Aside from the fact that, two and a half years in, I have no excuse NOT to have learned the bassline to the song so that the Exhibit(s) can once again cover Billy Joel...

I'm not entirely sure why it is that some people I know are so susceptible to pressure from their peers and society in general, and why I'm not. Which is to say, I know why I'm okay with ignoring people's opinions, and I know that learning to not care what people think is a long road to walk when you've spent your whole life living by other people's standards.

But some of my friends seem content to change themselves, or to do or not do things based not on what they want but what is expected of them.

And on that note, parenthetically, I'm not cutting my hair anytime soon, because windy days like today feel good. Do I need more reason? Fuck, I don't even really need that reason, do I? Nope.

People's opinions of me don't change a thing. And the things about me that they have opinions about -- hair, dress, tattoos, jewelry, music, movies, whatever -- don't really affect them one bit. Do I offend? Maybe, but I guarantee that at the end of the day, nothing has changed because of it.

And this is what makes me happy, this being me thing. It's not easy to be yourself, especially when yourself runs contrary to the flock.

But it's not like I'm carving swastikas into my forehead, or wearing GOD HATES FAGS shirts, or berating women at the top of my lungs, or anything else. In fact, I'm possibly the most live and let live guy you'll ever meet.

I'm just a little different. Probably partialyl to stand out from the crowd, sure, but also because it makes me comfortable to look and be the way I do and am.

You do your thing, I'll do mine. If you ever start hurting me, I'll let you know. You do the same.

Just mae sure you're not crying wolf, or I'll be quick to respond. Or maybe even hand you a band-aid.

And yes, it looks like shit in IE. Firefox is free, and works much better.

No one's making you read my blathering anyway.

Internet threats amuse me.

No, wait, I mean... yeah, actually, that's exactly what I mean.

Robertson calls for assassination of Chavez: "Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson called on Monday for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, calling him a “terrific danger” to the United States."

Ellen Ladowsky: Pedophilia and Star Trek: "This does not mean that watching Star Trek makes you a pedophile. It does mean that if you're a pedophile, odds are you've watched a lot of Star Trek."

Full moon Friday came and went, and turned into a decent enough day. Met up with Andrew after work for some video golf -- not one of my better outings, thanks to a terrible back nine. I went into the back half of the course at 6 under, which is about what I hoped for; it was all downhill from there, and I finished at 8 over.

Yes, even in the computer world, I'm about as athletic as my telephone.

Met up with Heather for drinks, first at Bailey's, celebrating their anniversary (we split before it got too crowded, though it was fairly packed, even at 11), and then to the Quest to meet up with Andrew and Julie and friends. A few rounds of pool and a lot of alcohol later, the night came to a close. Very good company, indeed. A good portent of things to come, perhaps and hopefully...

And now today I'm at work, not terribly happy about it. Covering my ass for some bad communication -- too many steps in the workflow means too many chances for assumptions and ball dropping.

Off to hang out with my folks' dog and try to enjoy the rest of my Saturday. A few errands, a little Wal-Mart, and perhaps a car wash before I drop in on the guys in GCW tonight to say hi.

And I wish I had completed my post yesterday (Thursday was filled with much more than just Batman), but I'm kinda glad I didn't; best, perhaps, to just let some things go and hope they don't come back.

Saw my first movie of the summer.  Oh, sure, technically, SWIII: George Lucas Raped My Childhood was in the summer.  But I didn’t see that so much as sit through it to complete the nightmare.  No… last night was BATMAN BEGINS. The comic book junkie in me was VERY impressed: the story details and atmosphere found a nice groove somewhere between the Golden Age Batman and some of the more modern writing.  Nice nods here and there to little details from the Batman universe (mentions of Zsasz and Arkham Asylum, for instance).  Gary Oldman’s Jim Gordon is spot on perfect – amazing to see Oldman play someone not creepy.  Michael Caine is a great Alfred, Liam Neeson played a great tweener villain, and Christian Bale is amazing as Wayne/Batman (really, two characters by the end).

The score by Hans Zimmer was amazing – a nice return to Ziimer’s dark strengths.  The cinematography in Gotham was great – like a nightmare version of Chicago, but not at all Goth-y like Tim Burton’s version. And for the most part, Christopher Nolan really nailed the job; I think he’s the perfect director for Batman, as he’s not a cartoon superhero as much as a psychological symbol in light and shadow.  BUT… man, someone else needs to co-direct with Nolan next time, only on the fight sequences.  There was one moment that the chaotic mess was appropriate, but for the most part, the fights were an on-screen clusterfuck.  Not that I could have done better, especially given some of the scenes, but they really needed a more experienced touch.

I’m now hesitant to go see another movie – I think I’m just going to let the summer end on a good note.

New comic book goes to Hell - - MSNBC.com: "John Colone, who owns Screams Ice Cream and Hell Country Store and Spirits in the real Hell, plans to carry 200 copies of the monthly comic."

Seriously -- anyone who gets to write "the real Hell" in an article has topped Everest and will never do any better. It's all jumping the shark from here on out.

"I've got your problem narrowed down to one of two things. On some level, you're used to imbalanced women who are going to cause problems to a point where you have the supernatural power to just pick them out of a crowd. That, or you give off pheromones that attract them. Maybe you smell like a delicious drama Twinkie that they can't wait to suck the creamy life out of."


To all the girls who think I'm talking about you:

I am.

This is some by-and-large excellent writing. The midpoint has what felt like kind of a cop-out in plot (though, alternately, I love the idea), but the writing is great. And there's some really good horror elements in here, too.

http://www.pointlesswasteoftime.com/jdate/intro.html

Read a little here, a little there -- just treat it like an online novel.

They tell me you are better off
Where you are now
Well, I don't care
They tell me that your pain is gone
Where you are now
Well, you left it here

One of the best things about this Interweb thing is the power for people to post, raw and unedited. If you're looking for good writing -- well, there's a lot more shit to wade through to get to it. But for emotional memory, this is it. It's like stumbling onto a gigantic meta-diary for the world.

When a blog writer dies, it's a bit eerie. You can't always tell if they've just grown bored with having a public diary, if they've taken an extended break... or if they're gone. In some cases, you can follow other links from their pages to find notes from friends; in at least one case, the blog of a murder victim helped lead to his killer (if I could find the link in my giant list of archived things, I'd post it).

But reading things like this
are what really inspire me. Not death, or even an online obit from a close friend -- but the raw emotion and pain that the medium allows. This is the sort of thing you rarely if ever find in print, edited and sanitized as print tends to be.

And it seems so much more real and pure to me. Perhaps the timeliness of the reading (today versus one or two months out); but more likely, the fact that the words and thoughts and tears are not filtered through editors.

And the whole thing reminds me of meeting Melissa just a few weeks before her grandmother died. I never met her (she had advanced stages of cancer, and so it just never was the right time, too early in the relationship). But I remember after she died, the stories I'd hear in the immediate afterwards -- and it was a rough time to be in a new relationship with someone, but something I wouldn't trade, because I think death brings such real and true emotion to the surface. Years later, you get a whitewashed version of the person, as most of the negative has been ignored or forgotten, but right away, the emotions are too strong to allow for conscious editing, and I think that you get the truest version of that person, as seen through the eyes of others.

In fact, I wrote a song about it. Wanna hear it? Here it go:

I did not know you, our lives never touched
'Til the day they gathered, to bid you farewell
And they painted your picture and as I looked around
I felt I saw you in the words and the sound

Your talent came flowing, through the stories they tell
And through the faces of those who loved you so well
Your life gave them a treasure, a piece of themselves
Something they carry, and still serves them well

Just one life, just one life, just one life
That is born, and is, and is gone, just one life
And I'm so glad to know you, as I know you now

Perhaps inside you, you were messed up like me
But to them you were whole and strong and a friend in their need
And what you left behind you and what swept over me
Says that your life's work rolls on and on, a piece of eternity

Just one life, just one life, just one life
That is born, and is, and is gone, just one life
Did you ever have a chance to find out
What life is all about

I did not know you, our lives never touched
'Til the day we gathered, to say our farewell

Okay, fine. Brian May wrote that. But it's beautiful anyway. So go look for the Back to the Light album, and snap it up.

And then spend ten minutes, quietly, remembering someone that you never knew.

And then get out and live. If not for yourself, for those who can't.

It's something that we all struggle with, at one point in time or another: the question of the meaning of life. Why are we here? Where did we come from, and where will we go after our bodies are wormfood or soot?

This is the source of religion, of philosophy, of a lot of science (entertainment for the weekend: toss a representative from each of those groups into a closet, and listen to the screams). And each group (and a bunch of sub-groups inside) have their own answers to the question(s): evolution, Big Bang, Genesis, Intelligent Design, brains in vats.

My problem with each of these answers is that they are stopgap -- if there's a god, who made him? If we are brains in vats, or someone else's dream, who made them?

If you can imagine the boundaries of the universe, you're a stronger person than I. What lies outside those boundaries? Nothing? What is nothing? It can't be space -- that's not nothing. But then, neither is non-space....

The opposite of the intelligent design theory -- does god worry about these questions when he gets bored, too? -- is the happenstance theory. No intelligence at all behind it. But frighteningly easy to grasp -- no worse than the infinite monkeys with infinite time and infinite typewriters idea. Sooner or later, given infinity, one of those monkeys is going to crank out ROMEO AND JULIET -- that's the beauty of infinity.

Take all probabilities, and each of them will happen at least once, eventually. Actually, they'll all happen over and over and over, thanks ot inifinity... But so it goes.

The odds of life spontaneously generating, given primordial soup and chemical reactions and whatnot, is ridiculously small. The odds of an amoeba evolving into a cat -- much less a human being -- even smaller. The odds of all the factors in the universe being weighted just so to support reality as we know it -- magnetic and gravitational fields, our bodies processing elements to support more processing, our ridiculously complex brains -- is microscopic. Therefore, there MUST be a god, right?

Unless you've got infinity, infinite time, infinite space. More than plenty of chance for everything in possibility to happen once.

Of course no one wants to think about this. Sure, it's an easy answer -- and it answers a lot of smaller questions, about coincidences and confluence, and whatever. But goddamn, it's a scary notion, because it utterly wipes out the idea of destiny, of fate, of kismet, of hope for some sort of meaning behind it all.

We're all a cosmic accident, and we're just here to putter around until another cosmic accident wipes us all out.

Human beings -- and dogs, and horses, and finches, and beetles, for that matter -- are a random cancer of the universe.

Fuck, that's depressing. Not any moreso than ID, in my opinion -- that road just leads to us being ants, instead of random chance mutations -- but pretty depressing nonetheless.

I'm all for teaching DUH
in America's schools!

I have a friend who is extraordinarily thin. Not unhealthily, I think -- really, she's hot, and that's odd for me to say, since thin is not usually my thing. Not that I have a type -- I like all sorts of body types, from tall to short to thin to stocky (at the risk of sounding shallow, I'm not a fan of obese bodies). My main interest is in proportionate bodies (where nothing really stands out as too large or small compared to the rest), but outside of that, it's not easy for me to describe a "type".

But thin's not really my thing, as anyone who has ever been on the receiving end of my "Eat a fucking sandwich, woman!" line can attest. But my friend -- somehow she carries it well. She doesn't come across as a Lindsay Lohan or Olsen twin (whichever one it was that threatened to wither away in the limelight); she's very sexy and healthy looking.

But she -- and a lot of other people in my circles -- are really caught up in this idea (ideal?) of physical beauty, primarily as defined by the magazines and TV shows and media outlets. And sure, Gisele and Tyra and Kate are all really hot, and there's a reason that they are the supermodels of the moment. But what about the normal, average woman? The one who doesn't spend the better part of her life in the gym, counting every calorie and sweating the ridiculous details of her carb intake?

I'm not talking, again, about the ridiculously out-of-shape. I think there's a certain sexiness in seeing that a woman cares enough about herself to look good -- TO AN EXTENT. I need to emphasize that point. I want to know that a woman is aware of how she looks, and takes steps to make sure that she's... presentable? Perhaps the wrong choice of words. Perhaps some examples will work better:

I love women that don't wear makeup. And while makeup can be really nice -- good enhancement, say -- some of the most memorable women that I've ever encountered didn't wear makeup. At all. And I've seen the hot women with lots of makeup, too -- I have a preference, I'll admit, for the goth look, lots of eyeliner, darker colors, etc. -- but I always suspect that they're hiding something horrendous underneath it all. (Though waking up next to a beautiful and un-made woman is always nice -- much like undressing them to find a gorgeous body)

Much like the make-up bit: I generally prefer to see a woman in blue jeans and a t-shirt and a ballcap than some formal dress. Mmm, clarification: I prefer to see a woman wearing whatever she's most comfortable in. Some of my friends wear jeans, some wear cargo pants, some wear warm-ups -- but mostly I like the aura that a comfortable woman exudes. Sure, the dressed-up look is a nice bit of variety once in a blue-moon, but overall, give me the "I'm getting ready to clean the house" look.

I've mentioned that I'm not fond of obesity -- and that's just a personal preference, by the way, not some overarching condemnation. I'm equally (generally) unattracted to women that are too thin, as noted above. But I'm really, really, really turned off by vanity bordering on narcissism. If you enjoy running, or biking, or working out, by all means, go to it. The toned body is a nice side-effect. But if you're punishing yourself to fit some societal expectation that the latest COSMO is pushing -- stop. That attitude is more unattractive to me than eight tons of cellulite.

I might need to rethink that last statement.

It's fine to be concerned with your looks, to an extent. I am, certainly. Not overly so -- I've got a little bit of a Buddha belly that I could do without, but I'm not going to drop $30 a month or more and hire a personal trainer to try to get rid of it. Guess what? I'm getting older, and eventually, that belly is coming to stay. I'm a big fan of keeping my hair long (not to mention a random color each month), but eventually, according to genetic predictors, I'm not going to have much hair to grow out. I've been blessed with fairly good skin, but eventually, gravity will take hold (not to mention all the stress I carry on my face).

The physical doesn't last forever. And what if my CIPD comes back? I'll not have much choice in some of my physicality. I can either go back on steroids to hopefully control the problem -- and gain a metric load of weight, mostly in my face (as evidenced in HIDE & CREEP), or I can allow my nervous system to be eaten alive and slowly lose my extremities (which included my facial muscles, though I hid that fairly well at the time).

Does that make me any less desirable? Well, sure it could. We're all human, and we're all Western, and that means that we're conditioned to a certain body type, a certain facial look, etc. I get to hear my female friends and acquaintances rant all the time about which guys are hot (that list rarely includes me), and eventually, you find yourself wishing that you might make that list more often.

BUT...

Ultimately, I think I'm better off than most of the guys that make those lists. Sure, I'm not the one that girls notice when I walk into a club or a party. But the only thing that really limits is the number of one-night stands that I'll be having (and I've had plenty enough, thanks -- the joys of bartending). But not being thought of as hot means that I don't really have to worry about my look any more than I feel like it on a given day. I can dye my hair green, and no one outside of my mother (and occasionally my ex-wife, though less as we get older) gives me that "you look so much better with your natural color" speech. I can wear whatever I feel like wearing (which, on top of making me more comfortable, save sme a lot of money).

Where am I going with this? God only knows, and he ain't talking.

Oh, but I know where this came from. That new Dove commercial campaign -- that's where this all started. And I'm a little offended (and part perplexed) at the contradiction of showing natural women, promoting a more attainable beauty, in an ad for wrinkle cream. But whatever... The two girls with short hair, by the way, are really hot....

Right. Back to point. Which is that I'm glad someone's doing this -- featuring beautiful women with normal bodies. Yeah, supermodels are hot, sometimes, but so are normal women. And I think that, judging from the thinking of some of my female friends, this idea needs to be reinforced today. Too many girls going for that freshly-released-from-the-basement look today for my liking.

Yeah, beauty is nice. But a lot of beauty -- the real, lasting kind -- comes from self-esteem, and there are a lot of girls who would really be killers if they just saw themselves like I do.

Five men in a car.

Works best if you close your eyes and just... listen.

Motorcycle meets car. 155 MPH. Cops think that rider, at that speed, never even had time to apply the brakes.

Motorcycle becomes one with car, and passenger.

I still want a bike, but if you want to governor that engine, it's fine by me.

eChalk colour perception: This is so far beyond hard-to-swallow. I have to wonder if there are aural illusions like this, as well.

Illusion 3 is pretty intense, but it's number one that I can't force myself to process....

I woke up today
To a world that's ground to dust, dirt and stone

Anyone else ever wake up and wonder what happened to you?

Anyone else ever wake up and wonder what happened to me?

There's a fog over my life today. Over me. Over who I am, who I want to be, who I'm happy with.

Calgon, go fuck yourself.