Sense and sensibility

Oh how I want. I want as I have never wanted before.

In the past what I wanted was always either beyond my reach, or something that I shouldn't have that wouldn't go to awry if I had it anyway. Now is different.

Something I want more than I can understand is in my reach. All I need do is ask for it. Also it's one of those things that I shouldn't have. But if I take it anyway, I will have violated my principles. It's not a simple want, like I want to eat pizza, and then I eat too much, but eh. I'll live. I'll take a jog and be done with it.

This time my world has changed shape solely on the desire of something that I can but shouldn't have. I want. To have, to hold, to care for. I need. But no. That's a feeling. In truth, this might destroy me.

Before me have many friends fallen to the same temptation.

I want to fail. I want to unsuccessfully attempt to abstain from this desire. So each action, no matter which way it goes, comes with regret. I don't call. This is right. I shouldn't prolong it. And so I do not call and am so unhappy because of it.

I shouldn't reply. But I'm so happy to see it that I reply anyway. I'm so excited! And guilty.

I thought feelings meant something. I don't know if they do now.

I believed in love. Love lifts us up, gives us hope! Love is the greatest and most powerful thing in this world! If it is love then it MUST be right! So I thought. Am I wrong?

What if I fell in love with what was obviously wrong? Does the love that is there redeem the wrongness? I feel like it should. It is because of love that we do right, isn't it?

A man who loves his friend might go back for him in the heat of battle. Lovers put aside the differences of two different worlds, all for love. But should they have restrained themselves in the first place, not allowed themselves to fall? Was it wrong? And does it stay wrong? A horrible stain on their souls for all eternity? Or does the love wash that away?

What is this supposed redeeming power of love?

But that's not what I'm worried about, yet. What I do worry about are the opposing persons within me. My Feelings have risen up to battle my Reason for control of my actions. I hope my Feelings win, but know that my Reason should prevail.

It's like in that terrible movie, War, where the guy you were rooting for the WHOLE MOVIE turned out to be the bad guy.

Either way, I lose. If I fall, I will regret not having the strength to resist. If I resist, I will regret never knowing what could have been, or whether it would have been one of the greatest stories of all time.

All is loss. And all is victory. So either victory is tainted by the bitterness of loss.

The disease

Hope.

It is what sustains us. It is all that stands between humanity and extinction. And how it does its job. Instinct? We haven't got much of that, anymore. That's what keeps the animals alive. But we do have hope. And that will keep us here long after the creatures have gone.

Hope is our cure.

And what is the disease? Is it our cruel, natural human condition? And what is that? The desire to kill, steal and destroy? Why do we do that? Because we want to live, and we want to live well. And the reason for that? It is because we hope for a better future. Hope.

Hope is our disease.

Our everlasting beacon of salvation and doom. Hope is what saves us from what we're doing to ourselves, and it is what keeps us doing just that.

Remember that story about Pandora's box? Apparently some bitter god or titan gave mankind and his wife a box, as a gift, but instructed that they never open it. She got so curious that she opened it anyway.

Out of the box flew creatures, embodying disease and suffering and misery and all the things that are bad in this world. Pandora shut the box, but by the time she did evil had already been unleashed on mankind.

And there was only one creature left in the box. A sad little critter named hope. And Pandora kept it and nursed it and cared for it.

Question: WHY would there be ANY good in that box?

It's an interesting story. But I don't know if I can deny hope the right to exist. Consider heaven and hell. Hell hasn't got a sting if it's citizens haven't got hope. If they couldn't dream of a better existence, then hell would be no worse than any other place in this universe.

Even if we couldn't hope for a heaven, then what use would anything better than the now exist? Mankind would lose his will to live. Hope is all we have to live for.

Is there nothing else we ought to live for?

Of course I'm bitter, I suppose. I too have hope. Lots of it. And honestly that hope isn't based on anything solid or real. So when the universe disappoints me I'll come crashing down from my cloud of hope. I know this. I know that I will be disappointed. And yet I cannot discourage hope.

I'd rather hope for something I'll have someday, rather than only for something I only might have, or worse might never have at all. I suppose it's meant to make me reach further than I might, if I'd hoped only for something I knew I could reach.

How simple and deplorable such a life would be, one in which I only reached for what I knew I could have. I'd never ask for more, from myself or anybody else.

I'd really hoped to pass judgment on hope and find it guilty. Yet once again hope has disappointed me. The worst part? That it might be a good thing, this disappointment.

Hope makes us miserable, but our misery might not be in vain.







LINK OF THE DAY!!! Yeah, I'm still promoting myself. BWAHAHAHAAA! Check out my *attempt* at a humor blog at http://clickypenstranger.blogspot.com DOOOOO IT.

Art, I miss you

We aspire to responsibility. Why?

Yes, being responsible is a very good thing. It makes you a good person, when you stick to it. It makes you a hero in times of war. Unless of course everyone does it. Suddenly it's just expected of you. It's a shame how something even as important as that loses its value as supplies increase.

(guess who's taking an economy course?)

But there are greater things to be responsible to, greater than just living day to day, making money, getting food on the table. These are the necessities. We all adhere to them as best we can because we have to. It's made it easy for us to deny our responsibilities to being true to ourselves, and encouraging that of others.

And so we have abandoned that which should matter to us, that which was part of being true to ourselves. And I miss it.

I miss painting.

I miss playing my guitar.

I miss writing.

I miss putting my songs together.

I miss learning for the fun of it and reading until the sun rises.

I miss four hour wikipedia bunny trails.

I miss scraping up weird, independent films and becoming a devoted fan.

I miss holding my nephew every day.

I miss that feeling when I first fell for the boy.

I miss having friends in town to go out with.

I miss Stephen and Jesse's stupid antics.

I miss spontaneous trips up the mountain and doing donuts in the taco bell parking lot.

I miss quietly drawing in a corner until I have it exactly the way I imagined it in my head.

How much have I abandoned that we should be free at any time to explore? We are free but fruitless. I challenge you to rise up to the potential beyond the requisites. Do something more than what's needed to get by. Look outside of your needs, and show yourself what you want to do.






Link of the day!!! This post too dramatic for you? I understand. It's okay. I've started another blog. I'm aiming for hilarity and nonsense, none of that dramatic, depressing or morally obligating blather! Check it out at http://clickypenstranger.blogspot.com

Sunrise

It was Friday night a few hours ago. I got off work early, did some banking, got some Chinese take-out. Then I conversed via the netterwaves with my friends until, one by one, they dropped off to sleep.

For once in a long, long while I do not work on a Saturday morning. So I decided, around perhaps two in the morning, that rather than going to sleep then and there, I would stay a while. I want to see the sunrise.

It's been a long time since I've been so "irresponsible", I suppose. But then again, I'm an adult now and it's my turn to decide what that means. This isn't a moment of irresponsibility. This is a life experience.

The last time I saw an actually sunrise, I cannot recall. I only recall the last time I was up whilst the sun was rising. I did not see that sunrise, though it ended a night marred with nightmares, which is what awoke me from my rest so early. That was late last fall.

It's very frightening, that hour before the sky really lights up. The sky is not so deep a blue as it was in the evening. It feels as though I could nearly smell the nearing dawn. And it's quiet. So quiet. Thus every sound is amplified. Each rustle of an insect in the brush is an imagined evil of the night. Every muffled tap of a cat hopping onto the roof of a car is the footsteps of a nighttime psychopath, fresh from the asylum.

To comfort my irrational fears I write. My creativity flows because suddenly I need it, like a shield, protection against the dark before dawn.

I sit on my porch and listen and breathe deeply. Someone's air condition near by shuts off and the silence is deeper even than it was before. The only sound is that of my typing and tiny, unnamed night noises.

I can see a planet. I think it's Mars. It's got an indistinct red tint to it. Or perhaps that's my eyes playing tricks on me. Is that the television on in my neighbor's front room? It is! Good grief. Everyone knows there's no good television on at five in the morning.

It's getting lighter in the east. Just a tiny bit. A solitary truck drives by and I wonder what could have possessed the driver to be up at this hour. Perhaps he is sleep driving.

The moon is nearly full tonight. This morning? I do not know. It's indistinct when you've yet to sleep. But of all the light, my streetlight is the brightest. There's one just outside my house. Usually it doesn't work. It's ironic that it should only work now, when I would make a bid to see the sunrise.

An indistinguishable tint of yellow permeates the deep blue at the edge of the eastern sky. It is nine past five in the morning. The sun should rise in twenty minutes, if the chart I looked up is correct. I wonder if the sun ever rises at the exact same time, or if it's always just a fraction of a moment out of pace?

There is a thunderstorm far to the north west. I do not hear the thunder rumbling, but every once in a while the northern sky lights up with a flash of lightning. It's almost surreal, somehow. The quiet, the purplish red below the belt of green and yellow beyond the eastern mountains, the flickering clouds in the north, it all seems like some unbelievable place, something from a sci fi movie or a fantasy realm.

It certainly doesn't ring true to what I've come to know of reality. Is this the world without people? With less people? I don't know what to make of it. The silence is like nothing I've ever experienced. What is in this silence?

