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. 

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

When did being predictable become a bad thing?

Entry 10/08/2020 09:05:41 AM: Mentat 1465

This one is sort of dedicated to RJ and people like him as it caused me to think quite a bit (again) on something that I have often encountered from people in my life that want to be “unpredictable”…

One of the emotional cockleburs I often encounter in people — particularly in men — is that when I often declare after intensive observations of them is that they’re rather predictable in their emotional responses to the world. Men often get more vehement (not to mention adamant) about it being the truth and will often go out of their way to prove just how spontaneous and unpredictable they are. It often amuses me in just how much they try to prove their spontaneity in the same way it often amuses women when they pull the smile, nod, and muttering, “sure you are…” fully knowing that even in this act it’s just as predictable as everything else going on with a man.

However, instead of moving on as I would usually, I ended up recalling the acts of defiance and denial while looking through the past encounters in my life in how often I often have made the declarations of predictability to men and women and how often men will either mock — even perhaps even honestly — deny it to being the truth… It was then I went down the various rabbit holes based on the investigations and social mores I’ve encountered through the years and remembered the following:

It’s believed that being predictable is boring. It’s believed that being predictable makes a human bland or insipid. It’s believed that being predictable makes a human one-dimensional.

Does it make a man boring, bland or even one-dimensional? Not if you consider John Walter Wayland’s quote on The True Gentleman when it says;

…whose self-control is equal to all emergencies…

However, the not even remotely sad fact to this all is that while IDIC creates the diversity of how individuals react to something I have learned through my years of wandering the planet, that we only have a finite amount of emotional sets to our repertoire and therefore the longer we wander the planet and the longer we remember everything that we have encountered, the easier is becomes to being able to predict what we’re seeing in other people. This is also reinforced when people begin to realize that while our genome might be 6.4 billion basepairs huge, there is a surprising trend of physical — even facial — similarities in the 4 major races of humans on the planet.

I find myself dealing with two separate thoughts based on the following questions: 1. Is being predictable a bad thing? and 2. what negative aspects can being predictable produce from other humans we encounter?

The second question immediately brings to mind the fact that someone else can exploit that predictability in a self-interest sort of way. However, as Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” It works the same as when people attempt to exploit some weakness, reaction, even course of action… And instead of knee-jerking based on something someone else said or done to simply stop a moment and start by asking, “what is this person attempting to do?” One can easily stop allowing oneself to fall into the trap of being manipulated.

The first question though… That goes well into the realm of personal tastes and perspectives before we become familiar with a person (you know, because of how we learn about a person through exposure to them). Most of the times for me, if the person has a personality of any sort, being predictable is never a bad thing. As I mentioned to RJ the other night, Tommy was as predictable in his actions and reactions as the sun rising in the east and setting in the west. He could be clocked based on his reactions to a situation right down to which of the terse sentences he would use if he didn’t want to engage (“no”, “fuck you” or simply walking out of the room or away from the encounter and disappearing for hours at a time). The only times when predictable is a problem with me has to do with when a person stifles their emotions and opinions in such a way as to come off as coming off as… for lack of a better word… Hypermasculinity.

Suppressing one’s emotions in an effort to project some form of masculinity (either to prove heterosexuality or with gay men to being “straight acting”); I can read like a flare from a castaway on a deserted island. And it invariably turns me off/turns me away from the person in much the same manner as a raging egomaniac as well as a pathological liar does.

The only thing that I can say in the end about being predictable is have a personality to make up for it, especially if you think being predictable is bad. I have often seen that being stifled in expression (especially emotionally) is more a bad thing (as it’s read into the negative more than in the lack of expression because of people’s understanding of body language and nuance) not mention a contributing attribute to being read as bland (or insipid). However, being predictable can leave people with a better sense of sanity and stability than being spontaneously unpredictable, as too much of spontaneity can leave people thinking you flighty or unstable.

Until the next time.

Gaming & The Constant Adrenaline Rush

I was watching an acquaintance of mine trying to run a new set of missions within my favorite game (Warframe). It’s a particularly difficult set of missions that only the true min-maxer can go through unscathed that I personally think promises to be getting a re-work in the near future. As it stands, it’s sadistically harsh and lacks the necessary enjoyment value of the game as I understand it. But that’s another story for another time. The point is, when he had failed the mission at the time and was waiting for the hourly reset, I noticed and pointed out that he hadn’t done his weekly Ayatan Statue run and that he should do it for the relaxation.

He refused stating that with the new alerts he’ll get more than the required statues even if he might be a little short of stars that the moment and saw no need to do the weekly mission.

Another of my acquaintances challenged him to turn in his sculptures to see how much he’s made. So after a quick trip to Maroo’s Bazaar he was able to provide proof of about 33,000’ish endo for refinement.

This was both amusing and disappointing to me as I am currently sitting on about 76,800 endo for refinement and still holding on to 200 cyan and 200 amber stars each in three weeks’ time. Further, the disappointment was due to the fact that neither the acquaintance that challenged him to turn them in, nor myself could confirm or deny that he’s been doing these alerts since they were released on 12, October and there’s a good possibility that there were statues in his inventory that he had collected outside of these alerts. Couple this with the fact that based on my viewing his playing through the streaming session he had lost 4 missions to winning 1 and well… the seeds of that observation were sown for this morning’s thoughts in the shower.

With all this instantaneous gratification. All this fast and furious running, with the mad dash and the lose-to-win ratios, this acquaintance is pulling in less than I do running casually through missions foraging for what I require.

I am reminded of Aesop’s tale of the Tortoise and the Hare where the moral of the story was, Slow but steady wins the race.

The thing is that there’s an endemic problem with streamers. A fractured and often miasmic concept that the only way to be really good at a fast-paced game — like Warframe — is being the last Mastery Rank currently attainable, have the biggest and best dojo, have all the weapons and have them min-maxed to god-like levels and ultimately be not only famous but have the most amount of followers is to play the game in a non-stop rush from insertion to extraction.

Talking about this with one of my acquaintances — the god-like weapon levels might not entirely be accurate. A lot of streamers don’t seem to be working on Min-Max leveled weapons. In fact a good majority of them work with barely adequate weapons and the concept that if they’re able to beat Sortie leveled enemies, their weapons and warframes are more than adequate.

And that’s the problem — there’s too much rush..

