The Passion

The toothpick wielder was granted the Master MasterCard, infinite credit. I was born in the borderline between reality and unreality. The contact point between pen and ink. It was this verge, this verse, this cutting edge of the razor of reality from which the creativity of humankind flowered forth. We all went in search of the Universal Message together. Candle, the human female playing a red and white deck, was in awe of herself and my stomach grumbled, churned, quaked, started again... but I wasn't hungry.

Yesterday, I played Magic: the Gathering with EDB, the toothpick wielder. He won both games, once with a deck I built for him, once with a deck partly of his own choosing. They were true games. His deck was a black, white, green optical illusion deck, and mine was a blue, red, green creature control deck. However, I had turned off my power in order to lose fairly. Fate decided the outcome. I was in awe of myself. I reassumed by true role, and Candle smiled sweetly, innocently.


(And now a word from our sponsor: Jedi Tennis...)
The emerald dawn infected everything in this city, from gray wizards to purple magic alike. Eden could barely contain himself. He and I learned life magic together, with Life as my guide. EDB once and for all realized his true nature, and beat off Darth Maul with a single toothpick. It was hardly worth his effort. He was better than cyclops with his visor off. A single reflecting teardrop, crystal clear, shining.

We had teriaki for lunch that day. The elven savior sat to my left with outside help. The ring-bearer was there, shrugging off chaos, Ruddy the Red was learning to play a gray deck, and Mathematician the Gray was attempting a red deck. It was the most controlled explosion in the world, moving at a pace of 3.14159265 cm/minute. The boundaries were set. We went on to play a game of scavenger hunt without objects.

It ended when Love's representative found the bug}insect. We found ourselves in true geekdom. Love's representative was a male geek, solid, human, friendly. He represented the twin rings himself, binding like Courtship. He would be able to find free will and Fate whenever Fate needed to be rescued in the great scavenger hunt without frontiers, war without death.


(We now pause for these commercial messages: The Ring of Brightest Angels Around Heaven...)
Death patted EDB and Klaproth on the head. My two cute little goth boys, she said. Candle grinned Chaotically. She was learning to be Chaotic Good as well. Red and black in the most brilliant and heart-stopping colors. We fell madly in love all over again. She was like Chanel #5. She caught the lump in her throat, and sighed with anticipation. I played a recorder and a harmonica. Eden bowed and ran off with a new mission of his own writing.

Life reformed, and played a squirrel deck, merging with all opponents with tremendous speed. I kept him in check. We were both EDB and not EDB at the same time. The holder of the Master MasterCard jammed his toothpick through his computer monitor, opening forth magic as yet untapped in our reality. He was a frontier elf. We cheered.

He was pushing the limits of the City of God ever outward. The gated community reversed itself. The white picket fences joined the Fellowship of the Ring. Candle and I had our twin rings, and we graduated to married life. The king and the queen returned after merging with each one of their enemies. Redefinition. Game over. The Eternal Chess Match continued on, this time with new, more brilliantly drab and boringly brilliant colors.

And we'll stop here for now...

Today was unsatisfactory.

I had determined yesterday that I would complete a minor coding exercise before that day was out and having failed in that I approached it this morning with a slightly obsessive attitude. I made some progress by neglecting an early lecture but was thrown mid-afternoon by a half-dozen intermittant power cuts.

At this point my head was all charged up like a van der graaf dome, arcing all over the shop. I'm not really a walker but I had to just leave the house and walk. No particular place to go. Just exploring.

I experienced that most irritating feeling as I drifted along. I felt that I was just starting to understand something but without any of the relief that understanding normally brings. It was the kind of understanding that you get when you release your thinking is all wrong. You're going to have to rethink a lot of things and untangle a lot of knots. A lot of what you think is true is very arbitrary.

God knows what prompted this type of thinking, too much spodding, a quarter-life crisis. I'm sure that my feelings are not new to the world but they are moving me. There is nothing I have that could even be defended as idea yet. They are just notions.

