A Tale Told in Two, Maybe Three Parts. Part Two
Entry 10/27/2022 03:07:44 PM: Mentat 1920
All right this entry is going to be a bit more frivolous as I wrestle with how to say what’s going on within the homestead. That and as anyone that knows me – if it’s going to cause me excessive amounts of anger, rage and/or fury – will avoid at all costs because of the bad habit of putting myself through the emotional hell while trying to describe it. I digress.
After the entry in April, Spring became Summer and then Summer finally became Autumn. Let me tell you that Summer here while being worse than what we experienced in the first years of us living here, but also the heatwaves we experienced in the Tundras of New England. 95 F (35 C)? 100 F (37.7 C)? 120 F (48.8 C)? Yeah we had all those temperatures – routinely – through the days of the summer. Nights weren’t much better with the coolest we saw through the summer was 75 F (24 C).
Rain was all over the place. Sometimes we had near drought conditions. Other times we had so much rain going on, you’d think we were having the rainy season after a monsoon. There were times thanks to all that rain that I had to wait for weeks for the backyard to dry enough to actually mow. And if I haven’t said it enough: thanks to the construction companies using the cheapest sod for the “instant” lawns for the properties and because of it, while the front lawn is easy to manage, the back lawn is like a jungle with some fescue so thick it can take 2 – 3 passes to not only get it cut down, but cut evenly as well. This also meant that while I got my exercise – it took anywhere from 90 to 180 minutes to get the yard completely mowed properly. Sometimes even having to do it through two days because of how thick the backyard was.
The truth is that even with the passing of the Autumnal Equinox in September, the temperatures really didn’t cool down to 75 F (24 C) in the afternoon and 49 F (9 C) in the evenings/early morning until sometime last week… With the occasionally death throes for the summer happening if we have some serious high pressure front in the lead of another incoming rainstorm. So far there had been at least two of these death throes. Enough that the A/C which has been silent only until my mother was baking something, to randomly turn on through the day when the house was heated more from the outside than the inside.
They changed construction companies/contractors to the area because the company that built this home and the other homes in the area. Company’s name is Alvarez, but thanks to me quick reading the sign in front of the estate/area, I thought I read it as Alcatraz.
I even thought a snide comment like, “great, the new estate is being build by prisoners out on work order” or something of the sort. I chastised myself once I reread the sign and knew it was my error, yet the snide comment remains stuck in my head for some reason entirely based on instinct.
In the half-year that it’s been talked about from me either verbally or in blog entry – there’s been some work going on about the roads for that part of the subdivision along with some of the pipes and sewer lines being laid down. And so far only one house has shown up on the property that they own. I believe it’s supposed to be the sales office, but it doesn’t remotely feel like the one that DR Horton had used for their administration on the site during the last 4 years. I get the impression that some of the stay orders for the construction of new houses in the area along Hwy 25 seemed to have been lifted (as houses are being built closer to the corner of Highways 190 and 25), it doesn’t feel quite the same here. Particularly when you consider that what little construction and heavy earth moving equipment I’ve seen in the barrens of the proposed area don’t seem to be doing all that much. And workers seem more concerned about making sure the first house – down at the end of the street – gets constructed before doing other work around here.
So maybe, the stay order for this subdivision hasn’t entirely been lifted as I suspected.
Although one good thing did come out of this stay and partial construction. The other side of the road that connected the subdivision to Highway 25 – which has been blocked off by a fence since the time we moved here – has been entirely removed. At least with this change, we have at least two ways to come in and out of the subdivision instead of the one we’ve been using for the last couple of years.
As for the neighbors. I still don’t talk with any of them. But unlike the warmer receptions we got last year, and earlier in the year during the post hurricane clean up, I get the impression that while the men do their perfunctory waves and nods… women on the other hand completely ignore people’s existence while they’re driving in or out of the neighborhood, or give this sort of disapproving stare if they don’t know/recognize you. Can’t be sure of their body language as I’m not usually wearing my glasses when I’m walking in familiar territory, I can make out their facial expressions when they pass by close enough. Eh, it’s bound to happen. Humans are territorial after all, and if you’re not recognized – and believe me, most people don’t because I seriously self-isolate since moving south – I “must” be a threat of some sort.
That’s about it for part two. I’m off to finish the first season and then call it a night as tomorrow I have to make a call to my doctor’s office about refills on lancets and test strips as I continue to have a few problems with using the tool properly. Until the next time.
A Tale Told in Two, Maybe Three Parts. Part One
Entry 10/26/2022 02:03:06 PM: Mentat 1919
Six months…
Seems that it’s been six months since the last time I tried to come up for air and write about something. No excuses and less stories at the moment though. Just dive right in and start with the pandemonium. Where to begin with all this madness?
My annual physical went well with some of the usual flags that I was expecting, and one flag I wasn’t… I survived hearing the usual, “your kidneys are sluggish” (yes I know, I have inherited my paternal grandfather’s gout, but it’s also because I often work through all the water I drank the night before and didn’t start it until I get home), the “your glucose, LDLs and Triglyceride levels are a little high.” But my doctor wasn’t entirely happy seeing my A1Cs and said that I would need a follow up in three to four months to ensure that it wasn’t an issue with my dietary intake as she knew I had been laying hard on junk foods post New Years like I always do.
Fast forward 3 months and I went into the office for my routine follow-up blood tests. In and out, nobody got hurt, and I was off to return to the house and waiting to see what those results will be coming in, which was going to be sometime in two or so weeks.
I saw the results (through the app). They looked the same as they did after my Annual so I assumed it was just more of the same. I didn’t get a follow up call, I didn’t get any follow-up e-mails requesting contacting the office for a Telehealth Conference.
Days, weeks and a couple of months go by… I didn’t think much about it as I thought that if my doctor wasn’t getting in contact with me – it was just more of the same.
Two weeks ago, when I went to pick up my routine hypertension medications – you know, the one that can only be refilled every 30 days – the pharmacy tech tells me that “…in order to get this prescription refilled again, your doctor wants you to call in and set an appointment…”
I pooh-poohed it off to the pharmacy tech saying it’s probably time for my annual. And when I got home, set an appointment with them for early in the morning.
I went in on Monday of this week. Two days ago, in fact.
The long and the short of it is that after a quick Blood Glucose Test coupled with another 3-month A1C screening, it turns out I have Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus without complications thanks largely to the fact that most of the firstborns on my mother’s side of the family develop it. After a bit of a talk with my doctor about it and the history/experience I have with Hypoglycemia and family Diabetes, I have the following to look forward to:
- Cardiology exams – at least annually – to ensure that the diabetes doesn’t affect my Cardiomegaly (although the truth is, I suffer none of the symptoms listed and the only symptom I have is laying on my left side in a certain way, I can usually feel my pulse).
- Ophthalmology exams to ensure I don’t develop glaucoma, and ensure that no damage is going on with my eyes.
- Podiatry exams – but thanks to my knowledge on what needs to be done when it comes to neuropathy, it’s currently in the no-rush state at the moment, as I didn’t neglect that quite like my aunt who has it.
- And lastly another follow-up consultation (in three weeks), while around the same time a Diabetes Education class.
The Cardiology exam is going to be made once the doctor receives the referral letter/approval from my insurance and they’ll contact me when it’ll be done. Ophthalmology is set for the end of next month.
Of course, nothing goes modest or minor in my life when it comes to health. Like my blood pressure reading done seven years ago and being a whopping 225/158 (or something along that line), my Glucose level was at 247 mg/dl.
Because of all these findings, two new medications have been added to my daily routine, along with a Glucometer (One Touch Ultra 2), with lancets and blood testing strips. As you can see here:
Yay me! I’m turning into my (maternal) grandmother with all the pills she used to take. And my aunt with this tool always within reach because of the fluctuations in her sugar levels.
In the two days I can tell that learning how to use this glucometer is more difficult for me than expected because while I am mechanically inclined and I have the memory to being able to mimic things, observations does not always mean personal experience. And in two days I’ve gone through double the amount of lancets, and almost triple the amount of blood test strips for the machine. Tomorrow I’m going to need to call the office as to how they want me to go about re-ordering the lancets and strips for the machine.
Funny thing is that my aunt and my mother have routinely made comments about how annoying the lancet pricks in the fingers are either painful or annoying or both, but the truth is that thanks to my infancy and toddler ages, I got really used to needles because of all the blood drawing that used to be done. Hell, even the phlebotomist usually makes a comment about how little I react to the blood drawing during my annual examination. Including unconscious/autonomic reaction. Even with the failures so far, the pin pricks for blood drawing are the least bothersome about the use of that meter.
And in two days, my glucose reading has gone down to 140 mg/dl.
That’s all the medical and health nonsense I want to talk about right now. Tomorrow, or the next day, I’m going to start on the other crap going on in the last six months. I want to watch a bit more of Ragnarok. Yes, the one with David Stakston. The language might be doing my head in because of my experience with German over Scandinavian, but at least it’s not as bad as it used to be. That and the story about the Norse Gods and the Giants is definitely something to behold.
Until the next time.
No, this is not for April Fools. Not at all.
