Half the yard chores done, and fun facts along the way…

Entry 06/29/2021 10:09:44 AM: Mentat 1653

Success! I was able to get the front lawn mowed in order to make the house look pretty, but damned if I can do the backyard and the side “alleys” because of the amount of standing rainwater that’s going on there. While the worst of it got drained off in the backyard because of the fact that the drainage ditches that are there are not properly dug out and only ensure that when the water is running off, it drains out of the area and into the southern sewer/drainage tunnels. The rest of the water usually sits there in the drainage ditch until it dries out. And based on the amount of standing water that’s going on, it won’t be dried out enough for another 3 – 4 days before I can mow the backyard and the side “alleys”. I’m going to be keeping my fingers crossed because the weather reports for the week indicates cloudiness and threats of rain and thunderstorms for the next 9 days. Ugh! Thunderstorms today (chances between 40% – 50% for the afternoon), but after that? For the next 4 days the percentages are low, but like New England living here is also based on the old Yankee saying, “if you don’t like the weather, wait a minute“. Amusing that the original quote is from Mark Twain describing New England weather when he was visiting (although he said to wait a few minutes). The link I posted points to it being modified to the Midwest because of the tumultuous way winds and tornadoes can happen out of nowhere.

When I was commenting on it with my mother — as her husband was out of the house for some reason — she had made comment about being sick and tired of rain. I went to do a little research on that and what I found was amusing.

While we moved down here for the temperatures and to escape the four months of snow, between the annual average humidity (which is 6.5% more annually), Louisiana gets more than a foot more rain (almost 31 cm) annual rainfall than where we moved away from. The other thing is that in Rhode Island, we get 4 months of snow and the conversion is like 5 inches (12.7 cm) of snow for every 1 inch (2.5 cm) of rain. That means about a third of that annual rainfall includes snow (and FYI based on calculations it’s somewhere in the vicinity of 15.8 in (40.1 cm)). With that it’s more than 79 inches (2 meters) of snow, we don’t think twice about it because it’s usually a slow melt through the season and into the Spring Months.

My mother will probably continue to complain because Yankees do that with weather regardless of the fact that it’s out of their control, I’ll be more quiet about it because the temperature’s an easy trade-off to the amount of rain we might get. *chuckling* and while I was working out those numbers for this entry — it rained here — just in time as I finished the front lawn. It looks like it’s enough to make the ground wet, but not enough to flood the front drainage ditch. That also means that there’s a bit more standing water in the back and the sides which is probably going to be taking longer to dry out.

Great googly moogly, that means it’s going to be a bloody jungle in the backyard when it finally stops, and that’s going to be pure hell. At least 3 bags worth of cut grass and sections of the yard almost impossible to push a lawnmower through. There’s my cross to bear when it finally begins drying out. If it does long enough for me to continue mowing.

In other annoying and amusing news, Moe has picked up a new habit in the last couple of weeks that when he comes into the office, he’s announcing his presence. By announcing his presence, I mean he’s coming around the corner of the archway and meowing loud enough for me to know he’s coming — even when I’m listening to things with headphones on. It’s not like I can’t see him, he’s all black and while the hardwood floor is a faux dark oak, it’s not as though I can’t see him moving against the background, even in my peripheral vision. I guess it’s because he’s getting what he wants (me signaling him to come closer to pet), it looks as though I’m reinforcing it as a positive and because of that, he’ll be continuing to announce his presence.

Finally, it looks as though I’ll be adding a new physio habit to my morning regimen. I slept facing the left side or my bed this lat night because I got tired of my cat taking up the part of the bed facing the window, so when I was getting dressed I noticed that I couldn’t even get a full range of motion to putting my belt into the belt loops of my pants. And like the times I was beginning to feel Carpal-Tunnel in my left wrist, I’ll need to gently do stretching exercises to get the tingling and the pain out. It’s going to be the same with my left shoulder for the next few weeks in order to shake off the lack of range of movement and whatever pain I’ve been experiencing. Did my first set of low-impact stretching exercises and can already see the improvements and range of motion — so it’s going to be a few weeks before it might return to normal. As always though — if it doesn’t — I’ll have to contact my PCP.

That’s about it for the time being. Hoping to catch a new streamer after watching his VOD and noticing from yesterday’s conversation why he’s not sleeping at night. *chuckles* Kids and their absolute love for Monster Energy Drinks. No wonder he can’t sleep.

Until the next time.

