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THIS BLOG IS RATED WWW-MA.

Update 2020-12-16: (True sticky posts banned; click to read.) So, owing to the evolution of the internet, or at least my own approach to it,...

Monday, December 31, 2012

Evolution: Something Went Wrong.

Wisdom teeth, tonsillitis, the need for glasses, hair that's utterly useless in providing warmth or protection, appendicitis, ingrown toenails, hands that require lotion to not dry up and bleed, cracking knuckles and other joints, having to wipe every time, and a useless bit of penis the removal of which improves everything. Just a few mind-boggling and irksome qualities of the human body. Now try to come up with some on your own. (I imagine women will have plenty to say here.)

Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Linus

Three days from now, the twenty-second of December, 2012, marks the four-year anniversary of the death of Linus the cat, as well as the two-year anniversary of the death of my younger aunt. I wrote a big thing about Lucy, Linus's sister, after she died. I wrote a big thing about Cookie, my father's sister, about half a year before she finally took her one-way trip into the tie-dye dimension. But I never wrote a big thing about Linus, even though his life did end during this blog's lifetime; I only wrote a tiny thing. I feel like he deserves more.

Linus was, quite simply, the ideal pet. About his only quality that could be considered a drawback was that, like Loki before him, he was diabetic and required insulin shots on a rigid twelve-hour basis. But that wasn't a big deal. He didn't feel anything in the scrunched-up back between the shoulders (cats are like that), he got a treat after each shot, and he was happy. So beautifully happy.

He loved attention. He loved being petted. He loved a good, soft belly rub. His size, condition, texture, and easy personality made him the ultimate snuggle-bunny. He was, in essence, a living pillow. Not too clingy; very laid-back. He had a good life, and he knew it. He loved everything....except the dogs. (And perhaps Loki.) He and Lucy had to take refuge in the basement any time the dogs visited, and that was nearly any time I visited. The dogs have never gone to the basement. I always did. I knew where the really good quadrupeds were.

Sometimes in the morning, while the dogs were still locked away in the bedroom upstairs with my folks, Linus would be out on the dining room table, just relaxing. I'd bring the newspaper in, set it down in its plastic sleeve next to him — he loved licking plastic for some reason — pull out the chair a bit, sit down, snuggle him, bury my head in him, and stay there until someone else had gotten up and come downstairs — usually my cousin, who would see us and just sort of spiritually melt.

Linus was the only pet in our family that I could really do that with. The other pets were either too small (the yorkie, or Lucy), too reclusive (Abby), too grouchy (Loki), or just not really designed for snuggling (the pointy-eared schnauzer). Loki slept with me once, and watched Saturday morning cartoons with me, but he wasn't much keen on fully snuggling. About the closest approximation to Linus I've had, and still have, is Dinah the second schnauzer, who is basically the canine version of Linus. Same general temperament, good bit of size, nice soft texture. Yet, as much as I enjoy snuggling her, I've never really succeeded in burying my head in her and just leaving it there for a sizable time, the way I did with Linus. She's just not built that way.

I miss Linus so much. In this crazy world with religious nuts, gun nuts, sex nuts, money nuts, war, poverty, diseases, natural catastrophes, artificial catastrophes, and all other brands of madness raping our senses, I feel an ever-growing need to find something or someone snuggly and appreciative, bury my head in them, and just leave it there for a while. For brief windows in time, I had such a creature, and I will be forever grateful for that and for him.

Rest in love, precious pumpkin.

P.S. Now and then I run my cursor over his tummy in this picture and imagine his purrs. (Click to enlarge.)

Monday, December 17, 2012

The Wake

In case anyone missed it — perhaps your corner of the world wasn't so abuzz about it — we had yet another mass public fatal shooting here in the States this past Friday. This time it was in a very well-off, primarily white, far suburban elementary school. Hence, this time, people may actually talk seriously about guns and the people who obtain and use them. They might, they may, they could...will they?

