Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Christmas, direction, faith, Holidays, life, New Year, NORAD, reward, Santa, time, winter
So I was born in the eighties. It was a good time to be born… earlie enough that there were still good things on TV and late enough that you’ve been playing with a computer since you were five… not great things on TV, or a verie good computer, but the arguement stands.
However if you were born in the eighties the past decade has seen you turning into an adult, not totallie in the factual sense, but definatelie in the legal sense… in march of the new year, I will finallie be able to rent a car. The thing I’ve found is that time changes as you age. I’ve never had a great relationship with time, we don’t reallie understand how each other function, we can live together, but we don’t often speak. When I was little… the minutes flew by, but each individual year took FOREVER to pass… now it seems that the minutes take forever, but the years are just whizzing past.
Still, people can get used to almost anything and that’s what time is about. Giving of itself so you can adapt to the way things are… or change them.
I personallie am a big fan of the months between September and January. I like Ladie’s Day and Halloween and T-Day and Thanksgiving and Christmas, and I even like Wintereenmas, but I’m not the biggest fan of New Years. It’s not that I don’t have fun, it’s that I hate change, and while it never seems like it in the long run, it’s a prettie big change… especiallie when it comes looming up out of the post holiday daze like an iceberg out of the fog.
This past Christmas Eve I went to church at Our Mother of Sorrows in Bridgeport. I like it there. And I know that those of you who know my stance on things religious might not totallie get this, but even if I don’t reallie believe in god, I do believe in Church. I would go on my own because mostly it is a lousie way to spend Sunday morning. But on Christmas Eve is calming and almost magical.
I usually enjoy the sermon as well on Christmas Eve, it tends to be short well thought out and to the point. This year, for the first time in my memory, I did not. And this suprised me, because it started out so well. It was about faith and direction and instead of highlighting why I didn’t like it, I’m goign to tell you why I could have.
First of all, faith… I know I’ve looked up at one time or another how it is defined in the dictionarie, but to me faith is belief without proof. Not just without, but inspite of, or not requring. For instance I have faith in Santa Claus… I read NORADs article on their Santa tracking program and it made me cry… I’ll link you… http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-10418101-52.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
It talks about how volunteers answer when questioned about their belief in Santa…
“‘We believe, based on historical data and 51 years of NORAD tracking information, that Santa Claus is alive and well in the hearts of people throughout the world.”
And it’s true. You can believe in things without proof… god, or Santa, or even tooth faries, or the kindness of strangers. You can keep believing even tho there were dinosuars or a big bang, or finding your parents putting out all your presents, or slipping a quarter under your pillow, or listening to the news. Faith can survive all of that. Faith is belief, with, without, or in spite of proof… and without it well things would be prettie pointless.
Which brings us to direction. There are people in the world whom others have referred to as directionless. I have at one time or another been one of these people. The thing about directionalitie, is people tend to only see where they’re going, and if you’re not going with them, then you aren’t going anywhere… you’re pointless.
The thing about direction is that you need to be able to see it, even if no one else can. You need to have faith the the place you want to end up reallie does exist, or if it doesn’t, then you need to have faith that you’ll be able to create it. And this is hard, if the picture you have for yourself isn’t the same as alot of people’s. If you’re different or unconventional, or just checking out the sights.
I’m not saying you need faith or direction to survive, but I just might be saying you need it to live. And you’ll get time, which everyone gets, even if it’s never enough. And as it has so famouslie been said, maybe you won’t get what you want… but I’m thinking you’ll probablie get something that was worth the trouble…
fair compensation for a hard task, even if you can’t see it now… I have faith in people, and life being worth it, and happie endings. And sometimes, you have to wonder if faith itself isn’t the reward.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: copiers, invention, iPhone, possibility, Stargate Universe, technology
When someone encounters a new piece of technology, they first try to figure out what it will do. For intance, (this is a big pet peeve of mine) copiers. A copy machine WILL copy. And pretty much anyone can do this. You push the green button and bingo zingo… copues. But that’s not all a copier CAN do. Copiers these days can collate and staple and sort and fax and change from one sided to two sided and back again, and no one can use them. Except me, and maybe you.
And the way I learn, is I push buttons, I read the menus, I check out my options. But it works this way with anything. An iPhone for instance. One obvious thing that an iPhone does is make phone calls and by the same logic one would assume that it can also send text messages. These are things the iPhone will do. It will also download and run applications. But that’s not all it CAN do.
For instance, and don’t tell anyone this, I happen to own and iPhone. It’s the old standard 3G 8Gig. It does not have a video camera and yet today at work someone showed me thier standard 3G 8 Gig with a working video camera. This is something that the iPhone won’t do, but it CAN.
