The human mind is a puzzling thing

And this even a "zomgwtf is wrong with these people" post.

So, I glanced a the headline for the most recent post from my friends @ Davis House News and all I saw was a jot about the last trombone class for the year. I had to stop and purge my brain before I double checked.

Huh.

Looks like I flubbed the html on that last one.
Maybe I should have just used youtube's embed code.
Oh, well.

So... apparently, I graduated today.
I'm not entirely sure what that means.

I can tell you for damned sure it doesn't mean I'm done.
All the classic cliches about endless struggles? The others about being one's own worst enemy?
Yeah.

But it's cool. For a given value of "cool", anyway.
I haven't got much else to do most days but kick the shit out of myself. ;)

Missed out on a job opportunity today. Turns out they interviewed internally first, then hired one of their receptionists on the spot. From answering the phone to IT. The American Dream, I guess.
Oh, well.

Don't read too much into it...

it's just a song I liked enough to share.



Oh, it stings at times, but it's just a song.

hm.

…
What to do with myself?
I’ve got a strange skill set, to say the least.
There are plenty of things I’m good at, but none of the stuff I enjoy really works as a way of life.
At the moment, I’m afraid, I’m having trouble finding true enjoyment in anything; understandably, I think.
I spend much of my time these days examining the things flitting, oozing and blazing through my mind. Trying to excavate parts of me too long calcified.
Some of it, I’ve come to terms with. Other things, I’m still processing, still exploring. Some, I might never understand. I think that I’ll be able to accept the bits that elude me, once I have some idea of what these things are. I may be able to accept riddles with no answers, but first I need to find out exactly what those riddles are.
I think I understand where I’ve been these past years. I’m quite certain that I understand the better part of how current events came to be. I regret it, and it shames me, but I’m trying my best not to get sucked into it. That’s no way to live.
An (un)healthy part of my mind wants to do just that, though- just curl back up in my hole until I’m emotionally dead again. To be honest, it’s not that it hurts any less in that hole- but at least the pain in there is familiar.
Instead, I breathe. I try to relax and let the feelings move like waves- coming in, then receding. Admittedly, a lot of the waves are still crashing in, but I try. Day by day, breath by breath, I work at it. In some things, I think I’ve enjoyed some measure of success. But I know there is so much more ahead. I know the fight is far from done. Some days are so much harder than others. Sometimes it feels like too much. Sometimes it’s all I can do to hang on to what I’ve gained, to keep hold of the clarity I’ve gained, the clarity that is, frankly, my only hope as a human being. So I keep breathing. I put these thoughts down in writing, hoping to alleviate some of the pain, hoping to draw some of the venom out.
I’m not sure what I want out of life, and that anxiety is added to everything that’s going on. I’m afraid of the future. I try to keep things day-to-day, try to keep myself grounded and keep things immediate enough to focus on things without the anxiety, without the fear, but that’s hard, too. But I cannot avoid the future. It descends inexorably- a mountain grinding down on all of us moment by moment. And I don’t know how to face it alone.
Oh, I know the mechanics of how to survive out in the wide world. It’s been a while since I had to worry about that stuff, but I know how it’s done. But between having no idea what I want, without a tangible rudder and starting from pretty literally a backward-moving starting point, the future seems more than daunting.

heh. Not bad, I guess.

Something occurred to me today on my way… home… from my emo-moshing at Kaiser’s East Interstate facility:
I’ve been driving through downtown every day for the last week or so!
That may seem like a really odd thing to be excited about or proud of, but not so long ago it was a huge trial for me to even ride in a car downtown, let alone drive.
This realization led to another- other drivers don’t bother me so much anymore; at least, not like they used to.
Oh, I admit that other drivers still frustrate the hell out of me sometimes, even piss me off. But there have been times over the last few years when they would absolutely enrage me.

This all came to me as I was sitting on the raised Burnside Bridge, waiting for a ship to pass beneath. It suddenly struck me that I had never done that before. I’d never been on any of the bridges here, waiting for a boat. Not that this is actually a banner accomplishment or anything- it was just a thing, but a novel thing. Something I had not experienced.
As small as it may seem, it was sort of cool.

Journalism without Sensationalism

Huh.
I didn't realize anyone did that anymore.

NPR

I got bored at about 2 this morning.

So I rented a movie from On Demand.
I watched a scifi/horror flick by the name of Pandorum.
It starred this one guy, one of the Quaids and a German chick. And a couple of other people, but whatever.

