Ode To Dad

Friday, January, 9th 2008 at 11:51am

Hey, don’t forget! Make the sheep-level rumor! Include sheep-skin armor, Shepard character opens up, Shepard king...

Friday, January, 9th 2008 at 5:41pm

I tried for the second time to start reading the book My Gaming Friend gave me for Christmas. It's called "A Game of Thrones" and it's written well so I should like it, but I keep having trouble focusing on reading. I cleaned for three hours in the living room and dining room. Helped my mom cook baked potatoes and lima beans. Argued with my mom... Digital painted for a while, got down about a paragraph on my novel... Hm, I think that's pretty much everything. My Boyfriend made me an egg for breakfast.

Friday, January, 9th 2008 at 6:41pm

I met My Boyfriend’s Best Friend at Thursday in the Square in the Summer of 2006 while I was still going out with Travanti. I was near My Boyfriend’s Best Friend because he was a friend of a friend of a friend per-say and I overheard him saying that he loved soccer. My Crazy “Ninja” Ex had just been telling me how he wanted to get a good soccer match against a good team or even one-on-one just a few days previous. So I told My Boyfriend’s Best Friend about my boyfriend and how I wanted to set up a match; probably at Deleware park. My Boyfriend’s Best Friend said he was interested and gave me his number.
I was a lazy pothead, so I never called the number until after I had already broken up with Tre. I called My Boyfriend’s Best Friend because I wanted to start throwing house parties and because I remembered that he was a popular guy at the square I figured he’d know a lot of people and that he might even have advice. We talked on the phone for a short while, and he didn’t really remember me, but he said he’d like to come over to “make plans” for these parties I was planning.
Then My Boyfriend’s Best Friend calls me back and asks if he can bring his roommate. I wanted to object at first, but then I thought “what the heck” since it probably meant two people I could get to first my first party. So My Boyfriend’s Best Friend and his room mate showed up at like seven o’clock and I escorted them up to the attic. We went to the corner store and bought some drinks (wine-coolers), and then returned to the attic. I didn’t really notice his room-mate much at first; he was quite and he probably kept his hood up most of the time.
But on the walk to the store I began to notice that they were not your “average niggas” at all. While they weren’t per-say your sort of “white” black people, they also weren’t your stereotypical black guys either. We got into a debate about religion and about the Niphiliem and I read a passage of “The Twelfth Planet” by Sitchin, and at that point I noticed that El’s roommate was a pretty cool guy.
If you hadn’t guessed by now, El’s roommate was My Boyfriend. Well, some point after drinking some more we all got a bit more comfortable, and My Boyfriend wraps his arm around me (while My Boyfriend’s Best Friend is taking a piss) and tells me that he’s claiming me. At this point I’m thinking to myself “this feels good and all, but I have an insane-ex who will tear this poor little guy to shreds if he finds out.”
What I didn’t know at the time is that both My Boyfriend’s Best Friend and My Boyfriend were making bets on who was going to get to either date me or sleep with me or which-ever. What also is really funny that I didn’t know at the time was that My Boyfriend’s first impression of me was “the most hood white-chick” he ever met. (I was pretty darn ghetto while I was dating Tre.)
Well, alcohol is a great helper; so next thing you know there is a lot of kissing going on and My Boyfriend’s Best Friend is just sort of leaves while we were occupied with each other. I end up fishing around for a condom, feeling really guilty, but at the same time not giving a damn. I didn’t even expect to ever see My Boyfriend again. But, less than a month later we’re a couple and totally nuts about each other.

