The Conet Project, And Why You May Wanna Hang Onto Your Old TV.

We pretty much all know by now that television is switching over to a digital signal next year, and without a converter box, we will no longer be able to receive our favorite shows. That's hardly news.

9:55 PM - 1 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Tennis.

"You know what they call the zero score in tennis?" says Thing 1.

"I do not." says Thing 2.

"They call it 'Love'... Ya know why?" says Thing 1.

"Because noone wins?" asks Thing 2, and smiles.

"Close," says Thing 1. "The cynical inference is that you must be doing it (playing tennis) for love, because you sure must not be doing it to win."

3:01 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Everything Looks Like A Mall Now.

The lamp above your pillow blinks on and your eyes flutter a bit before opening.

With an extra flourish that surprises even yourself, you roll out of bed and plop into your seat at the desk nearby. Quickly, so as not to forget and lose any of it, you crank up your laptop and, in the appropriate form, report as much of your dream as you can remember (actually quite a bit this time, if you have to say so yourself).

For a few more hours, you contribute musings, sketches, and other detritus that came to you during the evening before; insuring to fill out the appropriate forms as you do so. You want to make sure your contribution to The Numbers is calculated as accurately as possible.

 You almost can't wait for that evening's television. You've made some very effective contributions this time around, you're sure to see some of your work in a commercial. You hope beyond hope, however, for some of your material to be quoted in the shows themselves.

You won't be given credit, of course, but you will know. And you will be reassured that your contribution to The Numbers is truly effective.

Before you know it, your shift is over. You take a shower and prepare a sandwich. You pull a tin of potted meat and spread it over the bread. Suddenly the image emerges in your mind that maybe the meat in the can spent it's life as some ugly hairless animal they shoved in a blender. The image almost amuses you for a moment, before you strain to purge it from your mind. No sense humoring negative thoughts, you remind yourself. Could have a negative effect on tomorrow's contribution.

Besides, the meat reminds you of your childhood. Or you may have seen it in a commercial. Either way, it reminds you of someone's childhood, and that's what matters.

A short klaxon burst informs you that a deposit has been made to your card and reminds you that it is time for shopping. You descend the steps outside your door and swipe your card into your shopping cart, which unlocks the wheels.

You live close to the border of your shopping district, and can see the gate outside. You wonder what it's like out there. You know, however, that if you cross that threshold, sensors will lock the wheels of your cart and you will not be able to take it with you.

You would have no place to put your purchases! What would be the point?

Your shopping cart informs you that there is a new beer on the market. It knows from your shopping history that you typically do not purchase this brand, so it prints a coupon. It also wants to let you know that the beer was brewed with spicy and sour flavor additives to make it taste more Exotic.

You wonder how far away Exotic is. What they think about. What they purchase.

You half wonder if these other countries you hear about even exist. You've never seen them, and you're unlikely to ever see them.

You don't want anyone to get the wrong idea, though. You've never considered yourself oppressed. You're allowed to vote. Hell, you voted on three things in the past month! You're a bit hard pressed to recall exactly what they were, but you're pretty sure one of them turned out the way you wanted. Besides, if you were really that oppressed, someone would have told you about it by now.

After shopping, you return to your room and lie down. You don't feel particularly bad, but you'd be hard pressed to say that you feel particularly good, either. You would say you felt uninspired, but in all likelyhood you've never actually felt inspired in your entire life. You have no basis for comparison.

Stop thinking like that, you remind yourself. Don't want to jeopardize tomorrow's contribution. You remind yourself that you are important, and what you do is important.

You have a place, and you have a purpose.

Then you flip on the television.

You wish that someone new would stop by your shopping district, but you know that will never happen. Once they cross that threshhold, their shopping cart's wheels will lock up.

Where will they put their purchases? What would be the point, then?

2:11 AM - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Uneasy Equilibrium.

It's weird. For two months now, I've managed to maintain a state whereby I'm not with anybody, I'm not pining for anybody, and I'm not pursuing anybody...

It may not seem like a big deal to you, and that's fine. But it's a completely new state of being for me. For the near-decade since I came back from Baltimore, I've never been really single for more than a couple of weeks without some fluffy, sparkly, cuddly and colorful thing just dropping out of the sky and completely capturing my attention and imagination.

To tell the truth, if this is what I've been scared of for as long as I can remember, I have to admit I feel a little silly.

I'd be lying, however, if I was to state that I've had any magical revelations about myself, or any perceivable increase in self-awareness or self-esteem.

It has, however, allowed me to decode and rid myself of a lot of the 4th-circuit mammalian sexual-territorial tension that had previously been unhealthy background noise in a lot of my interactions. And I've also managed to turn down the volume on the relentless immediacy that's dominated nearly every move I've made. So that's positive.

