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08-31-00 are you pondering what I'm pondering?
08-29-00 mightier than the sword
08-28-00 deliver me from Swedish furniture
08-24-00 two words to rub together
08-22-00 day of the dead
08-20-00 seeing the world
08-17-00 Arisu?
08-16-00 whatever happened to...
08-15-00 someplace like home
08-13-00 pardon my abstraction
08-09-00 be alert for more messages
older entries...
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are you pondering what I'm pondering? |
| 08-31-00 |
I can't resist personality tests. The one at The Spark says I'm a Mastermind...
 "You can be silent and withdrawn, but behind your reserved exterior lies an active mind that allows you to analyze situations and come up with creative, unexpected solutions. Normal people call this "scheming." Don't learn German."
Heh.
The Onion interviews Harlan Ellison. As much as I don't like the guy, he's a riot, and he makes some points that chime right in with what I've been saying:
With the Internet, the greatest disseminator of bad data and bad information the universe has ever known, it's become impossible to trust any news from any source at all, because it's all filtered through this crazy yenta gossip line. It's impossible to know anything.
But what really struck me was the idea that we know "more and more about less and less as the years go by." I noticed years ago that this was true in DragonRealms, where systems are so complex that we were forced to specialize. I didn't have the whole magic system in my head, but I knew where to look for things ― and I was totally lost in something like combat or commodities or favors or experience absorption, to the point where half the time I couldn't answer players' questions about them.
This is not necessarily a bad thing, as long as one is aware of it and knows how to deal with it.
On the other hand, I tend to think divergently and I'm not terrible at general trivia games. ;) I think anyone who is interested in things (like Dr. Worm) and reads a lot is not going to be totally lost.
To answer Suz's question, "Would you rather have a million dollars that you could spend only on yourself, or fifty thousand that you could spend on whatever or whoever you wanted?" ― I would be devious about it.
If I chose the latter, I'd pay off my debts, get new but inexpensive car and furniture, some nice but not too extravagant gifts for family and friends, and donate the rest to the House. However, if I took the million dollars for myself, all my income for the rest of my life, including the interest earned on the million bucks, would be available to spend on others. Wouldn't that confuse the heck out of the IRS? ;)
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mightier than the sword |
| 08-29-00 |
...do not dip your pen to injure a man.
Being who I am, I tend to take that pretty seriously. For me it's very much along the same lines as "do you kiss your mother with that mouth?" Kai-Imakhu Nakht calls it "purity of speech." If I write something full of anger or hate or dishonesty, then everything I write is tainted by it. If I keep my proverbial pen "clean" though, then everything I write has more value, more virtue, and more power.
(That's not an entirely mystical idea. When you read a message board or newsgroup, are you more likely to pay attention to those who keep a cool head and make their points eloquently, or those that give in to ranting and name-calling and LOTS OF EXCLAMATION POINTS!!!!!!!!?)
To put it another way: a pen doesn't write well if you drag it through the dirt first.
Broadcast not your words to others, nor join one who bares his heart. Better is one whose speech is in his belly than he who tells it to cause harm.
Of all the authors of ancient times, Amenope is my favorite. He's all about honesty, thoughtfulness, and knowing when to keep one's mouth shut.
But he never said it was easy.
There is a difference between law and rightness. Look at etoy.com or chunkymunky.com for example; they did nothing wrong but law worked against them.
This is not to say that law is bad, or that lawyers are bad, or that our judicial system is bad. This is just one of those problems of human nature that we're stuck with for all time. Everyone wants the freedom to do whatever they choose, and they also want protection from what everyone else chooses to do. Should I be allowed to build a wall on my land high enough to block the sun on my neighbor's garden?
Ever taken apart your keyboard hoping to clean out some of the nasty fuzzy stuff in it, and had trouble putting back the enter or spacebar keys, and been afraid that you broke the darned thing? I just did that.
I wonder if there's a word for the detritus that gets stuck inside computer keyboards. I wonder if that word is "detritus."
A digression: on the type test, I came out as a Brain, and my dream girl is an Intellect. Heh.
And speaking of goobers, I'm not really into watching sports at all. Playing is more fun, though I'm not good at much (see above paragraph). But if Iron Chef counts as a sport, then maybe I'm a fan...
 A new perspective on the star vs. flower debate, brought to us by someone on TheAncientVine: it's a magic wand.
It was a... let's call it "speculative" post, in a discussion about whether there were faeries in ancient Egypt. The idea was that we still see echoes of Seshat in Cinderella's Fairy Godmother, Pinnochio's fairy, etc.
I don't see "Mom" in those characters in any way; the idea is not much more than silly to me. But if you just visually compare the two symbols and wildly speculate, while knowing some things about Seshat and nothing at all about the history of magic wands, then you start to wonder where the idea for that wand came from.
Seshat doesn't hold the thingamabob-with-the-pointy-whatsit-on-the-end in her hand, she wears it on her head. But she does hold a palm branch in her hand...
Bah. This is how rumors get started. :P
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deliver me from Swedish furniture |
| 08-28-00 |
Field Museum of Natural History... not Ikea. |
Nevermind that we needed to save money and prepare to move, Steph and I took off to Chicago for the weekend. Visited the Field Museum (Sorry Mom, but I still haven't been to the Art Institute yet. One of these days!), celebrated our spiritual leader's shiny new graduate degree, had good Chicago food and visited the modor of all furniture stores.
Approaching Ikea is a little like driving up to the Disney World entrance. Walking through it is like playing The Sims, except noobdy catches on fire. The idea of a furniture store three stories tall, with two restaurants and a full complement of Swedish vending machines with Swedish chocolate and Swedish soda, special escalators for shopping carts... not to mention lots of very stylish but cheap furniture and other stuff. I was tempted by no less than three styles of glass vases which would have made really cool fishie homes, including one conical thing on an iron stand. Might have to order it through the catalog along with the futon mattress I might be going for.
I have fish envy now. Donna has three young Bala sharks. They'll require really big tanks when they get older, but they're cute and playful little suckers now. If I get more fish though, I promise not to name any of them "Dirk Diggler." :P
The Millenium Peace Summit is now underway ― without the Dalai Lama or the Nisut Hekatawy I (AUS). To the 37 people who signed the petition, thanks for the support. To the Chinese government and the organizers of the summit, I just shake my head and wonder what your motives are.
God not only surfs the web, but chortles at Jeff's Stargate comments. :)
I just can't listen to track 2 of the Half-Life score without hearing that voice on the tram welcoming me (or Gordon Freeman) to the Black Mesa Research Facility and reminding me to keep my limbs inside the vehicle at all times. It's a haunting scene, building up anticipation for the scary stuff that awaits... and that voice has an incongruously sexual appeal.
I know... I'm a geek.
Advantages of moving in to the new place:
- No more walking half a mile from the closest available parking spot to my door. No more landscapers dumping big piles of mulch in the few remaining parking spaces. No parking tickets for blocking access to trees which must remain clear in case of an emergency.
- No more secondhand smoke if the neighbors light up. No more hearing the lady behind me yell at her kids, unless this one uses a megaphone.
- I can get an ashiko and play it at two AM.
- Two words: lower rent.
- With Russ as the only OSGM remaining at Mooville Apartments, it would take a much bigger bomb to wipe us all out. But then, Russ is officially a full-blown developer... does he still count?
- I get to adopt (sort of) a cat and don't have to clean the litterbox.
- I get to adopt (sort of) a DVD player and don't have to put it on my credit card.
- Yard. Deck. Hibachi, here we come! Washing cars with a garden hose. Making soap and paper and messes.
- Two-car garage, big yard. Is it just me, or does this just scream "giant tesla coil?"
- Being able to eat with my friends without going out every night. While I kinda like living alone, eating alone is a drag, and I don't do it right. Besides, now that I've seen the Iron Chef, I want to have a Popcorn Battle sometime. (I'm not going to take on either Steph or Jeff at chili.)
- Makes it easier to kill Steph and Jeff in their sleep.
- Motivation to not leave dishes in the sink for months at a time.
- Three gamers + three computers + one house + one weekend = 48-hour lan party.
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two words to rub together |
| 08-24-00 |
Hmmm. While we (or at least Steph) are on the subject of poetry, I'm a sucker for Emily Dickinson. Figures, doesn't it? She has that wonky sense of humor, which I don't think is morbid at all, but maybe that's just me. Some of my favorites: In A Library, The Chariot, Lost.
I'm no poet myself. I tried. I started to write a poem for "Mom" but I got so wrapped up in all the possible choices of words and phrases that it choked on itself. So I tried to follow a strict syllabic pattern, and of course after the first six lines or so I couldn't think of anything that fit it. So I threw that out and wrote more naturally, without even trying to make it a poem ― and it worked fine.
Unlike Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz, I won't strap anyone into a Poetry Appreciation Chair and forcefully subject them to my verse. (I get my thrills forcefully subjecting my coworkers to Finnish folk music. Bwahahaha.) But if you really want to read it, it's here.
Don't say I didn't warn you. Oh, and I wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't look right in Netscape either.
We are now completely committed to moving into the new place. The cash ball has been thrown, and I spoke to the capitalist running dogs at Mooville Apartments about breaking the lease. After learning that they have nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety eight ways of screwing me over and somebody in the back room figuring out more, I talked it over with Steph and Jeff, who rock. They're going to save me from having to pay rent on two places simultaneously. For now, I lose my deposit, pay back the lease renewal "bonus", and save up for a cash ball of my own ― the big ugly bill that Mooville Apartments will send my way when someone moves in to my old place. When that's over I start paying rent on the house and all three of us will be happier with our substantially reduced rents.
Not that we're moving into the place we thought we were moving into. That got switched today, in a bizarre turn of events that worked out fine for all involved. We get a nicer-looking place at the end of the street, with a bigger yard, which costs $15 less. It has three bedrooms rather than four, but a nice big den we can divide for our nefarious purposes. And the family moving in today actually has a place to move into, instead of being stuck with a hotel and a late fee on their rental truck. And the landlady owes us a favor and $15. Heh.
 A couple of people have asked me about the scarab I've been sporting since returning from the retreat. The lady at Bread Company thought it was a turtle and said she was waiting for a head and legs to poke out. Heh. A coworker asked about it, and we had one of those conversations that makes it clear who does or doesn't read your website. :) (Can't say I blame him; with Blogger making it easy for so many Mooville folks and friends to get in on this thing, I don't keep up with everyone either.)
Anyway. He asked if my interest in Egyptian Stuff (TM) was "a pagan thing" and I gave him a tongue-in-cheek answer that might have sounded differently than it was meant. Out of fairness I'll try and do better here. If you're not interested in that, please skip the rest of this entry. :)
While the Open Directory Project among others might classify Kemetic Orthdoxy as"pagan", its own members and clergy don't. Nor would, I think, most people who do call themselves pagans.
Not to put too much value on generalization, but pagans tend to have a sort of flexible framework in common whether they're worshipping Ra, the Virgin Mary, or Susanowo, while Kemetic Orthodoxy, Catholicism, and Shinto are clearly distinct, unique religions. Praying to Mary does not make one Catholic, any more than praying to Ra makes one Kemetic.
And I don't have a problem with that at all. The reason the world has more than one religion in the first place is because there isn't one that suits absolutely everybody.
What does get my goat is those 5% of the people which make 95% of the trouble. Every group has them, whether you're talking about religions or schools or workplaces or highways or massively multiplayer games. With pagans, that trouble has to do with the dissemination of bad information, and you know what I think of that.
For example. There's a person out there who is unable to recommend a single book on Egyptology, but will happily tell you that Bast is the goddess of lesbians, marijuana and erotic dancing. If he just decided to believe this on his own, that would be one thing ― but he goes and passes it off as if it were historical fact.
The problem I have with that is when children or beginners look for information, they run into this kind of thing. Not knowing any better, they then take that bad information and share it, further perpetuating ignorance. I'm afraid of the possibility that our educational system does not defend students against this ― especially now, when schools are realizing that information is easy to find on the web, they may not be emphasizing that it takes extra work to find good information.
On the other side of the coin, there are some very sharp, highly educated pagans out there with libraries to be envied, who dislike ignorance and lazy scholarship as much as I do (waves to friends Jared and Selene for starters). And there's a vast middle ground of decent people who, while they might not be zealous scholars, at least recognize the value of truth.
So when I toss off a line like "the difference between us and them is we know what we're doing," even if it was meant in jest it's not a fair thing to say. The difference is that we have brought back, to the best of our ability, the state religion of ancient Egypt before it came under Greek influence ― a conservative approach. The pagan approach is generally to borrow, adapt, blend, and syncretize in a fairly creative and dynamic manner, varying from individual to individual and group to group. Neither one is more valid than the other, but they are distinct and separate.
One of the FAQ pages at kemet.org addresses the issue, and if I didn't feel the need to get both the rant and the apology off my chest, I'd have not bothered to write this at all. :)
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day of the dead |
| 08-22-00 |
I know, wrong time of year for the Mexican festival. But on the Kemetic calendar, today was a similar holiday called the Wag Festival.
I took a day off work... because I can. And because I wanted to visit a graveyard and have some time to reflect on it afterwards.
I know a lot of people have this idea that the ancient Egyptians had a morbid obsession with death. A misunderstanding brought about by the fact that it's the tombs that are best preserved and least disturbed, millenia later. If you think about it, dwellings for the living only have to last a lifetime ― but the dead outlive us, so to speak.
 Look at a dollar bill sometime. That guy died a couple hundred years ago and we still see his face every day and honor him several times a year. Is that morbid?
We still build monuments for our dead. Some are large and impressive and attention-getting, others are small and unassuming. Some are made well and are well cared for, while others have an abandoned look to them. But none are truly forgotten.
Many people think of graveyeards as creepy places. Not necessarily due to our legends of vampires and zombies and ghouls and such, but more because it reminds us of things we'd rather not think about. Our own mortality. A sort of guilt for being alive and well, for things unsaid to friends and family who have passed away, for not thinking of them every day, for not bringing flowers as often as we should. That sort of thing.
