A Wish List Item

Some days I want a sign. Big. Neon. Porable, that's important. Big enough to be impossible to miss, small enough I can hump it about. Bright, blood red letters, foot tall. Two lines. It will read:

"You Are Not Helping"

I will have it equiped with a switch so that it can be turned on and off at a moment's notice. I will turn it on every time someone wants to do something superflurous, or idiotic, or obstructive... all ostentiously to be help to me.

I cannot begin to number the times I must have needed that sign today.

Sort of Expected this

And... yeah.

Saw this coming.

Okay, so the schedual has been caught by the twin demons of procrastination and lethargy. Between them they have consumed it and spat out it's bones. On the other hand, I hear the things regenerate, so...

Anyhow. I need a topic. Um.

Yeah. Therein lies the problem. I have all sorts of ideas of what to type before I get here. They just evaporate once I am, you know, here.

It is why comedians sleep next to notebooks, and poets always carry a pen and a writing tablet. Just because you can put something down, doesn't mean you can manage it all of the time. It can be grueling, painful to try and sit and force inspiration. Or the easiest thing in the world. These are not mutually exclusive per human either - a person can experience both, sometimes in a fifteen minute period.

So, yeah. I have great ideas. Many topics. Unfortunatelly, then I got anywhere near my blog, and - poof, gone.

Except for the one on musing on theology, and I kinda think if anyone actually reads this thing that may get me stoned. So it is good that no one out there actually follows this.

Though, if I can't figure anything else tomorrow night, I might be risking it. Gotta raise that schedual from the dead somehow.

Fun With Language

I once had a Latin instructor who drummed it into my head that Latin is not code for English, and in fact, no language translates perfectly into any other. Therefore, translation between, say, English and Farsei, or German and Russian, isn't a 1:1 proposition. No matter how similar the languages are, there will be some nuance that can't be handled by simple conversion methods. It might be a construction of grammar, a twist of syntax, a shade of meaning, cultural connocation, or a multitude of factors all conspiring to make even the simplest of meaning difficult to divine across the bridge of differing language.

This is why machine translators can give you a general idea of what a sentence from another language might mean, but only a true fool would ever trust the exact translation to be spat out by one. Provided, of course, that the translation being spit out even sounds like language in the first place. Translation is an art; machines are notoriously poor artists

Which makes some things, like, say, this website so much fun.

I mean, what could be more amusing to do than take that old game of telephone - whispering a sentence to a circle and watching it mutate as it goes around the room - with the vulgarities of allowing machines to try and do translating. Translate one sentence, back and forth between languages, and wait until meaning breaks down. Sometimes spectacularly.

This is so much fun, in fact, I played around with it for a good while. For instance, a line from the HBO series 'The Pacific':
"Oh for god's sakes, coffee is the one thing we got to enjoy around here, and we'd just like a little quiet to enjoy it. Now, you either go kill Lieutenant Larkin, or shut the f--- up."

After ten translations, that sentence became:
"Oh, God, and coffee, everything here still use it. Now, you have to kill you or f--- Lieutenant Larkin."

After fifty-four translations:
"Oh, coffee is still available. Soldiers were killed in a day or kiss."

I mean, most of the noun specifics are still there. But the meaning between the nouns is worlds different.

Go on. Try it.

Little Rabbit Foo Foo

Little Rabbit Foo Foo,
Hoppin' through the forest
Scoopin' up the field mice
And boppin' them on the head

Down came the good fairy,
And she said:

"Little Rabbit Foo Foo,
I don't want to see you
Scoopin' up the field mice
And boppin' them on the head"

"I'll give you two more chances."

So the next day:
Little Rabbit Foo Foo
Hoppin' through the forest
Scoopin' up the field mice
And pattin' them on the head.

Down came the evil fairy,
And she said:

"Little Rabbit Foo Foo,
I thought I had warned you
About scoopin' up the field mice
And pattin' them on the head."

"I'll give you two more chances.
Then I 'adjust' your attitude."

So the next day...
Little Rabbit Foo Foo
Hoppin' through the forest
Scoopin' up the field mice
And boppin' them on the head

Down came the good fairy,
And she said:

"Little Rabbit Foo Foo
I'm disappointed in you
Scoopin' up the field mice
And boppin' them on the head"

"You have one more chance
After that I smite you."

So the next day:
Little Rabbit Foo Foo
Hoppin' through the forest
Scoopin' up the field mice
And pattin' them on the head

Down came the evil fairy
And she said:

"Little Rabbit Foo Foo
I'm really gonna hurt you
If ever I again see you
Pattin' a field mouse on the head"

"This is your last chance.
Not kidding - remember what happened to your cousin, Little Bunny Foo Foo?"

It was at this point that Little Rabbit Foo Foo realized he was screwed.

So on the next day...
Little Rabbit Foo Foo
Hoppin' through the forest
Scoopin' up the field mice
And alternately boppin' and pattin' them on the head.

Down came the good fairy
Down came the evil fairy
And they saw each other
And both said, "you".

They shook their heads,
And turned to Little Rabbit Foo Foo
And said:

"Little Rabbit Foo Foo
Little Rabbit Foo Foo
I'm disappointed in you
I'm furious with you
Scoopin' up the field mice
Scoopin' up the field mice
And boppin' -
And pattin' -"

Then the good fairy said:
"Heck with it-"
And attacked the evil fairy.
Who was expecting that.

So that night...
Little Rabbit Foo Foo
Scampering through the forest
Scoopin' up the field mice
And getting out of the way

And the next day they threw a 'no more fairies' party.

Why I Suck During Basketball Tournaments

Friend: "Hush now. Watching exciting end-of-basketball-game scenario."

Me: "Oh. Right. Go team I don't know. Beat that other team that I also do not know. Rah. Rah."

Friend: "..."

This is why I don't get invited to gamenight parties.

How Do You Feel

(The following is fiction)

How do I feel?

I feel tired.

Sick and tired.

Thanks for asking.

Particularly tired.

Not that you care. You don't.

You should but you don't.

This is entirely the fault of your pigeons, you know. Everything. All these emergency vehicles and the lights and everything.

This is entirely the fault of your pigeons and that hideous, godawful crap you've been feeding them. The smell alone would kill weaker willed sorts and that isn't even getting into the inconstinence it inspires in them, with that floating grey stuff - seriously, what is that, it's more disturbing than that time you caught the rainstorm on fire over that resthome on Thanksgiving with all the little kids screaming and the ambulences and that one guy shouting the line about 'the humanity' like that ever helps - yeah, the grey things, those... anyway, they drifted out of the cage and they killed the cats, yes, both Fluffy and Leatherface, then they burned through the floor and into the Johnson's place and I don't know what Mr. and Mrs. Johnson and all their partially clothed friends were doing before that (but I wished they could have kept the volume down, I was watching vintage Golden Girls) but they started yelling through the melting floor about the smell and I said back that if I didn't complain about the noise then they couldn't complain about the smell or the melting ceiling, and they said "What melting ceiling?", then they said "Oh, THAT melting ceiling, then they started complaining about the melting ceiling - WHINERS - then the pigeons chewed out of their cage and that guy from next door started knocking on the door, and he called out that he wanted sugar, I have no idea what that is all about, the Johnsons were picking up volume about the their cursed ceiling - is it my fault they forgot to acid proof? - and your pets started eating your other pets - the pigeons eating the cats - only it turns out Fluffy either wasn't dead or he got better, because he suddenly wasn't all dead and boy that cat knows how to kill.