Nevertheless, they are crucial. They encompass what I am, how I see the world and where I stand in it. These thoughts do not go away. They just bide their time while I divert myself. I'll need to take them on soon.

I have finally come to my senses. After ten years of fighting with the truth, I have decided to come to terms with this one, simple fact : There is no Love.

I've been alone as long as I can remember. Sure, I have friends. I have family. I even have plenty of friends here. But I'm tired of being alone in my heart. I've been waiting for that special someone to come along for far too long. I used to be a hopeless romantic; in love with the idea of being in love. But it's never happened. I thought it had once, but it was just co-dependency rearing it's ugly face.

I'm bitter, jaded, and tired of all the bullshit I put myself through. I'm tired of all the bullshit the world puts me through. I watch movies about love, and when they end happily, I know it's bullshit. When they end sadly, they try to soften the blow with "Love is forever". No, it's not. If it was, then why all the pain? Love is supposed to be about happiness. If love is forever, then why does the happiness end? I have seen many friends, both in real life and on here, get irrevocably hurt from "love". Many a night have I stayed up late, at home on the phone, at the computer typing, or at a party holding someone's hard, listening to the poor sap, boy or girl, pour his or her heart out to me over something they call "love". I'm sorry, but if you've only know each other for two or three months, its not love, it's lust.

Love will not find me, I know this now. I mourn the loss of my innocence, but I am better because of it. I won't be flittering around, hoping to be happy because someone else loves me. I will make my own happiness. Don't pity me because I've seen the light. Don't hate me because it scares you that my words ring true. Just think of my words, and see if you are happy in your suffering...

Certain people can just be there, and thier unexpected brief hours of friendship, calm me and make me realise that the human race is not a complete waste of time. Another friend mentioned that you should, in his experience, never give up on the posibility that you will love and be loved again. I can believe that, even in these trackless emotional deserts. Just don't lard it with destiny or "meant to be" or any crap like that. The phyical world is governed by dead deterministic and random probabalistic laws. There is no certainty that you will find a human meaning it, or if you do perchance, that it's the only one, the "right" one.

I can be a very negative and antagonistic person. So I am making a bit of an effort to let the nice stuff out. To apologise when need be. To say so if something bugs me. Even to compliment.

Work is ok, despite the upsteam problems. Our ecommerce web site can only work if two upstream providers are on line, and both of them have been in yo-yo mode for the last few days, and we have nad some publicity so the number of new registrations and purchases is up. Many of these are failing, and there's not much I can do about it except phone people off site and tell them that thier box is down again. We have reliable server hardware and a reliable OS on it. I know that both of them are running MS.

Out of boredom in the evenings (finished reading the silmarillion, yes, that bored) I have been playing Serious Sam. It is light, fun, plays like doom, only more so. I like mindless games with lots of big explosions to help me relax. If I want something intricate or complex on a computer I'll write code instead.

I wonder if I will finish the game before I have to pack up all my stuff. In five weeks time I am moving half-way around the world, and the size of that task is beginning to get to me.

Klaproth has eaten 6 of my older, shorter, sillier writeups, though not ones that will be much missed. Oh well, good to know that Quality assurance is at work. I don't do funny nodes much these days, the attrition rate is just too high.

I am in an absolutely fantastic mood right now. I have just completed a short story. It originally started as an experiment in noding. The idea was to get a list of all of my node titles and then weave as many of them as possible into a story. From there I was going to post it on E2. Not a single node link leads to someone else's work. While at first glance, this seems self aggrandizing, that wasn't the point of it. I did it as a sort of challenge to myself. I mean, here I am with 195 writeups, right? I got to wondering how many of those node titles could be used as viable, linkable phrases. Are the node titles just useless, glib tripe or can they be used in certain contexts? I suppose any node title could be used in a certain context, but would it make sense?

So, I got to writing, to find out. It took me about a week and a half. I finished it tonight, not thirty minutes ago. The story itself stands on its own and relates to a book I've been writing called Mystic Ghost. In addition, I've written some new content for the Mystic Ghost node (which hasn't been posted yet, but will be soon), so that it will make more sense in relation to the story.

I'm going to format it for posting on E2 over the next hour or so- it resides in my laptop right now and I will need to transfer it to my desktop system.

I know this just sounds completely boring, but for me it's a real kick in the pants. I haven't actually completed a story in six months- well, that's not entirely true... there was "Inside a Living Nightmare", but that was an exceptional situation. I needed this big-time. I needed to see that, yes, I can carry something to fruition. The story itself might bomb entirely. It might get downvoted to oblivion- I don't care. The story makes me happy and it adds to the body of work I've been doing in the last year and that's all that matters to me. I've tentatively named it "Shell: Handmaiden of a Mechanized God", but that title might change at the last minute.

It's 7,000 words, which really isn't that much. I've pounded out 7K in a night. That it took me a week and a half kinda irks me, but I can't complain about the storyline. Damn. I'm just in a good mood.

I like it when I accomplish a goal. We all need a goal in life- even small ones.

I've been wandering around Paris for the last few hours, and I desperately need a hug and a good cry. I've been getting the latter.

And of course I've been trying to figure out how to write all this, because, well, that's what I do.

My Dad used to buy a lottery ticket every week, actually, several of them: one with a set of numbers he had put together with our birthdates, and his wedding anniversary--numerology really, and then he'd get a few more where the computer picked numbers at random.

My Dad is a very smart man. Mechanically and mathematically inclined, if never scholastically--he was on both the high school chess and baseball teams (he was an excellent pitcher until a shoulder injury). He was a machinist and mechanic while in high school, and he even went to junior college, for about a semester--because he met Mom there, he always says, with a sort of sly grin.

In any case, he knew the odds of winning the lottery. I think he was even the first person to show me how to calculate them.

Today is my birthday. I'm 26 years old, exactly half his age. I found out today that he has a bone marrow cancer. One so rare that his doctor said, "You had a better chance of winning the lottery."



Why couldn't he have won the fucking lottery?


In some ways, though, this is a relief. He's been sick for several months, not working for 6 weeks. There's been a stream of doctors, and angry phone calls to the insurance company, trying to find the right person, the one who will say, "Yes, you can run that test."

He insisted that I go on my trip anyway. I'm on one of those proverbial backpacking trips in Europe--I had planned for 6 months, between finishing my master's degree and starting a doctoral program. 2 months on the train, then the rest finding a really cheap place in Germany and trying to learn to talk.

Its been really good so far, though I'm really struggling with Paris. I've actually managed a couple of transactions all in french, by memorizing phrases from my phrase book. I'm still terrified of actually going into a restaurant, because they might use words that aren't in my meagre vocabulary, and I might have to resort to, "Je ne comprends pas. Anglais?" which I've gotten _very_ good at, and of course they always do speak english. Which is both helpful and disappointing, I want to learn from them, and I'm woefully ignorant. Even the panhandlers in Europe seem to speak three languages.

But this is the sort of story Dad seems to enjoy hearing, and why he keeps telling me to stay, to continue. Despite my guilt. Despite my need to do _something_ that might help.

That was until today. When I talked to Mom, and she told me that they finally had a diagnosis, and a treatment plan. She actually apologized for asking, but she wants me to come home the last week of March, which is when they will do the third round of chemotherapy, and then the bone marrow transplant. The first round started yesterday, and will continue for 4 days, after which he gets to go home. She thinks I will be helpful around then, but that until then it will make him feel better for me to stay here.

He's at UCSF medical center, where the head of hematology has seen exactly three cases of this kind of cancer in her career. No one else there has ever seen one. They've actually given him a life expectancy, based on averages from their small sample:

  • 1-2 years without treatment
  • 8-10 years with.
Which is actually pretty good as rare cancers go, but its still stunning to have a number like that. I hope we can manage to not pay too much attention to it.