I'm afraid that if I look away too long, I'll miss it. The sky is changing so quickly! There's a thin line of what could nearly be daytime sky blue between the deep blue and the yellow! And then an unsettling maroon at the edge of the sky.

I can still see Mars. The last lonely twinkle in the sky.

It's getting cooler. That's so strange. It just feels so odd, especially in a desert like this, for this sudden rush of cool that preceeds the sunrise. Perhaps it's what wakes up the birds. I can hear some of them now, quiety twittering, shouting out to one another from the trees.

It's truely amazing how one singular light, even one so great as the sun, can chase away the vast darkness of space. I say this because it's so strange to see the darkness flee, driven away. There is so much more darkness than there is sun. And yet the sun overpowers it daily.

I wonder when the streetlights will shut off. I wonder when Mars will fade.

Heh. Now it seems like the sun is taking its sweet time. There are some clouds on the east horizon. I wonder, is sunrise when the sun peaks over the mountains, or over the clouds obscuring those mountains?

For a brief moment, I wonder where that music, like bells, is coming from. Then I see that some unfelt morning wind has stirred the wind-chimes. It's perfect. I could not ask for a better instrument on which to play my sunrise.

Mars is dim. The sun would be up, if not for those clouds. A line of large, sleepy ants meanders past me. The early shift, I suppose.

I have a "I should be sleeping" headache. The sun was to rise around 5:35. It's nearly ten minutes past that and I still can't see it. It's those clouds. The world is illuminated, and I can't even quite see the sun yet. It's as though the sun has never taken such pains in rising before. Each moment the sky is brighter, but still the sun evades me.

I'm determined. I will see the sun before I submit to sleep and fail to extricate myself from warm, seductive dreams.

The world is bright but the sun is nowhere to be found! Perhaps it has disappeared, and left only its light to remember it by?

In the morning this desert city smells as the mountains do. Fresh and clean, cleansed somehow in the night. It's wondrous.

Oh! Some bold, foolish bird hopped into a dense potted plant here by my side! Looking for the bees that about in it, I suppose! I heard him rustling in the plant and turned abruptly, surprised, and frightened the silly creature away.

There it is! At last!I've seen the world awaken. And the shy but glorious sun comes forth and peaks through her curtain of clouds. Even the sun slept in on a Saturday. And now I think I'll do the same. Good morning! And Goodnight!

There she goes... there she goes again

GAH!! Always this ridiculous obsession with love!

Thank you Chritian's dad from Mulin Rouge! That'll be enough of your ranting!! It's my turn, and I'll raise your rant a rave. Love. I always come back to this one concept, which stands tall in the middle of everything and becomes the most important thing in the world.

How is it that it always comes back to love?

Avoiding it is like trying to escape a quick orbit around the sun. It just seems so impossible. It's always on my mind. I do try to think of other things, important things. Of course! I cannot really base my own value on the love that I wish I had.

There are many other important things in the world! Like what am I gonna do if/when the American government crumbles and we dive into civil war or poverty? They do love their penniless artists in France, I suppose. Perhaps the Canadians could smuggle me over somehow?

Or what about writing the next novel to go down in history? I've gotta get ON that! And what about READING all the classics that came before mine? And what about learning everything there is to know? And applying that knowledge? I still have to find a cure for cancer! And I didn't finish that hat I started knitting yet....

THERE'S SO MUCH TO DO! So why is my brain still all tied up and entangled in the wild concept of love? So much to do, yet does the hope of having love come and sweeps all my thoughts off the table and plunge me into fantasy.

Is love really this big, or is it just when we're young and hormonal? I mean, really? Plenty of people have time for war and peace and saving the environment and making money. Surely love isn't throwing them ALL off the same way it throws me and all my equally young and hormonal friends off!?

And then the many (really, it seems like everybody is either dating or undatable! Ludicrous!) lucky people that find a match to hug and kiss and hold or be held by, they don't seem to understand just how HUGE love really it!

They use it almost nonchalantly! Don't they realize just how important it is? The word love is not a term to be thrown around! Good heavens, what are you doing!? Getting past the third date SURELY does not unlock the level of love! LOVE IS NOT LEVEL FOUR, and romance is NOT a game!

Love is this powerful, unconditional thing, and teenagers are skipping around and tossing it like a Frisbee! NO! Don't say it until it is always true. And PLEASE. Be realistic. You've known each other only for a little while. Don't base love on feeling alone!

Love is a feeling, yes. It's also an action and a fact! Body, mind and spirit, right? Of course your spirit's soaring. Your body is pumped full of happy horomones, or what-have-you. As for your brain, somehow it ALWAYS gets left in the dust. Think about it, critically and realistically. Ask yourself, will this work?

If you don't know for absolute certain, then bite your tongue! Wait until you know beyond the shadow of a doubt. And allow me to remind you, it helps if the object of your affections feels the same. Love is a feeling, a thought, an infatuation as well as an agreement with another person.

Personally, I think you love somebody as soon as you plan on marrying them and staying forever by their side. Before that, it's an infatuation and a friendship. Before that, you really DON'T know for certain.

My feelings say there is no greater thing than love. My mind says, nuh UH! There's more to life than that! My body back-hands me with a large dose of hormones and I stand, confused. I look to my left, look to my right, make a wish at 11:11, cross my fingers and start moving forward.

That nifty knitter stabbed you with a knitting needle!!

THAT'S IT! I won't stand for it anymore! No fear! No foolishness! NO procrastinating!! I'm gonna do this thing! At long last, I will make me a hat!!

For too long we wait. It's a dream, but it isn't of immediate or obvious benefit to ourselves. Maybe it's a silly dream, and not doing it isn't a disaster to be averted. But really, it could be the saddest little truth. It's easy to do just enough. Work just enough to afford what you need, and your simple wants. And so it's all we do!

Believe you me, great artists, famous actors, the geniuses and celebrities of our times were not satisfied with "enough". They started out with just that much, and then they said NO! I want more, and I'm willing to get what I want!

Yes, this brings up an obvious argument. Selfish personal gain. DON'T USE THAT TO JUSTIFY WASTING YOUR LIFE!! I know that's not what I want!! I do not simply wish to exist! I wish to make some small impact on the world I live in!!

Or you know what? I'd be satisfied just to make an impact on a few people IN that crazy little world!! It's not selfish personal gain! It is you making the world a better place! Adding to it before you go! Don't just be satisfied to break even when you say adieu! There should be some kind of profit!

Profit for yourself, for others, it doesn't matter as long as you don't break even, and end up with a wasted life. There's nothing less spectacular in this world than that!! You can succeed spectacularly, you can fail spectacularly, but averaging out just does nothing.

This is a call to arms! Stand up and fight back the weariness that would send you to your grave with nothing to show for it! Sweep the lazy curtains back from your eyes and DO SOMETHING!!!

Write a book! Too much? Alright, a poem! Sing your significant other a song you wrote yourself!! Or sing along with a love song on the radio! Paint something and frame it! No? FINE! Doodle on a sheet of notebook paper and stick it on the fridge!! Personally, I'm gonna make someone a hat!! GO, GO, GO!!!









Link of the day!!!! ORRRRR if you wanna keep procrastinating, this is a fun way to do that....
HellOOOOOOO shopping cart hero!!!

Adventures in Craigslist

Intellect, atheism and theism.

I had the strangest random argument with a random stranger this week. He replied to an add I put on craigslist, of all things. At some point there was information looking for someone both intelligent and of a particular theism. It was to this that he replied.

You won't find an intelligent religious type, not often, he said.

I, in all good manners, replied, rather than deleting. I suggested it was closed minded of him to say so, and that I myself was acquainted with many an intelligent theist.

And then it got complicated. He attacked the particular theism that I had referred to, and claimed that all intelligent people were atheists, or would be, some day, because that was in fact the result of critical thinking.

Look, I'm not anti atheist, but good grief!! What a ridiculous, general statement! Yes, there were studies he cited, but there were just as many that in fact came up with exactly the opposite conclusion! And generally his studies only used groups of scientists as their intellectual guinea pigs!! Trust me, intelligence is not saved only for the scientists. There are english majors and teachers and philosophers and more!

For a while I enjoyed discussing the topic, but more and more often he was simply offensive and rude, rather than professional! Whatever happened to honest, respectful debate for the sake of learning?

What kind of lonely nut case wanders craigslist looking for people to call stupid? What, he can't get any REAL people to listen to him whine, so he looks online? Or perhaps he's a wimp that can't stand up to somebody unless it's anonymous and untraceable?

Stupidity abounds in atheists and theists alike! Just as not all atheists are scientists, not all intellects are atheists!

I played by his game for a while, in a respectful manner, of course (unlike him, I might add), but eventually I decided he was wasting my time. If he wants to toot his atheistic, intellectual horn, he should write a book or start a blog. Not search through craigslist personals for people to put on the defensive.

Because I for one don't care to argue with someone who can't be bothered to question their own beliefs, but delight in questioning mine.