So we've been having the inevitable few days in the wake where we ask in stupefaction, WHY? And my mind has certainly not been at rest. I've been quietly unraveling some thoughts the past day or two. Somewhere early yesterday morning, when I was about ready to go to sleep for the day and unprepared to write a full blog post, I quickly jotted down a note in the form of a Tweet: (something profound about the lonely outcast gunman stereotype and the increasing lack of sociability in today's world). And I think I'm ready to at least begin to expound on that.

Most of the "lone gunmen" we hear about are young white men. The common stereotype is that they were previously, as people, very quiet and kept to themselves. They've seemed pleasant in the past, maybe even intelligent. Many of them, from what I've read so far, have some family turbulence in their personal history and have struck out on their own. This last seems to apply to both Friday's Connecticut shooter and the one at the Oregon mall earlier this month. A certain number of them also may have a history of depression — understandable for people prematurely separated from their parents (also for intelligent people, it seems). So, to briefly summarize, for your average perpetrator of a mass murder-suicide, we have a reasonably nice, reasonably intelligent, young white guy who has known social isolation and depression and, therefore, thoughts of a very dark nature.

....holy shit. That's me.

....well, almost, anyway.

Reasonably nice: check. Don't you agree?

Reasonably intelligent: check. At least many people and supposedly indiscriminate tests have assured me of this over the years.

Young white guy: check. I don't much identify with any of those qualities, but, at twenty-six earth years, with my genitalia and sexual desires, and a neat comparison of my skin tone to that of others I've known and how those people identify, I guess this is right.

Now, to social isolation. I have perhaps exaggerated in the past about myself being socially isolated. I've lived with my parents all my life. Although they argue more or less constantly, they've never divorced or in some other way fully split. Aside from the occasional trip taken by one or two of us, we've always been together, "put[ting] the 'fun' in 'dysfunctional'", as my mother once put it. The three of us. Just over a hundred miles from the nearest reasonably close family. Mom with two fairly good friends that come over once in a while, or, more frequently, take her out for an evening. Dad with no friends or apparent desire for them at all. And me with my own picoscopic social life. And up to three small dogs at a time, which is absolutely not my thing (except this one). And zero cats.

So, social near-isolation, with bizarre tastes and not much ability to connect or identify with anyone in this college town in the cornfields. Fragment of a check mark.

On to depression. I'm not on any antidepressants now. But I most assuredly was for a time during my eight-year college tenure. I went through five different varieties of antidepressant from roughly 2008 — when I announced I wanted to drop from school and the family panicked — to 2012. The first one didn't do anything. The second one made me more depressed. The third one, I shall come back for. The fourth one lifted my mood but did nothing for my apparent lack of will to progress. ("Now I can wear a smile as I swirl down the john!", I semi-joked.) The fifth one at least got me through what I needed to get through, before my insurance ran out. I finally graduated shortly after that. I'm done with college now, and I feel fine, except that I'm still here in the tiny home of arguing and gracelessness. But, as I'm sure I've said a number of times now, I'm working on that.

Thoughts of a very dark nature. These are absolutely existent, surfacing in my brain on occasion. A few of them have even made their way onto this blog. Like here. And perhaps here. And maybe in a few other places in this archive. I seemed to hit a fever pitch of sorts in 2011. Depending on your interpretation, "Society's Waste", written that year, could raise a red flag in your mind.

The thoughts and fantasies are there, certainly. As a milder example, when the yorkie's annoying me, I sometimes fantasize yet about clocking her a heavy one and throwing her in the trash can. And I'll also admit to some sexual fantasies that completely betray the feminist notions I've put forth on here. I will honestly say that I've never fantasized about shooting up a school or any place crowded with so-called strangers. (Even if I did, I know and live with nobody who keeps firearms, at least that I know of.) But the dark and perhaps violent fantasies are there, in limited quantities. Now the question is, do I ever act out those fantasies in the flesh?

About that third antidepressant I said I'd come back to: It was while I was on that that my mother came home one day in her usual bossy, grating manner, and I punched her face. I didn't draw blood or break anything, but I did elicit a certain amount of panicked yelling and calls for me to immediately leave the house. In a panicked stupor, I hopped a train to my aunt's house early the next morning for the week to follow. I never touched that third antidepressant again.

It was also rather a while after I came back from that week at my aunt's before my mother and I spoke to each other again. Eventually we got to talking enough to move me on to the fourth antidepressant.

There was also, at some point later that I don't remember exactly, an instance where I was washing dishes, and "Bossy Boots" (a name she's been known to bestow upon one of the dogs vocalizing that they want a biscuit) was going at a hundred miles an hour, and I just took the knife I was washing, held it, and stared silently and menacingly. My memory of that moment is dim, but I believe she eventually went away for the moment, and I simply turned back and resumed washing. Nothing major happened, that I can tell, but the occurrence could be noteworthy, lest one day I somehow do lash out at a crowd of unsuspecting people, which I doubt.

I want and love peace, and love, and I cherish those things when I have them. I think this is true of many people. But in this cold, crazy world, I suspect that those primal, carnal, animal instincts that dwell within us get more difficult to contain as, with this global age, the world slings ever-increasing shit everybody's way. Certain people don't seem to know how to release stress and feelings, and the onslaught erodes at their outer human façade, unleashing the beast within.

I've revealed all of this information about me simply to provide an idea of where I'm coming from. And about now, my destination here shall begin to pierce the horizon.

There's been plenty of talk since Friday's massacre in Connecticut about gun control. Some people want a total absence of guns among civilians; some people apparently want to fight fire with fire and arm all the teachers. Some people want restrictions on the types of guns that civilians can obtain — presumably no military-style automatic assault rifles. (Why does an elementary schoolteacher need something like that, anyway?) And some people want background checks on potential gun owners. I say, given the American mindset, start with the background checks. If someone has a history of depression or other mental illness and has seemed withdrawn, it's probably wise to deny them gun ownership. It may not always help — the Newtown killer took his mother's guns — but it's perhaps a start. Maybe also minimize the damage with some of those aforementioned restrictions on types of arms. Of course, if we do that, someone may be tasked with taking the banned guns from people who will be quick to use those very guns on anyone who would take them away, and that could get nasty.

Indeed, this is not at all easy. But I do have one other proposition I'd like to make, and it takes on a rather broader scope of life than simply guns and gun control/rights. My mother made a remark during a telephone conversation over the weekend that "something is wrong with the basic mentality in this country" (paraphrased from memory). I'm not convinced she knows what it is, but I think she has the right idea.

I'm thinking of the quiet/loner aspect of the typical mass shooter. Humans are a social species; loneliness and "lonerism" are not at all healthful for an individual, and they are certainly not healthful for a people, or a country. Yet the general mentality in this country seems to be one of mandatory, aggressive self-sufficiency, often forsaking others just to get one's own self ahead in the socioeconomic ranks. Helping our fellow humans here seems frowned upon and apparently, in some cases, illegal. (I think I've mentioned this before.)

And it seems that contemporary technology is making it worse. We can use our devices, mobile or otherwise, to ignore and dismiss the people we're physically with while we discover via the internet things we don't like about other people whom, before the discoveries, we considered friends. For a lot of us, I think, cyberspace is replacing real, human friends. The more rapidly technology develops, the faster our descent. Even without technology, it seems that at least my own family, probably many others, never gather outside of certain major holidays, thanks to our jobs and whatever other obligations we feel cement us where we are. We, as a people, are becoming more withdrawn and forgetting who we are. We're lost and lonely, and we'll remain as such until we decide to stand up and guide each other.

Please: If just for an hour or two a day, twice a week, something like that — turn everything off — television, cell phones, computer, etc. — get together with family, friends, barflies, whoever's around, and just spend time talking. Maybe play a game together. Maybe exchange uncouth jokes or random anecdotes from your week. Maybe have a meaningful discussion about how things are and how they need to be.

Remember also to teach your children to help, to love, and to accept and be accepted as friends and human beings. Teach them attentiveness, togetherness, and positivity. And while you're at it, turn them on to arts: painting, writing, playing music on instruments, dancing, perhaps sports can qualify. The children may come to rely on those as a means of catharsis. I know I've benefited from setting myself loose on the writing board — even if it is virtual.

