Au Naturel?

While crawling through my 'Book feed a few days ago, I chanced upon a friend's thread, all about whether or not women ought to ever shave any part of them — pits, legs, something in between — any part. I couldn't immediately think of something to say about it, so I went on with my unemployed day, dodging family and cruising in Street View. (Side note: I've actually discovered Geoguessr since I posted that link from May; however, I've momentarily taken a break from landing in Brasil every game and getting super-annoyed in Russia. I have nothing against Brasil, mind you; I'm sure it's as fine a country as one can find in South America. I just prefer a little more variety in my blind-drop nations. As for Russia, it seems rather a chaotic place. Driving there is obviously insane; even though Street View images are static, it shows. And I'm sure everyone's heard about them a fair amount in the news. They'll harbor the whistleblower Snowden, but they'll hard-labor-imprison most of Pussy Riot while they thrash homosexuals and the like in various manners. In my yearning for world travels, I think I'll pass on the old Soviet master.) ......Where was I? Women's body hair, right. And as I clicked down the winding road, something struck me. This became my comment.

*~*~*~*

I'm fiddling around in Street View right now, as I'm all too wont to do. At the moment, I'm in a piece of Appalachia. There are bits where the imagery wavers between old, low-def 2008 imagery and new, hi-def 2012 imagery. Aside from the vastly improved resolution, there are obvious roads that didn't quite exist in 2008. This is difficult for my life-long midwest-bound mind to grasp, but, in Appalachia, it is necessary to carve into hills to make room for roads. Most of the roads run through the spaces formerly occupied by the now-erased bits of hill, leaving all this exposed rock.

While the exposed rock at the roadside is a kind of exotica to me in the corn fields, it is also, when I get down to it, kind of bizarre. There's all this wonderful green around, and then, every last bit of a sudden, there's this odd wall of lifeless tan. As newly done as it is, there isn't a blade of grass in the whole thing — at least, until I get to where it isn't quite so new, and nature has started to reclaim that lost real estate at the roadside in its way. The newer exposed rock looks decidedly unnatural and a tad off-putting.

It rather reminded me of this thread, which I saw earlier. ★

"A lot of people would be thinking, 27, what have you got to complain about."

So commented a friend on the Silliest Ffourth entry, two down.

The sheer stagnation.

My own life seems to be going at a pace slowed to half the norm. My body is 27; that would put every other aspect of me to roughly 13½. I'm living in a small house with yappy dogs and parents that loudly and gracelessly snore, burp and obstruct. I have no job, and I have never had even a temporary romantic partner. All around me, everybody's getting married and having kids. Even this past day, the world, or at least the media, has gone gaga for royal goo-goo. (Why does America care? Hell, why does Britain care? Useless figureheads. Leave them alone! Man, this new baby's life is gonna be hell.) The rate I'm going, my body will be 35 by the time I get to be with somebody.

Everybody's getting married. One of my favorite old co-workers with whom I'm cyberfriends came up in my feed this past Friday as having her wedding; I'd known she was engaged, but I hadn't known the wedding date. Me, I managed to find a wedding that I could attend on Saturday, namely, that of my mother's best friend's daughter, whom I hadn't seen in rather a number of years. It was a small town wedding, just up 150 a bit, in a small church — low-key and fairly pleasant. Reception in the next town's American Legion post; food unremarkable but got the job done (I love me some pasta salad); cake curiously sweet and far too plain — no filling at all; music by and large horrendous. Also, I only got to talk to the bride and groom once. But other than the song that busted out with "LET ME SEE YOUR TITS", an overall decent and happy time. That feeling lasted through most of Monday.

So, back to jobless, isolated, lonely reality, wherein my new improved health insurance bill has arrived. I want to leave online social media for a while, but I have no place else to go. Dating sites require payment. I gaze helplessly at pictures of people with cats and food. I "Like" some of those pictures. One friend just found somebody. I dig that friend very much, and I hope it works for them. Somebody talks about all the frogs around. My mind produces a 404 page; I have never seen a frog in my life. Somebody else invites me to an "Event" at least a hundred fifty miles away from me. On Twitter, I follow Neko Case for some reason. She's single — yay — but all the posts about traveling do their best to persuade me to unfollow her. She and plenty of others speak of New York. Fuck. I put on something by the Diogenes Club and space out a bit. I play some obsessive rounds of Boggle against the computer; I win more often than I lose or tie. I destroy "bubbles" by matching three or more of the same color. I sign selected political petitions that have been e-mailed to me, never with my own name, address, or number. I play Freecell, in which I now have 940 wins and zero losses. I check in on this ... and its thread. It's gotten exciting. The music I'm playing is so dreamy as it's winding down. And then, from beyond the door to the room I'm in, the sound of another door opening. Skittering dog paws on the hard floor. Door closing. Human footsteps. Loud, repulsive burp. More doors. Fart. Piss. Decibels. Reality.