LINK OF THE DAY!! This game makes me feel like an explosives expert! http://www.physicsgames.net/game/Demolition_City.html

An existential crisis

It on occasion bothers me, life. I sometimes feel that it doesn't have any worth on its own. Not for everyone. Some people make their lives valuable, by how they think, the people that they strive to be, rarely by what they do. WHO they are is valuable. It's something specific that I look for in other people of which I myself fall short on occasion, at least concerning my own personal standards.

Depth.

Perhaps that's a pretentious word. It suggests a certain distaste for "shallow" people, and often the kind of people that so desperately hate "shallow" people make nearly everyone out to be shallow. I could understand the majority of the population hating such a person, as well as being such a person. People are crazy. But we all knew that.

I had to take a step back from the chaos in my mind and figure out what I meant by depth. There was some great appeal to making my life worth something, in order to share it with those that matter to me. Friends, family, a special man someday, maybe even something bigger than all that. I want to have something of worth to share.

Of course I want a fair trade. Maybe it's too much to ask people to make their lives worth something? I doubt it. I think there are very specific things that lend value to a person.

Intellect, balanced with grace. Courage, balanced by wisdom. Love and loyalty. What is it that makes somebody valuable? What makes me worth anything? Does being intelligent but cocky about it lose me points? Is it even a point system at all!?

All I know is that this special kind of worth is what attracts me to certain people. Friends. Possible loves. Mentors. Then again there's my family. Are they somehow exempt from my system of worthy attraction?

Or perhaps it is just that the better I know a person, the easier it is to see their worth.







LINK OF THE DAY!!! Honestly I may have published this post specifically so that I could post this link. I've found the brownie bible. I wept when I found it for it was the truth, the way and all the recipes for the best brownies you never thought were actually man-bake-able. My life is now complete. http://thebrownieproject.wordpress.com/

Hunks of awesome awkward: A life story

Life is awkward. Which can honestly be great fun.

I don't hate being awkward. Yes, it makes meeting new people hard. Also yes, it makes alienating people that I dislike very, very easy.

It's like some kind of crazy super power! You don't understand. Keep overbearing, annoying salespeople from talking to you!

Those people from the mall kiosks that follow you around and ask you questions about your hair, teeth, skin and feet? They can be kept at bay solely via bad social skills!

Of course sometimes you will get nabbed, and will be obligated to slip away with multiple petty lies and obviously unfelt apologies. That's a different form of awkward, one of the kinds I'm less at peace with.

Everybody knows the random not-applicable-answer awkward moments. If you've ever bought or sold at a grocery store, you know what I mean.

"Hello!"
"Yeah, you too!"

"Have a nice day!"
"Not bad, how about you?"

These are very entertaining. Just keep the ball rolling and they'll do their best to pretend it didn't happen. Also, enjoy.

Dress oddly. Or boldly. Pick your adjective, either works.

Really conservative people HATE it. Eventually they will have to talk to you, and when they do you're sure to get a nasty stare, shrewdly judging your carefully crafted ensemble. It's ironic that grown men and women are no better than school children in this respect.

My favorite of these actually looked me up and down, asked me if I worked "here" (yes I dress oddly at work), and did a double take when I said I did. I suppose some people might have been offended, but I found it hilarious.

These are great fun. Grow a fetish for odd straps or outlandish hats. You'll like the results. Either you'll find it funny, or you'll have a great rude customer story by the end the day!

(this works even better in churches!)

Alright. My favorite of all favorite awkward situations would be the awkward date goodbye. (I am THE awkward date. See: The Last Stand) This one is fairly new. Two people with no ability to say goodbye have come to that point in the conversation.

You've regressed to small talk, and clearly are getting ready to head your separate ways. But neither seems to know where to draw the line and end it. I never had a talent for saying goodbye, I just tend to wait until my victim makes a run for it. It doesn't quite work this way when neither person knows how to go about it.

So, whilst still talking, begin to back away from each other, casually, slowly. It's like you're being sneaky or something. Circle each other, looking for an unguarded moment to make a break for it!

Once you finally get far enough away from each other that casual conversation voices are no longer prudent, shout a quick goodbye or wave awkwardly before dashing back to the safety of your various modes of transportation.

I suppose that could be considered unpleasant, if you're not a connoisseur of the awkward. People hate awkward. Most consider a date good if there were no awkward pauses. I think a new take is in order.

Look at your awkward moments in a new and amusing light! Awkward is just too much fun for you to suffer through it. Enjoy it! Life is awkward. Life is interesting!





DISCLAIMER: SOME OF THESE EVENTS MAY HAVE BEEN EXAGGERATED EITHER FOR YOUR ENTERTAINMENT OR FOR MY OWN PERSONAL SATISFACTION.


LINK OF THE DAY!!!!
Oh man. If you're too lazy to actually cook it, you can just read the recipe. It's like food porn. Just thinking about this uber delicious brickle recipe gives me shudders of delight. (but seriously. Make some. And make ME some. MMmmmmmm.)
http://www.macheesmo.com/2009/06/brickle/

Just STAAAAANDIN' in the raAAIIIN!

Extreme weather incurs powerful feelings.

The monsoon season is a time of terrifying beauty and intense power in the desert. Thunder rumbles across the sand and reverberates off of the distant mountains.

Lightning writhes throughout the heavens and casts shadows between the curtains of dark clouds in a light show never yet replicated by man.

It just doesn't seem natural to toss a city into the midst of this supernatural show of strength. Cars moving between sheets of rain. Traffic lights backed by by the majesty of a lightening lit sky.

It's like putting a statue (a glorious one such as Bernini's Ecstasy of St. Theresa) on the edge of a volcano or just above a towering water fall. It seems like nonsense. Such a strange contrast, such heights of extreme.

It is strange. But somehow it's one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen or known.

So I hike up my pajama pants and trek out on my bare feet as the rain pours down. I wander the incredible world changed by the water on the ground and in the sky, the lightning and the clouds. I become a part of it.

I kick through the puddles and the water weighs down my lashes and soaks my hair, and I have never felt so alive.

I am a banana

It's true. I am a banana. I'm yellow and frankly kind of weird looking. My outside is gross and odd, and really does nothing of interest. My insides, however, are delicious, and perfect for smoothies and banana bread. (but not banana muffins because muffins are really creepy)

Okay, fruity metaphor aside. So many people are focused on just how entertaining someone is outside of themselves. You've got to do interesting things, be seen in interesting places full of other interesting people.

Nonsense!

Nonsense, I cry! Those poor people of action never slow down and work on all the mad excitement that should be going on inside their brains! Thinking is nearly a lost art!

I think one of the more fantastic past times is just thinking. It develops your mind. You can just sit there and think, or you can read or listen, and think about what you've read or heard.

Maybe I'm just making this complaint because I'm a really boring person, and my only excuse for my deplorable state is that I'm thinking. Maybe I'm bitter because the only interesting thing that the outside of me does is get slipped on in cartoons. (back to the fruit metaphor)

But maybe if you'd talk to me, you'd see how interesting I am on the inside. Ask anyone, we all think the inside matters more than the outside, in the long run.

Now how do you find out what's going on inside their head? Talk to them. Speak up! I would be a prominent citizen in the city of Dictionopolis. There's nothing more important than words and the thoughts that create them!

I implore you, think! And I beg of you, speak! More interesting than all that you will do is all that you will think, if only you will tell me all about it.

Odyssey

It had traveled some time since it was bought for cheap in a distant, unknown store in the swimming section. It likely was bought just at the beginning of the summer, not but a month or two ago.

Perhaps it was carried by a group, and in their flurry and excitement, it was left. Maybe it was the same group that bought it to begin with. I rather hope not. I'd like to think otherwise.

Perhaps this particular bright green foam pool noodle has thus far had a long and rather adventurous life, for a child's pool toy. It had of course been received by a delighted youngster, probably as a cheap birthday gift. What better gift for a summer birthday at the pool?

The little child had probably ignored the momentary angry flash in his mother's eyes, a bitter dart shot toward the frugal mother that had been so cheap as to buy the birthday boy a pool noodle. The kid didn't care. he had a tool, a weapon, a pet sea monster. He had something that he could hit his friends with that didn't seem to anger any of the parents.

He'd struck gold, as far as he was concerned.

but on their trip back from the pool an argument broke out. Somebody had received enough noodle welts to last him a lifetime and finally tore the noodle privileges from the noodle king by force. A struggle ensued, and the noodle was dropped into the wash of no return, lost to it's barely new owner forever.

Perhaps a few days later a team of rowdy teenagers playing with airsoft guns happened across this lost treasure. Of course teenage boys aren't so different from little boys when it comes to flexible, foam clubs. The main difference is that they probably hit harder.

I'm sure that at some point these teens realized that carrying a neon green noodle about displayed their position quite accurately to their friends with the airsoft guns. So of course it ended up back at camp, where they might harass each other with it later.

But that harassment was never to be. A strong wind kicked up and swept the mysterious noodle away, across a highway and into a sheltered neighborhood. Adventures abounded, but this magical noodle never stayed in one place for too long. A pair of college students going for a lazy Sunday bike ride would find it in a week or two.