I've come to the conclusion that it's not really my problem if I'm misunderstood. I'm the first to admit that I'm a very odd duck, and that I myself can't always make sense of my own motivations and actions. So the idea that there's some super-special person out there that can and will is patently ridiculous, and there is no sense in continuing to pursue something that doesn't exist.

5:42 AM - 2 Comments - 8 Kudos - Add Comment

Theological Copyright

"For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written unto this book.
And if any man shalll take away from the words of this book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things that are written in this book."
-Revelations 22:18-19

"Scientology and Dianetics are technologies that work if applied exactly. If they are altered, the results will not be uniform. For this reason, the writings of the Church are protected by copyright and the words and symbols which represent the technology are protected by trademarks. . . . Some unscrupulous persons have tried, through dishonest conduct, to profit from the technologies of Dianetics and Scientology. . . . By owning the trademarks and copyrights of the religion and enforcing their proper use, the Church can ensure such ill-intentioned acts will never occur."
"What Is Scientology?" - L. Ron Hubbard

4:45 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

The Last Blog Of This Universe.

Gotta write fast. What do I remember? Will what I write be altered?

I've read enough Robert Anton Wilson, and enough quantum physics to think he might really know what he's talking about.

How much time is left before the Hadron Supercollider goes online?

No sense worrying about it, there MUST be enough time for me to grab another beer. If not, noone will know the difference.

Like I said, if I know enough about what I'm talking about regarding potentiality, most of us will not even recognize the difference if thrown about the intersections of quantum potentiality.

I'm half convinced I've been flung there prematurely.

I'm in some place where Fox Network is allowed to run commercials on NPR, where I saw a commercial with Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates inexplicably in a discount shoe store, and Bill Gates carried an ID with his teenage prison mugshot on it, where McCain has signed on with the exact same nasty, doughy little strategist that crucified him while working for his oponent, while still claiming to be a political maverick.

And who are all these lunatics that are so excited about someone so absurdly unqualified, so hypocritical, and so disturbingly preachy competing for the role of the second highest office in this country, that it makes me long for the days of Dan Quayle? The only rational explanation is that they came from another dimension...

Just my luck, I've been flung into a reality more hostile to rational thought than the one I grew up in.

There must have been a door in this wall, how did I get in?

7:09 AM - 3 Comments - 6 Kudos - Add Comment

Beyond The Hedge Maze.
Category: Blogging

Purgatory.

You joke that the company you work for should bear that name. Or at least you'd like to joke about it.

But you don't really talk to anybody.

You stumble in, bleary-eyed, and sit amongst the squared semi-circle of computers. Your job requires, rather than a badge, for you to place your right hand into a device, arranging your five fingers to contact three posts in order to clock in and out. Yet, you sit down in front of a piece-meal computer that might have been top of the line even before the millenium grid dropped.

One of your co-workers is dropped off by her parole officer. It is likely she will never be able to legally drive a car again. You want to ask, but dare not, about the obviously razor-inflicted scars across the upper arms of the girl two seats down from you. To your left, your older co-worker at one point described an incident where, after drinking an entire bottle of rum in his darker days, he hallucinated a rare record he was coveting on the track of a subway, and the train severed his legs shortly after he leapt down to retrieve it.

"What legs you got on tonight, honey?" asks a sassy black woman three seats down.

He rolls his pants legs up to reveal a pair of leopard-spotted prosthetic shins. Everyone chuckles in approval.

You've arrived every weekday morning at this same industrial park, same floor, same room for as long as you can remember, but you begin to realize there is another door on the other side of the building you have never passed through.

One morning, while driving in, you catch something peripherally you have never noticed. Over the dense foliage that typically frames your trip to work, you suddenly notice a tower... a tower with tubes? A waterslide?

A waterslide in your industrial park? What is this?

And suddenly you remember that door.

The next day at work, during your first break, you confidently exit through the other door.

Was it this bright out two hours ago? You stumble around the previously unseen anterior region of the building only to find yourself inexplicably facing...

A hedge maze.

Further confusion.

It's not a particularly dificult maze, likely recreational. You quickly reach the center, where there is indeed some sort of miniature water park. Very appealing in the middle of August.

The spire you noticed this morning is probably about 50 feet tall, with three water slides of differing complexity. Everyone is in comfortable swim attire, but are also in ceramic animal masks. You hear much laughter and you witness much embracing. It looks like so much fun.

Instantly, you are seized at the wrist by a hooded figure, also in an animal mask. You know then that you will have to go back the way you came. You do not belong here.

You're late back from break anyway. And you really do need this job. There is no use resisting.

You find no good reason to bother to relate this story to your coworkers. And eventually you drive back to your place, alone.

4:39 AM - 3 Comments - 8 Kudos - Add Comment

Fuck You Orson Scott Card (The Sequel)

I have gotten so much amazing feedback from my last blog, I can't possibly reply to it all... Thank you so much for the your emails and comments, tho.

But I have to give credit to my lovely friend Kell-E-Y (who also maintains the status of being the second person ever to get a tattoo designed by me) for her amazing re-evaluation of that bile-spewing post by Orson Scott Card, but from a woman's perspective... and not just a woman's perspective, but one of a woman who's also (through circumstance) has edured a period of being a single mother.

I cannot possibly give enough respect to the single mothers of this world. The best I can do is to mimic toasting you with the vodka and orange juice I'm drinking inappropirately late tonight in your general direction.

But now to diverge from the general back towards the specific, let me shut the fuck up for a second (aren't you sick of me yet?) and let you read this amazing deconstruction of the same article I commented on from a whole new angle.

----------------- Original Message -----------------
From: kelley
Date: Aug 13, 2008 7:28 PM

So, I just read the Card piece. Piece of shit, that is, and while I'm in a big hurry and none of this will be at all eloquent, I have to say this:

As deplorable and fascistically ignorant as his commentary on gay marriage and gay rights is; what's additionally mortfying is his oh-so-LDS gender bigotry in general.

See the following:

"In an era when birth control and abortion make childbearing completely optional, the number of out-of-wedlock births shows the contempt that many women have for marriage.

Yet most of these single mothers still demand that the man they chose not to marry before having sex with him provide financial support for them and their children -- while denying the man any of the rights and protections of marriage.

Men routinely discard wives and children to follow the nearly universal male biological desire for diversity in mating. Adultery is now openly expected of men, even if faithful wives deplore it."

So, in brief (again, I'm in a hurry), what I'm getting out of this is that fags are a useless parasite, genderqueers/trans are "tragic" genetic fuck-ups, and straight women are whoring, soulless goldiggers? When women have children "out-of-wedlock," they are denying men their rightful access to free pussy all year long? So, the man has no stake in whether a child is born "out-of-wedlock?" I wasn't aware that, according to his logic, these ancient traditions of marriage he holds in such esteem applied. You mean, all primitive peoples upheld legally-binding, monogamous unions? Oh, wait. He means, white, Western, and Christian. My bad.

So, bastards are all women's fault. They should have married the sperm vessel. Yet men who choose not to get married...especially when kids are involved...surely he's got some words for them, right? What was it he said again? Oh yes, that men who stray or choose not to get married are simply abiding their "nearly universal male biological desire for diversity in mating." So, while he is asserting that men are expected to overcome this base biological desire, it's understood that when they do it's simply because of a natural drive that can't be helped. I thought the natural drive was to commit to a monogamous, baby-factoring, hetero LEGAL marriage. He SAID that was the biological drive. He SAID that was how humans operated. Surely I'm misunderstanding?

No, unfortunately, he, like many Americans, have found their little black dress to put on when they don't want to deal with the "real" issues. For me, "gay marriage" is a "real issue," but part of that stems from my utter lack of understanding why the fuck it even matters enough to people. You hate queers? Fine. Don't deal with them. Go be a fascist pig in your own redneck neighborhood. So, anyway, I agree with you. And I wanted to read his original posting. But I couldn't help but notice that, like many people, his bigotry stems from a completely fucked-up view of human interaction, anyway.

6:14 AM - 1 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Fuck You, Orson Scott Card.

Ya know, you wrote some truly engaging prose in your time. A very, very close friend recommended "Ender's Game" to me about five years ago, and I've read some of the sequels.  Well, actually, no I didn't. But "Ender's Game" was pretty cool.

http://mormontimes.com/ME_blogs.php?id=1586

3:40 PM - 3 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Superstition (Seasonal Affective)

"Are you ok?"

"Yeah, the weather is just getting to me. I always melt down when big storms hit... totally sucks the life out of me..."

"You mean you think the barometric pressure is taking away your soul?"

"Well, not literally. And it's not the whole storm, it's mainly the approach that wears me out. Once the storm hits, it's not so bad."

"Right."

"Everybody else is comforted by the rain, it makes them relaxed and lets them rest; me, I try to fight it, and it wears me out and gets me even more down."

"Me, I keep getting that hitch in the middle of my chest. What is that?"

"Yeah, I feel it a lot lately too. It just comes unexpectedly, and suddenly every performance review at work, every missed phone call, and every unexpected traffic delay just becomes... I dunno, practically biblical."

"Yeah, it makes any objective, rational reaction to criticism, or even an invite to dinner, impossible. I just want to shut off the phone and hide. It's like I'm leaking; and there's no way to socialize properly again until I'm fixed..."

"Yeah, I can't explain it very well either..."

"Me, I think it's the pain of our seperation from the collective unconscious, from becoming complete beings. We stuff all sorts of things into that gaping wound, but eventually all break loose at one point or another."

"Me, I'm still sticking by blaming it on the weather."

3:15 PM - 2 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment