Sea and Sky and Land (original) (raw)

"You're using the old version of the Friends page — switch to the new one."

NO. FUCKING. CHANCE.

A while back, I used to visit Boston fairly regularly. I found a hotel I really liked (the Residence Inn in Cambridge, due to being near a bunch of things and having rather a lot of room), and would stay there. I'd usually take Friday off from work, sleep a little late, and head up by Amtrak. Get to South Station, get the Red Line (which I often had the majestic fu to have it pull in just as I got there, or a couple minutes, so a very short wait). Get off the Red Line, head to the surface, and walk the block to the Residence Inn. I'd check in, turn, and...

...my friend ardaniel would get off the couch in the lobby, fall in next to me, and we'd walk to the elevators, without a word being said, sometimes just a nod.

The first time was because I was in a towering mood due to problems with the train making me almost an hour and a half late and I didn't want to say anything until I had managed to have a good blasphemy, and I try not to do that in public. The times after that...

...well, it just seemed funny. Especially since I tended to dress up a little for the trip, and I would be wearing my long black coat (it was cold a lot of the time), and so there you have this big guy with a large suitcase checking in politely, and then this woman who'd been sitting there, usually in fatigues or something like that, getting up and falling in next to me without a word being spoken, as if I was an out-of-town hitter and she was my local contact.

(Interestingly, there was at least one suspicious accident I found on a weekend I was visiting Boston and staying there, but I know I wasn't responsible for it.)

This entry was originally posted at http://mephron.dreamwidth.org/818356.html. It has comment count unavailable comment(s) over there if you want to look.

Reading through some stuff on the EPU boards, I came across a comment that, with current events and knowledge I have, now slew me, a comment from one of the Brits that show on the forum, describing the Prime Minister of the UK as:

"D(avid) C(ameron), England's leading exporter of shiny forehead"

It's just such an apt comparitive.

The old saying goes that the sincerest form of flattery is imitation. I've been known to do some of that in a couple forms.

Firstly, fanfic: I've done some fanfic for various things, and then I write for a fanfic group.

Then I do filk. Filk, for those that don't know, is taking a song, and then doing a modification of it, usually with a SF or fantasy or techie flair to it. One I did thirteen years ago, based on the White Wolf World of Darkness universe, is located here, where I pulled it off of Usenet so I wouldn't lose it. It is notable in that it got me one of my first really angry emails. (Someone found the idea of conflating the Brujah clan from the old World of Darkness with the Village People to be personally insulting, to which, if I remember correctly, my reply was "perhaps you should lie down for a while.")

Another one, which I kind of wish I had and kind of wish I did, was done to Billy Joel's "The Entertainer", and was about tech support, which I was doing at the time.

A third, which was based on a particular page of the webcomic Looking For Group is here, if you want to see it. It uses "Never Gonna Give You Up". You have been warned.

Earlier this week I wrote another one, to XTC's "Dear God", addressed to Speaker of the House John Boehner, about HR.3, and I kept it private because honestly, I wasn't sure whether or not it actually trivialized something that actually enraged me, and a lot of people who would be directly affected by it were expressing the righteous anger it deserved in ways that did not involve monkeying around with song lyrics.

So I guess that sometimes the sincerest form of support is to just quietly agree with the people who are doing it better than you, and knowing when you might fail to do good by mocking the bad.

I have ridden Icarus and seen his rise and fall.

I used to work for a bank. (full disclosure: I was laid off.) I watched it rise, and rise, in the stock market.

I was there, watching, as a financial Daedelus built epic economic devices for Minoan stockholders, hoping to contain a Minotaur made of corrupt practices.

I was there when a Theseus entered the labyrinth and brought it to light, and I watched as the Icarus-like flight of the stock fell, then plummeted, as the stock options I had would cost money to get rid of.

I watched it crash.

And I watched as Zeus picked it up and said, "Here, boy, have a TARP, get yourself together".

And then they let me go, and I fell as well.

In conclusion: the old myths were a lot better.

This was inspired by skylanth and commentary by takhys, so all honor to those worthies.

What makes a problem a 'first world problem'? I submit, as takhys put it in Skylanth's repost, that at the core, a problem is a problem, no matter where it happens. Using that term 'first world' just sets up these mental/conceptual barriers between us. My last LJ Idol post - the one on 'brouhaha' - expressed (and not as well as I had wished) my displeasure that these barriers exist in ways that cause anger when the barrier is transgressed in ways that give offense (even if none is offered).

We all have problems. We all have troubles. We all have things happen that displease us.