It was ok.

The ship (LOVED the exterior design- very unconventional), was more believable than, say, the Event Horizon (inside-out porcupine was just too Hellraiser-ene), offering the dark, tight tension of the colony on LV426 (Aliens) on a much grander scale (again- ref. Event Horizon).

So, it's got a running thread about Hibernation Psychosis, Hibernation Instability, whatever. Cool- psycho-thriller aspects, but it doesn't hijack the scifi/action/horror core of the story. I can appreciate that- I didn't rent this hoping for The Usual Suspects- I don't need a mystery-thriller trying to take over my spaceship-in-danger movie.

It's also a race-against-time-to-save-the-ship movie.
That works, too. All things considered, the ship probably could have used some maintenance, anyway.

It's also an origin story of super-Reavers. Or something.
The monsters are kind of explained- just not satisfactorily. For me, anyway.
I mean, I understood the explanation, and I can even accept it within the realm of suspended disbelief- I'd have liked to have seen a little more crunch, though. Just my thing.


Now- the HUGEST thing the movie has going for it is the guy that plays the protagonist- you know: that one guy.

He can act pretty well, I suppose. I've got no real complaints.
But what he does brilliantly is this... well, it's like the sudden-pain "o-face".
He doesn't grunt, or scowl or grimace like a traditional action hero when dropped on his spine, oh no- his whole face widens with shock, his eyes bugging, mouth gaping like a fish as the air is knocked out of him.
It's perfect.

oh- completely forgot!

I'm an internet hooligan!

I got banned from CNN's comments section on Thursday!
It all started with an article about suicide.

It was a pretty good article overall, if a bit narrow-minded for my tastes in certain areas.

Some cat commented that the nature of the individual must be considered, the situation, and above all, the individual's rights.
He didn't write well, and his opinion was fairly ill-received, but I felt his position had merit, so I stepped in to support his ideas.

Keeping things civil, I participated sparingly in the ensuing... conversation.
I was surprised how few religious-right "abomination against God" replies; but overall, no one seemed to be willing to consider the notion of a consenting adult's right to order their own life- or death.

No one was willing to accept the notion of choice.

So I tried one last tactic (as it turned out, one last post before everything I said was deleted and I was banned)-
I asked (more or less), "If you can support a woman's right to choose to abort a pregnancy, whether the choice is based on convenience or anything else short of medical necessity; how can you not support the choice of a 40 year-old severe chronic pain victim when he decides to abort a life of continued and increasing pain?"

Apparently CNN's got an allergy to my version of liberal ideology.
Not as severe as Fox News, perhaps, but still...

...just what the FUCK was that?!

Look- I don't usually blog about video games... hell , I don't usually blog at all, but shit, man!

Right, so here's the deal- last fall, a pretty sweet FPS (First-Person Shooter) by the name of "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2" (henceforth, "MW2") was released. It was the sequel to the equally sweet CoD: MW released a couple of years ago.
The opening of MW2 was pretty intense, from this vet's perspective- 'urban' Afghanistan looks a lot like urban Eritrea or Somalia, or Iraq, for that matter. I've got an Iraq vet's testament for the... striking verisimilitude of the setting, as well.

After the opening of the game, though, with the Russian invasion of the US and all that stuff, the story becomes... fantastic enough that the stressors of simulated combat aren't really an issue.

Great game- graphically and technically astounding, great gameplay, far-fetched but entertaining story. However far-fetched the invasion might be, it was at least justified by the ongoing tread of the story.

More recently released is what is thought of as the prime competitor to MW2, "Battlefield: Bad Company 2" (BC2 from now on). It's gotten the same rave reviews from the same media sources as MW2.
And frankly: it sucks.

Graphically, it's far inferior; making out-of-date uniforms on 'near-future' US soldiers look like they're woven from coarse wool and poorly dyed, weird geometries slashing across characters' flesh instead of fluid movement, et cetera.
The mechanics of gameplay are old and outmoded, and the voice acting and characterizations are pathetic.
The player's team throughout the whole game consists of a crusty black sergeant on the cusp of retirement, a hillbilly Texan, and a techy machinegunner with acne scars from Jersey. Oh- and the civilian hippy chopper pilot that ferries the team around. WTF is that all about?