Entry 04/02/2022 01:05:25 PM: Mentat 1830
I know I haven’t written a public blog since about the new year. On the one side, it shouldn’t be too surprising really given that I’ve been suffering through the post holiday blahs, coupled with the extremely psychotic weather of the area. On the other side, I’ve been dealing with family and personal issues and the non-stop tug-o-war that created. But more on that in a few moments while I try to deal with the mundane before I get into the struggles and the frustrations that caused for me.
To begin… The Post-Holiday Blahs struck first, and that struck me hard this year. More so than any of the years that I’ve taken off for the Thanksgiving and Christmas Holidays since I started on entertainment Usenet groups since the mid 90s. I would like to blame the fact that this is post COVID isolation repercussions/reverberations, but the truth of the matter is that as I’m sitting here and thinking about it; the isolation requirements in these post omicron COVID days, I’ve been pretty much secluded for through most of my life since living in Atlanta back in the early to mid 90s. So this really isn’t much different really. Good friends know me well when they say, “you do no suffer stupidity, ignorance, or patronizing bullshittery lightly. And believe me, in the last three months I have witnessed and even personally experienced Olympic levels of this in the last three months. to sum it up as eloquently as humanly possible, if I were to describe the level of blahs (coupled with frustrations) I’ve been having in a single video-linked phrase, it would be this one.
I tried surfacing and resurfacing (that is being a presence in all the usual places) a couple of times, but quickly went back underground and enjoying most of my solitude with my cat being more present in my proximity in some way or another. Hell, to give you an idea, this is what I’m looking at right now as I’m working on this entry:
The last couple of weeks Moe’s made it a habit of ensuring following me everywhere he can (just as long as he doesn’t hear any loud noises or the dog going ballistic for gawd only knows what reason is going on in that dog’s head), then he’s “you’re on your own” for a couple of hours before returning back to ensure I’m where I’m supposed to be and doing nothing that would make him think I “abandoned him” to the dog and the rest of the family.
Now for the ever present psychosis of the weather here in the Taint of the Bible Belt. Basically I didn’t have the usual two seasons that come from living here in the Deep South. We had Summer, followed by a hotter than average Autumn, followed — what can best be described as — Mother Nature completely skipping her daily doses of Lithium and singing every day, “I don’t need this! I’m perfectly all right!” Since the New Years, temperatures have been frequently fluctuating between 40 F (4 C) through to 85 F (29 C). We’ve had at least two tornadoes touch down (knock on wood neither of them were nowhere near my hometown). Also in these three months we’ve had a horrible medium strength rainstorms to “Noah, get the boat” moments of torrential thunderstorms. And thanks to these rainstorms all passing through the area, they bring with them warmer temperatures from the tropics to make sure that temperatures reach 75 – 85 F (23 – 29 C) before dropping back to typical winter-like weather when the rain has completely passed through the area.
The good news is that we’ve only lost power through all of this once and for no more than 90 minutes one late afternoon/early evening. The bad news is that because of how topsy turvy to psychotic it’s been — it’s caused me to have some difficulty staying asleep as the barometric pressures rise… And they rise every time a new storm is blowing into the area. Thanks to all this, according to my various health info I’ve been averaging less than 7 hours of sleep a night just prior to the storms. This alone is probably one of the biggest contributor to my negative attitude since New Years…
The other came wrapped up with my family. The truth of the matter is, my mother’s health has been declining in recent months, but it’s not entirely because of her age. The long and the short of it is that she’s been eating poorly for more than 2 years. Couple this with her inappropriately taking in her recommended daily water in a house with HVAC (which is new to her as we’re Yankees used to having a lack of centralized heating and air), and she’s worked her way into dehydration. I thought she learned her lesson on this back two winters ago when she had to be rushed to the hospital for dehydration and needing saline IVs to recover from that, you’d think she’d’ve learned..
But no!
We go through that a second time. But the second time let’s add malnutrition to the mix and we have a hot mess involving the need to be calling an ambulance and a rush to the hospital for a 4 day stay to start the process of recovering fluids, showing my mother how to properly exercise both for muscle reinforcement and BPPV which she has acquired during her decline.
Four days in the hospital and a few weeks of occupational/dietitian and physical therapists later the several weeks since her discharge, I’m finding myself in a never-ending battle of teaching my mother the value of a High Calorie/High Protein diet, on how to plan eating according to this, and how to avoid her never-ending want for calorie shortcuts with inordinate amounts of sugary foods and sweets instead of protein and carbohydrates. And hell, how to be able to plan through the day so that she doesn’t end up with either a caloric deficit by the time she heads to bed, or having to eat more than she can handle at the end of the day.
Leaving her to her own devices she has — at least three times — not even made it to 1800 calories intake on her own (never mind the way protein and carbs are well below that 1800 calorie limit). Two of the times I had to make a concession that Sunday is considered a “rest” day where she didn’t have to eat 2200 calories/22+ grams of protein/380+ grams carbs and the third day I had to go into argumentative mode because she was trying to cut down her intake to less than 2,000 calories a day. Couple this with when she got to 100 lbs. (45 kg), she declared she could stop the diet completely because she was done. Mission accomplished and all that, according to the passing remark from the dietitian. Never mind the fact that she had anywhere from 4 – 20 lbs. (2 – 9 kgs.) to be in her ideal weight for her height. Never mind that after this diet, she’s going to have to be maintaining 1500 – 1800 calories a day intake in order to maintain her weight and energy requirements. But this is a battle I’ll be better ready to confront when we reach that bridge.
As I said to my friend the other day, I can see why my brother and my mother never got along. They fight the exact same way: a combination of flat out dislike of something, coupled with the stubborn disposition of they’re right, you’re wrong. With the icing on the cake is that they will belittle you every step of the way either through ignoring you or make you walk a minefield until you give the hell up and leave the room in anger, frustration or complete contempt.
Seriously on three separate occasions, I have thought of either calling the dietitian or her primary physician to explain the problems we have on the homefront to ensuring she’s eating properly, and continuing the weight gain. I also wanted to discuss the probability of an eating disorder (after all, my mother has been on some sort of diet for losing weight for the better part of 40 years), and either supply better suggestions to ensuring she continue to take care of herself, or have some method to getting her to stop fighting me at every opportunity for her self-improvement.
At least the good news out of this, so far, it hasn’t reached that point: I haven’t had to make any calls to her physician. I can see my mother has mulled through much of what I’ve explained to her and actually makes an effort to eating better. And she has finally admitted that she understands that I’m trying to do my best for her well being and that I’m not trying to sabotage her attempts at doing things her way and only her way. It’s just one of those back up plans for that “just in case” moment where she’ll do it her way and cheat in the process. That’s something my brother learned somewhere and something they do share in common..
That’s where I’ve been for the last three months.
All in all, it looks as though until my sleep patterns return a better normal, I might be able to write publicly with a little more frequency. Until then — it continues to be a struggle here. I’m off to post and watch something else I stumbled across. More on that another time.
Lessons in Honesty and Disingenuousness
Entry 01/20/2022 11:34:25 AM: Mentat 1790
I’m in a hell of a rampage right now. I was watching James playing New World last night and for the three hours that I was there, he was making a mockery of the bullshit lines that he feeds me routinely when it comes to Warframe vs. other games. He says that he dislikes farming in Warframe, but there he was in New World fishing and farming through not one or two streams, but several.
All right, I see what the problem with this is and called him out on it.
Then he counters with, “I like killing in in Warframe…”
There’s a problem with this as you can see here:
James is on the left, I’m on the right. Based on his mission hours vs. total kills he’s averaging about 512.78 kills per hour, whereas I’m looking at 574.86 kills per hour. Further, I’m sitting on (easily) 1,102.69% more materials than he has (if I were to use gross income as an indicator to materials collected in the game).
I’ve completed 5 planets with him on Steel Path and while he might enjoy the killing — he doesn’t do the necessary whole-mode killing required for running a mission — let alone the consistent team support killing for any marathon farming mission that he constantly implies (like doing in missions like Mot (Tier IV Void Survival) in order to entice me to the challenge. Instead of reading it as a taunt, a challenge or a good-natured ribbing; I’ve been reading like a manipulation because I know that he needs to farm for materials.
The logistical problems for this is that he’s too melee main, and for another his kit for Steel Path is too small and niche and needs to not only be examined; it needs to be seriously worked on.
To make matters infinitely worse, he’s using Steel Path to mastering and leveling up weapons he hasn’t even worked with, let alone min-maxed in any appreciable way to running marathon farming runs. What’s he’s doing, is saying it’s his playstyle and coming off as an excuse to me because he has said “…the rest of the game is boring…”
This makes little sense to me as I’ve been playing the game for 8.5+ years and have watched Warframe evolve to what it is today. Steel Path is not for leveling up and is not for min-maxing. It’s was added for players that have spent their time in the normal Origin Map (Solar System on normal mode) and “wanted the challenge”. The developer added enticements to this game mode (inherent Drop Chance, Resource, Credit, and Mod Drop Chance Boosters) to make it worthwhile for the run & gunners to getting the materials that they didn’t farm in normal mode, but even based on the experience of playing what I have, it still pales in the amount of materials I have farmed through the normal map… FOR YEARS
In conclusion, I’m interpreting what James as telling me in two ways. The first is that he’s using the word Playstyle in the wrong manner and is attempting instead of playing a looter-shooter (like Warframe) as though he were playing a roguelite (like Hades for example). He is then pigeonholing his gameplay in Warframe as though to make it personally appealing and enjoyable, and making people come along for that ride.