Or some semblance thereof.

Spring in Suburbia

Kids screaming in the street. The constant roar of lawn mowers, one asynchronous homeowner after the other. Dogs barking endlessly at all the mowing. Father barking endlessly at the dogs, trying to tell them to shut up, while the non-English-speaking dogs probably think he's joining in the chorus with them. And me, lying in bed, feeling my brain rattling against every bit of my skull's interior in a quest for a way out. Soon, I'll be coerced into contributing to that noise pollution with the family's own mower. And my mother will come home and add her disharmonic vocal to the mix. But for now, my father takes a moment to lull me back to sleep with his lecture about why I should get up and mow the lawn.

Lawn mowing is a microcosm of suburban life as a whole. Its only fruit, apart from the snot that the newly scattered pollen will elicit from our sinuses, is that the lawn looks nice in the eyes of horrid, imagination-less suburbanites. For maybe a week until the grass has grown back. And then it has to be done again. To please the horrid, imagination-less suburbanites. Theoretically.

Pure bright, even-height green. The whole premises, wherever there isn't a house, tree, mailbox, or bit of concrete. No fruits. No vegetables. No flowers. No organisms that resemble flowers but are apparently weeds. And if it's not the day of the week when the garbage collectors come by, get that bloody trash can outta here. (But if it is that day of the week, consequences will be dire if the can isn't out.) If it isn't an indistinct, crew-cut blade that lives only for itself and eventually dies in vain, it's not allowed. Sound familiar?

So, as I've said many times before, I don't belong here. And I remain in talks to hopefully belong somewhere new. But while I'm jobless, I am being given looping domestic things to do. Pointless yardwork. Moving trash forth and back every week. Cleaning up and fixing my demented father's "projects" and digital screw-ups. Assisting my demented father with getting to his outside errands and participating in the grocery shopping. And I get food, shelter and internet at no further cost than the $275 bi-monthly health insurance payment. So there's that. Plus this. At least for a little while longer.

More Bodily Irks and Quirks: Trichotillomania

Another eyebrow gone. It's never a conscious choice to remove it manually, hair by hair (or three). I'm not out to make some sort of obtuse political statement with only one of the right and left sides of my face being naturally decorated in dark brown. It doesn't particularly hurt when I do this. It just seems that every now and then, my body, acting more or less independently of my mind, gets the feeling that perhaps there's too much weight or pressure or something at that one spot on my hairy self, and proceeds to alleviate, or think it's alleviating, the feeling there by plucking the cumbersome, protruding scapegoat occupants of that spot and apparently expecting a final, euphoric pull that will nab the main perpetrator and instantly restore total homeostasis. Of course, that may not happen — and the "spot" may sort of grow as the "partially euphoric" feeling of the pulls catches on. Hence, one whole eyebrow gone. Or, in the past, a set of eyelashes, a bit of my beard on and around my chin, a good-sized spot on top or near the front of my head (though it's been a delightfully long time since this last), or — dare I say it — "down there" when I'm on the can and in no hurry to get off it.

Describing "compulsions" is not so easy, especially with grace. I am not so much in the state of mind to look it up right now, but I'm sure there are plenty of stories, descriptions, and clinical terms available in a web search for "trichotillomania". I think I'm spelling that correctly. It's simply the manic pulling-out of one's own hair, and it may have gotten a couple bits of publicity here and there over the years.

