Archive for 2005

Well. The week that rang it in was pretty dang shitty. Work has been rough, two holidays in a row will do that.

But I’m pissed at a friend right now. He’s a really good guy in so many ways. But, there is this game, Carcassonne, that I really, really like to play, that he introduced me to. We play the game with reasonable frequency.

Its just that he doesn’t play honestly. By that I mean to win for himself. He plays to foul others up. Of course he does end up winning in the end anyways, so the effect is the same, its just the means are, well, dirty. By analogy, if this game was long distance track running, he would end up running into his opponent to topple them to the ground. Of course, he would still suffer slightly, but his opponent would suffer more because they didn’t expect to be toppled to the ground, and as such spent more time to get back up to speed.

Another analogy. In business, it is illegal in many instances to sell a product below cost with the intention of running your competitors out of business.

Instances like this end up being a game of seeing who can hurt the other more before one party loses.

So, tonight half way through the game I just got pissed and stopped playing. Not a literal walking away from the table, but I was placing my pieces down in such a manner as not to score any points. When I had the simple possibility of scoring points I did not announce or score them. More or less if someone is going to play dirty, I just would rather not fuck with it. Especially when its a game, and not about survival or something life threatening.

To the unnamed person: I’m not playing Carcassonne with you for quite sometime, and yes I’m serious about it this time.

To anyone else in the Cincinnati area who likes Carcassonne: Need somebody to play with?

I’m still processing The results of November 3rd. (The day John Kerry conceded.)

My first response (which I acted upon) was to leave the country (if only for two days). I also espoused a game plan to likely leave the country eventually and obtain citizenship in another country.

After my initial fit of anger I’m still not sure about this idea. Citizenship is a strange social institution. The closet thing I know to compare it to is marriage. (Not the pussy ass edition practiced by so many hetro-attracted people where if you decided to split you can get it done with at most two years in court. (My parent’s divorce proceedings lasted a bit over two years.)) To renounce your US citizenship you have to obtain citizenship in another country at the same time. This is as if to get divorced you’d have to get remarried at the same time the divorce became final.

At the moment my country and I are having a bit of a rocky relationship, but I’m not sure its time for a divorce — I want to try to work it out.

In related news I have to say I’m proud of John Kerry. Yes, I know he didn’t win. But, I read this excerpt from the November 15th issue of time in The December 21, 2004 Advocate.

Looking for a way to pick up swing voters in the red states [in the weeks before the election] former president Bill Clinton, in a phone call with Kerry, urged the senator to back local bans on gay marriage. Kerry respectfully listened, then told his aids, “I’m not going to ever do that.”

I’m proud to have supported the presidential candidate that didn’t compromise his values to get elected. If you’re not going to follow your values you have nothing.

I usually make a policy of always having any PEIDM entry be something I create, because if I didn’t there would be a bunch of other crap floating around here, and that isn’t my point for this space.

I just couldn’t resist posting this. My sister, Randi, emailed me these this morning. Its one of those things that circulates around email. Kudos to the original photographer. I won’t describe them, just take a look at them one at a time in order. I wonder if this qualifies for a Darwin award… (Those of you reading this in email, I recommend visiting this entry on the web for the full effect.)

First, Apple needs to release their new products on days that I am not at work or at least days when I don’t have class after work.

Second, all the pundits are missing the points. I have a point with the Mac mini, but I need to get it to solidify. But as to the iPod family they’ve actually out-Microsofted Microsoft and the rest of them. Apple has built a music platform around iTunes (the break-even leader) with the associated assortment of iPod music players (with an excellent selection of price points from $99 all the way upto $599, and I’m sure profit margins to boot.) (For those who seek structured similies the iTunes is to Windows as the iPods are to Office.) Everyone else in the industry should be running scared.

Now Apple, don’t fuck it up like you did the Mac a while ago…

Someone probably tried to kill me tonight. I’m stuck on this thought at the moment.

I was driving home from Dayton on I-75 around 2:30 AM or so when I got into a protracted fight on the road with another car.

After a series of repeated on the road altercations I refused to continue on with the road fight and pulled over expecting the other driver to continue on, as I figured he wasn’t going for something else, just a piss off fight on the road.