This is being silently reinforced based on his want to getting more Steel Essence through map completions and routine fighting the Acolytes that show up, which is a form of farming that he selectively doesn’t loathe. While he admits he wants it for the pre-built Forma — I know that based on his casual conversations, he also aims for god-rolled rivens through luck and gacha-like gambling.
The second is that while he has joked about going to high level Steel Path missions (for the enjoyment), the fact that he has routinely commented on it through the 5 planets, I’m reminded of the saying “There is a grain of truth in every joke”. Because of this, I’m feeling he’s either being dishonest about his intentions, or disingenuous about his needs within the game and because of my playstyle of helping a squad, am being manipulated into helping with the wants and needs.
These conclusions are reinforced ad nausea, ad infinitum when looking at his arsenal (and his profile) and seeing an appalling lack of forma in his weapons and warframes, along with the affinity numbers for what he has used since he started the game, as he has more affinity (XP) from squad sharing and playing in open missions than he does on his own.
Normally, I loathe dishonest and disingenuous people because if I have to read between the lines like I have to finding the truth, then they normally don’t belong in my life. But as I’ve learned through the years, sometimes I need to give a person the chance and the opportunity to come clean and not disappoint me. As Garibaldi said in this scene here.
I know I’m going to have to confront him on this tomorrow. Right now, I’m putting my anger and frustration up to the universe in the hopes of shaking it out of my system.
We just lost power here and we’re waiting to see how long it’s going to be out. Until the next time.
Post Edit: Two hours later everything restored without issue and I’m back. Off to rest relax…
Resurfacing in the New Year
Entry 01/01/2022 11:54:55 AM: Mentat 1781
2022 came in with a lot of haze and overcast, in spite of the fact that last night the neighbors seemed to have spent an obscene amount of money on fireworks that seemed to have made more noise than the previous year. As I said publicly in the usual spots (e.g. Twitter and Facebook), it made me think that people were trying too hard to celebrate the New Year because 2021 had a whole lot of shittiness, paranoia and fear going on with the non-stop media attention to the various strains of COVID and how people tried to make up excuses for not going through the booster/vaccination process for a healthier world. I got the distinct impression that it was a whole lot of, “dammit we’re going to have fun and screw the fear and depression” in spite of the fact that fear and depression is still present and continues to remain with all this mismanaged anger and lack of taking responsibility going on.
Honestly, I’m not sure how I’m going to be reacting to that fear, paranoia and stupidity; but I can tell you right now my patience is at its end when dealing with it in the Facebook groups replying to the state governor’s messages trying to cover that precaution. And if I continue to witness and encounter it, I swear I’m going to turn as crotchety and as curmudgeonly as I used to be in Usenet more than 30 years ago.
So I went through my COVID booster a couple of weeks ago, and let me tell you if the second shot hit me like a truck back in May, the December shot hit me worse. I got the chills within 10 hours of the shot (indicating that I had a fever going on), then I had massive amounts of aches and pains for the next 14 hours after that made it next to impossible to do anything. At least at the end of 36 hours, I had recovered almost completely and shortly after that I was back to being right as rain.
Then last week I went through the influenza shot and thanks to Strain-B which was part of it, I had nausea for the better portion of a couple of days. It didn’t help matters that when I was warmer than usual, the nausea crescendoed pretty badly in the morning and I thought I was going to throw up. I can guarantee I didn’t (as the last time was when I got Norovirus years ago), but the feeling is annoying no matter whether or not you do.
As for this weekend, as it’s time for me to checking through last year’s resolutions, I have to say I did appallingly bad.
Last Edited: 01/01/2022 05:47:41 PM
I’ve been thinking a bit about it and I have to say that while it feels like an excuse, I can tell the problem with my not doing what I should be doing about self-improvement and more positive habits had everything do to with the fact that I was intentionally lying low in the household because of the sort of negative behavioral attitudes that go on here with some people’s incessant bitching and whining. Instead of addressing the issue, both internally and externally, I did what a beaten down cur does in allowing that negativity become something like a festering boil that has little to no outlet from purging.
I know, bad Michael. I of all people know that only creates the sort of negativity that makes living in any environment intolerable and I end up bottling up all sorts of anger issues in the process. For a while during the last part of the summer, I was beginning to feel like I had some sort of explosive PTSD-like anger issues because of all that bottled up negativity. And then shortly after that I was just shutting it down and finding other things to completely bury myself in, in order to make it mildly bearable.
Because of one of the things I wanted to stop — playing video games — I went into playing games for almost 10 times the amount of time than I should have in order to escape the noise I often heard from other parts of the house that were causing me stress.
Tomorrow, I’m going to need to sit down and work on some of my resolutions, carry over other resolutions and otherwise begin the deconstruction of those anger issues in order to stop it from festering within. That’s about it for the time being. Until the next time.
Perhaps the last entry for 2021
Entry 12/11/2021 01:21:06 PM: Mentat 1770
With the Christmas Holiday only two weeks away; I continue to maintain my tradition of withdrawing from the public and either lurking when possible, or sticking to avenues and people that I know from experience that either I know their energies well enough to brace against (or toward), or have the calming effect on my nerves that I like to be around to ensure I maintain a positive vibe. Because if I go into areas of high stress, or are the wrong sort of hyper — I will find myself either more stressed or more apt to snap at any form of stupidity. Especially when I go outside of those avenues.
And believe me, I come across a whole lot of stupidity during the holiday season.
And of course it does not remotely help the fact that while we’re in December and I should be expecting weather in the 40s (~ 8 C) for the morning with upper 60s (~18 C) in the afternoon. what’s we’re getting instead is low 70s (21 C) in the evening, with the temperature getting up to 80s (26+ C); 100% humidity with the threat of rain that never seems to happen. Hell, even with my body being used to the thought of cooler weather for the late fall, I’m noticing that it’s causing me some difficulty trying to sleep through it as my room — and especially the house — feels stuffy when I wake up in the middle of the night to head to the bathroom making me feel warmer than I should be. It doesn’t help me any because years ago, when I was living in Atlanta and my dentist suggested I remove the silver-amalgam fillings for ceramic (AKA Composite-based), when the temperatures shift hard from cool to warm too quickly — my teeth feel like they hurt until the temperatures return to a sort of constant/normal for the season.
All in all though… I’m in pain, I’m annoyed, and I want to hide under the bed and wait until it all just passes. Hey, at least the one positive that I have going is that out of the 6 years I’ve been on my beta blockers, I haven’t suffered a migraine. *knocks on wood*.
At the moment, I feel pretty bad in the guilty sort of way when it comes to a friend who I routinely tell them that my door is always open no matter the time. Only problem is that the one morning he called while I was able to chat for a while, there comes a point where I can’t continue anymore and feel the want and need to take a shower and get dressed (along with making coffee). Then this morning when he texted me, I had shut off my phone because I woke up before my alarm usually goes off (at 5 AM), got up to try to shake off the discomfort from the heat and insomnia, before going back to sleep. I woke up again at 07:24 and saw that my text messages forwarded to my iPod (which was received an hour before I actually did wake up),
While I maintain an open door policy, I feel rather disappointed with myself because those words seem rather hollow at the moment between my being more introverted during the holidays and shutting off my phone because I didn’t drag my phone with me when I woke up to walk around the house or read something boring (like technical manuals) to make me sleepy enough to go back to sleep.
I believe that I might be overly high self-critical. Then again, given my experience with some people and their standards — that’s also rearing it’s ugly head.
There might be one or two more entries for the year. Otherwise, I’ll be in the shadows until 2022. Until the next time.
This is when judgment replaced curiosity
Entry 10/31/2021 08:37:30 AM: Mentat 1745
While I slept miserably, I realize that it was because of the feeling of dread and disgust that came from listening to a friend of a friend’s podcast and realizing the veneer of researching and the truth was just that: a veneer. Now I’ll explain based on perspectives and instincts that were going on while I was listening to the man ramble on for the better part of an hour.
He said that unlike the other news sources he would be doing research, with quite a bit more stress on the word research which tweaked my curiosity. After all, I’m always interested to see how the information researched was going to be interpreted through personal filters. Then came a whole lot of glossing over some of the subjects that the podcaster was going be covering, including Holistic Curing Methods and established cover-ups, a romp down the road of “conspiracy theories”, “truthers” and all sorts of buzz-words associated to the dissemination of the truth, and an assortment of nifty tidbits that were definitely on my list to seeing how this podcaster was going to deal with them.
What I was left with, was an assorted mess of half-truths, lies believed to be the truth and positively no research performed on any of the points that the podcaster wanted to make while at the same time foisting a personal agenda that unconsciously felt more like the sort of radicalized ideas that I used to get from some conservatives (and religious fanatics/zealots) that tried justifying that homosexuals were not human and deserved the stoning and the beating they got for trying to push “the gay agenda“.
What started the podcast turned into a jeremiad on the podcaster attempting to promote an agenda of the conscientious objector that it was his right to deny the company mandate for a company-wide requirement for the now FDA approved COVID vaccination with strong leanings toward my right and my body. It took quite a few minutes to something that felt more like the truth to the podcaster, I discerned that in his ramblings that the reason for the dissenting conscience wasn’t simply the right to object, but a careful weighing of the need for the vaccination and the podcaster’s unique medical conditions. That the potential threat of health and life if he were to get the vaccine and his decision against it. Instead of attempting to understand that Truth and Understanding is three-edged sword, the podcaster instead decided to use his rancor for the company that decided to fire him as a platform of anger and hatred for their actions because of his conscientious dissent.
