Not a team player!

Grrrr! Arrgh! Hear me roar!

Sorry, I have to vent for a moment.

So I'm working on this mod for a game. Mainly, the project is mostly code and game design, with a little bit of pixel art on the side. The code is challenging, and I had to get things running and bug-free before I could release. So I started with and focused on what was the hard stuff to me, and then I just hammered out some quick and dirty placeholder artwork for the graphics as an after-thought. There'd be plenty of time to spruce that up later. After all, I've never had a programming course, but I've been to art school.

Problem is, my placeholders look good enough to be someone without an art background's best efforts... yet not not nearly as good as the final art of the main game without mods.

So based on that initial release, I've now got people crawling out of the woodwork offering to do my graphics for me and asking to collaborate, because my code is strong, my game design stronger, but my art sucks. It's like almost flattering, yet humiliating at the same time.

I AM SO PISSED! Grrrr! Arrgh! Hear me roar! Again.

I mean seriously, someone redid half my place holders and sent their versions to me unsolicited so I could replace my crap with his beautiful art. I didn't ask to collaborate with him, and even though his work is great, this project is my baby. But now I'm stuck where I either have to use his contribution, or top it.
Plus, among the things he sent his version of was one of the two graphics in the mod that I _didn't_ consider a placeholder. The bar has been raised and the little thing I was doing for fun is now like a freaking exam.


Grrr, whine, etc. I am not a team player, I am a tempermental auteur!

And now I've shared my shame with a wider audience. Cause if you can't humble yourself, who can you humble?

Double Death-Defying Day

On Monday, I was nearly run over by a truck and ended up in the Emergency Room. But surprisingly, not in that order.

At 2 AM Monday morning, I awoke with massive abdominal pain. The only time I'd ever felt worse pain in my life was during recovery from major surgery about 8 years ago. Given the intensity, I thought for sure my appendix was about to rupture. So I woke up my wife and we headed down to the ER.

After a several hours of blood tests and CT scans, they ruled out all the possible causes that would have required cutting me open to solve. The diagnosis they finally landed on is just a case of Epiploic Appendigitis (that "g" is not a typo). Horribly painful to be sure, but it's self-limiting and I should recover in 5 to 10 days.

Cranky but relieved, I headed for home, certain that I'd just dodged the only bullet of the day.

As my wife and I were crossing the street near the hospital, a jerk in a big truck ran a red light and nearly plowed us over. Due to my illness, I really couldn't run or jump. So I just shoved my wife towards safety. Thankfully, she had the same instinct and grabbed my arm and pulled me towards safety. It was all kind of a blur, with each of us feeling our quick thinking had just saved the other (and so I guess we were both right). The truck slammed on its breaks and stopped several feet past the crosswalk where we just were, passing within a foot of me in the process.

A guy in another vehicle waiting at the stoplight shouted out to us "today's your lucky day!" He didn't know the half of it.

As much as I despise assassinations...

It feels really weird to be happy about the death of a human being, even one so obviously evil. I must admit I feel a little safer, knowing that Osama bin Laden is no longer out there, even though logically the odds of being harmed by terrorism are extremely slim. There's a relief one feels, that is disproportionate to actual degree of change in the world this one violent act brings. That sense of catharsis must no doubt be far more pronounced in those that were closer to the tragedies of 9/11, and those more patriotic (or fearful) than myself.

Morally and intellectually, I despise and repudiate our nation's policy of assassination. It undermines the ideals by which a right and just nation should operate, and specifically stands in bitter contrast against against the principles of the Constitution of our nation in particular. I believe in due process, the right to a fair trial, the right to face one's accusers, and I am even opposed to the death penalty.

The case in favor of the death of Bin Laden is about as strong as such a case can be made, in the absence of a proper trial. He publicly took credit for the September 11th attacks, which is probably the only evidence that matters. He has been "public enemy no. 1" for a decade, the living justification for unjust wars. His continued survival over the years has no doubt emboldened those who seek to inflict harm and terror upon the world (regardless of which organizations or nations they belong to). Any trial that might have come from his capture was unlikely to bring any heightened level of justice, but would only serve as spectacle or even provocation for further extremism. As much as a man can be said to deserve to die, he did. As much as justice can be done in such a case, it has been.

I remain steadfast in my opposition to assassination, violence, war, murder, terrorism, totalitarianism, and tyranny; At the same time I take comfort and security in knowing that Bin Laden was captured, killed, and buried at sea in rapid succession. I am hopeful that this dark accomplishment might help restore sanity to a nation (and a world) that has been far too eager to sacrifice it's principles and freedom in the often unbalanced pursuit of safety. It's time to move on.

Airport Security

If I were a pedophile (or just sexual predator in general), I'd apply for a job at the TSA. Getting paid money for groping folks all day long, that'd be sweet. For a sick fucking perv.

If I were a terrorist, I'd be thrilled with the long lines at the Airports. It used to be that to use a bomb to kill hundreds of Americans and disrupt transportation, you had to smuggle the bomb through airport security. Now that the TSA and DHS's "safety" procedures have lengthened the time you spend in lines at the airport, and conveniently packed more Americans per square foot into the kill zone, you could just detonate a bomb inside the airport itself. Psychopaths and religious extremists alike must be very encouraged at the potential to blow up people in lines outside the security checkpoint.

But alas, I am neither a terrorist nor a molester, so instead of being happy I find myself angry and critical of our government.

