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.

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."

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)

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.

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!

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.

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.