I agreed wholeheartedly with – even support — his decision as it was thought out in some way based on the perspective of the podcaster. What I didn’t agree with is how it was getting buried in the pontifications I hear from people trying to use, “it’s against my religion” as a shield to their objections.
For you see, I also understand the reason for the strict — even draconian — method of any company saying, “do this or else” and you’re stuck having to make the decisions between the company policy and personal beliefs. At the same time of being that management, there are too many Peters crying Wolf about a health-related mandate with those dissenters that continue to crying “personal freedom” and bring their problems into the workplace.
The rancor that he had use to push his agenda came off more selfish and butt-hurt than understanding and fighting for the rights of individual against draconian company policy. And because of that rancor, I wasn’t seeing his actions anywhere near the realm of selflessly motivated nor the actions of an activist fighting for rights, but instead the actions of a selfish, spoiled child throwing a tantrum because the choices he made came with the consequences as stated by corporate policy and the general wellness of all individuals working in that corporation.
Never once did the podcaster ever go down the road of alternative medicines, let alone comprehending the use of the phrase “conspiracy theory” (Which is as I understand it, a set of events and a perspective on an incident or a situation based on unsubstantiated proof and even personal perspective often foisted by the thought of sinister governmental agency instead of working on the understanding the perspective of Hanlon’s Razor) or why a phrase like “truther” carries with it a strongly negative connotation.
If there was any research done, I didn’t get the impression. There was no references to sources used for the research. Further, when the opportunities to perform and sort through the sources (for that research), it was nowhere to be heard from the podcaster. A good example of this was where the podcaster liked the part about the National Enquirer being a credible news source because — in his words (and I paraphrase as I’m not going to re-listen to it) — “…they have their reporters up in trees…”, the podcaster referenced back to the movie Men in Black as one of the sources for his observation. Sitting here this morning I found the scene in less than 3 minutes. The problem with even using the scene as credible is the scene is a lampoon at the credibility of Tabloid news. While this perspective does cater to the possibility of Tabloids containing truth in them, too often they are bought into based on the quote, “One swallows the lie that flatters, but sips the bitter truth drop by drop.”
I also found myself having a knee-jerk response that comes from the podcaster saying that people covet America for their art and something else… I stopped listening at the moment because I began remembering the things in my wanderings in the world and the attitudes I often caught from Americans outside of the United States long before 2012. I was seeing the sort of attitude in this clip in the 80s and 90s when I was traveling the world and trying to learn more about the world around me rather than just the blinders-on world I was seeing in the United States. Basically outside of the United States most human beings see Americans as Ignorant, Self-Centered, Ill-Mannered, Uneducated, Stubborn and meddling in too many things then they should. And that opinion is just scratching the surface of the opinions I’ve encountered since I’ve been an adult and wandering the world in real time as well as virtually.
I think it was when the the podcaster reached the part about politics, the middle east and Muslims, was where he was painting a broad stroke on both radicals and Islamic Conservatives, and when I really began losing interest in his podcast. He was coming off as a conservative with too many anger issues and using too many stereotypes to supporting his agenda all the while lacking any sort of research as to the findings that he was trying to foist. Further, I had personal issues with the use of the word Philosophy because the questions and the agenda he was pushing had nothing to do with finding answers to the universe and human life. No instead it was the typical shield clattering and rabble rousing of “America! America! America!” and what makes America such a great place to be. It reminded me that the podcaster is just another voice in the isolationist movement of cutting off the borders and keeping America inside a set of walls away from the rest of the world through the elitism that comes from the fractured and old thoughtform “We’re the best”.
The podcaster did get one thing right, even though I strongly believe he missed the point because he focused too much on American Comedians. Comedy is a good source for getting a pulse on humanity and their perspective at the time of the jokes the comedian says regardless of where in the world the comedian is from. It’s a good way to making light and putting light on the sensitive subjects that cause people discomfort by making people laugh and thereby shaking them up to re-examine their perspectives.
I remember watching Jimmy Carr in a video once showing the fine line between comedy and offense and unfortunately I can’t seem to find it again on YouTube. Oh wait, I think I found it in the series Riskiest Joke Volume 1 and Volume 2, although it’s not the original video I saw that did give me a moment’s eye opening.
Wrapping up for the day and wanting to shake off the moral disgust I feel for the half-truths and selfish agendas the person foisted in the hour I listened to, I wish the podcaster well in his search for compensation for the corporation’s decision to fire him for his Conscientious Objecting to the COVID vaccine. I however cannot in good conscience nor moral obligation to human need and self-improvement feel the want to reach out and help him morally, emotionally or even financially. I wash my hand, and look to balancing myself out from the moral turpitude I feel I got from the encounter. Until the next time.
A quandary and potential situation
Entry 10/19/2021 01:31:52 PM: Mentat 1737
I’ve been in a hell of a mood today. While the good news is that I got plenty of sleep last night (again in spite of the fact that it’s still saying I was up more times than I actually was), I continue to be cranky about it all. So, what I didn’t write about yesterday was the things that’s been working my nerves the last couple of weeks… The next door neighbors. Seems that their still allowing their dogs to shit in their yard and it’s now beginning to happen into our yard as well. I wanted to write the HOA about this bullshit attitude of theirs, but it turns out that the e-mail address we got about animals not on leashes is a do-not-reply sort of e-mail leaving us to the whims and dealings of a face to face with them. Now, the problem is that the mother works long hours and I’ve seen her in nurse’s scrubs so whatever the job is, I know she’s probably working long and infrequently routine hours that it’s next to impossible to catch her. And if there’s a father he’s rarely if ever present or working third shift making it next to impossible to catch him. And whenever I see them, it’s the teenagers and that won’t go well because of either the age gap, or the attitude that Zoomers usually have to boomers and older people — so, it’s a wait and see when it comes to the parents of the house for the reasons of either disrespect or the parents getting all Karen-like about someone old enough to be parental meddling with the affairs of their children.
And the truth is, I get tired of trying to sit outside or do yard work of some sort or another to catch adults to talk about the situation, so I was hoping for an easier solution to the situation. And I don’t want to be an ass or passive aggressive about it and leave them either a note or their dog-shit in a bag in front of their door. Instead I went looking for alternatives to handling the problem.
Shared it in Tim’s Twitch stream and while some of the suggestions to the situation were something to think about and reinforcing what I know about the situation and the environment I’m currently working in. First and foremost is the fact that I have a bad habit of being extremely blunt when I talk to people about things I find extreme displeasure on. Then there’s the fact that while I might be gay, they won’t see it. Instead they’ll see me as white. And the less friction it might create, the better things will be.
The problem is that the ass tried to make the typical sophomoric jokes about it by saying things like, “be a Chad and shit on their lawn in response.” And many of his responses to a lot of the things I said was completely oblivious of the post-Trump race hatred bullshit that many of the locations in the Mid-Atlantic to Deep South suffer through when it comes to racial differences between people in a deeply Republican area. But then again, I have some serious and severe issues with the ass because too often his sense of humour blurs the lines between funny and bullying and instead of owning up to the possibility of crossing the line(s) that he did, he tries to blow it off with the same attitude of “I’m joking” that sexually aggressive and sexual predator people trying to cover-up their toxic and horrible attitudes.
Frankly I can’t stand him. He’s too trite and tries too hard to be an asshole to people if he gets the opportunity. While I can’t be sure whether he’s trying to be cute or if this is a defense mechanism compensating for something, I frankly don’t care after the kerfuffle I’ve had with him. Further, his work ethic is hypocritical as he’s like, “I don’t play games when I’m at work because I’m there to work…” but he has absolutely no fucking problem chatting up a storm on Twitch even when sitting in a team meeting with his boss. The hypocritical part of this was that he turned all holier than thou when it came to my suggesting not playing games even if working from home.
I’ve been trying to give him the impression that I don’t want to deal with him — like a typical Murican it’s going to take a brutal hammering to get the point across. And Tim — being Canadian — is going to find it too sadistic, brutal or uncivilized. So I’ll stick to being vague and southerner about it and wait patiently to see whether the message will sink the hell in.
That’s about it for the time being. I need to continue to put myself to bed early so that I can get more sleep in the night. Particularly given that for the next couple of days the temperatures will return to being more like summer and not autumn… Again. Thanks, but really can this pass so I can sleep more with the window open? That would be lovely.
Until the next time.
Thoughts during Hurricane Ida and the aftermath…
This is going to be a flat copy and paste of the thoughts that I had while running from my laptop on battery. It’s sort of an organized jumble that was going on as I was dealing with life without the Internet with my mother, her husband and the animals here in Louisiana as we lived through Hurricane Ida and the aftermath…
Be prepared, it’s going to be a missive so skip over it if it’s too long and too rambling.
Entry 08/30/2021 12:05:18 PM – Mentat 1707
I’m taking a moment to come up for air while waiting for the power to be restored. Yeah, Hurricane Ida didn’t hit anywhere near to town, but we lost power about 2130 last night which at the time of this entry, we still don’t have any power. Currently doing the ghetto thing and charging my phone off of the battery on the laptop in spite of the fact that I shouldn’t be doing so, but it’s just something that I needed to do because I’ve been heavily relying on it and it’s causing a serious drain on the battery. Even with power saver mode on. I got the battery up to 35% on the mobile and I’m seeing about 5 hours of power on the laptop, and with that things are rather copacetic at the moment. My mother and her husband’s mobile carrier is still offline in the area — which I find odd given that it’s something that locals would be using more than Tracfone but my phone is not only connecting to the network, it’s also allowing for calls and SMS messages too and I’ve contacted Tracy to let her know that we survived even if there’s no power in the neighborhood.
We have water and we have gas so at least we can cook if we have to. Also get washed up too. Hopefully we’ll get power back in the next day or two or else we’re going to be needing to cook everything in the freezer and that’s not a fun thing to do.
Took a walk this morning down to Hwy 25 to see the condition of the road and when I get there at about 0730, not only were the tree cutting and collection trucks out there, but at least two electric trucks were checking/surveying the potential damage for the area. So hopefully sometime this evening we’ll be getting power back. Either that or tomorrow.
While the power was out, I also too advantage of clearing out and re-oiling the fans that usually make the most amount of noise when they’ve been running for long periods of time and then suddenly shut off. I also too advantage of swapping out the video card back to the 750 TI to see whether or not I did finally fix the fan so that it wouldn’t be sounding quite like a jalopy. I won’t be able to restart the machine until the temperature gets down to about 74 when the A/C kicks on — but I can take advantage of turning the UPS back on to getting the battery back to 100%.
I think the biggest problem I’m having at the moment is the fact that because the temperatures in the house are warmer than usual and we have higher than usual humidity — the ear wax it causing my tinnitus to be louder and more persistent than I wanted it to be. I began cleaning my left ear (which is currently louder than my right) and I’m hoping that with the double dosing I’ll be doing in the next couple of days I’ll be able to clear out that pain and annoyance. Then it’s the right ear to see whether I can get rid of that pain as well.
The neighborhood is pretty much keeping to themselves. While they are being friendly, it’s the sort of guarded friendly I prefer as I don’t need people getting into my face through the post-hurricane clean up.
Not too much else at the moment other than the fact that the dog is annoying as fuck because of all the noises going on outside which she has to bark at as warning because apparently we need protection. My cat doesn’t like the noises from outside the house so he’s hiding under the bed through most of the morning and day, and will only come out if I go looking for him. After playing with him for a little bit, he’s back under the bed minding his own business.
Not too much else other than it all being the waiting game. I’ll write more tomorrow if we have no power. Otherwise, until the next time.
Entry 08/31/2021 12:19:38 PM – Mentat 1708
News continues to be inconsistent when it comes to the aftermath. Through second-hand news we’ve been hearing anywhere from the end of the week to the end of the month. I’m going to go with the end of the week given that it’s more optimistic and it’s not the sort of thing we have to worry about when it comes to the worst case scenarios. Although I’m thinking that it’s high fucking time to start some sort of movement against the news in the fact that they tend to rush it out without any fact checking — or they make shit up until such a point that it’s panicking the locals all for the sake of ratings. However overall, this shit has to stop as it’s not helping anyone and it’s ending up with the sort of bullshit that causes more harm than good.
For example, we had news of where the Hurricane Ida was going to make landfall, but the local news was reporting it as “near category 5”. NOAA on the other hand was reporting it as Category 4. Seriously… Near Category 5?! What the fuck is the point of reporting it as such when… wait for it… the NOAA continued to report that when it made landfall it was still a category 4.
I was also able to confirm that the reason why the boot-up was taking so fucking long has to do with the fact that unlike the desktop which doesn’t start SysMain at the time of boot up — the laptop does. Although the difference between the desktop and the laptop was that the laptop has it set automatically to start, and the desktop had it running manually. Frankly, I see no reason to be running SysMain on the laptop seeing it has half the memory of the desktop and I really don’t need so much shit running at the beginning given this is supposed to be a combination one and done and being able to get up quickly to chat, write and what not instead of waiting for everything to load at the start only to have marginal speeds once SysMain has done all it’s necessary read-write.
Still, I’m noticing that the laptop still has insane amounts of battery and I continue to use the ghetto method of charging one battery with another (iPhone to laptop) so that I have some power for it even though I can’t get the thing to 100%.
Contacted the landlord with the pictures and telling her that the house survived along with us, so things are normal for that for the next couple of weeks.
Now it’s all a matter of waiting and seeing when things will get back to normal here. At least for the rest of the week. What we have to do after that remains to be seen.
Can’t connect to the Fitbit site, so that means that I can only wait for another two or three more days until that data goes to pot. Whatever. I’ll treat it as a “vacation” and will just keep trucking on in the hope that I can get power back before the end of the week.
That’s about it for the time being. I want to be able to charge the phone another day if it continues to be like this. Currently up to 36% and that’s 3% more than the day before. I’ll let the power get up to whatever while the laptop battery drains to 80% if only to be able to write a bit more come tomorrow or the next day. Which I’m sure I’ll have more to talk about.
Until the next time.
Entry 09/01/2021 08:11:11 AM – Mentat 1709
Let’s try this again as I’m running into a problem with it creating a new month on a new day and decided to crash when I saw that the information for the 29th, 30th and 31st was not populating in the calendar view.
My mother’s husband tells me that the local news has reported that the local electric company — Cleco — has made a public statement saying that they’re still “assessing the situation” and continued to say, “it will take some time for them to completely understand the situation. There are three problems with this. The first it’s coming from one of the local news stations that is well known for reporting the news on the impending hurricanes, tropical storms and tropical depressions showing that the weather map with the storm cutting straight through the New Orleans area whether or not the storm is actually heading in this goddamn direction. The second is that the PR report from Cleco is the most generic we can get post storm, in spite of the fact that the other day I saw the DPW was already out on Hwy 25 performing the usual tree cutting and tree clearance and had been done for this part of the road by mid-afternoon. The third is that I’m getting this second-hand, from a man well known for believing the bullshit news (AKA Fake News) from affiliates like Fox and CBS and thinking that they report what can be called “the truth”. More on this in a moment as I have more news for that.
The problem with this sensationalistic and often vague news is that it doesn’t calm the sheep and the easily panicked. In fact, it does the exact opposite as it prevents them from thinking clearly, sensibly and even beyond the end of their nose and will cause them to rush out in a panic and collect as much as they can grab before running either back to their house or evacuate to somewhere else with this hoard leaving those that either weren’t fast enough or strong enough to collect these things leaving them to suffer their own fates.
I don’t believe the news at all, because the assessment was done by someone trying to prove some sort of superiority with his panic. Something I have natural Yankee skepticism toward, particularly given that I’ve seen this sort of news in the past and am less likely to believe it when it’s reported because what they’re not saying is often more telling than what they are saying. This bullshit doesn’t remind me of Katrina either given I was living in Atlanta at the time and all I could do back then was look on with idle speculation. I had other issues at the time to be more concerned with — the least of which was me dealing the Rick and his bullshit tricks of making my life a living hell. No, this is reminding me of the various blizzards I’ve survived through in the north and Narragansett Electric (changed to another company I can’t be assed to remember their name) and the vague responses they were giving year after year when it came to what sort of damage was done, what sort of clean up needed to be done, and just how over-cautious the PR statements were in the hopes of avoiding various lawsuits in the process.
I’m still projecting that power should be restored to parts of Covington by the end of the week, and failing that, I told my mother that they should be looking into evacuation to somewhere there is power so that they can enjoy electricity more than here. Particularly when you consider that they’re 20+ years older than me and this sort of temperature is going to only rise the longer we go without electricity because summer is far from over here in the south. I also told her that in the next couple of days she should be looking into water conservation because if she’s an example of the waste that’s going on with water for the whole of the subdivision, we’re going to be dangerously low on the water sometime by then as well.
Which reminds me… She hasn’t been drinking water, but instead Ginger Ale, which I will have to fucking remind her Carbonated Water is not water. Yeah, she confirmed it — she hasn’t been drinking water since we don’t have ice. And of course she’s giving me the usual lip service of, “I can’t…” yeah, fuck you you can’t. I can, you can. Jesus fucking Christ and they wonder why I get easily pissed off. All this stubborn stupidity.
But the more on this… I was chatting with my mother’s husband about the mask mandate as he has to work somewhere which has it posted because of the Parish mandate and it became clear I had in my household the perfect example of the crazy fucks (AKA Keyboard Warriors) I deal with online. Even though I got the complete vaccine, the first thing out of his mouth was, “why do you fucking care? You’re vaccinated.”
Never mind the Delta and Lambda variants. Never mind the fact that the Delta variant seems to bypass the vaccination and there’s preliminary reports that it’s possible the vaccine is making people more susceptible to COVID. Never mind the thought that by wearing a mask, I continue to set an example for the sheep that think they’re immune or worse that it’s just a form of influenza virus and that the public thinks they fucking know better than PhDs, Doctors and Specialists in the field and will do the same bullshit people used to do when the Bubonic Plague was spearing and using bullshit remedies (like drinking piss, or rubbing shit on themselves to cure it), in this case using Ivermectin which will cure roundworm and the the invasive form of worms that cause Rosacea but has little to no effect on COVID because this isn’t a worm-like virus — no this is a bacterial virus.
