Archive for August, 2006
Humble Admiration
31 August 2006“My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.”
- Albert Einstein
My List (Revisited)
30 August 2006I was doing some tweaking to TH… (That’s right, I haven’t forgotten about this place, despite my tendency to write sparsely and sporadically. Actually, I installed a new plugin that displays “Related Posts”, and some more are coming. But I digress…)
Ahem… I was doing some tweaking to TH, and I came across “My List“. That is, a list of things I want in an “ideal” girl for me. It’s a short post, so here’s the long-and-short of it:
Eh, Danté wrote a list of criteria for the “perfect” girl, seemed cool, so I thought I’d do it. I’m not even pushing the subject lately, but lists are just cool.
1) She must be capable of providing a stimulating conversation with me, and isn’t afraid to.
- a) She isn’t afraid to defend her opinions, and
- b) is respectful of others’ opinions when they differ.
2) She must be compassionate about the world around her.
3) She must consider love a priority in life.
4) She mustn’t have a restless heart.
- a) It doesn’t mean she can’t want to see the world or experience as much as she can… I want the same, but
- b) She should find content in settling down into a peaceful life, gradually and eventually.
5) She should like those other goals or dreams I’ve set in my own life. (i.e. the “ugly green chair” thing)
- a) She should have her own goals and dreams, but
- b) ours should be relatively compatible.
6) She should take some sort of pride in her appearance.
- a) She doesn’t need have the “perfect” body or dress a certain way, but
- b) Her appearance should be reflective and representative of the type of person she is.Wow, I didn’t think I’d come up with a very good list, but I’m actually quite happy with it. I’ll give it a second looking later, to see if there is any room for addition or correction.
Oops. Did a bang-up job with that, the second look. Oh well… Well over three years later, but here I am. Interestingly, though I wrote this entry hot off the major, heartwrenching drama I went through with Genelle (and it shows), the list is still pretty accurate to what I desire. Usually when someone asks me to describe my perfect match, I tell them I won’t know her until I meet her. In fact, I guess I’ve had a reasonable idea all along.
Even more interesting: I seem to have found someone who, as best as I can determine, meets just about every criterion on that list. There are a few caveats: Her goals seem more in line with what mine were back then than what they are now. (Although, what the hell are my goals, anyhow?) I’ve yet to catch her in a situation that would require a display of compassion, especially towards the world at large. And I’m somewhat jonesing for some intellectually stimulating conversation, but again, the opportunity for such hasn’t really presented itself. But you know what? Those concerns are simply unknowns, blank spaces. They certainly aren’t ominous red X’s. And I have a strong feeling that, sooner or later, I’ll be looking at big green check marks down the line.
Not that the success of a relationship can be governed by a checklist… I’ve never believed that. Even still, I’m somewhat surprised how swiftly a real relationship and a good relationship cuts its own path, rendering expectations null and void. Every time I get together with Naomi, the occasion unfolds differently than I would’ve expected. And it’s fun that way. Yes, I’m a lucky guy, alright.
Updates in Brief
18 August 2006No, it’s not titled that because I’m in my underwear. :P Well, I am, but anyhow… Plenty of little things to talk about, but none that really need a lot of time devoted to them. You know what that means… Bullets!
- Just signed up for an “Orange Savings” account through ING Direct–4.35% interest and no minimum balance… What a great deal, huh? Thanks for the tip, Dante!
- Found a GREEN Boston Red Sox cap, complete with a red shamrock on the back. I think I may have a Red Sox cap compulsion/fetish, but this is one I’ve been wanting for a long time but never managed to find in a size that fits my ginormous head. Now I’ve got something to wear on St. Paddy’s.
- Bought a Sean of the Dead action figure. How’s that for a slice of fried gold?
- Picked up two CD’s I’ve listened to for ages but never actually picked up: Reload (Metallica) and Whatever and Ever Amen (Ben Folds Five). Good shit.
- Got a poster, too… A “Chuck Norris Badass Facts” poster. When Chuck Norris was born, he drop-kicked the doctor on the way out. Because no one delivers Chuck Norris–but Chuck Norris.
- Got our new servers at work. Actually, got them last week, installed the OS on them (Debian Linux), and sat waiting to get them networked. That happened yesterday afternoon, so today we were able to hit the ground running. Setting up what’s called a high-availability load-balancing server array, which means one of the boxes monitors the performance of the other two and distributes workload accordingly… Additionally, if the main box fails, one of the other boxes can take over. It’s pretty cool.