Fluffy killed two of the pigeons, which, I might add, were starting to look rather demonic, and the rest of them got respectful, but then those two bird corpses started burning this really eerie neon purple flame and went through the floor and whoo-boy the Johnsons didn't like that no they didn't in fact Mrs J said, "I'm going up there to give them a piece of my mind and I called down, "Hey, could you bring back up those pigeons?" and they said 'sure' and for a moment I was happy because I thought I was going to get your missing pigeons back, eldrich abominations and all, when the guy from next door kicked down our door, looked at me over the huge glowing hole the pigeons had made, said, "You need a doorbell", then went into the kitchen, wisely skirting Fluffy's continued deathmatch with the pigeon horde, and the guy upstairs started to hit the floor, raving something I couldn't hear, probably complaining about the noise, and the next door neighbor took out a measuring cup, opened the cabinet marked 'sundries', and started stealing our sugar, and I said to him, "For shame!", then the people downstairs in the Johnson's Place called up through the floor saying "Stephanie tried to get those pigeons, but she was subsumed in their flames," and I was like, this is why you should always do important things yourself and I just huffed and told them I would be down after Golden Girls to collect the birds and they said, "Oh no, it's turning Stephanie into some sort of Fell Horror, which will likely consume us all," and I said, "Fine, could you send it up when it gained sentience and mobility?" and they said 'sure', then Fluffy started transforming and somewhere about this time the apartment building caught fire - well, really, caught more fire, it having been burning a bit already - and the guy upstairs put in some loud war movie that always upsets his neighbors up there like he always does when he is trying to ignore the rest of us, and then Mrs Johnson burst in, all angry and dressed in a sheet or something, I can't really recall, and she said, "I must complain about - hey, did you know there is a minature black hole at the base of the stairs?", and I said yeah, and told her you'd reported it to the building manager last week, and she said that was bull and he should have fixed it by now and I agreed because, yeah, that just isn't safe, and it is hard enough carrying stuff up those stairs without it making everything weigh the same as a thousand suns, but then Mrs J started chewing me out over the melting ceiling, though I derailed her for a bit saying that it was a melting floor up here, then Fluffy, mid-transformation, finally pulled down a fifth pigeons, then wrapped them all around himself to make some sort of caccoon, and the guy from next door came out of the kitchen with all of our sugar in cups, took one look at Mrs. J and told her, "I love you," and she said, "No one ever told me that," and he said well he had and he stood by it - he was very noble for a sugar thief - and she said, "Well then I love you too," and he said, "Let's run off together!" and she said, "And bake!" and he said, "I've got the sugar!!" so off they went, good for them and mind the black hole.

But now there was a firefight upstairs for real - guess the gang members up there were sick of the war movies, then the sprinklers went off because, hey, building increasingly on fire, and the TV shorted out, which really pissed me off since now I'll never see how that episode of Golden Girls ends, and that sprinkler water was gross and cold and it made the floor collapse, and it made the walls unstable and a window broke and the rest of the pigeons escaped - more power to them and I fear for the world - but there I was, suddenly in the Johnson's appartment and I asked where Mr. Johnson was, and they said he stepped out and they asked where his wife was and I said run off with the sugar thief, and they all said 'ooooo...' and one guy said, "I knew it!", but then an explosion rocked the building and the gas mains went and those explosions where bigger and there was fire everywhere and the walls shook and pieces of masonry started falling and I started to feel really sick - I think it was the water from the sprinklers but it could have been the Johnsons' dog (I'm allergic you know) - and I had to ask the Johnsons' guests why they were all dressed like it was Ancient Greece with sheets 'n things, but I never got an answer because the Fell Horror Stephanie awoke, who rose with a terrible banishee wail, seized two of the guests and offered us the sadistic choice of which she would destroy to consecrate her creation when the gang warfare, small arms fire, and explosives above all collapsed our old ceiling and everyone two floors up was suddenly falling to join us in the Johnsons' apartment, which was starting to feel a bit cramped, and you know, for a Fell Horror, Stephanie was rather pretty with ample... ahem, and also there were feathers, but she told us she was shy about that, and you could hardly notice that she was surely the doom of us all with the full on urban warfare or the remains of the melted ceiling and pigeon ... stuff left by your weird birds all over the place, also the confusion and running about but still the building manager burst in yelling at all of us in a really rude way, and you know I was still pissed that it was so hard to get hot water and the laundry room only had the one working drier and he never closed the minature black hole, so I suggested to everyone that we sacrifice him to Stephanie to seal the deal on her being a Fell Horror and the suggestion was very popular, so she consumed him and drank of his soul, which was fun to watch, and after she'd destroyed him and released her two hostages there was much rejoicing.

So we were all happy, despite the burning, exploding, falling apart building and all being trapped together and I having missed the end of Golden Girls, and the Johnsons' guests gave me and several of the gang members honorary togas and gowns and I finally got to meet the war buff from the apartment above us - did you know he carries a .50 caliber magnum and thinks we are all out to get him, and he might have to 'get us first'? What a character! - but then we had to run when the burning broken building started collapsing, and the Johnsons' apartment was no longer safe, and dagnabbit, that micro-black hole was heading towards an implosive event which would be relatively survivable for everyone who wasn't in the building, but would probably be less survivable for anyone inside, and as things started to fall in towards the stairwell everyone was panicking, and I barely remembered to grab Fluffy's cat caccoon, but thankfully we ran into Mr. J - or sorta, something weird had happened and he and his dog had merged into a half human / half canine thing and when we asked he just said it had been a really weird night - and thankfully he knew a way out that only required two key cards, a few logic puzzles, and some minor combat with the undead, which, since we had the gang members and our upstairs neighbor, really wasn't a problem, and we got out at least sixteen seconds before a completely arbitary guess of when the building would fall into the hole would occur (it was some guest from the party who did the time limit, and he was off. Took another twenty minutes for the building to crumple into some odd implosive ball), and it turns out almost everyone got out, except the building manager, and the Johnsons ran into each other at the emergency cordon that the Fire Department had put up, and they agreed to an amicable divorce, with her getting all baking supplies and a new husband and him keeping the dog, and the guests all went home, and the gang members offically made the war buff their new leader and I think they are taking over the block, and I am applying for emergency housing, but the main thing is I still feel like crap, and I am pretty sure it was the sprinkler water the more I think about it, and you missed ALL of this because you couldn't be bothered to leave work at a reasonable time, and I am tired from all the running and answering questions to the firemen and the police and the animal control people (by the way, all those warnings on TV about watching the skies and be afraid and curfew? Your pigeons, again) and it comes down to this:

I am leaving you.

For Stephanie.

She's a wonderful person for a Fell Horror, and she's there when I need her.

Oh, and we're taking Fluffy.

That's how I feel.

Lifetime Horror Films?

Okay, let's get this out in the open: I do not like Lifetime. The television network, not, you know, anything else associated with lifetimes. It is shallow and melodramatic and asinine. It takes things that might actually be interesting then loads them with so much crap and badly written angst and glaringly obvious subtext that they might as well situate a harridan in the room with their viewers, so that she can literally beat people over the head while screaming plot points. You know they want to. Then they'll do a Lifetime Movie(TM) about how she's a poor disadvanged dear whom we should weep for because her children were raised by goats, her husband truly loved her but had to get a tummy tuck due to peer pressure and some other things which were EMOTIONAL and TEARJERKING, and most of the men were total jerks, so she is entirely justified in making you suffer with her, because that one doctor maybe perhaps well possibly was rude (le gaspe) and she accused him of worse though we'll never have proof and no one believed her but she was so brave and-!

Sorry. I digress.

Where was I?

Oh. Lifetime Movies. They blow. They blow chunks.

If men made movies like this - okay, men do. See any of the Disaster/Epic/Whatever Movies or anything staring Pauly Shore or early Adam Sandler. But we know they are shallow, venal things with no redeeming features. Say that about Lifetime Movies, and you'll find a pack of ladies with knives out for your flesh, screaming.

Of course, I wouldn't care. Normally I can avoid Lifetime like the plague it is. But recently it wrested Project Runway away from Bravo, and anyone who wants to watch Project Runway has to do it on Lifetime. Cue the suffering.

(As an aside, I have no idea why the hell I like Project Runway. It's about a host of things I couldn't care in the least about, featuring a number of people who perform roles in society I will never need to interact with or worry about. Yet I do. And I like some of those folks. Though I have no idea why. Though frankly, fair often I think the judges see a completely different outfit than me.)

So, while watching Project Runway on one of the worst networks on television (There are at least six which make Lifetime look like quality entertainment) I must suffer through their advertisements. Which includes the veiled threats, I mean, commercials for their Movies.

One thing that keeps me from sleeping at night? There is a Lifetime Movie Network. The blood chills.

But the one that takes the cake is one that apparently is getting an encore showing - 'The Pregnancy Pact'. It's about high school girls getting pregnant. If you are muttering uh-oh, I ain't done yet. They are marketing it like it is a bloody horror film. Complete with ominous music, moderately threatening announcer guy saying, "What could drive these teens to all get pregnant together?' (Somewhere, Larry Flynt's head snaps to attention, and there is a low 'hmmmm?') It has flash editing, dark colors when they are discussing plans, and as many dark overtones as is possible in a film about kids doing stupid things. Except most films about teenagers being dumber than usual have a negative body count, and presumably this one won't unless they are really misadvertising. This is a movie about teenage sex. Bad, but really, not enough to get the slow dance slasher music.

More, the word 'pact' and the fact the girls are apparently planing this means they have a dump truck more foresight and preparation for this than most girls in real life who, you know, listen to Nike's sloagan (Just Do It!~). Yes, a group of girls - apparently high school age, from the ads - going out and boinking until they are pregnant? Really dumb. Only Lifetime would think to market it as the next Silence of the Lambs.

I'm sorry. This isn't really cohesive. I just had to let out - somewhere - how moronic I found the whole thing.

Bravo, I don't care what you have to do. Take a page from Lifetime Movies and mug their network in a back alley. Whatever. Just get Project Runway back. I am sick of this.

Rambling 2

Tim: "So it's like they always ask me, 'Tim, how do you deal with flesh eating fungus?' "
Jim: "You're kidding. People always ask you that?"
Tim: "No you idiot. It's a framing device."
Jim: "Ah."
Tim: "Think a little."
Jim: "Well, I'm sorry-"
Tim: "Don't be sorry, be polite."
Jim: ...
Tim: "Where was I?"
Jim: "We were talking about how you cope with unexpected family visits."

Rambling 1

So then we were camping

Camping is fun

Except we forgot the marshmellows

Got lost in the woods

A bear ate Steven on day three

Then this witch started in on us

Found weird things in the trees

We kept walking in circles

Misplaced a few more of us

I think Andrea went nuts

Always hard to tell with her

Ran out of pop tarts

Both types

Ran into a werewolf

Sounds outside the tent at night

Horrible chainsaw weilding maniac...

But finally...

Made it

Safe and sound

For the four of us left

Here we are

Safe

At Camp Crystal Lake

Oh, Right, I Have A Blog...

Um. Yeah. Forgot

Heh.

(CrapI'mgonnahavetomaketwopoststodaytofittheschedual - all worship the schedual)

So...

Yeah. We all knew this would happen. I have a good excuse, though!

Give me a moment

It will come to me anytime now....

Okay, I forgot. Sue me. It happens.

Anyhow, here I am - about to go to sleep and needing to type up a post.

We've all been here before. Trapped. Needing, desperately, that one point where we have a lucid moment to produce something workable, and yet - we are caught flat footed.

Some of us work through it. Others procrastinate.

Some, like me, take the third option of giving the viewers something, pretending it is decent, then sneaking out the back.

Don't knock it. It is how the writers of Heroes have produced the last few seasons.

On the other hand, knock it.

So anyhow, I put up something. Nothing good. But something. Now to get to the sneaking out the back part of things...

Skittles and ponies!

For Your Consideration / My Record Holding (version 2)

I've told this story elsewhere. But something has recently made it come to mind for me again.

A few days ago, someone at work was cut by a sheet.

A sheet.

Yes, and this dangerous thin-weave cloth was checked over carefully by several folks, to find out what dangerous teeth and claws it was hiding. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. It was a sheet, and as offensive as any peice of fabric gets, which is to say not very. Certainly nothing was on it that could possibly be called an edge or a point. Yet it managed to leave a respectable hole in a coworker.

I have, over the years, been injured a lot at work. I once had someone remark to me after a long weekend, that she couldn't remember a week when I hadn't been cut or jabbed or otherwise hurt. For a relatively static job, that's something. But it is never the dangerous things that get me. Never knives, or falling objects, or, you know, stuff that happens near me that should by all rights send me to the hospital. So I have some regrettable experience with bleeding at my job. Usually it's from the things that shouldn't hurt me that I receive cuts. (Or falling out of things, but that is a story for another time.)

Don't believe me? Heh. In my tenure at the place I work (hereafter known as Soar), I have been cut or injured by many strange things. I have received minor cuts from balls, by blankets. I had to pry a splinter nearly half an inch long from a old wood toy out of my hand once. A pillow once made me bleed. I will bear the scar from a sofa to my dying day (its a small scar, but still. A sofa.) A coffee mug gave me a cut that took eleven stitches to close. Other minor injuries include doors and one very irritable chair. I have embedded small bits of glass in my flesh more than a few times, and there was that incident with the book.

Ever get a cut from a book's leather cover? I have.

I can take these. They don't bother me. Most have reasons behind them. The ball had glass embedded. (Glass hurts me often - as does ceremic.) The pillow, needles. The sofa did its work on me with a staple, and the full weight of its steel reinforced sleeper frame behind that staple digging in. The coffee mug shattered in my hand and a shard passed through the finger. The blanket...

Well, okay. No one knows how the damn blanket cut me. But that one is weird enough that it isn't pathetic, its more a file for the bizzare.

Seeing why, as weird as a sheet cutting someone, I am not more amazed?

The worst though, and the record of the oddest object to every cause a person to bleed? I still hold that one.

That's because, about a half a year ago I was cut by a Hello Kitty Pez Dispenser.

You read that right.

More, there was no conceivable way for it to cut me. It wasn't broken. No part of this thing was hard or pointed. There were no sharp edges. There were barely edges! I can't even recall corners that weren't rounded off. You could hand this to a kid, and he'd be safe from everything except eating Pez.

How the hell does one live down being injured by a Hello Kitty Pez Dispenser? I mean, its got a big cute rounded plastic cat head for chrissake.

This is the rock bottom of injuries. This makes paper cuts look noble.

Sorry, distracted.

Anyhow. Some places, it seems anything can be a surprise. Also, next time you get injured, stop and think, "Hey, as bad as this is, it could be worse. A sheet could have done this to me." Or, god forbid, a Hello Kitty Pez Dispenser.

Unless, of course, you think you can top it?

Isomnia

I do not like spring.

Well, perhaps that is an overstatement. I do not like spring as much as I do winter. Or autumn. Summer... I suppose it ties.

Yes, I like cold. Yes, I am allergic to mold, dust, and pollen, which makes spring a special kind of trial for me. Frankly, like most people allergic to large swathes of earth's plant life, I find a certain joy in morning frost. But more striking is the system shock of sudden warm nights, and what it does to my sleep schedual.

I have always been an insomniac. Not that bad of one, really. Exhaustion will usually get me a decent few hours of sleep a night. After a week the four to two hours a night catches up, and I get a real nice, long rest. Then there is the first month of Spring.

I don't sleep well in the heat. It tends to make me stay awake as, if not more, effectively than caffiene or pain.

Last night was warm. Last night, I did not sleep.

After dawn, I got about thirty minutes of sleep. I managed, through various means, to acquire forty more here and there during the commute and waiting for work to start. All of this was extremely shallow sleep. I doubt I got down to the lower layers of unconsciousness - little to no REM, and stage five sleep? Ha. Too scattered and desolute for that.

Then I got an eight and three quarter hour work shift.

It is days like this that I consider to be erosive to the soul. Certain incidents along the way were also very bad. Maybe we'll be exploring those later, but on exhaustion's edge they certainly didn't help.

I had a long day. I have now been awake approximately thirty three hours to an hour and fifteen minutes of sleep over the last two days.

But hey, got in that third blog post this week. All worship the schedual.

Anyhow, just checking in. Now I am going to go curl into a ball and go comatose somewhere. I hope.

Final Fantasy XIII Early Impressions

So sue me, I am desperately seeking a topic and I love me my video games.

Okay. So I knew that people would be not liking this game. I can see why. Final Fantasy XIII is a departure, even more so than usual. Which is the first thing that sends a fanbase into a rabid frenzy. Change something, alter a good formula, hell - switch artistic styles (look at the folks who raved lun about Wind Waker), and some group of the fanbase will start screaming an waving signs.

So, in a series that always changes something big time every time, they apparently decided XIII would be a lucky number to alter as many things as they could. I kid not. Battle system? Entirely different - only a couple other games that I have ever played is anything like it. Game combat is fast paced, largely automated (until it isn't - SURPRISE!), tactical in the extreme, occasionally unforgiving (read the tutorial that sort of makes sense, then figure the rest out), and resembles nothing else in the series. Hell, so far it only vaguely resembles anything in any series I have seen. It is terribly rigid in places that I am used to flexibility, and fluid where I am used to order. It keeps me on my toes, true, but it is also nearly a system shock. It is the familiarity equivilent of juggling on a moving mopad. I am sure it is very easy if I get used to it, but until then I shall enjoy careening about with the occasional 'incident'. I am enjoying the flow of the encounters (I think. Probably) and I still twitch a little. I am an accepting person.

In a bit more detail, the combat is... active. Ever play Dragon Age: Origins? It is almost nothing like that. But chances are, Dragon Age is the closest battle system to FFXIII you've ever played, so keep it in mind. All damage is healed between battles. There are no magic points, technique points, etc, your characters just do what they can. You imput skills to use for your leader, or have the computer figure a set on the fly - and your companions are technically entirely out of your control and doing whatever the heck they like. You have only the most marginal, theoretical control over what two thirds of your party is doing at any given time. Which occasionally leads to screaming at the fricken' incompetents. Meanwhile you are trying to juggle what roles they are supposed to be doing, whatever the character you are controlling is doing (What is my leader doing? Staring at the bad guys? Again? FRACK), and keeping track of sixteen other little details wizzing past. Plus, it is in HD. My TV is not HD. My TV is BD - stands for blurred definition. Damned if I can read half of what pops up on the screen. Of course, all dialogue is now spoken - no message windows - so that isn't as bad, but it makes battle information interesting (little bar says I am dying, I just wish I knew what the hell the little numbers up there said, little bar tell me what you are saying!) I can only imagine this gets better. I mean, it isn't like any of this is new. Okay, the paradigm thing is - and those roles are going to drive me bugscrew - but even they have some precident if you squint. But it is like the Constitution back in the 1700s. Nothing really new there, but put it all together and step back and go, 'Well then. That's gonna be interesting.' So. Combat is jarring, but it usually goes by fast before it drives you madder than staring into the face of Chluthu-

Can I see the fanbase shatter into a thousand pieces arguing about this? You betcha.

Also, the story. It's good qualities I will get to later. Let's talk about the bad, first.

This game is a rail RPG so far. Its a very, very good rail RPG. I am liking it. But RPGs, you usually expect to explore, to see the side road. To find your own strength. FFXIII? Welcome to point A. Look at the line. It will take you to point B. Have fun with that. The game is linear as a novel in its early stages. Interactive to a degree (and novels, whatever else, rarely go 'in this battle the team were horribly eviserated because the reader is an inattentive moron - go back two pages and read better next time') but you will be walking more or less forward a lot in this game. Primarily to get away from what is behind you, but there is nothing to either side, and every time I have doubts about this game, its because my gamer's instinct wants to go sideways. Wants to explore.

I can't. For everything I am enjoying, there is a limit to how much I can embrace walking from point A to B. Thankfully it is getting better the further I go, like combat. The first two chapters combat was not only the odd, rigid but fluid system that caught me flatfooted and still does, it was also exceedingly simple. Then fighting, lacking a better term, went bugscrew on me and I am still plumbing its new, strange depths. Hopefully sooner or later, the linearity will go bugscrew on me. Heck, FFVI - originally FFIII in America - was fairly linear right up until its entire second half where you basically had to sail off an island, get a ship, and destroy a madman gone god. Everything else was optional - including making sure that two thirds of your party survived the apocalypse, and getting ready to have a chance in hell of surviving the last place. In other words, half the dang game was optional. It was the plotline equivilent of a tree - fairly straight at the bottom where everything is trunk, then a sudden, vast branching. Final Fantasy Sidequest - and often considered best in the series. So, I am crossing my fingers that bugscrew linearity will happen again, in FFXIII. Here is hoping.

But to the good parts of the story, it is compelling. This is a fairly well realized world we are talking about here. There is depth and complexity in what is happening, and the fact that the game starts on what is essentially the thirteenth day after some mysterious ball started moving, it more or less whispers to you, "we now begin your game on hour fifty. Catch up or die." You join the story in media res as a conspiracy to massacre a city starts to fall apart as resistance and defiance and desperate last stands derail a holocaust already in motion. You follow a soldier and a pilot, who quickly are revealed to be strangers to each other, and uncomfortable companions at best, as they make their way across elevated rails and floating switchbacks, watching a doomed citizenry try to save themselves - too late, it seems - from a world that has suddenly become murderously hostile to them. The soldier, a caucasian woman with the assumed name of 'Lightning', and the pilot, a jive, gangy black man with a big afro housing a bird named Sahz, are helpless to do much beyond keep themselves alive. This is painful to Sahz, as much as he tries to hide it behind good cheer. He has got a reason, not yet voiced, to stay alive and free regardless of the cost and so follows the vetern fighter as she carves her way through the smoke and gunfire. Lightning - not so much pained by the tragedy around her. She's got bigger concerns... someone to save, something to kill.

Elsewhere, a young rowdy with a hero complex named Snow and his band of militia / amateur monster hunters have also broken out of their trains and become the core of one of the largest knots of resistance. He arms former citizens and leads them against and army. It is very brave and incredibly badly thought out - like much of what Snow does. He wins some victories. He gets a lot of people killed doing so. One of them is a middle aged mother. She saves his life. He can't return the favor. Her last words, a plea for him to save someone important to her, visibly break open the bravado that gets Snow through most of his waking hours. The wounds mends, but not entirely. Occasionally it breathes enough that you can see big, brash, impetuous Snow convulse with the scar of maturity.

Not far away, a teenager named Hope (a boy. I don't think school was much fun for him with that name) is watching, and sees Snow get his mother killed. This does bad things to Hope's mental equilibrium. He wants to give Snow a piece of his mind. Or maybe kill him. It is hard to tell, and not because it isn't clear. It's because Hope is a teenager, and the the whole marked for death thing was already blowing his mind. He isn't coping, and when wracked with rage or indecision, the way his entire world has crumbled rings through. Perching on his shoulder, egging him on and further mindscrewing him about every ten minutes, is a teenage girl named Vanille. She's a ditz, a flirt. She's jailbait and sunny innocence. She's also calculating. How much of what she appears to be is real, I don't know. But despite her many goofy, fluff brained actions, occasionally there is a very serious, very solemn narrator who clarafies points across the fourth wall. We the players need only to watch carefully, and we know it is her. But if that is the real her, then she's faking with her every moment in the party. The game lets the player know they've never seen Vanille's real face. Then let that thought slide away. I'm waiting for the payoff. I wonder if she's the villain.

Or maybe the real hero.

Anyhow, across this battlefield the five characters make their way. Hunted, shot at. Heading to the thing that caused it all - a divine/demonic being with the power to bind mortals to its will. Just encountering this thing doomed a whole city to being 'Purged', being massacred quietly. It can take anyone who comes near it, marking them with a geas, a task they must perform. Those who fail it become monstrousities. Those who serve it well are made into immortal stone. A bad bargain at best. Lightning wants to kill it. Snow wants to save someone from it. But if you reverse the names, you'd still be in the right. Sahz, Hope, Vanille? Complete strangers to each other, to those two. But drawn along.

Then bound together in a fell contract that will force them to function as a group for a purpose they can't even make out. Their world wanted them dead before they became tools for a monster, just on the off chance they might have been what they now certainly are.

This a well told tale so far. Even better with the characterizations, since all five characters have their own motives, their own personalities. They don't always work together well (or at all). These people don't know each other, and the dynamics of their group show it, and do so with a superb skill that sells all the rest. Party interact is pitch perfect, and it makes everything else click.

Most games tell stories. It is a large chunk of the point. That FFXIII has a story good enough that I am, currently, completely and totally fine with the alien architecture of the system, says a lot for it.

Granted, I am not that far in. Plenty of time for it to get better or worse.

Bad Signs for Romance

Stumbled across a book today. Been laying around in my reading pile, and its one of the odd ducks - not something I bought in my usual lines. It is one of the texts I picked up because it looked so different I just had to read it. In this case, because it sounds so quirkly. It is called 'How to Spot a Bastard By His Star Sign' and with a name like that you can bet it is not exactly a book which is overly rosy in its view of my gender. Basically it is joke astrology, pointing out just how men of each sign are horrible wrecks of humanity, broken in truly terrible ways. And how to romance them, or at least resign oneself to the best of a bad lot. As literature goes, it skates close enough to the gender line that, if it was a man writing about women, chances are it would procede the lynching of some male author somewhere. It is irreverent, spiteful, and you can read enough disgruntlement in some chapters that you think this is less a joke than therapy after some truly spectacular bad relationships.

I find it hilarious.

Particularly as I am a Virgo. Usually this, astrology wise, sees me pegged as... excuse me, going to go to one of my lifelines for this - ah, yes, as 'very picky, shy, smart and very self critical' (thanks Moony! [was sort of hoping perceptive was in there somewhere {sigh}])

How was I to know that I was more? Romantically, at least. Virgos, as described by the book, are one good push from obsessive serial killers. That's right folks. I (and approximately twelve percent of the male population) am apparently Dexter - or at least a trundling cart heading down the hill in that direction. Not to mention that I apparently have some obsession with ice picks I never knew about (wow, you really do learn something new about yourself every day, huh?). Cough. Anyway. I am a budding socio/psycopath (well, at least it proves that all those people who think that my smile is creepy right). I don't quite believe it, but the authors gave a convienent checklist to see just how much the Virgo is, well, Virgoian. Let's see how I stack up!


Item one:
"[Virgo bastards] enjoy repeating the same tedious task in the same mind-numbing fashion."

Um. Okay. They've seen me at work.

Well, that's not fair. I don't enjoy that. But I will occasionally take up a 'tedious' or far more often a pointless task, and repeat it ad nauseum. I will admit to sometimes enjoying this. Even data entry. That's right. You heard me. Occasionally I enjoy data entry. Does that make me so evil?!?

....

On second thought, don't answer that. Moving on!

Item two:
"[Virgo bastards] have an unhealthy obsession with the little details - details normal people can't be bothered with because they've got lives."

Okay. Fair enough. I'll give them that one.

I do have a life though. It just isn't... very exciting. At times. But details are good! There is a devil in them too, apparently. Cough. Anyhow, anyone who doesn't pay attention to details is just asking to be caught by one someday and I am just digging the pit deeper so moving on -

Item three:
"[Virgo bastards are] too thick-skinned to notice people crossing to the opposite side of the street when they see [them]."

UNTRUE. A: Only once has anyone ever done that. Twice, max. And I am old enough that such a thing means - oh, wait, are we counting instances of this that happen on Halloween? Okay, then people do that to me a lot. But only on a certain holiday, and they're scared-y cats anyway! Maybe it is the creepy laugh. The trench coat. The axe. But seriously, most people have a lot more folks running screaming from them than I do. Also B: We aren't thick-skinned at all.

Do this to a real Virgo of either gender, and we'll obsess about it. For days.

Item four:
"[Virgo bastards] write checklists to ensure that [we] do everything [we] keep threatening to do."

No...

But...

My, what a fascinating idea.

... ahem... Later, later.

Anyhow, as you can see I only fit half of these which means I am either not yet a perfect Virgo (bummer) or not a bastard (internet quizes have lied to me!?) or the authors are wrong (le gaspe!). Which is sorta depressing. Particularly as the dangerous, edge of murder Virgo they describe has a better social life than I currently do. (Let's not explore that.) Certainly a better romantic life. And more ice picks.

I wish I had an ice pick.

I will have to explore this further. There may be wisdom to be gained from this. Still, food for thought...


(Author's note. This blog post contains quotes from 'How to Spot a Bastard By His Star Sign' by Adele Lang & Susi Rajah, copyright 2002, from St. Martin's Press. It's a funny book, and highly amusing even if you are [perhaps especially if you are] an actual male bastard. Go buy it. And if you are Adele Lang or Susi Rajah - please don't sue me)

Today Was Not Easy

So. Another long day at work. Though, granted, it was a little different than usual. Most long days are, well, what you'd expect. Lots of contrast between that which one must uphold and the demands being made on oneself, wearying people, the slow drudgery of a bleak season. You know, the typical Saturday. Big sale, too, so extra fun there.

After seven and a half hours of this (well, seven, not counting lunch which was its own lovely situation that we will not be discussing aside from the note that nothing today was simple even including the procurement and comsumption of foodstuffs) I was more than a little elated to have my break happen.

Break is great. I get to go for a walk.

Most might argue that seeing how big a circuit one can walk on a measly fifteen minutes isn't much of a break. But I find wind soothing, quiet (or at least as quiet as a small city / large town gets) relaxing, walking enjoyable, and all that. Plus, if I am out on a hike - however short - no one can find me. It is very hard for coworkers to interrupt your break if you are a block and a half blocks away. So I walk somewhere - in this case a little distance down main street.

In this I get to learn that it is a fun day not just at work. I see no fewer than three emergency vehicles. One is passing down the road (ambulance) in quite a hurry, while a police car and a fire truck have blocked off a road I wander past. Why, precisely, I haven't the foggiest, but it added just a bit of surreality to my trip. Not so much though, as when I was heading back. About a third of the way back into the shopping center where my place of employment resides, I come up on a 7-Eleven. There is a bunch of cars oddly parked at the corner of the little conveince store. One was a van, to the left of all the parking spaces, and on that little triangle of white lines that everyone knows means no parking. Next to that a little sedan - four door, but while I think it was silver god if I can tell for sure. I see one loud, belligerent man coming from the silver sedan shouting at another, who seems to be in the last available parking space that neither of the other two vehicles quite got into. The man from the sedan is loud, belligerent, obviously heading into a good rage. Odd, but not (unfortunately) that strange. Then I see him opening his trunk.

I think, honestly, that as angry as he sounds, he is getting ready to help. Maybe his odd parking job, the odd parking of the van or SUV or whatever that big thing is next to him, it means they are in trouble. Maybe he is trying to help and irritated that he has to. Some people are like that. Perhaps he's getting jumper cables or a jack or a spare tire out of his trunk. He's being a good citizen. I think this, and my world, while somewhat hard for the day, is normal.

The loud angry man pulls a rifle out of his trunk. He opens it up, checks to make sure it is loaded, then snaps it closed. I am not close enough to get all his angry shouts - he is loud mostly through emotion, rather than volume. But some words leak in. 'You', 'don't', 'me', 'my', and I think 'place' or 'space'. I may be wrong - I really do not know the answer. But he points that rifle at the man he was harranging. I honestly believe that he is thinking of killing him. Over what, lacking any other ideas in my head, is a parking space.

I wish I could say I did something brave and stupid at this point. I didn't.

I walked past, not speeding up or slowing down, and once past a couple cars cut in, went directly into the 7-Eleven and told the guy behind the counter, "You have a gentleman threatening another man with a rifle in your parking lot." I got no reply. I think they thought I was joking. I do that, sometimes, and they know me and I know them. I had to repeat it a second time, seriously, and I did. I was calm. I did not break into any kind of hysterics. I am proud of that much of my conduct at least. The second repetition did it, too. Both the clerk at the register and the other clerk in the store paid attention. The second clerk walked up to the front and we looked over, but the second car misparked, the SUV or van or whatever it was, it blocks any view. But it looks like maybe the sedan is gone. We haven't heard any gunshots.

It has been less than a minute, but it is probably over. The clerk beside me, senior to the fellow behind the counter, goes with the basic thought that it didn't happen in his store, he saw none of it, and it seemed to have blown over - not his problem. For all he knows, I am making it up. I have no idea. Thinking about it from his perspective, I might have done the same thing he then did: Figured it wasn't my problem, since I didn't see anything. He said as much, then he went back to his job. Life inside the 7-Eleven proceded on course. For all they knew, nothing had happened.

I went back out. The angry man had left, his sedan with him. The gentleman he was threatening moments before already had the police on his cell phone, and with the aid of another witness and myself, gave what information he could. Especially since, apparently, when the sedan left, the rifle was 'riding shotgun', as it were, and anyone on such a hair trigger might use it elsewhere. I couldn't provide much - I saw bits and pieces, but I was at a distance for most of the unfolding events.

And it was so fast.

I added what I could, which wasn't enough. I made sure the gentleman who, again, near as I can tell took a parking space someone else wanted and was threatened seriously with being shot had my name and place of employment in case he needed a witness. Because, if all you are going to do is make a point, why grab a gun? And if you just mean to scare the guy, why be sure it's loaded? Then I went back to work, shaken and doing my best not to be. I finished out the day with only a few more of the piddling little difficulties that make my current vocation such a trial, though they dragged more for the wonderful extra stress I picked up over break.

It was a hard day. Worst of all is the memory that I walked past. What I saw could just have easily been a homocide. I walked past. I honestly can't see anything better I could have done. Trying to break up a dispute where one guy goes from irritation to branishing deadly weapons is the height of stupidity, and I could have made things so much worse. I could have been the last straw before shooting started. I was prudent instead. I went directly to a place where there was possible aid. I did the safe thing, I think. I did the wise thing, I think.

I think.

Yet I keep wondering about the sequence of events. What if the argument hadn't gone so well? If it had been worse. If that angry man with the rifle had pulled the trigger, while I was doing the safe, wise thing, how would I feel about myself now? I saw a man pull a fucking gun longer than my arm, and I walked past. Not a word, not a whisper. I tell myself I did right. I even believe it. I still feel like a coward.

How would I have slept tonight, if he'd fired after I walked past? Would I have?

New Schedual - Same Sloth

Yep. Almost forgot again.

Free cookie to whatever stray reader forsaw that one coming.

So. Once again, here I am at the tail end of my night, desperately trying to dredge a topic from the depths of my mind (you know, I really do have to start giving thought to having a direction for this blog. Seinfeld may have run season after season on nothing, but I do not think I have the same constitution.) and present it as an offering to the dark internet gods.

Huh. Dark Internet Gods. Hee. Doubt I am the first to come up with that particular idea (anyone who has read even a little Neil Gaiman is nodding their head right now) but let's name some of them.