And I think that’s the hard part of learning new things. It is often easy to see what something will do, but it can be a whole other thing entirely to know all the things is CAN do. And maybe this is a geeky example, but occasionally I am forced to watch Stargate Universe… which is a good show I’ll admit, but in it Eli finds a device that is a video camera that’s what it will do, but what it can do, is lift a heavy sledge loaded with ice.
It’s the idea of possibilities. I will breathe, but it’s not all I can do.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: curiousity, fantasy, happiness, love, magic, marriage, normal, puberty, relationships, sex, vibrator
If you haven’t seen it, you’ve certainlie heard of it… the infamous pubertie video that tells teenagers that they are in fact normal, that everyone goes through this… don’t worry it’ll all be over soon. But puberty is really just the begining of the problem. They describe the physical changes in painstakinglie humiliating detail. The first pubic hair, under arm hair, wet dreams (or as they prefer, nocturnal emissions), the development of breasts.
They never really say why we do these things they simplie set out to make it terriblie clear that THIS IS NORMAL. But what about after?
What after you say? puberty ends, life goes on… but puberty occurs for a reason… it turns a sexless little semi human into a fullie functioning sexual human being. So now you like boys or girls or both… and you start to find ways to be with them. To what end you’re not reallie certain, but you want. So you hunt.
No one calls it this, but reallie, why not? A group of men or women out for an evening dressed in what they think makes them look “good”. They’re laughing and having a good time and this is an important part of the process, because you don’t catch a partner by being a sad sack, but why are they trying so hard.
A nice basic answer is sex. Sex gets a lot of hype. And possiblie it should, but not the kind it does. You get told that sex is bad. That sex is dirty. That sex is only for people who are married… or opposite sexes, or “who love each other very much…”, or maybe you don’t get told anything at all, and you end up with a vague mental impression of nudity and something vaguelie exciting.
And like anything people are curious about, they want to know more. The saying is that curiousity killed the cat, but it’s much more likelie that curiousitie got you naked in the backseat of some car parked in an empty school parking lot. So sex is a good answer. People like sex, like talking about it, thinking about it, watching it. In fact most people like doing all these things more than they enjoy actuallie having sex.
For all those little girls out there who got told that boys only think about one thing… this is technically true, but it’s not always sex. In fact after the age of 18 it’s rarely sex. I mean gosh, when there’s football and video games and cars and all the other strangelie mundane substitutes for sex boys come up with, it’s a wonder they have time to think about sex at all.
So even if sex is one reason people hunt, it’s not the only reason. Is it to get married? Personallie, I’m going to say no to this one. This isn’t a popular opinion, or even a frequent one, but it’s mine (so I’m fond of it.) I think that people get married because eventuallie you’re going to need to. You start looking for someone to hold you and sleep with you and bring you soup when you’re sick and smile over your successes and cry with you over your tragedies almost as soon as you feel “grown up”. (the feel part is important.)
and the sex is a bonus. It’s like my vibrator. His name is Percie and he’s a good vibrator. He gets the job done, when the job needs to be done, but he’ll never sneek into the bathroom to watch me shower, or stop me and say, “you’re so hot.” He rarely goes out for ice cream with me, and he never ever puts his hand out in a way that lets me know that he’d reallie like it if I put mine in his.
But is this what we’re hunting for? Are we looking for a bodie to lie next to at night, or a hand to hold in public? Are we looking for sex? The trickie answer is Yes. Yes we are looking for all these things and then some. We are looking for someone that gets us. That knows that we’re an insecure mess held together with hope and so many years of survival.
The right answer is that we’re looking for magic. That’s why people love weddings. Because weddings are magic. Even when they go spectacularie wrong, the magic is still visible. It’s why one night stands hold such fascination. They are pure fantasie. You don’t know this person, you can’t, but for one night they will fulfill your sexual fantasies. With magic there’s the anticipation and the suspense. The constant feeling of holding your breath waiting for the inevitable. Magic makes people want.
The thing is that in any long term relationship you can’t have magic twenty four seven. It’s difficult to have it for even just the twenty four sometimes. I think that to make a relationship work though you can have mostlie the normal… if it is normal after all?
Should I be upset about this? Are we taking things to fast? How soon is too soon to sleep with him? Where are we going with this? Am I overreacting? Are they the one?
And you take it… and you make parts of it magical. I don’t know how you do it.
Every person wants different things, but the things that you do to reallie make something magical is you work out what someone reallie wants, without them ever telling you and you find it, and give it to them. And that’s hard work… and maybe it’s not always worth it.
But maybe sometimes it is…
Filed under: Uncategorized
There is a part of High Fidelity where Laura tells Rob that she’s “too tired not to be with him.” It’s possiblie one of the least romantic parts of the movie, of any movie, or life, ever. But I can understand this feeling.
