(random morning memory after a night of insomnia) I was 27, studying at U.F. (I served in the military first) and working as a manager at a little mom-n-pop steak house called Steak & Pasta Works. Good food, but just expensive enough to attract a certain crowd with just enough money to sit down but not enough manners. That's a shitty thing to say, but it's true. It wasn't a job I enjoyed unless the cooks were kind enough to smoke me out behind the walk-in fridge and then the night would go as smooth as cool water. Like any restaurant, especially in a college town, we went through busboys once every two weeks. It's a crap job and not something anyone does for long. At the beginning of my third semester we hired a 19 year old guy named Maury as a busser. He wasn't a real blond, but that couldn't have mattered less. He was shockingly beautiful. Not just "he's pretty to me" pretty, but honest to goodness, conversation stopping stunning. He was all the more heartbreaking to look at because you knew it wasn't going to last. Everyone hits their peak-of-pretty at different ages and you could tell that Maury was in the full bloom of his. It would be all downhill from here for him. We had a brief fling. It was silly and fun and involved smoking a lot of weed and was the kind of fling I would never have thought of at his age though he was constantly telling me relax, man, it's just fun, don't think about things so much. I stopped thinking about it so much and just enjoyed the fun. The servers soon found out and were scandalized and jealous. I loved it. Every minute of it. I was still driving my little 64 1/2 Mustang that I had restored myself and Maury and I left every night together to the roar of vintage steel revived by the magic of Edelbrock and Holley. He told me one night that some guy had offered him $500 to do a j/o video. I told him not to do it. It was a mistake. It would be on the internet and in the computers of countless people forever, until the end of time. It would never go away. He said the same things to me he always said, relax, man, it's just fun, don't think about things so much. And that's when I realized that it wasn't just a difference in age between him and I. There was a deep paradigmatic difference in the way he looked at the world and an insouciance that told me tomorrow was never on his mind. The fling ended after a bit. He did the video, mentioning it to me one night at work, to which I only grunted an mm-hm of acknowledgment. I haven't a clue where that kid is today or what he's doing. I'm sure the glow of beauty is long faded, the trim waistline gone to paunch. That video, though, I am sure is still circulating in uncounted websites onto uncounted screens in locked bedrooms as we speak.
I don't game. I've been around for all of it. The entire phenomenon. From Pong to whatever it is that's happening right now. I had an Atari 2600 Gaming Console when they were brand spanking new. I had an Atari 800 computer when they were brand spanking new. I traded Pole Position and Frogger and DigDug and Avenger with friends on floppy disks that were actually floppy. I did all of that. All of it. And yet, I don't game. After the crash of '83 (I was only 13) I just couldn't be bothered. Yet, it seems I display some characteristic to other gamers that says I game because gamers often start chatting at me in Gamenese and I have to stop them with a polite "Sorry, man. I don't game" which evinces the same look as the just got friendzoned look. I actually feel bad when it happens. The look of disappointment is real and sometimes the guy keeps at it like no, you are not gamezoning me. We were totally talking and you gave all the signs that you wanted to game and now you say you don't and I don't accept it. I'm a cool guy, I think you're a cool guy, we should totally game. You cannot stand there in your Thundercats tee shirt and tell me you don't game. Why won't you game with me? What's wrong with me? Seriously, it's happened. I don't game and I don't know why.
I can't imagine what else I could add to this most eloquent and heartfelt expression of the view from within the culture.
So, this is just a little personal rant. I'm checking out sandals on eBay last night when my hubby comes into the room and asks what I'm doing. I point out my wish for new sandals and we start perusing the offerings together. He points out a pair that he likes, which I don't because they are the kind that you stick your big toe through a loop and I have a sizable big toe compared to my overall shoe-size; thus, it's rare for such a sandal to work for me. My toe just doesn't fit the loop. I make all of that known. He keeps egging me about it and I keep telling him that I like the look of the sandal but for practicality's sakes they're just not a good choice, I don't pick those kinds of sandals, let's move on. He walks out of the room, not angry, but with a muttering of "I'll be right back". He reenters the room with an ancient pair of sandals I wore during the triassic that are, lo and behold, big toe loopy sandals. The look of triumph is gleaming on his face. I have been proven wrong. I have in fact owned such sandals in the past and my vociferous, tenacious insistence that I don't like these kinds of sandals has been proven erroneous because of this aberrant pair in the back of the closet. I should have seen it coming, yes, I know. He knows full well that I have a memory like a sieve. The kind of random data I hold on to is not of the tangible, real world application sort. I hold on to random science facts and shit I hear on Discovery Channel and facts about foreign countries and languages. More practical memory eludes me. I occasionally find shirts in the rear of the closet, tags still attached, that I'm sure I bought because it's one of my brands, but the actual memory of having bought that shirt was subjected to ctrl-alt-delete. What got under my skin was the enjoyment he got out of the set-up and proving me wrong. I love the man dearly and would never trade him in on another, but that kind of shit is actually pretty ugly to me. It falls into the same bucket as enjoying getting a rise out of someone. It's a negative, unpretty kind of enjoyment.
