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| message board May 2006
I've marveled at this website for quite a while now - over a year in fact - but when I was looking at it today I thought I'd share it with you. The website for the Zephyr Syndicate is simply incredible, a work of art. The sample works within the website are also amazing, although with very different flavors. Take some time and check it out; you won't be disappointed. Posted at 12:26 AM
Global warming is alive and well and frying my brain. If the idiots that service our air conditioning system don't fix the system soon I'll all but melt away (and their claims that the coil, the part that they ordered, still hasn't arrived after three full weeks time ... well, I find it highly dubious ...). Today and each of the past two days has had the kind of high heat with crushing humidity that we don't usually see until August, and by that time we've had a nice summer. To have 90+ degrees on the Fahrenheit scale plus high humidity before June even starts is just simply a bad sign of things to come. This is shaping up to be a very unpleasant summer. Posted at 12:51 AM
Memorial Day is supposed to be the day we remember the men and women who died serving our country, specifically those who died in wars, but on Memorial Day all I can think about is the tragic waste of life that wars have brought. So many noble souls lost, most killed in their prime or even in their youth - and for what? - a piece of land? - a power trip for some lunatic? - a dispute over whose version of God is closer to the truth (as if any of us can really know that anyhow)? This insanity goes on year after year without end, one war here, another war there. People actually enjoy it, particularly as a new war starts. It's like a blood sport, watching some "other people" getting their homes blown up and their kids killed. Nobody seems to give a damn until it's their sons and daughters coming back in body bags, or until it's their bottom line that's being affected by the economic impacts, like higher oil prices or rationing or whatever. For far too many people, these 'War Hawks', all of the death is insignificant. For them the war must go on and it must be bigger and more destructive than ever. These are cold, calculating people who have their own agendas, and anyone else who dies as a result doesn't matter. But for me a single death is too much. A single soldier, a single civilian, a single 'enemy combatant.' All life is precious (or so abortion activists tell us, at least when they aren't supporting the death penalty or wars), and there are certainly better, more logical, more mature methods of resolving our differences in a civilized manner rather than by blowing the fuck out of each other. In 1993 I went to Gettysburg. I was spending a week training at Xerox so that I could service an important copier in my Kinko's stores, and the training facility was less than an hour away. I had decided that I should go while the chance was available. One of the other people who was training, pretty much a stranger from California (who was rather cute, but rather straight) wanted to go, so I took him with me. If you've never been to Gettysburg, I don't think that I can impart the vastness of the rows upon rolls of headstones. They roll as far as the eye can see in every direction, over hills, interspersed with statues and larger memorials or the occasional stalwart old tree. The headstones are innumerable, however - a sea of white marble points, each a final resting place for a human being whose life was more important than any reason for going to war. As I was at Gettysburg I turned to look around me, wandering aimlessly in those silent, haunting lands, and I wept. I tried very hard not to do so considering there was a perfect stranger standing only a few yards from me, but I wept tears that simply would not stop as I gazed at all of the death that merely one battle of a war can bring. The price, there, was too high, but that is the case with any war - the price is simply too high. We have grown older since the battle of Gettysburg, but we have not grown wiser. We still wage one war after the next, and now we are even more destructive than ever. The only purpose war now serves is to clearly display our inhumanity, our base animal cruelty and ignorance, and the selfish attitudes of so many about life that they seem to care nothing for those who die in these wars, so long as it isn't themselves. Today, rather than honor those who fought all of those wars, I feel we should beg their forgiveness. None of those people should have died. The price for war was too great, and to truly honor them we have only one option - to end war for all time and resolve our differences peacefully. Securing peace was the only 'good' reason we ever had for war, but it is unfortunately a misguided reason. Peace can only come from peace, never from war. Honor our fallen soldiers by working to end war forever. Bring peace to all mankind. Help us to find our humanity. Posted at 1:24 AM
I need to start skipping a day or two's postings when I have nothing at all to say, otherwise I'll have a huge collection of useless entries. Of course then I'd have to wonder how often I'd post at all if I did that. Posted at 12:22 AM
Phew! I'm glad that someone has finally, definitively answered which came first, the chicken or the egg. Not knowing has been driving me nuts for years.