Instead he stopped in the right lane and got out of his car. Upon seeing this I accelerated and left the scene, nearly missing hitting him with my car. As I was doing this my back window was struck and shattered.

Our on the road altercation continued for another few moments at which point he pulled off on exit 29.

Initially I focused on the facts, but trying to sleep I’ve come to my conclusions on the man’s intention: to kill me.

I figure at some point initially it was just an on the road tiff until he noticed my bumper-stickers. (For the record I have a total of six, artfully arranged. I have two John Kerry stickers in either lower corner of the bumper, in the middle of the bumper I have an HRC equal symbol sticker, in the center of the rear, above the license plate I have a rainbow pride squiggly, and in the window I have a white Apple computer logo in either lower corner.

So this leads me to three possibilities:

1. The man is a die hard George W. Bush supporter. (This makes no sense as GWB won the election.)
2. The man is a die hard Microsoft Windows user and was incensed that he was sharing the road with an Apple user. (For the record I also begrudgingly use Windows at work.) (This also makes no sense, if you’re attempting to take out Mac users I recommend a Macworld Expo, or at the very least your local Apple store.)
3. The man is violently homophobic.

I believe number three is the closest to the truth. It makes no sense for him to get out of the car to talk. I believe he did not have a gun as it would’ve been more advantageous to just shoot me when he got out of his car. Also I have not found a bullet and there is no broken glass for the bullet to have exited my car.

I believe he had a knife or other sharp object. The officer suggested that he broke the glass with his hand, but that seems unlikely as I have pounded on that glass myself without breaking it. (I was removing ice.) Additionally he would have had to applied additional force because my car was moving away from him, meaning that any force he applied would have been mitigated by my car’s forward motion.

The only logical conclusion is that the man grabbed a knife to kill me, after failing to run me off the road. When I accelerated, he used it to break my windshield. After this he followed me again and gave up the issue after he noted I was on my cell phone.

The bumper stickers will not come off my car. I will get another set of Apple stickers. I will not remove the pride stickers. I will not remove my John Kerry stickers. I will not change my daily life as a result of this incident.

I will not be a victim.

I choose to feel safe.

I choose to be proud of who I am, in all my different aspects.

I choose to display that I am proud of who I am.

I choose to tell the truth irregardless if it hurts me in the long run.

I choose to be respectful towards those who have attempted to hurt me.

I choose to only use deadly force if and only if my life is immediately threatened.

I choose to never allow anyone, to cause me to deny that I have the ability to choose, irregardless of the situation.

I need to write more. I have had so many ideas in my head recently of things I’ve wanted to write about I’m simultaneously at both a loss as what to write and trying to stitch all the ideas into one big long entry.

Yesterday, I revisited my entry where I argue for the existence of an intelligent designer, as placeholder. The problem with evolution/The Big Bang theory is it illuminates a fallacy of scientific reasoning.

Scientific reasoning absolutely relies on the examination of cause and effect and their inter-relation. Working backward from here every effect had a cause, and that cause was the effect of a separate cause, which this separate cause itself was the effect of yet another cause, ad infinum. Put another way, every effect is both a falling domino (effect) and a domino that will fall upon another domino and cause it to fall (cause). This is not where the problem lies.

The problem lies at the ends of this chain. It is possible and reasonable for a cause to have no effect, but it is logically implausible for an effect to lack a cause.

Back to evolution/The Big Bang. These are both explained as a series of cause->effect/cause->effect/cause->effect, etc. But, the problem lies within the effect-less cause. This requires that something was the instigator of this cause. Logically this instigator must have some special status. From this an intelligent designer follows. if you insist on the lack of an ID the theory in and of itself collapses in logical impossibility.

(For the record half of this is cribbed off my Philosophy prof’s lecture last night, but it elaborates on my uncomfortableness with some of the related science.)

I’m fucking pissed at myself.

I’m on the bus on my way home. Class got out early and I waited at the bus stop for about 10 minutes. Its one of those mellow cool nights, windless, not too cold that I need a coat, not to warm that I feel warm. So I relished the limbo.

Within limbo I delivered a monologue which I will hold unshared with me, my own selfish gift and albatross.

I’m frustrated when I walk the halls and walkways of NKU I’m constantly on the look out for W (Screw it, anyone who would research this, or knows me, knows I’m talking about Shawn.) I’m fucking pissed at myself for this behavior. Its horribly unproductive if not self destructive.

I don’t know what Shawn represents to me. In some ways, my nearly eyeblink relationship with him functions as a demarcation point. In some ways I can ascribe a Before Shawn Era and an After Shawn Era. Its not that he actually caused anything directly its just during the same few months, I had the intestines along with the shit beaten out of me, in more than one way. Our interactions just have the clearest hurt, and therefore allow me to ultimately tag so many unrelated disappointments onto them.

I’m fucking pissed at myself that I don’t have a vision of where I’m going – the possibilities are there – a “grand” career moving fruit, a producer of short money losing movies, the group member that gets the class moving, someone who gets other people’s visions done.

I have to accept this — I facilitate. I can get the job of getting people all accomplishing someone else’s vision done.

I’m absolutely denying reality if I think I can get my own visions done. Hell, I get a hair cut three weeks late, do laundry when I’m wearing clothes for the fourth time, and wash the dishes only after the stench is noticeable. This website hasn’t been upgraded despite the vision and the plan to do it – of course its my vision – not someone else’s.

Okay, I know I’m exhausted. I’m on about five hours of sleep and I’ve had a rough day at work, followed by a class with a professor I disagree with more and more.

But, in many ways I know I’m more honest with myself when I no longer have the energy to maintain my facades for my own benefit.

In case you missed it:

I’m fucking pissed at myself.

I miss sitting on the back porch. My Great Grandma Henson and I would always sit on the back porch after dinner. She would smoke a cigarette and I would sit with her enjoying the weather and watching the cars go past the mall parking lot directly ahead.

We would sit on the back porch and talk and bridge the almost eighty years that separated us.

I miss Grandma Henson. She was a woman whose wisdom I didn’t have the capacity to appreciate at my young age, and whose wisdom I desperately seek.

How do you go on for eighty years and find the strength of convictions to become the pillar bridging the rent in a family?

Where does the unmatched energy and grace come from when you’re matching the unbridled energy of a seven year old?

Where do you find the strength to outlive your husband and son, yet still mow your own lawn at the age of 75?

I miss sitting on the back porch. I miss my grandmother.

I need to write here more.

I need to cook more.

I need to balance all this dang stuff more.

I need to make sure that work doesn’t dominate my life.

• I’m amazed at how intimate my cats are. I’m pretty sure i’ve never met two who allow another cat to cleanse them nearly everywhere. I relish watching them, deconstructing who they are and how they act.
• I love William Finn’s music. The song “I Never Wanted to Love You” from March of the Falsettos (Amazon.com|iTMS) never fails to at least get me emotional, not bringing me to tears. I remember the first time I saw Falsettos (a combination of March of the Falsettos and Falsettoland), I was working on another show and we slipped in to see the dress rehearsal, as both shows would be running at the same time. The show brought me to tears, one of only a handful to ever do that.
• While I’m at it another song by William Finn that I adore – “Hitchhiking Across America.” (Amazon|iTMS) Its a musical contained in one song. As good as if not better than one of Billy Joel’s wonderful story telling tales.
• I despise how I feel when I listen to “I Never Wanted to Love You.”
• I’m utterly frustrated that I simultaneously want to Love someone but I also Never wanted to have Love him. I horribly want closure. How the hell do I get closure on this? It didn’t help that I ran into him three weeks ago or so. I don’t know. I’m half tempted to email this to him, but thats not fair.
• I’ve debated writing letters to him, addressing them with his name and one of the three cities we spent most of our time in. I find something about this approach more appealing than just writing the letter and burning it or saving it. I want to send these out. Give them somewhere to travel. (Albeit it won’t get far.)
• I want to make banana bread.
• I am encouraged that people find what I’ve written to be inspiring, or whatnot.
• I’m discouraged that in 2004, 4.9 million people were newly infected with HIV
• I’m angered that we live in a society that pushes so many gay men to start using Crystal Meth.
• I’m encouraged that we gay men have begun to address the problem.
• People who have come out are strong enough to avoid Crystal Meth. (Those of you who are saying, “What effort?” and whose coming outs were like birth, (i.e. painful for your mother, but more or less just a new experience for you) need not apply.)
• I need to do something to better the world around me.