The reason its only 8-10 years with treatment is that they don't think they can reverse the damage that has already been done to his kidneys and liver. Nor are they completely confident in the bone marrow transplant, because they will have to use his marrow, harvested and treated just before they use radiation to kill all the rest of it. He'll be in the hospital for a month for that, in isolation for much of it because his immune system will be pretty much gone. It would work better if they could find someone with matching marrow to transplant, but, again the statistics, they think its impossible to find one except in a full-blooded sibling. Dad has a half-sister.

I don't know what else to say. They want me to stay over here for 2 more months, and I'm feeling really isolated. I need to do something, and there's nothing I can do--either here or there.

After I hung up the phone with Mom, I checked out of the hostel so I could move to a less crowded one, and walked to the Place Bastille, and sat and cried for a while. A piece of paper tumbled along the ground in front of me, kicking up then coming down, repeatedly, like that plastic bag in American Beauty. It flipped over and stopped in front of me for a second--would you believe that it was a fucking lottery ticket?

I have to make a statement, and I don't want to be voted upon because my ideas do or don't agree with yours, or because I can't express myself as well as I'd like. Please don't be insulted by what I say; I have a tendency to make rather scathing generalizations about people when I'm angry. If you are insulted, I'm sorry. You were warned.

I live very close to New York City. In fact, I regularly make a trip into said city, often with some enthusiasm. I'm proud of the fact that I live near New York City. At least, most of the time.

I'm going home to South Jersey this weekend, and I'm exceedingly glad that I'll be there as opposed to in the City this weekend. And not just 'cause I'm going to see my son.

I will NOT be in the City on the weekend of the World Economic Forum. I will NOT be protesting the World Economic Forum. I will NOT be joining the ranks of Another World is Possible, or the Anti-Capitalist Convergence for their "green" (ie. "non-violent", although their website tells people to bring gas masks) protests.

First off, I'd just like to point out the fact that telling people to bring gas masks is only provoking the matter. it's a vicious circle; police will see the gas masks and think something's going to happen, so they'll be extremely jumpy, and they'll react badly to anything, and blah blah blah. If you're going to bring protection, bring something that fits in your pocket. But that's not my point.

Let's think for a minute, who's participating in these protests? Are poor people struggling on welfare and trying desperately to get a job to support their four kids going to these protests? Are homeless people who lost their jobs due to economic setbacks going to these protests? Are the people who work 16 hours a day just to make ends meet going to these protests?

No.

These people are at home, resting their tired feet. Or they're still at work, while the people who work 40 hours a week, or less, are going to these protests "on behalf of these people".

Let's think for a moment about what these people want. These poor, struggling people who work for every penny they get just to put food on the table and a roof over their heads. They want what every red-blooded American wanted in the 50's - they want a million dollars, and a big home, and someone else to do all their work. Or maybe they just want a job that will make them comfortable. You know, something they like to do that pays pretty well. Where they have time to be with their children, or clean their homes, or maybe even have enough money to have a new mattress for the bed or a weekend trip to the beach once in a while, or, God forbid, a newER car than the car that's been in far too many accidents and has too many replaced used parts already.

Kinda like what all these people have who are actually going to these protests.

Now let's think about these people who are going to these protests.

These are people who have a decent job that pays likely $30K a year or more. Something where, if they have a roommate or two, can easily afford a decent apartment in a vaguely safe area. These are people who work anywhere between 30 and 50 hours a week at most (with minor exceptions on certain weeks), doing something they like and/or are eminently qualified to do after years of schooling, and they have health care, and they have new clothing every once in a while. Most importantly, they've got time to think.

They have the time to think about their bosses, and their bosses' bosses' boss, and how things would be better if everyone could be that rich. Or if their boss had to go through what they did in order to get that far in life. And they dwell on that for a very long time, and they start to think about redistribution of wealth. And they start to think about the people who don't have any money, or who work in other countries 16 hours a day for a pittance, and how if only the guy with all the money would give it all up for 75000 foreign workers, wouldn't life be a little better all around? And they start to think, Oh my God, it's the foreign government's fault, because they just want more money for themselves so they're going to reduce pay and whip the people to death until they're making billions of dollars per shoe that these people make in the sweatshop!

Hey, I've got an idea, let's go back to when England owned half the world and the Chinese still had their kings! Maybe then, people weren't so oppressed, exploited and poor!

Uh, I mean... No, actually I do mean exactly what I said. I've got news for you -- ever heard of serfs? You think they didn't have it like shit? There will ALWAYS be oppression/exploitation, economic, racial or any other kind you can think of, as long as there is pride, greed, and stupid people. And there will always be people who think it's wrong. Remember the 20's? When people tried to turn the United States Communist? Oh, we all see how well that worked, don't we?

I've got some more news for you, folks. That whole spreading the wealth idea? You really think that's going to work? That by spreading out the trillions of dollars in today's financial market among the 6.2 billion people in the world that that will solve everyone's financial woes? That offering any and every commodity cheaply or freely to anyone who wants or needs it is going to help? It doesn't work.

Oh, my God, what a revelation! People take things that they want or need freely all the time -- it's called stealing. Spreading trillions of dollars among billions of people results in everyone in the world having about $5000 for their ENTIRE LIVES. And that's if you don't spend it at all! And you know what? There will still be people who want more. A lot more.

Hey, you. Yeah, you. The guy with the $30K a year starting salary, with the $150K earning potential. You think you could really get that in a country where the wealth was "evenly distributed"? No, you'd be making about $5K a year. You know why? Because there would still be some way for someone else to get that extra $25K of your salary. Because he "deserves it more". Or, because someone else said so.

You can't tell me that trading between countries is the root of all the eploitation/oppression people experience around the world. You can't tell me that an international meeting that is trying to find a way to GET MORE JOBS and pay people MORE MONEY is going to hurt and exploit those oppressed people MORE. You can't tell me that communism, or socialism, or imperialism, or any other anti-capitalist revolutionary concept is going to give all these oppressed and exploited people what they need. I could examine this: Canada -- not entirely socialist, but they got the health-care thing going -- their financial standing? Multiply by nine, divide by five, and add 32, man. It's the Fahrenheit dollar to our Celsius. (Hey, look, the one thing we do decimally.) Russia -- a month's pay for a loaf of bread? Yeah. Right. China? China can't even control its population, let alone its finances, or its government for that matter. Why do you think Taiwan wants out? Why did the Soviet Union fall apart? The most successful Communist country to date is Vietnam. A real poster child there. Look at Afghanistan. Or, wait, don't, at least not until the land mine explodes .... okay, now you can look. Look at what essentially a religious oligarchy did there.

Now look at the United States. A massive capitalist "empire" where people have rights, people have money (most of the time), and people have at the very least an opportunity to get what they want or need. What's the difference?

The difference is, capitalism is about using the money you have to make more of it. Money flows; otherwise it's worth nothing. Money flows via trade; we are not, by far, a self-sufficient country, nor should we be, and money is the way to get what we want and need as a country and as a society.

Capitalism is what allowed you to have the time and the freedom to go protest itself. Capitalism, and a free speech clause.

And no, I don't worship capitalism. Capitalism is not THE answer to everything. There is no one answer. The real problem that no protest, no petition, no boycott can solve is this: humans are fundamentally flawed. We are not perfect. Were we perfect, there would be no oppression, no needless suffering, no poverty. Were we perfect, we wouldn't need anything. We are NOT perfect. We are greedy, selfish bastards who want distribution of wealth simply because it means more for us.

I am a poor person. I am a white chick who grew up on a farm on the outskirts of suburbia in New Jersey. I am a graduate student making $14K a year (with $50K in debts from school alone) and struggling from paycheck to paycheck in a dual-income household with my fiance, the unemployed sysadmin who makes 2/3 as much as I do on unemployment. (Which we wouldn't have without capitalism, by the way. Did Russia pay people who didn't work? I don't think so.) My fiance grew up in the ghetto in New York City. My parents have worked all their lives at a job that keeps them in the red every single year and yet, because of legal restrictions on land use, they can't ever give up on. And yet, I refuse to protest the international trade that could result from the World Economic Fund, and the World Trade Organization, and FTAA, and NAFTA, and all those other related groups, because I know that in some way, it will benefit me by the simple fact that there's going to be a chance for me. I know that I will be able to make the money that will allow me, and my fiance, and maybe even my son, to live a better life.