Posted at 1:04 AM
Why do most people hate watching mimes but still think sock puppets are simply adorable? Both of them are tired and out of date, but people only push the hate for the mimes. Posted at 12:54 AM
Redrum. Redrum. Redrum. It's not because the building's haunted exactly, just because i's one elderly resident incites one to kill. That's my grandma alright. Posted at 10:51 PM
I've actually wondered, ever since the first ads for X3: X-Men: The Last Stand started broadcasting, if anyone other than me saw the blatant comparison of the movie's 'war against mutants' with the real-life 'war against homosexuality.' Apparently Sir Ian McKellan felt the same comparison and the same anger that I have felt from the battle that is being waged against me and others like me. Mr. McKellan says he channeled that anger into his character of Magneto in the movie as that character fights back with all he has, refusing to be 'cured' of something which is an innate part of himself, a blessing even. I wish that I had some venue for venting my own anger in a similar way, because honestly I feel that the anti-gay forces of the world are becoming so intractable and antagonistic that they are making a real, very unpleasant cultural war, replete with violence on both sides inevitable (not that the anti-gay forces haven't already been very far ahead on the physical violence against gays). The war is coming and I feel it's inevitable. I'm ready to stand up for myself and my gay brethren when the time comes - ready and waiting.
Posted at 11:11 PM
Now there's proof - Ohio falls dead last out of all of the fifty U.S. states in terms of gay rights and support. It's no wonder that I ponder, every day, why the hell I'm even here, regardless of my responsibilities to my grandma. This state, which I once dearly loved, has become a toxic cesspool. Is there no escape from this wretchedness?
Posted at 12:09 AM
More yard work. I hate more yard work. The stuff's neverending, though. My arms recovered a bit overnight (although only a bit), and using the blower/vac again today for three hours didn't make them feel any better. But, for what it's worth, the lawn is now in good shape, and new grass is showing itself in the areas that had died out, so my grass seed has indeed begun to germinate. It'll probably be another couple of weeks before the new grass looks like much of anything, and it's hard to say if all of the weak spots will indeed fill out decently, but I feel like things are more in hand as far as the lawn is concerned. Tomorrow I start digging into the flower beds and clearing out weeds, old leaves, maple tree seedpods (lots and lots of maple tree seed pods), maple trees (which have already started to grow from some of the seedpods), and old twigs and stuff from the remains of the plants (most of which are in and around freshly renewed perennial plants that have grown quite solid and full already (some are even flowering nicely)). I'll have to spread herbicide and fertilizer and add more pine nuggets to the older pine nuggets that surround the plants in the beds. And then I'll get to move to the next bed and do it all over again. Heck, I'll even have more 'fun' when I work the beds in the front of the house and have to trim and shape the bushes and plant a whole mess of flower bulbs that we've been collecting for three years. Rah. Have I mentioned before that this is hell, pure and miserable hell? Yes, perhaps I have. But it bears repeating. Posted at 11:33 PM
Yard work. I hate yard work. I'm tired and achy. Today's big tasks, among other, smaller things, was, first, to construct a trellis of string along the side of the carport so that the Clematis can be given something to grow along. That took a couple of hours. The next, and much larger task, was to collect all of the seedpods from the old maple tree in the front yard. There are thousands of them right now, being that it's mid-Spring, and they make a blanket over the driveway and the lawn. In the past I've just given up and mulched them with the lawnmower, but that ended up making a thick layer of thatch in the front lawn that got so clogged as to block out water and sunlight, killing a lot of patches of grass. I have no intention of repeating the same mistake, but unfortunately these seedpods are almost impossible to sweep or rake up. I'd be better off picking them up individually by hand, but I decided to get a blower/vacuum this year to just suck them up into an attached bag. Fortunately it works quite well, sucking these bastard tree children up just fine. The down side is that the moderate weight of the blower/vac plus the weight of the filling bag, combined with massive amounts of vibration from the engine, make this like running a jackhammer after a significant amount of time, and my arms feel like loose rubber bands as a result. I got all of the driveway and sidewalks perfectly cleared and the large section of the front yard that was covered the worst. I still have about half of the front yard to go, and I'll do that tomorrow if my arms still work (or should I say if they work again after some rest). I expect that I'll be doing yard work. most every day during all of this week and probably into early next week. The ten straight days of rain we've just passed through made it impossible to do anything, and there will be a day or two during the end of the week where rain will again preclude work, but there's simply far too much to be done to let it go, and while I hate ever minute of it with a passion, I hate even more being nagged multiple times a day by my grandmother (who sometimes intentionally nags so repeatedly but more often nags because she doesn't remember driving me crazy about some aspect of the yard just a few hours earlier). With any luck I'll have the yard up to speed by the end of the month. Then, lucky me, I'll get to shift gears to trying to contract different workers to do various repair-type things that need to be done around the house. I tell you, the fun simply never ends. This is hell, my friends, and nobody can get me to believe otherwise. Hell, I tell you, a hell that destroys the body and mind and soul and will all at once without any end ... ever. I hate yard work. I hate it with a passion. Kill me, please. Posted at 10:54 PM
Dontcha hate people that love Bush and don't understand when you tell them they've sold their souls to the devil? Posted at 2:04 AM
I had an excellent conversation today with my best friend Chris (the Chris who's normally from Lafayette, Indiana but who is currently in Benton Harbor, Michigan while he's at his summer internship with Whirlpool). Life sounds pretty crazy and full of drama for him right now, but he's only just finished the first week of the internship, only just previous to that having finished a hellish semester at Purdue, and he's currently stuck without any furniture or much of any possessions just yet since his planned 'friend-with-a-truck' didn't work out. So he's been sleeping on a lawn chair and being somewhat frustrated because he can't even go to the beach since it's been raining for the past ten days. Even worse, he's only just gotten his internet service connected this morning, so he's gone a week without net access. I think I'd have become a homicidal maniac after a week of similar conditions (particularly if you add in the other things that I'm not mentioning here), and that leads me once again to realize that Chris is a much stronger, much better person than I am in a lot of ways. He most certainly handles stress far better than I do - not to say that he isn't affected of upset by stress, but he manages to continue with his life even when all sorts of hell is thrown at him at once, whereas I tend to shut down (at least if the stress is personal - strangely, I deal incredibly well with stress when it's not about me personally but about someone else or about a job or whatever). Chris' job sounds very cool, very interesting, and he made clear during our talk that he loves the work and the people, particularly his direct boss (who bought him a couple of beers after work today, which may constitute some of Chris' appreciation for him). He is feeling a bit lonely and isolated, though, and that's a shame, but I know Chris well enough to know that he makes friends easily and is quite simply very uninhibited and outgoing and energetic, all of which combined makes him very intriguing and approachable, so I'm sure that given another week he should be a bit more at home. Still, I made clear that I'm always just a phone call away. Chris and I have a very easy rapport and have a lot of shared interests, and we always have a great time talking to each other whenever the chance arises. So hopefully he'll call me again soon, and maybe, since he's much closer to me during this internship, I'll possibly visit him for a weekend this summer (which would be in addition to my visit to see him in Lafayette in August). I'm glad I called him today. We seem to go far too long between calls these past couple of years, but it's always good when one or the other of us calls and reconnects. I wish I saw Chris more often. Heck, I wouldn't mind moving back to Lafayette, really, because I still really love that city, but we've each got our obligations for the next few years, and those things are going to keep us occupied and preoccupied for all of that time. In the meantime calls like today's are a great morale boost for me (and I think for Chris, too), and that is no small thing in itself. Posted at 12:29 AM
George Bush: America's Nero. And now the fall from empire and descent into anarchy, soon to result in a conservative-inspired Dark Ages where all science and fact is discarded in favor of faith and fearmongering. History does repeat itself. Posted at 11:16 PM
So Steve visited tonight. He had to be in Sandusky to service one of the local bank branches as part of his job, so he wrapped that up by about 7:30 PM and we headed out to a nice dinner at Outback. We talked for a while at dinner and then also back at the house, and it was quite refreshing. Steve and I have talked on the phone now and again, and of course we meet to play D&D fairly often, but we never get the chances around the game to really talk politics or current events or such things. Steve and I are both quite liberal in our views but we do differ dramatically on certain issues. Gun control, immigration, and unions are issues where we are at complete odds with each other, for instance, but for the most part we share a lot of similar concerns and ideologies. Even when we differ about things we at least discuss things intelligently and listen to each others' arguments. It's the civilized thing to do, and I wish more people were willing to openly debate and discuss their differences. Anyhow, Steve's visit was a refreshing break in the doldrums. I wish we'd had more time to talk, really, but we both have to be up early tomorrow with lots to do over the course of the day, so we called it a night at 11:30 and Steve headed back to Toledo. Now, as I'm feeling rather tired, I'm going to wind down for some sleep myself. I have to be up early tomorrow, so hopefully I'll have a fairly full night's sleep. Here's to hoping. Posted at 12:17 AM
I know that things have changed a lot since I was in junior high and high school, but do schools really contact parents to inform them and ask their permission about everything now? Are they contacted about a guest lecturer who is Jewish talking about being in a concentration camp in Nazi Germany or about someone who is black who will talk about their involvement in the civil rights movement? Are parents contacted about classroom discussions about rape, including current events like the Duke University rape case? Are parents contacted beforehand by the gym teacher that dodgeball will be played on Tuesday? I rather doubt it. I also doubt that student presentations to their class about just about anything are prescreened, particularly considering teachers don't often know the exact content of student-run class presentations until they are in fact presented. If it's in any way connected to being gay, though, you can be sure the parents will expect to have been contacted. In fact, even when it's not about gay people but merely a counter-example of something about gay people - then there's going to be hell to pay. I tell you, these people should not be parents at all if they refuse to accept that gay people exist and live in their world. Trying to pretend that gay people don't exist if you don't talk about them is the sign of a delusional mind, and such people should be declared unfit to be parents, plain and simple.
Posted at 11:39 PM
How is it that the people who speak loudest about their idea of God are clearly the most Godless of all? Posted at 4:12 AM
Malcolm in the Middle's series finale was highly disappointing. How could a show that was so smart and funny, that had people talking about it between classes and around the water cooler for two or three days after a new episode aired, that had an absurd but real-at-heart mentality - how could that have sunk so far and become so bland and boring, so lifeless and unamusing? I was seriously disappointed. Family Guy, fortunately, was fucking hilarious. That show only seems to get better and better as time goes on (which may never have happened considering the fuckwads at FOX had cancelled the whole series and only brought it back when they found out that another channel was running it to huge popular acclaim). Posted at 12:46 AM
Posted at 2:21 AM
Boo! My social life has turned from bad to worse. My planned get-together for gaming and gabbing in Perrysburg tomorrow has been cancelled. Wah! Posted at 11:59 PM
I get a kick out of Alton Brown lately, but even his antics aren't really breaking a massive fall into a pit of depression. Fun times, just like everybody wants ... not to have. Posted at 10:41 PM
We live in a sick, horrific world, a living hell of our own creation, and we blithely go about with no serious attempts at change, only the casting of blame on others to cover our own shame and fears. A well-deserved end can never come quickly enough for any of us, and most would be blind to the blessing that such an end would offer. Posted at 11:02 PM
It gives me a warm feeling inside to know that the coming generation is full of cynicism, sarcasm, and humor. I couldn't have done this sort of "article" any better myself.
Posted at 11:23 PM
... and ironically, considering what happened yesterday, I feel like death warmed over ... Posted at 12:16 AM
Today was not a good day to die. Apparently, however, it was a good day to become a ghoul. Posted at 4:52 AM
I have realized that I am offended by Christians who want to push their agenda upon me. I mean really, they're teaching our kids in schools with books that talk about church-going people and their family values! It's just disgusting! They're blatantly trying to indoctrinate our kids into Christianity. If we allow our schools to keep using such books, to keep teaching that it's "okay" to be Christian, then all of a sudden our kids will just say, "Hey, I want to try being a Christian," and then what do you do? Once they've tasted from the forbidden fruit it's all over you know. Realistically, if conservative idiots want to ban books that they find don't conform to their beliefs then everyone should be able to ban books that don't match with their ideologies either. I just don't think the conservative idiots see it in that way, regardless of the fact that once they force the issue of censoring based on individual morals, everybody has to be able to join the banning brigade.
Posted at 12:42 AM
It's been a busy, tiring day, but it may have just been what I needed to start getting back on track. First of all, I'm fairly well convinced that my cold is gone. Yes, I'm still coughing occasionally, and I still have a small bit of sinus filling/draining, but I think that what I have now is just my Spring allergies, and I can live with that. I'm still exceptionally tired, but much of that is from having to argue with my grandma to get her to take these new pain pills and anti-inflamatories - or - to struggle to get her to eat right so that she can gain back her strength - or - to constantly be watching her every move so that she doesn't burn the house down (which almost happened yesterday) and doesn't leave the front door open for hours (which she did a few days ago), among other things. She is really tiring me out lately, and it's made it rough to do much else. Still, I arranged a follow-up appointment for tomorrow to get repairs under way for the leak in our air conditioner coolant coils. I finally caught up with my neighbor (who works third shift and sleeps odd, unpredictable hours) so that he could help me get the lawnmower down from the attic/loft inside the garage (something that's just too awkward for one person (i.e., me) to do). So now I can finally mow the lawn and then get the ground loosened up and sow some seeds and fertilizer to fill in the dead spots nicely. I also got a bunch of groceries and supplies for various around-the-house tasks, and I got lots of stuff cleaned up and organized around the house. We also got out so that my grandma could have her hair styled (which she missed last week because of her neck pain), and we went to the hospital to get the x-rays and MRI of her back and neck so that we can figure out what is causing her pain. We won't see the doctor until Monday afternoon, so we're still fairly well in the dark, but the MRI and stuff is done, and it was much faster and easier than either of us had imagined. And heck, I even started reading a new book, one that's been on my shelves waiting for me for about a year, and I'm hoping to push through it at a pretty good clip now that I've started it. All of these things together give me hope that I might start getting things accomplished. Certainly a number of impediments are being knocked out of the way, and I'm very interested in getting certain things done and over with, so there is indeed hope. And of course for those of you who've been reading this for any amount of time, you certainly realize that hope is something I rarely claim to have. So that's something indeed. Maybe that's indeed a good sign. Posted at 11:25 PM
Doom. Doom! DOOM!! Posted at 10:27 PM
So this is hell ... hmmm ... I expected it to be more elaborate ... Posted at 9:11 PM
I've sacrificed a lot to be here, and I put up with a lot of hassle and heartache, and I don't think it's too much to expect a little appreciation or, barring that, at least a grandmother without a bitchy, uncooperative attitude regarding just about everything. I don't care if she is ninety-one years old; there is no justification for her behavior. I don't need the stress, the added depression, or the migraines and chest pains that she causes me. My life is and has been miserable enough on its own, thank you very much; I don't need the additional suffering that my grandma's causing me, and I don't know if I can keep taking care of her if she's going to keep treating me like this. I want to keep doing the right thing here and care for her for many more years, but I don't know if I can stand it. And to think, I only have five more months before I get a break from her ... Posted at 12:01 AM
Journal, by Paul Cales, © May 2006
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May 31, 2006