The college boy (not being too unlike his close cousins, the small boy and the teen-aged boy) picked it up and bothered his companion with it, poking and prodding with his new-found toy. His companion was vaguely amused, as were any other bicyclists or motorists whom happened to catch an eyeful of a grown man on a bike toting a bright green pool noodle.

At length the ride was over and the pair parted ways. He kept his little memento though. Left it in the back of his open truck bed. Too bad he forgot it was there when he drove some distance on a hot, dusty highway. It leaped from the truck bed and took flight, away to the desert unknown.

Who knows. It's probably still out there. Wandering the wasteland. Waiting for its next adventure. I almost envy it.




Long story short, we found a pool noodle. And then we lost it. Its time with us was fleeting. (I made up the rest)



I HAD to publish this post JUST so I could post this freakin amazing LINK OF THE DAY!!
http://www.nobodyhere.com/justme/nose_send.here It's INSANE. Which is kind of the point.

If only, If only

Have you ever had something you wanted and thought about often enough that it started popping up in your dreams?

Dreams are funny like that. If you think about it a lot, be it good or bad, it's bound to show up. Worry about school ALL the time and you WILL dream of showing up to the final naked. Or some other school related nightmare. Always thinking about that boy/girl? Yeah, he/she is definitely going to make an appearance in your dreams.

Not that there won't be lots and lots of really random, unnecessary dreams about evil construction cones and the dark side of the floating Bermuda triangle that rear-ended you in traffic the other week. But the occasional bit of what you really want is bound to make an appearance sooner or later.

I myself have had a topic to which I have been giving a great deal of thought for some time now. It just made it's first premier in my dreams this last week.

First a nightmare of high school past. Last came an unusual bit where Darth Vader made an attempt to keep children all over the globe from having fun, only to discover that he was in fact my father after he drew a beard on my face in crayon. In the middle of these two dreams was another, in which I was given a perfect slice of exactly what I wanted.

It felt so very, very real that I was convinced halfway through the next dream that it really did happen. At last! It really happened! I can't wait to wake up and tell everybody-- wait. Wake up? Oh NOES!!

Only after I had convinced Vader to leave the public library and he had introduced me to my long lost and much older brother (ironically a coworker of mine) and we'd gone to a family outing at Justin's Water World did the truth set in.

This was a dream. And so was that. The thing that I had most wanted, that I had been walking on air (sleeping on air?) because I'd finally gotten, it wasn't real. My subconscious had lied to me.

No, I AM your father!!
No. NO. That's not true. That's impossible!
Search your feelings. You know it to be true.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!




Link of the DAY!!
This game is addictive. This game is ridiculous. This game is... Perfect!!
http://www.cardtoss.com/ check it out!
(I know, I know, my second tossing game in two posts.... but could YOU resist?)

The last stand

Recently I found myself on the couch, embroiled in the last half of the last movie of the Lord of the Rings series, which was being shown on some obscure satellite movie channel. An army of men on horses faced what appeared to be an unbeatable foe: A massive army of angry looking bald men with painted faces and giant war elephants that were larger than your typical 2 story building.

At first there's a glimmer of hope as the courageous men on horses charge the evil elephants. Then they're brutally trampled to death.

You know what that massive elephant army reminds me of? Hint: one of my greatest fears of all time. (There's about nine of those now. Zombies, roaches, the dark, the thing, fear itself, failure, guitar strings (that's new) and that which I will reveal to you presently.)

Dating.

Don't get me wrong. I like guys. Just like any other woman I enjoy/bitterly hate a good crush, but I'm terrified of the whole dating scene. I feel just like what those poor dudes on horses must have felt. I'm facing something strange and unknown (a guy who's actually interested in me), and if I fail here I'll be promptly trampled to death (crushed).

Whilst comparing my love life to Lord of the Rings (dear lord what have I DONE!?) I might as well remember that the dudes on horses actually WON that battle. But I suspect they were the first to do so. I'm sure the evil elephant men trampled a lot of undeserving armies before they got to our courageous little horsemen.

So if this isn't the battle that I'm meant to win, then I certainly hope I won't be so trampled that I can't pick myself up, put myself back together and fight another day.




DISCLAIMER: to anyone of interest who may in fact read my blog: No worries. I'm exaggerating.


OH MAN. BEST link of the day EVAR!! This game is addictive. wind speed? I mean, really? AWESOME. Check out
http://www.widro.com/throwpaper.html

so much better than the real thing.

Let them eat Cake! (or some OTHER kind of comfort food!)

Ah, comfort food, comfort items, rituals and things and places and feelings that put us in the comfort zone.

I know that almost every motivational speaker tells you to get out of your comfort zone. But where there's a comfort zone, there's a zone right outside of it that's called a war zone. Heck, if you stay out of your comfort zone for too long, it's likely to get hit by a stray anti-aircraft missile.

BOOM! No more comfort zone. Sh**! Now what? Are we doomed to wander the war zone for the remainder of our zone occupation? Nooooo! I won't stand for it!!

There must be some semblance of comfort out here in the war zone!

And then there was pudding. And comfort objects such as the ratty old bunny that was presented to me at birth (*but* that I assuredly do *not* sleep with *anymore*). And best of all, comfort tv shows! Like scrubs, smallville and any form of animated batman (the best of said being the originals from the sixties, Batman the animated series, and The Batman).

On days when I eat pudding, I display it loudly and happily in all my status updates as a glorious time of pudding eating. But in reality, it means I had a bad day. And so pudding I must eat.

(what better comfort food is there? The sugar free is JUST as delicious as the regular, it's instant, and it's really, REALLY delicious!)

And then there was batman. Do I really need to explain why batman is so comforting? He's a man. ONLY a man. He uses his exceptional (but entirely normal and human) mind to uncover mysteries and predict people's actions, and to keep a large, successful company on its feet so that he can afford all his wicked awesome gear. He in turn keeps his body strong and tuned so he's ready for any bad guy. Human or otherwise. And his tv shows have ALL the best theme songs. Case in point.

As for that bunny that I *don't* sleep with, that's none of your business.

The take away of all this is that although it's good to get outside your comfort zone, it's good to take a little bit of it with you, out into the war zone. No soldier leaves his camp and goes out into the war zone without taking something to protect himself with. (hopefully)

The curious incident of the dog who knew too much

I find myself talking more often and more in depth and more at ease with my dog than with anybody else. Ridiculous! You say. Well. . . Maybe. Then again, why not?

Talking to my dog gives me a chance to speak freely without fear of misspeaking or offending. She won't think less of me if I say something that doesn't quite add up. She'll even listen intently when I don't make sense and have to repeat myself three times to get it right.

At one time I cared for two poodles who lived in a large lonely house. To qualm my fears at night (for my alone time in the large dark space gave my imagination far too much free time) I would banter happily with the dogs until I could not keep myself awake any longer. It was a comfort to speak so freely then.

Really it's just an inner monologue, spoken.

And I think everyone has those, on some level. Some people talk to themselves. Some just sort of think to themselves. Others choose inanimate objects as their hapless victims. It's good for you, I'm sure.

When you talk to yourself, or to your dog, or to your dashboard, you're practicing a real life social skill. You're learning how to better string your own words together out loud to say what's on your mind.

Plus it kind of helps that the dog is sweet and encouraging. She won't think less of me later. I suppose on rare occasion you'll find yourself a person that you can talk to.

There's somebody out there with whom you can be completely honest. You needn't fear what they'll think of you later. They admire you entirely based on who you are. You or I only might be lucky enough to find that person.

Until then my dog must suffice.




DISCLAIMER: I'm really not crazy. really. And I CAN talk to people. If I want.


Link of the day!! Check out Microsoft's new search engine. Does it suck? Well, it WAS made by microsoft. . . but what do I know? I'm a Mac, myself. Find out for yourself what you think of http://www.bing.com/

I rode my bicicle past your window last night...

Let me make perfectly clear to you my opinion on bicycles.

They're wonderful! What a clever invention! Except that some idiot had to go and invent the car. That spells imminent doom for some fraction of the bicycle riding population.

And then there's this: I live in a desert. Won't tell you which one, but there's sun, sand and cactus galore.

You think riding into a palm tree hurts? At least palm trees don't have spines. And once you actually hit the tree, you can pick yourself up and try again. Not so with cactus. With the cactus you're stuck till someone decides to brave the spines and untangle you.

And then there's that sun. In the summer it can get up to and even well over 110 degrees during the day. Oh it burns. Oh you sweat. Oh I hope you aren't going to school or work or anywhere else practical, because if you are you may have to tote a fresh change of clothes and some deodorant along with your briefcase or backpack.

And good luck with your hair. What nutcase invented bike helmets? Are those pathetic little slots supposed to keep your head cool and your hair dry? Because if so, EPIC FAIL!!!! And there is NO chicken for you.

Now then, have I explained for you the nasty and unpleasant bit about bicycles? Are you satisfied in knowing that I hate them? Because you would be wrong.

I have a sweet retro ladies street bike with shiny butterfly handles and a glistening red paint job. I have several conditions about riding it, however.