And, if you can help it, stay near a big city, where people and resources are available. And try not to move too far from other family.

I can't say that togetherness is the perfect solution for mass shootings, or for everything. But I think it can be a terrific start.

Peace and love be with all of you. Happiness will surely follow.

~C.A.~

Friday, December 7, 2012

Re: Isn't the Last Thing We Want For Them to Reproduce?

In a previous short post here, I pondered the common expression of "Fuck you". I didn't exactly say it that way, but you get the general idea: "Fuck you", "Go fuck yourself", "Get fucked". We say these as though they were violent ideas — and I suppose they frequently can be. Certainly the media seem to portray fucking in a negative light more often than not. But rumor has it fucking does not equal raping. I wouldn't know. But I do know from copious self-pleasure. So I got to thinking: Maybe, in origin, "go fuck yourself" is less a wish of total ruin of the subject's life, and more of a wish of an orgasm or six for the subject. Maybe.

You know what, I think I said it more succinctly in January 2011 when I wasn't totally thinking about it....

Back to the drawing board :+)~

Saturday, December 1, 2012

Searching for the Sounds

(with apologies to Petersen and Lesh)

I just posted a comment to a friend's link on Facebook. I never heard of the site that hosts the article before he posted the link, so I'm not keen to register there, which I apparently need to do to comment, but I do want a public place to post my comments. Well, I just happen to have one.

When I created this public place in March of 2008, I didn't know what general direction it would take. Most of the blogs I had known at that time were of a rather different nature: they were music blogs, with external links to free downloads of full albums. You can still see, in the archives, how clumsy I was, trying to find my voice and my purpose in the blogosphere. I didn't actually have much music to post that wasn't already "out there".

So, I've taken, these days, to more or less random writing. Luckily, I seem to be a pretty good writer. And here is my latest bit of stuff, slightly edited to be fewer inside references — a response to...

...this article about music blogs.

****

Another factor in the decline of music blogs, I would think, is the decline of blogs in general. Social media have changed in the past few years, as Facebook and Twitter have risen. Music services, too; we now have Spotify, Last.fm, a bunch of others that I can't be bothered to think of just now (the US-only Turntable.fm is a particularly social one on which I've spent many an hour and made many a friend since its launch in summer of '11) — and, of course, YouTube features many a taster, even though it too may be plagued at times by trolls in copyright masks (so has Turntable been, come to think of it). I just recently found a trove of sorts of full albums as single 'Tube videos. I didn't much care for Fuzzy Duck's self-titled album, but at least I got to try it. And many more "classic" albums remain for me to hear, via the 'Tube or any outlet on which they may appear.

Social media have changed. Hopefully the communities of the older ways have been able to stay together as they navigate the shifting landscape — although, as my long-time favorite forum proves, it's not always the case. With forums collapsing as a networking form, we moved and shape-shifted a bit too much, reducing us now to a weekly e-mail of the latest playlist of one member's weekly radio show, with occasional flashes of an ignored yet optimistic Croatian with limited English skills, and maybe a request or two.

I will also dare say that we were not immune to the "paranoid times" spoken of in the article. I think one admin in particular (who, by the way, un-friended and blocked me on Facebook a bit ago without a word of explanation) mistakenly turned away a few legit people from later incarnations, believing them to be "Hans". That hurt us, I think, more than any troll ever did. We had one bad incident our first couple months of forum-hood. We lived well after that, before RapidForum closed down. It wasn't a main concern.

But I'll try to keep personal politics out of this. There is another forum of which I'm still a member. It's not very far from a complete coma. Not counting me, there are about six active members (including the ignored yet optimistic Croatian). Music is still posted there, but in very trace amounts compared to the music blogosphere's heyday.

The digital landscape has changed. Although the music blog with its warm, personal touch may have largely fallen by the wayside, I can say this: There shall always be ways to discover new and forgotten gems — as well as the people who create and appreciate those gems.

Psych on, psyblings.