In Kemetic Orthodoxy that's not so much a problem. What gets me is the reminder not necessarily of my own mortality, but that of the whole universe. Everything changes. Everything decays. Stone markers fall over, are eroded by wind and water and snow, are covered by lichens. Even the sun is going to die sometime. The ancient Egyptians knew this, and spoke in terms of "millions of years" long before Carl Sagan thought of it.
But some things can be renewed for a time. We know the names and stories of people who died some 5000 years ago, and by remembering them they live on in our hearts. My spiritual Mother knows all of their names and all of their stories, which is both frightening and comforting at the same time.
So Kai-Imakhu meryBast and I visited this Oak Grove Cemetary today. We both poured cool water; she offered bread and took pictures while I wrote down several names, such as:
 Thekla Bruere ― I can't help but picture as very noble and graceful, perhaps like the Thecla of Gene Wolfe's novels.
- "Molissie" Bushdiecker ― I bet she was a fun person to be around.
- Joseph H. and Violet M. Charles, side by side and obviously cared for very much by their survivors.
- Aaron Hull, Henry C. Achelpohl, Ethel Rozhin and Margaret Little, whose names had all been covered over by dead grass blown from a lawnmower, but were quite readable (and, I think, grateful) after I cleaned them up.
George Washington or King Scorpion might be a little too remote and larger-than-life for us to really come to grips with. But visiting these graves and taking note of their names is a reminder that these were all once living people like you or I, with friends and family that cared for them, or still do.
And that in itself is a reminder that everybody you meet is a real person. Sometimes it's hard to keep that in mind. Even that jerk in the white Ford that just cut you off has a family, friends, and worries of his own.
I have some people of my own to remember:
- Jesse Patterson. I always start with her, because this is as far back along my family tree that I know something about, even if I didn't know her personally. Jesse was a little girl when she and her family crossed the Atlantic, leaving Scotland behind to come live over here. I can't help but think how scary and exciting that must have been, and I always imagine Jesse as an adventurous sort who sought that kind of experience throughout her whole life.
- Myron L. Dennis. My mother's father. I was too young to know him personally, but I've always looked up to him as a sort of John Henryesque figure. He was an architect who designed at least one rather unique church that I know of.
- Matt, a friend from high school. I can't recall his last name at the moment, but I'm sure it will come to me. He was a bass player in the jazz ensemble, and in an ill-fated rock band with me and a couple of friends. (We were horrible, but we were loud and enthusiastic.) He was a dreamer, easily distracted, but that's what was great about him. He told us over a game of Dungeons and Dragons that after graduation, he was going to get into his beat-up Beetle and drive all the way down to the southern tip of South America. A fatal traffic accident stopped him from ever graduating, but I bet he did get to see the Strait of Magellan after all.
- Mildred Amlong Dennis, my maternal grandmother. When I was a kid, she took care of me and didn't take any crap from me. When I grew up, we took care of her and she still didn't take any crap from me. :) I doubt that I'll ever have the strength of will that she did. We didn't see eye to eye on too many things, but it was from her that I learned how little that matters.
- Hessie Dean, my father's mother. To borrow a phrase: she was *so* nice... no one ever knew how nice she was. She was a good influence on a young brat, and she told stories and wrote poems and painted pictures.
- Roger Johnston. Every time I see the Egyptian phrase "true of voice" I think of this man. A coworker who I feel justified in calling friend, though I didn't know him as well as I wish. I think we'd have found we had a lot in common. He was our technical writer, a thoughtful and honest man with a passion for ancient Egypt ― particularly Djehuty, timelines and king lists ― and he thought my "Secret Santa" should get me turquoise jewelry (one of Seshat's stones).
Not long after he passed away, one of his cats was climbing around on the receptionist's desk, hit the button to dial his extension and thus played a recording of his voice. I love that.
- Terry Atwood, a brother in the faith. It's my fault that I learned more about him after his death than before. Always thought-provoking, a champion of the underdogs, and a startlingly good poet. There are a lot of people who count this guy as family. The only person I ever knew with a state holiday in his honor.
 Nora Allen, another coworker. Her characters in GemStone III used to hunt with, and flirt with, mine. Heh. Fiery, opinionated, and passionately loyal to the point of stubbornness, she nevertheless managed to work in Customer Service without ever strangling anyone. She fought against death longer than most people can imagine, and when I remember her, it is as a larger-than-life hero, beautiful and brave, eyes blazing and laughing at any challenge that tries to stand in her way. I have no doubt her son is going to make her proud.
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seeing the world |
| 08-20-00 |
Plectrum is a fun word, isn't it?
As Steph mentioned, we had a really great lunch today. It wasn't where we were planning on going (which was closed, because somebody who checked to make sure Saleem's was open on Saturday forgot to make sure they were open for lunch), but it worked out nicely. Brandt's has great spring rolls, great Vietnamese coffee, and I found that Xingu is better than Guinness or Sapporo Black or anything else of the dark and beery persuasion.
On the way back, we got to see parts of St. Louis that we've never seen before... in fact, parts that look like nobody has seen them in months. It's weird going from the cool, trendy, ethnic U City Loop, to a brick ghost town, to modern-looking condos, back to ghost town all on one street. Blocky brick buildings faced with nifty architecture that someone spent a lot of time and effort on, now left to rot and crumble while crows gather in the next lot over. It's kind of nifty and yet sad at the same time, and a little surreal.
Listening to MDFMK -- which seems to be a notch higher in quality than KMFDM was -- I was struck by the anger in the lyrics, anger that the world is such a horrible place and the system sucks and what are we going to do about it? And I didn't connect with that at all.
I used to really identify with the message in the more socially conscious lyrics of industrial bands, Skinny Puppy in particular. The message was basically "wake up, terrible things are afoot." They sang about animal testing and AIDS and the Exxon Valdez and the Vietnam war (not quite a current event, but scary enough) and Iraq's chemical weapons and neo-Nazis and deforestation, and a very bleak future for the human race if it doesn't change its ways. And I ate it up.
It occurred to me the other day that my world is a better place now than it was a few years ago -- or my viewpoint is. Sure, there are lots of horrible things going on in the world; some are difficult things we have to deal with as a species, and some are the result of inexcusable levels of human stupidity and carelessness.
But why wallow in it?
It's much better to concentrate on your own area of responsibility, your own impact on the world, the things that you have some influence over, than it is to worry about things beyond your sphere. This doesn't mean you should bury your head in the sand -- but you don't have to feel ashamed to be human because of horrible things other people have done. You can't personally solve all the world's problems, but you can be a decent human being.
And I'm sure that if somebody had told me this back in the day, I'd have said "yeah, I know" and then carried on wondering whether we would master space travel in time to escape the wreckage of the planet we ruined with hairspray and highways and bombs and McDonald's. I'm less of an idealist but more of an optimist than I was in college.
It doesn't do any good to fret or to be angry about things you can't influence. It distracts you from what's close at hand that you can deal with. Maybe that's why people do it.
Still like the music though. Heh.
I was kind of surprised by Suz's comment a while ago about Steph and me: "They are constantly trying to make themselves better." One of those observations that comes all unlooked for, from an unexpected corner, but hits right on the mark. (Donna, you do that a lot too, and sometimes it's from so far out there that it's almost cryptic... but don't stop.)
I know I wasn't always like that. When I was worrying more about the outside world than the world at hand, I don't think I made any conscious or subconscious effort to make myself a better person. I always liked the motto Mercedes Lackey and her character Diana Tregarde had -- "leave the world better than you found it" -- but I didn't quite take it to heart. I just looked at things like the possibility of a nuclear holocaust, and shrank.
Now though, I think that the better a person you become, the better your world becomes. For instance, if you respect everyone, then you live in a world full of respectable people, and isn't that a really cool thing?
I'm actually writing up some thoughts on the matter of respect, in a "wisdom literature" vein similar to the Instructions of meryBast. I'm letting them stew for now -- partially because they need the time to age and ferment, and partially because I feel a little self-conscious about it. I'm not sure I have the cojones to set my thoughts beside those of Amenope, Ptahhotep, and the like. Where do I get off advising people on how to behave? But then that's probably my own self-doubt working against me there, which is one of those things I have to improve. ;)
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Arisu? |
| 08-17-00 |
 I downloaded the Heavy Metal F.A.K.K.2 demo. The training mission was cool, but all the stuff before and after was not. I love the ropes and climbing and monkey bars and pipe shimmying and wall hugging, all very well done. But the small taste of combat I had was just plain bad. Torn clothes can't save the game, even if the cyber-Julie is prettier than the real thing.
 So with most of my interest in that game lost, my attention turns to American McGee's Alice. It looks suitably twisted and gothic and wacky to be lots of fun. The one thing I worry about is it's another third-person shooter, and maybe the reason I didn't get big into FAKK2 or Slave Zero or the like is because I just don't like third-person shooters. But the demo will tell. Meanwhile, the music (by a former NIN band member) sets that bizarre tone... thanks for pointing it out, Lockeworth. :)
It was 103.5 degrees outside today, according to the average of three bank clocks and weather.com. Overheating is one of SqueakyCar's favorite pasttimes to begin with, so of course it had a major episode today. We'd take Jeff's if it had air conditioning, or Steph's if the backseat was intended for any living being larger than a hamster. Oh well. I'll just have to load more Gatorade jugs of water in the back.
After much poking around on various map servers and getting virtually lost, I managed to locate the rental house that we're awaiting word on. Doesn't look like much from here, does it?
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whatever happened to... |
| 08-16-00 |
So to continue that thought from a couple entries ago...
When I was in ...high school? middle school? something, I checked out The Zen of Seeing: Seeing/Drawing as Meditation. Now, I have no talent for sketching, drawing, painting, etc. I can make interesting doodles, and I tend to do things like mazes or Celtic knotwork panels (it's an easy, repetitive thing once you learn the trick), but forget trying to draw something that looks like something. Even my stick figures are sad and pathetic. (My hieroglyphs are bad too -- when I try to write my name the "ka" sign always comes out looking like chubby cartoony feet rather than hands.)
Anyway. Despite my lack of talent I found the main idea in the book fascinating: that we in the Western world (and, I would think, pretty much everywhere) tend to categorize everything we see, to the point where we don't really pay attention to what it is we're seeing in the first place. Or you could say that our minds are object-oriented. When you look out the window, you see "a tree" -- an object of class Tree. It has a trunk, branches, leaves -- you know this not because of any special attention paid to what your eyes are telling you, but because all trees have trunks, branches and leaves. If you really want to paint that particular scene as faithfully as possible, you have to put aside any preconceptions about trees and just paint what you observe.
Maybe this is why great artists are completely out of their gourds.
We have a pattern-matching algorithm in our heads that lets us recognize a tree when we see one, even if we've never seen that tree or that species before. It also works for stylized symbols of trees, for example:
Why is that a tree? There are no leaves, there are no branches, and it's fricking BLUE. It's just some triangles stacked on a square. Nevertheless, when the image hits our brains it becomes a tree.
You know what's great about this? You read this whole thing and I don't even have a point. :) Just some thoughts I had. I don't know how this applies to music or games or anything else. It's something we already know and abuse all the time, but we never really think about it.
And I didn't realize it but I wrote one paragraph on this before. Oh well.
So. The Jumpgate prerelease version was just, uh, released. I guess I've lost interest in it for now, though I may go check it out sometime. What was once an obsession is now just a fond memory. So whatever happened to the other obsessions I've had?
- desktop customization: I've cooled on it. I still think a minimalist DarkStep setup is kinda cool, but most of the stuff out there such as WindowBlinds or NeoPlanet is a waste of system resources, IMHO.
- Linux: when Linux can be easily configured for my hardware, has a decent web browser, has a good selection of games, can be used to make music, and all the other things that I use my computer for, then I'd get interested in it again. Until then it's sort of an annoying curiousity.
- reptiles: got some. Don't need more. I don't want high-maintenance pets, and if you add enough low-maintenance pets together they become high-maintenance. I like the Gecko Sisters, and Poco is occasionally amusing. Do I regret getting them? Maybe sometimes, but not seriously.
- Star Wars: Episode 1 had its cool moments, but ultimately didn't live up to the hype and expectations. There is also not a lot of joy in owning the action figures and junk and stuff. This will in no way be a factor when Episode 2 is released.
- style sheets: oh baby, yes. Inline style tags too. Screw Netscape.
- Nine Inch Nails: every once in a while I'll put a NIN album on and be amazed at a new facet of the music that I hadn't noticed before. I live for that kind of thing y'know -- music that challenges you to really hear it all.
- Cyberstorm 2: it's still good. So sue me.
- the war against bad information: still going. Some people don't care or try enough, and so the best you can do is make sure good information is available for those who do.
- Cedant: I still like 'em and would recommend them to others who want a good web host. In fact, I have.
- Rogue Spear: no longer obsessed. Still enjoy it once in a while though.
- airsoft: good question. I think I'm still interested, sort of. Definitely not in this heat! Maybe when the weather gets tolerable again and I'm not so broke, I'll be ready to do it again.
- Japanese snacks: still hooked. I'm chewing Lotte Coffee 300 right now.
- bettas: Moe's doing fine. Might get another one sometime, not really feeling the urge though.
- Gundam Wing: nah. Over it. It's Cowboy Bebop now.
- EverQuest: since that one brief fling, we haven't been playing it. Blame Diablo II.
- Diablo II: yep, still hooked.
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someplace like home |
| 08-15-00 |
The cold hit its peak on Sunday and faded fast. Not fast enough, but it could have been a lot worse. It was kind of a seesaw there for a while -- I'd wake up feeling like half-digested pond scum, an hour later I'd be cheerful and happy and bouncing off the walls, two hours later I'd be moaning and groaning and thinking about a nap. But today was pretty good all around.
I tried that Korean Bacchus-F drink last night. It was a unique experience, but I'm not sure whether it was a good one or a bad one. I think it might be good if it's cut with 7-Up or the like... it needs to be toned down a great deal.
It comes in little brown 3oz medicine bottles, and claims to be a "dietary supplement" and a "nutritionally refreshing drink." It's overwhelmingly sweet and acidic. Corn syrup, every kind of sugar you can name, guarana, royal jelly, apple and pineapple juices. It's not that sticky heavy nastiness like Jolt is, but it doesn't seem like a drink exactly, either...