First of all, I mustn't plan on going anywhere. A bicycle is for fun and recreation ONLY! No practical uses!

However, I may violate that first one there if anyone goes about inventing a bicycle helmet that doesn't plaster your hair to your head with sweat. I could stand to tote clothes and deodorant, but I'm not bringing a collapsable shower to wash my hair in too. That's where I draw the line. There must be ventilated bike helmets!

Second, which may be ignored if the above clause is put into action, I hate helmets. Like I said, sweat. Gross. I will not wear a helmet whist riding a bicycle. Not until they invent a decent helmet.

Third and most important is this: I like to ride my bike at night and on rainy or overcast days. There's no better day or time to wander about on your be-wheeled beast of burden than at night, when the smells of evening like orange blossoms and summer barbecues permeate the air. Nor is there a better time than when you can smell the mud of the coming rain and the air is clean for once.

How perfect a time it can be, to fly over the streets and past the trees, and to let your mind wander as widely and freely as you can.

Breakfast for my Midnight Feast: A Memoir (not really, but that'd be the best title ever)

When did we get into this fantastic food feng shui (fung shway)? In a strange and magical land where certain things are best for breakfast, while others are more dinner items, what is fresh and new, and what is taboo? What can I say? It's food feng shui!

I love a good bowl of cold cereal for breakfast. Maybe it's cinnamon delicioso crunch or chocolate frosted sugar bombs. Whole milk or two percent, skim perhaps, or even soy milk will be my cereal's cool companion.

Remember when the more expensive, sugary cereals came with a prize in the box? The lucky kid remembered to keep the awesome spoon they got out of a cereal box a long time ago in a galaxy far away, that one that changes colors when they put it in milk? Yeah, we all had one. Don't deny it. If you didn't have it, you envied someone who did.

But can such a delightful dish be kept to only the early hours?

No! I will not make it so, Captain!! I will not let it be! Those aren't words of wisdom! Set it free!

Cereal is a meal for any time, and the guidelines are simple:

• If it's morning, you're good, no matter what. That first wake up meal of the day, no matter when YOUR morning starts, is breakfast, and so clearly a good time for cereal.
• If it's afternoon, you had BETTER be wearing PAJAMAS! This is the PAJAMA CLAUSE! It only works if you're in pjs, folks. Else your breakfast cereal rights may be suspended.
• Dinner? Of COURSE cereal is acceptable for dinner! But not a run-of-the-mill right on time dinner. It must be later than you usually would take dinner, OR after seven pm in your specific time zone.
• Breakfast cereal is a great snack even with out the milk. You can have THAT anytime, and in any condition. Except for at breakfast. If you're having it for breakfast, don't be cheap with the milk.
• Midnight snack. Ladies and Gentlemen, there is no greater midnight snack than this: That a man or a woman might lay down their Mac book for a bowl of cereal.

Amen.

The Time/Money paradox

Time is the most valuable thing there can be, in this world or any other. It's the most exhaustible resource that exists. It is priceless. You can never buy more time.

Time is the only thing we come into this world with. We can waste it, barter it, or use it to build and grow. It's the thing of great value that we can offer in this world before we have anything else. I'll trade my time for knowledge, and then, when I've added that knowledge to some more time, I can get a job out of the deal.

Then I can add that job and my knowledge to yet more time, and get money out of it. Then that money, with some more time, may someday buy me a home.

You'd think that by this point, I'd be exhausted. It's surprising how much of our time we like to keep for ourselves, to hoard away. It is, after all, our most precious resource.

What is the best was to spend this precious, priceless thing? Some must be given to get an education, to make money, to eat and to live. Where might the precious left-overs be spent, that they might not be wasted? Should we get more sleep, or while the time away in fantasy, or invest it in our television?

Perhaps. Enjoying something brought to you by someone else's well spent time is a worthy expenditure, is it not? I'm fairly certain that Van Gogh's Starry Night took much time. Just as I'm certain that Joss Wheden took time when he came up with his brilliant shows, and every great author took hours and days and months, and sometimes years to give us their glorious fantasies.

We could enjoy theirs, or do the same with our own. Of course, one of the best ways to spend something so valuable is with someone we value. I will give my time to my family, a significant other someday, my children, in the far future.

Take the time to create, to grow, to love. Surely it's worth it.

It's the Tapo Man!! (Get it? Like Repo, but made of tape? Eh? Eh?)

Yeah, I know. No one gets my reference. You'll all have to wonder, what is Repo? I made him at work today. Yup. You now know that A: I have a boring job and B: I have access to tape. It's true.

Some days it's just not worth chewing through the restraints

Ever notice how no one has a moderately bad day? There are good days, nice days, okay days, boring days, and really, REALLY bad days.

If your day starts out moderately bad, say, you get awoken a couple hours too early by your neighbor's car alarm, then really it can only get worse from there. Likely you'll slip in the shower, trip down your stairs, burn your breakfast, be late to work for trying to make a second breakfast only to under-cook it anyway, get shouted at by your boss for being late, snuffed by the attractive coworker and humiliated in the lunch room. You'll then proceed to get in a fender bender on your way home because you spilled the cold coffee you forgot to drink this morning all over your leather seats, and manage to run over your own dog once you make it into the driveway.

My prescription? If it starts bad, GO BACK TO BED!! Trust me, it's worth the sick day.

Of course that's the pleasant, avoidable type of bad day. There is Another Bad Day. (yeah, those capitals are intentional) A Bad Day so bad that whatever particular day of the week upon which it occurred will forever in your mind only be referred to as "The Day that Must Not be Named".

That day for me would be Tuesday The Day That Must Not Be Named.

This day could start out okay, boring, or even good. But it'll have its blood in the end. You'll see. Instead of being consistently and predictably terrible, it will just have one or two truly horrifying episodes. For a day like this with more than one terrible thing coming together to make the worst day of your life, the episodes will be at or above a 6 on a scale of 1 to 10. Your dog will die, you'll lose your job.

I personally think that the "One hit Wonder" (yeah, I made that up) is the Dark Queen Mother of all Bad Days. That day where everything is fine until one terrible thing happens. It tends to be that your whole day, somehow, without your knowledge, is plotting against you. You're a little tired, picking up a shift you might not have planned to work. Nothing is going wrong, it's an okay day.

Maybe it's not even the worst thing that could happen, but it's just bad enough, and because you're tired, because you're working on the weekend, it just hits you the wrong way, at the wrong time, in the wrong place. From there on out fate will let you make your own day worse. (and don't we always?)

Then again, maybe something terrible happens. Just one terrible thing. You get in a car accident. Your house burns down. A loved one dies. Pick a card, any card. At least on most bad days you get dealt more than just the one card. This kind of Bad Day is like playing high-stakes poker only you end up with just one card, and somebody forgot to take the joker out of the deck.

That's my science of bad days. Never a moderately bad one, and they're always competing with each other for the top spot in our top five worst days ever list. Has your calendar suddenly lost all of its Tuesdays Days That Must Not Be Named?

Is Love fair? And if so, how does it relate to war?

Anyone who's ever read my Valentine's day post knows my opinion on love. I find it maddening and ridiculous because most people who say they're in love aren't, and actual cases of true love are few and far between.

However love is a common topic when it comes to my dreams. Day dreams, night dreams, the warm lethargic fantasies of the cozy, woozy place between waking and sleeping, half of all of my time is spent in dreams of love. I'm a romantic. I simply can't help it. Love is my spited lover, the man of my dreams that drives me nuts, but always leaves me wanting more.

It's a love hate relationship.

Yet I haven't even the cold comfort of past love and loss. No reason to cry. So I must get by on sad and/or romantic movies. What to watch when I dream of love? What to watch when I've got no reason to cry? My personal happy medium is Australia, right now.

It had all the right romance and tears in all the right places.

It's a cruel world, this world that says alls fair in love and war. Is it? Is it really? I know that as a citizen of the U.S., all is not fair in war. We have to fight by the rules, while our enemies claim that all is fair. Then again I suppose that in this land all really is kind of fair in love.

Not fair in the sense of everyone coming out happy in the end, though. I think that's just what we wish it would be. Quite honestly, all is fair just means that somebody can get away with anything if they put it under the name of Love. This is a cruel defilement of Romance.

No man who would violate every boundary for his own gain and call it love is a true lover. And no woman that would play on every insecurity in the all powerful name of Love is a lady worth courting.

I said it once, I'll say it again. All you need is love. But I beg you, do not use its name in vain, nor cover evil intentions with its innocent blood.




Link of the day! A genius that I happen to on occasion (when it suits me) call a friend of mine has begun a blog. We've been exchanging/critiquing manuscripts (and she'd better send me something new soon or she'll find out why I call myself The Vengeance) and she's absolutely brilliant. Check out CaityMarie's blog 'Say Anything' at http://plaguesongs.blogspot.com

Life is Beautiful

title: the Name of possibly the most heart wrenching movie of all time.

I came to the park to forget about my worries. I talked to a friend about a potential suitor. As usual, he's rather interested but I don't think he's what I'm looking for.

"Go for it", says my friend. But my mind in the passenger seat keeps stomping the invisible break.