I'm a cancer survivor, so it wouldn't be particularly smart or safe for me to go through backscatter x-ray scanners if I can reasonably avoid doing so.

I'm also a sexual abuse survivor, so I probably wouldn't want to opt-out of the scans and have to get an invasive pat-down of my genitals (to make sure I hadn't wired my penis to explode).

I guess I'll just have to opt out of flying all together.  Wow.  Thanks, TSA and DHS, I feel safer already!

Holding Human Brains In My Hands

A couple days ago, we went to the Bodies exhibition. Waves of awe and shock and wonder passed over me.

We are lucky and privileged to live here and now. For the vast majority of history, to learn so much about human anatomy up close you'd have to commit a crime. But here we are, in an age and culture where we can pop down to a museum and see the intricate majesty of the human form, in all it's glorious layers. It was breathtaking.

Heckuvaweirdassparallelworldweek

This week has been bizarre.

Peaceful little ol' me has narrowly avoided two fist fights this week, with total strangers (one of who was definitely crazy, the other seemed sane but got the bizarre impression that I was trying to attack his 70-year-old mother).

The night of the first such near-fist-fight (with a guy at a coffeeshop who just spontaneously turned to me and shouted "you can suck my dick!"), I also got called a "fucking bitch" by some drunk lady in a parking lot, and then 20 minutes later thought I'd stumbled into the midst of some sort of gang-violence but it turned out the people running straight at me in the dark waving weapons were just having a squirtgun fight at 11pm. That day was the worst of it, but things haven't returned to normal yet.

A couple days later a friend spontaneously moved to Montana in the middle of the night.

My wife's sciatica, which is usually pretty tame and has never had a flare-up longer than 36 hours is now on her 4th consecutive day of incapacitating pain.

At this exact moment there's some guy in my neighborhood shouting "Spider Wars! Dude, that sucks!" again and again at the top of his lungs. Like it's the most important thing in the world.

If anyone knows the metaphysical nature or dimensional coordinates of the parallel universe I've shifted in to, please share them with me. I'd like to chart a course back to my original reality.

Congressman proposes rate hike on unsafe sex

The article is too short to even be worth linking to, but I'll do so just for completeness.
In summation - some politician proposes we can fix health care by raising the insurance rates on anyone who doesn't use a condom.

Just think about that. Joe Bloe is buried under some big debt or health bill, and he's filling out some paperwork. The paperwork asks if he uses condoms, and as it turns out, they chafe his little joey, or maybe his girlfriend of 16-months is on the pill. If he admits he doesn't use rubbers, he'll have to pay more money every month. Joe Blow is gonna lie.

It's not gonna save the nation money by making some unrepentant paraphile pay an extra $20 a month on insurance. It's not gonna make him any safer, either, because when he's hoping to get lucky he's not thinking about insurance paperwork. All such a law would do is make Joe Bloe commit fraud, and never think twice about it.

And these conservative idiots in congress worry that videogames desensitize us.

We can forget it for you wholesale

For most of my life, I was saddened that MK Ultra and Manchurian Candidate research had been so set back by the greater government transparency that came post-Nixon. As much as I revile torture and the Bush presidency, at the same time I kinda gotta respect that he, like Mengele, advanced the science of what it takes to break a man. I mean, what would we do without all that recent CIA research into waterboarding and solitary confinement?

My life would be poorer without it, that's for sure. In fact, I found myself getting morose at the thought that a new administration would mean 4 or 8 years of stagnation in the arena of fucking-with-our-heads-ology. Then, I looked at this headline from last fall, and was reminded that the corporate sector was all set to carry on in the grand Bush-Mengele legacy.

Memories Selectively, Safely Erased In Mice

ScienceDaily (Oct. 23, 2008) — Targeted memory erasure is no longer limited to the realm of science fiction. A new study describes a method through which a selected set of memories can be rapidly and specifically erased from the mouse brain in a controlled and inducible manner. New and old memories have been selectively and safely removed from mice by scientists.

Now, I know what you're thinking - safely rewriting the memories of mice is a far cry from anything Mengele or Bush did. Just the same, it's clear these researchers are thinking ahead:

Much as a war veteran remembers a fateful patrol when he was fired upon, [emphasis mine] mice can establish a very long-lasting emotional memory about a place if, for example, they receive a mild shock to the paws while there. The researchers showed if they over-expressed αCaMKII, this powerful memory was rapidly erased as the animals tried to retrieve them while other memories remained intact.

It's clear what's really being proposed here. Today meeses, tomorrow... what were we talking about? I just can't seem to remember.

I sure am looking forward to when they apply that technology to humans. I'd like to shake off a few of my irrational motivators, a few of my scars from childhood. Some of them are terrible things and the pain of them does me no good.

Oh sure, a few of them serve important functions... Don't touch that, it hurt. Don't treat people that way, it really messed you up when someone did it to you. Don't bailout the wall street tycoons, it did no good the last time you threw money at them. So, there's a chance that a few valuable lessons might be lost when my mind is wiped. But hell, I don't need those lessons. If I screw up again, I'll just pay to have those new traumatic memories wiped as well.

Think of all the money and misery this will save America!

• Traumatized by the that day half your squad died to friendly fire? Now you can forget you ever served in a combat zone. For an extra 50$, you can forget bootcamp, too.
• Obnoxious marketing jingle stuck in your head? It's gone now, along with that dreadful pop song you never wanna hear again.
  