I can say that confidently, because I know that trade encourages money flow, which encourages job creation, which encourages opportunities for everyone. I can say that confidently because I have the balls to be thankful for what I've been given. And I can say that because I accept the ramifications of the choices that I make.

It's not the system, it's the administration. Protest THAT.

And by the way, if it weren't for all that capitalism and foreign trade, there'd be no New York (founded by the Dutch and conquered by the English), no Statue of Liberty (a gift from France), and no little New York City souvenirs (made in Taiwan). So it's not all bad.


Addendum 2/4/02:

After a couple more hours of discussion on this issue after this writeup was posted, there are a couple of distinctions I think I need to make.

First of all, Capitalism does NOT mean Big Business. In fact, I'm kind of anti-big business. Think about this; who really wants a Microsoft for every single commodity on the market? Capitalism is the only system to genuinely encourage free enterprise. That is, if you've got an idea that's marketable, you can open a business! Yes, even if someone else had the same idea, if you can sell it, you can open your own business! Now, you might get bought out, but that's laissez-faire capitalism for you.

I'm not saying that's a good thing, either. Big business causes suburbs, and at the rate we're going with our Big Business Mania (Target, Wal-Mart, Barnes and Noble, Starbucks, Costco, brand-name outlet store complexes, etc.) the only open spaces left in fifty years will be parks or the Midwest. I actually left a Trader Joe's today because it was riddled with yuppie family time. Trader Joe's!

But I'll save my small business garble for another rant, another time.

I'd also like to try to clear something up about government intervention. There is no way to have an economy without the government. The government HAS to be involved. Defense contractors, education, national debt, it's all part and parcel of economic flow. One of our many problems as a nation is that our government is too busy regulating our bedrooms, our uteruses (uteri?), and our chosen states of mind to bother enforcing ethical business practices. Of course, that's also probably adversely affected by the fact that most politicians make six times as much money from donations from big businesses for purposes of "looking the other way" as they do from their government salary. We need to tell our leaders to take charge before it's too late; the Microsoft anti-trust case, which you can read about for yourself, is a prime example of "too late". Half-assed efforts are not what we need; look at all the anti-trust lawsuits in the early 1900s because the government "looked the other way". Again, another story, another time, but you can't avoid the fact that the government has to be involved in anything that can affect the economy. Look at Enron. On second thought, don't; they'll claim you shredded papers.

Maybe the answer is to have a bunch of poor people set up a new capitalist, democratic system and see what happens when people who suddenly have a glimmer of hope of having money someday do with that feeling. Or, we can wait 10 years and see how Afghanistan does.

I think that's all I have to say for now. Thanks for listening, and don't forget to tip your waitstaff.

I'm so far down most of you will have run out of votes, so har har.

Today on the bus home from work I sat two seats behind a girl. There were four of us on the top deck of this bus, so I felt okay about sliding my Creative Jukebox volume up a notch or two. So a couple of people hear I'm listening to Cathy Dennis after The Sundays, big deal.

As I stared vacantly ahead I could see this girl looking left and right, initially out of the window and then focusing on the glass. I twigged she was catching her own reflection, and started to get curious. From the back she had messy shortish black hair a-la Charlotte Hatherly which had a blonde and red patch at the bottom.

She was pretty young, looked about 15 or something, but dressed more like an older girl. A really nice indie chick type of long jacket with 'frilly' shit on the collar and cuffs. She's put on quite a lot of mascara. Not like a HUGE amount, but just enough so that you'd notice, or at least think to yourself 'she's wearing mascara'.

Anyway, that's it. I like natural music videos, they're going to be my 'thing' if I ever make music videos, cos all you have to do is film the view of a train or something. Dammit, the Chemical Brothers beat me to it. Although their's isn't really that natural, it's computer generated so that the bushes and other trains flash past with the tune. Amazing. Onnnnnn WEEEEEDD! (sorry, too much Half Baked viewing for me!).

And this was a very nice natural music video.

Thus concludes my first and hopefully last Daylog. Note to self: no E2 posting while out of it.

Timoteo

There's nothing stupider than a muke.
I didn't know I was in love with you.

You were the boy I missed every night as I went to sleep crying. For years.
I didn't know I was in love with you.

You were the boy whose image I attached to every love song I heard. Even the ones we sang in church.
I didn't know I was in love with you.

You were the boy I told: I love you, I care about you. I said I was jealous of your dog.
I didn't know I was in love with you.

There's nothing stupider than a muke.

Last week, I had to tell a man I wasn't in love with him. Because I had to think, long and hard, about what love meant, and what kind of love I wanted.

And I didn't know until then that I have been in love with you the whole time.

And I told you today.
Eight years later.

You said, "I know."

But you don't feel the same way.
I didn't expect you would...
But I had to tell you anyway.

They took it away.
They took my computer from me as punishment. I cry alone now. I'll miss E2. I'll miss all my friends here. I'm going to be spending a lot of time at the public library and will try to node once in a while. I thank you all for all your support and I hope someday to be able to spend too much time here again.

I'm so very tired lately and slept right through the alarm to get up to go to the doctors and now my parents have taken the computer as punishment. I meant to get up. I really did but I'm so tired and it's so hard to fall asleep. I have to hurry up because my best friend is going to go with me to the doctors. I have to get the staples removed from my leg. I just wanted to do a daylog and tell the people that keep an eye on me here why I'm not here as much now. Thank you for caring.

Ya know... I've realized a few things.

  • Taking a shower should not be an endurance trial.
  • Putting earrings back in should not entail breaking a sweat.
  • Brushing one's teeth should not involve needing to sit down first.

    I think I over-extended myself today...

  • I wrote this today, and left it in a silly place, it was promptly removed. I repost it here, in a moderately more appropriate location, to be found at some point by its hapless intended victim.
    I love you, but not enough. I could never love you enough, no matter how hard I tried. I could let myself go lax in my studies, and devote all my time to the care and feeding of this love, but still, I could never love you enough. It's not you, my dear, you're not broken; you're too perfect to be broken -- the way you casually accept my wildest devotions and my most ludicrous moments of failure with nothing but a charming smile, or perhaps a wicked glance just breaks my brain. I am at a loss for adjectives when I am with you -- there are no compliments in our native language that are suitable to you, and the few I remember in other languages are damned near untranslatable, and we don't speak the same range of tongues. But, then, we hardly need to speak, do we? You always seem to understand what I mean. I could say "chicken chowder", and you would know I really meant that I was horribly depressed and heartbroken. Sometimes, I hear your voice in my head -- some bit of witty patter from another place, another time, and I smile to myself. Other pedestrians stare at me, but I hardly notice: you are the whole of my world. i love you, but not enough, and it scares the living shit out of me.
    Without you, my prince, and that unholy tall kender, I would be an unredeemable bastard. You grant levity to my bitterness, and for your trouble, you are both held dear to my heart.

    On a less happy note, I seem to have eaten a bran muffin which contained some insidious allergen. My head is pounding and my throat is swelling. *sigh* The only redeeming quality of mild anaphylaxis is that it isn't severe enough to kill me. This, too, I assume, shall pass...

    Ugh, what does it take to get transfered out of tech support!?!? I have unfortunately reached that "so competent we don't want to lose him" stage, so trying to get transfered to the development side of the company has been a trial for the past year or so. Even more so when we got acquired and the whole division that ate the old company got put on a hiring freeze.