Saturday January, 10th 2008 at 3:40pm

Matt asks me what I’m reading after I told him that I’ve finally managed to read the first chapter of a book that my board-gaming friend got me for Christmas. It’s not that it’s a bad book; in fact, I’m positive that it’s a very good book; it’s just I’ve been in some sort of reading slump since the holiday slump began.
“A Game of Thrones,” I said. “Nothing you'd like. It’s a fantasy novel that may or may not help me write the one I'm trying to write. The moons knows I need the help right now.”
Then I continue to ramble on; “The only reason I don't have writer's block is because I refuse to have writers block; I keep writing even when I don't feel like it; even when I'm writing drivel; even when I have no ideas. The only problem is, I can only force myself to do that for so long before I find myself cleaning my nails again. I want to get into the zone... Lose myself in the story and write four pages without stopping. That would feel sooo good.”
Ah, indeed it would. I wrote about six-hundred words on my novel thus-far today. My new-years resolution was to write 1000 words each day for all of January or to finish the book before the end of January, which ever came first. I’m two-thousand words behind, and have been for a couple days – only managing to not dig the hole deeper, without catching up. I should be at eighty-thousand today, but I’m only at seventy-eight-thousand. *sigh*
I’m hoping to catch up today, perhaps even in the next couple of hours... I fear I won’t finish the book by one-hundred thousand words, and that’s not cool, because I expect the book is going to end up expanding in the first edit; not shrinking (like it probably ought).
Seemingly randomly I say to My Bestfriend, “My old ambitions are coming back with a new light cast on them. I feel like myself again -- perhaps for the first time since I met you.”
After a long pause he answers, “I thought that was a quote at first. What do you mean by that?”
“Well, I suppose that's a good question,” I say. “I was just trying to answer that in my head before you asked it.”
A bunch of thoughts ran through my mind; like how I’ve finally come up with a good theory as to where this reoccurring feeling I keep getting is coming from – this feeling that makes me want to either play this video game that doesn’t actually exist, or to create this game so that it would exist. I think it’s a left over desire from playing with my barbies for my entire childhood. I made up this entire realm and then I had to leave it behind or fall behind. I replaced that world with reading, writing, drawing, and guys. I think I miss the all-consuming world I had made for myself and my dolls.
After a while I answered, “For periods of time we break off from our overall self and become a more subjective than usual part of ourselves. During these periods of time we only take what we know from parts of our life and not all of our life because we feel the need or desire to ignore other aspects of what we know in light in recent discoveries. There has been a flood of discoveries about myself and about my peers, and a number of other things since I met you that have caused me to enter one of those periods where I was only using my new information. Now it's finally all settled into place with everything else that I know.”










Sunday January, 11th 2008 at 3:56pm

My Boyfriend,
So, I’ve been laying here on our bed thinking; “How could I have avoided this argument?” The only real answer I’ve come up with is that I need to word what I say more carefully. This however, is quite the paradox, because I said what I said because you didn’t word what you were saying carefully enough for me to understand what you were saying, so I ended up saying something that you took the wrong way... It seems to me that this entire argument revolved around taking things the worst way possible and mis-communication.
Besides how could I have avoided this argument, I’ve also been asking myself, “Did I actually do anything wrong?” I suppose that it could be commonly interpreted that I did accuse you of not putting me first, and accusations are always bad. I’m not sure my fault goes any further than making an accusation than I didn’t mean to make.
I don’t want to sit here and accuse you of anything, but the problem is, how can I tell you how I feel without creating any accusations? Well, I suppose if I say “I feel like...blah, blah, blah,” instead of saying “You’re saying that you are going to... blah, blah, blah,” or “You did... blah,” or whatever. So, perhaps if I agree to try and be more careful about what I say, then perhaps you’ll agree to give me the benefit of the doubt when I say things that sound like I’m playing you?
Of course, this brings me to the question; Why should I have to be careful about what I say? Then again, there is being careful, and then there is having to leave things out to avoid arguments. I believe that we should be careful about what we say, because after-all, we don’t want to hurt each other. Then again, if we both trust that the other person isn’t trying to hurt, then we should know that the other didn’t mean it that way.
However, I feel like you really mean it when you say things like, “You’re a fucking idiot.” Of course, if you’re angry, perhaps I shouldn’t take what you say too seriously? But then again, if I don’t take you seriously when you’re angry you’ll probably get more angry. Oh, the fun of paradoxes.
This brings me back to my original question, “How could I have avoided this argument?” You might say to me in response to this question; “Duh, don’t say things like that!” But what are things “like that”? How am I to determine which things I say will be taken as accusations? How can I determine which is romantic and loving manipulation and what comes off as cruel and unfair manipulation?
Isn’t it manipulation if you offer to hold me all night if I ride on top of you? I suppose that’s a bribe, but I would consider that to be a perfectly normal and loving bribe. An exchange to benefit both parties. If you say you’ll stay with me the rest of the week if you can go out on a certain night, isn’t that a form of manipulation? Especially if you ask me this on a holiday. Isn’t writing this letter a form of manipulation, even if I’m doing it because I love you? (And because I can’t think about anything else but how I could have prevented this – which is of course because I love you. And because I want to resolve this, which of course is also because I love you.)
I suppose one way to put how I feel is best put in the words of Mort; “Laya always appears... The question is, how did you respond? ...Sometimes we feel so duped into marrying Laya that we divorce Rachel.” I’m sure you know what I mean by quoting these phrases, but just incase you don’t, I’ll spell it out: I said something that upset you; but does that mean the correct response was to get angry and yell at me? You were so angry with what I said, you were willing to hurt me, despite the fact that you love me and want to be with me. Do you really think that looking back on it you’ll be happy with that sort of choice?
Maybe I’m taking this too far, but weren’t you taking it too far? I feel like you did.
If you had instead said (without leaving the bed, without raising your voice);
“When you say something like that I feel like you’re manipulating me. I want to give you the benefit of the doubt, but it’s really hard when I feel like you’re twisting my words into something that they aren’t.”
If you had said that instead of jumping up and yelling whatever you yelled (I can’t remember exactly what – when I’m being yelled at I’m much more conscious of the fact that you’re angry and that you’re yelling than anything else) then I would have been able to have a chance to tell your earnestly;
“I don’t mean to make you feel that way. I just don’t want you to leave again today. And I don’t want to go grocery shopping late at night, I want to get it out of the way while the sun is still out.”
And you could have said;
“I’m serious. I really don’t like it when you say things like that. It makes me feel like you’re trying to play me.”
And I would have replied; “Babe, I’m never trying to play you. I didn’t mean for it to come off that way. Can’t you talk to My Boyfriend’s Best Friend some other time though?”
And you could have said; “I don’t have time to talk to My Boyfriend’s Best Friend another time. It seems like he could really use some advice. He could just swing by for a little while and then we could still go grocery shopping tonight. I promise I’ll make it up to you.”
And I would have sighed and then said; “I suppose. I’m really sorry I made you feel that way, you know I didn’t mean it that way though... So how long is My Boyfriend’s Best Friend probably going to come by for?”
And you could have said; “Probably for an hour.”
And then there would have never need been an argument. Do you agree that the conversation could have gone that way? Do you agree that it would have been better that way? If you don’t agree, then please take this opportunity to tell me how you feel.
You can’t expect me to know or understand anything about you that you haven’t told me. While I may understand things you have not told me, you can’t count on it. You have to assume that I don’t know anything you have not told me, regardless of having said it several months ago, regardless of it being something I should have already gathered. Because, what if I don’t know?
I’m not going to be insulted or annoyed if you tell me something twice, or three times, or four times. Though, after four or five times I may mention that you’ve told me this before and that I remember. Clarification and questioning should never be a reason to become upset (in my opinion.)
While I’d like to say that sharing feelings should never be cause to become upset, sometimes they are. If you feel that you don’t need to make plans with me, or keep plans with me, I’m going to be upset. However, being upset should never be a reason to yell, leave, or say mean things. Do you agree? If not, please tell me that you don’t. If you do agree, which I sincerely hope that you do, please tell me. Again, you can’t expect me to know if you don’t tell me.
You see what I’m saying? I’m not trying to say that you’re slow or dumb, or whatever when I elaborate or clarify. So please don’t take it that way. Just in case, for our benefit, I’m going to reword that, in case I didn’t make myself clear the first time.
Sometimes we say things to each other that are good reasons to be upset. However, no My Bestfriender how upsetting what was said was, we should never yelled about it, leave over it, so say mean things that we’ll regret later. If you agree, then that means you agree that you should have given me the benefit of the doubt, talked calmly but seriously about your feelings, and that there was no need for a loud or prolonged argument. If you agree, then there is no reason for us to stay angry with each other.
Please tell me how you feel.
This is how I feel: hurt, and sad. I still love you though, and you know that.


Monday January, 12th 2008 at 12:45pm

Miruna says: “Ah. I have a desk, like all the other programmers. We work in a common room, typing away, for the most part. Most of us do some work from home, too, which is why I was able to send that script to crawl through the broken records in the database.
“I have heard a phrase from America, I think it is 'hostile work environment'. From what I can tell, this is a rather hostile environment. Some of that is my fault, of course, but I do what I have to.
“Most of us leave at around eighteen or so, some of us stay later.
“If you want to know what I think of my subordinates, it goes something like this:
Thirty programmers and twelve interns work directly under me. Best-practices elsewhere [such as America and Europe] dictate no more than six people directly under any given position, but we clearly do not follow best-practices here. I imagine most offices also ignore best-practices in practice.
“Eighteen. 18:00. I think that is when most Americans have dinner? Six on a twelve-hour clock.”
I say: “I was trying to calculate it at the same time as listing to my mom talk to me. My mom is telling me about financial issues at the moment.”
Miruna says: “Oh? Is it bad news?”
I say: “It's always bad news; a bunch of crises have happened.”
Miruna says: “Oh dear. At any rate. Out of the thirty full-privileged programmers, two seem to be burning out. That is about average for this time of year. I have looked at records going back a couple years before I started here, and that seems consistent. Which is good, because I have two interns with real promise, and that leaves six for shock-absorbers, and four to get rid of before April.”
I say: “I see. Sounds similar to my Dad's position since his promotion.”
Miruna says: “Ah. I imagine he does not need to be as careful with the interns, though. What cycle do they use at his office? Ours is three months. Which is why I have to dismiss the four lousy interns before April, incidentally.”
I say: “My mom called me back again, just a second... XD ...Well, he's not a programmer; he works for social services, but he has a lot of people under him; something similar to how many you have under you. His previous job (before the promotion) for the last twenty years has been working with wel-fare people. He has to find out if they are still eligible, if they are getting the care they need, if they're getting the work they are supposed to, etc.
“Before he'd have something like thirty to a hundred clients at a time, and he'd do the paperwork and make the phone calls and answer phone calls and meet with people. Now, he manages all of his old co-workers, and they don't phase in and out very often. I'm not sure if he has a power to hire or fire anyone or not.
“He has to make sure everyone else is doing their job, pick up their slack, and make reports on them. What's funny is that (in his own words) he has over 10 times the work, and less than a 10th of his pay raised.”
Miruna says: “That is a shame. For my part, I cannot readily fire the programmers unless I can prove [in court if necessary] that they are not doing their job, which is why I have to watch for signs of stress, and keep track of which interns look promising, and dismiss the slackers as quickly as I can.”
I say: “I believe he used to work in the same room as everyone and now he has his own office, but that's pretty much a guess. Managers in office-buildings rarely are in the same room with all the workers. I see. That sounds like it can have it's perks, but stressful for the most part.
“My brother recently tried to kill himself, which is part of the current financial problem.”
Miruna says: “Yes, it is mostly a lot of stress. But I cut a lot of throats to get to this desk, and now I can mostly count on keeping my job as long as I can do it. Oh. Dear. I am sorry.”
I say: “My mom has borrowed all of the money in my bank account (she promises to pay back with interest within a few months) to buy him an apartment so he wasn't sleeping in his car. And I didn't realize it was quite so much until I suggested us getting the "old computers" of the house fixed today. I figured that I could pay for my old two to be fixed/upgraded and she could do the same for Dad's old computer. Turns out, neither of us have any money in our bank accounts.
“My Dad got stopped for drunk driving, and he's been going through court and all of that, and that's going to run another 700 dollars. And the window of the car is broken, and to get it fixed is 300 dollars.”
Miruna says: “Well, if the hardware still works, try installing Linux on the old machines. Linux does not need nearly as much resources as windows.
“Oh. My.”
I say: “And I believe our tires are going as well, and I have no idea how much it costs to fix that.”
Later, on another topic...
“My Boyfriend says Windows always slows down because of the spyware on it -- even when you're not hooked up the internet, Windows always gets slower and slower. Would you happen to know exactly why?”
Miruna explains; “Well, he is partly right. Spyware and other malicious code [or anything that runs in the background all the time] will slow down a computer. But even if you remove all the spyware, you have another annoying drain on your resources.
“Windows NT [which includes XP and Vista] has a 'feature' called the registry. The registry contains practically all the information that lets windows act more or less intelligently in the face of clueless users [which is most users, no My Bestfriender how smart they might be [which is because Microsoft -tries- to keep users clueless which is a whole story on its own]].
“The registry gains new entries every time you change window settings, view settings, install programs, define [or 'associate'] filetypes with specific programs, and lots of other stuff too.
Since it is ultimately a database, it is very important that nothing ever corrupt the registry, or your computer will become useless.
“Unfortunately, since is is an -unsorted- database, any time windows needs to figure out how to respond to an event [such as you clicking on an icon] windows has to search the entire registry from top to bottom until it figures out what to do. Then it does what the registry says.
“The major flaw in this system is that at no time does the registry ever get sorted [and if it were, windows would still search the registry from top to bottom anyway] and the registry NEVER SHRINKS. It just keeps getting bigger [and harder for windows to sift through].”
And then back on the original topic...
I say: “On the note I lost track of before – our household makes a good deal of money, enough that we shouldn't be struggling so much; but my life since I've been born seems to be one crises after another. The major ones were the house fire, the recent economic crash, and at one point every appliance in the house seemed to die at once -- the furnace, the hot-water tank, the car, the thermostat, the vacuum; it was just insane, all in like a two month period. And my parents ended up filing bankruptcy a while back, and while I'm sure it helped, I never saw the improvement. And, of course, in recent years electric and gas bills just keep rising and rising (even though we've made a bunch of conscious efforts to bring those bills down: keeping the thermostat low, adding insulation to the house, adding insulated-siding to the house, changing to more efficient light-bulbs, using the air-conditioner very sparingly).”
Monday January, 12th 2008 at 3:33pm
So I got off of instant messenger with Miruna in order to go downstairs and help mom with a “project.” The project turned out to be clearing off one of the desks in the living room.
Why clear off the desk? (Besides the obvious – to have it clean!) Well, dad has been playing Civilization III again since he got his license taken away for drunk driving. He’s been supplementing his drinking and dancing with the video game, and I personally full-heartedly approve. It’s much more pleasant to walk by mom’s computer to see dad sitting at it playing Civilization III (a game I dearly love) than it is to walk by and to have a short conversation with mom about how much dad going out sucks. Not that this sort of conversation really takes place on a frequent occurrence... But...
There is dad’s drinking buddy who isn’t worth a lot of junk; and the two of them go to bars and drink and dance together, and according to my mom, it’s likely he’s been sleeping with other women. Hell if I know, hell if I want to know.
So, the reason for clearing off the desk is to move dad’s hunk-of-junk computer that My Aunt gave him once-upon-a-time to that desk, to hopefully install Civilization III. Of course, everything about that computer needs replacing, except perhaps the keyboard. The mouse is ancient (it doesn’t plug in with a USB port, and believe it or not, it’s not one of those green circular plugs with tons of pins either, but rather it looks like a monitor cord!) And besides being ancient, it sucks. The mouse barely moves, it’s on one of those dumb balls you have to clean all the damn time. So the first thing that needs doing is to replace it with a laser mouse.
Second, a flat-screen would be nice. The monitor weighs about sixty pounds (this is a complete guess, but I almost died carrying the thing down the stairs; if it had been only a pound or two heavier or just an inch bigger I couldn’t have managed it) and is huge. It’s got a sticker on it about “decreased infrared rays” and on this same sticker it says 1992. Yippy folks.
I didn’t really see his speakers, though I unplugged something that looked like a speaker cord from the back of his computer. I didn’t trace through the mess to figure out where it led to. The experience was depressing to no end and I couldn’t wait to get out of that room. It’s a terror-spot, it is. Socks flug every where way, tic-tacs and mints on the desk, matches, cigarettes, papers, pens and other assorted junk all piled on top of his keyboard; and a little pewter wizard I gave him several Christmases ago... There is no chair in front of his desk, just a mound of stuff, and a corner of a bin sticks out at about sitting-height, so I perched on it while I tried to extract the ancient monstrosity from his desk.
Speaking of his desk, I never even noticed what the desk itself looked like. It was too buried in junk. I did notice that he has shelves painted to patch the wall color against the wall on his side of the room, and yet mom doesn’t. This means my mom built him shelves – which he now has cluttered with junk – and she didn’t build any for herself (undoubtedly a cross between lack of money and time.)
Also hurtful was that both sides of the room are in equal disarray. Dad’s side has pants and suit pieces, old gifts and shirts, socks and underwear, books and computer stuffs, papers and discs and who-knows-what-else whereas mom’s side just looks like a mound of semi-feminine clothing piled atop a dresser and a little side table with a light, chap-stick, reading glasses and the last six books she’s read.
The horror. The dread. The memories and the pain and the guilt and the regret and the depression and the desperation and pleas of mercy and forgiveness and help just permeate the air of the room. I might prefer a hell-mouth. (Excuse the terrible Buffy-reference, I’m re-watching the series. Please no spoilers, I barely remember what happens and I’m only on season one, episode four at the moment.)
So that was hell. I carried the system down stairs; took three trips. I set it up, got it plugged in (easier said than done of course) and then the damn thing won’t start and I don’t have a clue why. Some of the parts within the tower itself are probably still good, it’s likely possible to replace the processor, add ram and perhaps a second hard-drive rather than buy a new computer. The only problem with that is that buying a new computer would cost about the same amount; though that’s only if we’re talking about a state-of-the-art bran-new processor, hard-drive and ram slot and talking a decent newish computer that can run Civilization III (which is any newish computer.)
It may just be as well to just buy a computer that came out sometime in the past two years if we can find one for under $500. Hell if I know where the money will come from since my mom owes me money and won’t be paying me back in full until likely the end of march. And I certainly won’t take dad getting a new computer as payment. So, if this old-junk can be made to work for some quick fixes at some shop than that may be the best solution for now. My Boyfriend will likely take a look at it tonight. It’s probably clogged with dust for starters.
Boy does that old thing make this lovely laptop look like a god.