• Economy so bad you had to sell your house and move into a rat-infested slum? Forget you ever had that nicer place.
• 43rd President a disgusting embarassment to our Nation? Now he's no more painful than the lack of a 13th-floor button in an elevator.
• Cash poor? Win big on Fear Factor, and next week you won't remember all those wriggling millipedes you had to swallow.
• Rather than just drinkin' yourself into oblivion night after night, you can just forget that bitch who drove you to to the bottom of the bottle. Still want the pleasant glow of not remembering who you slept with or how you staggered home last night? It now comes in a convient morning-after pill form at half the price.
• Local politics gonna get you run out of town? Pour a can of αCaMKII in the reservoir, and everyone will be much happier. No more guilty conscience, either.
• Bosses constant nepotism got you feeling like you'll never get ahead? Blood may be thicker than water, but it ain't thicker than αCaMKII.
• Deathly afraid of Snakes? Now you wouldn't know a rattler if it jumped out and bit you!
• Can't afford the alimony the judge will likely award your wife? A much smaller black-market payment will make her forget the day she discovered your affair. Should that fail, you can at least forget the last 6 months of fighting and most of the court proceedings.
• Psychokiller eat your children? Forget you ever gave birth to them.
• CIA programmed you to shoot someone? Now you can't remember enough of the details to rat them out to the Senate. Think of the savings to our government in hit-men contracts and hush money!

See, there's just no downside. All hail science!

Charybdis Sings

It's not often that the commentary track of a DVD puts you in that mental space of "should I laugh or cry?". Even rarer when that commentary track itself is a musical comedy (wait, has there ever been one of those before?). But Commentary! The Musical! did just that. I cried as I laughed. Twice. The rest of the time, I was just laughing, but 2 out of 14 songs really moved me.

For those not in the know, Commentary! The Musical! is one of the commentary tracks on the DVD release of Dr Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. Mostly it's a laugh riot, with the heart of it being a trio of songs explaining how Nathan Fillion and Neil Patrick Harris hate each other. Hilarious stuff.

The tracks that really touched me were Track 2: Strike! and Track 11: Heart, Broken. Joss Whedon pours his heart into them.

My favorite passages:

HOMER’S ODYSSEY WAS SWELL
A BUNCH OF GUYS THAT WENT THROUGH HELL
HE TOLD THE TALE BUT DIDN’T TELL
THE AUDIENCE WHY
HE DIDN’T SAY, HERE’S WHAT IT MEANS
AND HERE’S A FEW DELETED SCENES
CHARYBDIS TESTED WELL WITH TEENS
...
IT’S BROKEN BY THE ENDLESS LOADS
OF MAKING-OFS AND MOBISODES
THE TIE-INS, PREQUELS, GAMES AND CODES
THE AUDIENCE BUYS
THE NARRATIVE DIES

That's pretty fuckin' ballsy for a writer/director to be singing on a DVD commentary. My hat is off to you, Joss.

Just wanted to share that with you, since I mostly bitch about things on the net, and rarely remember to praise or make recommendations. Of course, I'm praising and recommending something that itself contains an awful lot of bitching. Hmm...

For those of you too cheap to spring for the DVD, here's the rest of the lyrics.

Fuck you. Whoever you are.

Fuck you. Whoever you are. For whatever reason. (No offense intended) Now that I've got that out of the way, I can get to the heart of the matter...

Recently, I find I can't help but find that I keep pissing people off. It seems like everyone just misinterprets everything I write. Probably that means I'm a poor author. But it feels like I'm going to have to constantly write "No offense intended" every paragraph. No offense intended, by the way.

That just seems like a crappy way to live - walking on eggshells, wearing the kid gloves, censoring every thought. I know I won't be able to do it. I'm a gossip, and I vent. If I'm going to do so, I'd rather own up to it than live a double life. No offense intended. And a double-life I had when working at the game store. There were half a dozen customers I wanted to ream before I moved, and somehow I managed to remain civil. Keeping all that rage bottled for years was really unhealthy. Now, events seem to be pushing me towards not speaking my mind again... which might result in more stress, or just bitching about people behind their backs.

But then I hit this awesome idea. Rather than use my default assumption of saying what I mean, and just hoping no one takes it offense, what if I just assume that everyone will? No offense intended.

In fact, I can just start every post like I did this one.

Fuck you. Whoever you are. For whatever reason. (No offense intended). Now that I've got that out of the way, I can speak what's on my mind...

See, that way, people are already pissed at me before they read whatever else follows. No offense intended. They'll remember I'm a raging asshole, and not take anything else I write too seriously. There'll be no surprises, and no failure to live up to expectations. No offense intended.

An earlier version of this post used Brad as an example. It talked about how, theoretically but highly unlikely, Brad could be deeply offended by my arguing about Land of the Lost. Ironically, I deleted that version, because I was fearful Brad might feel singled out. How silly is that? No offense intended. I think everyone should be equally fucked.

Gearing Up For America 3.0

The system had grown unstable, and we're lucky it didn't crash under that huge processor drain yesterday. For the next couple months, we'll be running on a patch. America 2.1.9, also known as "LameDuck Vista". There's still some potential for it to cause trouble. Even if it holds together for the required time, the installation process on the new 3.0 version may be intensive. It's bound to have new features, and not everyone will find them a perfect fit. Some worry 3.0 is really just 1.0 with a few new graphics and a number change for PR reasons, but even if that's the case, the classic environment would be better than known security issues of the second edition. Today, however, I find I'm actually looking forward to prospect of running a state-of-the-art machine again, after all those years of fatal errors and incompatibility.

I don't have much time to blog at the moment, as this is the first day this month that I didn't have 2,000 words written by noon. Just the same, I'm finding it hard to stay on task. Why does NaNoWriMo have to be November? If this novel started 4 days later, it'd be telling truly different tale.

Last night I watched the news till nearly an hour past McCain's concession and Obama's victory speech. I then tossed and turned all night, my dreams troubled by thoughts of the 2000 election. With some states having been called after just a few percent of precincts had reported last night, my less-than-conscious mind was unable to accept that we'd safely dodged the bullet and the jack-boot. There were fireworks at least until 3am, and my fitful brain snapped awake with each one as if it were a Flak88, not a celebration.

First thing I did on waking up was google "election results." I needed to know that it wasn't a dream, and that the election wasn't stolen away from the public by some late report or technicality in the wee hours. Twice bitten, three times shy. A few minutes on the net, though, and I was crying tears of joy. The election's over, we know who won, and there's no longer any way Bush can resist the momentum. He will hand over the reigns gracefully, as this public won't accept anything else.

A week ago, I scheduled an adjustment and a professional massage for this morning, knowing that if the election had gone otherwise, I would have needed them. I stopped short of looking up psychiatrists. The receptionist at the chiropractors gushed with me. When I first started going there, I'd answered a suite of questions on their survey (Do you consider your life high-stress? If so, why? What are the major sources of stress in your life?) with "Yes. Bush / Fascism. Election Worries." I think she'd noted it - because with a huge smile as I entered she announced "I bet you're doing well today, too!"

After that, I took a long walk around the very crowded Greenlake, and caught snippets of several dozen conversations, only two of which weren't simultaneously political and hopeful. The last time I'd been there, the conversations were predominantly fiscal and desperate.

A horrible weight has been lifted off my recently-massaged shoulders. Today, at no point did I feel the need to say loudly "The answer to 1984 is 1776" like I had the previous walk. Today, even a sour old curmudgeon like me can have hope. I'd been so terrified ever since the CCMRF stepped on our soil. An administration that has no reservations about sending thousands to their death can't be trusted. A conservative friend Monday night reminded me that the Texas constitution (?) includes a clause letting them succeed from the Union, and he, without noticeable irony, predicted over that night's dinner that that would happen Wednesday morning.


That goes to show there's still a lot of work to do. Bigots have burned our President Elect in effigy, shouted out for his death at rallies, and even got arrested for planning massive killing sprees. California voted to ban gay marriage ...again. Creationists still threaten to undermine our schools and science. The Constitution is in bad shape after numerous Bush attrocities. Our scars are visible and ugly, and we can't just look the other way for 3 or 4 years. I reflect on the Clintons - their first 2 or 3 months in office looked amazing, but then the system ground them down. I believe Obama will resist that, will persevere and bring the change he's promised. I find myself wondering what I can do to help keep us on the new and better path.


I can't stop smiling (not that I'd want to). I haven't been this hopeful for our country since... I don't know when. Sometime pre-9/11 anyway. Maybe never. It feels like a long and debilitating nightmare has finally come to an end. I just want to bask in the sunlight today.

Open Season

In a comment, X (is back!) wrote:

I still find it amusing how we can mock people for their politics, their personal habits, the cars they drive, even the food they eat (lutefisk anyone?), but we can't someone's mock [sic] religion.

I understand that mocking a persons ethnicity, sex, age, orientation or any other innate characteristic about them which is beyond their own control is cruel, but when religious belief like politics, low-rise jeans and driving an obnoxious Hummer or a self-righteous Prius is a voluntary endeavor, I see no reason for it not to be fair game for ridicule.

I keep reflecting on this statement, and, as much as I hate to admit it, he's probably on to something.

The counter-argument is that many people don't choose their religion, it's generally foisted upon them. But the same is true about political parties - it's just that most people step out of their parent's shadow faster on politics than on religion. If you're the sort of sheep who does what you're told, you'll likely maintain your parent's politics and religion for life. If you're a self-thinker, you may step away from either or both. One's a little more likely than the other, but it's only a matter of degree, and a fairly trivial degree as well.

The particularly annoying thing for me is that if I acknowledge there's nothing wrong with mocking someone's religion, I pretty much have to admit there's nothing wrong with someone mocking me about being vegetarian.

I know that's a touchy spot for me - if I say it's okay, I'm pretty much consigning myself to never-ending arguments. Part of why I rarely watch TV (other than the fact that most network programming rots your brain) is the ceaseless parade of commercials for restaurants, grocery stores, and meat products. It pisses me off - having dead carcass waved in my face, people telling me that I'm abnormal for not eating what they do.

But I generally don't go off about it, because I generally hold myself to the standard that it's not polite or proper to assail someone about their dietary choices. A person's really got to get my goat in order for me to be provoked into responding about my vegetarianism and their carnivorosity. Lutefisk gets my goat - mostly 'cause I think the only critter that could survive on that lye-soaked fish-flavored jello is the same sort of critter that can survive on a diet of tin-cans and garbage. Dear friends insisting that broccoli screams, or that since I must kill microbes therefore I shouldn't feel guilt about killing anything, gets my goat. My mother-in-law insisting that lobster is a vegetable gets my goat. Frankly, I ain't got much goat left.

So, yeah, I'm on the verge of agreeing that there's nothing wrong with mocking anyone's religion. But religion is much further down the continuum then diet is, so if I move the line past religion, it has to hop past diet and several other issues as well.

Seth Godin recently drew parallels involving religion, technology and fashion. I think I'll take him out of context:

People will recommend something if adoption improves their lives.

Fax machines? Life is better for me if you have one.

Fashion? Life is better for me if I'm not the only one wearing this.

Religious sect? Life is better for me if I'm not the only one in the building.

Vegetarian? Life is better for me if my friends and I can eat the same meals, and blog from the same viewpoint. By that logic, I should be actively recruiting.

To be crystal clear - it's not that I'm afraid you're going to start mocking my vegetarianism. IMHO, that happens every time someone posts a picture of the bunny they killed as a child, or a video that uses hamburgers and bratwurst to explain WW2. You may not mean to insult, tease, or deride me, you may not mean to not-so-subtly imply there's something wrong with me because I don't eat meat, but it's sometimes hard for me to not interpret your actions as doing so. It gets my dander up.

I just know that if I acknowledge it's okay for you (and thus, me) to mock someone's religion, then that means it's also okay for you to mock me about vegetarianism, and thus okay for me to mock you about your meat eating. If it's okay for Dawkins' to call all Christians "Delusional" than it's okay for me to say equally insulting things about meat eaters.

I don't want to go there. I've been a vegetarian for a decade and a half. During that time, I've never told someone else they shouldn't eat meat. I've never tried to convert someone. I don't want to be a radical in-your-face vegetarian, many of the PETA crowd take it way too far.

But at the same time, most meat eaters haven't a clue that they are constantly being radical in-your-face meat eaters, unintentionally insulting and affronting myself and my wife on an almost daily basis. Many a time has someone that knew I was a vegetarian said "you sure you don't want some of this? It's really good!" On more than one occasion people have tried to trick me into eating meat "for my own good", by lying about ingredients. While I've gone off on the second group, I contemptuously tolerate the first.

I've been a smug and silent self-righteous ass, telling myself I'm better than you, because I tolerate your carnivorous boorishness. I've been wallowing in my imagined glory for being above the crass tactics of the rest of society. All that silent contempt has been "justified" by my defining the line of what sort of criticism is proper and fair far to one side, when in reality, it's quite possibly far to the opposite end of the continuum. That dickish self-righteousness has got to stop. On the theoretical level, at least, I'd generally rather be honest than polite. As mentioned a few dozen posts ago, Integrity has negative connotations I'd never understood.

If I go there, it's like I'm declaring "open season" on all the crap I've been grudgingly tolerating, and by extension declaring "open season" on all my idiosyncracies that I wish people would just quietly tolerate. If I go there, I'll be in danger of becoming a militant vegetarian, and that's not gonna be much fun. I'm bitter and cynical enough as is, last thing I need is Carte Blanche to be a vocal asshole about 2 or 3 more topics than I already am.

On the other hand, I'm constantly pissed off about "minor" things that are part of everyday life, and I don't have an outlet to vent that anger. I suspect that bottled frustration is part of what gets me into flame wars on gaming forums and has me stubbornly defending positions that I don't really support in the comment threads of LHC posts. I'm bugged about one thing, and transferring that negative energy to other topics. That's not very healthy or honest.

It's time to think outside the box. I've got an anger management issue, and it's got a few possible solutions:

1. I could just start mocking everyone for everything, and take life a lot less seriously. From time to time, I'll still get upset, but when that happens I can try to diffuse it via humor.
   
2. I could focus on insulting instead of mocking, and just be a petty and hurtful dick. Honestly, scathing cynicism comes more naturally to me than humor does, so this may be the way to go.
   
3. I could ditch the internet entirely. My anger doesn't manifest in my personal life. I could gamble that the net is causing it, instead of being how I vent it off. There's a danger that this could result in me becoming abusive in-person, though, as I used to have temper issues as an adolescent. I'm not yet willing to take that risk.
   
4. I could seek serious psychiatric help. I don't feel that I need it, but maybe I'm in denial.
5. I could self-medicate. Next round's on me.
   
6. I could give up my principles, start eating meat again, learn to drive, support a binary political party, and become a born-again something-something-mainstream, in hopes that this would result in me feeling somehow less persecuted or frustrated.
7. I could go the opposite direction. I could intentionally become an animal-rescuing, arms-stockpiling, orgy-coordinating, treason-fomenting, religion-subverting, vegetable-worshiping, faith-healing, self-imagined messianic half-alien nutjob and establish a commune on an abandoned oil derrick and start producing my own postage stamps for the Sovereign Nation of Rolfelandia.
   
8. I could just delete this post instead of hitting the "publish" button, and forget I ever brought the subject up. That's probably the safest route.
9. I could go ahead and publish, then later delete this post and deny it ever existed, gaslighting anyone who ever called me on it. Naw, that's crazy talk. I'd never do that.
   
10. I could save this post as a draft, not publish it, and know there's a chance that Jake or X will one day stumble across it anyway. If they ever do so, then I can delete it and gaslight just them. That seems much more reasonable.
    

I'm probably gonna try "solution" number 1, and see where that goes. Wish me luck and/or mock me. I may or may not pretend I don't care, and/or mock you back.

Weekend at Bernies (of Innsmouth)

Damn am I ever glad to be home.

Do yourself a favor and stay away from Long Beach, Washington. The only difference between the small towns on the Long Beach Peninsula (especially Ocean Park) and those invented by Lovecraft is that Innsmouth didn't have a tilt-a-whirl.

Being a vegetarian in a small town is a harrowing challenge, so we prepared by googling restaurants in advance of our arrival, and coming armed with a GPS so we could find the culinary safe harbors.

For the life of me, I can't now find the webpage that had falsely indicated the quality of their fare, but I can only assume we got the names of restaurants crossed. I took a second sip of the murky stratified gelatin they called iced tea at "Bernie's Place", just to confirm for myself that it really was as bad as I'd just tasted. I've had insect repellent that more palatable. My regimen of injected antibiotics begins tomorrow. Here's my woefully inadequate attempt at describing the food: it looked like tater-tots, but when you broke it open, melted wax slowly oozed out.

I'm sure the same thing would have happened had the waitress's ancient head been similarly cracked open during our meal. No doubt the alligator man on display down the road at Marsh's Museum was a close blood relative of hers. I tried and failed this morning to make a Mii of our waitress - I could get the square jaw, the horribly deep wrinkles, the sickly yellowed complexion and the bulging froglike eyes set out at the distant perimeters of her noseless face, but I just couldn't find a way using the Wiis limited options to give her the bandages, vericose veins, gill slits and webbed fingers that her real-life counterpart had.

Fearful of the genetic damage done by two sips of sludge and a quarter of a plate of tater wax, we left in a hurry (tipping the endangered species in spite of our better judgment) and rushed south down the peninsula looking for beverages bottled far from the local water supply.

Given that Cthuluoid context, it's not the least bit surprising (though still every bit as sorrowful) that one of my dear friends went certifiably insane while we were there, and now clearly needs significant psychiatric counseling.

Forgiveness

study after study shows that one of the keys to longevity and good health is to develop a habit of gratitude and let go of past hurts.

Sappy as heck, and therefore uncool, but it's got some interesting ideas on how to stop being motivated by pain. I'm particularly fond of step #9: Tell The Story From The Other Person's Perspective. Not bad, as far as unsolicited free advice goes.

AWPC: Do you like Bowling? (NSFW)

A buddies anecdote about a Black Crowes concert reminded me of this workplace conversation I overheard back at distro:

Sales Manager: Welcome to the team. Here's you desk. Water cooler's down the hall. I'm sure you'll fit in fine.
...By the way, do you like Bowling?

New Sales Guy: Eh, it's okay. I haven't really played since high school, but I'll try anything once.

Sales Manager: Well that's good, cause we have a office bowling league on Monday nights.
...Do you like softball?

New Sales Guy: Like I said, haven't played since school, but I'll try anything once.

Sales Manager: Great, cause we have another league. We play softball against other companies on Tuesdays.
...How about Tennis?

New Sales Guy: Again, I'll try anything once.

Sales Manager: Great. We do mixed doubles with accounting on Wednesdays after work.
...How about anal sex? Do you like taking it up the ass?

New Sales Guy: Umm... Can you just forget what I said earlier?

Sales Manager: Guess you're not gonna enjoy Thursdays much, then.

I was always amazed that ol' workplace never got any lawsuits.



I stuck a NSFW label on this - guess I need some obligatory nudity.

photo source

Lessons. Guilt. Apologies. Scar Tissue. Et Cetera.

Long post about uncomfortable emotional stuff. Feel free to ignore this, and skip to fun stuff like dreams and floating tattooed boobies.

---

Back in 7th - 10th grade, I had this friend named Joey. I have a little anecdote about a specific interaction with Joey which was pivotal to my development. As I remember it, one day Joey got up the nerve to let me know:

• that I was just generally a violent jerk,
• that I had the annoying habit of taking out my aggressions on close buddies,
• and that said close buddies were not the reason I was angry at the world, so why the heck didn't I ever take out my aggression on the idiots who deserved it, instead of him?

This gave me reason to pause and reconsider who I was. So inspired, I let go of his shirt collar and did a little soul-searching.

---

Outwardly, I looked like a hippy. I claimed to be growing my hair for peace (the truth was I just distrusted barbers), yet I was anything but peaceful in my interactions with those whom I considered friends. While I'd been in remarkably few fights, it was because I was a bit scrawny and a late-bloomer. Well, that and because my enemies were all on the football team, and therefore likely to crush with both numbers and girth. Powerless to affect them, I lashed out at those whom I respected. It's really weird - I'm far more critical of dear friends than I am of total strangers, and I find it easier to tell a friend off than to say the same to someone I despise.

That moment radically altered the man I grew up to be. I still sometimes lose my cool, but I haven't laid a hand on a friend or loved-one since. (Well, at least not intentionally - other bloggers here can attest to some incidents with frisbees and chairs in 11th and 12th grade, but those wounds were never inflicted in anger.) Point being, I was absolutely in danger (though it would have been a long way off) of being a wife-beater or the sort of fool who murders in the heat of the moment and only later realizes what he's done. Joey's comments made me face that horrible ogre inside me, master it, conquer it, and become a better man.

---

I feel that when someone's being an idiot, the worst you can do is silently tolerate it. Doing so merely perpetuates their cycles and tendencies. Distancing yourself from them rarely helps either, not unless you clearly spell out why you're leaving first. The lessons of my life have taught me that this is doubly true for friends.

---

What I learned about myself after that incident with Joey, was that:

• While I get really angry in the moment - I mean really frighteningly rage driven sometimes - I cool off quickly once I've vented, and I tend to forgive everything and nearly anything over time.
• I always know, no matter the situation, that if I can make it through the next five minutes without violence, I won't feel the need to commit violence an hour from now.
• If I speak my mind today about the thing that irked me, tomorrow I probably won't even be angry about whatever is pissing me off right now.
• However, if I sit silent, and bottle it up, I'll carry that anger forever. It seems my only mechanism for letting go of that which bothers me is to get confrontational about it with the person who ticked me off.

Which pretty much means that if I'm calling you a jerk, it's 'cause I value you enough that I can be open about how angry you made me. It also means that in the process of venting at you I'm simultaneously getting over it, and I probably won't hold anything against you on the morrow. Both of those points sound like total bullshit. I would never blame anyone for being skeptical in regards to them, as they don't seem to match how the majority of society approaches confrontation and problem-solving.

---

Honestly, there are only three people I hold grudges against. Two are former bosses from long ago, whom I never really found the courage to tell-off in the way they deserved. The third is someone who actively tried to destroy my life on multiple occasions, then stalked me when that didn't work. If those descriptions don't match our collective back-story, you can rest assured that I am holding nothing against you.

Three enemies, that's it. Everyone else resides in the neutral or friend column. If we've ever been a friend, I still consider you such, even if we haven't spoke in years. (Unless you're one of three mentioned previously, which I reiterate because one them was definitely a friend before she went psycho.) Heck, I don't even hate my ex-wife. I'm pretty sure she cheated on me, and that fucking sucks, but the emotions there are more pity and sadness, not anger any more.

---

Most of you reading this, assuming you believe any of it, are probably let down because I've never yelled at you - so therefore by the logic above I must not consider you a friend. That'd be incorrect. I have half a dozen specific topics that hot-button me like nothing else. It's far more likely you've just never pissed me off, because we've never discussed those 6-or-so issues about which I am most likely to fly into a rage.

---

That's me, explained and largely unshielded. Do with it what you will.

---

Recently, a friend hit one of my half-dozen or so exposed nerves. I sat quiet on it for a while, but it was getting worse from being bottled up, so eventually I said something. More that that, I went off on him. I apparently came off a lot harsher than I thought I had, which is sadly pretty common for on-line communication.

The next day, I was no longer the least bit annoyed. I pretty much forgot the email had ever been sent. A few weeks later, he replied, and made it clear that I had permanently wounded our friendship. What he sent could be interpreted (though I'm not sure if it was meant to be) as a formal declaration of intent to end the friendship. I hope not, and I'm probably just being paranoid, but last night I couldn't sleep because of it all. I sent an apology, but I wouldn't blame him at all if he just deleted it unread.

I've only made a mistake like this once before. While the relationship threatened by that mistake long-ago recovered, I've never understood how it survived. I've just been thankful that it did.

---

For a long while I just avoided the internet to make sure this couldn't happen again. Avoiding the internet in today's society is like opting into the "have-not" category. It's not really a realistic option. I could easily go back to self-imposed hermitage, but I feel that would be unhealthy. ...and it would annoy Sarah.

---

I'm unclear how to proceed. Any advice?

Anaheim blues, point-by-point

• We recently "celebrated" our 5-year wedding anniversary - it was December 30th.
  
• I use quotation marks, because we didn't really do anything for it. We'd exceeded our budget in November and December by... well, more than we should have... and we had a lot coming up.
  
• For example, this week, Sarah is in Disney, for this big work convention. In fact, in just a few minutes, she'll be taking this uber certification exam that will lead directly to a raise and the opening of numerous doors in her already rocketing career.
  
• The company shall reimburse her for all reasonable expenses. We still needed to have the money in the account for her to eat at Disney though, since reimbursement takes at least a week.
• As a result, the anniversary celebration was postponed until later this month. Neither of us were happy with this, but the certification is too important to skip.
  
• Why a medical diagnostic coding seminar would be hosted in the Magic Kingdom, I do not understand, but that's beside the point.
  
• Even more boggling, is why UW Physicians Group considers the price of meals at Disney to be a "reasonable expense". She called last night to say that she was eating in a giant pirate ship rigged with christmas-tree lights.
  
• Despite a dozen people from her company attending, they put her alone in a two-bed suite with a waterfall right outside her window. How can any of this be cost effective?
• Don't get me wrong, she's well worth such expenses, but most of her coworkers aren't.
  
• This is not the first time we've ever been apart overnight.
  
• I've had multiple work trips of my own over the years, attending GTS (the Game Manufacturer's Association Trade Show), and once judging Grand Prix: Phoenix.
• Wow. Do not confuse GTS with GTS. Trippy.
  
• I've never been the one who had to stay home alone. This is new to me.
  
• When you're at a big event, there's so much going on (and so much to think about) you don't have time to get homesick.
  
• When you're home alone, the emptiness is quite noticeable. You find yourself doing strange things you'd never normally consider.
• I wrote up a dozen new Knacks for my Scion RPG campaign. This was not a strange thing - it was a bit prolific and excessive, but it was also a low-priority task that I'd been putting off for weeks.
  
• Then I popped over to the white-wolf forums to post said knacks, and got distracted by contributing to a couple threads. Again, fairly typical.
  
• Before I knew it, I found myself in a flame-war.
  
• This was a strange thing. Some dork was trying to pull a fast one on his GM, and it offended me. I rarely let my posts devolve into such pettiness, yet last night I embraced it as a way of ignoring the disruption to my regular schedule.
• I'm usually the voice of reason in such situations, making a single post that summarizes the salient and non-inflamatory points of each view, coupled with "Can't we all just get along?"
  
• Instead of going to bed at my usual 10 pm, I sat at the smoking computer till 11:30.
• Then I decided it was a good time to start watching the extended edition of The Two Towers.
  
• I'd watched the whole LotR trilogy over a dozen times before - always with Sarah. I guess it's the visual equivalent of comfort food.
  
• It's also really damn long, and I was already up way past my bedtime.
• Instead of kicking the cats out of the room as we usually do, I let them lay on the bed till 4 am.
  
• They did that annoying "knead you with my claws" thing (Sarah calls it pitty-patty) and I didn't even complain.
  
• Then I got up at 7:30 am, because, damn it, that's an hour and a half past when my alarm normally goes off.
• I think tonight, I'll just start reading a book at 5 pm. It seems a lot healthier.
• Perhaps I'll reread Carl Hiassen's Team Rodent. Which, by the way, is a very enjoyable book - though I imagine one can either enjoy it, or enjoy a trip to the Magic Kingdom, but not both in the same lifetime.
  

I didn't talk about this with my then-boss

Another life experience worth putting out there mostly to get it behind me: It's the reason I do believe the devil exists. Not as in a personified fiddle-wielding contract writer or an asmodean pitchfork-bearer who tortures the dead. But I have seen evil that exists as a tangible yet inexplicable force.

I know the exact day (I don't know the date, but I remember several harrowing events of that evening) when the ghost, demon or what-have-you gave me cancer. It touched my shoulder. The tumor was first noticed later that week, looking at first like a bee sting.

The doctor I saw that summer about it told me it was a "birthmark that you've just never noticed" and that "unless it starts growing at a rapid pace, there's nothing to do about it".

It took it around 15 years to grow to the size where I felt I had to see another doctor about it. Turns out it was Dermatofibrosarcoma Protuberans, aka DFSP. The cause of this extremely rare form of skin cancer is unknown to the medical and scientific communities, but I know mine started the week I was attacked by a ghost.

Between this photo and the other one you can see the signs of how much they had to cut out of me. I spent 3 months in a "gunfighter sling" unable to move my arm or dress myself.

An apology 8 to 10 years overdue

I gather from our interactions of late that you forgave me for this long ago, but I still feel like an idiot who owes you a public apology for my sins and social affronts. Here it is.

Kris, I'm sorry I went off on you. I'm sure you know the time I'm talking about, because you and I haven't really exchanged an email or an IM since then. You did nothing wrong. I was in the wrong. It was all me. I inferred meaning that wasn't there, because I had a sore spot I was in denial about. I was in a bad place. I knew my (first) marriage was doomed to fail, and I was really touchy about it. I didn't know how to cry out for help, so instead I lashed out at one of my dearest friends, without giving you any hints as to why I was being such a reactionary dick. Then I toughed my way through a couple more years of stupid pointless painful marriage that should have never come to be. I'm sorry that I let my insecurities strain our friendship. I'm sorry that I hurt your feelings. When I look back on those days, I am really embarrassed. I should have known better.

I do know better these days, and I'm happy to say that while I'm still high-strung, I'm not carrying around the same craptastic baggage that I once let ruin my life.

Thank you for not writing me off completely and forever.
Thanks also to Jake for not cutting me out completely in the process of defending you.

Thank you both (and X, and Daved, and our readership) for making me feel welcome to join this blog so I have somewhere to vent all this shit that built up while I was in Albuquerque. You are all a large and active part of my healing process.

AWPC: Scar Tissue

This was from a business trip like 14 or 15 months ago...

Boss: *says something insulting or offensive*

Me: *reacts*

Boss: You just need more "scar tissue". In a few years -

Me: I'm a cancer survivor. I'm a sexual abuse survivor, including one event that could best be described as gang rape. For three years, I was physically beaten every couple of days. I've been threatened at sword point. I've been through a divorce. In fact, twice in my life I've had multi-year relationships end because of women cheating on me. You've been saying this "scar tissue" crap to me for 4 years. You bring it up every time I express any emotion! I am a thin-skinned, emotional individual! And I'm okay with that [*meaning myself*]. Clearly, if any more scar tissue was ever going to develop here, it already would have! No amount of additional suffering that the universe can pile on me is ever going to make me magically transform into a calm, even-tempered individual! And it fucking offends me every time you tell me it should!

Boss: I'm sorry. I didn't know. Every abuse survivor I've ever known has had a more [gruff? coarse? *I don't remember his exact word*] exterior. Usually they don't rile so easily, or they -

Me: Maybe you've known more people like me than you think, but those people just didn't feel the details of their life was any of your damn business! Have you thought of that?

Cab-driver: Um... we're almost to your hotel.