Swocharns, the Dread Beast of Glitches and Viruses. Every time your screen fuzzes oddly and spots appear or you find that opening an e-mail from your favorate cousin Binky has infected you with twenty-seven different form of spyware, worms and trojans, you know that Swocharns has lifted his eyes of binary-junk murk to skewer you with his baleful fury. Your data is not safe. Your OS? It will fall to his bloody assault. You aren't safe. You aren't even protected. Those virus updates you got this morning? Useless - he got backdoors past all of them written by some teenage hacker in Holland or New Jeresy or down the street, and your system, with all those hours of data entry work and frustrated, ultimately triumphant effort will be flushed away, and all you'll see is a blue screen of death as everything you have worked for since 1998 is rewritten into unimpressive dribble. He is chaos that is smart enough to hold together just long enough to destroy just a little more of your harddrive. Swocharns - the faceless hatred of ten thousand black hats pureed and concentrated and given form for one purpose. To shatter what little sanity you have left after you realize just how much of your life is invested in a machine you have so little control over the survival and protection thereof.

Less threatening, but just as out to get you, is the Faceless King. He is Nigerian, and he just died and left you a fortune, if only you would divest yourself of all protection and give him the information that he needs. Nevermind how sensitive - he assures you you can trust him. He's also a long lost friend, recently passed away who wrote you into a will, a brother you never met, an admirer from so far away you never realized he could be, a professional just needing that one missing piece to put together a treasure map. But he needs you. She needs you. Gender isn't important, and he or she is whatever you most want to believe. If you miss a lover, the Faceless Queen will be your lover. If you want to feel important, the Emperor of Uncounted Wishes will grant you all the value you could ever want. He wants to give you things, too. What do you want? A credit card with a limit that never runs dry? Done. Better body, with larger attributes to the bust or the scepter? She understands, and will discretely provide. What do you want, what will pull you into his land, out of your own. What price to render your life, your years of carefully invested wealth, your future? He can offer a bargain that would make Mephisto green with envy, a Faustian bargin to shame every two bit fool who sold their soul on the cheap. All you have to do is listen. Listen carefully - to your e-mail, on your social networks, throughout all the lines and cracks, because he has a thousand mouths, all looking for the one promise which will pull you to his million hands. He doesn't need your service, he won't help himself to your home one moment longer than he has to. All you have to do is reach out, and contact him. Just the once. It's all he wants. It's all he needs. Because once you do, the Faceless won't ever need another thing from you. That once is enough for him to have everything.

Last of those I have identified is the Tricker. The one that pulls you into the internet, convinces you that it means more than it does. Convinces you that a piece of the life is all there should be. We've known him longest, feared him more than anything else. He is seduction, not of the lustful variety, but of the sweet pro-offering of having the world at one's fingers without need to go out and risk it. They've made movies about his promise, his lie is in a thousand TV programs almost as far back as computers were beginning to enter our lives. We know the other two by their teeth and their claws, by the whispers in the electronic night and a thousand signs glittering like deadlights over a shadowed sea. But the Tricker, the Sleeper, the False Dream, the one we've figured was waiting to be born with this new Information Age before we even walked in the door? He's no surprise, and like the other two he doesn't advertise. Its crass, and he's no fool. He merely lets those who would be seduced come into his web, and he lets them rest. In their sundry idles, he drowns them, and like those who have come into his den since a poor settlement in mythical ages found lotus fruits and smelled sweet smoke, he'll embrace them as lovingly as a parent. They'll not even notice his gentle grasp is choking them. He isn't addiction, he isn't madness. He's worse, and he's got millenia of practice before he looked laughingly at the feast we offered as a trade for all the good we get from this time of dawning advancement. Read old sci-fi. Hell, read old science journals. It was the bargain. For the thousand easements of this world wide web, we let one of the oldest spiders of the human condition crawl forth, looking for those caught in it's strands. If you watch the news, occasionally you'll see a story about the caccooned madling found; some victim who lost his sense of reality to Fascination and never came back.

...

Dang. That didn't come out anything like where the first fleeting random thought on it looked like. Oh well. This is supposed to be stream of consciousness - whatever comes out, goes up. Least until I can come up with a direction.

Anyhow. That's enough for now. Goodnight hypothetical readers.

Fear the Three.

Just a note - I am going to three or four posts a week now (think I mentioned this) that I have finished the first week. Extras when something pops into the mind that I just have to note.

Still, while I am here, a few random thoughts. First, great bumper sticker motto I saw: "First pillage, then burn."

Words to live by, those.

Second, a possible explanation of Elvis. Elvis Presley may well have been the modern day avatar of Zeus, a being sent to bring good music, parties, and lust for life (as well as just lust) back to the modern world. However, he was tainted by too many earthly doughnuts after too long on the mortal plane, and thus faked his death to get back to Olympus where he could swiftly lose weight. Since, he has made more manageable trips to the realm of man, though he seems but a fickle spirit to the minds of man!

Yeah, its hogwash, but add about 800 words and it is perfect for a tabloid.

Last but not least - it is always great to graduate with flying colors, but walking colors can work, especially as they are slightly easier and you are sane at the other end.

Anyhow. Skittles and Ponies. I'll add more tomorrow.

Phone Conversations from Work

There are reasons I hate answering the phone at work. Someone has to do it, and it usually falls to me. Most phone conversations are easy and quick. Others are... less so. As always, it is those that are not easy or quick that stick in the mind. They vary a bit, here and there, but it is like they take passages from the same script.

The whole of the bad conversation tree would go something like this (note: I do NOT include my name in this, to protect my own identity, and I also properly changed the name of the store at which I work.) -

Me: Hello, this is Soar.
Caller: Is this Soar?
Me: Yes, this is Soar, ma'am
Caller: The thrift store?
Me: Yes ma'am, we are a thrift store.
Caller: Are you open?
Me: Ma'am? Yes we are open.
Caller: Oh good. I didn't know you were open on (Sunday, Tuesday, Fridays, holidays, ever)
Me: Yes ma'am. Do you want to know our hours?
Caller: Can you tell me your hours?
Me: ... Yes. We are open today from 10am to ____, but we stop accepting donations at four.
Caller: You aren't accepting donations anymore?
Me: No ma'am, we just don't accept items after four-
Caller: But I have a lot of things for you.
Me: That's fine, but the back door is used for donations. The staff back there closes down at four.
Caller: I can't bring them in the front door?
Me: We would prefer not.
Caller: Well. I'd like to sell some items. What do you buy clothing at?
Me: Ma'am, we do not buy clothing. What you want is a consignment store, they buy used clothing. We are a charity-based thrift store.
Caller: You aren't consigment?
Me: No ma'am
Caller: Isn't this Soar?
Me: Yes ma'am, this is Soar.
Caller: The thrift store.
Me: Yes ma'am.
Caller: But you don't buy you said.
Me: No ma'am. We work on donations. Thrift is donations. Consignment is purchase.
Caller: So you don't buy.
Me: No ma'am.
Caller: What about computers?
Me: What about computers, ma'am?
Caller: Do you buy computers?
Me: We do not accept or purchase computers.
Caller: But you accept clothing
Me: Yes ma'am.
Caller: You just don't buy it.
Me: That is correct ma'am.
Caller: What if the computer works?
Me: We still won't accept it ma'am.
Caller: Where are you located?
Me: We are at ____ _____ in Fairfax, Virginia.
Caller: I would like directions from Northwest DC.
Me: Would you like me to connect you to someone who can give directions?
Caller: Yes. I would also like to speak with a manager about your buying policies.
Me: Yes ma'am. Please hold.
...

I may be exagerating, slightly. I may not, too. That example conversation, that's only a few minutes long if you count the awkward pauses. I've had worse that lasted five, ten minutes. They spiral downwards into an abyss of miscommunication and social discord from whence not even the spirit of Ma Bell can wisk one fully from. That's just what I deal with. There are legendary conversations which managers have dealt with that are three times as long.

But this, more than a little, explains why I twitch a little when a phone rings around me. Its certainly one of the key reasons why I do not own a cell phone.

Once Again - Or, Six Random Musings

Almost forgot. That won't do.

Promised myself I'd put something in this blog every night for a week, then think about relaxing the schedual (all worship the schedual) and what happens? I forget until the wee hours of the night which is... well, late. I don't necessarily get that bad, typing-wise, when late at night - or so I tell myself - but it certainly isn't helping.

Also, the topic I was going to write on is way too long, and I will never get it out in a decent time. So. Six random musings. That's what I am going to do. First six things that pop into my mind end up here. How bad can that be, right?

Hoo boy.

M'kay. First of all, SKITTLES and PONIES.

Yeah, okay. The next five musings, let's try a little more, um. Anything. Because that's random alright, but as a thought, its right up there with corporate creativity and the idea that telling young people that candy is bad for them is likely to accomplish any positive effect.

Which is true. Tell a young kid something is bad, and that kid will nod at you and in all likelihood go off and do the same exact thing five minutes later. Children don't work well with the pure abstract or shades of morality, especially when sugar is involved. This is why parents quickly learn to upgrade. "Candy rots your teeth," especially if some sort of visual or details of the rotting are involved, now that works. The child has a concrete reason to be wary of candy despite the sweet siren song of sugar. Concrete examples and solid detail - every parent's friend.

Also, since I seemed to cover skittles there, and keeping on the concept of children? Let's look at ponies. Every little girl who has ever wished for a pony probably is unaware that they eat a lot, and then all that edible matter comes out in a very certain way. Also, a pony will never be able to room with a child, no matter how 'cool' that would be. Be sure to point this out to young children when they argue for the traditional uberpet so that you can bargain them down to something more reasonable like a dog or a cat or a goldfish. Or a pet rock. They still have pet rocks, right?

Well. Even if they don't, how hard can it be? Really. Try it. You go find a rock with no sharp edges and not that big a size, wash off the dirt, and take it home. Ta-da. You have a new pet. Call it Steve or Fluffy or whatever. Basalt is a cool name for a pet, I assure you. It won't take up much room, will never destroy anything of yours by its own accord, doesn't eat, needs no medical bills, and will never want to be educated. If you are good at sculpture, then you can improve your pet, even.

Which brings me to hobbies. Get one that involves making something. Even if it is making someone laugh. Trust me. It's a lovely thing.

How many is that? Four? Ack, five, but that's only if I count the first one. Why did I have to pick six?

Well, I will take the first one because I am trying to do a speed post and better something terrible than to not follow through. Right? Right.

Its always easy to get a concensus when all you need to agree with is yourself. I have no problem just saying 'yes' and 'ah-ha' and so on. It makes my life that much easier. Of course, if you are a deeply argumentative person, have particularly annoying devils and angels on your metaphysical shoulders, multiple personalities or a number of additional voices in your head, it can get a little more difficult. One of them wants candy, one of them wants to sleep, one doesn't want either because of the nightmares of rotting teeth, one spews out nonsense that all the others scramble to try and make reasonable before it ambles out the mouth or gets typed into a blog (note from oddball voice #28 - BUTTERFLIES!), one of them tries to be the reasonable and rational human being, one is an internal censor keeping anything too weird from wandering out (like that paragraph about the tables with teeth [maybe next time I end up doing this late]), one tries to be relentlessly optimistic to try and balance all the others, and the last one is just trying to keep count.

Not that I'd know.

Skittles and ponies, ya'll. Me and my voices are taking up the new hobby of sleep!

So I get to thinking at work about the necessity of having a purpose. Now, I do not have the best job on the planet. I have little positive to say about it. I have quite a bit negative, but that's a post for another time.

Still, every time I think about it, I come to the same conclusion. Its better to have something to do than nothing at all. I can drive myself to the edge of muttering to myself and mad plans by having nothing to occupy myself properly. Now, I am not saying leisure isn't good. It's lovely. I wish I had more. I tend towards sloth - I just want to be a sloth with a goal or two. Interesting ideas are more than just something to keep the mind active. They're the grist that keep us all from going mad.

Which, of course, means the way to get through any given day involves finding something to keep my mind active that I don't walk away from when something pretty shines over another corner or find so vexing in some way that I abandon it when given oppportunity. I have many such interests. Of course, something that interests one that can be done as a way of earning a living - now that's a trick.

And if you think this topic is dry because I couldn't think of anything and just typed out the first thing that came to mind when I sat down, because it is better than nothing, then you win a cookie.

It was either this or the odd obsession I had today with sharpening pencils. Which was fun. The machine went whirl and then the pencils came out and they had these perfect tips and I could write in really really small text and it was fun and now I wanna go sharpen more stuff! ... ahem.

Hey. At least it kept the mind occupied, eh?

Musing on American Idol as Psychic Apparatus

Once again, making a post in the late hours when I am all but assured that I will be about as eloquent and effective a writer as Pauly Shore was an actor. Also, my chances of making bad '90s references goes through the roof. But them's the breaks, and better late than breaking the schedual.

(All worship the schedual)

So, anyway, I get to watching American Idol earlier (and I know I am not the only one) and the thought flickers through my mind that the braintrust of the live show - the judges - operate in a sort of psychological way. That is, there is a representitive of the ego, the super ego, and the id, and the last judge is the conscious mind contantly pinging between them.

Granted, two seasons ago this would have been a much easier case to make. Back then there were only three judges. The only argument for Consciousness we had on the show was Ryan Seacrest, who between jokes at Simon and faint worry for and about the contestants tries to be as professional and cheerful as possible. Which sort of fits the role.

More importantly, though, back then we had Paula Abdul. What an unrestrained Id she was for the program. Paula rarely thought before she spoke - oh, who am I kidding, it is very likely Paula rarely thought at any point during the season. She was such a wonderful creature of instinct. A better writer than me once said that Paula was representitive of all the dreams and well wishing of the audience. All those folks who cheer and clap regardless of what the performers do (and, on American Idol, I assure you someone could gurgle through a song and get a roaring response from that house), they found their avatar in Paula. She dreamt the big dreams, she saw the possibilities and the sparkles and all the great things that all these kids could get if they won. Granted, some of that was probably her altered state of consciousness. Regardless, Paula was the heart, the Id, of American Idol. Even if that heart was bleeding, and the Id was perpetually out looking for a lunch. Wikipedia defines the Id as "The unorganized part of the personality structure that contains the basic drives. The id acts as according to the 'pleasure principle', seeking to avoid pain or unpleasure arosed by increases in instinctual tension. The id is unconscious by definition." What better role than this for Paula, who rarely sounded coherent, who often got up and danced to songs she liked, who never stopped believing. This isn't a slam, mind you. While I don't think Paula was the best judge, someone that doggedly earnest, that purely sentimental was necessary for the show. She had heart, she was heart, and while it is easy (so easy) to mock that, like any good mind the show wouldn't have functioned without her.

Balancing Paula is of course Simon Cowell in for the super ego. The money grubber, the hard nosed realist. The one who doesn't so much care about the dreams so much as wanting proof that a singer has the necessary skill and talent to make it there. Cowell isn't nice. He has, by definition, no heart. He knows, as the super ego does, that heart gets in the way, blocks the road, gives those who don't have the shot false hope. Simon Cowell is the oracle of the rational mind. He's the slap in the face for those singers up there, while Paula is the soft comforting voice in the night. But Simon, for all his hard edges, is far more noticeably important. He may get booed a lot, but when you get down to brass tacks, he is the one that always tells the hard bottom line. Simon won't lie to someone to make them feel better. Like any good perfection seeking mind, he knows that rejection and pain aren't the enemy. Failure is not the end of the world, and Simon is there to tell people that if they'd listen. He tells a simple truth. If you are good enough for that point, you get a pat on the head and a warning not to falter. If you aren't, he'll tell you to worry. Evolve or die. Improve or be eliminated. Simon is only as important as the other judges, in the parts of the show we see, but because his role is so coldly rational it is easy to get him.

Of course, that leaves Randy Jackson. The ego. The part of the mind that handles the drives of the id, and strives for the perfection inheirent in the super ego, and still keeps on functioning. Randy gets the unpleasant job. He has to sound wise, rather than supportive (as Paula used to do) or critical (as Simon ever is). Randy's always had some... trouble with this. It isn't really his fault. Like the ego, he occupies a middle ground between two forces which staked their own territory and then realized they did it just a table away from something very different than themselves. Randy tries - he occasionally offers good critique, such as Simon, or empathizes like Paula. But his job, ultimately, is to look at the contestant not as glorified elements of themselves or a commodity that he has to sell, but as people at whatever stage of the competition they are at. Randy has the burden of trying to relate to a bunch of teens and twenty-somethings under truly crushing pressure like they are just who they are - people who, to some degree, he is responsible for letting into this place, and is watching being transformed by the show. Sometimes that transformation takes the form of crushing them, and sometimes it is molding them, and Randy has to relate to them as if that isn't the most important thing. Because it isn't. The ego acts to the reality principle. Randy tries to get through all the pressure, all the attitude and arrogance and fear and worry, and make things plain. I commend him, though I think he tripped here and there over the years.

So that was the early seasons. Paula talking about the pretty beautiful singers and how they were so bright, Simon finding every flaw and slamming on it because if he didn't then someone who would break would get through or someone who wasn't high enough quality would qualify, and Randy, in his own words, "Keeping it real". Or at least trying in that general direction.

Last season, though, the formula changed. It had been shift awhile. Paula, having embraced her inner child or just getting wonky, had been rumored to be on her way out for awhile, and the consciousness (Ryan) acting more as an objective intermediary. An avatar of the individual viewer, combined with an agent of necessity to move things along. The role fit him better. So they added another judge (as you, whomever has actually read this far probably knows) to fill that void. Kara DioGuardi is meant to be current, to know what is needed in the industry. She fills the holes growing between the three other judges like a good conscious mind is balanced in itself. She lives very much in the present, has a sharp eye and a hard tongue if necessary. She knows how to hold a grudge, that's for sure. She's more forgiving than Simon, and less so than Paula was or Randy is.

This make-up would have worked great, really. The four balanced each other like some psychologist's idea of a musical party game or an ancient philosopher's imagining of four guardians who stand at the foot of the muses keeping their appointment calenders clear. But Paula left, and now Ellen DeGeneres has taken a seat at the judging table and...

That brings me back to my thought on the braintrust, earlier this evening. Because almost as soon as the idea occured, I realized it worked better in the past. I'm not entirely sure of this new dynamic. Randy seems to be sliding into Paula's old place, but as an id he'll be more watchful. A wild bobcat looking for dinner rather than a pampered kitten looking for affection. Kara has seemingly abandoned consciousness - stark evaluation of the present position - for Randy's old place, not far away (Remember, ego and consciousness go hand in hand) of trying to relate to the contestants on an individual human level in relation to how they are doing versus how they should be doing. Its fuzzier, but with Randy now the most idealistic of the three known quantities (take a moment to shudder in fear) its just easier to take that position and let him out in the dark moors that used to be Paula's realm. Ellen is... adapting. I like her on the show, but I still don't know how she fits.

At least Simon is still who he has always been. The critical, viscious, clear eyed lump who will tell you with a level look if you aren't good enough, and do it as a kindness.

Then I realized something. Simon usually looks bored. Which was my other big thought. The super ego is the most stable thing in the place. Simon the most stable part of the show. Until he leaves, of course. His base position has always been bored. That is his resting state, the point to which he always returns. That's his job. He's not comfortable, or particularly enthused. Because the only way he is supposed to be, the only way that his state changes, is if someone on that stage in front of him makes him be not bored. Evoking emotion - forcing the rational to riot, to arose the heart of a indifferent man - is the only way that any contestant gets anything out of Simon. Its why he calls so many songs boring. Because that performance failed the simple litmus test of making him care one way or another. The things that matter, they'll make him feel despite his misgivings, despite the position he holds.

Light save anyone that makes him angry or disappointed, though. I notice those usually leave pretty quick, though.

Anyhow. Just my random musings. I really need to learn how to conclude these better and start on them earlier.

A Bedtime Story

Almost forgot to post something. That won't do. How about a nice bedtime story?

*************

"Once upon a time there was a guy who did a thing for a girl because she was pretty and had a crown and a kingdom as a dowry and because as brave and strong as the guy was he was also rather shallow and marrying into money and position just seemed easier than working for a living. So..."

"MOM! Dad is screwing up the bedtime story again!"

On Scheduals - Or, Why I Am Worried

I have never been that good with single draft writing, nor am I all that skilled at off the cuff conversation. Which is another reason why I find it rather odd that I am doing any sort of blogging, even if it is the equivilent of private writing (because I sincerely doubt anyone is reading these).

Add to that my somewhat listless, procrastinating nature, and I find the idea of writing down any sort of post daunting. I know it sounds like complaints, again and some more, but it isn't. Its an explaination, because I am doing this regardless.

To start is difficult, and that is a truth that rarely changes. Objects in motion tend to stay in motion, and those at rest tend to do nothing more than grow moss. Getting the latter to become the former takes actual impetus, but all it takes is any one of the hundreds of distractions in life to take momentum from a task at hand. Some times it may feel easy to begin, and the more a task becomes a habit the less energy required to make sure one keeps with it. But habits, like everything else, need that moment of decision and effort to keep at them.

So, while I do not believe I am producing good writing here, I am going to keep trying. I'll need to be finding topics soon enough - there is only so long I can mutter esoterically in the shadowy corners of the internet. But I will not be doing what I half expected I would. I won't be giving this blog up after a couple desolutory stabs at it.

For better or worse, this is where I start. Let's keep up the momentum.

On Misanthropy - Or, A Secret

Let me tell you a secret.

Most people are, for lack of better terms, good or at the very least nuetral. I mean this entirely objectively, mind you, as I take no stance on the absolute virtue or evil of mankind. As an observer, though, the average human being will find most other human beings pleasant or at least bearable in the majority of interactions. We as a species are social creatures, and part of that is, by and large, we don't spend the majority of our time annoying one another. This holds true. Go on a day out with others, and actually try to keep track. Bet you the ones you like or just notice outweigh anyone who makes a negative impression.

Then you try working with the public.

This is where prior experiences fail. Working with the public, with people en masse descending upon you, that's entirely different from relating with people in a day to day way. For those of you who have never had this experience, we aren't talking about a line of a dozen folks. Working with the public is when you stop talking about groups, about crowds, and start using terms like 'society' and 'clusters'. When you refer to the day in ways which imply less linguistic communication as interactions with biomass.

You deal with one or two or ten or twenty people, and most of them will be nice or kind, and the occasional 'other' doesn't really impinge on your mental well-being. But you start dealing with folks by the dozen, and those negative instances start adding up. At which point some other facts will start making themselves apparent. The first and foremost is the impact of emotional memory.

We remember things better, as people, if we associate it with other things. Emotion is a great anchor. Something irritates or elates you, chances are you'll keep it in mind a lot longer than something that stirred not your heart at all. Negative feelings - dislike, pain, anger, fear, and that ilk - they make an experience stick like glue. Combine that with instances of dealing with the public, and the statistically enhanced likelihood of some sort of nasty run in along the way (or multiple run ins) and you run into why retail and public relations jobs are murder on the psyche. A person will deal with more than a hundred people over the course of a day in even the more basic of those jobs. Chances are, they'll forget the, say, 90% of those people who were fine, where nothing went wrong or even things were rather cheery. But the 9% that was harder, that was spent dealing with harsh, demanding, and bitter encounters - anyone in those jobs remembers those much more.

These unpleasantnesses, as I note, accumulate over time. You don't remember the good people much. You can't forget the bad. It leads to getting jaded, cynical. Ask someone if they've worked retail. Ask them how it made them feel about folks. See if their mouths' twist.

I may be over elaborate - I've waited way too late to start this post, and I am tired. But this is the secret - its easy to remember the negative, so those who see it often sometimes forget the positive.

But there is always that one last percentage point. Those instances that are good enough that, even over the course of a bad day, still stand out afterwards. Sometimes they're just the bright spot. Other days, a really good customer, an understanding client, a helpful associate, is all that keeps the flagging fellow trapped in the service or retail industries functional.

***********

Yeah. So. I suppose next time I'll try a topic a less esoteric. If I am putting ideas and such here, it would be nice to have some that aren't as snarled.

On Beginnings - Or, I am doing this for all the odd reasons

So. I've decided to create a blog.
I am doing this, granted, none of the reasons that most people create blogs. I don't really worry about my voice getting out there. I am not concerned with sharing this with friends and family. I am not looking to inform or educate, expound, expose, or coerce.
It can be argued, in fact, that if I am a lone voice crying out in the wilderness... Nifty. I like wilderness. Less people there, and for someone who started on the introvert side of the equation then took a sharp left turn into misanthrope territory, the middle of nowhere just means you don't have to worry about upsetting the neighbors.
But at this point, any of my hypothetical visitors (leastwise, the ones who haven't wandered off to greener, or at least more cheery, pastures) might be wondering why I am actually doing this. Simple. I'm rusty.
Used to be I was good with words. Still am, maybe, when talking. Those times I am not tripping over the English language (let's be kind, call it 75% of the time. Cough.) But writing? Agch and alas, I am out of practice. Thus, a blog. Hopefully with at least one or two people I rope into watching to hunt my lazy rear up when I haven't left a post or two in awhile. I hope to have a schedual for this blog. Three or four times a week. Really, I do.
We'll see how that goes.
I also know that a blog is, well, useful for proving I am an articulate, intelligent, learned gentleman (camoflague! I mean, um, important qualifications) should I apply for some sort of job position where prospective employers wonder about my ability to string words together into actual conversations. So there is that.
So. I've now written my first blog post, and its entirely about why I am going to try writing blog posts. How very meta of me. Hopefully I'll develop more of a variety, or else I am going to bore myself into some sort of comatose state long before I get anywhere with this.

Anyhow, if you actually read this whole intro, you've earned a cookie. Go on, and make sure its a good one. I'll distract the guy monitoring your diet.
I promise.
You trust me, right?

Heh.