes the case, which seeks a preliminary injunction against the measure until the case is resolved, will wind up before the U.S. Supreme Court. He is a former U.S. solicitor general who served in high-level Justice Department jobs in the Reagan and George W. Bush administrations.

Jesus, couldn't they have done this from the beginning? Or were they too afraid of Republicans to want to throw the Equal Rights into the mix? God, I'm really beginning to disrespect liberals. They claim to want equality, but in reality they're too afraid of losing what they have to fight for the issues they claim to stand for. Instead they play watchdog over nomenclature and inane policy (I would put a citation in here, but I was overwhelmed when I looked for the thread...)

Don't get me wrong - I'm a filthy non-activist liberal preaching on my blog about the things that I think are right. But I'm going to law school in the fall for civil policy. I think I'm in a unique position to be able to do something once I understand the rules of the game. How many other lawyers were on free lunch, were a minority in their high school, put themselves through college (with the help of Uncle Sam)? I'd go on but it just seems like tooting my own horn...the point is that I still want to make a difference, and I'm gullible enough to believe I can be a hero in my own way.

Cycles

2009-05-21T13:35:00.000-07:00

Do things really move in cycles? The seasons come and go because we're in orbit around a sun, but is anything else really cyclical? Or do we just organize our lives in that way because it seems to make sense given our environment?

John Donne

2009-05-20T10:57:00.001-07:00

I've been on a John Donne kick, you know, in between fighting with my school and trying not to drive myself crazy, and the guy is really pretty interesting. He was derided by Ben Johnson for not keeping to meter, but I tend to really like his writing. He thinks about a lot of the same stuff that I do.

There's a good site to read his work: http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/donne/donnebib.htm

This is a particularly good one that I hadn't heard of:

But he who loveliness within
Hath found, all outward loathes,
For he who color loves, and skin,
Loves but their oldest clothes.

Hip to be Angry (lots of swearing)

2009-05-12T09:22:00.000-07:00

As a sociologist, I read a lot of blogs about...well, society. Not glamour pages or Hollywood - I read about race relations, cultures, and a lot of news. More and more I see the label "white" pasted across anything racist. Now hear me out - there is a lot of institutionalized racism. A ton. If you ever want visible proof, look at a map overlay of Southern California comparing race vs. income. There is no if, and, or but about it; blacks were put into ghettos and kept there by unfair housing, discriminatory wages, and hostile environments. The same seems to be true for Hispanics (I haven't studied it - sorry). That being said, I would also like to point out, you know - to the internet in general, that NOT ALL WHITE PEOPLE ARE RICH. If you haven't noticed, yes, the Power Elite (as my beloved sociology professor likes to refer to them as) is mostly made up of white men. Again, not a coincidence. However, that does not make every single white person alive responsible for the system of racism put into place. As always, money talks. If you don't have money, guess what? You're everybody's dog. Irish, Italians, Polish, Persians, Jews... all screwed by the system. All considered white by Census standards.

I read on another blog that all white people... you know what, here...here's the quote that set me off:

Most white people are quick to agree that "we're all human." But they rarely see how, deep inside themselves, they actually consider people who are supposedly different from themselves, in large part because of their skin color, as less than human. As less than fully deserving of fundamental "human rights."

(source: http://stuffwhitepeopledo.blogspot.com/2009/05/value-white-lives-more-than-non-white.html)

I wish there was a Chris Rock sketch for white people that does the same thing that his Black people vs. N*** did. Yeah, I don't use the word, and I don't get much titillation out of him using it. But he makes a good point - there should be a way to separate yourself from the stupid shit that people in your color do. Someone on your baseball team does something morally repugnant - you can quit the team. You can switch political parties if they violate your beliefs. You can't quit your skin color. So why the hell should it even be used as a judge?

At the core of it, when I read things like this and am as outraged as the next person (non-white person, according to the magazine article because whites totally don't think that human values are for everyone and hence wouldn't feel outraged) I feel betrayed. I feel like telling them - "You fuckheads! You screw up everything! Just when I feel like my race isn't a mark against me you assholes go and do something to make everyone who's watching roll their eyes and go, "Uh huh, whitey. This equality thing is all a lie and you know it." FUUUUUUUCK!!!

I just want to point out again that race is a bill of goods sold to the underpriviledged to keep them contesting amongst themselves instead of with the people who make the rules - the Power Elite. It's the magician's sleight of hand, watch while I conceal billions of dollars in bailout money and corporate kickbacks - look, illegal immigrants are taking your shitty less-than-minimum-wage jobs!! Outrage! Scorn! Guess what? He didn't take your job - the man in charge of the corporations decided to pay less so that you couldn't live on that wage because he knows he can screw over the immigrant with no legal recourse. Face it, the Power Elite are the ones who decide the policy, not you, not anyone else. After all, did you get to vote on that bank bailout? Fuck no - the ones in charge said it's for the best and we shrugged and said okay. Meanwhile, you'll swallow the bullshit they pass down to you that black men are more likely to be violent, illegal immigrants take up all the welfare, and whites are involved in a system to keep everyone down.

It's ignorance, not skin color that decides this. Look around you - we're all screwed the same way. We're all just trying to get by. That white person you see on the street where you live isn't puppeting the system because those kind of white people live in gated communities, put their children in private school, and wouldn't walk in your neighborhood because it makes them nervous. That white person is stuck the same as you, bitter the same as you, and you both probably hang out together and watch the game. If not, you should - the Dodgers are having a hell of a season.

Wolverine

2009-05-05T14:30:00.000-07:00

Oh man...can't begin to tell you how many ways not to expect good things from the new Wolverine movie. It has it all: wooden dialogue, stating the obvious, all the good "normal" people in the movie dying just to give Wolverine a chance to feel anguish. It's like the entire movie was written to make Wolverine into The Woobie (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheWoobie) Other than that, I think Sabretooth was a little better characterized than in the movies and Gambit was a complete waste. All in all - don't go see it.

Playing For Change

2009-04-22T17:21:00.001-07:00

This isn't so much a post as a link to the best...no, The BEST version of Stand By Me I have ever heard (perhaps even beating some live ones I've heard.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Us-TVg40ExM&feature=PlayList&p=C122061BDC373B4B&index=1
Apparently it's by a group called Playing for Change (http://playingforchange.com/)and they're about to release a CD to benefit their fund to build music and art schools around the world. Huzzah - I'm in!

Joshua Bell can't win

2009-04-20T16:33:00.001-07:00

Here's a link to an interesting post in another blog about the time people don't take for beauty. http://www.egodialogues.com/general/violinist-in-metro.php In short, Joshua Bell plays in the subway station one morning and only collects thirty-something dollars. Little kids try to watch him, but everyone else hurries on by, missing one of the most popular violinist of the times playing a free concert on a priceless violin.
What's interesting to me is how quickly the comments under the blog catch on the to the flaw - it was rush hour. In the morning. People had work to get to, and schedules to keep. Little kids don't. Also, how many people really like violin music (other than violinists?) Plenty of people have an appreciation for orchestra but hey, violin by itself can be a little high-pitched for the ears. I certainly wouldn't stop for a piccolo player, unless it was to steal their piccolo so they couldn't play it anymore, and the violin pieces I've seen routinely get up into the stratosphere into that shrill dog-whistle range. They're also right about him playing in the subway and people using it as a qualitative marker. The only reason anyone has heard of him was not because he played in the subway, but because he's played the Met. To be honest, I hadn't even heard of Joshua Bell until he lost his damn violin and a taxi driver returned it, which to me was a black mark on him - who loses their instrument? Anyway, I probably would have been the lone person who stopped and listened - I always stop for string players. It's a solidarity thing, even if most of them are snobby.

Stress management and Mozart

2009-04-14T14:02:00.000-07:00

Alright, so anyone who knows me knows stress - I'm stressed often. It overwhelms me. It crashes on their beaches like an angry wave of bees sometimes. It's not something I'm proud of, and the stress of knowing that I stress out my friends stresses me out more, etc... You can see how this isn't a good cycle.
At any rate, I'm trying techniques to deal with stress. Fortunately, I'm also involved with choir right now (all that singing and oxygen intake is a great stress reliever) and we're doing Mozart's Requiem. Hence the lead in to the second part of this post: Holy crap was Mozart a troubled man! I don't have a good idea of his life; I've read the play Amadeus once and it struck me as weird. And that's about all I remember of it...don't know details of his life, haven't looked them up, but just listening to his music (and I'm not just talking about Dies Irae, either) it's so....complex and twisted. I believe art comes directly from the person producing it, especially when it's not tainted by marketing. His music shows a lot of strife - the way he transitions chords and structures his phrases; this man had a lot going on in his head. I'm not just saying this coming from someone who's used to Bach and his nice structured transitions. We sang Beethoven's 9th Symphony in choir about 3 years ago and there's just such a difference. Where Beethoven was powerful, Mozart muddles. Where Beethoven used emotional, stirring phrases, Mozart interrupts and throws phrases behind other ones. It's so strange; wasn't Mozart supposed to be the all-time musical genius? Perhaps we like him because he doesn't have a clear point.
It's certainly intriguing. It's also pretty compelling. Mozart was a genius, but as I'm coming to understand, that just means that he had more complex choices and more moral quandaries in life than most people can handle. Intelligence is definitely a gift and a burden - in what parts I don't know.

Life is not a zero-sum game

2009-04-03T20:22:00.001-07:00

It's hard to know sometimes, as much as you try to keep other people's points of view in line, what is right. Philosophers have struggled with this question to no successful conclusion; we call it moral relativity and leave it at that. Religion and science both compete for this answer but neither one moves me as a person. Neither one will answer "Should I stay in this relationship or strike out for somethimg better?" or "Do I need to buy better work clothes?" Usually this type of input is left to friends and family, but what if those support structures aren't there? What if they perpetuate bad systems of thought like abuse or self-neglect?
We don't have a net for people who learn too late that the tools they've been given in life don't do the jobs they need. Supposedly, you're supposed to be able to figure this kind of thing out on your own, but I don't buy that conclusion, either. Life is too short to try and figure this out alone, yet that's really the only choice. Perhaps I just need to find friends at the same stage of life that I'm in, which is hard because I'm unmarried, no kids, and atypically smart. And whiney...did I mention that?

One more class to go!!

2009-03-30T23:28:00.000-07:00

Wow. After working with the database at work for the past nine months to clean it up for a report for the entire department... and having this last class and being so out of the swing of getting my assignments done that I basically did them all in the last week, I am done with the last classwork of my degree.

Now I just have to complete my project...(if I passed the class! knock on wood)
Just a few more months...kyrie eleison, christe eleison, domine miserere....

The Atlantic chimes in

2009-03-30T16:33:00.001-07:00

God, you'd think all I did at work was read articles (I promise it's not!) but I couldn't pass up the chance to link to yet another article framing the banking collapse as a class issue.

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200905/imf-advice

I haven't read the entire article yet, but it calls the banks plus government an oligarchy and suggest the real solution is to break up the relationship between the two. My first thought is "Why would that make a difference?" Power is a vacuum. As the old saying goes...