Ah well, at least the Meiji Tact and the rice crackers were good. And ichimi togarashi is great on popcorn!
A Kemetic term Steph left off her list that's worth including: nekhtet! It means "victory!" or "whoo hoo!" (For example, the sun rose today and the universe still exists. Nekhtet!) Ever since the retreat I've been wanting to use it for various things... I had to restrain myself from shouting it on the staff channel in GemStone when I found out about Logan's birth. Wouldn't want to scare the nice GMs or anything.
I got some leopard skin jasper beads for "Mom" via eBay. Won the bidding on Thursday and they arrived in the office Monday. Pretty fast. The seller was "Trash City," so when the envelope arrived at the office, Bruce's comment was "I don't want to know what kind of porn sites you've been surfing." Hee!
I redid the gallery page(s). I thought the old one was a bit awkward, and it's nice to not have to load all the thumbnails at once. Plus this way I don't have to put the retreat pictures on their own separate page and figure out how I was going to link to them.
Steph, Jeff and I went looking at a house to rent today. I was thinking we were Just Looking, like we just looked at a bunch of other places. Like my family looked at lots of places a few years ago when we were considering moving and/or looking for a place to remodel.
But we wound up signing applications. That's a bit faster than I'm normally comfortable with, but this is a pretty decent place at a really decent rent. The bedrooms could be bigger, but the extra rooms compensate for that. It's too bad there's no ground floor bathroom, but with a strategically placed night light for safe nocturnal stair and cat navigation, it won't be a problem. I like the fact that my room is set apart from the rest of the house, even if it's the weirdly industrial utility room that separates it.
Heh. Here I am calling it "my" room already. Bit premature. The application has to clear, Steph and Jeff have to move in, and I have to figure out what I'm gonna do. My lease isn't up until April, but demand for those apartments is high so I might be able to successfully break my lease without getting screwed like I did last time. Here's hoping.
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pardon my abstraction |
| 08-13-00 |
I tried not to get sick, but only managed to delay the inevitable. Stuffy nose and the general weakness and ickiness that comes from not breathing or sleeping adequately. I hope it burns out fast.
 As I write this I'm watching the final hour of an eBay auction I've bid on -- an antique St. Therese medallion. No, I didn't suddenly turn Catholic; in a rather roundabout way Therese represents my spiritual mother. St. Therese of Lisieux is called "The Little Flower" and is usually depicted holding and/or surrounded by flowers; I guess this is why Santeros identify her with their orisha Oyá, who likes flowery patterns and is too much like Nit-Seshat-NebtHet to be a coincidence. Some admittedly pretty thin connections there, but that's the way symbols work. It beats wearing a Kevin Bacon medallion.
Thinking about that made me think about symbols and abstraction for a bit. Or maybe it was the cold medicine. At first I thought maybe this is what sets apart human minds from animals -- that we not only understand context, but actual abstraction. Even a mouse can make the connection between pushing a lever and getting food. A particularly bright animal can be trained to communicate basic things in language. But then, Koko the gorilla paints in such an expressive way that you have to wonder. Maybe it's just a matter of degree -- I don't think even Koko could write a Java program, or understand how a stamped piece of metal can represent a Catholic saint who is a stand-in for an Afro-Carribean deity who is more or less equivalent to an Egyptian abstraction of an incomprehensible universal god.
The universe in our heads is entirely made up of language and math and symbols and rules.
Music is a mystery though. Everything about music can be described by math, from rhythm to the frequency of every note down to the waveform of every individual sound. But it's more than that. When you hear music, you instinctively get impressions from it -- even if it's instrumental music in a style you've never heard before. Is the song triumphant, melancholy, cheerful, hostile, sedate, frantic? Does it make you think of walking, riding in a train, flying, swimming, sitting still?
Is music just a subtle, but widely-understood language that can convey only emotions, whose words and phrases are a mostly uncatalogued set of scales, chords, tempos, riffs and arrangements? I know I tend to treat it that way at times. If I want to evoke a particular emotion, I'll bring out something from the bag of tricks that fits the bill. Take the theme I wrote for Theren Keep for example. I think of it as a sad place, with a glorious past but a lonely, tarnished present. And I always think of that front gate and how it closes at night, shutting people out. So I used tympani, a church organ, a subdued female choir and crickets.
Other times I just try stuff and see what happens. If it starts to lead in some direction I'll follow it where it takes me. Sometimes there's a moment of "hey, that sounds just like..." Ratha, or the Vykathi Hive, or trolls marching stoically in the hot sun, or ripples on an underground lake, or one of those dreams that just keeps looping back in on itself without making any sense.
 Speaking of dreams, I've been rereading Sandman. In order this time, from beginning to end. Talk about layers of abstraction!
"World's End" is a story about a tavern where the apprentice Petrefax tells a story in which a master tells a story in which his master told a story. Whew! In all of it though, my favorite collection is tangential to the actual Sandman plot -- "Fables & Reflections," a set of excellent short stories. Don't tell anyone, but I always cry at the transition from the dream-Baghdad in "Ramadan" to the ruined slum of reality. (I have a weakness for "The Sound of Her Wings" too; it's Nebt-Het in a nutshell.)
"Let them laugh. I am still their emperor."
Whoo hoo, I got the medallion! Naturally, somebody tried to snipe it in the last half hour and almost doubled the price. Funny how online auctions work -- they have to be available long enough for a certain number of people to find them, but the real action doesn't get going until the clock threatens to run out.
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be alert for more messages |
| 08-09-00 |
Now that I'm back from the retreat, I could use a vacation. Nah. I'm physically tired and have a lot of cleanup to do, but mentally I feel charged up and ready for another year. Though that could be the Japanese candy talking...
Something like the retreat defies explanation, which is why I had such a lame entry after last year. Leaving out the details of necessity (and to avoid boring everyone), let's just say I got to meet a bunch of great people, learn some things (most of them about myself), help out a bit, receive some nice gifts that I wish I could reciprocate, hear a few simple but profound words from my spiritual Mom, cry over them, laugh at a jackal, play some drums, try to snatch vanilla bourbon from a cat, think a lot without fretting over mundane things, and have the chance to serve in a meaningful way.
I'm Assistant Scribe to the Nisut (AUS) now -- an administrative position rather than a priestly one, but it's perfect. It's a way I can serve Seshat and the House. It's a thing I can comfortably volunteer my time and effort to do, where I can't picture myself doing most other kinds of charity work. It's something I'm suited to doing (Donna, the self-confidence issue is something else that doesn't apply to this). So it's very cool. :)
Last year Steph had the "come closer to bowl" Zen koan that wasn't. This year... well, okay. Last year during some of our free time, Sah and Ikh and I went for a walk along Lake Michigan and found $22 washing up on the beach. One of the priests thought that was pretty amusing but pointed out possible numerological significance (not to me personally but in general). This year, on the way up to Chicago I find a wallet in a restroom that contains a green card, a $2 bill and a Mexican 20 peso bill. I turned it in, and was pondering the coincidence (or whatever) when we pass a portable road message sign that reads "BE ALERT FOR MORE MESSAGES." Heh. Figure I'll take that as a general order.
So of course the first thing that happens when we reach our destination is Donna (Imakhu Inibmutes) gives me a bead bracelet that has guess how many beads? Right, 22.
And it just so happens that someone left a copy of Catch-22 in the men's bathroom at the office a few weeks ago. I didn't even think of that until just now. Heh.
As an aside, I'm not much for numerology. No way can you figure out a person's personality or predict their future based solely on their name, birthdate, telephone number, etc. Numbers are symbolic and abstract, having the meaning that you give them. That makes them very powerful and very weak at the same time. Friday the 13th is no more significant to me than Tuesday the 2nd, and if I ate sushi in the first place I would not complain about being served four pieces.
But strings of coincidences are fun things. I do believe in coincidences, but unlike our good buddy Albert, I think God not only plays dice but is a notorious cheater. ;)
Got some new info for the Seshat article which I'll write up sometime soon, after I've had a chance to eat and sleep and rest and research a little more.
On more mundane stuff... I had a chance to try Red Bull energy drink (okay but I think it needs shaking), RC Edge (it tastes just like RC cola with taurine and ginseng, which is what it is, kinda icky) and my first Mai Tai (heh heh heh). Also bought a Korean drink called Bacchus-F at an Asian market and I haven't had the courage to try it yet -- guarana, royal jelly and apple juice. I like guarana, but I'm not sure about royal jelly... guess we'll see.
Steph and I are both really broke this month. It's okay though, payday is next Tuesday and we'll both be getting our new and improved salaries then, and I've got food to cook once I work up the nerve to mount an offensive on the dishes which have now had over a month to entrench themselves in my sink, and breadmakers are wonderful things when you don't want to spend much. I spent too much on meals during the trip, but in my experience Chicago restaurants are twice as good on average as St. Louis restaurants, and ya gotta celebrate.
There is a hilarious episode of Cowboy Bebop on the 3rd DVD. But I'd rather just leave it at that than give away the punchline. Heh.
Getting my head into web design mode here at the office again. Structure and layout for play.net 2.0. This is a project I think I'll enjoy -- rather than bailing out the old leaky tub we're building a new boat. Whoo hoo!
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regulars:
moo
third
chat
kimbered
logic
shades
on a whim:
orisinal
bilbanan
smurf
bang
lobster
yugop
skin
wood
rhythm
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