When you’re sick you want someone to take care of you. You want someone to hold you when you’re sad. When you’re little this person is most likely your mother. After a certain age though, it becomes odd to want that. (I’m not saying we don’t, just that it’s no longer sociallie acceptable.) So you have to find someone else to do it.
This usually entails romantic relationships, but the problem is, you have to find someone you’re attracted to sexuallie. Someone who excites you, but someone who you’re comfortable enough with to have them hold you when you’re sick.
And sometimes at night you’re too tired to get out of bed, but not asleep just yet and you’re thinking of the person who you want to be there with you. And maybe it’s not what she meant, but maybe a more romantic way to say it is that life without you is exhausting.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: a softer world, emily home, joey comeau, love, photographs, webcomics
with comics.
There is a “comic” called ‘a softer world’
Three panels of photographs with pasted in typewriter text.
I adore it. And in return it continues to exist.
“I don’t hate marriage or love or monogamy. I just like to have sex. I don’t under stand why you’re so confused. Here, let me show you.”
~a softer world 479
“Ah, love at first sight. When you see someone so beautiful that you forget they aren’t there just for you.”
~ a softer world 430
“I love you, but I don’t love you enough to give up falling in love.”
~ a softer world 486
“Maybe I did steal your heart and am such a perfect criminal that you never even noticed.”
~ a softer world 481
Before we met I was so scared of dying. But if the end comes today, this will have been enough.”
~ a softer world 400
“I can be happy alone, sure. I can be happy without ice cream, too. If we’re being hypothetical.”
~ a softer world 379
“When you are feeling low, I will be there to feel you up.”
~ a softer world 373
“I think you are beautiful and I would like to kiss you. I can think up some clever lines, if you prefer. But I wanted to say that, first.”
~ a softer world 319
4Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: awkward, communication, Philadelphia College of Art and Design, shy
I’m shy. Terriblie Painfullie shy. I don’t always seem it. And as I’ve aged I’ve become slightlie less so, but still I am painfullie shy. And the thing about being shy is that you either live as a shy person, or you try to overcome.
I have tried to overcome. My most recent college experience has helped alot. It wasn’t just the fact that I’m training for a profession that requires you to talk to strangers everyday. It was also my roomate, who can and does talk to anyone. And the fact that the program I am in works a lot like being in the military you make friends fast.
The issue with overcoming shyness is the line between appropriate and inappropriate. People who are good with people have a feeling for this line. They can find it in any situation. They know it’s contours and it’s place and can pinpoint it to the micrometer.
I’m luckie if I get within a couple feet of this line. I screw up constantlie. I overstep or understep. Sometimes I seem aloof and cold sometimes I seem obnoxious and overbearing. Reallie I am aiming for somewhere in between. I want to seem friendlie and approachable, but firm. But I’m still looking for my line.
The thing that keeps me going on this is a realization that I had recentlie. And I owe it completelie to my roomie. She’s impressive and friendlie and you could tell her your life storie in seconds, because she CARES in some fundamental way that you can feel. It’s trulie and completelie impressive. AND she DOESN’T know this. She feels awkward too sometimes. She feels like she is saying the wrong things sometimes.
It seems to me that if she can feel awkward sometimes then everyone must feel awkward at some point. Everyone must feel sometime like they are missing their line. And it’s that realization keeps me trying. My most standard question is what do you do.
This isn’t a good quesion, because I mean it like RObert Fulghum meant it when he answered it in one of his essays.
What do you DO? not what is your job, or how are you employed or what do you write in the Occupation slot, but what do you DO?
For instance I am a part time nursing student who loves the internet with a passion and spend time cleaning her apartment playing with her kitten and reading anything she can get her hands on.
And it does include the fact that I am a nursing student, because I consider that part of who I am, but not everyone considers their occupation who they are and people who have no occupation still occupie their time. Very few people do literallie NOTHING.
So I’m looking for a new question. One that will help me stop speaking awkward. Suggestions?
My second rant is communication. You can major in communication these days. But does it reallie teach you to communicate?
For instance a real life conversation with Timmie from Friday…
Me: “So where is the job at?”
Him: “PCAD.”
Me: “So where is the job at?”
Him: “You know the park with the trolley in it?”
Me: “Yes.”
Him: “Right across from there.”
*pause for me to think*
Me: “You mean the Arts College?”
Now this might seem stupid to you. What does it matter if you know where the job is? But this happens all the time and sometimes it matters and sometimes it doesn’t, but shouldn’t you try to get it right for those occasions when it does?
The issue in this conversation is that he lives in Lancaster and I do not. As anyone who has lived in Lancaster for some time can tell you PCAD is the Pennsylvania College of Art And Design. Now I know it’s there. I visit Lancaster alot these days and I spend alot of my time walking around downtown. But I had never heard of it referred to as PCAD (pronounced pee-kad) and as such was very confused. And instead of just saying the Arts College he asked me about the park with the trolley in it.
You think I’m insane. This couldn’t possiblie matter this much, but people make sillie little communication boo boos all the time and mostlie they don’t notice. It is my new goal to become better at communicating as well as overcoming the shy thing.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: biological warfare, books, Demon in the Freezer, smallpox, weapons
So people lend me books. All kinds of books, plays, greek poetry, romance novels, crime thrillers, science thrillers, fantasie… you name it, I’ll read it. I’ve even started in a few test books. The point being that i recentlie started reading Demon in the Freezer by a guy with the last name of Preston. It’s good. It’s all true, or as true as you can get… and it’s fascinating. At least it is to me.
Demon in the Freezer is all about smallpox. Just a quick background, but smallpox is the first virus to have been eliminated in nature (as far as we know). It’s also in an odd way the inventor of the vaccine. But mostly smallpox today is talked about because of it’s enormous potential as a biological weapon.
I get the idea behind biological weapons. A gun is scary, but a disease that kills you by making you bleed out of every orifice is a bit scarier. A smart bomb is pretty frightening, but a disease that will literally make you skin fall off your body in sheets and then make you ooze pus until you most likely die and can be spread for almost two weeks before you even realize you’re sick is just mind blowingly horrific. And you win wars not with dead bodies, but by making them unwinable. It’s one thing to shoot at a person who’s going to shoot you. It’s something else entirelie to try to chase down someone who at any moment might not just kill you with some horrifying disease, but all your loved ones.
There’s only one problem with biological weapons. And it is the same problem that we ran into with nuclear weapons. The problem is this… They are deadly. Doi! you say? well here’s the thing. A gun only kills the people it’s pointed at. A bomb only destroys the place it hits. But germs like radiation spread.
It would give a whole new meaning to friendly fire.
MRSA and VRE and others like it have become over the years big news in the medical field. Bacteria that are resistant to the best drugs we have. Sooper Bugs. And the way these germs were made is through the careful application of antibiotics over years. Antibiotics have been around for about 70 (more like 80 now) years. And bacteria has had that long to develop it’s resistance. But people who turn your normal run of the mill killer germs into weapons, speed up the process. Growing their own little colony of mercenaries from the offspring of those germs that lived.
There would be no cure. There might be people who were naturallie immune (it happens). Or maybe a new antibiotic will be invented, but not before most of the people that created the little monster died at the hand(?) of their own creation. It could happen. Smallpox still exists in plenty of labratories all over the world (although it is reputed to live only at two[one here and one in Russia]). There is no vaccine given currently. Who would get a vaccine for an irradicated virus? And it is rumored (and likely true) that even if every drug company in america started producing the vaccine the second an out break began over half the population would die before they made enough.
Still, it could happen. Madmen do exist.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: America, military coup, Obama, politics, revolution
http://www.newsmax.com/john_perry/obama_military_coup/2009/09/29/266012.html
The author of this article is incrediblie biased and likely gives America’s generals far more credit for revolutionarie spirit than is reallie warranted, but his words are not totallie unlikelie. And yet, despite the numerous undesirable changes of the past ten or twenty years, America has reallie said nothing.
We are a nation of revolutionaries. We gave honor and pride to what is basicallie treason and terrorism. Yet, as America is now, I think you’d be hard pressed to find much of the spirit that took a fledgling colony and turned it into a world sooper power.
I”m not going to lie to you and tell you that I follow politics religiouslie or even well. What little I see of it is mostlie a trickle down. But I have enough sense to be worried about the future of America.
This man is likely a fanatic and incrediblie off base, but is it so terriblie unrealistic to imagine that what he has suggested might someday occur? And if America (as the author suggests) wouldn’t be the proud country it is under Obama’s presidency, what would it be under military rule?
What the author doens’t take into account is that a military coup would overthrow the Constituion that the generals in his imagination have sworn to defend. If a military coup did occur America, as a nation by the people for the people, would in fact perish from this earth.
But America is young Nation just over 200 years old and no nation has so little civil war and revolution as we do and did. And it is a time when so many things are going wrong all at once that a President has the opportunity to be great, but also to be shot at.
The author cites a lack of personal responsibilitie, but the Obama elections had the highest voter turn out since 1968. People saw that something was wrong and worked to fix it, by performing their civil dooties but that doesn’t mean that they’ll always do it. Voter turn out has been steadilie declining for years. Someday people will be apathetic enough about politics to not vote at all.
So I’d say that while the revolution is far from here, it might be coming. What should we do?