I'll switch gears soon, I promise. It's just that it fascinates me that we're acting like this is news. Who didn't know that corporations were in control of our government? Seriously, how can anyone in the Senate say they work for the people with a straight face? Our judicial system is much maligned for being "rogue" but to me, it's one of the saving graces of the United States government - people with experience and lifetime tenure deciding issues that matter. No, I don't always agree with them - I'm afraid of the consequences for women with a true Republican court - but it's better than the alternative. I wrote in my law school entrance essay that the law was the true record of society because it's the one that no one remembers to cover up with spin and rhetoric. Laws can be repealed, but they stay there, indelible, as a testament to the will of the times. They are slow-moving, resistant...the very frustrating things about law are also the same reasons it makes for a great history of society. At any rate, our laws reflect that we are not a government "by the people, for the people" at this current point in time. Bailouts, tax shelters, liability limits...cui bono?

Jubak has his say

2009-03-30T09:01:00.000-07:00

Another hit in the news, this time aiming for Congress:

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/JubaksJournal/fluke-credit-crisis-was-a-heist.aspx?page=1

Unfortunately, I don't have time to comment on this article, but it is sort of strange for me to see the things I've been concerned about in the news because let's face it....most of the time the news is more worried about Angelina Jolie's next child than directing any attention at the government. Granted, Jubak is a financial columnist, so it's in his purview, but it's on msn.com so it will get some exposure. Now just to find some more hoity-toity sociologists that think the class warfare is on...

Let them eat cake

2009-03-26T14:04:00.000-07:00

A quote from a vitriolic Rolling Stones article on AIG:

"In essence, Paulson and his cronies turned the federal government into one gigantic, half-opaque holding company, one whose balance sheet includes the world's most appallingly large and risky hedge fund, a controlling stake in a dying insurance giant, huge investments in a group of teetering megabanks, and shares here and there in various auto-finance companies, student loans, and other failing businesses. Like AIG, this new federal holding company is a firm that has no mechanism for auditing itself and is run by leaders who have very little grasp of the daily operations of its disparate subsidiary operations." (Source: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/26793903/the_big_takeover/print)

The point here isn't to debate bailing out the banks, which I fear I am not as far up the learning curve as I would need to be able to truly grasp all the details, but to look at the attitude that is being portrayed in the piece. By far this is one of the tamer quotes; another section calls Hank Paulson a "bald-headed Frankensteinian goon" and another talks about a "guy who acted like making huge bets with other people's money would make his dick bigger." Obviously very yellow journalism, but also very in tune with what the audience is feeling. If this had been my first article to read about the bank bailout, I could see myself falling into the trap the author lays, carefully layering facts and details with crass judgment. It's not necessarily misleading - there are very valid points about the lack of oversight and deregulation that should be taken seriously. The problem is that the article is not about AIG's deregulation - it's about class warfare.
No solutions are ever presented to the problem. The entire article is one big rant about how taxpayer money is being spent bailing out guys who are in an exclusive club, who caused the problem in the first place, and who expect to be catered to due to their lifestyle. In fact, the article takes the position that what the bankers are doing (working long hours, ulcers) and deliberately derides them for it - who cares since you guys caused the problem and have lots of money? Here's the quote so you don't feel I'm exaggerating:

The most galling thing about this financial crisis is that so many Wall Street types think they actually deserve not only their huge bonuses and lavish lifestyles but the awesome political power their own mistakes have left them in possession of. When challenged, they talk about how hard they work, the 90-hour weeks, the stress, the failed marriages, the hemorrhoids and gallstones they all get before they hit 40.

"But wait a minute," you say to them. "No one ever asked you to stay up all night eight days a week trying to get filthy rich shorting what's left of the American auto industry or selling $600 billion in toxic, irredeemable mortgages to ex-strippers on work release and Taco Bell clerks. Actually, come to think of it, why are we even giving taxpayer money to you people? Why are we not throwing your ass in jail instead?"

Here we find ourselves throwing anger not at the architects of the failure, but specifically at "Wall Street types", not at the government or even Secretary of the Treasury Tim Geithner's policy of bailing out AIG in specific, but workers which to most Americans are indistinguishable to anyone else who works in a suit and a tie. There is no clear idea of what a Wall Street type does - I'm assuming there are multiple jobs and tiers and involvement, yet we are to direct our anger at the mere image of wealth when we have none.

The reason I bring any of this up is because this is dangerous. It's the pendulum swing of anger and intolerance that continues to return in new incarnations every generation or so. Getting angry at Wall Street doesn't erase the degrees and hard work and moving up from the bottom level of the company that many of those (mostly) men have endured. Nor does it make them responsible for the situation we find ourselves in - again, the idea of the corporation, the segmented knowledge that one has working for such a place. Just because you have a desk there doesn't make you responsible for every move the corporation makes. Hell, the article pretty much admits that the CEO and Director had no damn clue what was going on yet directs its anger towards not the named, not those in charge, but the unnamed as well.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, it's unfair to everyone who's losing jobs and homes. Period. There is no qualifier that makes it right for the people caught up in this depression, no amount of blame cast about unqualified loans and union job bashing that will make up for the sheer scope of people whose lives were destroyed by this (and still will be - it's not over.) However, to frame this in an "us vs. those who get bonuses" argument is derailing the entire discussion from where it needs to be - how the fuck do we keep this from happening again? It's casting blame to a straw man while leaving the issue out of the discussion. Being angry about employees receiving bonuses doesn't regulate the business or propose solutions; in fact, it drives a wedge even further that began in the time Bush was elected - anti-intellectualism. Just because Joe Banker wears a suit and a tie and toddles off to Wall Street at dawn to put in a 14 hour day so he can pay off his Harvard grad school loans doesn't make him evil. We don't need to lose any more intellectuals; we just need to give them incentives not to screw us over.

What strikes me as interesting is that all this kicked off during the Clinton administration, and Clinton is not a dumb man. Granted, it was during the time he had a Republican congress who liked to naysay his policies, but all the same I would be interested to hear his opinion. Taco?

It's the future!

2009-03-25T21:50:00.000-07:00

I am writing this from a phone as I sit here amazed at the continuous innovation in mylifetime. Seriously, who needs a jetpack when you've got all this? Tiny keyboard aside, this is really a neat experience.

Ada Lovelace Day post

2009-03-24T01:53:00.000-07:00

Sybilla Masters, considered the first recorded American woman inventor, lived in colonial America circa early 18th century. Masters invented a type of mill that used hammers instead of grinding wheels to grind corn for use. Since British law at the time did not recognize the right of women to own patents, it was issued to her husband after Masters appealed to King George I himself. It might also be the first patent issued to a colonist. Sybilla went on to patent another invention through her husband a year later - a special weaving technique for straw hats using palmetto fronds. Her husband was elected mayor of Philadelphia, but did not take credit for his wife's invention, which is the only reason why we know the name of Sybilla Masters today.

Although perhaps not explicitly a woman of technology as we think of it today, without innovations like this, we would have not have been able to build to supercomputers and semiconductors. It's a good exercise for everyone to see when people aren't given rights, it doesn't reduce their value; creativity will always out itself. For all those patriarchal societies, you are keeping yourselves down when you keep your women uneducated and subordinate.

Sources:
http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blmasters.htm
http://www.cbsd.org/pennsylvaniapeople/sources/sybilla_masters_sources.htm
http://womenhistory.blogspot.com/2008/08/sybilla-masters.html

Ada Lovelace Day - Join in!
http://www.pledgebank.com/AdaLovelaceDay

Leadership and the Pack Hierarchy

2009-03-20T10:25:00.000-07:00

There will always be a ruling class. Democracy is just a way to try to control that, to make them respond to who they are subjugating without armed revolution. What it has turned into is just a farce - on the face of it, we still have elections, congressmen to write, and activism. In the reality, just as always, money funds it. Who has the money? Not you as an individual, even though (if you're American) your collective taxes fund the government with the largest budget in the world. Nope. Corporations have you beat in influence - after all, can you afford to hire lobbyists? The government is not a faceless mass; it is made up of individuals who like to be recognized and treated specially, who have families that they want to provide for all the things they didn't have. In short, they are people, and people have had the same shortcomings for as long as people have been around. To pretend that a collective noun (government, corporation, people) can be treated as an individual and counted on to act in the best interests of others is just delusional.

A couple of thoughts...

2009-03-20T10:14:00.001-07:00

It just occurred to me - Patience is detachment. Is this considered a virtue because it keeps you from disrupting everyone else, or because you hurt yourself less with anxiety?

Also, I wonder if the perception of time follows along a reverse Fibronacci sequence? It sure as hell seems to speed up as I get older. I have no idea if things change faster or if that's just my perception at work, but fashion trends, ideologies, job turnover - all these things seem to be taking less and less time between real changes. It troubles me in an "turning in the widening gyre" sort of way.

Yes, and (part 2)

2009-03-18T21:43:00.000-07:00

Anyone who has been in a theatre/improv class might recognize the title of these posts. It's the most basic rule of improv, sometimes the only rule of improv - if someone gives you something, you must respond "yes, and". Not literally necessarily, but with your actions. If in improv I tell you, "My god, there's a snake on your head!" the proper response is never "No, it's a ____" because then you just killed the momentum. It's perhaps, "Yes, it's the new style. Do you like?" or maybe "So that's where I put it!" Perhaps these are particularly non-funny examples but it demonstrates the ability to keep the flow going and developing, rather than stopping it.
The reason I chose this as the title is because I've known a lot of people for whom "yes, and" is a way of life. These people don't let fear or anger guide their life. They roll with the punches, realize that life is a mixed bag, and continue to be their best regardless of the situation. A friend of mine likes to flirt back with unattractive men; for her, it's not about fear of what she is inviting or an ego that says he is beneath her - it is merely taking the situation and saying "yes, and." She is a very courageous woman who has lived with a lot more hardship than I can begin to know of, yet she is fearless. I think the "yes, and" response to life tends to draw more out of life and lets you live more confidently. I often admire her and try to emulate her, but I live with a lot of fear. No excuse, just fact.
What does all this have to do with race? I think if it was applied to the lines we draw between ourselves, it would allow us to be a little braver. "Yes, I'm white, and..." "Yes, I'm Hispanic, and..." No stereotype of any race will ever be enough to hold the complexity and wonders inside a person. Losing cultural identity and becoming homogenous isn't a valid solution to being able to relate. This approach allows for bridges between what might seem like vast cultural divides. It gives people who might be trying to give up their prejudices something to work on besides just the skin color they can see. It's also a little more forgiving to someone who might be trying to change but is at the shaky beginnings.

A New Way Forward

2009-03-17T10:39:00.001-07:00

I am dangerously close to rescinding my non-activist status:

http://anewwayforward.org/demonstrations/

I'm not an expert and I have no idea of the decentralization of banks could be beneficial, but it's a protest against those outrageous executive bonuses and I'm all for that. I've known too many people who do the real hard work so the executives can play politics and get treated to lunch and drive expensive cars, and those hard workers are struggling right now. I'm supporting them and their right to be Americans with dreams instead of indentured servants to a feudalesque upper-class.

Yes and...