- Got together with Naomi last Saturday (as you probably guessed by the news the next day) which was a total blast. Saw her again Tuesday night, also cool. I excitedly await seeing her again at her sister Lisa’s housewarming party. Sheesh, it’s such torture only getting to see her for an hour or two here and there, but I’ll take what I can get… happily. :D
- Anything else? Oh… Dante and I are going in on a site together: Appleganda.com Our thinking is a combination news & financial analysis regarding Apple Computers, along with some Firefox-y grassroots-level product evangelism.
On the Drift
15 August 2006
Ok, it’s been a while since I’ve geeked out about Firefly/Serenity stuff, but between hanging out with Naomi, Lisa, The Cap’n, and some other Browncoats, and being alerted to the freely available Done the Impossible fan documentary, I’ve been on a kick again lately.
So, I’ve made a supremely geeky purchase: On the Drift, music “inspired” by Firefly and Serenity, performed by the Bedlam Bards. The Bards are “Renfolk” musicians–or in Captain Dummy talk, the sort of guys you might hear at a Renaissance Festival–but are also pretty fervent Browncoats, and have compiled a CD of tracks that are either instrumental elaborations on the Firefly soundtrack, or folk songs about the characters and the Big Damn Show/Movie itself. They were among the fans interviewed in the documentary, and I was interested enough to seek out their music. I came for “Hero of Canton (The Man They Call Jayne)”, stayed for a really beautiful instrumental, “Saffron’s Wedding Dance”, and was sold by “Leaf on the Wind”, a tribute to the late Hoban Washburn.
It’s all a bit rough around the edges, but hey–it’s folk music. Real folk music, in the sense that they’re singing about larger-than-life legends not unlike the original folk, the chanties and Celtic melodies sung hundreds of years ago. In that way, I think these guys really tap into the spirit of the ‘Verse itself: worlds of our past trapped in a future setting.
Oh, and if you’re riding the fence, the Bards will donate a portion of their profit from every CD to Joss Whedon’s favorite charity, Equality Now. So go check them out!
“gf”
13 August 2006Seems a little bit silly to announce it like this, partly because it’s just come about so naturally, partly because I’ve gone ten years and two or three good relationships without any real label attached to them… But it is definitely a milestone, so…
As of about 3:30 AM this morning, Naomi and I are officially an “item”, as in she gets to call me her boyfriend, and I get to call up all my friends and say, “Guess what? I’ve got a girlfriend.” Which I have done numerous times today. :P Yay!
Weird Day for Everyone
10 August 2006So apparently everyone’s had a weird day of some sorts. Naomi was feeling “not centered”, which as many of you know is something I don’t like hearing without having more details. Liz was bored but quick to leave chat tonight. My bro was oddly quiet after seeing the movie tonight–although, being WTC, leaving in an oddly quiet mood is somewhat understandable. People who tend to talk a lot weren’t talking at all tonight, and people who tend to save their words had plenty to pass along, although nothing necessarily substantial.
All in all, it’s now got me in a weird, somewhat unsettling mood, and I don’t particularly care for it. Ugh. Just can’t wait for the weekend. I feel slightly tortured that there’s this still-relatively-new person in my life, and I can’t wait to continue to get to know her better, but between schedules and distance it’s just so hard to do so. Is it possible to really “get to know” someone you only really get to see or talk to once or twice a week? Yeah, it is, but it’s slow-going and frustrating. All in good time, I know. :P
Bed beckons.
Gimme That Nut (or, A Random Lesson in Causality)
8 August 2006Wow, I was on a streak of nearly all personal, non-political posts for, what, a few weeks? Time for a relapse. :P
So today on Google News one of the top stories is that “Fans of Crude Music Have Sex Sooner“. Apparently there’s a correlation between kids who listen to raunchy lyrics (defined as lyrics that are both sexual and derogatory in nature) and kids who have sex earlier than other kids. Ok, makes sense. But here comes the flawed journalistic logic that I’m all too sick of: “Adolescents who listen to a lot of music containing these objectifying and limiting characterizations of sexuality progress more quickly in their sexual behaviour…” Or, in other words, kids have sex earlier because they listen to raunchy music. Wuzzah?
I never listened to much raunchy music (although I must admit to enjoying a bit of it, from Eazy E to The Thong Song) and it’s no secret that I was far from being a sexually active kid. So it would seem that I would’ve fit the pattern of no-raunchy-music, no-teen-sex. But I cease to believe that music will simply compel a kid to have sex.
First of all, why’s the kid listening to raunchy lyrics to begin with? I never found the appeal in it, aside from the sheer silliness of some of it, which is not unlike how I’ve felt about sex. If someone’s listening to that music, and really enjoying it, I’ve got to believe their mind is already in the gutter, that they listen to that kind of music because they’re already thinking about the subject matter, or are at least unusually curious about it. See, just because A and B are true, does not mean that B is the result of A.
Don’t get me wrong… I’ve thought for a long, long time that we live in a culture that is way too sex-obsessed in many ways, and unfortunately quite immature about most of them. But I think to blame music or movies or television on it is too simplistic & too short-sighted a point of view. To what extent this is a true “problem” in terms of negative impact on society, the solution is to reinforce better priorities amongst kids and amongst ourselves.
Codename: Future
7 August 2006Yay, another project! This one’s actually been on the backburner for a while, but Kaleena convinced me to resurrect it and bring her in on it. It’s a writing project, a future-epic. As with most codenamed projects, I must spare the deets, but it’s chock full of sociopolitical commentary, human behavioral studies, sci-fi lite (tomorrow’s-technology-today stuff), terrorism, sex, drugs, fringe/cult societies, and then some. Fun stuff, and IMO a very fresh take on the sort of social cautions pioneered by books like Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, and 1984.
Life (After Ohio)
7 August 2006Sorry to have left everyone hanging on Day 7… It was pretty uneventful–packed up, hit the airport, flew home. Caught a few cool pics on the flight back:
…but nothing spectacular.
Got back and it’s starting to be business as usual. Only worked one day this week… I went ahead and took Wednesday off because I just wasn’t ready to go back to work, no clothes, not enough sleep, etc. And Friday I had an EGD scope performed–that is, an esophagogastroduodinoscopy–a mouthful, in more ways than one. Actually I don’t even remember the procedure, so I can’t complain. Apparently though I have inflammation of the stomach and esophagus. Oh well… I don’t want to talk about my digestive tract. How about the social life?
Got together with Naomi Wednesday evening, saw Clerks 2 again and hung out. Got together again last night, played Mario Party at her friends’ house, and again hung out. I think that makes five dates with her now, which considering that’s more dates than I’d been on cumulatively for the past 3-4 years, should tell you that I’m enjoying it quite a bit… Can’t get enough of her, frankly. It’s fun. :) I really could gush–I think several of you already know that–but hey, I don’t wanna jinx anything. I’ll keep you posted.
Saw Genelle this week too, although under completely different circumstances. I’ll spare the details, but suffice to say there was a family emergency urgent enough to bring her back from New Zealand prematurely. (She’s going back again soon.) Anyhow, got talking Friday night and it just seemed like she needed company, so I asked if she’d like some and then booked it to Avondale going about 80 mph at 1:30 AM. Seems there are fewer and fewer opportunities to drop everything and act reckless or semi-crazy for the sake of a friend, so I must say I didn’t at all mind making the trek. It was good to see her again, and y’know, she made the point and I must agree that we have finally hit a point of normalcy. Whether it’s just having known each other for so long or that I’m no longer as anxious with in-person situations, I dunno, but we managed to sit down in the same room without that awkwardness, that second-guessing on my part that I was either saying or doing too little or too much. I finally see our friendship moving into that long-time, at-the-drop-of-the-hat comfort that I have with Kaleena and very few others… A good thing, for sure.
And I must reiterate, no second-guessing. I suppose it’s the nature of our friendship, and the fact that she’s hardly ever in town, that we go months or years without seeing each other, so it’s always curious just how I’ll feel. In the past, just as soon as I decided I had no lingering feelings for her, we’d get together and whaddya know, I’d find some more. Sooner or later I had to shake it, and with me, Thom, being on the verge of an honest-to-god relationship, it was a great relief to know that I finally have.
Well sheesh, it’s too late here. I have to work in the morning. Hmm… Anything else? Oh, I’ve got some more ideas regarding Codename: Sheba, but everything’s still hush-hush, so all you need to know is the gears are turning. I’m starting up a new category for Codename: Future, which I’ll explain in brief in my next post. Yeah, I’m done. Goodnight, everyone.
Day 6
4 August 2006Our last full day in Ohio, we went to what’s probably the biggest attraction in the area: Cedar Point. Unfortunately I was feeling terrible, and Kaleena was quickly affected by the heat, so we weren’t it great condition to ride the fun stuff. We spent most of the day skipping between the Class 2 rides (”mild thrills”, as they were described on the signs) and air-conditioned attractions throughout the part. The shining moment of the trip was the Snoopy on Ice show… mostly because of the brisk, cool air and the pretty girls. :P Oh, and Kaleena’s crush-of-the-moment, one of the male skaters.