    Still, my manager's been pulling for me for the past month or so, and it looked like I was good to go over to the QE group (Quality Engineering aka testing). They're definitely impressed with my technical know-how (not surprising since I've been in support for almost four years and know half our products inside and out, and can pretty easily fake the other half). Then today management drops the bomb that the open personnell slot they thought they had is apparently not available. Still, I'd apparently interested QE enough that they're going to see if they can pull some strings to transfer me anyway. Of course, this meant that I had to spend most of today essentially writing up a resume listing all the great skills I can bring.

    Oh well, I guess I'll spend the rest of the day surfing through the userfriendly archives to try to cheer myself up.

    Who the hell am I?

    As pretty much everyone knows, I've been struggling to find out exactly who I am with regards to those big questions of sexuality, gender identity, and how I fit into the world. Well, I came out at work today, told two of my co-workers pretty much everything about my struggle to find exactly what my gender is. I didn't want to do it, not yet anyways, but what's done is done, I guess.

    It started out as normal office banter. I was talking with the two main office administrators, women in their mid-forties who had seen a lot more of life than I have. Somewhere along the way, I said something I probably shouldn't have, at least not right now, dug myself into a hole, and found myself looking at two sets of eyes probably wondering if I had finally gone off the deep end. Realizing exactly what I had done, I figured I might as well just be off with it and let the chips lie where they may.

    I talked about the general malaise I had been feeling about my gender, a feeling that had been within me for a very long time. I tried not to get into too many details, as I said before, I really didn't want to get into specifics, especially there; it's not exactly a subject for the workplace.

    They were supportive, and strongly suggested that I look into getting professional help, and determining if this truly was the right path for me. We talked briefly about how to tell my parents; both of them strongly suggested I hold off telling them until I had seen a psychiatrist and determined my true feelings. We talked about how to pay for what may be very expensive treatment; I'm in that awkward income bracket where I'm too rich for most subsidized mental health care, and too poor to afford medical insurance which will provide a decent amount of treatment. I guess that's one thing I'm going to have to determine - are there any programs that I do qualify for which will give me the services I know will be helpful.

    Almost as quickly as the conversation began, it ended. The warehouse guy, someone who I definitely don't want to talk about all this with, came in, ending the conversation. We all returned to work, and didn't speak about it any more. I'm sure the topic will come up again; it's not exactly the kind of thing you can talk about once and forget about.

    Through the whole conversation, I was of that odd mental state where part of me wanted to tell absolutely everything, and part of me wanted to tell absolutely nothing. I didn't know if they were going condemn me for my mental state, if this was going to end up getting me fired, if I was going to just break down and cry, or what. I was sweating, but at the same time, feeling great. It felt relieving to talk about these emotions I've had bottled up inside me for a long, long time. Who knows what will come of this? Nothing? Everything? Maybe that elusive happiness I've been seeking? All I know, is what's done is done, and there's nothing much I can do about it now.

    My girlfriend broke my nose today

    Sitting around at home on a Friday. We both have a day off. This is unusual. It wasn't so long ago that I would find out her days off and arrange to have mine on different days. But things have changed. I have fallen back in love with her recently. I had to put both of us through a lot of shit for me to realize it, but I'm glad that it has happened.

    Anyway, we were sitting around the house on this cold rainy day. Bored but in a pleasant way. One thing leads to another and before you know it, we are emulating our favourite wwf stars. Imagine the mind of a person who watches professional wrestling. She's HHH and I'm Kurt Angle. No, really, this isn't a euphamism for sex. I'm showing her how to do a body slam, right there on the futon. This is the real deal, in-Japan futons here. None of those make believe ones you get in the west with the slats under them. Sooner or later she wants to win one, or at least go for a pin. "you could at least pretend to lose", she whines. Okay I say and job to her. Here's the plan. She'll fling me off the wall, bend over to toss me over her back. Then I'll get up and suplex her, from the sitting position, I mean, she is a girl and all. I forget the rest of the plan, but no doubt it involved me letting her think she was gonna win, and then crossing and beating her anyway.
    All goes well until halfway through the suplex. I get her up, but then drop her, back first onto my face, driving my nose back into my head. She of course is unaware that there is a snafu and somehow doesn't see the copious amounts of blood until after she makes her first real pin.

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