2009-03-13T14:30:00.000-07:00

http://deepad.livejournal.com/29826.html

An interesting article about writing without cultural awareness. Apparently there has been a big discussion on livejournal (which I don't follow - just sort of stumbled into it) about race and racism and reverse-racism, etc. There seem to be two sides: the 'we should treat everyone as if color doesn't matter' side and the 'you will never know what another race goes through' side. Both sides have valid points. It's not an easy problem by any means. Empathy can be taken for pity, rudeness for racism, and effort for privilege. I find it hard to write about this now without double- and triple-examining my words. It's certainly an awareness.
One of the life-changing experiences I had in college was diversity training as an RA. It was a week-long affair, and one that I probably learned the most from any job about people and priviledge and prejudice. One of the exercises separated the men and women - women talked about things that had been said to them based on the fact that they were women and wouldn't be said to men. I believe, "You shouldn't have worn that dress if you didn't want sex" and "You're just a bitch" were some of the examples; if not, they are in the vein of what was said. Then the women were told to pick two of the things that had been said to them and we followed our RC into the next room. The men were all in a circle with their eyes closed. We whispered the statements to each man in turn, walking the circle. It was really creepy hearing those words come from our mouths and telling them to people who, while we knew and laughed with, were not quite friends yet. After we were done, they told us what the men had been told: Think of a woman you respect and admire, someone you love, and hold them in your hand. Close your eyes and imagine, as each of us came around and said our statements, that those statements are being said to the woman you love. One of the RA men cried and I felt terrible, but also realized we shouldn't have been told those things either. I'll never forget the guy who cried - such a sweetheart who cherished his loved ones. It made me feel a warmth for him that I can conjure to this day to know there are people out there who you might not guess who hold such a deep love and are still vulnerable in a way that I tend not to be anymore.
Another training that we went through was for the room to be divided. We all started out on one side, and then different topics were brought up - people of color, children who were abused, women, GLBT, etc - and each in turn those who belonged to those minority groups were asked to step to the other side of the room. That side of the room was asked to talk to the majority, to tell them things that you wanted them to know. It was an emotional day, and it hurt sometimes to see the people I had begun to form friendships on a different side from myself. The one that stands out in my mind, and really the reason for this post, is the race one. I don't reveal details here too often for fear of alienating someone who is reading and making it my story, instead of a shared one (the smiley face theory from those who have read Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics), but I am white. Perhaps that has come through anyway through that unconscious priviledge I've been reading about, but for the most part I tend to try and be equanimous. Back to the story - one person, a person I deeply respect for her intellect and her willingness to talk, said, "You will never know what it's like to be black."
As an empathetic person, at first I was appalled. It was like a huge line had been drawn between myself and her, as if the trust that I had given in our shared experiences was some kind of distant thing to her because of my skin color, that all of our time together had been me fully investing and her holding back because I was not "black". Suddenly our shared experiences were marred by the fact that I no longer trusted that I knew how she felt. I didn't like it, and the words she said stayed with me, and still do to this day.
Eventually though, after thinking about it for a couple days, I realized she was absolutely right. There is no way for me to know because I am not black. She was not invalidating our experience together by saying that; she was merely stating the obvious in her mind. Just as it amazes me that the men around me can walk into a job and tell someone they know how to do something and be taken at face value, she sees the discrepancy because that's how it is for her, just like I have to explain why I know how to fix computers whenever I say I can.
This idea came to ease in my mind because it does not preclude me from understanding a situation after taking in viewpoints; to me, it means that I will not inherently pick up on certain things and sometimes I might have to work a little harder to break down my own misconceptions. This does not mean I will ever understand it a prima facie, merely that I can accept it from that point of view. I put that in italics because to me it seems a very casual dismissal of all I have read to believe that I will ever have the experience to speak from that point of view (which implies understanding.) I believe that I can find it relevant, act on that relevance but to know it, to be it, is something else.
On that note, I strongly feel no one should ever tell me what I can't feel, and I find it coming from the same reasons that she did by saying, "You can't know what it's like to be black." There is a small but very important distinction between the two; telling me I don't know what it's like is absolutely valid - the only experience I can experience is my own. Telling me I cannot feel assumes you have some superiority and know what is my capacity for emotion and that your feelings are beyond it.

More to follow...

EDIT: This article seems like a good place to start... http://academic.udayton.edu/race/01race/racism10.htm

The neighbors in your TV

2009-03-09T14:24:00.000-07:00

If most people live life akin to the way I do (which is probably the most erroneous assumption I can make,) then they probably don't get to see their friends or family every day. If they do, then there is probably at least some amount of time dedicated to doing something else (work, school, chores, etc.) that keeps them from engaging in the amount of socialization that they would prefer. Sensory overload also plays a part: some of us go to the bar to meet new people because that is the acceptable place to meet new people. Passing on the street, in line at stores, all of a thousand other places we could potentially meet people but these are considered inappropriate places in the most common experience. It's common in cities to ignore others as they pass you as an attempt to give them some privacy and get some of your own in return. We are literally more surrounded by people than ever before (at least in world population terms, probably density as well but I haven't verified that) and yet there is still a sense of loneliness that pervades our world. We rely on electronic pacifiers to sate our need to connect - Twitter, blogging, Facebook, text messages, television. You name it, and most of modern technology is wired around that central idea of connecting to the humans that you know and maybe meeting a few you didn't know before.
Now enter the modern living situation. Fewer people own their own homes, especially with the current economic crisis. This will probably continue to be a trend with less and less home owners and more renters. Not surprisingly, this follows the current trend of separation of lower and higher incomes, often called the death of the middle class. If you have to be rich to own a house, then only rich people will own houses. The rest will rent. This can mean an entirely different perspective than the old-fashioned 'get to know your neighbor at the barbeque' approach to social interaction.
Having renters next door or in your own house is a mixed bag. Some are the sweetest people you can find, treating where they live as a home and taking care of it. Some are horror stories just waiting for a photographer to come in and document the stained carpet, holes in walls, and disgusting bathroom. Most are in the middle, treating the home for what it is - a transitory place that they do not own and will not be living in for the rest of their life. This can affect your house value if you're the neighbor next to the renters who don't mow the lawn or cause you to end up with vermin that don't belong to you from a neighbor's less-than-sanitary food habits.
How does all this connect together? Simple - as a population we need to recognize why we need TV. If the people next door move every year, or you move every year, the desire to have strong bonds with the neighbors is just not there for most people. Why invest in a temporary relationship that means compromise and getting used to another person's idiosyncrasies? Enter where TV comes in; shows are like neighbors that you can interact with on your terms. The most long-running shows are people-centric; the Simpsons (family that never really changes), Cheers (bar friends), and the aptly-labeled Friends are all shows designed with a need to interact and be involved with another person's life. Furthermore, they can be tailored to fit your busy schedule. Can't call your friends at 10 PM? Simple - watch some TV before bed. Get up too early for the rest of the waking world? Watch some TV. Even news falls into this; invest in a story for just three minutes and then grab coffee and leave for work. Instant social interaction.
The amount of disconnect from reality in this situation (which is probably a realistic situation for a lot of people) is disconcerting. I'm not trying to bash TV watchers or label them as antisocial, but overall as a society, what does that say about us as a whole? Where do we think the pressure on our teenage girls is coming from to be thin and sexy? For boys to be action heroes? It's not from TV programs per se - it's the ability to see TV programs as a normal societal interaction. With a group of friends, one can watch TV and laugh about the stylized choices. When TV is how you connect to people after a busy day, it becomes a lot less easy to differentiate.
Again, I'm not villainizing television or television watchers - just pointing out that TV is on the whole being used as a substitute for interaction, and that puts a lot of power in the broadcast corporations over society. We need to make sure to fulfil our need for social interaction with others in a meaningful way or risk taking on even more problems with our interactions.

Why I am not an activist

2009-02-24T16:57:00.000-08:00

I was reading about the Pro-Life movement on Newsweek on an article they had detailing a reduced abortion approach and it caused me to realize why I am not an activist - when you are an activist, you are only allowed one point of view at a time. Hold up a sign that says "Right to Life" and you aren't allowed to have any other opinions at that time. If someone comes by and skewers you because you're focusing on that issue and not one of a thousand others, you can't really have an identity other than that sign. Similarly for a Pro-Choice supporter; all of a sudden you take on the entire movement on your shoulders should you decide to speak up. Since I can't dictate the entirety of any movement, nor can I agree with all the speaking points of any particular party, I decline to take on that responsibility. It seems like a very irresponsible way to handle it, but I can bet there are a lot of others out there who would stand for a lot more if only it meant keeping your full identity when you did so. I don't want to become words on a sign.

Authors Beware

2009-02-19T14:55:00.000-08:00

I clicked on an adwords advertisement from my gmail and just happened to go to CreateSpace. Now, I am hoping one day to publish a book, so self-publishers always interest me. There are some very good ones, and then there are draconian steal-your-work-from-underneath you sites like this one. Note that I visited two pages on the site: the main page and the terms of service page. No login or trial or seeing content. Note what I have now agreed to, according to their terms of service:

"PLEASE NOTE: If you visit or shop at the CreateSpace website, or any of our members' E-Stores, you automatically accept these conditions. Please read them carefully. In addition, when you use any current or future CreateSpace service or visit or purchase from any business affiliated with us, whether or not included in the CreateSpace website, you also will be subject to the guidelines and conditions applicable to such service or business." (Note - Bold is theirs, not my addition)

So just by being directed to the site, I am already subject to their guidelines, which include the right to email me at any time I'm assuming because I figure at this point if I click on the link that takes me to the Privacy Policy, I am further agreeing to this nonsense. But alas, legalese being what it is (thanks to the ridiculous EULAs we put up with by not reading them,) you'd think all this would be pretty boilerplate....except that you're on a bookpublishing site that has this in the terms of service:

"If you do post content or submit material, and unless we indicate otherwise, you grant us a nonexclusive, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, and fully sublicensable right to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, and display such content throughout the world in any media."

Holy shit, what? Can you repeat that? If I publish or post anything here, I am giving them not only the right to publish my work in whatever form they see fit for their own gratification, but to make derivative works (like movies, games, etc) or to sell my rights to someone else to do the same? Really? What's the point of even retaining the right to the legal work? Why don't they just come out and say that if you make the mistake of putting anything up there of value, they can fully rip you off and there is no legal recourse?

Oh wait, that's right - because then no one would use their service. I hope they don't, for their own sake. There might be a lot of bad teenage poetry out there, but it doesn't need to be stolen from the author through a stupid TOS, either.

So authors - READ THE TOS ON EVERY SITE YOU POST ON!

(Oh wait, google/blogger has the same shite - "11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive licence to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services." Guess the author-screwing is an internet-wide sort of affair.)

Oh well, at least google isn't claiming itself a publisher...yet.

Blogging for Literacy

2009-01-07T16:43:00.001-08:00

Hear ye, hear ye, o commentators of the internet. After extensive cries of "First!" "fail" and "ur an idiot" you have been heard. Yes, all your data has been correlated, discombobulated, and regurgitated. Every crappy study you used to verify your pernicious conclusions and to refute other pernicious conclusions have been put into cage matches until one was beaten almost unconscious and given a chair by its manager to come from behind in an underdog upset victory. It's true - we've found the cause of all mankind's troubles - war, disease, poverty, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (or happyness if you're Will Smith).
The cause is: YOU HAVE TOO MANY OPINIONS!
By your actions on the internet we have determined that it doesn't matter - smart people, dumb people, people who read, people who go on hearsay, and people who lie through their teeth to seem impressive all have the same thing in common - they want to be right. This desire for rightness goes so deep as to ignore other opposing facts, ignore contradictions that exist (but only on the side that one has chosen - please flame the other side about their inherent contradictions) and to drive otherwise caring, average human beings into bloggers. The internet has given the rise that people care what you think, even moreso than being the hot girl who talks too much but guys put up with for the action. Reality - no one cares! In a sphere containing billions of people, your words do not affect their opinions. In fact, if you disagree with them, it will only serve to solidify their offensive against you and get you called Hitler or worse than Hitler. Even in somewhat reasoned exchanges that do not include the word "crap" it's useless to argue on the internet. People are not online to debate and have their mind changed - that's what TV and magazine articles and hearsay from a friend are for. People get on the internet to express their own opinions like firehoses aimed at Victoria Falls. All in all, only a place to pick out what it is that you want to know and disagree with all that does not suit you, just like the buffet at the Sizzler.
So therefore, bloggers, I will continue to blog for literacy, sit around on my couch for fitness in America, and express opinions in the hope that someday we can all just get along on my terms.

(A Modest Proposal, indeed. My modesty knows no bounds!)

Irony strikes again

2008-12-22T10:17:00.000-08:00

Bush administration officials might be covering up their tracks:

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/bush-insider-planned-tell-all/story.aspx?guid={3386CE02-96CC-4933-874A-C96677A2F36E}&dist=msr_1

If this is true, it confirms all my worst fears about this administration. Figures it's the week after I start to feel sorry for GWB. *Sigh*

GWB = Judas?

2008-12-19T13:23:00.000-08:00

It's rare for me to post twice in the same week, let alone the same day, but I feel compelled. A lot has been made of the shoe throwing that happened this week towards GWB - I like the headlines that make fun of the fact that shoe-throwing in Islamic countries is a sign of disrespect, but apparently is okay every where else. It brings a nice bit of realism to what is becoming an overinflated ideological identity, an us vs. them mentality that just isn't true. Throwing shoes at people = not a sign of respect pretty much universally.
As anyone who has read past blogs might realize, there have been a lot of changes in this country in the eight years that GWB has been in office, many of which I have vehemently disagreed with. I can't stand listening to him talk, I think of him with distaste that our President could have brought the office to such a bumbling disprespected conclusion. Yet, I and many others are guilty of exactly what Congress and Big Business want us to do - blame the figurehead. Presidents have some power, but by far the most power resides with Congress and lobbyist. It's not flashy in the same way that the latest recession doesn't have one cause - it's a lot of minor details that most people get bogged down on. Don't get me wrong - the Presidential right to pardon is probably one of the most abused privileges of office in my opinion; however, presidents just don't get to do a whole lot besides be figureheads.
That being said, as much as I decry this presidency, it is not right to put all the blame with Bush and act as if it will all be better once Obama is in office. True, he's already lining up a talented cabinet. He will still have to deal with Congress and Big Business in the same way that every president has since the birth of the corporation. Money is what talks, people. Money is what put Bush in power and kept him there. Money is what has allowed people to look the other way as atrocities are committed. After all, look at Oskar Schindler...yes, he saved a lot people, but if he and other businessmen had taken a stand against slave labor and Nazi fanaticism do you think history would have quite turned out the same?
Alright...stepping away from Godwin's law and back to the point - it's wrong to place the blame for the failures of this country squarely on Bush's shoulders. He's a figurehead. He's been a participant in a very unpopular movement which has a right to a backlash. He is not the devil. He is a man, and at the end of the day when I see the videos of him being shunned at G20 and having shoes thrown at him (he's a world leader!!) I feel pity for a man that like many of us has gotten caught in the wheels of a machine. Yes, he participated in it and helped to create it, but who among us has not participated in actions with unforseen consequences? He is human.
So, President George W. Bush, I wish you peace. I hope that when you go from office that you go to a quiet existence, a humbled man but not a broken man. Each man's failure diminishes me, to paraphrase John Donne, and I feel a part of what is occuring. Peace and the setting aside of grudges is not weakness, rather the mark of compassion and a sublime understanding that "but for the grace of God go I." I wish you the best, my one-time foe, and a happy time with your family away from the pressure of the Presidency.

Christmas with the agnostics

2008-12-19T11:39:00.000-08:00

There is a great series of photos over at The Big Picture (http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/12/hubble_space_telescope_advent.html) from the Hubble Telescope. These picture are awe inspiring and amazing, especially considering the Hubble's troubled history. As always, it's more my response to the comments that I'm writing about rather than telling you what you can see for yourself.
It strikes me more and more that there is a real anger in the non-Christian community. Anger at being persecuted, anger at not being legitimate to Christians, and anger at not having their rights respected in everyday life. I know this anger - I've lived it, too. An anecdotal story - once, while in college and undecided about religion, I was reclining in the grass and enjoying the beauty around me. Two girls walk over and ask me if I've received Jesus...as I like to call it, "the talk." I'm feeling particularly in tune with nature that day so when they ask me what religion I am (after finding out that I am not Christian,) I tell them "I'm sort of Wiccan." I kid you not, without missing a beat the one girl tells me, "That's okay. We're all wicked before we receive Jesus into our hearts." I'm not calling Christians morons - I'm just saying that a little cultural awareness would be nice, you know, before you try and change us.
So I come from an understanding of the persecution and misunderstandings that come from being nonChristian in a Christian community. There's a lot of damage control - "yes, I still have morals, no I don't believe in Satan, I don't know what happens when we die, if there is a God then he made me who I am and he'll understand"...anyone who has lived this life understands. Family that prays for you, or flat out doesn't believe you. The whole "You're too good of a person not to believe in God" - (yes, that's a real example. On more than one time, too.)
What I don't understand is using the veil of science and technology to hide the fact that athiests/agnostics have an axe to grind. In the comments of the advent calendar, many went to religion. There are comments along the lines of "God is amazing" and "The glory of the Lord shall be revealed." Now I can be as sensitive as the next person when it comes to religion, but are the comments from the athiests/agnostics really necessary? Here's a quote - "it is so sad how ignorance is so alive in the world that when religious nuts who simply can't comprehend such great images see past what is there, and instead start babbling about God and creationism."
Again, I don't know what this particular author was responding to, and honestly after that I didn't read all the comments, but...seriously? Where's all that tolerance that nonChristians so rightly crave? Calling someone a religious nut because their gut reaction in their experience with something so majestic is to call it God? Excuse me, but that is the beauty of faith - to fill up with wonder and awe. Most people who have religious affiliations that they truly believe in look for just that experience, and I think it's wrong to deny them, just as it's wrong to deny me my awe not affiliated with a god.
Athiests/agnostics are crossing their own lines into intolerance by calling everyone a "nut" or implying that they are stupid for believing in God. Faith is not inherently tied in with intelligence. There are plenty of smart people on both sides. The anger there at being persecuted cannot be assuaged by becoming the persecutor.

Still not Spam

2008-12-09T21:10:00.000-08:00

I'm not a very nostalgic person. I remember things about the past but they seem distant, like they never really belonged to me. Sure, I went to high school, but I'm not that person anymore. I was in a relationship for 10 years, but I'm not that person anymore either. I have this increasingly long continuity of memories that add together but aren't quite the sum of their parts. It's incredibly frustrating how fragmenting depression can be. I've been working on controlling it for as long as I've known the word, yet all I seem to do is make myself into different versions of myself like combinations to a padlock I can't open yet. I've given up thinking there's a solution. For me, there is only coping every winter and trying to remember all the tricks that worked from the last time to keep me from losing my job, killing my relationships, and getting suicidal. It's not easy, especially since depression both impairs memory and concentration.
My mind is a mess. Since this blog is degenerating into me complaining about my life and not focusing on putting my thoughts out there, I'll sign off for now.

Blog lockdown

2008-11-28T20:05:00.000-08:00

I'd like to "thank" Blogger for locking my block for a good week and a half so that I couldn't post. Apparently mentioning Obama qualifies as spam to their bots.
I'll post again when I have something interesting to say. Just wanted to whine in my blog about the outage.

An Open Letter to Obama

2008-11-06T09:44:00.000-08:00

This is from one of the teeming American people, underrepresented, who came out in droves to elect you. You're the first presidential candidate who won with my vote. My first experience with elections was voting for a candidate who won the popular vote, but was not elected president. I have watched with scorn and contempt these past 8 years as concepts such as habeas corpus, civil rights, separation between church and state, foreign policy negotiations, and peace were summarily ignored by the ruling elite. I have watched the presidency turn from a position that should carry some sort of dignity into something that other countries mock alongside us. I have watched the decline of America.
All this sounds grim, and it was. I say was because honestly, until yesterday, I didn't realize there was another way for the world to be. It's only the renewed spirit that is permeating the air that causes me to realize what a prison we had put ourselves in. You ran on a campain of hope for the future, and when I look around me now I see that hope in the air, in the joy in others, the open way that people are speaking to each other. You have brought hope, at least to a blue state.
I hope this carries over to conservatives, gives them something to rally behind besides what has become the status quo. I hope they can see you as a man of faith who does not act to exclude, but to embrace different ideas and creeds in the hope that together we can forge lasting bonds and a stronger nation. We need each other for balance, and to exclude one side is to risk an uncontrolled spiral, a descent into darkness. Moderation is key in all things.
History has a way of making idealists into martyrs, though, and I worry. Maybe it seems silly for someone who doesn't know you personally to care, but I see your family up there with you and I worry that they won't see you at their graduations, at their weddings, in the same way that JFK was not there, MLK, Jr. was not there. History has taught us to fear the lone gunman, yet there are more guns in this country than college graduates.
Perhaps this letter has gone on too long, but it is a time of change, of uncertainty, and that cannot be summed up into short sentences. But it is also a time of hope. Thank you for that.

Wishing you the best,
LH

Education vs Political leanings

2008-10-13T10:52:00.000-07:00

A friend sent me some interesting articles written by conservatives decrying the Republican shift...not away from traditional values, or free economy, but towards the undiversified undereducated masses. It's interesting to think of that as a conservative Republican crises; after all, much of their party is the traditional, bootstrap, free economy do it for yourself mentality and I can see that leaving a lot of people behind. What's interesting to me is the idea of an educated Republican mindset, a responsible mindset who uses well-reasoned facts to govern instead of just traditional values...remember, the first president I remember was Reagan and the first was I knew was the Cold War. Republican values haven't represented reasoned, rational interests to me in quite some time.
One of the editorials mentioned the liberal bias in colleges, which caused me to rethink that idea. Until now, I had figured that liberalness came as a product of being educated - that you would be more open-minded and willing to cultivate diversity and less traditional mindsets. It's caused me to rethink this - it's true in a way...Conservatives are more likely to go for the self-made person approach and spend their time in corporations where their own ingenuity is rewarded rather than an institution where they are rewarded by the growth of others. Liberals most of the time have an idea of giving back and enriching the individual, while Conservatives tend to put those impulses into caretaking - feeding the poor and homeless through church initiatives, donations, etc. Therefore a college campus and teaching would have a broader appeal to liberal minds than conservatives.
I think for me it has come down more to depth of perception of the individual. It turns me off to hear a factoid rattled off by some talking head who equates the zeal they support the idea with to the facts of the debate. I can't say that liberals or conservatives have the edge on this front (Sean Penn comes to mind) but I can truly say that a well-reasoned person probably comes closer to moderation than any other leaning, and I wouldn't mind having four years of that...or eight...or twelve, rather than electing someone based on how well they can quote sound bytes that put me at ease with them.

Politics

2008-09-11T18:27:00.000-07:00

I don't need to remind any American what day it is. Too many posts are spent looking back...I choose to spend this one looking at the state of things right now. Wow. I've been reading the news, and the comments below the news, and it always seems to make me want to blog. I mean really, are we as a people so divided on basic facts (evolution as a science, abstinence education, Iraq as a war from God!!) that we cannot sit down and discuss what should be ideas with a basic sense of humanity? It seems to me like the more political spin gets put on things, the less it becomes about what our leader will do and more about who they are, what they're wearing, how they're going to uphold our deeply held values.
Honestly, I want the government to stay the hell away from my deeply held values. Less government. There, I said it, and now I sound like a libertarian, but it's true. Bureaucracy is known for how deeply they can screw things up - why do I want more government laws? They're not passed in my best interests (hello exonoration of the phone companies who did the phone taps, hello Patriot Act, hello TSA and their incompetence) so why even waste the money?
If government were truly acting in our best interest and upholding Christian values or whatever the hell they call it, they'd stop legislating and start doing. Make it a part of being a congressman to get out there and do public service. Volunteer for soup kitchens, build houses, work in a medicaid office. Those are the public servants and they work damn hard with what little budgets they get.
I am a realist. I don't knock people who have religion - faith is a beautiful thing. But that's not the realm of government, and never should be. After all, most Christians would detest having a government-sponsored religion such as England, where the ruling monarch is the head of the church. Why would you even have the hubris to assume that you know what God wants in our government? Why is God in the government so important to the basic population of America, such to the point that the Republican party is now the Faith party? It doesn't make sense to me. Is this still the conservative backlash for the liberalism of the 70s?
This post probably doesn't make sense - I'm tired, and all this is touching on a very complicated topic: why people base their choices only on themselves. It's one thing to use yourself as a reference point, but has American individualism come to such a point where the "other" guy is no longer even of any importance? If so, I can see it coming from our culture quite clearly, but is there any way to use this "moral" streak the Republicans have capitalized on to do something besides make a lot of corporations a lot of money? Face it, that's what they're doing. Feeding America the bible on one hand and lining pockets with the other. But have we become too selfish to see that as a bad thing?

Naievte

2008-09-04T16:10:00.001-07:00

I'm not sure if there's a place in the world for people like me. It sounds so juvenile to say that statement, but the more I come across in life, the more it keeps me wondering that same thing every year I'm alive. I'm not very competitive, I'm cooperative. I don't like the idea of being afraid of things I don't know about and trying to legislate them away. I'm usually the first to admit that I'm not an expert on a subject but I'm very prideful of my intelligence (and yes, I looked prideful up to make sure I was using it properly...details are important to me.) I was just reading a few articles on Boing Boing about the Republican National Convention on how some of the "rioters" might have actually been hired by the police to instigate news opportunities and another post on an old comic that was done against homosexuality. It's not really the items that get me, it's more the people that defend it in the comments. Does it make me a hypocrite that I wish to beat down those beating down others?
I think it's probably because I'm moving on psychologically, developing into the next level of awareness. If I remember right from my classes, it's about now that you start developing a community membership, having developed your individuality in your teens and your support structure in your 20s. It's all very strange. I wish there was a myth for today, for how to grow and progress without all this worry. If all is true, then we are remaking the same world our fathers and grandfathers made and so the social dynamic isn't too terribly different. I don't believe our mindset is too different from the Renaissance at this point, except that in America the government isn't representative of God like Queen Elizabeth was thought to be. However, many people think that the President is there by God's will, so that doesn't make it too different.
Humanity has made it through those times. I don't suspect we will end ourselves with these. It does leave the question though - how far into the dark side will we get before we come back to lighter times?

Post Secret

2008-08-05T12:35:00.001-07:00

For anyone who's had their head in hole for the past few years, Post Secret is a site where people send in postcards of the secrets that they can't tell to anyone else. It's supposed to be a liberating experience. I'm not sure - I don't really keep secrets. I have in the past, and they usually come back to haunt me, usually because I'm lying to cover them up. So while the site interests me, I've never had anything to send in. *cue dramatic music* Until now. *duh dun dunnh*
It's not exactly a secret. Everyone in my life - hell, anyone who's even read my last post - knows what's been going on in my life. The problem is that it's driving me into another depression; again, this isn't a secret. Depression changes who you are and it's not exactly like the people around you won't notice.
My secret is that it's driving me towards a nervous breakdown and that I'm fighting it as best I can. It's just hard to fight the enemy that is yourself, and with depression breaking down my defenses, it makes it that much more difficult. But I like my job, I don't want to give a bad impression and I certainly don't want to lose what I do have in my life. I've been trying to stay active - today was the first day I called in late to work and honestly it was one of those duh moments ("oh yeah, I sleep more when I'm depressed" - you'd think I'd remember by now) that I hope to avoid in the future. I will try to start making it to the gym and eating right, but I'm afraid what's going to drag me down is the emptiness. I need human interaction. But I am fighting the urge to contact him tooth and nail. It won't help, but it still hurts. Everyday.
At any rate, I should actually get to work. It's busy but not enough to keep my mind busy...gym is definitely necessary.

I am in pain

2008-07-22T23:33:00.000-07:00

(No words can describe it, and if they could, you probably wouldn't want to hear about it.)

"He that loses his conscience has nothing left worth keeping." - Coussin

Blogging is a job

2008-07-07T11:06:00.000-07:00

I treat this outlet more as a journal than a place I really expect people to read. After all, most of the things I put into this are things that others wouldn't get about me. It's hard to find people who can discuss politics and comics, philosophy and video games. There are a few out there, but in practice it makes a better curiosity. It gets old not having people understand you. Or maybe they do and I'm just not very interesting. Whatever the case, it makes for frustrating conversation.
I'm disappointed again. For me, it's something that colors every aspect of my life when it occurs, and it occurs too often for my taste. It's just a friend, who I thought the world of, isn't what I thought he was anymore. I believed the best in him for a long time, and I think that best is slipping away.
"We do what we must, and call it by the best names." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Psychology of wasted potential

2008-07-01T18:32:00.000-07:00

Human psychology is one of the most interesting fields there is with such a squandered potential. Psychologists don't study the complexities of the human mind; at least, not if they make money. They study drugs for problems that are created by society and prescribe those drugs. Sometimes they might actually talk to you to see if you have a problem, but more often than not it's just a precursor to getting out the prescription pad.
Don't get me wrong, sometimes with chemical imbalances and schizophrenia and real genetic disorders, there is a need for those drugs. I should know; I'm currently classified as type II bipolar, and have struggled with depression since I was a child. However, psychology as a field, the way the mind interacts with the body and society, what forces shape who we are and the choices we make - totally wasted. After all, lord knows "generalized anxiety" is something we've all felt from time to time, yet it gets more attention than the fact that on an evolutionary scale, our brains are still living in caves and we have every right to feel anxious in our society where one slipped word at work can lead to political repercussions and sometimes loss of employment. People aren't allowed to make mistakes anymore. Our brains, with their hormones and chemical synapses, aren't prepared to deal with the deluge of information that gets thrown our way. And emotions? Forget it - no place in the modern world, and it's wearing on us. Where are all the studies that deal with this? I read somewhere, probably in the works of Joseph Campbell, that myths were the tools that guided our transitions in life, from childhood to adulthood, from adulthood to parents, from parents to elders. It informed us what was expected and let us prepare ourselves mentally for that change, and they remain important changes even in modern culture. We need modern myths.
Wow, this is a ramble if I've ever seen one....

Work and Fear

2008-06-12T00:51:00.000-07:00

I'm about to head into a lot of work. Coming from me, that's no small statement. While I tend to whine more than the men I know in my life, it doesn't diminish my capacity to work hard for a long time. As we speak, I'm on my 11th day in a row of working (as in 58 hours last week) and I have a major exam to take this weekend. I think if I were to be measured against laziness, I would at least come out on the positive side.
The main difference is that this work is uncertain. I've not done a lot of uncertain things in my life; in fact, that's where I tend to quail the most and find excuses not to do it. But this is unavoidable, and must be done, and I must find a way to do it. It's my Master's Project, after all.
The thing that strikes me the most is how much possibility it opens up. I'd forgotten the freedom of not telling myself no all the time. It might be a disappointment, but it just might be wonderful, too.

My charge to you, my nonexistent readers - go out and do something that you don't think is possible. I need company in this, for me, uncharted expanse.

Indiana Jones is dead

2008-06-01T04:06:00.000-07:00

An icon is dead...yes, it's true. Henry "Indiana" Jones, Jr. has died a horrible and merciless death at the hands of the money-grubbing Evil Elf and the Spielberg doppelganger. Gone are the days when Indiana Jones sought treasure to help mankind, or knew the wisdom of leaving powers that are beyond you alone...no, in his latest adventure he retrieves the treasure and gets...married. Yes, that's what he gets out of it. Of course I get the heavy handed "knowledge is important, knowledge to cherish the one you've always loved" idea behind the script, but by the time it made it to the screen it had been puked on so many times and rolled in money that I don't think it shined the way it was originally intended. Oh, and Shia LeBouf swings through the trees like Tarzan.
I can't say enough bad things about this movie. To know that they spent ten years on this script and this is what they came up with is just agonizing. Indy talks too much. The plot is terrible. I mean.....aliens? Aliens, for god's sake? And for anyone who thinks I'm giving something away, I'm not. The movie starts out with an alien body in a crate in Area 51. You think it's going to be cool, you think they're rewarding you for knowing that the Ark is in a crate but no...it's a f*cking alien. Sure, you see the Ark for one shining second....and then you're out rolling around in a NUCLEAR EXPLOSION in a goddamn Frigidaire. Did I mention the gophers?
Everything about this movie reeks except for the chance to see Marion in action again, and even that isn't as fun as it could be. Here's a tip to make it better: STOP MAKING HIM TALK SO MUCH! I swear Indiana Jones turned into my grandmother in between these movies - I'm surprised he doesn't go on about what he had for lunch at some point. Speaking of time in between the movies, did they talk enough about crap you're never going to get to see and people you'll never know? It's like they're planning to fill in those movies later when the Evil Elf perfects his digital technology and they can make a younger Harrison Ford act through a computer. Also, you can't fire someone with tenure - that's the whole point of tenure!

I writhed in agony during this movie. Indiana Jones was my dream man. I used to play like I was him in the backyard growing up. Thanks, Evil Elf, for taking a huge shit on my childhood dreams. And if you put "I've got a bad feeling about this" into one more movie, I swear I will find you and punch you in the face.

Fucking pathetic

2008-04-24T09:53:00.000-07:00

I wrote a long letter to my ex this morning and I couldn't send it because of how pathetic it seemed to me. Why are you hurting me, change please -- I mean, good god. If he was any kind of man he would do it on his own. Why does he need a fucking letter to remind him to be a good person and have some goddamn compassion?
That's what 10 years gets you, ladies and gentlemen. A pathetic whining mass who has plenty to get done but takes an hour to write a letter that's absolutely useless. Problem is, I don't know how to let go. I've honestly tried. Problem is that I don't know how to fill the gaping void he leaves in my life. He's more than just a romantic interest - he's a mentor and a role-model (at least professionally) and is the smartest man I know. I wish I could keep those parts and discard the romantic interest, but all of those things wrap up together for a truly wonderful experience. So what brought the trouble to Paradise then, you ask? Simple - he's a cheater. A big liar. An egomaniac who can't make decisions based on anything but his own wants and needs. Right now he's living with his ex (not me - the one he cheated on me with) so that he can save money. He was supposed to move out in January - he's still there and it's almost May. And yet somehow I'm supposed to believe that he cares about me and still loves me? Sad part is that I try really hard to believe it because it's what I want more than anything - to have that wonderful experience all the time.
When I was younger I had a best friend we'll call M. M and I had some pretty strange things happen to us, some of which I can't explain to this day, but the whole time I wondered if it was a lie. Eventually, growing up led to us parting ways - she moved on and I didn't. It strained our relationship to the breaking point because I still wanted the wonder. I think she got tired of it, maybe she got tired of me. The point of this is that I tend to fall in with people who lie to me, or at least put themselves in less than credible situations, and I believe them. Then once they're done they try to move on and I'm still stuck. Or in this case they keep stringing me along and I can't break free.
I'm beginning to wonder if real life will ever hold the joy for me that I want it to have. Everything hurts right now. I feel like a teenager all over again, powerless to change the things in my life that make me unhappy.
I can't think of any snappy lines or good sentences to end this post. You'll just have to go on without it.

Writing again - woo!

2008-03-06T11:03:00.001-08:00

You might think I mean here, but instead I'm talking about the long set of stories that I haven't finished and have never published. I counted up the words the other day and I actually have enough for almost two novels, with a third one by the time I fill in all the gaps, finish the current storyline, etc. There's a lot that's happened with the character (I've been writing these since I was 13 or so) and a lot that needs to be cleaned up and rewritten (again with the 13-year-old) I almost don't want to go back and change all the old stuff even though it's pretty embarrassing how immature the writing was. It's almost cute - I'll never be that naive again, at least on the topics I write about. I worry that my work won't really have an audience - it's almost like a written-out comic book, and about that level of sophistication...well, Frank Miller level of sophistication maybe, with aspirations towards Alan Moore. It's got sex that's not whitewashed or described in such appalling terms as "manhood" and "honey pot" and a lot of violence. A lot of violence. There is a quote by Oscar Wilde that says "in every first novel the hero is the author as Christ or Faust" and I think I've managed to make my hero into both. I've also got another set of stories in the works that I'm up to 8 parts on, another 2 stories that are in development and an idea for 2 more that never have gelled at this point but sometime in the future will turn into stories.
Wow, if I keep this up, I might actually be an author one day. Although I must relate a tidbit that I find amusing. Fuzzy and I were sitting around on the couch and I was grousing about a parking ticket that I got and how I needed to make more money.
Me - "I need to find a way to make money that doesn't take up anymore time."
Fuzzy - "You could sell a couple of stories."
Me - "..."

Sometimes the obvious is the hardest to grasp on your own. That's why you need good friends. Thanks to all my good friends who have supported me on this. Maybe one day I'll be more than just a hobbyist with a penchant for dialogue.

The Drugs Like me.....

2008-02-23T15:30:00.001-08:00

Things have been better since I was put on medication. I'm pretty sure I'd be non-functional by now by the way that I feel now. Unfortunately, now I have reasons for it. My oldest friend Dr. Jones and I are in the middle of some strange power struggle, where on one hand he has his extraordinary busy life and living situation and on the other hand there is ...well, me. He's stopped answering his phone around some people, and to me that's just insulting. It would be different if he were to call back later, or answer sometimes around that person but not other times. Nope, a consistent shut out with no regard for my feelings or even my understanding.
I get the feeling I'm being lied to. Again. It's the worst feeling in the world to think that the person you trust the most doesn't respect you enough to tell you the truth. Things just aren't adding up though.
Bitterness is like wasp stings - it adds up until the entire skin is painful and you go into shock.
It makes me sad to know that it has come to this.

I don't write very much

2008-02-12T00:47:00.000-08:00

If I wrote more often, perhaps maybe there would be an audience for this blog instead of me talking and ranting to myself. It's okay, though; I've been through a lot lately.
Depression is the mind-killer. I don't have depression where my life sucks and I think everything is worthless - I have the kind where my brain decides to throw a switch and stop producing chemicals I need. I stop sleeping well. Eventually this wears on me and I get irritable and anxious. This in turn wears away on the chemical production in my head - just like sleep deprivation - and I start to withdraw. I'm not the most outgoing person to begin with, but I am friendly...until I get depressed. Then I don't want to talk to anyone. Work is hard to get to on time. Every responsibility drags down on me until I feel like the only things I can manage are going to work and breathing. I stop eating properly. I don't do my homework.
I'm sure this list is boring to everyone else, but this is what you would get if I was blogging for the past three months. I go to a doctor tomorrow, but I don't expect a miracle cure. I've been on four different medications, each one cruel and worse than the depression. I don't think we should mess with our brain's chemicals lightly - but at this point I have to go if for no other reason because I cannot make decisions right now and people close to me think I should go.
At any rate, I wish all of my nonexistant readers well. May you never go through this.

Political rant

2008-01-19T13:09:00.000-08:00

Holy shit...I just got done reading an article about something that Bill Clinton said - the way they spun it, you'd think he was tearing the heads off of reporters - and the comments underneath were outrageous. I mean, are we actually allowing people who make comments about "Bill needs to stop lying hurr hurr" to vote for President? I can't relay to you the depth of things that didn't matter that were being brought up on the messages below; Obama playing the "race" card, Bill being president again; entitlement, lying - I mean, this list is even more coherent than the actual comments were. I think the thing that really got me was that some loser posted a comment to the effect of "I'm starting to see what the Republicans were talking about...I'm voting Republican"
BLACK AND WHITE ARE NOT THE ONLY COLORS, PEOPLE!
Just because one party points out a valid fault doesn't mean that they're right about everything else. Yes, Republicans have a lot of good ideas - if they didn't, there wouldn't be a Republican party because no one would vote Republican. You don't see anyone from NAMBLA running for President and getting votes, do you?
America has got to get over the duality - we need a third party. Bring back the Whigs! Put some Torries in our government. Give people a different perspective. Too bad Nader can't get a real campaign going...I mean, like mainstream.
The other thing that bothered me about the comments of our nation's voters was just how much they brought up the Clinton's "lying liarly lies" as if the current administration was any different. Hello? War crimes? Our entire Presidential Cabinet could be brought up on war crime tribunals in the Hague if any other country really had the guts to prosecute. It's like GW is a nonentity to everyone - NO! You fuckers voted for him - you should be reaping the absolute humiliation of propagating genocide and corporate greed. It's your fucking fault...none of this bringing up Monica and Watergate - a white stain and a sham marriage is nothing compared to an endless war that is taking away any prosperity our economy has and slamming us into recession. Canada has a better currency than we do right now...WTF!? How do you sleep at night, America? Your off-base comments and five-second span of attention are symptoms of a deeper pathology...you don't care! You still have a home, and a big fucking gas guzzler of a car, and can dispose of anything you wish because it will be magically carted away - you're only going to wake up from your apathy when its too late, when the environment is ruined, when you're broke and desperate, when India and China have taken away all the professional jobs and America is left with an overeducated team of McDonald's workers.
All I ask is this; pay some goddamn attention to the real world. Not just the news, because the news lies. Look around you, watch how people operate, listen to the debates, listen to Al Jazeera, listen to everything AND THINK! The only thing that's constant in this world are people. Become a good judge of people and everything else will be easier. Pay attention to something other than what party lines are, who wore what, who prays to who. Stop being led around by your religion; it belongs in your heart, not prostituted out on the corner. Stop letting them do that to you, faithful people! The measure of a man is his actions, not a seat in a pew. Stop confusing morality and status.
The only thing that can be worse than this president is if you people vote in another quasi-religious nutjob who'll screw over the constitution and the country for a profit. Democrat or Republican. NO MORE APATHY!

Make it stop!

2007-12-07T18:15:00.001-08:00

2007 has been a hell of a year, if I say so myself. I've been to the doctor more this year than I believe in all previous years put together. It's funny how when your health is gone it becomes the focus of your life. I understand older people now and why they tell you about their sicknesses when you talk to them. It's because it becomes so fucking important...I mean, what's more pressing than the fact that your life, the very existence you live and breathe, is not so permanent anymore?
It's caused me to have a new perspective - my body and I are no longer the same thing. I don't think a "soul" or consciousness can exist without the body and vice-versa, but they are no longer the same object. I burned my hand pretty badly at Thanksgiving and it was literally an experience of "What did I just do?" rather than "Ow, I burned myself." It's like playing an instrument; my body is now a tool of my expression rather than the sum of my being.
I'm sure all this sounds crazy. Hell, it doesn't make a great deal of sense to me, either. I just know that after being sick for months, it has divorced me from thinking that I am this matter, these carbon-based cells.
On a side note, I discovered the blog Violent Acres (http://www.violentacres.com/) about a month ago and read through her posts. It made me realize that a lot of my life has been very sheltered. It fascinates me to read about someone who has had such a different experience. I don't always agree with her, but her posts are entertaining, thought-provoking, and honest. She has a lot of personal demons, and I respect the hell out of someone who isn't afraid to admit to them and, most of all, doesn't care what you think.
Wouldn't that be refreshing to really not care what others think about you? I have only journeyed down this road a bit; I'm the oddball at work, the person who gets the job done but doesn't hang out with too many people outside of the job...but I get stuck on the little things, like trying to be helpful to people I know are assholes, and watching the noise level as not to disrupt the neighbors. Maybe these things are good and maybe you wish your neighbors would shut the hell up from time to time (I do!), but I think at the same time life might just be more rewarding if, when you decided to sing Shakira at the top of your lungs despite the fact that your neighbor's window is right there like mine is, you didn't have to stop and think about the consequences.

The Face of the World

2007-08-17T18:29:00.000-07:00

I've been away, or rather haven't been away from the entanglements and scheduling conflicts that keep me occupied most of these days. I've moved now; I have a room instead of a house. Less expensive, more boxes of stuff to store.
I just realized that public speaking no longer makes me shake physically. I guess if you do something enough, you eventually get used to it, even if it's something you never thought you'd embrace.
I've been writing more, which is good, but falling behind in my jobs. I now work at 4, count 'em 4, different places.
ITT Technical Institute - full time
Southern California School of Music - part time
UX - part time/contract work
The Princeton Review - on hiatus
What does this show you, friends and neighbors? It's never the fact that you can't get a job. It's how many of them you need before you can pay your bills. Let me stress again that I am single, no children, average student loan debt, average car payment. Is anyone listening in those hallowed halls of Congress? Or is that the point - let's make our citizens work themselves so much to make it that they no longer have time to participate in world events and we can run this country into the ground?
A friend tells me that the rhetoric Bush is spewing out now about Iran is exactly the same as what he said before we invaded Iraq. Please dear God let us know some peace for a time - no more war. Is it so selfish to want this? Will Iraq and Iran and Afghanistan really suffer so much without us? If so, who else can help? Surely if there is so much danger and distress in such a crucial part of the world, other countries would be willing to step in where we leave. Or perhaps we just don't want anyone else there due to the oil interests?
Tangled, tangled. My own life is so complicated. I can't imagine deciding the fate of a nation. It reminds me of the old Groucho Marx axiom - "I don't care to belong to any club that will have me as a member." I've heard the reverse is true of presidents - the only men who want the job are the men you don't want to have the job.
Just as an interesting fact - with the state of our country's homeland security today, the statements I've made can be counted as treason. Just an FYI.

In memorium - Martha Smith

2007-06-26T20:14:00.000-07:00

I just received word that a dear coworker, Martha Smith, has passed on tonight. She was a spirited lady who I was lucky enough to spend time with, to enjoy her ironic humor, and to learn from her. She even indirectly helped me with my stories by telling me about her experiences riding the trains. She was a fellow Texan and someone who you walked away glad you had spoken to them.
I know she was suffering before she died, and I am glad that she is no longer in pain, but all the same there is a hole in my consciousness that will never be filled up with her jokes or stories again.
I miss her very deeply. She was a part of home here in California.

Memoria in aeterna, Memento mori, Memento vivere.

In requiem.

Updates

2007-06-11T12:56:00.000-07:00

It's been quite a crazy month, with my almost attendance of my father's wedding and a computer refresh for the school I work for. I'm tired and sore and miss summer vacation more than ever.
I will be moving in a month, keeping my record of the past seven years of never living in an apartment more than a year. It's hard and I hate it, but I never seem to be able to put down any real roots. Money is always an issue these days, hence the move. I know things could be a lot worse, but I still wish for a little less stress.
Nothing much to say. I've been too busy to write stories lately, so I'm out of practice. I don't know if Nightshade will ever get done - I'm not the same person I was when I started writing her story and it's hard for me to continue it.
Time is my generation's crisis. People can point to record wealth and standards of living, but what about having free time for yourself? Less and less of it, even for someone like me who is unmarried and has no children. Perhaps especially for someone like me...there are a lot of subsidies and tax breaks for children. It begins to look economically sound to have a dependent when you do your taxes yourself and see all the things you're missing out on.
Alas, I digress...Go out into the world and do your own thing, my imaginary audience, but ponder to yourself - are T. S. Eliot's words really true? Will there be time for all the works and days of hand? If there isn't, you're in trouble.

Poemesque

2007-05-10T00:56:00.000-07:00

I stand at the foot of the pounding ocean. Every hope, every dream I have will be no more than a single grain of sand to the world, a nothing beyond notice, not substantial enough to be forgotten. The sun will set and rise again, washing away the old, a child with no memory.
We live our lives in an orb of self-importance, sharing other orbs, repelling yet others. Is our dance any different than the very molecules we are built from? Are all our longings stamped into existence by electric current, filling the spaces between? Things fall apart, but oh the bittersweet rush of the fall! Breaking away from the set patterns, feeling the rogue attraction of a passing current - we are what we are made of. Is it so wrong to be made of the universe? To be a part of the godlike enormity of it all, a stepping stone in between matter and planet - or must we feel special, a being of celestial exquisiteness, a matter unencountered anywhere else?
I lie down in the sand, letting the waves touch me, letting the sand mingle into my skin. For a short time, I dream the dreams of the sand. The waves carry my hopes to unknown destinations. Electrons and wishes mingle in a microcosmic dance as the sun washes over the shores, settling down for the ever-new day to begin again.

Stream of consciousness

2007-04-21T01:16:00.000-07:00

I would give all that I own for once to build up instead of break down.
I realize this isn't the way of the world, but it's hard for me to accept that my life will be spent moving from frustration to frustration, always dissatisfied.
I was stupid. What else is guaranteed in youth but stupidity and temerity? The weight of those years has always hung between us. Year by year, we have broken down more and more. Will you eventually look across a crowded room and meet my eyes, not realizing who I am? Will you let me haunt your thinking until you finally remember my name on the way home?
Could it really have been any different?
The biggest lie that every story ever told perpetuates is that of love.
"Nature's first green is gold
Her hardest hue to hold
Her early leaf's a flower
But only so an hour
Then leaf subsides to leaf
So Eden sank to grief
So dawn turns down to day
Nothing Gold can Stay."
You can never see truly into someone else's mind. You can never know what they're thinking, when they're lying.
The sharpest edge lies on the truth. Lies are smooth, curved, promising. Truth is bloody and hurtful.
Everyone regrets something deep down. Mine will be my lack of control. Every time. Emotional, physical, mental. It all fails. Human, only human. Which one will be my downfall this time?
Fear is my biggest enemy, and the biggest part of my personality. When is enough? When is too little? It takes a lifetime to master...then you die, unable to pass that mastery on.
Foolish to think we are anything but transitory. But we touch the divine...and spend the rest of our lives unable to reach it again.
These words will never reach their intended. They will only reach the people they will least help.
I long for grace. I believe in things that aren't real. Religion is most people's delusion of choice, so I'm in good company.
All this feels like rambling, and probably is. This is the real Fringes of Lunacy, where the absurd meets the inspired. Bring your towel and don't panic.

Thoughts about the Virginia Tech shooting

2007-04-18T17:24:00.000-07:00

At the risk of going off and saying something half-cocked, I will write this post. Please forgive me if I am insensitive.

I worry about the notion that it's okay to kill other people, but I also question the wisdom of warning the entire population to be hypervigilant. Is it really right to tell everyone else to react more violently, more quickly because a few nuts with guns, or a few nuts with box cutters, kill others? Those people are less than a 1/100th of a percent of the entire US population, let alone the world population, and are responsible for their own actions. To tell everyone else to live in fear because there's a better chance of winning the lottery than to be shot in a shooting spree is ludicrous. It's precisely what our country doesn't need right now. We need togetherness and justice, not suspicion and prejudice. And when is it ever right to blame the victim by telling them "Cowering under a desk and waiting for help to come is no longer an option"(source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18174900/ )? Our citizens should not be prepared to live in warzone.

My biggest fear is that more of our rights will be taken away in the name of security. College campuses are still the biggest place for the free and open exchange of ideas. Please don't bolt down the doors and post the HSA at the entrances. When our country stifles the last bastion of cultural exchange, then we will truly be poor.

Money

2007-04-11T01:19:00.000-07:00

I can't say that I'm poor, but for the first time in a long time, I simply don't make enough. I try my best to live within my means, but apparently with the gas prices the way they are, that means not having a car. I work too far away not to have a car, so I'm stuck. I have three jobs, and still I simply don't make enough money. Does any other American sense the desperate irony here? I am an educated individual, a Bachelor's Degree under my belt and enrolled in a Master's Degree, working three jobs, all of which pay less than twenty dollars an hour. Why? Because no one wants to hire someone who doesn't have less than two years experience in a field. Because no one will take a chance on intelligence over certification. It makes me angry in a way - since when do I need to have someone tell me what I am capable of? I can do anyone's job, given the time to learn and the resources. How many CEOs of multimillion dollar corporations can say that? Yet I cannot even get beyond a flunkie position being a no-name in one of those corporations...tell me this isn't age-based discrimination?
Anger at my potential being squashed. Anger that so many scheming, useless morons can hold jobs they are unqualified for, and more anger still at the system that supports those scheming, useless morons and makes them in charge. This isn't anger at my current employer. This is anger at the system, at being a cog in a machine, at making less in my current position than the dumbass technician who has to call five different people to figure out how to do his job.
All I want at this point is to be able to learn and work...I don't even want to be rich. I just want a job where I make enough to pay for gas and that's interesting enough that I want to go everyday. I'm sure there has to be one...or is that just my youth speaking?

People

2007-03-27T16:17:00.000-07:00

Every year I do the Renaissance Faire. It's a fun place to be outdoors and interact with people in a way that most Californians have no concept of - just talking to them for no reason. Coming from Texas, this happens a lot...grocery stores, lines for tickets, airports...any time you put a Texan somewhere they have to wait, they'll usually try to talk to someone. It makes the time pass.
At any rate, it got me to thinking about people. We experience people every day, through our jobs, through our neighbors, but do any of us really understand the nature of people? We know there are bad people and good people (or if you're Oscar Wilder, charming or tedious people) and that we need to lock our doors when we leave the house...but we feel slighted if the neighborhood kid comes over to talk to us and their parents whisk them away in a rush, admonishing them not to talk to strangers. After all, we're not strangers - we're neighbors. The news tells us that there is every type of bad person out there and they're all waiting for you to slip up and walk down the wrong dark alley, but where are all these bad people when you get a flat tire on the side of the road?
I'm not by any means saying bad people don't exist. Often people are motivated for selfish reasons, and by that very nature means that if they want something, they care more about that than they do your wants and desires. Office politics and gossip could tell you that much. It just makes me wonder how much we cut ourselves off to shield from all this? A sense of community, a place to belong is a wonderful thing. It's annoying sometimes, sure, but in the end we are pack animals and together is where we belong. It also brings to mind the question if we continue to cut ourselves off from humanity for fear of pain and loss, what does that do in turn to our own humanity? Does it make us more selfish and liable to hurt others due to the demands of our own agendas, like a vicious downward spiral of ever-worsening behaviour and loss?
We live in fortress cities now. Mike Davis, a leading sociologist and specialist on the plight of cities and communities, has done extensive studies on Los Angeles and come to very startling conclusions. His books are very interesting (check them out sometime) and deal with the same idea that cutting humanity off from itself is a bad idea from many perspectives.
Renaissance Faire, I believe, is a place that many people go to get that sense of community back. It has all the affairs, gossip, drama, and fallout of any community, yet almost everyone who works it comes back yearly. I might mention now that this is an entirely volunteer effort and no money is paid to most of the participants if they are not involved with a stage show or "theme character" so anyone who works the faire is choosing to participate in this "mystery cycle" as it were.
More to come...this thought is definitely not fleshed out to completion.

Scheduling

2007-03-19T19:23:00.000-07:00

It's been really busy again - I don't think there's much time in my life that I spend idle anymore. I remember lazy dazy in summer back in junior high when the day stretched out forever and it seemed like nothing could make the day pass. Now it seems the exact opposite - the day passes whether or not I wish it to, whether or not I've finished my work, done my chores, or had any type of relaxation.
I miss that right now. Taking vacation time is always to do something now, never to just be. Can you imagine not really being responsible, having absolutely nothing to do? What about having so many days off work you couldn't wait to go back? Some things from childhood don't become precious until they're over, and I believe this is one of the main ones.
I should head back to work now...

Size

2007-03-05T18:02:00.000-08:00

Sometimes it amazes me how fragile we are as human beings, how small things that happen to us sometimes never leave, how something inconsequential to others can devastate us for years. On the flipside, sometimes our resistance is downright heroic - from surviving wars to living with debilitating diseases, all with a smile on our face. We are downright astounding creatures.
All this being said, I think sometimes we have a hard time connecting to each other. We forget the simple truth that our experience is a shared one. Or perhaps this is just my own shortcoming - I have seen many people do selfless things for strangers, including myself. Perhaps those people are better people than I am; more realistic, more humanistic. More often than not, I react with fear to the unknown. It is a great weakness that someday, when I feel like I am not so small, perhaps I will overcome. Or perhaps I will just become more withdrawn and frightened as I get older, until I cannot connect with anyone anymore.
For a long time, my heading was "Sadness makes us Human." I still feel this way. I think it serves as a reminded to every member of the human race of all the struggles and pain we have in common. Perhaps at those times, when ego and pride are forgone, we truly see our reflections in the eyes of others.

Making yourself

2007-02-27T19:03:00.000-08:00

Not so long ago, when I was struggling with a pretty heavy depressive episode, I came up with the idea that we make ourselves who we are. At first this seems pretty far-fetched, considering that I suffer from a genetic chemical imbalance that puts me into my depressions. But really, even now this still holds true. The more I learn about myself, the better I control the effects of depression, the more I can live my life, the more I become the person I want. I have always shied away from using drugs to control my depression because they also make me into a different person. I don't judge anyone else for using drugs, illegal or otherwise; this is simply the choice I make for myself. It strikes me as funny how much effort we'll spend to craft ourselves into what looks good and just leave ourselves morally bankrupt and self-centered. Money is increasingly becoming the focus of our lives instead of harmony.
Many people think spirituality is something you get from church. Truly, it should be something you already have and cultivate and bring to church. It bugs me how many people think that athiests and agnostics are immoral. I left the church due to the hypocrisy and flaunting of who is closer to God, who was wearing what, etc. I mean seriously, these are the same people reading in the Bible about how Jesus washed the feet of his disciples as they argued who would sit at the right hand of God...how can they not see that they do the same things?
For me, it would absurd to think that someone else (such as a church) understands my relationship with God/Allah/the Goddess better than I do. The world is my church. Every day that I stop and look around me and feel lucky to be alive, to experience the wonder and the absurdity that is the world, that's my worship. I don't think there is a religion for people like me simply because we would all gather around, talk and laugh with each other, and walk away feeling the same satisfaction we feel every day.
The music of Eric Whitacre is something amazing - if you ever get a chance to hear a choir sing it live, it is a treat. He has a composition based on an e e cummings poem named "i thank you god for this most amazing day." Although I have yet to hear it, I think about that title a lot as I drive along and notice the mountains, or see the sunset, or stand in my yard and listen to the trees and smell the grass. I am grateful for the days I get, and the chances I get to make myself into a better person.

A Decision at Last

2007-02-26T20:16:00.000-08:00

It's weird. For the first time in my life, I feel truly as if there are signs to point the way. I have taken the LSAT and the GRE, paid all my fees, gotten my letters of recommendation, and am waiting patiently for news to arrive. Then my best friend tells me he doesn't think it's such a good idea. We talk - he tells me I should pursue something creative. I keep seeing signs; another friend is coming out to California to look at schools and might be a potential roommate. Then, last night at the Oscar party I spoke with my very creative friends. My boyfriend, on the ride home with me, simply tells me, "You're really happy right now. You should think about that."
With those simple words it occurred to me what has been happening ever since this decision was presented to me. For once, metaphorically speaking, it's as if God has stopped watching TV, turned and looked down at me and said, "Oh no, no, dear. I meant you for other things."
I believe I am about to pursue a degree in something artistic. And I feel fabulous about it.

I just saw Reno!

2007-02-22T14:26:00.000-08:00

I just saw someone who looks like one of my characters. In fourteen years of writing, this has never happened. It's probably fortunate for me that he was in the drive-thru two cars ahead of me, or I might have done something weird like try to take his picture on my phone. My drawing style has always been very cartoonish, so it's hard for me to convey to my artist friend Fuzzy what I mean when I say, "No, Reno's nose is big, but not Faramir-big, just big-big!" You can imagine his frustration with me. I know what's there when I draw it, but I've never had a clear picture until today just now.
Maybe I should have chased him down and camera-phoned him.

Keeping pace

2007-02-16T17:00:00.000-08:00

I often forget to post, considering most of my time on the internet is at work, and, when I am at work, I am often trying to catch up to my endless list of tasks. I am trying to make a habit of it though, if for no other reason that I will have a record of where my time and attention is going. I haven't written in a while - I must say that I miss it. I managed to reread the entire Dark Tower series and am still not pleased with the tone of the last four books, but it was nice to visit Roland in his world again.
It comes to me often that the world is not meant to be a very nice place. I was reading an excerpt from a book, and there was a quote the author used - "Whatever a man hates, he becomes." (Or that's what I remember the quote as since the website is down.) It really struck a chord with me. Is it really true? If so, is it wise to judge others so harshly as to hate them?
Sociologists will rail against society and the "prison city" that keeps people from interacting (it's true, ask one...and bring a lunch.) but is it in our nature to interact without conflict? Perhaps the division is necessary in modern life to keep it from collapsing into chaos. It would be interesting to know the truth of it, but truth is better left for philosophers than scientists. Everything is subjective, even this statement. Muhaha...the irony fairy strikes again!

Wilde and Emerson

2007-02-12T20:44:00.000-08:00

It never ceases to amaze me how much society can make a brilliant man look average. Lately I've gotten on a kick of reviewing quotes from famous authors. It started with Oscar Wilde; the man is highly quotable and I'd heard many of his more boring quotes before (see previous entry on An Ideal Husband) but I read more of his lesser known quotes and was amazed! Where did this witty insightful man come from, and why weren't these quotes the ones he was known for? Tonight, I discovered Ralph Waldo Emerson - not the lame Ralph Waldo Emerson who I often confused with Henry David Thoreau, but a vibrant, intelligent man who was a great thinker and reluctant activist. I don't agree with his views on charity, but many of his quotes are inspiring.

Find someone who inspires you. Then find who inspired them. I suspect there is a very long trail of wisdom that lies mostly ignored for the masses, or perhaps is just unacknowledged.

Stephen King's Dark Tower series

2007-02-07T19:29:00.000-08:00

I just heard that Stephen King's Dark Tower Story is getting a new addition in the form of a comic book. Apparently this story is between Wizard and Glass and The Gunslinger, which makes sense if you're a fan of the series. It's ironic that this is coming out now - I was just rereading the series this month.
One thing that bothers me - the books seemed to go downhill after Wizard and Glass. I'm still a fan of the ending - the ending after the ending for those of you who stopped - even though I know a lot of people weren't. There's something that fits Roland's dark romanticism about his endless repetition, but this time he has what he needs so it's uplifting in a way. The rest of the books in between just seemed too hokey, like Mr. King lost sight of the real world of the gunslingers and just added our world when he felt he couldn't get in touch with theirs anymore. Perhaps this is because I read the stories before W&G, before it seemed there would ever be anymore books. Many fans know what I mean - the original days when Dark Tower books were few and far between, and before the "may it do ya" and "thee" were introduced into The Gunslinger. I enjoyed the way the story seemed to be going through The Drawing of the Three and The Wastelands...and it seemed to dissipate after that. Perhaps this story, like many others before it, outlasted the author who wrote it. Sam Kieth's The Maxx comes to mind, although the author admitted it was time to move on at the end of that one.
It all seems to serve as a reminder: finish your story before the ending leaves you.

LSATurday

2007-02-07T19:18:00.000-08:00

Wow. Stress stress stress....if there is a good way to relax, I need it right now. I need a good way to relax that doesn't involve oh, time off, fun, money, or illegal drugs. I hope at some point that there's some type of payoff, but the longer I live my life, the less it feels like there will ever be anything but the present.
I was thinking today that, were I to be diagnosed with cancer and given months to live, I would want to write. Not work at some job that isn't my passion just so that I can make a living wage, but to truly write, to sit down and do what all the authors tell you to do and write for at least four hours a day. I want to finish my stories before I die. Even if they're crappy stories that will be forgotten, it will still be better than never having finished. My NS stories are mounting; I have what I call a "pile of words" that's pretty formidable and a direction that I want to get to with her. The Drifters stories are just starting, which is sort of exciting and scary at the same time. I have two more ideas waiting in the wings for research to be done, and somehow the ideas keep coming. I used to be afraid that I would run out. Now I think it's more a matter of staying in shape mentally so that you're open to the ones that come to you.
BTW - the old author's saying about the characters having their own lives and you discovering them through writing - absolutely true. Anyone who can control their characters is writing a boring book.

Internet vitality

2007-02-05T18:27:00.000-08:00

I live on probably the only block in the country where there are about five wireless networks, and all of them secured. Currently, I'm still recovering from Christmas and insurance and cell phone bills and graduate school application fees and test fees....you name it, I've incurred it over these past weeks. Consequently, I have no internet access at home. It's interesting to see how much I still rely on the internet to get my bills paid, make sure that my life is in order and generally keep in touch with people. In my opinion, the internet is achieving "utility" status, right up there with gas and water. Of course, many others would probably disagree, but those people probably aren't reading my blog, either.
It's hard, but enlightening at the same time. I grew up without internet access, and I was in high school by the time it really started hitting the masses where I lived. Seems odd that something so new could be so life-changing. I suppose that's what they felt about electricity as well.

Productivity

2007-02-01T18:49:00.000-08:00

I read a lot. And when I mean a lot, I'm the person who reads the back of the shampoo bottle...more than once. The internet has been an interesting place for me due to this. It is just recently that I have decided that blogging isn't some sort of self-important pity party, or at least that it doesn't have to be.
It is here that I hope to develop my writing style. I don't ask anyone to read this...if you do, then be warned. This is not for you, as the Pearl Jam song puts it. Nor will it be about me directly. Somewhere in the middle, we'll find a compromise, and I'll find my voice. The journey is the important part.

A couple of good Oscar Wilde quotes...

2007-01-30T17:10:00.000-08:00

I never liked Oscar Wilde before. We did An Ideal Husband when I was in theatre in college, and it was probably the most boring show I'd ever even heard of. One day I stumbled onto a quotations page and found out he's not all about foppish wit and careless upper society quips. The man, I've discovered recently, was brilliant in a way that not many people are. Mark Twain comes to mind. So does Carlos Mencia on a good day. At any rate, without further speculation on my part, here are a couple of quotes:

"In every first novel the hero is the author as Christ or Faust."

"It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it. "

And one more because I can't count - "Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth. "

Welcome to the 21st Century

2007-01-30T14:11:00.000-08:00

If you're reading this, you probably already know me, so I'll save you some time by not introducing myself. If you don't know me, then what better way to know someone's true self than by reading his or her thoughts written out?

I find myself stuck in a quandary of sorts. My life is rather boring, my job mundane, my stress level too high - in other words, I am your typical American. I stand on a precipice of choosing to continue the practical or following the words of a man I admire - Mr. Joseph Campbell - and following my bliss.

Does this sound familiar? Of course it does. You're in the same situation, I'd bet. We all are. And, for now, I will continue to do the practical until I am absolutely dissuaded from it, even if it means pounding my head against a wall I know I am already tired of facing.

But that won't stop me from dreaming. And now I have an outlet...