Maybe if we just accepted that the person over there has their versions of the same problems we do, the same troubles, and we are all locked inside out own skulls so that we don't think it could be the same for anyone else - and yes, yes, I am guilty of this, day after day, I'm not claiming to be a paragon - if we tried just a little more to reach out and take a moment and think about the person's problems, be they across the street or across the world or somewhere between...

...if we thought more about being in their shoes...

....maybe there wouldn't be so many problems that we would need to divide them up into categories like "first world problems".

Things I have done so far today since 1 AM:

  1. written the Wordpress to Twitter through Twitter Tools tutorial based on my presentation

  2. outline the Wordpress to Facebook through Wordbooker tutorial, also based on my presentation

  3. Started to play with ComicPress in order to figure out how to make it work, for when some people I know may start webcomics

  4. Talked to my parents (go go gadget time difference), both of whom were pleased that I had given the presentation, asked me questions about the tutorials, asked how I could monetize them (told them "not really well, but it gets my name out there"), and discussed the holidays a little.

  5. realized that I may in fact need to sleep at some point

But for now I'm poking around with ComicPress and seeing how it works. It's pretty elegant in a lot of ways, but I see some things I don't understand and want to...

...huh, looks like I have a new obsession.

Also may need to actually find a buy a Power Glove, and then kick my Photoshop skills up, because I have an image in my head and I think it's time for me to learn to get them out. (No, this has nothing at all to do with webcomics.)

"If a thing isn't worth saying, you sing it." - Pierre Beaumarchais (1732 - 1799)

“Choose a track. It doesn’t matter what it is – just that it matters to you. Stick it on, and turn it up. Close your eyes and listen hard. Fogus. Just feel the song. Let it sweep over you. Breathe it in. Let it possess you. And when you can feel it filling every single cell in your body… just ride it as long as you can.” -- David Kohl, as written by Kieron Gillen, "Phonogram: The Singles Club #7"

( On a method of transport.Collapse )

"That's just paranoia. Everyone has that." - Slartibartfast, as written by Douglas Adams.

For a long time, I have had trouble living in the present.

I've lived in the future, thinking about what if, what if, what if. What if I did this, if I did that, if I did the other thing. Fretting, worrying, examining. And every time, I find I have overthought the situation, and managed to make it really screwed up. It seems that the times I just trust my instincts, take the step without looking at it from every possible angle, are the times things work. My move to Seattle, for all the planning that happened... all the planning happened after I made the decision. Things happened, and I just... decided to it. The hell with it.

But worse is living in the past. What did I do wrong. What did I screw up. Why did I do X instead of Y. It's tied me up in knots for years, and years, and years, about things. Most of them have been affairs of the heart, you see. I suffer from trouble letting go. (But at least I recognize it, which I suppose is a positive thing in some ways.) There is a woman who told me I was so out of control she never wanted to see me again. Another one is my friend again, but it took a lot of time. There's currently one there and I'm pretty sure it was neither of us, but just the way life goes, that cause things to not work out.

But sometimes I go back and monday-morning quarterback things that other people would/should think nothing of. Was that comment supposed to be snide? Was that actually flirting with me and I just don't get it? (I had a moment earlier today that was entirely overthinking a social interaction, and I knew it, and yet I kept going.)

I'm trying to live in the present a bit more, but it's harder than you think. It's harder to think, than to pre-think, or to have afterthoughts.

Sometimes we use the term to describe something which exists, and sometimes... something that doesn't exist.

It can be a thing which people don't want to talk about despite its terrible presence: the illness of a loved one, an addiction, a mistake which has left a terrible mark. The words you said that can't be taken back but that for a time are ignored so that there can be at least some kind of social functioning.

I never really loved you
It can be the thing that is never spoken of, always put out of mind, because to think of it can be too painful for people to bring up, to discuss and reconcile.
I'm sorry about the miscarriage
It can be the brief conversation where you said something you knew, you knew would hurt and make everyone around uncomfortable because someone mentioned the elephant and you wanted them to not mention it anymore, and just to stop bothering you with it.
"when are you going to settle down and find a nice girl" "i did she's taken maybe my next incarnation will have someone in it for me"

Sometimes the thing that's there and the thing that's not there are the same thing, and it all depends on who's looking at it.

It doesn't matter. The point of it is that it hurts, and you don't want it to come out, because it's a private pain.

This one strikes near and dear to my heart. Because I am a Star Wars fan from a long long time ago... and also I have run the Star Wars RPG since it came out.

( Some RPG fu shows up here.Collapse )

Last night my roommates and I sat down and watched the first three episodes of the DVD release of the show Max Headroom. It was short-lived (its second season going up against a little show known as Miami Vice…) but brilliant and in its way subversive.

( Read the rest of this entry »Collapse )

Originally published at Geoff Depew (dot com). Please leave any comments there.