In my relatively brief attempt to just get this out of my head and into the blogosphere during the two-o'clock hour ante-meridiem, I'll say this about my own "episodes": they usually happen when I'm alone, either in bed or at the computer (or on the can), and often when I'm supposed to be doing something specific. My mind just sort of spaces out, and my body is somehow not keen on just old-fashioned masturbating; it seeks other ways to be occupied: fidgeting, knuckle-cracking, grooming...and maybe getting carried away with the grooming, discovering what it proclaims is a pressured spot as I described it before and going to work. And I just drop what I pick out wherever I am. It'll get vacuumed up soon, I imagine. (Or, in the "down there" case, I'll soon flush.) Oh, and these episodes tend very much to be time vortexes, which can be important if I am indeed supposed to be doing something specific. I'm so glad to be done with school and all its assignments; on another tentacle, this whole "job hunt" thing is somethin' else.

Curiosity: In the times when I've freshly cleared what I'd think is a glaring spot on my face where everyone can see, usually the only person who ever mentions it to me is my own mother (who, of course, goes hysterical every time). Only once that I can recall did anyone else ever bring it up to me, and it was a good, delightful friend with absolutely no capability of mocking or malice. Do people honestly not care, generally? Do they say "What's up with that?!" among themselves after I've hit the road? If I went for a job interview like this, how would it go? Well, nobody's contacting me for interviews, so it might not matter. Anyway, it's only sometimes when I have an incomplete face. The stuff does grow back. Personally, I'm just glad I was symmetrical at my cousin's wedding; everything else seems dispensable.

This seems to be all I have to say for now. (I'm giving "bodily irks and quirks" its own tag on here.) If anyone has thoughts, please share them. Meanwhile, I think the feeling of pressure where I recently had an eyebrow has subsided, but my hands are still feeling a bit fidgety and "compulsory". I may try masturbating again. Good night!

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.)

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.

Bulging Wanderlust Blues

Somewhere earlier this past week, I met with a guy from the state who invited me to a job-counseling appointment. I gave him many different aspects of my personality and perspective. Pretty much anything I said, he remained with the same recommendation of employer: Meijer. Lest anyone lives where Meijer is as-yet unestablished, it's a supermarket chain based out of Grand Rapids. When I mentioned the idea to my mother later, she expressed a thought more or less the same as mine: I don't belong in a supermarket. I should have something more professional and appropriate for a bachelor of the arts. ("Meijer props dead people up behind the counter", she said.)

I've pretty much reached the conclusion that, if there's a future for me beyond sitting alone and jobless in front of this monitor, it isn't here. Geographically, I mean. These flatlands have nothing to offer me. There's nothing in jobs, and there's nobody that I really connect with on a spiritual level. I need to be in a completely new place. Or Chicago. The city I call "home" likely has good stuff.

I went out on "the town" tonight. I ate alone, and I sipped my cherry soda alone. (Side note: I've remarked in the past that I enjoy ordering a "cherry soda" and hearing the waitperson repeat it translated. This one rather stuttered through a couple varieties before finally asking "cherry Pepsi?".) Everybody in the uptempo downtown bar & grill was indistinct (but not uneasy on the eyes...) and gathered in impenetrable groups. I had neither invitation nor particular desire to mingle with anybody. I wandered through a few other downtown bars — the ones that had no cover charge — plentiful of people but not so much of openness or curiosity.

Eventually, I did find one old friend in one particular chair in one particular bar where he seems to take part-time residence. The old hippie who once taught my high school's CISCO networking class greeted me warmly and took me aside from his group for just a few minutes as we conversed. I explained my feelings of post-grad bitterness. He mentioned his imminent retirement after this final year of teaching, as well as the fact that he'd just come back from the Windy City where he saw Bob Dylan for the forty-seventh time. I laughed and applauded upon hearing that latter; my good man is still rocking as hard as ever. Anyway, he doesn't know where he'll go after his retirement, either. For either of our situations, "it'll be all right", he assured. About the last thing he said was, "My advice is, don't look back."

I stopped briefly in a couple other places before coming back to the house. I stopped there for the simple reason that they had people with guitars playing. They were certainly competent within reason, and they had tip jars. Given my current circumstances, I didn't tip anyone. But I did think about the possibilities of moving to a new city with new people — or at least old cyber-acquaintances that could be new real-life friends.

So, once again, I'm calling out to the great wide world of cybercitizens: Who doesn't live in the middle of the flatlands and is willing to have an angelic 26.5-year-old stay with them a while? If nothing else, I can grab musical gigs with my guitar while I seek something more, um, reliable. Hopefully, some people out there can make a serious offer. Preferably people without dogs, but I won't haggle too much.