While it’s true that out of all the communities I’ve encountered in my long time of gaming, Warframe’s community is the most helpful… Or at least the most friendly when it comes to doling out help. When it comes to helping to the point of being self-sufficient however; they are sorely lacking. The streamers of this community are more than willing to get the person — or group of people — to their goals, but rarely enough to teach them the skills necessary to being able to farm the materials or accomplish the objectives in the long run.

To quite literally go from the new/young player and growing into the experienced veteran capable to doing everything on their own and even teaching future generations how to maximize their returns in whatever mission they set their mind to.

Instead, they end up creating a new generation of gamers working on the concept, Penny-wise and Pound-Foolish. That is to say able to accomplish what is required of them in the short-term, but lacking the necessary effort (and cost) for the long-term. So instead of being able to accomplish anything that might crop up since the start of the game; many — including the very streamers that taught them — it’s a constant rush from insertion to extraction on every mission just to scrape by.

This is one of the main contributors to why so many people burn out of Warframe so damn quickly. And because of my slower approach, I realize that the reason why I didn’t burn out half as bad on this game as so many people have in the time I’ve been with it was because it was always about slowly getting to the goals.

In spite of all these observations and inferred methods of correcting the problems about slowing down and enjoying the game… About maximizing resource collections in the short and long runs… Be it as an end-user and as a streamer — I’m stuck in the misconstrued position that because I’m not a streamer, I don’t know what it’s like to go through their issues. About the want for popularity… About the want for followers… About the wants and needs and desires to go from simple streamer to affiliate to partner. About the careful juggling of being informative as well as entertaining.

Try being a teacher to teachers. Go a mile in those shoes and you’ll see it’s being done without the voyeurism of an audience.

In the end, I’ll continue to try to lead by example. As long as one learns what I’m saying here: I’ve accomplished something. As long as two pay it forward; I’ve changed the world.

Until the next time…

Moments of Thought (during a 4 KM walk)

Entry 12/03/2014 06:40:38 AM – Mentat 811

Nothing like completely screwing up my sleep patterns in one day.  I laid down early last night listening to Psychobabble and then the Relic Radio Podcasts that I collected yesterday.  Ended up listening to the first one (from the Science-Fiction collection) from beginning to end (20 minutes), then when I moved onto the others (Thriller, Suspense and the straight on podcast), I fell completely asleep during each and every other podcast afterwards.   Oh sure, I woke up at the end of each and every one, start the next, get comfortable and then **BANG** out like a light once again.  So all in all I drifted in and out of sleep during each of the podcasts.  I remember listening to the last of the podcasts at 11:30’ish last night.  I stayed up for a couple of hours then went back to bed only to wake up again at 10 to 6 of which I’ve been up since.  Sure, I got something like 9+ hours of sleep, but thanks to the program I’m using, it doesn’t count.  Bloody annoying that…   But that’s what happens when one is working with a program and all the various quirks that it comes with.

Now that my mother’s home from the doctor’s office and about to start her morning chores on ironing what little clothes that need it, I’m sitting here having a rather interesting time trying to come up with the energy for some of the thoughts that I’ve had watching and listening to some of the various podcasts, YouTube videos and stray thoughts that usually assail my mind during the early evenings and especially when I’m taking my 2.5 mile (4.02 km) walk through the neighbourhood.

I’ve continued to mull over the lack of “neighbourhood” in the urban sprawl of Providence and in its place is what retail companies think “neighbourhood” should be.  Especially now that my walk routine’s changed a little bit and surfaces along Atwells Avenue near to De Pasquale Square.  I mean Broadway has never truly felt like a neighbourhood.  It’s almost always been completely renovated from Residential to the sort of Commercial zoning synonymous with Doctor’s/Dentist’s Offices and…  ick…  Lawyers.  What little retail stores while being a Ma & Pop of some sort or another, don’t really give the feeling of a neighbourhood store (that I remember from my childhood).  About the only exception to this is the Sutton & De Pasquale Street block on Broadway (where DASH Bicycles is).  Between the bike shop, the gaming store and the “corner” pizzeria there, it definitely has the right sort of “neighbourhood” feel I used to get when on the Hill 20+ years ago.

But Atwells?  No sir…  Taking the walk through the neighbourhood here and what I remember of the neighbourhood when living here  is near completely gone.  Sure, there’s the old tattoo parlour and Sicilia’s Pizzeria at Dean Street..  Sure there’s the corner mart diagonal from it…  Sure there’s even Caserta’s on Spruce (a block off of Atwells)…  But the rest?  Ugh!  Restaurants and Boutique stores up the ass and especially in De Pasquale Square itself.  There’s some stores that I remember from 20 years ago — but they don’t seem to be open much anymore.  Like the old Federal Hill Liquors (which the security shutters are closed on all the time), or the Jamaican Dive Restaurant (where the laundry I used when I was living with Darin used to be).

What’s worse about it is the fact that with the invention of the leaf blower — a lot of these trendy boutique store have the nasty habit of blowing everything away from their store fronts, instead of putting it in one pile to pick it up (and throw it out).  This of course leads to a metric shit-ton of various flotsam — leaves, paper trash and bags) to end up in the neighbourhood immediately behind and around the storefronts to look polluted…  And more importantly changing the various old-age and character flaws of the neighbourhood to look…  Well, more depressed than it should.   It’s sad really…  Having moved up from the Valley (just a few blocks difference) and what I end up in is hipster and trendy hell.

As the saying goes, “the more things change…  the more they remain the same…”  At least when it comes to the conformity of retail…

Then there’s the other thoughts I had yesterday during my walk on how much has changed with being a queer in the new millennium.  I remember back in the mid 80s, the generation before me had been blaming my generation for dropping the torch that was handed to us.  I remember vividly at the time my generation had been accused of “resting on our laurels” by not continuing fighting for the rights of LGBT folk in the USA.

Sure, when it came to getting states to pass laws for domestic and partner benefits (and turned it into a hell of a fight with the hydra forcing groups & activists to approach companies instead of states), DADT has come and gone…  DOMA is being stigmatized and given of feeling of being a blue law as Domestic Partnerships has been passed in many more states.  Or my personal favorite, watching how coming out episodes went from “After School Specials” to Coming out become statements of the every day on YouTube.  Of seeing queerfolk being queerfolk without the mockery, the spectacle and even the mockery from 30 years ago…  Love & Hate and annoyances….  Or my personal favorite the bickering that happens in love.  You know what I’m talking about when it comes to every couple:  the really intense sort of comments (snide or otherwise) made at the other that makes anyone watching extremely uncomfortable.  I don’t mind them of course, they remind me of the times when I was in a relationship and know it’s not as bad as it looks.

I know there’s still a really long way to go…  A hell of a long way to go still…  But perhaps what was always needed was viewing it all from the every day instead of when I came out 35 years ago and only being a taste of it given to middle of nowhere America in the form of news snippets on Gay Pride.  Make them see it’s not all about deviations and parades…  But instead the everyday and the ordinary…  Even if folks like me see the color that might be missed by everyone else.

There were a couple of other thoughts, mainly the sort of thing that I find myself reminiscing about things in my personal past.  Like how Battey Street off of Broadway seems to have gotten longer than when I was living in the neighbourhood.  Or how the houses in my neighbourhood are certainly weird and wild and of course pre- and Post-Victorian odd…  With sections of the building jutting out or the wild window work (like some of the houses I’ve taken pictures of during my 2012 picture of the day and might again for 2015…).  Or how many of the houses have preservation plaques on them (especially on and just off of Broadway).  Or finally the quirkiness I seem to stumble across while I’m walking….  like the church off of Tobey that has French Services (this is a predominantly Italian & Spanish neighbourhood now).

That about it for the time being.  Off to simmer a thought or two.  Until the next time.

Ruminations from the Mad Scientist™

I have been an artist all of my life.  While I might not be the next Rembrandt or Picasso or Michelangelo, I have always felt that as long as my art brings just a little bit of happiness to someone’s life, then I’m content.  That my fulfilment comes from creating something that someone (anyone really) likes in one way or another is good enough for me.

While not actually painting, drawing, illuminating, sculpting, being a ceramicist/potter since leaving high school (having followed my path into computers after being introduced to them in high school and programming on the TRS-80), I continued to dabble when I could where I could and whenever I needed a creative outlet for whatever problem I had been working through at the time.  I remember being introduced to the first fractal making program back when I first owned a 386 computer in the early 90s. It worked on Mandelbrot’s main formula (with some added computations and variations), but it lacked the depth and resolution I had seen of CGI and technical effects I saw on the silver screen.  But it had promise as it was the first stages of programs for the home user to create works of art based on mathematics (something I was adept with), computers (which I had excelled in) and was a taste of things to come without the exorbitant price tag of some CGI programs on the market at the time…  I forgot about it  and programs like Bryce (and also Ray Dreams), focusing my attention on programs and mediums that furthered my skills in writing and socializing.

Then came the mid-to-late-90s.  A programmer from the UK created a program called Terragen that took the ideas from the more complex terrain and CGI programs on the market and allowed end-users to play with landscapes of their own and do so for cheap or free.  It allowed me to create landscapes near enough to what I saw on the Silver Screen and do so from the comfort of my home on my own computer and allowed me to produce something like this to wow friends and strangers alike while demonstrating both my inherent artistic abilities with how I harnessed the “magic” of computers:

More time passed: another decade in fact.  I stumbled across the program Chaoscope from one of the tech e-papers I used to read for work and after downloading it gave it a try..  It produced the exact qualities that I wanted to create: vibrant colors on a dark background and coupling it with mathematics, did so at speeds I had been accustomed when I had done speed sketches into my diary.  It also gave me the inspiration (and feeling) of when gods of lore harnessed the gases of the sun and infusing it in silicon, allowing me – a mere mortal – to create images of wonders to behold like this:

While Chaoscope had its potentials, it wasn’t quite for me.  It lacked the complexity that I was familiar with in database programming.  It also didn’t create imagery quite the way that I wanted:  taking up the majority (or the whole) of the monitor screen and do so in wondrous colors, shapes and patterns.  I kept at Chaoscope for as long as I could, until the day I had met Damion and he introduced me to Deviant Art.  That’s where on a random impulse, came across a piece of fractal art created by a program called Apophysis.  My fascination in that program started with this:

And the rest was – as we say – history.

Apophysis allowed me to combine the wild impulses of artistic creation, mathematics and programming.  It allowed me  the ability tinker and tweak the “guts” of the fractal (though the use of manipulating the “triangles” within the editor) until I was satisfied with what I was seeing; then to render what it was I wanted to share, and (in my hope) to confer the same feeling(s) to others I experienced in the creation of the piece:  the wonder that comes when maths are made into art.  Apophysis also opened up avenues that allowed me to marry an image created with words and apply it to an image of chaos made manifest, much like this one:

And so, the Mad Scientist™ was born…  Well, he was already born…  This was the time the Mad Scientist™ matured into the adult.

And now for the change of direction (albeit briefly).

I have also been on the Internet since before its popularity with the home user.  A full decade before.  I remember the various poor man’s Internet — the BBS system — sharing files, and pictures and sounds and programs at a whopping 150 baud (to 300, to 2400 and on).  I remember finding the Internet when working at a college and keeping that account for as long as possible.  I remember and became familiar with Eudora, Gopher, Usenet and FTP.  I remember tools that helped convert binaries to text and back again.  I remember the birth of IRC and the World Wide Web.  I remember when businesses were introduced to CompuServe and the home users being introduced to Prodigy and AOL through GeoNet.  I remember the birth and death of Netscape (and rebirth to Firefox).  I’ve seen the gestation of social tools like MSN Messenger, AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo Messenger and ICQ give birth to the social media explosion that brought us Deviant Art, Facebook, YouTube, and on and on and on…

I am one of the few ancients that continues to make his presence felt online — at least with this incarnation — since at least 1994.  Well that and still boast about being from the early days, anyway.   There are others, but I’ve learned they don’t admit it as quickly or as readily as I do (without prompting such as this).

From the two, I’ve learned interesting lessons in the creation of my art, it’s attraction of others that see (and even download) and occasionally the offers that I’m offered for showing a greater audience (and always graciously turn down because I feel it would take from artists that need that attention more than I would as this is only a hobby and a great experiment for me).

I had to take a walk to sort the next part out. There was an impact I was hoping to make and felt I wasn’t going to be making it the way that I wanted.  I couldn’t shake the feeling…  was the very thing I loathe seeing from “people” following my blog on WordPress (e.g., the Advertisers trying to sell their “wonderful” little-work-yet-great-return-so-you-can-live-the-good-life product) or worse, the pontificating fool…  The fact is, I’m not trying to sell anything.  I give away what I’ve learned freely and though one person did in fact sparked the muse that inspired me in this (yes, that’s you Mr. R.), it is in good spirits and in kind heart that perhaps something can be learned from it.  Both for the person that inspired me to make this post and anyone else wanting to use and utilize the tools we have today.

They’re sort of rules…  And by rules I mean guidelines.  The sort of guidelines that had been passed on to me, and passed on to everyone that has ever made anything for people to view, experience, witness, like and share within the community of artists, musicians, celebrities, bloggers, vloggers and those inspired by the energies that create harmony through conflict.  That create beauty from the chaos within and without.  That want to inspire in others the spark we all contain within ourselves.

1. Let your art sell itself.  The first and best way you can make an impact is releasing that art to the wild.  Be it to your followers, viewers, friends, to even the world at large…  Put it out there without excessive tease, preamble or long introduction.  Let the audience that it was shared with digest and decide for themselves whether to like share, comment, etc.*  If you feel the need to hint – and people often do – let the hint go free and don’t hint at it anymore.  When the time comes (and goes), release it.  Hint at something too much and you might end up giving impressions you’re more talk than action.  There’s some really interesting lessons to be said about this approach.  You get an idea on the audience you’re reaching whether you do your art for free (like I do) or making money off of it (like some professional artists that I know and follow.  For example, in six years I’ve learned that women tend to favorite/favor warmer colors in the fractal art that I create with men gravitating more toward the cooler colors…  Or my personal favorite…  What I personally didn’t like ends up getting a metric shit-ton more views than the piece that earned an award for production.  Some art that I personally put in hours of work ends up being completely ignored.  Others rush, loved, complimented, liked, downloaded.  It’s from this that I learned the public has its own tastes and drives and no matter how much you might want the public to like something you’re proud of, the public has whims and tastes of its own.

2. To sell your art, you need to sell yourself.  I learned this from my years on Deviant Art.   It’s not about sending up messages advertising, “hey, I put something out, check it out..”  No, it’s more about interacting with your community at large.  Someone’s having a problem and you have advice?  Share it!  You like something they produced be it friend and/or stranger?  Comment!  Someone did something you could only wish you could?  Congratulate them in their success (and don’t be afraid to ask for some advice)!  They failed or had difficulty in the production of their art?  Give advice and pointers on what you did to overcome the difficulty they faced in that art’s creation.  Be effervescent in all responses (as my mother and grandmother used to tell me, “you’ll attract more bees with honey than vinegar.”)   And always, always, always favorite/like the things that impacted you.  You’ll find people that you’ve been following, watching, even commenting once or twice to, coming to check out what it is you’re producing.  Make it feel like you’re part of the community at large.

3. Once you release your art let the social media in question work its “magic”.  I’m not talking about re-sharing a compliment that you got for something they listened to,  I’m talking about something said to me about having to repeat things already said because of fans and followers being in different time zones.  This is the internet…  In it we feel the closeness regardless of the distance and we as a whole are beginning to work out all the time zones one way or another because of those distances.  Every bit of social media I have and had ever utilized has the inherent ability to filter.  I missed/can’t see a comment from a circle of friends in Australia?  A click or two later, all the other conversations in my timeline disappear and their comments/conversations come bubbling to the top.  There they are, my friends in Australia are having a discussion on who’s got the best ass on screen.  Another click and my timeline returns to normal.**  Because the negative to this is if you find yourself having to reference the same piece time and again, you run the risk of alienating the very people would want to “sell” to or even could get you recognized.

** I’m finding that 5 years later I’m still getting saves (it’s like favorites/likes but for personal collections) for the piece that I received an award for on one site and still get offers on the various artwork that’s available for older work that can be found through WordPress, Deviant Art and even Flickr.  How?  They found it through my postings on Twitter, WordPress, Flickr and even Facebook.  Not because I repeated them, but because it’s something that can be found in history.  And besides, I’ve learned people like a good treasure hunt.  It often gives people the feeling of accomplishment when they can find something memorable for themselves and want to treasure it.

When you’re properly working points 1, 2 and 3, you’ll find word of mouth will also in fact also work its magic.  Want proof?  Check out how Cosmo Jarvis’ Gay Pirates went viral.

Finally not necessarily a rule but I’ll number it anyway…

4. Know which social/media site will be the best place to showcase your art.  And then reference it in some way in the places you like to visit and especially if have some sort of presence.  Like how WordPress allows me to reference the last four pieces I’ve uploaded to Flickr.  Like how you’re given the ability to create an about page that you can tell more about yourself (and even how to get in contact and/or reference other locations…  Social sites allow for intermingling in some way or another.  Utilize them to the best of your ability.

It’s a strange set of lessons there, one that I’m not sure how to explain without simply giving the information and allowing you to sort it out yourself…  My Fractal Art tends to be primarily posted to Deviant Art and Flickr because of the visual art community at large.  WordPress?  One Drive?  Google+?  Well, I want to see how long it’s going to take before I max out the storage space after that I’ll be referencing/embedding from Deviant Art and/or Flickr.   I get more likes/downloads and especially comments from Deviant Art and Flickr than anywhere else that my fractals posted to.  Facebook comes in second because well, my friends and family are all as opinionated as I am so I look forward to their advice and comments.  Everywhere else is just icing on my cake and gets me recognized either by comment/contribution or piece that I made for the week.  And because of this…  My art inspired other artists to try their hand in media they were more familiar with, here and here (to name a couple off the top of my head).

It accomplishes what I set out to do when I started making my art digital: make the impact I wanted.  Inspire others to give it a try themselves.  I’ve also witness that it applies to what I’ve seen of those Vloggers known as YouTube Personalities, Musicians, Celebrities and so on that have impacted my life and so many other lives in the process.

That’s it from me…  I’ve said all that I can.  Now I’m off to give Moe some attention and then read and to bed.  Until the next time.