Realizing that worrying was what I came to forget, and that this suitor had me worried, I wandered to the swings and talked of other things.

My friend went to dinner and I sat alone, enjoying the wind and the sky. As I swung on that swing, the wind pushed me high, and for just a little while I knew I could fly.

Time is a great teacher... Unfortunately it kills all its students!!

quote: Hector Berlioz

What if you got old prematurely? No, no, just wait! Hear me out! I mean, what if you were young, like in your late teens or twenties or even in your thirties, and you woke up one morning with the body of an eighty year old?

What would you do?

First thing first? PANIC!! After that, try to find a cure. Of course, its infinitely likely that there is no cure. You're doomed to be old until you waste away from the illness (oy, if you're young and you suddenly become old, I'm willing to call that an illness).

Okay, so you're now old until you die, which will presumably be sooner then you may originally have expected, now that you're old and all.

Will your loved ones recognize you? Will they believe you? Even if you know the deep secrets that they only entrusted to you, do you really have faith that they will know you? They'll probably send you to a crazy house, or a group home.

Then not only will you be out of your element because you were young and suddenly you're old, but now you'll be surrounded by peers who grew up two or three generations before you did! You'll be an outcast in the nursing home!! Old men will hit on you (or old ladies, to be gender sensitive) and little old lady cliques will gossip about you in corners, assuming that you cannot adjust the volume level on your hearing aid and suddenly have super sonic hearing that allows you to hear through walls and across great distances!

Ooh, now that I think about it, I think I'd raise hell in a place like that! I'd be the rebellious little old lady! It'd be all kinds of fun! If no one believes I'm me, then whats to stop me from getting away with murder? (figuratively. Maybe.) I'd hijack electric wheelchairs and rob the other old folks blind by cheating at poker!

I think I'd definitely play at some serious online dating! BWa ha ha! Imagine some poor hot young fella meeting me for the first time and finding that his hot date is an eighty year old! (naturally I'd be fishing for men in their prime, so that'd make their horrified realization all the more delightful)

I'd be the bane of every assisted living home.



And you know what? I'd say SCREW YOU, CREDIT!! I'M DYING SOON ANYWAY!! And run up the charge on every credit card I could get my wrinkly old hands on. TAKE THAT, RECESSION!




Post of the day! I SO want to do stuff like this in my hometown. It's like an ART ATTACK!!!
http://www.xmarkjenkinsx.com/outside.html

To sleep, to dream, to do nothing

Failure.

The term that any one human heart might hate most in all of this world. I suppose it's defined as trying and not succeeding. But I have a fear that it is worse than that. Much worse.

I fear that failure is when you don't do something that you can do and want to do. When you tried your best, you can hardly call it failing. You tried. You gave it all you had. But when you are completely capable of doing something, and you don't, now that's failure.

The fat man that claims he tries and still stuffs his face.

The would be author that excuses her lack of hard work for a lack of inspiration.

The student who just didn't feel like doing her homework.

How many more of those stupid little phrases can you come up with that apply to yourself? I should make a list of all mine. Except... Well, what for? Does it seem to you, as it seems to me, that it makes no difference that we admit to these? We still continue to fail.

You have failed to do what matters. And the worst part is, it's always something that we want. I want to finish my books. He wants to be an accomplished artist. She wants to be skinny.

How do we bear to be seen in public when we have failed to do the simple things that would give us personal satisfaction?

I hate it. I so hate it. And I fear it. There is nothing more terrifying.

There were five great fears in the world, for me, before I feared failure, and they are listed thus:

• One was my irrational fear of roaches.

• Another the only natural fear of the dark, paired with an imagination like my own, which always made for me terrors in the night.

• A third was the obligatory fear of fear itself (for I often frighten myself with my own imaginings and dreamings of fearful things).

• A fourth and rather ridiculous fear was that of zombies. Suffice to say I watched a scary movie.

• A fifth was the absolutely not ridiculous at all fear of The Thing. You know, that eerie alien that kills somebody and then takes their shape, just until it infects its next victim? I was far too young to see that movie when I did.

But my horrible new fear blows all the other ones away.

I fear failure by inaction. Why won't I do something!?





Link of the Day! http://david-mcmahon.blogspot.com/
I've always enjoyed Davids posts and you can find all kinds of neat new blogs through his Post of the Day posts. Enjoy!

The sudden cessation of stupidity

"I was writing a paper about creativity, or the lack there of in
school systems... and was dealt a heavy serving of irony"
- A Harried College Student (and a friend of mine)

It's true, you know. Creativity really does seem to be going down the drain. People don't have time or motivation or the resources. Or the desire.

Why? What's so wrong with the clever, creative things?

I suppose they're expensive. AND you'll never make it in the field... Is that it? Despair? Is that our problem? The lack of hope is slowly killing us. Yes, it can kill us, this lack of creativity in the world. No, not physically. But I suspect physical death is a mercy in comparison to death of the heart and soul.

Is it worth a physical life if all that once justified that life is gone?

Picasso once said that "All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up".

Maybe that's what's happening to the world. We're growing up, and growing out of the artistic era. I suppose many people take up art again once they've retired, but if the world is only just growing up, then how long before we start cashing in on the social security?




Link of the day: http://www.clublaugh.com/es-items/712.swf
woah. Trippy.

Tooth and Claw: an artistic red-eye special

For those who don't get it, the three-liners are haiku. Some form of Asian poetry. The only rule is that the first and last line must have five syllables, and the second must have seven. That also might tell you why they're so cryptic. It's okay, I've given you translations after each verse.

I got my nails done
Fancy black nails with white tips
Glittery between

(I got my nails done at a salon today! first time evAR! The nails are black and the tips are white. On the border between black and white there's a little line of silver glitter! Uber pretty.)

Long nails pained digits
I write in terms of typos
So awkward at first

(My fingers HURT! Getting fancy nails is NOT a painless ritual. There's sanding and burning chemicals involved. I keep making stupid little typos because I'm not quite used to typing with long nails yet.)

Home now inspired
I go now to my paper
Embrace with sharpie

(When I got home I was suddenly all inspirey! I really need an outline for my book so I'm not writing blind. So I pulled out the world's largest type-writer roll- it's a huge roll of 4 1/2 foot wide white paper. I just rolled out about ten feet and started making a GIANT story web with a big fat sharpie.)

My dreams are homesick
I beg them return to me
That I might nurture

(I've pushed my writing and art aside for some time now because of school. Now I'm trying to get back to them, make them a priority. I want to finish what I've begun.)

Tadaaaa! I hope you enjoyed it! I wrote it at 4 am, hence the title red-eye special.

So long, and good morning!




How about a link of the day? http://fmylife.com
Somehow hours pass as I read about all the miserable stuff that happens to other people.
Should I feel bad about that?

Fantasy is a fantastic thing, if you've got the imagination for it.

The Ancient Mayan Culture absolutely fascinates me. Who were these geniuses that rose to such a formidable peak of civilization so much faster than anyone else? What mysteries lie behind this people! Honestly, if I only had one chance to travel back in time (clearly unrealistic, seeing as no one travels back in time, so far as I know), it would be then, and there!

WAIT! I've got it! If Doctor Who were to come and pick me up in his Tardis (a time and space traveling phone booth), I could ask HIM to take me to visit the Mayans! Naturally the Tardis would bridge any language barriers (yeah, it does that too). I’d meet them, talk to them, see their temples, discuss their fascinating calendar with them. As long as they weren’t the "kill first, socialize later" types. Being as Doctor Who is very clever, I’m sure he’d find a way to convince them not to sacrifice us to their god(s) right off the bat.

Then again, I doubt that they would try to sacrifice us, strange foreigners, to their god(s). They are thought to have preferred children, because they were considered more pure. If adult Mayans were not pure enough for human sacrifice (which involved the tearing out of the heart: yeeAUGhhhhh....) then me and the Doctor would certainly not qualify. They had a bit more respect for their god(s) than that.

The reason I say ‘god(s)’ (rather than ‘gods’) is that they had many gods that kind of blended into one. They were all sort of bondable to the other gods. Like tinker toys. The center of their collection of gods, sort of the main god, or the brain of the pieced together god tinker toy tower of deities, was the maize god (for all you normal folks out there, maize is corn)

Now the Mayan calendar? The Doctor would probably know what was up with that, and he might even know if the world really does end in December, 2012. But I can’t make sense of it even now, with wikipedia to guide me.

Perhaps my visit would help me to better understand the Mayan calendar, as well as the Mayan people. A people shrouded in that much mystery have GOT to be interesting to have dinner with (seeing as Doctor Who often gets to have dinner with famous folks like Shakespeare and Charles Dickens, I see no reason why we would not end up at a Mayan dinner table).

Ah, it’s such a shame that I have to maintain such geeky gall as to wait for a timelord to drop by in his Tardis and invite me to join him on a time traveling adventure before I can see the Mayans in first person.

When my dreams came out to face me

I wrote this a few months ago, during the summer. I was living in Philadelphia with my brother and his family at the time, and I was nanny to my baby nephew during the day, while my brother and his wife were at worked. It was a long, long summer. I was left alone for much of the time.