Not Every Free Thing is a Gift (Indeed, Very Few Things Are)

The past couple days saw yet another story of a career politician (a gop, natch) making a pro-rape comment. And naturally, those days also saw many people expressing outrage online. The question I gotta ask is this: how are these people allowed into politics in the first place? I'm not convinced that they're all beamed down from some supernatural, misogynist, bigoted mothership. I believe that they are created and installed by us — the people.

Ladies of the U.S., I hate to tell you this, but here it is: The people of this country are firmly primitive and regressive, and there is no possible short-term "change" that will reverse this and so quickly make us a females' utopia.

The prevailing idea in much of the country seems to be that the future is inexorably bleak — in all respects — and that the "old days" were better. Somewhere in people's minds, we were at our highest quality of life in the days when men had complete and utter control, and that slight majority of us known as women were essentially considered commodities — not even human. It was only a little less than a hundred years ago when that slight majority was first granted the right to vote. I wasn't there at the time, but I expect that the women's vote was granted with tremendous reluctance. That reluctance has not faded in the least; indubitably, it is increasing with the presence of all these "regressives" — people who seem to see a long-established religion as permitting and encouraging rape. (I stumbled upon this on a humor site compiling "Unintentionally Sexual Church Signs", and I honestly cannot fathom another way to interpret it. "To forgive is divine! Be a deity! Do what we goddam tell you to!")

No. Do not be sub-human deities. Be humans. Stand tall for yourselves — for ourselves. We got a lot of work to do yet. We may not see positive results in our lifetimes yet. But we have to try.

Teach peace. Teach equality. If you can, teach all the people how to recognize and avoid these. (A reputable-enough source, yes?) And, if you must be religious, at least be very careful with how you interpret your sacred texts. It may take a generation or three for us to come to the point where we aren't electing people and then getting faux-outraged when one of them claims that rape is a gift (basically, paraphrased). And, who knows? Maybe by then we'll have shifted out of reverse as a people and actually rendered our future brighter than it seems now.

Meanwhile, we have to hang in there and work/vote for what is available, while it seems we still can.

Musing City

I got back from four days and change in Nashville yesterday. Already I feel a need to get back to Tennessee, Jed. The change in scenery — more accurately, the momentary introduction of scenery — was exactly what I likely still need. Lately, I've felt particularly stifled out here in the flatlands. It seems that there's nothing out here, least of all truly friendly people willing to lend a hand, or even an eye or ear. This sanitized plastic land is not the place for me. Maybe the whole country is sanitized plastic by now; me, I'm willing to give the benefit of a doubt to places I haven't fully gotten to know yet.

So I was in greater Nashville for a handful of days. I can tell you this much: whether it actually has it or not, Nashville at least has the aura...of "life". I don't quite know how to explain it; there's just a feeling that things actually happen there. It's a feeling that permeates the rolling hills and the winding roads that must conform to them — roads on which one can easily get lost without a GPS, because there's no workable grid. But getting lost there isn't too bad, because it's very beautiful in the rolling greenery, or green-red-and-orange-ery here in the autumn. At least it is during the daytime; those close, fast-paced winding country roads tend to not be at all lit at night. I say all this, by the way, as someone who is apparently really amazingly good at directions. Pretty much anyone I talk to tells me how horrible they are at directions and navigation. But give me a couple minutes with Google Maps before I hit the road, and I sail smoothly. At least I usually do; I had rather a hard time one night in England in 2006. So maybe I'm skewed by my life in flat, gridded Illinois. But I've done well so far in the Nash. Anyway...

I didn't get to manage but a couple interactions with "locals"; I would love to have interacted more. As it is, I stayed alongside my family, except for one night at a bar, finally meeting someone I had known in cyberspace for a while. (Also, the previous night when I tried meeting them and failed, but never mind.) As a northerner in the South, it was wonderfully trippy for me. And from a comment made by the fellow who came to join my friend and me, the feeling was mutual.

I would most certainly benefit from getting out (of town/state) and interacting more often. If only I could find a way to be able from within this cornstalk-barred prison....