Irks and Annoyance with Small Streamers and their Communities

Entry 06/13/2021 07:28:27 AM: Mentat 1640

Following are the list of bullshit things I am tired of dealing with when it comes to being entertained by smaller streamers looking into jumping into the realm of the self-employed entertainer and whose attitudes will put me off faster than being chatted up by rent boy with the advanced stages of the clap. This is going to be both a rant a rumination as I count down the days to Emancipation Day in 12 days. It’ll sort of be like bullet points as I was feeling particularly pointy-haired the last couple of days and needed to learn how to focus a little better when putting my thoughts together. This is that bullet-point list…

• I’m stupid/dumb

Perhaps the worst one I have to deal with from most younglings (read: Zoomers mostly). Trying to say you’re dumb — or stupid — does not remotely fly well with me particularly when it’s proven without a shadow of the doubt that the profession they chose to follow — both in and out of school — requires a hell of a lot of applied intelligence in order to be successful in it. I’m talking about engineers, programmers, developers, DBA and most things that fall into the Comp Sci fields. It’s one thing to have little to no common sense, or even wisdom — that can always remedied through experience and maturity as Rita Mae Brown once said. But to down play or self-depreciate your intelligence so that people aren’t going to be intimidated by it with the phrase, “I’m dumb” or “I’m stupid” opens up the streamer to the next problem with its own set of consequences: being labeled as a liar — either intentional, routine, and even pathological.

If you want to hide your intelligence, then learn common sense and speak simply. If you don’t want to intimidate people with blinding intelligence, be honest, open and welcoming to explaining the word, words, and phrases that people might find themselves stumbling on. They might work on the stereotype that intelligent people are degrading, arrogant and even condescending, but that opinion will quickly change if you convey charm that comes from interpersonal interaction. And that charm can be conveyed though a smiling and humble demeanor, a calming voice, through being accepting of all walks of life and making people feel safe, and my personal favorite: maintaining the thought of being harmless.

Hell, I am more than willing to work with pure book intelligence without common sense or wisdom. But I will never work with the preamble of “I am stupid” or “I am dumb” as a means of hiding that intelligence. We all have our gifts, and if you haven’t/can’t figured it (for yourselves) out; as once of my favorite sayings goes, “…We are the universe made manifest trying to figure itself out…”

• Be Honest and don’t lie (if you can help it)

As Psychology Today has a couple of interesting articles that I read through not too long ago here and here that covered this point. I understand that we often tell white lies and half-truths if we find ourselves in a difficult position where complete honesty will open up more questions and issues than we’re willing to handle. However, saying half-truths and even white lies routinely can often build up against anyone especially if there doesn’t seem to be an end to them.

This includes my personal favorite that has driven me off from watching more female streamers than male streamers. The infamous Hall of Mirrors I often mention when thinking about specific people. I personally can’t put up with people that do this when it comes to their personality and how they project themselves to the world around them. It’s somewhere between two-faced along with the usual social trappings that come from both liking and hating people at the same time without adequate reasoning provided. When asked, I often observe people suffering with Hall of Mirrors waffle between both like and hate equally and interchangeably.

No thanks to that noise. It’s clear evidence that the person in question doesn’t have a good self-image and projects it to anyone and everyone that threatens their persona in some way — real and even imaginary. Having experience with trying to sort it out what the hell is going on in their head coupled with the sort of emotional and mental minefields going on there (as I used to routinely go through this with my psycho-ex), I’d just assume be a cloistered hermit than deal with such people with this affliction.

And don’t think it’s misogynistic of me either. I know the problems with surpassing and exceeding the social mores that we’re often thrust into based on a binary gender oriented system. I usually admire women more than men when they can excel at becoming the exception to this, I just don’t see it as often as I would like… or hope.

• I’m shit at this game

Another off-putting quality I catch too many Zoomers as well as many Millennials doing especially when they’re variety streamers is trying to say this to cover up just clumsy (and awkward) they are at just about any and all of the games they just picked up and started play. The odds of being a prodigy is rather slim and being a polymath just as slim if not slimmer; so saying you’re shit to imply you’re not going to be a veteran/pro-player from the start of the game not only detracts from the entertainment value you’re attempting to provide but also insults the intelligence level of your audience.

If you don’t know the game and you’re asking for help, listen to the pro-players that are there to help you with it. If you want no backseat suggestions, play it like you’re trying to figure it out. But never EVER use “I’m shit at..” as filler and as reflex because you can’t figure it out. After hearing that three times, I will unfollow and leave. I’m through with it.

• If you have an audience, interact with them. If you don’t have an audience, act as though you do and interact with the imagination that there is an audience present

Nothing drives me off faster than going into a stream and seeing that the streamer is not talking as though he were trying to entertain an audience, but is also being dominated into silence by the circle of friends that are nothing more than a talking head session going on with a Discord Voice Chat. Further, if I hear someone in the talking head session being more competent than the streamer who’s sitting there like a lump on his chair — I’d rather go look for the friend and watch his stream instead. And if they don’t have their own stream, it makes me wonder what the hell are they riding their friend’s ass in order to get the attention.

But all this, “I need my friends to support me to stream”, plain and simple fact is — don’t stream. They’re not helping if all you’re doing is sitting there on camera and not saying a thing. They’re also not helping you pay attention to the stream as they’re usually on one monitor and can’t play the game and see the audience window at the same time from Twitch. And many that do have two of monitors will not want to do your job for you as a streamer. Or worse, the gameplay being performed by the streamer is not remotely near to the energy levels of their streaming.

• Don’t create a (Discord) community if you’re always going to be invisible or constantly unavailable in it

There’s no easy way to incorporate the two thoughts that I have going on here. So I’ll go with them one at a time. Look, being a streamer is much like being a politician or a movie star. You — the streamer — are going to be the center stage of the community that you’re trying to create and foster. This means that many people that join the Discord, TeamSpeak and whatever other servers are still out there are going to be pulling at your coattails to get your attention in some way or another. You are going to be the the first and last point of contact of what’s going on with your stream schedule, whatever community game servers that are going on, and any and all suggestions for games, server adds/changes and ever occasionally the shoulder to support the community you pulled together.

And the sad and hard truth of the matter is that it takes months for creating an adequate management (VIP/Moderators/any elevated title) to being trusted as spokespeople to the streamer/content creator… But never… ever think that you as the Streamer/Content Creator can rest on your laurels and stop communicating with these people when things are in the works for change. They are your first line of defense from the people trying to contact you to figure out what’s coming down the line, and because of that this first line of defense can never ever work in a vacuum.

I recently ran into this as I mentioned in the last entry, and I rapidly began putting together all the thoughts through the current Discord servers I’ve been part of and are still part of, I have seen an obscene pattern where the streamer sets themselves up in an ivory tower to keep their distance from the community they wanted to create. And worse, will do so by either always setting themselves as DND (Do Not Disturb) or Invisible in the effort of deter people from messaging them directly (not that that matters, people will do it anyway).

What’s the bloody use? And what’s the bloody point?

The Bottom Line is that I’m really tired of these streamers and the communities of silence and lack of information that the community provides to both the denizens and the new members coming into the community. I’m tried of the amount of work that I feel has to be put into them in order to feel as though they’re inclusive instead of just another community of people that continue to over-extend themselves in order to find input and finding instead just another community of silence, shit posts, silence and wallflowers that don’t really interact with each other.

I know I set a personal guideline some time ago that I would take a week to follow a streamer, and then two weeks (or one week after following on twitch) to join a streamer’s Discord Server, but I’m beginning to wonder whether I should be extending that rule — including hesitation to making exceptions to those rules when I find a streamer and a community that seems positive as I initially interact with them.

So far out of the four communities I’ve encountered that I was willing to make exceptions for in the last year, one ended this way, another ended this way, and one that I didn’t talk about ended up with me being verbally attacked by a 15 year old that was intimidated by my proper use of English and grammar. The last I still am part of and rather like both he and his girlfriend as they have the casual sort of energy that reminds me of a childhood friend I’ve lost touch with.

Overall, a 75% failure rate is not a positive ratio and is a definite sign that I wasn’t listening to my instincts while I was looking for a more positive community during the aftermath of COVID self-isolation. Those failures are definitely not something I want to trip over (let alone into) again.

And that’s about it for the time being. Off to enjoy a streamer I haven’t stopped by to see since he got himself a girlfriend. Until the next time.

Deeds should always follow words…

Entry 06/10/2021 09:22:43 AM: Mentat 1637

And… Another man washed out of my hair.

Took the start of my morning to decide to work up the courage to say “let’s sit down and have a voice chat” with someone (I was having more than a few issues with) only to get the response “I don’t voice-chat with strangers…”

That was the straw that broke the camel’s back as I had been grappling with ongoing issues the last couple of days with actions that were met with an attitude not entirely unlike “think of the children”, because that completely fucking invalidates the whole point of handing out VIP (on Twitch) to anyone. That doesn’t remotely mean I’m a VIP, it means it’s just a mother-fucking badge to collect.

I don’t collect badges like a fucking boy scout.

I hate getting rewarded AT ALL for me being me.

And the fact is that in the couple of weeks I have attempted to deal with trying to work through either typing more complex sentences, and even simple information I was frequently met with either goldfish levels of memory (yes, even less than 30 seconds only to end with “what?” and “huh?”) or information that would tweak people’s memory was either met with contrarian attitudes (I don’t mind that one, I’m used to it as I do it all the time) or was skimmed and misinterpreted, or my personal favorite: more “huh?” and “what”.

So, I’m getting it out of my system while doing a musical exploration venting out my feelings in order to expunge the wasted efforts and wasted attempts to making right what was clearly out of my control.

I’ve closed off Discord to keeping in the servers that I’m on, and preventing PMs from people that are not on my friends list because of it. In fact, the only way people can be friended is if I initiate it until such time as I feel the need to be so restrictive about it… Which at the moment I’m not seeing going on for another 6 months easily. Maybe longer given that Emancipation Day is coming up in a couple of weeks.

As I said, when I’m a Moderator and/or VIP on any platform that allows it, it means that I’ve gone above and beyond the needs and necessities for the Streamer, the Moderation Staff, the Group that I’m participating in. it’s not because I live by the saying of John Walter Wayland, The Dalai Lama or Eleanor Roosevelt’s “Do what you feel in your heart to be right – for you’ll be criticized anyway.” (to name a few off the top of my head).

That usually means a whole lot of doors being opened, and a whole lot more preferred nation stuff that comes with it that I rarely — to never — abuse when it’s given to me. The only time I might go into that realm is when I’m dealing with excessive amounts of stupidity, the sort of cowardly approach some people have done in the past (and I won’t name names, but I can easily point to the mad ginger that should have worked on it more than being the halfwit that he was).

But — and this is the big but — moderator/VIP/or any other title given in any social environment should never be something granted to someone like a gold star for getting an A on a litmus test in a community. You don’t shirk those people to the B-Row they’re a stranger (as said above). Doing so trivializes the meaning of the title and invalidates the efforts made by the person to being nothing more — as my psycho ex often said — than words on a screen. This is why I often stress first and foremost, “…whose deed follows his word…”

Because if it’s nothing more than words on a screen, then what value do those words hold?

Apologies if it seems more cryptic than usual; as I said elsewhere I want to post publicly more and this is a good way to getting into it.

Now that, that’s been vented… I’m off to finish the small batch of laundry I started this morning and work on more troubleshooting and perhaps collecting some of the music I’ve been liking during my adventures.

Until the next time.

Existential struggles with the term “Ally (to the LGBTQIA+ Community)”

Entry 06/04/2021 08:40:42 AM: Mentat 1631

Solvitur Ambulando – Latin Proverb attributed to Saint Augustine which means problems are solved by walking.

I’ve pretty much went back underground in the gay community because quite frankly, I once again got tired feeling like the token queer among the crowds. Don’t get me wrong, it routinely happens with me… partially because I get tired of having to edit out my thoughts to exclude lingo and phrases that most heterosexual people don’t have a clue on. Partially because sometimes I really get tired of dealing with education on things most heterosexuals are completely oblivious of.

I don’t usually stick around long within the community — both publicly and underground because too often I find the community to being so uptight in politically correctness it’s suffocating. Couple this with being patronizing when they’re trying to shut up or squelch discourse that involves anything other than complete agreement to the point originally made.

While this hasn’t happened just yet and I’m enjoying the company that I’ve been finding; thanks to my looking for entertainers (on Twitch, YouTube and other areas) I came across a subset in the community that it’s a sort of blend between the binary of heterosexual and homosexual…

Allies (to the LGBT community).

Normally I have little problem interacting with folk that declare their allies to the community as they often are better educated to the lingo and don’t bat an eye when folk get together and dish it up. Most seem all right, but one of them left me wrestling with all sorts of personal issues I didn’t think/want to be dealing with when it comes to entertainment. This was the reason why…

He had similar interests as I did and I thought that I take the opportunity to interact and learn from the man, and at first I got what I expected. There was the sort of belittling that comes from the fact that I have a very bad habit of using words that aren’t normally used in everyday conversations. While I’m more than willing to explain the word for anyone that doesn’t understand, I have also maintained the habit that my best friend and high school mate Bob used to have in that whenever he said, “Mike, talk to me like I’m an idiot…” or “talk to me like I’m an 8 year old…” and I learned that whenever he said that I would simplify what I was trying to convey. And when it comes to new people I meet — if I routinely go off like that — if they say something similar (after I tell them the story) — I’ll continue to simplify things.

But it didn’t stop there. Even after I sometimes got belittling statements from the person anytime I attempted to share wit, wisdom and information that I collected through the years and through the fact that I maintain a very long memory of the things I’ve encountered in my life. While it might have been meant to be positive (e.g., “Baldelli’s flexing again”) the word choices definitely don’t feel positive when said with a straight face and a weird tone in the voice.

The cherry on the sundae came one day during a more competitive PvP games that I only watch casually while getting a feel of streamer while playing such games. At the time he was playing with friends, and it was going rather well. I enjoyed the banter, I enjoyed the game play and I enjoyed the general attitude of the stream. Then after something rather sexual or suggestive was said, the worst possible phrase was dropped after the suggestive comment: “No Homo.” It was then I began seeing the person differently.

I began seeing the jocular banter less as amusing, and reminded me more and more of the bullshit attitudes hyper– and toxic masculine jocks would say and do around each other in order to prove their masculinity. This wasn’t feeling like a safe zone, and it was rapidly give me the sort of nausea I used to have dealing with the jocks in high school.

I began struggling with my beliefs of inclusion (based on the principles of //Infinite Diversity in Infinity Combinations) and that in community building — there are all types of people and not everyone I’m going to come across is going to share my beliefs in the same way. So some leeway must be given to the differences in people that don’t strongly ally with my own…

Only problem is for me “No Homo” is a homophobic phrase even in casual conversation, and especially in the gaming community. As we’re playing video games and having casual banter, we don’t need to redefine our sexuality and sexual identity when the realm isn’t remotely physical and not remotely in the realm of sexual advances.

I took a break for a couple of weeks after feeling this nausea and this existential crisis because I didn’t want to make a rash decision like I routinely do when dealing with hatred or anger, or willful ignorance and believe that as cooler heads will prevail when I take a break from it. And that’s what I did for the next couple of weeks.

I came back and it seemed that when playing alone for the entertainment of the community — the man was easier to get along with, but it sort of spiked me when the instant I showed up in the channel (and remained invisible as I normally do to lurk and observe), the man quickly identified there was someone watching him and tried to call them out to talking (typing) in chat. This went completely against the advise given to him two weeks prior to not pay attention to the audience numbers given to him and admitting that he was going to play for the enjoyment and not the numbers. So in essence, he was being a hypocrite.

It didn’t matter that that he was 200% better behaved when not in voice chat with his friends, hypocrisy is a form of lying and blatant lying like this often makes me question so many of the other truths said by a person.

So this morning as took my 3.5 mile (5.6 km) walk this morning and as I was working out the draft for a story I’m writing somewhere, I found my brains wandering back to what it meant to me to being an Ally to the LGBT community. And then I began remembering who I did call ally…

I’ll admit right now before I laundry list my beliefs, I was spoiled by these people whom I call ally, and I refuse to negotiate anyone that doesn’t come close to these qualities.

• An ally is like my best friend Bob who didn’t hesitate to take my hand when I was a teenager and scared shitless of the dark to walk me home through the fields. All the while holding my hand and ensuring me nothing was going to hurt me in the dark.
• An ally is like my Ancient History Teacher — Mr. Rogers — who after seeing one of the class bully constantly picking on me, came into the class and humiliated the bully by pointing out he respected me for standing by my beliefs and never cowing into the bullies and cowards.. (Consequently the bully stopped picking on me after that moment).
• An ally is like Brad and a host of other people that have LGBTQIA+ family members and look at all the homophobic comments in confusion as those folk perfectly natural and positive influences in their lives.
• An ally is like my old work-mate Jose who — happily married for more than 5 years at the time — would compare notes with me on a man’s beauty, and would even play matchmaker when I didn’t have the guts to go up and ask the man for a coffee date.
• An ally is my friend’s husband Paul who knowing I was gay and is a very close friend to his wife; never once felt threatened at our closeness because I was a man. He would even ask me how to handle his wife’s condition when she would be running on auto-pilot through her migraines and her flare-ups. And finally,
• An ally is like my friend Glenn and a host of more people I have encountered in my life, who while might have found homosexuality repulsive personally came around and never once made me feel bad about being human, following my head and heart. He showed me respect and even urged me to pursue a relationship with a person he never truly understood.

In the end I walked away from that person and his community. While actions do indeed speak louder than words, when one is more concerned to reinforcing one’s sexual identity thereby allowing that to take precedence over creating a positive, and healthy safe space for all — then being an ally to the LGBTQIA+ community is nothing more than words on a screen to ease some hidden guilt that needs to be first addressed. I personally can’t abide or stomach my disgust and nausea to educating the wrongness of such a hollow claim, as it’s a path only that person needs to walk and learn from.

Until the next time.  Happy Pride Month…