I didn’t say any of this. I saw in his attitude and his eyes that this is fucking America and we don’t wear viruses. And Fuck You for thinking that we should. Wearing masks is perfectly acceptable for other countries like Thailand, China, Japan, etc. but for Americans — this is an affront to for the American Way.
You’d think after it was proven to us back during the Bush Administration that America was no longer isolated and independent from terrorism as it hit on American soil back on 9-11 that this fucking mindset Americans have we’re no longer an isolated country immune to the actions and activities going on in the world. That instead of doing the “we know better than the rest of the fucking world” we Americans would begin to incorporate a more world community mindset. And it’s not happening. Either through lack of proper education, or cliquishness stupidity, or even selfishness — it’s just not happening. And it’s making us such a fucking laughing stock both to the rest of the world, and to those here in the country that see this willful ignorance being what it is.
That’s it’s for the time being. Until the next time.
Entry 09/02/2021 11:34:39 AM – Mentat 1710
Day four without power and we’re currently somewhere between the hopeful and the annoyed stage. Milk has gone completely bad — but that was entirely expected. The frozen food has been completely defrosted and while it’s still cool in the freezer portion of the fridge, it’s only a matter of time before we’re either cooking it in the hopes of it lasting a couple of more days, or because my mother is a boomer and isn’t thinking things through, just throwing it out because “…it’s not fresh.” Seriously — this is what pisses me the hell off about her sometimes. She raised her children to think about saving and completely making sure it’s usable before throwing it out, but now that we’re out of the house she’s picked up her mother’s habit of throwing things out because she can. And of course when I question her on this, I get her usual bullshit response of, “get off my back” or “stop picking on me”, with her completely forgetting that I was raised with her attitudes of ensuring everything is saved and scrimped and used when it can no longer be usable.
Take for example this morning. She sent her husband out to pick up a couple of things, which he picked up some creamer, 2% milk (in 2, one-quart canisters) and half a pound of ham from the deli which was the only meat available at the store. What does she do? She says, “we’ll have grilled ham & cheese sandwiches tonight” completely forgetting that not half hour before she said to her husband that she would be making Pork Chops instead.
When I confronted her on this, she’s like, “I’ll make them tomorrow.” Excuse me, we don’t have any electricity and we can’t be sure that come tomorrow the we can’t even be sure about whether or not the pork chops will be good for tomorrow. It took her another half hour to forty-five minutes to reverse that “idea” of hers and she’s currently making Pork Chops & homemade Spanish Rice. Yeah, the ham was picked up today so it’s a good chance to last a couple of more days, but what’s left in the freezer will either have to be made or thrown out.
And that fucking annoys me also to no end because it’s not like we can make the hop over to the local supermarket as people are lining up outside of them around the building, because like everyone else in the area who have no power, can only take a little to get through the day with and hope that tomorrow we’ll get our powered restored. We’re going to have to deal with it as much as the rest of the locals have to, and that means a whole lot of waiting in line and whole lot of empty shelves while the supermarkets are selling out what they can while they wait for power to come back on and they can call for more deliveries.
Then there’s the husband who thinks he’s doing a bang-up job with the dog as Maggie only half listens to him (usually when it’s the most convenient for her) and like my mother are constantly countermanding whenever she looks toward me as the alpha of the house. She definitely doesn’t listen to anyone when she’s barking up a storm because of the noise she hears outside, and nothing he can do has brought her under control. But he definitely continues to talk to her like a fur-baby thinking that with consistency she’ll suddenly understand everything that’s being demanded of it.
Yeah, right. This is why he has to punch her in the hopes that she’ll stop what she’s doing and instead is the primary reason why the dog growls at anyone that tries to raise their hand or tries to discipline her. Me included.
Because of her constant barking, I’ve had to make sure my cat stays out from underneath the bed. Because he’s been hiding there constantly, he hasn’t been eating, he doesn’t drink from the faucet unless I’m always there and coddling him to ensure that he stays on the counter to drink from it, and definitely doesn’t drink from the bowl in spite of the fact that the water is still changed daily. So far, he’s definitely showing more life today and seems to have drank more water than he has in the last couple of days. He’s also been more vocal and purring with routine since he’s not hiding under the bed and that’s definitely better than he’s been the last two. I’ll check to see whether or not he’ll drink again later on when things start cooling down.
So the hopeful part. Through second hand information, my mother’s husband confirmed seeing buck trucks for Spectrum and AT&T and that’s usually a sign that they’re going to be behind the power company when it comes to fixing the wiring on the poles somewhere in the area. Whether it’s going to be completed or not for this neck of the woods by the weekend remains to be seen, but from what I remember from my days at Cox Business; power company has priority, then telephone and then cable. As there’s no central telephone anymore because of the Ma Bell Breakup coupled with the fact many of the baby bells have gone into the telephone/cable business, they’re somewhere between second and third place.
That’s about it. Tomorrow, I might have more thoughts that I didn’t share today. Until the next time.
Entry 09/04/2021 01:16:36 PM – Mentat 1711
Day six without power, although I can confirm that there are parts of Hwy 25 with power less than 2 miles away and when my mother and her husband went out this morning for some ice and food for lunch for them — they were able to confirm that there are Cleco trucks working on the downed power lines north of M P Planche heading toward Folsom. So it’s possible we might be getting power back either for Labor Day or the day after… Hopefully and god willing.
Power has been completely restored for Hwy 190 all the way up to Claiborne Plaza (with my mother’s husband works at the packie and cigarette shop, there are parts of 190 between the Bogue and Winn-Dixie which my mother and I typically shop at that are still without power. But I think it’s more a fixer-up for the wiring there because it seems odd that there’s no power at the car repair place where where they’re selling generators.
This is also why I didn’t work on an entry yesterday because I had been dealing with some thoughts yesterday from the previous entry that had me thinking carefully.
Sure I can identify the problems and the cancers that come from American Society — from the selfishness to the “me first” to even the bullshit attitude that comes from the stupid application of patriotism (e.g., This doesn’t happen to America or Americans) — how can I possibly address the issue in such a way that will slowly change that cancerous attitude that has crept into the woodwork when I’m one person in an isolated instance who tends to be more online and in real time? How can I possibly expect to be able to change all this anger that I encounter day in and day out — both within my own home and in the world immediately around me?
More often times than naught people don’t tend to listen to me even when I’m not being the snarky and sarcastic bastard that I can be, and go full on into denial mode thinking they know better than everyone around them. And no matter what I can say either intelligently, or in anger or even in the way that can cut a person straight to the bone — the try their best to only see what they’re saying for the sake of spouting bullshit for the sake of it.
It’s like a never-ending flood of hate and anger and no amount of turning the other cheek — let alone offering a compassionate hand — will stop let alone abate their anger. It’s like they don’t know how to shut it off within themselves to begin with.
And sometimes, as I see all the anger and the hate, I continually ask, “what’s the bloody point of even trying?”
I’ll keep working on this thought. I’m sure this was something my grandmother had to face on more than one occasion when it came to her Christian Faith. Yet for the longest time, I remember she kept trying.
And with that, I’ll try to conserve the battery a little bit more. Until the next time.
Entry 09/05/2021 01:07:51 PM – Mentat 1712
Day Seven without power and it might be a couple of more days before power is restored. More on that in a minute.
Slept like shit last night. Couldn’t tell what time it was and I kept drifting in and out of sleep through most of the night. This made it hell for me as I had to get up and walk around more than a few times through the night in order to shake whatever was going on within me. Once I did and I could see it turning daylight toward the eastern sky, I knew it was time to wake up.
Getting up this morning, my mother’s husband got me into full panic mode when he mentioned that everyone on Sylvia and River Park Drives got their power back and we were still without power. Tried to correct the fuck that everyone in the back area is still running on generators, but he was fucking determined to be right because god forbid he could be wrong, and his proof was that all the houses that were running on generators last night had lights on in their houses.
The full panic mode comes from the fact that if Joyce was out of power, it would be out of power for weeks as subdivisions and smaller sections of a neighborhood would have low priority to getting repaired. And that meant we would need to be worrying about getting my mother somewhere with air conditioning either at a motel, hotel or somewhere else other than this house given we have nothing but dry foods left that’s still edible — and of course my mother constantly does the fucking pushing everything off because it’s good at the moment and can last another day (no it can’t but that’s also in a moment).
In panic mode, I pushed off cleaning the fridge and went to take a shower, getting dressed and taking a quick perusal of the neighborhood. Long story, short is that the power from Catherine Street to River Park Drive remains off-the-grid and doesn’t have any power, either relying on battery backup or generators of some sort or another. And what the nit-fucking-wit was seeing when it came to the lights was from the generators that they were running last night.
Came home to tell him what I was able to confirm and the selfish fuck pulled a, “I don’t want to hear it” with the typical attitude of, “I’m right, and your wrong.” I blasted into him telling him that he sent me into full panic mode and if he’s going to kick the campfire he had better fucking listen to what I had to say when it came to the confirmation. I even told hi if he left the fucking house and looked around, he’d see what he thought he was inaccurate.
I was fucking livid not only because the information he gave me was grossly inaccurate. but was done based on looking out from the back porch of the house and not something done by mingling with the neighbors. Even got my mother to believe that cockamamie half-truth in the process.
Took me the better part of three hours to calm the fuck down because since the power’s been out, I’ve been slowly training the dog to understanding commands and so far, I got her to understand the following: Sit, Come, No, Down (for laying down), Up (for getting on the chair), and a modest amount of the command “Stay”, which for as long as I don’t get out of sight, or in a direction where she gets the impression I’m going outside — will in fact stay.
Does he use the commands any? Nope! Determined to speak to the dog like a fur-baby which she only half pays attention to what he says at any given time. Doesn’t mean I wasn’t imagining taking a hammer to his skull and beating in the commands that Maggie understands so far.
After a modest lunch of 2 slices of ham, a can of green beans and a cup of rice (AKA a Monk’s meal even if monks are mostly vegetarian), I set out to walk about to get a feel of the neighborhood and perhaps catch a little chat from some of the locals to get an idea on how long it’s going to take to get everything fixed.
Talked to a DEM officer that was testing the water for Chlorine and he’s telling me that the water’s good. Didn’t have much else information but did a little chit-chat explaining that I had been concerned about how St Tammany Parish had stopped the continued construction in the area, only to renegotiate it and the new construction is back on. While he confirmed it’s not an “old boy network” down here when it comes to building practices, he wasn’t able to give me an idea on who to talk to within the parish to confirm or deny the building being back on the go.
Walking around the block, I overheard one of the younger couples talking about the power grid and how we’re still without power and said something about how the power for the neighborhood is being split between Covington and Folsom and that the back end of the subdivision (AKA ours) is coming in from the north and that they’re still fixing wiring north on 25 as they were speaking.
About 30 minutes later — and about 1/2 mile up the road — I can confirm that CLECO is still laying wires out on the poles. While I wasn’t able to get closer to the workers as there was a lot of traffic and some bigger trucks blocking the way, I can only treat that information as hearsay at best, even if it seems to follow Occam’s Razor in the truth in simplicity.
Because of this I think the power’s going to be out another day or two because there’s some mileage between where the construction is going on and where Folsom is.
Coming home and cooling off (even though it seems to have rain coming in at the moment), I’m greeted with the selfish fuck trying to put cokes into the freezer where the ice is for the remaining food, with the smug answer that “there’s still room” which I ignored him controlling my want to taking my water bottle and beating him with it. The selfish fuck could’ve put my mother’s ginger ale in, but he completely fucking ignored the last bottle on the counter, only worried about his precious fucking cold cokes (never mind that he doesn’t remember there’s another one in the pan from yesterday).
At least during the morning when we were waiting for more ice, I was able to clean the fridge and freezer so they don’t stink of rotten food.
Tuesday I think I’ll be heading down to the library to see whether I can recharge my laptop, as well as see if I can’t find out a little about this region. Can’t do it tomorrow as it’s Labor Day after all. That’s about it. Until the next time.
Entry 09/06/2021 11:17:57 AM: Mentat 1713
Eighth day and power was restored for the remainder of the neighborhood at 19:09 last night. One hour into the eighth day of being without power. Amusingly we could hear the kids hooting and hollering when the power was restored in spite of all the background noise going on. While some people were still running their generators, I can tell you that when we confirmed that the central air conditioning kicked in, all the windows in this household were shut so that we could mute out that horrible noise. Took me more than two hours to realize the cooling was on and that the house was cooling, let alone hearing the intake running from the central hallway as my ears were still ringing from all the generators high pitched and regularly sounds going on from them.
Unfortunately for me though, I had a very difficult time trying to fall asleep, and an even worse time trying to maintain sleep last night. First off, I got myself a a fire ant bite walking yesterday when I went to check out the work still going on farther north on Hwy 25. While I tried to clean up the bite area, three hours later I could already see it all reddened more than from the bite area. This means that if the area gets warm, I end up with it being itchy and uncomfortable making it near impossible to sleep or get relaxed without it annoying the piss out of me. Then there was the problem where in the last week of dealing with incredible amounts of heat and humidity and now it’s cool and dryer than it has been which made it impossible to be comfortable either below any coverings — even sheets (making me feel too hot) — or on top of the covers and I was feeling too cold.
Entry 09/07/2021 12:41:05 PM: Mentat 1714
We’re two days with power now and I’ve had a ton of middling things I had to do now that we’re back to a “normal” we Yankees can understand. All of the ice we used to turn the freezer into a sort of cooler has finally been removed from the freezer. While the fridge and freezer’s still looking a little bare, at least it still has some things in it since going shopping this morning, it’s more like a college student or single man’s kitchen instead.
Sleep for me has been pretty damned miserable. Thanks to the fire ant bite I got on my left shin I run into the problem where I’m either too warm which causes me discomfort and a whole lot of itchiness, or too cold if I pull all the covers off of me. It turns out to be a never ending struggle between itching and being too cold for me to sleep. It’s a constant struggle to trying to get comfortable and trying to stay asleep for extended periods of time. Because of that, I often have to get up, get out of bed, stay up for a while before going back to sleep and trying again.
I know for a fact that I’m allergic to Fire Ant Venom, I learned this living in Atlanta and standing on a nest while at a bus stop back in 2003. I know that it takes something like 10 or more bites before I need to go to an ER for either an epinephrine shot or whole body immunotherapy(using the same stuff if it’s that severe). Otherwise it’s a few extra days of pain and torment more than usual for the venom to abate in my system.
This morning, I spent some time assessing when I will be mowing the lawn, and I think it’s going to be done in the next two days. It’s looking a bit on the scrubby side, but otherwise it’s not like the jungles I see from some of the other yards on the street. After doing that I needed to deodorize the trash bin because when we threw all the spoiled food from the freezer (and Fridge), some of the chicken blood from the packaging leaked into the bottom of the bin and if it wasn’t cleaned out, it was making the garage, my mother’s bedroom, the laundry room and even parts of the hallway that smell like a combination of an open sewer and a chicken slaughtering farm. Thanks to that, the garage is also smelling sort of like Fabuloso.
When the power came on two days ago, I didn’t mention that the mold and the Serratia that had formed in the bathtub, the toilet bowl and even on the toilet seat because of the heat and humidity that had been collecting in the room. Was pretty damned gnarly, and given it’s also on the shower curtain, I’m going to need to wash that as well.
I think the biggest news I didn’t mention has to do with my cat Moe. While I understood that he was annoyed and did the old man thing that didn’t want to deal with being touched. That was understandable, I mean when I’m hot and bothered I don’t want to be touched. The problem was that with all the windows being opened and us living on the first floor and Moe’s rather wacky logic that if he can be seen he can be touched, and he doesn’t like strangers touching or interacting with him. That freaks him out.
Then there’s the part that with all the loud noise from all the generators, all the kids making noise outside, the dog barking at every little thing and even my interacting with my family in the kitchen/common room areas, there’s just something about my mother’s husband that he just doesn’t like/trust and will not stay in the room when he’s around. Oh he’s done nothing to the cat, but the cat picks up some of the energies I do, and he just doesn’t like it.
So, Moe acted like a shut-in in my bedroom the entire time and it took about 3 days in for him to actually leave the room at night when everyone was in bed and the house was remarkably quiet. With the Air Conditioning back on, he’s coming out more from the room and will even with with me in the office when I’m sitting here. It took him two days but now he’s sitting in the office with me and will even ask to get up on my lap as I’m sitting watching something on YouTube (or Twitch), or playing a casual game. Unfortunately the other side effect I’m noticing is that when it comes to me going to the laundry room and out of the house through the garage he’ll move with speed to hide under the bed until I come home to collect him. Or he’ll follow me around the house when I’m doing my hourly 250 steps, and even will occasionally get my attention to follow him to ensure he can either get water from the bathroom and will even have me make sure he’s showing me he’s eating from his food bowl. At least the good news is that he’s no longer requiring me to sit/stand there while he’s eating (like he was doing sometimes prior to the hurricane). I guess he just wants to make sure he gets where he’s going without being molested by the dog.
And with that…. I’m off. Thursday it should dry enough for me to mow the yard (we had a freak downpour while I was writing this and it’s more than a little bit wet and will be around for a while). Until the next time.
A Couch Potato Review of the Series: Word of Honor (2021)
I am going to warn early as this is also going to be posted on MyDramaList, I am not going to be a gushing fangirl with all sorts of lines like “OMG OMG OMG OMG this is the best Wuxia BL ever!!! (in spite of the high review I did give there). This is more a reflection of how far some countries have come when dealing with LGBT/BL story lines and how far some countries still have to go to accepting the 10%+ of the population that exists within its borders. I’m reminded to reinforce this concept as the late Mira Furlan once said as the character Delenn of Minbar, “…everywhere Humans go, they create communities out of diverse and sometimes hostile populations. It is a great gift and a terrible responsibility. One that can not be abandoned…”
I have to say that after seeing the teaser for it in my recommended videos on YouTube’s main page, I had mixed feelings of sitting there and watching yet another Chinese series that originally had a strongly BL theme to it. Since watching Guardian which also had a strong BL theme in the book and then turning it into a “friend-zone interest”/bromance my taste for these levels of censorship died in the 80s when I was already some years out of the closet and enjoying more positive and independent LGBT cinema works. In fact in my never-ending study in humanities and the aspects of human love regardless of sexuality, sexual identity and even proclivities, I have routinely found that out of all the countries that I have sampled stories involving LGBT/BL levels of relationship, China and Brazil seem to share a 60+ years in the past Hollywood mindset of killing off LGBT/BL characters to even stamping out through censorship and downplaying anything that might show as sexual tension or even sexual attraction between same sex characters.
Word of Honor carries with it all the typical plots and subplots, contrivances, tropes and hundreds of major and minor characters you’d expect of any Wuxia story. One of the protagonists — Zhou Zi Shu (played by Zhang Zhe Han who I had first caught in another period piece called Legend of Yun Xi) — is a disillusioned and disheartened leader of an imperial force called the Window of Heaven. He imposed on himself the same pain and agony he did while serving as the leader of Window of Heaven: the Nails of Seven Torments which are inserted into a Kung Fu Master’s meridians thereby ensuring that he will only live no more than three years before dying in the sort of agony no one would want to have being deprived of all seven senses and the amount of pain being unbearable. The other protagonist — Wen Ke Xing (played by Gong Jun who I will be looking into more in the future) — that from a tragic past turns out to being the leader of the Ghost Valley (a place of criminals wanting to maintain their criminal lives without ever being part of the human world).
Pros
Wen Ke Xing’s comments towards Zhou Zi Shu when they first met — even when Shu was in disguise — were overtly sexual compared to the heterosexual counterparts both in this story as well as other Wuxia stories I’ve watched. Not to mention the continued overtly sexual and flirtatious comments are definitely a step in the right direction when it comes to the censorship that China continues to maintain on LGBT/BL stories.
Zhou Zi Shu warms up to Ke Xing’s flirtations and attention. While it becomes clear that this happens through prolonged exposure and coming to accept the fact that Ke Xing’s not going to be going away, Shu seems more accepting of the budding relationship going on.
Zhang Cheng Ling’s (played by Sun Xi Lun) acceptance of the relationship between Zhou Zi Shu and Wen Ke Xing without question or social stigmas reminds me of how many kids did the same thing when they found out that their fathers, fathers of friends and complete strangers they encounter in their life were gay or lesbians. This to me has always been a step in the right direction that the younger generations will always be more accepting than the older.
Extra points when it came to Wen Ke Xing’s comments during the second Heroes Conference when he defeated Zhao Jing (played by Wang Ruo Lin) when confronted by all the leaders of the sects attending the Heroes Conference when they discovered he was the Leader of the Ghost Valley even after he was able to prove his lineage leads back to the destroyed sect from the Healer Valley. I don’t often catch when the survivor of some made-extinct sect has been discovered to be the leader of the villains of the story, and his delivery of “where were all the allies when my father was killed” shamed everyone attending to humility a welcome addition I would like to see happen more. Because more often times than naught the lines between good and evil are not only black and white in Wuxia films — they are as unchanging and unmalleable.
Zhao Jing being the center stage of true villainy within the story. Through 20 years of story and grievances, you find out he’s the kingpin of all things evil going on within the story. Wang Ruo Lin pulls off such a character that people can just love to hate from beginning to middle to end as the story unfolds as to how he was involved with all the plots, counter-plots and ministrations that pulled everything together and apart through the majority of the story.
The almost Oedipus-like love/hate relationship between Zhao Jing and Prince Xie — or Scorpion King — (played by Li Dai Kun) going on since Xie’s introduction was positively palpable when he discovered time and time and time again at just how much his godfather used him whenever his godfather could. The way that Li Dai Kun can make such a subtle expression come off as hurt and painful is an honor to his acting teacher and directors in this film. I could almost feel sorry for him as a villain given that his godfather used him every step of the way through this story.
The rich and intertwining stories going on with many of the supporting characters. Namely Liu Qian Qiao or Glamourous Ghost (played by Ke Nai Yu) with Yu Qiu Feng (played by Liu Han Yang), Xi Sang Gui or Tragicomic Ghost (played by Chen Sha Sha), Ye Bai Yi or Sword Immortal (played by Huang You Ming). This is the sort of story telling that can only make the world richer and more living than what westerners do with making the stories so main character-centered.
Ambivalence
I find myself not too keen on the use of the word Soulmate when describing these two (as well the minor set of characters from our Sages of An Xian (played by Yu Zi Kuan, Lu Chun Sheng, Zhang Zhi Wei, Tong Xiao Mei and Yu Zi Kuan) that seems to imply a more polyamorous relationship). While I understand that this might be Ciwen Media/Youku attempts at introducing the concept to China’s mainstream audience in the same way that Longtime Companion (1989) introduced Significant Other to the English-Speaking mainstream, it’s taking a phrase steeped in metaphysical and philosophical knowledge and trivializing it to a euphemism. As though people are that incapable to making the jump from their world into another.
The witless heroes and petty villains of this story. Namely Gao Chong (played by Hei Zi), Mo Huai Yang (played by Wang Bo Qing), Long Xiao (played by Wang Zi Run), his father Long Que (played by Zhang Shuang Li) and Wang Mo Xuan (played by Ren Xi Hong) who I’m sure they had better roles in the book written by Priest, but came off as nothing more than MacGuffins for continuing the story. While I understand that all of these examples are supporting roles to the main character, they seem to be more downplayed than expected and just show up when some plot device needs to be pushed forward and seemed to lack a richer back story I’d come to expect from many of the other characters we were introduced through the 36 episodes.
The occasional CG blunders that pulled me out of immersion and temporary suspension of disbelief. While I understand CG special effects with humans as objects is still in its toddler stage, there were moments when you could clearly tell it was a computer drawn image instead of the actor/actress. Fortunately for me, it wasn’t the sort of routine occurrence I would expect from a low budget series so it didn’t make me regret my decision to truck on with the series.
Cons
I must’ve missed some Eastern/Chinese Mores in the transformation from Shu pushing Ke Xing away from him because he was dying to accepting Ke Xing as a Soulmate to live with through the end of his days. Further there doesn’t seem to be any indication what internal energies changes from Shu to actually see Ke Xing as a Soulmate he could never live without. In fact, because I might have missed the social queue that occurred, it comes off as an 180 degree change without any explained internalized decision how it changed from the character.
The anticlimactic way Zhao Jing was killed off during the avalanche at the end of the series. This painfully reminded me of so many books I’ve read and stories I’ve watched where the writers don’t know what to do with a character/villain hanging by the wayside and instead of letting them be forgotten, choose to just wipe them out through some deus ex machina event to just remove them from the plot. While I might have cheered a moment because it removed a loose end, thinking about it later I would’ve much rather preferred he live out the rest of his days as a mute invalid.
The transformation from pained and tormented villain Prince Xie to two-dimensional and even more petty villain he became fawning over his mute and invalid father while trying to prove just how much of a villain he was and how his father underutilized him through much of the story. If there was a reason to use a dues ex machina to remove a character — I would’ve voted for Prince Xie instead of his godfather Zhao Jing, because it’s clear from a story telling standpoint, he would be used in future stories in some way or another.
The insane way that the theme song for Zhou Zi Shu and Wen Ke Xing gets hammered into the scenes at every frelling opportunity. While I appreciated the extra work that was done for translating everything in the movie (from dialog to street signs to the plaques in the internal scenery, which is definitely more a pro than a con), the fact that the song had to be translated every bloody time it played along with the song playing through several stanzas was enough for me to be off-put wanting to find it. It’s one thing when Chen Wei Ru’s Rice Omelet of Love was used at the beginning of the episodes of HIStory 2: Right or Wrong and a plus when it was used in instrumental form through some of the series… To have it play complete with Lyrics so routinely as to try to artificially manipulate the heartstrings of the audience comes off instead as cheap and cash-grabbing.
The 1950s attitude that EVERYTHING needs to have a tidy ending. Villains are vanquished and dead. Questionable characters defeated and given the choice to live outside of the world they were introduced never to be seen again or killed for their loyalty to villainy, and heroes — other than the protagonists (that will come with the bottom line) — live happy and prosperous. Further, this particular series heavily relies on Shakespearean-like plot tropes of killing off even minor characters if they transgressed against the fealty and filial of their family and/or their Sect Leader. This is why I usually go looking for indie films and series instead; because with them at least they attempt to make it as gray a world and as messy as life can be as possible.
Bottom Line: While it’s clear that it was written in such a way that even the protagonists were going to suffer in the Shakespearean-like way where a non-heterosexual couple has to pay some sort price because it’s not the “norm”, with enough of the Eastern/Chinese Mores learned, coupled with some attention to details that cropped up during the last episode of this particular series, I was able to do what I’ve been doing since I was a toddler. Make the ending the way I wanted it to be. Because of that, even with the twists and turns that were introduced to the story, coupled with how many pros there were to cons (listed and unlisted), I found this to being an enjoyable romp through a Costumed, Wuxia, Period Piece. I might go looking for the epilogue to confirm my suspicions. Whether I re-watch it remains to be seen.
One notable afterthought that comes to mind deals with Wu Chang Gui or the Changing (Impermanence) Ghost (played by Xue Fei). I was incredibly impressed with the vocal resonance which Xue Fei used when he was speaking his lines. While I can’t seem to find any interviews to confirm whether that was his normal speaking voice or if he pitched it specifically for the role — I’m off to watch a couple of movies he did support roles to confirm my suspicions.
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