****

Here are some things other than scenery and natural beauty that I've seen in Tennessee but not in Illinois that I can recall:

• SPEED LIMIT 70

• MapCo

• Belk

• Stoplights after midnight implementing a two-way stop by having one of the two intersecting streets seeing yellow flashing lights while the other street sees the usual red flashers. I guess that's how that works, based on about two other vehicles that were out at the time that I saw.

• Exxon, though we do have their other half, the most boringly-named Mobil. No "Tigermarket"s here.

• Kroger, except down in the south of the state where I never went until last year. Actually, Bloomington-Normal might have it. I never go there, so I don't know.

• Someone else's outdoor cat coming to visit us and ours, although ours is not particularly a fan

• Shoney's (I'm pretty sure)

• Publix

• Cartoon-esque holes in the ground and a tree or two in the yard. Where are the "critters" that would make such holes where I live? What do they look like?

• An OVERSIZE LOAD passing another OVERSIZE LOAD on the interstate. I'm sure that's not exclusive to other places, just something I don't see every day. Actually, this might have been in Kentucky on the way back.

• Piggly Wiggly. I'd heard that these existed, but I never saw one until this past Monday.

• Quite so many two-or-more-word street names. Seems Tennessee likes to make it absolutely known who their roads are named for. I think the town I live in has exactly one street that bears a person's full name, and it likely helps that that one person is named "Ed". If we named a street for General George Patton, as has been done in a couple places in the greater Nashville metro, it would likely just be "Patton Avenue".

And that reminds me of another thing: Pikes. No Illinois roadway seems to be described as a "pike". We got most every other variety of thing to drive on: street, avenue, boulevard, drive, road, parkway, court (if it's a dead-end or only a block long). Occasionally we might chance upon a "trail", or "place", or something. But no pikes here. Weird.

• Jack in the Box. Another chain that's supposed to be nationally renowned, but if we have any here, I don't know where they are. I don't even know what kind of food they serve, exactly. Typical greasy fast food?

Actually, there are a couple chains like that, or used to be. Chick-Fil-A was totally unheard of here until maybe three or four years ago when one came in to replace the McDonald's in the Illini Union food court. News is that they've opened a few places in Chicagoland since. Also, Chicago has had a White Castle or three — the one at Clark & Ridge comes to mind — but never down here.

• A sign at the end of a dead-end street saying "Temporary Dead End", with another one right behind it saying "Permanent Dead End". The site of a legal battle, my family surmised.

• Someone removing their clothes right there in the bar. It wasn't my friend, and I don't think "Trish" will be, but it was good for a laugh. "Why is your bra in your hand?" "Because I took it off."

• A kitten climbing a tree. Before I went down, my cousin had actually snapped a picture of "Ellie" having gotten on the roof. I didn't get to see that in person, but that can be all right.

• Someone using their fireplace. Matter of fact, the house I live in doesn't even have a fireplace.

• The kitten using the ash-filled fireplace for very much her own purposes.

• And, last but not least, I feel a need to point out that I live north of this. But I'm told I ain't missin' much there.

Looking through my archive here as I put some new tags on posts, I realize I have a curious lot of rather dopey "emo" posts here — you know, the kind of vague, moping posts that gave rise to the "annoying Facebook girl" meme. On one hand, I want to clean that stuff up (delete it); on the other, I rather like the idea of having an unfiltered record of my ups and downs.

That's one thing that amuses me: that signals of desperation actually by-and-large repel our fellow human beings. That's certainly how it appears in this Western culture, at least. Usually, when someone actually answers a call for civilized help, it makes the news. In other words, the norm is to ignore people who need, or, okay, claim to need, a helping hand. In fact, I seem to recall a few news articles where people were arrested for helping the homeless or similar.

Truth is, we're not the least bit above primal Darwinism. The financially/socially/physically?/etc. fittest survive, unconcerned about the unfit; the unfit could all perish, and the fittest would not miss a beat. Heck, the gop [see post below] running for president now is rather known for saying that he's "not concerned about the very poor". We have a Darwinian people gripping this country, denying, among many, many other things, the teachings of Darwin.

We're wonderfully contradictory. Maybe we're in a transitional phase of humanity; maybe humanity is eternally a Darwinian entity with mere flashes of what I will call post-Darwinism.

Either way, for the time being, those post-Darwinist flashes are out there somewhere. And I want to find those flashes.

Baseball Season's Under Way

I wrote this at the beginning of the 2011 baseball season and posted it as a Facebook note. Why there and not here, I don't know. So I'm bringing it here now. And why not? The Cubs have lost twelve straight coming into today. And they're down a run now.

There's a certain poetry about the Cubs and their fans. A parallel, perhaps, to the greater humanity and the widespread undying faith in a higher power that will make everything "right". Sure, it's possible. It could happen. Any millennium now.

Somehow, it remains. Nothing happens, and nothing happens, and nothing happens, and nothing happens, and nothing happens, and the faith somehow remains. We will be rescued from this existential hell! We will be saved! The Cubs are going all the way! Humanity is going all the way!

I find it fascinating that the same people in the heartland who make it a point to act as sort of local missionaries, spreading the word about our savior, should mock the Cubs and their fans for believing in something that "just ain't gonna happen".

And, of course, I'm not the least bit religious in any sense or direction. I firmly believe that anything involving deities and saviors that aren't ourselves is pure bovine fecal matter.

So why am I a Cubs fan? Maybe it's partly genetic, but the Cubs happen to strike me as simply being a uniquely likable organization, unlike any other sports entity. Yeah, the Red Sox got that cozy community feeling as well, but the Cubs' aura beats it out, to me. The Cubs can trade away the half of their major players that don't have noticeably imperfect personalities, and, in spite of what I say at that time, spring comes around, and, somehow, here I am again.

Cubs fandom is the mark of true human beings. And, in spite of my frequent talk of me coming from another planet, that ain't likely. I am human, and I find it best to roll with that.

Play ball!

Lolling Out Loud

Those of you who've interacted with me online a lot may have noticed that I never use the term "lol". I'll say "ha ha", "heh", "hee hee", or any one of a number of such things, but I just don't dig "lol". I guess I'm a big fan of particular expressiveness; I find "lol" to not be terribly descriptive. And it certainly doesn't convey the feeling of actually laughing out loud very well. Especially since many people use it in nearly everything they post. And frankly, I ain't laughing at everything they post. It's rather lost any kind of meaning for me. Heck, a couple people even put some variation of "lmao" in nine out of ten statuses/tweets/etc.. I wonder, "What, isn't there a strong enough duct tape that can keep your ass attached while you laugh? You've lost it so many times now."

I also get rather turned off by so many discussions I encounter where about a third of the transmissions, including the last consecutive four, are just "lol". Maybe my sense of humor is just different from that of most people, but I am seldom laughing that much in one conversation. I tend to picture these "lol-ers" as just sitting there, sort of pretending to be amused — maybe making just a fraction of a chuckle with their breath, maybe two very short exhales through the nose, but very little show of emotion at all. And that's about how "lol" comes across to me — emotionless filler.

I rather hope that I don't find myself putting emotionless filler out there. Or that society should somehow compel me to. I kind of feel like I'd be holding my hands in the air and surrendering if I used "lol". Come to think of it... lol rather looks like a guy with his hands in the air.

And I probably should say, I don't completely distance myself from cyber-acronyms and similar initials. I'll use FTW on occasion, as well as a couple others that escape me just now. But LOL just doesn't do it for me. Nor do OMG or ROFLMAO. And I'll usually use an emoticon in place of "WTF": ¿-⌠ (Tilt your head like you would for :-), and you'll see it. Hopefully.)

On 3D Printers

Apparently, these things are becoming a real phenomenon now. They can essentially create duplicates of objects, such as household tools. It got me thinking:

In the Twilight Zone fourth season episode "Valley of the Shadow", a reporter finds himself basically held hostage in a remoter-than-remote town where such technology and beyond exists. The town can't let knowledge of the technology escape to the outside world where it will certainly be used for evil.

The reporter tries to escape. He does this at one point by "printing" up an object — a gun.

....Even after being told the reason that the technology can't be let loose on the world.

So, the question I want to ask about this 3D printer thing is: Which will it be used for first: printing up food (à la Star Trek) for the poor, or printing up weapons to eliminate competition for food (and other things; clean water, perhaps)?

Place your bets, folks.

(And yes, I did see the xkcd strip about this. There'll be plenty of that, too.)