I’m all alone in a mostly empty house. All the time. Or at least until 4 pm. Every weekday. Other than the three cats, two dogs and the baby, I’m alone.

My dreams come out to face me. They look me in the eye and speak (clear evidence that I’m mentally deranged, or schizophrenic). “Why do you ignore us now? There is nothing and no one to get in our way. Write your book. Sing your song. Take dancing lessons.”

I turn away from them and click on safari. I first look to see if there is anyone on line I want to talk to. None. Then I search the web for weird stories about creepy mysteries like big foot, vampires and spring heeled Jack.

“How about that comic book?” one of the smaller, quieter dreams steps out of the group. “You got that computer with me in mind. So why don’t you draw up a final draft of one of your old pages and use that fancy new scanner/copier/printer to put me into your computer. Then google programs for comic colorists. Maybe they’d be expensive, but you’d be a step closer to making me more than a dream. How about it? Please?”

I look up pictures of chupacabras and find videos of the extinct thylacine.

I go up to my room and lie on my bed. I dream of my own secret world, with my own secret friends and family. People that know me, people that I’m not afraid of. One of my taller dreams steps forward to make a plea, “What about me? I’ve already been realized! All you need to do is work on me. You needn’t buy anything, or go out and learn something you don’t know. There are no tools that you don’t have. All you need is patience, diligence and your computer”.

This dream is my book. He’s right, I need only take time, of which I have much, and start to type. Perhaps a little outline would be nice. I shan’t know the end until I get there, but my story will let me know how he should end. “I will!" he says, "As soon as you write me, I will be that story! I’ll tell you how I’m to be ended, once we get there. But you know how we’ve got to start, don’t you?”

Of course I know. However, I was online for all that time, and then I wandered through my fantasy world for so long. Now it is nearly midnight, and I’m very tired. Perhaps I'll start tomorrow. No, definitely tomorrow! When my dreams are my only sentient companions, I cannot deny them for long. Can I?


Here it is! Another link of the day! http://lifejustkeepsgettingweirder.blogspot.com/
Life just keeps getting weirder. This is by far the funniest blog I've come across yet. She is freakin hilarious to no end! From Pan Flute gigs to the Undead of JoAnnes, this gal had me rolling on the floor in endless convulsions of hilarity. You simply MUST check this out.

A page from the notebook (specifically my notebook)

2-26-09

Today I was given this fantastic note pad [really it is truly fantastic. It's this pretty little spiral notebook, and the background of the cover is black, and then it's got pretty, swirling, vine-like designs in silver, with a skull and crossbones (also in silver) overlaying it. It isn't too large. maybe 9 by 6 inches. It's adorable, in a dark kind of way] and seeing as I couldn't stand to see it go unused, I went ahead and began writing in it.

[I was at work and had nothing better to do (slow day for a grocery clerk), plus I wanted to practice my cursive.]

I seriously doubt in my capability to keep a journal, so I shan't say that I will, to save myself the shame and embarrassment later on in about four years when I find it at the bottom of a cardboard box with this as its only entry.

Of course in this case that means I shan't be introducing myself, even as I cross my "i"s and dot my "t"s. [In the notebook I accidentally crossed the "i" in "introducing", rather than dotting it. Hence the rather odd ending to that sentence] Nope. No introduction here. I only intend to write, which is what I'm good at. [That sounds a bit pretentious, in retrospect.] And frankly I ought to practice what I hope to do with my life more often.

[It's true, I hope to be able to write for a living some day. And sell my art. Both, hopefully. Of course that's just my dream, and those don't always come true.]

Really, think about it for a moment. If that's what I intend to do for a career than I had better get used to the idea of doing it all the time, even when I don't really feel like it. The same of course goes for my artistic endeavors. I would love to be able to live off of my art and writing. It is my dream to do so.

Wow. My own raw writing is a little embarrassing. This was just a scribble that I did in that notebook solely because I desired to write in it (because it was such a pretty little notebook).

Then again, Oscar Wilde said that all bad poetry springs from genuine feeling. (he did honor poetry, the good and the bad, in his short story The Decay of Lying)

The random scribbled page in my notebook wasn't bad poetry, but it certainly was terrible writing. And definitely genuine feeling.

Perhaps I benefited from my little scribble, after all.



Okay, link of the day! http://jumpinginartmuseums.blogspot.com/
This is a link to a blog called Jumping in art museums. Yes, it is EXACTLY what it sounds like. And it is FANTASTIC! And to think if I hadn't been googling images of Jackson Pollock paintings for my art history homework, I would never have found it. Thank goodness for college!!

It's the Green Fairy! And we're not talking Tinkerbell.

Art is inspired by many things: Beauty, Love, Music, Hallucinogens......

Beauty inspires us. We see beauty in the world around us, in the people around us and we want to mimic it. What's that about the best form of flattery being mimicry? And of course love inspires art... love is the greatest of all feelings, and art is the embodiment of feeling. And music? Music is art's audible counterpart! But of course it would be inspiring!

But Hallucinogens now? Where did THAT come from? You read me right, that's not a typo. I'm talking magic mushrooms and Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds and, right up there with the best of em, Absinthe.

The Green Fairy, they used to call it. Or the Green Muse. Or the Green Goddess. Take your pick of green-tinted hallucinations.

Fairy? Muse? Goddess!? What gave this creepy drink made from worm wood such a special reputation worthy of such glorious names? We know that the rebellious Bohemes of France made it very popular, but aren't we artists particularly well known for leading the lethal statistics of any vice that causes mental illness, alcoholics anonymous, lung cancer and rehab?

(no, not ALL artists are pot smoking, liquor swigging, needle pushing rehab cases, that just seems to be a stereo type they often fall into)

There is some reason to some of our madness.

"A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world."

"Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people."

~Oscar Wilde



~Vincent Van Gogh



~Pablo Picasso

What is the link between these three geniuses? Art? Yes. Absinthe? Yeah, that too.

I suppose you consider me a drugged up absinthe swilling fiend now. No, not really. I just find it intriguing. Look up these artists. Do you admire them? Do you admire them less now that you know that they at times drank absinthe in search of creativity? Or more, maybe?

What will we turn to next? Personally, I'm hoping for a creativity patch, to wean us off our present vices. It can even have a cool or trendy picture on it, like a skull or a cup of coffee! To apply, peel off of paper backing and slap sticky side onto forehead with hand.






Here's my link of the day! http://www.stumbleupon.com/

Oh man, this site is awesome! It adds a button to your tool bar and you just click on that button and it will send you careening across the web waves and you'll find yourself on some of the coolest web sites!! Check it out!

V day to me is like D day to the Germans... ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE!!!

Alright, here it is, ladies and gentlemen, my post valentines day blitz!!! Brought to you by all the miserable unloved people out there. (not really. It's just me.)

I have a very special love/hate relationship with valentines day. Actually, I have two very special love/hate relationships with valentines day. Two you ask? Let me explain.

I wear a lot of black, I'm slightly socially awkward, my friends call me eccentric. Various bits of metal are strewn across my skin and I cut and dye my own hair. I like the occasional sad song, like Madeline or Lonely Day, specifically because they're sad. I enjoy bitter, angry metal or rock songs like Love me Dead or The Unthinking Majority because I'm often bitter or angry.

However, there is a separate side to my personality. (no, I am not a schkitzo)

I am a hopeless romantic. I have dreamed up a thousand different ways to meet a hundred different men of my dreams. I have an innate joy that shows through regardless of how I'm really feeling. I am unique and excited to live, love and explore. I wear sweet victorian corsets and gauntlets, dreaming of a fantastical dark love that I'm destined for.

On occasion I wait at my register for some handsome artist to come by, purchase my favorite bouquet from the flower stand, and hand it straight back when I finish bagging his purchase.

Yup. Two sides of one funky mirror. Tell your attractive, artistic gentlemen friends.

The angry, gothy side of my personality hates valentines day, just like it's supposed to, just as you would expect. But that angry goth side also loves to HATE valentines day. I enjoy being miserable during such a holiday. It just feels so fulfilling, I suppose. I'm fulfilling my pleasure for angry songs and sad songs. I'm fulfilling my obsession with tears. And that feels good.

The romantic, however, is different. I hate valentines day because I never have a valentine. That romantic desperately wants to be loved by some special man. And she HATES to see all the lovey doveys that populate the holiday. Why should mediocre personalities like those have love when there is a deeply romantic character over here who's got nothing!? No fair. BUT valentines day is all about love. And what romantic can deny true love?

I love it like Christian did love Satine, and like Amelie does love Nino, and like Helena might one day love Valentine.

All you need is love.



link of the day: http://www.onesentence.org/
Beautiful, funny, stupid, fantastic stories. All told in one sentence, from people all over the place, in life and otherwise.

The Shorthand of Emotion

Leo Tolstoy said that music is the shorthand of emotion.

I'd agree, and I'd elaborate on his brilliant philosophy with another bold statement:
Art is the embodiment of feeling.

All art, each different kind, is another part of emotion, another part of the whole. Emotion is a being that can be seen, heard and known through art. Poetry and writing are her character, paintings show her face, sculptures reveal her body, and music is her voice. Mankind is her soul.

Meet the spirit that separates man from beast.

Try to think about it for a moment. Do you know any artists? Any kind? I don't just mean painters, the general artists, I also mean the singers and the writers and the actors. They are artists too.

What do they do that makes their art so delightful? Can you tell me? You might not be able to, if you aren't the artist. I'm not saying that the artist is special and you aren't. I'm saying that only the artist knows what they were feeling, what they were thinking when they did it.

The paintings, the music, the words, they are all feelings.

Of course there is the occasional artist that feels nothing. They just do it to get attention, to please the crowds. These are what Poltok, the author of "My Name is Asher Lev", called "art whores".

(I highly recommend that book for any artist or lover of art, or anyone that just wants inspiration- it's truly fantastic)

Now I'm not leaving the poor bastard children of these art whores out in the cold. They are often adopted and given feeling by the patrons that buy them and the public that adores them. They too end up embodying art.

What can you do with this sweet bite of knowledge?

Feel. Feel because it is beautiful. You can write it, you can draw it, paint it, sing it or sculpt it, or you can keep it in your heart and cherish it. Just feel.



I'm trying something new! Here's my link of the day! (the first one EVAR!)
http://www.almostdailyexploits.com/
She's clever and funny! I really enjoy reading her posts. Check it out!

A bit of fiction

Below I've pasted an edited out-take from one of the novels I'm currently writing.
This week it's for your pleasure only.

One single tear rolled down the dirt smudged, bloody face of a dying father. He had watched his family die before his eyes while he lay helpless. But his family’s hardships were over. Soon his would be too. All he need do was wait, to slowly spiral down into the peaceful dark of death. The crunch of approaching footsteps echoed strangely in the finally quiet valley. A tall, pale, young looking man stood just in the edge of his vision. He seemed to swirl and glow, and then slowly turn red, in the eyes of the dying man.
“Do you know that you are the last one?” The young man’s voice was sudden, unwelcome in so quiet a place. It seemed like he was shouting in a graveyard; for that's where they were, in a giant, open, mass grave. “You haven’t even the camaraderie of your dying companions. They all died quickly. They didn’t have the time to think about it. I hope you’re taking advantage of your unique opportunity”. His voice was quiet, and deep; and yet it was so hard, so cold. He settled himself down on the wheel of an upturned cart. The horse was being eaten by flies and maggots, still lying where it had fallen, still strapped to the cart. The same cart that had trapped the poor father. He had run from the sides of his companions as they were being slain to save his family.
His wife had been at home and unprotected, caring for their children. He’d been in the fields working with the others. They had come from the forest, and the men on the furthest edges of the field never had a chance. He and those around him had formed a loose line, and prepared to fight this monstrous… army? It was! Somehow these beasts formed what looked like military formations. They charged. Really, considering how easily they slew the men, their organized attack was unnecessary. Overkill. When the men around him started dying, he turned and ran. He had to save his family. The village was doomed.
“Juliet! JULIET!” He’d been shouting his wife’s name. If he hurried, maybe, just maybe they might escape into the woods. Running was the only option by then. The enemies were sweeping through the town, right on his heels. He could hear the screams of his friends and comrades all around him. Apparently he wasn’t the only one who had turned and run. Snarls and roars surrounded him. There were shadows around every corner. Screams and shouts of dying men rent the air. A woman’s high-pitched scream carried over every other sound. They were attacking the women and children. His hut was at the very edge of the village… if he could just make it… There was a crash, and a horse’s frightened whinny, followed by a loud clattering. He threw a glance toward the noise just in time to see a horse drawn cart slam into him, and fall on top of him. His head hit the stone street with a sickening crack!
He woke what must have been moments later to his wife’s desperate screams. She was standing in the doorway, shielding the children, a five-year-old girl and two boys, one seven and other only three years old. His head throbbed, and the back of his skull felt warm and wet. The cart had crushed him, and he was pinned from just below his chest all the way down to his feet. A giant, scaly creature, like a lizard standing on two legs, faced his terrified wife, slowly stalking forward. In its hand was a horrible weapon, like a mace, but with long, sharp spikes on one end, and a bloody hook on the other. Not that this creature really needed weapons. Each of its fingers was tipped with a long, sharp claw. It grinned, showing two rows of sharp yellowed teeth. The man tried to shout out, but only a labored groan escaped his crushed lungs. The creature turned its head to look at him with crimson eyes that glowed out of the rotted skull of something that used to be alive. Now he could see that bits of flesh hung off of the creature’s bony frame, and the flesh, which must have originally been a healthy green, was now a tired old grey. The monster reeked with the stench of the grave. Three new beasts leapt up on top of the little hut. They looked like twisted, emaciated wolves. Their limbs were long, and should have been too wiry for such a huge frame. They were nearly skeletal. Still, regardless of their lean frame they were colossal. Their combined weight was too much for the little house. The roof came crashing down on the children. The woman screamed as the reptilian monster launched it self at his wife. None of it lasted long, but it seemed an eternity to a helpless father and husband.
The entire battle had not been long. In fact, it had not really been a battle at all. It was a massacre. The ones in charge of protecting the people were nothing more than a small village’s unprepared men. They were not soldiers. They were farmers and hunters. Such a small place had nothing to offer its attackers, except perhaps for food and water, the bare essentials. Yet the army that marched against them was too large for a tiny village such as this to provide any meaningful sustenance. Surely the people of the village had not been in the way! They were innocent and insignificant, useless and powerless. This was murder. The tiny town was just practice, just a little bit of fun to an army as great as the one that had stomped through here. What made their odds of survival all the worse was the fact that this was not an army of men. It was an army that none could believe existed, made up of monsters and men that might as well have been monsters.
Surely the strange young man must be mad. All of the innocent lives lost, and he was being philosophical. It seemed horrible, one last cruel violation of the hearts of the people of the slain village. He was right, though. The dying man was the last of his village. The other men, and all the women and children, were dead. Small flames licked at the remainders of the houses, which were all that was left. It was kind of peaceful, now that the dying man thought of it. His eyes followed his spirit’s languid flight to the heavens, and never closed again.
“Pathetic”. The young man said it to no one in particular, with distain dripping from his voice. Everyone was gone now. “His last moments on this earth and he chose to think about peace and quiet”. His cold words seemed to settle over the village like a shroud. The sun was setting, and mist swirled at the edges of the village. Eyes peered through the misty darkness, and bizarre, twisted shadows began to take shape. A lone snarl came from the forest behind the crushed hut. It seemed to pose a question more than a threat. “Yes, alright. I’m coming. Let’s go”. An icy chill swirled from one edge of the decimated village to the other, and the young man was gone. The menacing shadows melted into the softer shadows of the twilight hour.
A rattling came from the crushed hut at the edge of the village, and then the soft crying of a child.


Input, people! Let me know what you think. Thanks! I hope you enjoyed it.

What's in a name, by any other name a rose would smell as sweet

Actually, on this rare occasion, I'd have to disagree with the world's favorite play-write. Names are essential. They are a part of identity, maybe even of destiny.

I have been writing a novel, and up until recently my leading lady was simply dubbed Bob.

That's not because I'm a freak, or my character is quirky (although she may be, just a bit), but because I couldn't think of a good name for her. Each of my characters has an important name that means something. It has to mean something. And it isn't so easy as naming a baby (or maybe it is... as it were I've experience with one and not the other) because my characters have pasts, and I already know how they'll end up.

I have to name them according to what I already know they will do. I didn't want to be the lame stereotypical fantasy/sci-fi author and make up names. I wanted them to have substance.

Instead of Bob, she got a very special name that means either 'completely free' or 'God answers'. These seem random until you know who she is.

She is a unique young woman who showed up in her town years before as a lost little girl. All she had was a first name, and no one ever found out where she belonged. She grows up to be free willed and impetuous (completely free), and through the story, she ends up being the salvation (God answers) of my bad guy. It's perfect! And it took me forever to find that name!!

All I knew, going into the intense 7 month period it would eventually take to find a name for her, was that I didn't want it to sound too modern or too American, and I liked 'A's. I trolled websites and name books for months before a friend mentioned a name she liked but couldn't use for any future daughters due to some awkward initial issues.

I really liked the sound of it, so I went home and looked it up online. Low and behold, the meaning was exactly what I wanted. And after I finally got her name (the more complex a character, the more important the meaning of the name, the longer it takes), her two companion's (whom I'd been calling Mac and Joe up to this point) names quickly followed suit.

It's incredible, really. I know I was given my name for a very special reason, and it has indeed guided my life a lot. I suppose I could buck it, if I wanted to. But then it would be ironic.

Just kidding. sort of.

Actually, I wouldn't really want to fight my name's meaning. I think its affect on my life has blessed the people near to me. And I like that idea.

In my book, my characters' names define what they will do. If the real world is like that, then I think we might want to pay a bit more respect to names and their meanings.

Who knows when our destinies may catch up with us.