[Edit:  Silly me.  Up to my tits in a lot of things and forgot 2 links in the last section.  Back and added…]

The Year-end Contemplation

Entry 12/30/2013 09:04:07 AM – Mentat 688

“Learn as much by writing as by reading.” – Lord Acton

It’s coming up on the end of the year, and looking at my journal for 2013, I realize all too painfully, I haven’t written nearly as much as I wished. Or as often as I should have. I know that sitting here and thinking about it — I have had a million reasons and excuses why this had come to pass for this year. I thought about some of the reasons why I had picked up writing a diary/journal in the last 32 years… At first it was because I was an introvert and needed to learn how to be more open and extroverted. Then my journal entry changed a bit and started including bits of philosophy, metaphysics and the observations I made during these studies into books by Alice A. Bailey, Helena Blavatsky, Aristotle and Socrates… I even included bits pieces (and even whole entries) about dreams and the dreams that I’ve had over the years, delving into understanding the unconscious and the subconscious…

After that, there was much about my private life. Mostly because I had been accused by many that I had dated (and even had long-term relationships with) that I was too secretive. That I kept too much of what was going on inside me close to my chest. When I broke up with my last SO just over a decade ago, I changed it to dealing with the healing that came from living 4 years in an abusive (and extremely toxic) relationship. During the next 5 years, it was a struggle dealing with the pain and the hurt and the healing that comes from finding myself in a dark place and trying to make it back to the light. I did pretty well, in spite of the work-related drama that cropped up for a couple of years. Was even lucky to find myself head over heels in love with a man that understood everything that came out of my mouth no matter how confusing or obfuscated it sounded.

Things trucked along as they should and I was as active as I was when I first started coming out of my introverted shell, in spite of the fact that I was at home with all the baggage that it incurred. In spite of the often strange, eccentric and gruff attitudes that Yankees have here in the Tundras of New England. In fact, I had reached a point in my life a couple of years ago that mirrored the times when I finally worked out who I was and what I should-be doing with myself and my life.

Then comes two years ago. I have the illusion that regardless of the circumstances that lead me to having to move I was in that comfortable place of dealing with whatever was going to be thrown my way. I found myself dealing with a thief and a user, and another that was not only incompetent but also a user… And that’s when I only just realized I was dealing with karma not only from the last relationship I had, but also dealing with issues going all the way back to my first boyfriend (the asshole ex, as I refer to more often times than naught). Admittedly my anger and rage was through the roof with both. The thief I was just wanted to pulverize because humans like him don’t deserve to live and use others in the way that he had used me (and before any new readers think I dated him, I can assure you he is most assuredly not my type). And the incompetent one, I just want to smack the shit out of him in the hopes that sense will be beaten into his skull. The thing is that sitting here and writing this entry, I realize I let these two fuckwits imbeciles get the best of me, so much so that I had become quite a tight ball of hate, anger, rate and vitriol. The more that I attempted to confront that hate and anger in the form of writing a journal entry, the more verklempt I became. It reached a point where instead of continuing in trying to work through the issue, I avoided it — like a plague it felt it was — ran away from it diverting myself with anything I could pay attention to. Sometimes these diversion were creative (like my fractal a day work), sometimes not so much (like my MMO gaming and television show binging). In the end though, I ended up lethargic, unmoving, and almost incapable of doing anything but distractions.

Sometime last month; after I had to get family to intervene for me while I tried to epically control my anger with dealing with one of the fuckwits imbeciles in my life, something happened. With my family witnessing the insanity of one of these imbeciles and then commenting on it — I came to the slow realization, “well gee… It’s not just me (being a perfectionist)… He really is an idiot…” It was then that I started to repurpose my approach to the problems I was avoiding.

This approach has been met with some conflicting feelings from family. My mother believes that if someone/something gives you that much problem that the best (read to me as safest) solution to handling that problem is to leave… Move out… Go somewhere else… Basically let someone else handle the problem, or let the problem just break itself. The only problem with that is that I’ve gotten tired of running away whenever I have a problem. Leaving it to karma or to other people — while momentarily satisfying — took too long for the likes of me to get resolved… And let’s face it based on the two years I’ve been here in Providence, RI — these two fuckwits imbeciles have been doing this sort of crap for far too long longer than my personal experience has witnessed.

Sure, I would wait for karma to catch up and deal with them… The only problem with this is that while each of them have gotten (at least one) the wake-up call to the road they’ve been walking will not end well for — and yet both of them do just enough to stop the train wreck from happening. And I’m tired of waiting…

I might talk about them in the next couple of days… I might not… Not sure whether I can or can’t… But in either case, I’m gunning for both of them and this time I’m going to pimp slap the both of them where it counts: in the wallet. And I will do this efficiently and legally instead of taking matters in my own hands.

Let’s see what else…

For about 7 months during this year I had been dating (albeit really long distance) the man that I had mentioned way back when in April (Entry 683)… C was inspirational, energetic and most of all inquisitive. The problems that cropped up were the facts that he was way too impulsive, flighty/un-grounded, and lacked the integrity of his own word — breaking promises because such promises were inconvenient to his desires for impulsiveness. The straw that broke the camel’s back was the time after waking up from a particularly troubling nap, I encountered a private message from him on Facebook that I couldn’t tell whether it was him or one of his friends taking the piss out of the two of us by using his account. Couple this with him breaking the promise of one day a week of getting together (more than twice), I had my fill of that inconsistency. Writing a quick “Dear John” I explained precisely why I had broke all contact with him and moved on with the feeling that “it had to be done…”

Friends and family tried to excuse his actions to youth and inexperience, yet I can’t accept the excuses of “coming of age”. I’m of the firm belief that by 18 people should have a good damned concept of what integrity means. Hell, even know the value of one’s word to commitment. If by adulthood one doesn’t understand this, then one needs to learn the consequences of ill-action. This lack of commitment and integrity must come with ramifications. Because no matter how intelligent we humans think we are, we learn best when there are (negative) consequences to our actions.

While the dreams that came from being around him had stopped, there have been a couple of times since our breakup that I get the impression he’s been thinking about me and once or twice I’ve been struck with the impression that he’s thought about reaching out to me in some way… But the one thing I’ve learned about humanity is hurt is the greatest motivator to integrity and commitment and given the break up — I’m sure that his promise of never speaking to me again if I were to disappear the way that I did… Still though, I’m sure like me — there’s been more than one time we’ve thought of each other and wondered whether the direction taken was the only one left at the time.

I’m going to stop here for the time being. I have some things to think about in what I want to say for today or New Year’s which means it’s time to wander off to contemplate. Until the next time.

Quandaries on the Road of Life

Entry 04/12/2012 08:53:23 AM – Mentat 640

Ah, what fun it’s been this morning and it’s only the start. I finally did sort of get the right amount of sleep last night woke up with the growing dawn and sunrise. I didn’t mind it so much as I did get the right amount of sleep. The Mad Cat Committee™ was skulking about my door this morning — mainly with Saucy wanting in this time instead of Wilma (probably so that she could caterwaul out my window to announce how ready she is to have kittens). *eye roll* at least Saucy’s quiet at the moment, though I digress… And I got through all my chores quickly this morning; though the air head that I am, the last ½ hour I was like, “where’s my coffee?” only to realize that the water was in the maker, the pot in the right place and the coffee was in the filter, but damn if I didn’t leave the cover to the coffeemaker up and the coffeemaker off. Yeah, this is a sure sign to what’s going to be going on today for the likes of me, I’m sure of it.

So this morning, I’m off on a tear to watch through a few soap operas. Part of the reason is because all of my chores are done. Part of the reason is because I want to avoid a semi-sore subject from last night. Part of the reason is because I have other issues I should be thinking on and don’t really want to at the moment. And finally part of the reason is because I really need to get over my running away from soap operas every time the story gets too gripping.

Yeah, that’s a fun one to be sure. I know that soap operas are supposed to be train wrecks in various degrees. Relationships come together and crash apart in often spectacular drama. Sure infidelity and deceit are easy enough for me to handle in any sort of story — but when it comes to heartbreak? I’m running away as fast as I can. Skid marks are left from about where my desk is, to the other side of the house (and sometimes even farther out to the street). I don’t know what it is about heartbreak in a story that causes me to run for the hills more than any other element. I mean I’ve gone through my fair share of it in my life — but seeing it happening to someone else? Just tears me and I just can’t watch. Sometimes I think it’s because I feel so helpless watching and not being able to interact. Other times, it’s just that I find myself annoyed (when I realize it later on) just how stupid people can be sometimes. And still other times, I believe it’s because writers can be horribly trite and contrived and make the drama happen because they don’t know how to handle the real drama of making things work with two characters in a story.

Yeah, yeah… I know… Soap Opera… They’re supposed to work out that way. No one’s supposed to live happily ever after in a soap opera. That wouldn’t be a soap, it would be a fantasy. But it makes it easier to realize that in the real world — there’s more to problems than the most contrived that come up in Soap Operas.

Take for example the problem from last night that I’ve been sort of avoided thinking too much about. I was supposed to chat with someone online last night who didn’t show up and only noted me two hours after the time we were supposed to meet and chat telling me that he had to make some sort of emergency trip to western Massachusetts and that he wouldn’t be back until midnight. Even after the note that he had left me, I am ready to write him off. For a person that says that he’s “emotive” and “expressive” I have found him each time we’ve attempted to chat online to be stilted and an emotional wreck from pressures in his life. My impression is that he lacks even the most rudimentary multitasking abilities and incapable to switching gears as a means of taking a break from whatever it is that’s bothering him. While he’s been respectful of my wishes about taking it slow and chatting a bit online first — he has made a couple of overt comments (which come off more for me as gentle pressuring) about his wanting to talk with me on the phone so that he can hear instead of reading me.

I feel… nothing… when I’ve talked with him in chat and in note. I get the distinct impression as though I’m father confessor for his problems and drama. And worst of all, I feel completely detached whenever I give him any wisdom. As though I’m going through the motions for the sake of it and nothing more. There’s no emotional commitment nor want to emotionally invest to anything that he says. It’s the sort of feeling I get whenever I find someone that while being good intentioned and well-meaning, though is trying way too hard to impress. For lack of a better phrase, it’s like caressing the air: I can feel the pressure of the air’s movement, but there is positively no substance to it.

As I sit here with his apology in my inbox, I find myself in sort of a quandary about how I want to handle it. On the one side, I think it’s time to simply end this before it goes anywhere else. One of the things that I want in my life is a man that can live up to his word (after all, if a man can’t live by his word, what is the man’s worth?). Damion absolutely positively spoiled me on this. When Damion made a promise, he quite literally lived up to it — even if at the appointed time he said he would show up — he would tell me that he needed more time to think it through. In the year and a day that Damion and I were together he had never left me feeling as though I were in limbo (well, except for that one time, but he didn’t run away when I confronted him).

What’s got me thinking is that I’m sure this man — Tom is his name — had ample time to realize that this trip was going to happen and that a note more than 2-hours after the promised time is never a good omen for anything. Particularly when you consider that he could’ve noted me on his way out the door telling me he would need to reschedule.

On the other… Well on the other, I’m sitting here thinking I’m being too hard and harsh in my decision. I have other — more serious issues — going on in my life at the moment that can definitely be shading my actions and reactions on this. And perhaps because of those more serious issues I’m pulling one of my notorious “cut out all the drama” moments in order to balance myself back to peaceful.

I think I’m going to sit on it for a couple of more days before I make any decision, in spite of the majority of evidence present that states that the best that could come of this is a casual friendship.

Heh, and for the record, I’ve stopped watching the soaps again. Seems that it’s hinting that one of Oliver’s trysts (Verboten Liebe) from the past has HIV and further inferred through body-language and looks that the two of them had been intimate. I think it’s a PSA-type message — the first one for this German Soap Opera that I find so blatant in American Soaps — and I’m not in the mood of going down a road I’ve gone down in reality a hundred times, and on television a thousand more. So instead of dealing with the continuing story for the moment, I’m off to making Apophysis Fractals for a bit (and man am I ever rusty). So expect a couple of uploads from me on this in the usual places.

As for the other issue… I’m not quite ready to talk about it. I’d rather stew on it a whole lot more before I start talking about it. Well that and I have to confront the intended party before I start pouring out what I’m thinking and feeling here. It is the least I can do about it.

Other than that, well… I’m finally in a good mood. I have my iced coffee here at my desk, watch the seconds tick by for another fractal that came out interesting all on it’s own and without any help from me (and looks like a woman’s fan) as it finishes, listening to some trance and enjoying the fact that the car wash is dead, dead, dead. Seems that the witch doctors have been predicting more rain today (though from what I’m seeing, it’s only partly cloudy) so no one’s over there making a nuisance for the denizens of the neighborhood. I’ve been stuck on John O’Callaghan’s remix of Gareth Emery’s Concrete Angel mostly because I find the lyrics to the song to being on the mark with the issue I’m not ready to talk about. Time to find something else to listen to, else I have another episode of a song getting stuck in my head and going on all day. That and perhaps play a game or three before another round of “I’m so (fill in the blank)” when the roommate wakes up.

Time for me to run. Until the next time.

Reminisces from the Mad Scientist™

Entry 04/05/2012 02:59:24 PM – Mentat 638

Well, it’s been a while since I’ve had night terrors. And it seems that last night was one of those nights. I mean I had positively none of the earmarks that I would get if I were going to have nightmares; the weird twinge in the back of my mind that feels like a worm trying to get out. The antsy feelings I sometimes without any rhyme or reason. But it happened. It happened when my roommate came home in the middle of the early morning (3’ish or so) and he was fumbling through the kitchen with his bags of laundry. I woke up hearing him going through the bags, and the only thing I remember wanting to do is scream my lungs out. I think that I tried, but couldn’t get a sound out of me (thanks largely to being dead tired and unable to move (thanks largely to the hormones that the body produces to keep it from moving when one is asleep). I was afraid of something, but in my waking mind, I can’t remember why or what the cause of it was. Fortunately for me, I gave up quickly and fell back to sleep. Still though, it has been some time since I’ve had that sort of unrelenting and unnerving terror. And I did sleep pretty well for the remainder of the night… Certainly better than it used to be in my 20s.

[Last Edited: 04/05/2012 05:12:26 PM]

Actually, I talked with my roommate this afternoon as he came back to the house ½ hour ago. Turns out that he didn’t actually come home at all, and that all the sounds that I was hearing in the house were all in my imagination. Great… More to be slightly concerned about.

So I’m sitting here trying to get caught up on my Hulu queue. Since my happy obsession with the various Soap Operas involving gay couples, I’ve fallen horribly behind. Sitting there that last couple of days, I realize that I’ve simply lost complete interest in the stories within my queue too. Not surprisingly really given that as I sit here watching them I find them so… mainstream. Girl meets boy/boy meets girl. They do the normal things of fall in love, fight evil and injustice, go about their lives and eventually live happily ever after (or in the case of a series, returns to the status quo that was established since the start).. Blah, blah, blah… While I like the stories and I like the archetypes, at the same time I’m reinventing them (and the stories surrounding them) as gay and lesbian. It’s a habit of mine that I’ve had for the longest time given that the 70s and 80s, there have been few to no gay heroes in stories. After all, somewhere at the early start of my coming out process, I believed there are an equal amount of heroes — both straight and gay — so why should television and movies simply focus on the 90% of the population that I’m not really a part of?
I admit it, I am a citizen of two worlds. There’s one world that most (heterosexual) folk walk in and one that I often find myself flooded with… The world that deals with sex selling, and the prettiest man or woman getting the prettiest woman or man from the moment I wake up in the morning, to the time I shut the world out and eventually fall asleep. One that tries to promote the “sanity” that says that when you find someone of the opposite sex attractive, you fall in love, you get married, you have that 2½ kids and cat/dog with the picket fence house in the suburbs. The world where — for reasons that defy my understanding sometimes — men can’t always understand women, and women sure as hell don’t always seem to understand men. Where social stigmas seem to run rampant and taboos are something to be reviled and scorned publicly and sought after privately. Where the good of all are determined by the majority and anything different such a narrow viewpoint established by the majority should be hated, mocked, oppressed and pushed under the rug to be forgotten at worst, to ignored at best.

The other world…. Being citizen of the other world takes quite a bit of traveling to get to. Once you get beyond the dysfunction, the want to escape, the anger and self-loathing, the depression and sadness that comes from having to face oppression, suppression and being treated as a second-class citizen to the majority of humanity on a day to day basis in some form or another. An occasional safe space for the queerfolk can live and breath and have their being… A world where a quote like this makes sense and is perfectly normal:

Roy Cohn: [under the impression that Belize is the Angel of Death] Can I ask you something, sir?
Belize: [going along with it] “Sir”?
Roy Cohn: What’s it like? After?
Belize: After…?
Roy Cohn: This misery ends?
Belize: Hell or heaven?
Roy Cohn: …heh…
Belize: Like San Francisco.
Roy Cohn: A city! Good! I was worried… it’d be a garden. I hate that shit.
Belize: Mmmm. Big city. Overgrown with weeds, but flowering weeds. On every corner a wrecking crew and something new and crooked going up catty corner to that. Windows missing in every edifice like broken teeth, gritty wind, and a gray high sky full of ravens.
Roy Cohn: Isaiah.
Belize: Prophet birds, Roy. Piles of trash, but lapidary like rubies and obsidian, and diamond-colored cowspit streamers in the wind. And voting booths. And everyone in Balenciaga gowns with red corsages, and big dance palaces full of music and lights and racial impurity and gender confusion. And all the deities are creole, mulatto, brown as the mouths of rivers. Race, taste and history finally overcome. And you ain’t there.
Roy Cohn: And Heaven?
Belize: That was Heaven, Roy.

(From Angels in America for those of you wondering where that came from).

A world, where men understand women extremely well, and women understand men. A world where not every hero gets the girl, or the heroine gets the boy. A world where the things called perversion are understood as part of living, and are avoided only when one wants to avoid them. Oh, it’s not about the moral purity of society that causes folk of that world to avoid (and in the dichotomy of being homo sapiens covet in secret) , but instead because of the purity of one’s beliefs — their soul if you will. A world where man can love a man and settle down to form a family, or a woman can with a woman and do the same thing. It might not be able to call itself a “community”, but in the microcosmic sense — it’s a community nonetheless — what I would occasionally call ‘the family we choose.’

I realize that I’ve been a long way away. I know that the reason is because of my own choosing. I know I can attribute my being away because of fear of trying. I can also attribute it to my calling to educating people to the differences between the two worlds I have lived in. I know in the attempts that I’ve tried making my way back, I’ve found myself lost in the dysfunction, the oppression, the anger, and the self-loathing of others. I know I find insurmountable obstacle in those that try so hard to be the same as everyone else, when the world is meant to be filled with color, diversity, difference and just a little bit of one’s own je ne sais quoi. Sometimes I don’t know if I’ll ever make my way back.

Yeah, I know… that’s the pessimist and the cynic in me talking. I know I’m just letting off steam on this. At the moment though, I’m just feeling a bit put out after watching about 4 hours of queue and feeling more than a little alien while watching all the weirdness of girls fawning for boys, boys fighting with each other over some girl, and drama that plays out in such a predictably over-dramatic way.

Well, I think I’m going to cut out for the time being. I’m getting mildly annoyed with my reminiscing and longing for different places and different days. Off to enjoy another beer, and perhaps play a little before I pass out in bed. Until the next time.

Busy and Quiet in the Tundras of New England

Entry 03/17/2012 10:36:17 AM – Mentat 635

This is just one of those sort of days when in spite of all the chores that I’m going to accomplish by afternoon, I would rather just sit around on a porch somewhere, coffee in hand, and watching the world move in quiet chaos. Yes, it’s St. Patrick’s Day and I found my neighborhood surprisingly sedate. I’m not sure whether it’s because people in my neighborhood (mostly a mix of Hispanic comprising of Latin and South American Nationalities) are lying low while the rest of the folk in the state find it another reason to party, get drunk and wear green, or because it’s cold, damp and a bit on the raw side (as opposed to the unusually warm weather we had by mid-week). In any case, the supermarket was barren… The laundry is as well with just the owner and the help doing the drop off. Heh, about the only place that seemed to have been hopping was the Dunkin Donuts that I passed on the way to doing my laundry with the drive-through having a queue one would expect to see during weekday morning Rush Hour. It made me think about waiting a bit before stopping by for a large iced coffee though sitting here at the moment I find myself regretting that decision as I’m seriously jonesing for my morning ritual. Though I do know I’m going to need the coffee more when I get home, because the next chore on my to-do list is the housecleaning — and that’s going to be a chore and a half.

Sitting here yawning and stretching entirely too much, I have to say that I’ve been doing surprisingly well since my last journal entry involving my confessing my problems. I know this is temporary high has to do with two things — the burden I’ve been carrying about my issues is a bit lighter and the fact that I’ve found a new obsession (of sorts).

Earlier in the week, I was still going through a binging of watching movies — mostly LGBT — and have finally had my fill of them. I sort of guessed I was scraping the bottom of the barrel with them last week, but wanted to see if there were any more to watch. Boy, was I mostly wrong. While I was able to watch Patrik, Age 1.5 (good movie), and a Question of Love (French film), the rest were complete and utter shit. Moral depravity, Narcissism and Obsession, Codependency and drug addiction… I knew at this point I was watching films that covered elements within the community that I had always strived to avoid in my long life. Though I did brave through Clapham Junction with a mixture of disgust the same feeling one gets rubbernecking to seeing a train wreck in progress. It was a spectacle and a disaster in more ways than one — and I did enjoy the thought that in spite of all the moral depravity and selfishness present, humans can sometimes do the right thing.

Since then though, I’ve had a mini-obsession going involving a coupling fan that has spent considerable time editing out one couples actions through the series into 2 – 10 minute segments Yes, this definitely caused my insomnia yesterday (which is seriously throwing off my internal clock as I type this), as I spent a majority of my time watching it to see where it’s going. Well, I know where it’s going to end — it’s a soap opera after all — no one’s going to have a happily ever after. Everyone — gay and straight alike — are going to have torrid relationship problems. Still though, it’s amusing in an idealized sort of way that has been both a distraction and a therapy to the problems I’m working through.

Oh… Yeah… There’s something else that I’m sort of working through at the moment, one that I recently admitted to a good acquaintance of mine on DA. You see, I’ve been wrestling with a change that happened to me during and after the disaster of a relationship with Rick. As a child I was an introvert mainly because I was gay and felt isolated and different from anyone else. When I came out — I still felt isolated — though I did make it a point to be a bit more sociable than I was before if only because the isolation I was feeling sort of got easier after coming out. When I joined the Army (and met Tommy) and later when I came home and lived on my own — I set out to becoming more gregarious than I ever was in my adolescence.

I did remarkably well particularly after my epiphany when I was 25 and things got easier for me to being not only more sociable and gregarious but able to move from group to group with an ease I had never felt before. While things changed a bit when I moved to Atlanta (because of all the friends I had made when I moved there, and lost to complications to AIDS), my attitude changed in that I was still gregarious but was able to enjoy my solitude away from friends and groups for longer periods of time. More as a means of recharging the spiritual (and emotional) batteries before heading out to meeting more people.

That sort of changed when dealing with Rick’s jealousy and insecurities whenever he found me friendly with people. I could go into the horrors of the incessant fighting and petty insinuations of jealousy he had whenever he found me relating to someone else more than he thought he was able to relate to me, but the fact is — I allowed myself to be controlled by this. I allowed myself to be dominated by his petty jealousy and bickering. To the point where I had once again became like the introvert I was in school. Years later as I’m sitting here, I realize that I haven’t really changed all that much. While I can be civil and sort of sociable in a work environment, get me out of work and I’m pretty much an unknown hermit and ascetic pretty much staying home and spending most of my time chatting with friends and acquaintances all over the world, playing games, or watching my television queue.

The thing is — I’m confused whether or not I want to change this any. On the one side I have become familiar and used to my solitude. On the other I know no man is an island, and isolation is not a good thing for the likes of me. Particularly given part of my nature is to debate and understand how people think and feel.

[Last Edited: 03/17/2012 02:32:42 PM]

All right… Back again. After all three of my chores are done and sitting down for a late lunch. To continue…

One of the things that I thought about as I was cleaning the bathroom is that in my being sociable comes hand-in-hand is the gift I was born into that can be extremely draining (and disconcerting): being the Father Confessor for friend and stranger alike. Something about the way that I carry myself… Something about the way I look — people will tell me of their “sins” without a second thought. After Tommy’s death I found that extremely disconcerting; dealing with my grief was one thing… Dealing with the secrets and the sins/wrongs of others was completely over the top. At one point I sabotaged this in a way that people stopped sharing.. But after my epiphany it started to return and I tried to keep it toned down. I was in love with Darin at the time, and I wanted to enjoy my time with him more than working through my karma that involves helping people learn to cope with their own wrong-doings.

Now though? I don’t know if I’m up for the responsibility again. Let’s face it — it runs on my mother’s side of the family (though it seemed to skip my parent’s generation who completely ignores anything of the sort) and I remember vividly how diligent my grandmother was about that calling up to her stroke some years ago. From my watching my grandmother over the years to my own experience with it — it’s draining. And while I can live without the gratitude or the pat on the back (as I have a sort of ego boost for having whatever I’ve done — good or not so — go unnoticed), I find that it’s rather hard to live without the peace and grounding that has come from years of solitude and quiet reflection.

Maybe I can balance it without burning myself out or freaking myself out like I did the last time. We’ll see…

Well I think that’s going to be it for the time being.. Head’s not where it was earlier thanks to the orgasmic experience of a good strong pot of coffee, and being sated from Lunch, so I need to be off. Until the next time.