musings from the sleep deprived

Cynicism doesn’t really fit me. I don’t like thinking that way, nor having to think that way in order to rationalize a perceived behavior, but you know… thats just the way the world works sometimes. I suppose once you’ve worked for enough companies, or enough larger companies, you will eventually meet people who meet a certain criteria. Namely, those who would seek to rise through corporate ranks and achieve whatever element of success they want through manipulation and exploitation.

Is it so wrong to still believe the right way to go about doing that is by achievement, skill and honorable business practices? I suppose not, but perhaps its just naive to think that everyone would seek to take that path. I don’t even claim to be the holder of some holier-than-thou work ethic, or whatever, but to some of these people, concepts like loyalty, friendship and integrity have no place in their worlds. Sad, really. I suppose it has just always seemed the better path to prove value through deed instead of word. Furthermore, I know it works. It isn’t necessarily a fast process, nor easy. But its definitely satisfying. And not just ‘job well done’ satisfying, but also satisfying in the opinions that other people have of you, and how those get reflected back to you.

“Oh, I’ve heard about you … you’re the one who did X, Y and Z when noone else was willing to”

“Oh, hey, I finally get to meet you, I’ve heard so much about you from person A, B and C”

“Is the company taking care of you? We need to make sure you’re getting what you need”

“You let me know if you’re not happy where you’re at, I have room for someone like you anytime”

Tell me it isn’t satisfying to hear those sorts of comments. I’ve heard all of those within the last week. How you react to those statements is an entirely different matter, and depends on how humble you are, etc, but just to hear them makes alot of effort otherwise expended into the ether worthwhile.

So to those who would succeed through shortcuts, exploitation of relationships (or anything else, really), or manipulation of the truth to further your own ends, regardless of what other consequence that may have, or who else you might be hurting with those actions …. I tell you this:

You will never, ever hear those words. You will never, ever have the satisfaction of knowing your salary, position and compensation are DESERVED. I realize, those are hollow words, because you don’t care about that. Oh well. Your loss.

We’re currently looking around to see if we can get a companion for Sasha, our current dog. Sasha is an aussie cattle dog mix. Sasha’s mother was an Aussie cattle dog/chow mix (probably), and we’re really not sure of the father, but one possibility is a Shiba Inu. Anyway, we’re really impressed with Sasha’s temperment and brains. Her size is also perfect. She weighs about 40 pounds (or just shy of that) and thats just right for us. We’re hoping that another dog will also be in that same range for all three of those qualities.

Here are a couple of the candidates we’re looking at:
number one
number two
number three
and number four

The fourth of those is actually pretty astonishing to look at, given how close she looks to Sasha when she was that age. Compare it to this picture from just shortly after we got her home. Or perhaps even this one. Amazing. Almost identical coloring.

Anyway, we’ve emailed the shelter, and we’re trying to arrange to meet with them this Friday late afternoon, early evening. If it all works out, who knows… might be a very busy weekend.

As with just about any other blog out there, I did recently get hit by the elements out there that would seek to make maintaining a site like this one a more difficult, high maintenance process. Fortunately, wordpress has some excellent facilities for dealing with comments spammers.

I found it an interesting observation that the spammers are not at all seeking click throughs to the sites they are advertising. Instead, they’re simply seeking to have the search engines find as many links to their site as they can, which in turn improves their rankings in searches for things. I suppose any system can be subverted if you throw enough assholes at it.

It is always hard to come back after a break from work and suddenly be 100% productive again. Whether its some inherent slowness in the brain due to too much intake of tryptophane, or needing to gear things up again after having been idle for a week.

Who knows, either way, it hasn’t been easy. Blah.

Time is such a tenuous thing. You think you have alot of it, and it passes by at an astonishing rate. Its amazing how many concepts around our daily existences revolve around it. We can ‘make time’, ‘pass the time’, ‘let time slip through our fingers’, ‘kill time’, ‘waste time’ and so on.

When we’re young, we think there’s so much time, we can’t hardly find ways to fill it all, and end up bored. We look forward to getting older, becoming like our parents or other idols of our youth. As we get older, we abandon some idols for others or end up in a searching pattern, trying to find our ideals, goals, wonts, desires and faith. At some point, we think we know what we want, or at least accept that it is a moving target, and simply strive to always move to that target. And then we spend the rest of our days seeking that, filling every single minute of every single day in that search.

It may not always feel like it. It may feel like we’re just existing in some sort of wheel, or locked into a cycle or pattern that simply repeats itself endlessly. But to what end? To make money? Find fame? Become a star? Usually nothing so far fetched or unreachable. But it does feel like there isn’t enough time. Why are we in a rush? Is it something we impose on ourselves? Are we so ‘instant gratification’ driven that we can’t be patient with reaching those goals? Is the short term gain always more important than the long term?

Maybe we do need to slow down again. Societal pressure, as well as our own (perhaps misguided) drives make us push hard against that. A scene from a recent movie just struck me as poignant on this thought. In The Last Samurai, in the lord of the village remarks on his poetry, and how he is seeking the perfect spring blossom. Finally, in his death scene, his eyes already clouded over from his impending death, he remarks that they’re all perfect. Maybe we do need to spend more time in the now, looking at the beauty all around us, share in the pleasures and joys that we already have, instead of dwelling so much on things as yet unrealized.

I’ve always used the phrase casually, “Gotta Have Goals”, usually in reference to something lewd or lascivious. And I don’t think thats changed. You do have to have goals, drives and things that get you up every morning and drive you to excel. So the frustration that I’m feeling now revolves strictly around the constraints we face in accomplishing all that we want within the constraints of the time we’re given. I think I need to step back, evaluate again what is important, and not try and do too much at once. And in the meantime, leave myself enough time to enjoy what is around me now.

I miss college. I think many people might say that same thing. Why? Well, perhaps it was because I was so moved to accomplishing the things I did there that I neglected to enjoy the here and now of it. Maybe 4 years of that kind of environment wasn’t enough. But thats simply an example.

I need to think about that some more.

So next week I have off from work. Family coming into town on Tuesday. So that gives me three days to get my fill of Halflife 2, Metroid Prime 2 and World of Warcraft before they get here. Oh, and clean the house. Oh well, so much for having vacation. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn’t.

Christmas break will be different. 2 uninterrupted weeks of no obligations or distractions. God help me.

Ok, so you’re right.

I’ll just generate a PDF and provide a link to it. Time to dig out my acrobat license and get to it. Blah.

This one was pretty detailed. It started out in a skiing resort type village. Somewhere were there was snow and a gondola. For some reason, the main gondola had some kind of cable problem and one of the gondola ‘pods’ was hanging low over a street. A large SUV or truck came ripping around the corner and nailed it. The main character was in the gondola, and the next thing he knew, he woke up flat on his back on the ground, staring up and two huge pylons, one from the gondola, and one from a power line and transformer. Also notable was that he was surrounded by hundreds of snowballs and that he had a photograph of his best friend (who had come with him on this ski vacation) on his chest.

He was brought to the hospital and checked out, having suffered no overt damage except shock, and eventually went back to the condo they had rented. When he arrives, he finds out that it was his best friend who was in the SUV, and that after the impact, it had careened off the road and fallen down into a frozen pond where his friend had drowned.

After going back home, and getting over that event, as time passed, strange things started to happen to people around him. They would die in strange ways, or would disappear, or apparently be kidnapped and never heard from again. It doesn’t happen constantly, but certainly with a much higher frequency than would normally be associated with one person and those he knows.

Over time, and through hypnosis and counselling, he is able to slowly remember the events of that original accident. What he eventually discovers is that after the impact with the SUV, he was thrown from the gondola, and landed squarely on a power transformer on the other pylon. During that moment where he is being electrocuted, he has a sort of “come to Jesus” moment, and meets his maker. Not having been a religious person at all, he is confused and cautious. As a result, he is given a choice by this being. Either he can die, and be brought “into the Light” of this newfound God, or he can live a full life, and (looking down below in the snow) over his lifespan, people around him would always be dying in mysterious ways, one person for every snowball on the ground.

Again, he then remembers having woken up on his back in the snow, apparently having made his choice. The significance of the photo eventually becomes apparent as well. It seems that every time he really looks at a picture (not just seeing something in passing), someone in the picture then dies or disappears without a trace. One scene in the dream is where he is being shown a picture by a friend of his of this person’s child, who is in the other room. As he looks at the picture, there is a scream from the other room, some other adult just having watched the child vanish from where she was playing on the floor.

After that point, I was sort of waking up from a phone call or two, and there wasn’t much more. I do remember that earlier in the dream (again) I had a feeling that this dream was not ‘original’ and that it had come from a story I had read or movie I had seen or something. Also, in the ending parts, the person had started secluding themselves from society, trying desperately not to view any photographs and cause any more deaths. Then it ended.

Whacky.

I’ll add to this as I get things forwarded to me.

This one is somewhat uplifting in spite of it all. I wish this wasn’t so funny. I don’t want to laugh about any of this. And this one was pre-election, but makes all this that much more frustrating. Also, I have alot of respect for Hunter S. Thompson, so whatever. Here’s something to note if you really just can’t take it anymore. Commentary from George Soros.

I’ll add more as I find them.

It occurred to me, after receiving an email from Crispin, that I hadn’t put up any of the more recent images of the back tattoo work. It is, in fact, done now. Please note, that in the below images, where you see ‘red’, it isn’t the color of the ink. That is just how skin behaves when you puncture it thousands of times with little needles, and the blood comes closer to the surface of the skin. So, I submit, for you approval or loathing…

Update (9/28/2011) … just linking straight to the gallery.

Note, I need put up one final image from now, which will have everything the right color and shading and such, and I’ll get to that soon. And for reference, the kanji in the small scroll thinger on the left hand side are three pairs for ‘truth’, ‘honesty’ and ‘compassion’.

Thats how I feel. Glazed. To some extent, this both validates and invalidates the election process for me. One the one hand, you can see that yes, in fact, the people have spoken. On the other hand, they have demonstrated the fact that, in the majority, they are really really fucking dumb.

How, after the past four years of lying, stealing, tax evading, nepotism, lobby, money and favoritism-driven political agendas that this asshole can be seen as the ‘moral’ choice, and the ‘family’ choice, is completely beyond my comprehension. And I didn’t even start in about the economy, environment, big corporate breaks, or the global communities he’s gotten us kicked out of.

So yes! Go America! We get to see another four years of the worst administration this country has ever seen in its existence get to wreak its ugly habits on this great land of ours. And who will be able to blame? Only ourselves. Congratulations, you have managed to divide this country in a way it has not seen since the Civil War.

November is a busy month. In about 4 hours, work will begin (for many) on their nanowrimo work for the year. Am I ready? I have no idea, really. I suppose I don’t have to wait long to find out, though.

Elections in 2 days. It is my intent to hit the polls in the morning, and just get into work whenever that is done. It is worth taking the time to do it right. Especially this year.

Finally got the new drives installed in my computer, and avoided doing a complete reinstall through some fancy drive footwork. I still will do a reinstall at some point, but now is not that time. In the short number of hours before tomorrow, I think I’m going to redesign the color scheme for my desktop, and give myself something new and fresh to look at. I think I need to reinvigorate myself in order to maintain energy this month. That might help, if even a little bit.

Finally, if you ever see the movie ‘Samourais’ on the shelf in your local video store, leave it sitting there. It may be interesting to look at, but even by my own mercilessly loose standards for movie entertainment, this thing was a complete piece of shit. Don’t say you haven’t been warned.

Just got up from another weird dream, and this was another one worth writing down. I suppose this was possibly influenced by the recent watching of Passion of the Christ, but in alot of ways, it has nothing to do with that. Anyway….

The beginning of the dream is all very Indiana Jones style. I was with someone, and we were investigating some documentation that had been put together a very long time ago about a manner in which to ‘summon’ God, or at least have a visitation of some sort. It wasn’t very clear. I believe the person I was with was supposed to be a priest of some kind. Later on in the dream, it turned into Trout.Complex, but I’m not sure if that was significant.

Anyway, we managed to uncover some sort of portal. It looked to me like a iron bar type gate, which we could see through into the inner chamber, which was filled with all sorts of religious symbolism. Interestingly, it contained symbols from many world religions, not just that of Christianity. At this point, the person I was with said some sort of prayer in Latin, and simply stepped through the gate without opening it. He had invoked some sort of belief or “spell” for lack of a better term, or called on God to help him through this challenge. Good call, as it turned out, as every step further inside the sanctum produced all sorts of traps going off that he(we) could just ignore. Though I remember seeing this part in slow motion, my perspective appeared to be viewing him from in front, facing backward. I didn’t see myself, and didn’t see how I was avoiding these pitfalls myself. Ah, the logic of dreams.

Finally, we reached what looked like a giant sarcophagus, and the priest person pulled out all kinds of stuff, including a long sword, a brooch with a huge gem in it, and a large bag or container of water (presumably holy water). The whole thing seemed to be slightly tipped up (head at top), so that when the water was poured over the thing, it began to spread down the entire surface, filling in all the relief parts of the surface, making it glisten, and almost glow. The sword he slid into the brooch, about halfway down the blade, and somehow affixed it there. It matched the impression in the surface of this thing, and he placed it inside the depression.

Nothing really happened, although it did seem to become darker, and there were several lightbeams, not unlike sunbeams (but more focused) that were coming in from odd angles, seemingly highlighted places on the walls. Behind the sarcophagus now, the priest guy read some text, and indicated that we would find “His Son” on the northeast wall, or something similar to that. Looking up on the wall, and spotting one of those lightbeams, it appeared to be highlighting a small picture of Jesus, who was looking down into his hands, where a small flame was lit. It did appear to be a button or movable in some way, so I reached up and pressed this.

This triggered a series of what I’ll call ‘tests’. It was also somewhere during these tests that it became clear the priest guy was now Trout. Two other things occurred to me at this point. One: that I seem to have been brought along on this thing quite intentionally by the priest (Trout), almost no more than one of his other props, like the sword or water. It wasn’t clear to me why until later. Second, that I also knew I was going to get up and record this dream. The possibility existed that I would later incorporate it into a story or write it, and the feeling that I couldn’t do that was strong. It seemed that this story had been written before, or that this was somehow else not going to be a unique work.

Anyway, I jumped fairly quickly back into the dream, and the tests. The tests involved different things. At one point, simply finding various images on the wall and noting them. At one point, reading text in Latin. Another was rubbing dirt off of images on the wall. Once uncovered, it turned out to be childhood images of myself and Trout. The image of me was a picture I do recall being taken of me as a child. The images had to be completely rubbed from of whatever ‘rot’ was happening, because if there was even the smallest spot left, it would then grow and re-cover the whole picture. This part I don’t remember so well, but I do remember the last part. It had to do with “Praying for the Ascension” or some such. Another very large, outline lit image of a massive sword in the wall had that inscription, and Trout told me to pray. We both knelt with our backs to the north wall, and looking at the sarcophagus, and then both closed our eyes and prayed.

I don’t remember the prayer. I remember it being rather disconnected and not really affiliated with Christianity, despite all the previous tests and evidence in the room being fairly heavily tilted that way. I felt a rush behind me, and wanted to open my eyes, but Trout said not to, that this was for someone else. I think we then both immediately ignored that advice, opened our eyes, and stepped up to an altar that was before us, very brightly lit. On it was a God figure type, and we didn’t really look directly at it. All I could see were the white robes and it being incredibly tall. Next to us was another figure, robed, with a golden chain around him. The chain seemed to be rooted behind us, and the voice was talking to him or it indicating its usefullness had come to and end. There seemed to be some discontent in that other person or entity being so tied to material things (the chain?) and it was pulled back behind us by this chain and disappeared. We stepped up onto the altar or dais and began hearing some kind of contract being read.

The contract seemed to indicate that the earthly world was under the impression that we were dead, and would continue to believe so until our presence was also no longer needed. It seemed to indicate that this diversion from the natural course was some kind of alternate space, where we were no longer alive, and that once we left (sometime in the future), that alternate timespace whatever would also cease to be.

Our role almost immediately became evident. We started hearing sounds of different sorts. Some were grating (nails hammering, fingers on chalkboards, etc). In each case, Trout asked if such a noise were to be here for eternity, and it went away. The next noise was like a puppy lapping at something, or licking a face, and it was accompanied by an image of a very small child playing with a black haired puppy. It occurred to me that we were analyzing things that were innocent, and we needed to explain how, or why they were. I said something about it being important in that case that the innocence of the child was important because it hadn’t yet learned to fear the power of the dog, or that it could be dangerous. It was that fearlessness, which we eventually taint with experience, fear and knowledge that forced us to lose that sort of pure bliss. It occurred to me know why I was here, and a flashback (seemingly given to me by the god person/figure) where ZenRhino told me that I had a child mind, or was similar to Ho Tei from Japanese mythology. Our role was to show this god figure about this purity, or innocence, and why it left us (as humans) or something similar.

I remember being really happy at the image of the child and the puppy. The dream ends.

I’ve decided I’m going to try to make a consolidated news/comics/etc page that gets RSS feeds from all the stuff I want to read. Who knows, it might just end up being the only place I go to read anything anymore. It does get back to an idea that I was throwing around awhile back to have a page that you could completely customize that was just other news/content sites pulled all together into one ‘newspaper’ (except in an online form, obv). So no more browsing through dozens of sites to get what you want. You get all the headlines, and then shoot off to specific content if the headline grabs you.

Imagine google news only extrapolated to deliverable content in general (be it comics, specials in your favorite section of amazon.com, top 10 national book best seller lists, etc).

We’ll see.
<update> And it works! See the link to the right </update>

We watched Passion of the Christ last night. Largely because we wanted to see what all the fuss was about. I’m still formulating an opinion, I think. It hasn’t completely sunk in yet. I can make a few comments now though.

The very first impression that struck me was that regardless of the religious tones of the movie, that was a brutal and horrible time and place to live. The manner in which we, as humans, treated one another was just atrocious. Or maybe we still do that, but we’re less open about it. I think the most cruel characters in the movie were Christ’s punishers, or torturers. Between the original caning and flogging, to the very end where they finally had him up on the cross, several of them were just constantly laughing and merrymaking in the pleasure of the torture. Just brutal.

I guess I’m not sure I want to comment on the religious aspects of it. It was certainly a pretty stark deviation from what I remember reading of the Bible. The lack of compassion of the Jews who wanted him crucified doesn’t map well with me. The conflict in the Roman leader and his wife struck me as more honest than anything reflecting back to the more controversial aspects of the movie(book). The flashbacks to his teachings was fairly well done. Again, some creative license taken, but not overly much.

I suppose when you consider that by the time the work in question reached some sort of rigidity in its translation and publication, it had already passed through dozens of (mis)translations of varying degrees, quibbling over a word here and a phrase there is pretty meaningless. As an example of what I mean, you’ll recall the phrase “Peace on earth, good will toward men”. Well, according to some sources, that was a pretty silly mistranslation. The proper translation was “Peace on earth toward men of good will”. Hmm, interesting twist of a couple words, and the entire meaning changes.

So who really is to say what went on during that turbulent time. Who really is to say who is ultimately responsible for his crucifixion. Who really is to say precisely what portion (if any) of Christ’s teachings made it through unfettered by the mistakes of monks. Certainly not I. Sometime, I’ll get back on a rant about religion in general, and maybe this will come up again. For now, I’ll let it lie.