The story... hooooo boy... it started well enough, I suppose- a fictional Japanese superweapon towards the end of WW2- then sort of fell apart and oozed along. The superweapon is lost and forgotten as we drop the Bomb(s), and history moves on.
I'm still not entirely sure why my four-man team has anything to do with any of this- it's stressed over and over that we're not 'special ops'- so what in the wide, wide world of sports are the four of us doing in foreign countries waging small wars? Conventional units aren't that small and don't do that sort of shit.
But here's the real kicker: the thing that made the whole story a weak, derivative piece of coprolite: after all the shit you go through in the campaign, the game ends with you being informed (by a lieutenant general [the same asshole that got you into all this shit to begin with]who conveniently happens to be nearby when you crash a plane near Nacadoches, Texas) that the Russians are invading the US! Nowhere in the story are US/Russian tensions or hostilities mentioned- we save the day, get back to the US and then: "lol u n00bs- all ur base r belong to Ivan lolomgwtfhax!" Like I said- fucking pathetic.

A single huge credit to BC2- as you unearth certain parts of the Japanese superweapon history through the game, various cut scenes give you a little insight as to wtf is supposed to be going on.
What makes these cinematic intermissions frigging awesome is the musical score- it's straight out of the Indiana Jones movies. The softer, slower orchestral pieces as Indy examines a prize? Yep. That's the stuff.

I've got to try out the respective games' multiplayer functionality next- I can only assume that's what the comparative reviews are based on.
If they are, though, why are devs wasting their time making singleplayer campaigns? If good multiplayer excuses all faults in singleplayer, why waste the extra development time and effort?
If the BC2's multiplayer is so good as to rate the same overall ratings as MW2, then they should have just made a mp-only game with an sp tutorial.

well, bugger...

Chris linked me.
I suppose that means I'm obligated to do one of my notorious biannual posts. :p

Right... So.
Um.
I really don't have much to say.

I've been put on and gotten off Methadone now; no, not detox- chronic pain therapy.
That was some nasty shit; sorta like a two-month blackout. I was a complete dick the whole time and entirely unaware of it. Long story on how I figured out what was up.

Working on re-sculpting skulls for casting/production right now- always best to avoid trademarks and all that shit. Only eastern Asia manages to throw all international copyright laws out the window and get away with it.
Once I finish in the next few weeks, it may very well turn up on the frogblog.


Like I said: I've not got much to say. Everyone else that blogs seems to have most of my topics pretty well covered.

Say what you will about the church

(I'll almost certainly agree with you, after all)
I will grant, however, that Francis of Assisi was a pretty damned good poet.

Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace;

where there is hatred, let me sow love;

where there is injury, pardon;

where there is doubt, faith;

where there is despair, hope;

where there is darkness, light;

and where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master,

grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;

to be understood, as to understand;

to be loved, as to love;

for it is in giving that we receive,

it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,

and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.

Amen.

Leaving out the 'lord' and the 'divine master' bits, I think it's a pretty damned nifty phrasing of the golden rule- just taken to a wider scale.
Sort of a step beyond doing unto others and so forth.
Help- because you can. It doesn't have to be because you're trying to do God's work, as it were, but because... well, because you can.

My brain chemistry is pretty screwed up right now. Everybody who needs to know, knows. The really short version is, I tried something to make a thing better, and it only made other things worse.

Anyway.
I stumbled across this little ditty as performed lyrically by Sarah McLachlan, and it really struck a chord with me.
I'm not entirely sure why. It probably hearkens back to a time when I believed I could make the world a better place.

/end quasi-emo gush of the night.

You'd think they could have found a trainer...

How is it, that in 7 years as Buffy Summers (the Slayer), Sarah Michelle Gellar never learned how to throw a punch?
I mean, I've never had much use for punches myself; I'm more of a knees, elbows and boots kinda guy, but at least I know how it's done.
I mean, sheesh- just because your character is superhuman, it's ok to punch like a girl?

As a side gripe- why bother fighting all those bad guys? Hunt them down and slaughter them, then go have lunch at a nice bistro.
Don't fight on the enemy's terms, when and where the enemy is strong; have a wholesome breakfast and then napalm the Big Bad while he's in bed.

You're the slayer, not the scrapper.
'Buffy the Vampire Boxer' is closer to the truth.
I'll grant, it doesn't have the same ring...

I am not an individual.

And neither are you.
Think about it- if you wanted to get really simplistic, you could classify 'self' as the voice in the darkness behind your eyes.
But that 'voice' isn't a voice, is it? It's a chorus of voices, even if most of us give no thought to subtle refrains and variegated threads of that chorus.
What about the parts of your brain that track the demands of your body? Your body which is always too hot or too cold, too hungry or too full, too uncomfortable...
Sometimes you listen, not even realizing you are- you think it's your idea to eat... and it is- but it's not just 'your' idea.

I am a committee, and so are you.
Freud, Jung and all of those prats would natter on about the ego and the id, the conscious and the subconscious.
But there is only the committee. It is all one thing, yet the components wrestle for dominance constantly.

The parts that communicate with the body have the ability to override logic, compassion, everything.
Why? Because those are the members that are most closely related to the oldest members of the mind- the dark, red, entirely uncivilized parts that coil in the hindbrain, waiting. The parts that joined up before civilization, the parts that were there before we were properly human.
And with the occasional exception, the parts of the mind that end up running the show when the world crumbles under your feet.

Amazing species, humanity. Until it all goes pear shaped, we never know if we're predator, prey or other. Those primal voices from our brain stem are all the same- we all come from the same origins- so why is it that he is predator, she is prey and I am other?

What part of the committee... taints, dilutes, those old voices?

Why did he wet his pants under fire, even thought he continued to fight? Because he is prey, but training allowed him to function, to some degree, regardless. Why did that one go nuts- nearly berserk- fighting back? Maybe he's predator, or maybe he's just particularly dangerous prey... I don't know.

And why did the world slow down for me? Crystal clear and perfect, I'd swear I could see the disturbances in the air from passing bullets, I had nearly been killed, might still be, and the world... was... perfect.
I felt the broken ceramic back-plate grind against me as I shifted target to target, the blood running from my nose and split lips, soaking the cravat tied around my face against the road dust...
Shit.
This wasn't supposed to be a war story.

The point is, people often talk about your mind playing tricks when it thinks it's gonna die, and maybe it does. But I don't think that's what was going on.

I was calm because the the deep, feral things and the rest of the committee were in perfect accord. The mind cannot be allowed to anticipate death if it's going to destroy it's threats most effectively. Does that make me other?
And it never failed me. Heh. It's probably the last time in my life that my mind wasn't messily fragmented. Maybe that much... integration isn't good for your brain.
That was probably the best time of my life, for all the horrifying shit I saw... Me and my Beast, all of mind, focused...
The Beast sniffed them out, and the rational mind dealt with them- the Beast's aim is, frankly, shit.

It's not paranoia...

How can you know if you can trust someone with your death?

It's remarkably easy to trust someone with your life- you do it pretty much every time you step onto a crosswalk.
Most folks won't bother with your life, especially the strangers waiting on you at the stoplight.
But your family... your family's statistically more likely to kill you, yet, perhaps perversely, they're also the ones who will fight to the bitter end to keep you alive.
Even if you don't want them to.
Who can you trust with your death?

See, some of the cases are silly- lady's got the mind of a gourd but you're keeping her alive through artificial means? Absurd, but it's your money, mate.

But what about the coma patient that shows brain activity? How long do you wait? How long do you leave your loved one trapped in their own mind? IF they wake up, will they be the same person? Will they even be sane?

How about Cancer Dude? The guy with the slow but excruciating and untreatable cancer eating him alive? Who can he trust to understand his desire to punch out a little early?

I'm sure you can see where this is going.
This is not an e-suicide note. My readership isn't wide enough for it to be effective. ;)
This is just something that has nagged at me now and then, as the years pass and the pain grows worse and more frequent, as my mind frays just a little more.
No, not a suicide note.
Just pontificating a bit.

Would my family understand?
If not, what would it take to convince them?
Dare I risk them not understanding? Do I dare risk their betrayal of my trust to their misplaced faith- whatever that may be?

Who can you trust with your death?

Like tap-dancing on a landslide

"This is the hand you were dealt..."?
So, can I fold?
I mean, it may not be a losing hand, per se, but it's no damned fun to play this one...

Stubbornly persisting on playing out a questionable hand is gambling addiction.
Holding because you expect the hand to get better- that's insanity.

I really hate going to the VA hospital...

and have to get it off my chest.

See, it smells there.
It smells like sickness and suffering... it smells like slow death.
The VA hospital is not a place of healing- it's a place for soldiers (and sailors, Marines and airmen) to go to die.
It's a nursing home for terminal cases. Some of us just take longer than others.

Going there makes me feel sick and sad and unworthy.
The clink of the gas cylinder, the rasp of the lungs it supports; the shuffling click of the walker or cane... they are reminders of stoic suffering. Little snips of stories far more horrific than mine, riffs of ballads far more heroic.
All of these heroes, come to this dismal place to die.

Some have family there to help them, friends to prop them up. Some have nothing left but pride in comrades long dead.
I lament the multitudes that are yet to come- those yet to join our ranks. Yet to contribute to the miasma of broken hearts and minds, broken bodies and spirits. Those yet to rage and weep in frustration and pain- but never at the hospital.
There, we bear it stoically.

Because whether we acknowledge it or not, we're all there to die.

Heh. Heheheh.

My brain's sizzling. It's gonna be one of those nights.
The question is: do I dope myself into a coma, or do I just roll with it?
See, it's not necessarily a good fizz I've got going. I'm feeling a bit irritable and belligerent.
As I put it to my brother and sister earlier: 'the cosmos is lucky it doesn't wear trousers, or I'd kick it right in the fork.'

~sigh~

So. What are you doing tonight?
I'm toying with all sorts of ideas- most of them require power tools, which I can't do here, so I'm also toying with the idea of going over to the shop.

Of course, that indubitably lead to people running around, shouting, 'What's the meaning of this,' or maybe, 'WTF?!?!?' Admittedly, the second is much more likely, even from friends that are at least as well-read as myself.
Anyway.
When people get all excited like that they get annoying. And inconvenient.
I'd rather not be inconvenienced by anyone I'd regret killing later. My brain chemistry's just not right for casual annoyance.
I toyed with the notion of running down a bicyclist earlier because he was riding slow and wobbly, and that caused the red blinker on his seat post to bob and weave in a way that I found off-putting.
The prospect of the much larger annoyance of coppers dissuaded me.

See? Even with my crazy-eyes on, I can maintain a modicum of control.

The doctors with the cattle prods would be so proud of me.

MWAHAHAhahahahaha!!!!

...because more than two exclamation points are a sure sign of an unsound mind...

Right.
To date, I've jabbered about Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles via mass email to my geek friends. I'll do it here this time at least, to avoid spoilers for my lazy, Tivo-ing geek friends out there.

DIVERGENT TIMELINES!
Ha! See- I advanced the possibility last season against arguments of history scrambling, retcon-ing, etc.. As more and more operatives from both sides get sent back, the future a given being came back from may not be the same as the next being's future.

Derrik theorized as much in "Complications"- Monday the 17th's episode.
Sure, about half of the episode was given over to Sarah's fever-tripping, but *shrug* whatever.
Of course, Derrik and I could be wrong, but when I'm in agreement with guy from 90210, I'm almost certainly right. It's the 2nd Law of Bassification, I think.

Right. Y'know- this is much more fun with alcohol. I'll have to do this more often.

OK- what's the effing reference from last week's title? "Mr. Ferguson in Ill Today"? WTFBBQ is that? If there is no reference, it's even better. Inspired, certainly.

"The Tower is Tall But the Fall is Short" was an obvious allusion to the temptation of suicide, regardless of the origins of the phrase. Because it's so true- no matter how many steps you've taken, you've only got to take one more...

Um... what was I talking about?
Jesse. WTF is up with her? I trust her about as far as I could toss one of the tinmen, but then again, she seems to have genuine emotional investment in Derrik. Aaaand she's fucking psycho... Still, she's a hot Austalian with Asian ancestory, so she's welcome to stay.

John finding the photo of Sarah (originally taken at the end of the first film) at Ellison's house is a nice detail, too- that's the polaroid that sends Kyle Reese to the past the first time around.

's all for now. I'm gonna wander off to bed, I think.

I've gotta move to Australia...

and I don't even like beer.
See, I've known about the rabbit problem down under for years. It's always raised Australia's esteem in my eyes that one could get a blasting permit there to deal with rabbits.

But I just learned today that they've got a feral cat problem as well. Make no mistake- I like cats. I don't much care for strays or unmanaged indoor/outdoor cats, but I like cats.
But these friggin things are like... land-based Great Whites- they just cut a swathe through anything in front of them.

And I really want to move down there and kill the damned things for fun and profit.