Culture, in a short and dirty version of its anthropological definition, is the accumulated knowledge one generation passes on to the next, via language and its outgrowth media, which continues to propagate forward through time. Humans are not the only creatures to have culture under this paradigm. There are other primates and also cetaceans that we know to participate in this tradition. They are more than just their hardwiring. But once there is a medium of recording the information, writing, which we alone possess, there is an explosion of culture because it allows for the accumulation of much more information than any one mind could ever hope to hold. From the plains of Africa to the Moon because of writing. One thing that anthropologists must always be wary of is sampling error. When digging up the remains of ancient cultures, we are often left with only small parts of that culture that, if one is not careful, could easily lead one to believe that the day to day life of the average person from that era was focused only on certain things, the things you find left behind, the temples and goddess figurines, the fetish idols and the well buried rich (who appear from the beginning). Most of the writing that comes to us from ancient times is filtered through processes that leave only certain subjects intact. We find scripture quite often and strangely also things having to do with accounting come to us in profusion from the ancient past. There is more, but when found, it often gets held back from us, like the fact that pornography has existed since humans first possessed the capacity to draw boobs and a wiener. Once we come into times where the record is less archeological and more historical, we find again that the culture of the day is filtered through the hands of those in possession of writing. Scribes painstakingly wrote books by hand that took lifetimes and are today national treasures in many countries. And again, the writing seems to focus on paradigms less in touch with day to day life. The printing press came and for a time the written word was available to, for, and from anyone who could read. Then, as humans are wont to do, things got organized, categorized, and privatized. In short, the few took control of what our culture (the many) says to the future by controlling what gets printed as regards our thoughts, our feelings and our imagination. We're back to where we were when we first chipped away the crust of a rock to reveal the flint blade within. We leave behind only tiny, hard facets of what we, as a culture and a species, are at this moment in time. All the soft tissue is gone and the bones can tell us only so much, even to the trained eye of forensic anthropologists. Self publishing is a bigger deal than I think anyone realizes. Never mind success. Never mind making money and a living at writing. Never mind all of that for a small moment, I beseech you. Self publishing, for the first time, gives humans a way to allow anyone to deliberately give a small piece of themselves, the individual, small, singular self, not only to anyone with technology in hand today, but also to the future in a way that doesn't physically erode with time and get lost amongst the atoms and molecules of everything else that happens in the world. The individual voice can speak to the future, unfiltered by the hands and minds of others, and give a window into a singular life, a singular mind, a singular human paradigm. That's huge. That's as huge as the discovery of fire, of writing, of the opposable thumb. It means the future gets to know you, not someone else's version of you, not some filtered, altered, strained you, but just you and only you. And through the many yous who make deliberate use of this medium, the future gets to know a greater and more real us. Think about it.
A recent conversation in the forum concerning the making of maps had me digging up maps I had stopped working on a while ago. The story for which they were being made had also been put on hold. It seems both are in play again. Here are two different levels of "aging" in the world map. Not sure which way I'm going to go. Still very much WIP and rough. I need to work on the continent edges as well. In some spots the color intensities are too similar between land and water and the edge becomes hard to make out. I'd rather not outline it like it was before. And I'm not sure about the arcane symbols. I'm just playing with those for now. The size and balance is off on them. Any ideas/suggestions?
I still keep up with Banzai (former mod) via Facebook. He's a great chap. We often discuss the things that embarrass each of us about our respective countries. He's in the U.K. and I'm in U.S. (well, sorta') One of the things we've hashed over (and has been hashed over here in the forum more than once) is the way we see the physical and paradigmatic set up of each other's countries. If you take away the verbiage each of uses, you see a set-up that is actually pretty similar. The U.K. is comprised of countries that make up a kingdom. The U.S. is comprised of states that make up a federation. In the U.S., when a child becomes savvy enough to notice that a U.S. state is veeeeeeeeery similar to a country in other parts of the world, out comes the ruler, smack go the knuckles. That kind of talk is no-no territory. So, I understand when royal subjects get annoyed that Americans don't see the U.K. as being comprised of different countries, not states (lower case s), even though to us it looks like exactly that. You have to forgive us, we've had years of heavy indoctrination that those words are not to be used. And with that said, a funny perspective of America from an Aussie's POV. I love the bit about the two Washingtons. He's right. Why did we do that?
The internet is not America. It's not. It's the World. Welcome to it. I know you've been insulated from it for a goodly while, but it's time you got reacquainted. Please leave your giant, gossamer-thin comfort bubble in the receptacle to your left before entering. Notions of political correctness go in the bin to your right. Please know that viewpoints will be other than your own. Please know that you will encounter socio-personal interactions different from the ones you have been trained to accept as acceptable. Please know that people may say hun, and sweetie and dear and poppet and petal and pet and sunshine and you can clutch the pearls all you like and make great show of a case of the vapors and everyone will move on. Try and catch up. Things you hold as knowledges may in fact turn out to be opinions. People from other countries are not Republicans or Democrats or Tea-Baggers. Their politics have nothing to do with the paradigm you know. They have their own paradigm under which they function because they are sovereign people beholden to the countries of their birth. They aren't just Disney World attractions. People are not nations. Just as you would ask to not be held accountable as an individual for the actions of Washington, thusly should you proceed with others. Sincerely, A patriot, a true born son, an American.
00:00 - 07:50 The Lovers 07:51 - 10:56 Conception, Preparation, Anticipation 10:57 - 12:51 Creation Approches 12:52 - 13:34 Birth and Amazement 13:35 - 17:52 Celebration In the west, Shiva is called The Destroyer, which leaves me deeply saddened at the shocking liberties interpreters of the past took with meaning and intent. Shiva is better described as the tabula rasa. Shiva clears the way so that new creation can happen. When Shiva is Nataraja, Lord of the Dance, he holds Apasmara, demon of ignorance and ego, beneath his feet so that what comes next can have a better chance than what came before. He's not the destroyer. He is the creator of new opportunity. This kirtan, which is dedicated to Shiva, is to me, clearly a song about a child coming into the world. Beginning with lovers being beautiful to one another, conceiving, anticipating, and finally welcoming their child into the world. It is a perfect allegory. What is a new baby of not a universe of possibility and wonder? I imagine Shiva as Nataraja, nebulous and vast, dancing his celestial dance across the universe, laughing and filled with joy, knowing that somewhere in the world this story is playing out. He dances and clears the way for this new life.
In those areas of India where Radha (also Radhe) and Krishna, The Divine Lovers, are most beloved, the people greet one another as Radhe. They say, "Radhe, what's up?" and "Radhe, how are you?" They greet each other, be they male or female, as the goddess, the original shakti. I think that's a beautiful way to greet someone, to acknowledge the divine spark within each person, a divinity that to western minds seems to blur the difference between mortals and gods. The error is in believing there is a difference to blur. There is none. This song always makes me picture people at a festival. Young and old, men and women, gay and straight, everything. As the night progresses and the festival grows loud and bright, they slip off alone and in pairs and they all meet in a field of grass beneath a moon by which you can read. And they dance together. All of them. It's a polychromatic Bollywood extravaganza. Every person, no matter what they look like, is heartbreakingly beautiful. Every man is Krishna. Every woman is Radhe. Unless they would rather be the other, which is perfectly fine.
I just finished watching Howl and was very moved by this movie. I had written James Franco off as just a pretty boy until his last few roles where this young man has proven himself capable of a sensitivity that makes him all the more attractive. I was never one of those who was in a literary love affair with the American Beat Writers. I did not have a copy of On The Road on casually purposeful display in my dorm room or later in my apartment at university. I did not wax rhapsodic over beers and bong swats as to the deeper underlying truths that these writers were trying to elucidate. I did not pretend to understand what I did not understand in order to look smarter than I was because frankly I was not drawn to these authors. No space ships. No aliens. No whiz bang technology or first contact with alien races; hence, I could not have been less interested in what they had to say about the human condition. I was of the opinion, though I did not have the words to express it at the time, that the human condition they we're trying to get the reader to know was not a condition that applied to me in my modern life removed from a sense of ennui that life was not living up to its own promises. Basically I was a philistine as regards these men and the literary and cultural movement they started. Anywho, the movie centers itself on the life of Allen Ginsberg (James Franco) and the poem, Howl, which he wrote and the subsequent obscenities charges which were brought against the publisher of the collection of poems of which Howl was a part. If I took nothing else from the movie Howl, I took the idea that a writer must be true and real and honest. A writer, as an artist, must comment on the culture around him as it affects him, even when this comment is disquieting or unpopular or perhaps even distasteful. Anything less is a lie.
So, I broke down and saw it. Actually, I helped my dad set up the new Bluray player he just bought and that was the movie he purchased to christen the device. I had stayed away as long as I had because I have a deep dislike for the Leonardo Dicraplio. True to form, just like in every other movie he has ever made, he finds a reason to get up into someone's face at one point with his mug all squinched up and his arm bent into the shape of a Z, finger pointed nanometers away from the victim as he lets him/her have it in all his Leo-fury. Rent ANY of his movies after the age of about 15 or so and you will see what I mean. This: Anywho... I actually liked the movie. It was saved by my new reason to want to emigrate to the U.K., Tom Hardy. All I can say is that my hubby has good reason to hate Tom Hardy, and Tom Hardy's wife has good reason to hate me. If she let's her guard down for just one second...
This is a waystation, a chance for you to turn back. Most of my fanfiction contains at least a little smut. You've been warned. (click the image below) View attachment 22977
Just in case I ever mention that I have been sacked from my job, here is the very probable reason for it. We have a work forum (yup, just like this forum) where there is a thread concerning a new canned closing statement we have to make at the end of every call. Just so you know, this is the third time the closing has been changed and extended, and there is also a canned opening we now have to use as well. My response to the thread was as follows: