Since my thinking was all screwed up this night and I suddenly realized the totally obvious error of my reasoning I figure I’ll share my new found wisdom with you. Don’t worry this’ll be quick. (this’ll should totally be a word!)

A lot of times you read about how human beings are inherently selfish. That we’re always basically in it for ourselves. All our choices are considered at their heart selfish choices. 

People bring up counterexamples of this or that unselfish choice done for this or that unselfish reasons of course. But the argument goes that they are really being done for selfish reasons too! You are doing it so that you will be liked, or so that people will praise your, or even in the hopes of getting something out of it down the line. Selfish right?

Wrong.

Merely the hope or expectation that some benefit will be derived from an act of benevolence is not enough to prove that you are inherently selfish. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing! The fact that you want to look good in front of other people does *not* wholly override and invalidate any of the other reasons why you might be choosing to do a thing.  Maybe you want people to pay you on the back, AND you honestly want to help someone else.

And by that logic then there’s a fairly simple test. Imagine if, given a choice you are about to make, that no one will praise you for and you’ll never get any positive benefit from it whatsoever. Now ask yourself,  would you still do it? If the answer is yes then that act is altruistic not selfish.  So in that case, it’s still fine to hope and wish or dream of good or pleasant things coming to you as a result of the decision. Just so long as you are true to your beliefs and are not doing it *just* to get those things out of it.

So we should probably just be honest with ourselves about all of our motives for a given choice, the selfish and the selfless. And not feel bad about ourselves just because we have selfish motives. It doesn’t make us bad guys just because when we are doing the right things we are sometimes selfishly motivated.

Now I’m a programmer and I’ve pretty much worked with computers all my life. Building them, fixing them, messing with software, programming for them. I’m a “tech” person by any measure. If you visit me you’ll see my place is filled with wires and hard drives and graphics cards all strewn about haphazardly. In short… I like computers.

Except when I hate them of course.  Certain software packages just drive me to insane rage! How could anyone design their software with so little regard for the users I sometimes think? How could someone make something where so little thought was put into it?  Sometimes when I see a badly designed system I just want to fly over to Silicon valley or Redmond or wherever the developers work and punch the person who thought of it in the face!

So I understand how people can hate a piece of software. I get it. I really do. I don’t think it’s irrational at all. You work with these programs day in and day out they become a part of your life. If they don’t work the way you want them to it’s only natural to get upset.

But even so… I just don’t get the hate that is so regularly shewn about the Windows Vista operation system. 

Now I’m no Microsoft Fanboy by any stretch of the imagination, but this attitude it’s just really strange to me. But I go to forums and people talk about how much they dislike it. I hear people say how they absolutely *have* to downgrade their new systems to Windows XP because “Vista sucks”.  And there are all kinds of websites out there showing step by step instructions for how to do this. I’ve even heard some system manufacturers now add an option to buy a system with windows XP installed rather than Windows Vista. And they charge you for it too! As if Windows XP were more valuable than Windows Vista.  It’s crazy.

I do understand that Windows Vista has significantly higher system prerequisites than XP. But that doesn’t explain the depth of people’s hatred. I’ve used Vista. I have two machines that run Vista at home and I run Vista at work. And I can tell you honestly I don’t notice the difference. Granted I’m running 2GB RAM on two systems and 3 GB RAM on the other, but even when my laptop only had 1 GB of RAM when I first bought it sure I noticed that it was a little bit slower than XP would be, but not incredibly so. The laptop still worked fine for everything I needed it to do.

User interface-wise sure I see lots of little things I’d change that I don’t like. And sure maybe it isn’t as good as a Mac (I’ve barely ever used a Mac so I wouldn’t know).  And sure there are lots of thigns I like in KDE and Gnome better than Vista (it’s a trade off, there are things I prefer about Vista too).  But you can’t honestly tell me you think the Vista UI is strictly worse than Windows XP! Windows XP’s UI is almost identical except without a lot of cool features that Vista added. Vista also organized and cleaned up things. Everything is easier to find, better labeled, and more comprehensible for the layman. Navigating in explorer is easier all around and I love the new address bar. Some of the features I just don’t use and don’t see much of a point to, like the new side bar and the weird new 3D switch between windows thing, but I just turn those off and don’t use them. No problem.

And security-wise is where I say Vista is great. The nag boxes that everyone rags on I think are absolutely amazingly useful. Windows desperately needed something like that since in the past it was so trivial for programs to be running, manipulating systems settings, deleting files, doing whatever the heck they felt like without you even knowing it! Now you are basically running in something much akin to a lua and then sudo when you need an application to update system settings. That’s just like every other OS has been doing since the beginning of time. And it’s the way it has to be in order for you to be secure.  Not only that but the design of these dialogs that show you when system settings are being altered are much more elegant and easier to use in my opinion than the alternative of running some excessive bloatware firewall that nags you perpetually whenever anything on your system does anything.  And overall I bet the memory difference between Vista and XP is not nearly as bad people think when you take into account the memory used by these massive security packages people run, and *need* to run on XP.

Now most of the most horribly infected machines I’ve encountered have been running Windows XP. So far, I haven’t really run into any Vista machine with significant malware on it. It’s true Vista hasn’t caught on as much yet but I think it also has to do with Vista being a more secure design than XP altogether.

All of this is not to say that I think Vista is great by any means. I’m just saying I think it really IS a step up from XP. Not as much of a step up as XP was from the unspeakable OSes that came before, but a step up nonetheless. I wouldn’t go out of my way to upgrade to Vista. In fact if a machine isn’t running Vista out of the box there’s pretty much no way I’d spend one dime on upgrading to Vista unless for some reason I had to. But if a machine comes with Vista preinstalled, I don’t understand spending all the time and effort to downgrade to XP. And I really can’t get paying *more* so that you can have XP. What’s so great about XP? I’ve been spending years waiting to get *rid* of XP and move on to something better. Why would anyone want to go *back* to it. Ugh. It’s insane!

And what really really bothers me is the people who will go through all this trouble to downgrade to XP but then would never even consider installing Linux on their box! I mean come on! If you’re going to go mess with your OS anyway, why not just ditch MS altogether? If you really need XP or Vista for games, run it in a virtual machine or something. I just find myself unable to comprehend this.

The only explanation that makes sense is if you buy a new system that just sucks and yet they put Vista on it anyway. One that has way too little RAM and an ass video card and a poor processor. Hopefully most manufacturers aren’t dumb enough to do that anymore. The only thing I’ve seen still happening lately is a number of manufacturers still putting too little RAM in their machines. But luckily DDR2 is dirt cheap these days so that’s still no excuse to me to downgrade your system. Installing more RAM is easier than downgrading your OS!

Anyway, that’s just a random rant I had to get off my chest. 

Are you one of those who hates Windows Vista?  Maybe you can explain it to me?

Just some random ramblings today. No need for you to comment, read, or acknowledge the existence of this entry in any way. It won’t make much sense anyway.

So today I finally got a lot of the missing data I’ve been looking for. You see I’d been having this really bad feeling for quite a while now. And at the heart of it, I thought, was this sense of missing information. I thought there was something really bad I didn’t know about or something really bad that was going to happen as a result of my ignorance.  I felt like I needed more data. The situation just wasn’t making any sense to me. My instincts were screaming at me that something was very wrong.

Turns out for once in a blue moon my instincts weren’t wholly off. There was a lot I suspected but didn’t know that turned out to be dead on exactly as I suspected. And just as bad as I suspected. But it seems like things are going to be ok now, which is good. In fact for me personally they might turn out to be even better than ok. Or maybe not. I don’t know, but it’s clear that my life might end up getting a lot more complicated. But not, I think, in a bad way. I think I could learn from it and help someone at the same time. And if it doesn’t turn out that way, I think I’ll still have learned a great deal and have gotten a chance, I hope, to meet a new and interesting person. I’m really happy that things are turning out alright. That a lot of things that have been bothering me are getting settled and all falling into place.

So…

Why is it that I still have this really bad feeling?

I’m not sure. Maybe it’s something else wholly unrelated to the last feeling. Something else that just doesn’t seem right in my environment. Details I’m missing. A lack of data from which I can derive a sound judgment. I don’t think there’s anyone in the world who hates not knowing as much as I do. Anticipation drives me nutts. I need my data. I have to be ble to draw logical deductions or else I start to get unsettled. And I start to worry. I worry way waay too much in fact.

I wonder if a bad feeling isn’t naturally a self fulfilling prophecy right? It’ll just stick around up until the point where something bad happens and then you’ll just say “See! Guess my bad feeling was correct.” But of course that’s a clear falacy since bad things will eventually happen to everyone almost guaranteed and when it does, guess what, you’re always going to think your bad feeling was correct!

But I guess I’m not so much of a logician as all that deep down because I tend to trust my instincts and my feelings and my suspicions. I act upon them even long before they are confirmed. This often leads me to make mistakes. But every once in a while it enables me to be prepared for the things that do happen. I don’t get blindsided very often. It seems like most possible outcomes and possible explanations I’ve already considered and taken into account. If my instincts are telling me that something might turn out one way, then I prepare for the possibility of that happening while still being prepared for the possibility of my being dead wrong.

Even worrying about weird feelings and odd suspicions aren’t the thoughts that preoccupy most of my time spent staring into nothing though. Rather then my mind wanders most to imagining the possibilities.

I keep wondering, how would things have been different if things had changed just a little bit. A few small alterations in variables? What if we changed the time frame by just a couple of months or a couple of weeks? What if I had written things just a little different, had never sent that letter or never written those words, or never reached out to that person, or had chosen to reach out to that other person? What if I had stayed there a little longer, or left there way sooner, or what if I had never gone to that other place in the first place? Would it have been different? Better? Would I have been able to help the same people? Would I have been able to help them even more? Or help others? And what would have happened to them if I couldn’t have helped? What kind of life would I be leading now if I’d made all the easy obvious choices? Done all the right things? Would I be leading an even simpler one than I have now? Or would I have run into complexities I couldn’t have imagined?

And mostly I just can’t help but wonder about the far past… What if I had made different choices while growing up? Choices that would have lead me to be a better more capable more successful more…  well I don’t want to go down that line of thought any further than that.  And yet I wonder if I had made those choices growing up would I still be the same person I am now? The same free thinker? The same person who thrives on being unpredictably unique in a lot of ways. Or would I have conformed more in order to be more acceptable to others. And would that be such a bad thing? Does the world need people whose minds walk such strange paths as mine seem to wander day by day?

But what if eh? I seem to be preoccupied with that damnable “if” word.  It seeps into all my writing. Strange.

I don’t believe in God or religion of any kind really. I’m not very spiritual at all. I’ve written about that before. If there’s any word that applies to me, it’s that I’m agnostic, but even that doesn’t seem quite right. I really hope there is more to life than what there appears to be. I’m just not about to jump on *any* belief bandwagon just because I can. I need real reasons. Rational reasons. Ha! This is actually hte same reason I have very little school pride or national pride and why I find it so hard to get into sports and most kinds of fandoms in fact.

But I do sort of think that maybe sometimes I do believe in Destiny and Fate. They’re different you know. Fate is the impending unrelenting outcome you want to avoid. Destiny is the impending future that fulfills an ends. Eh I’ve explained the difference much better in the past but the words are escaping me today. It’s late. And my mind is starting to wander to even weirder places now.  But I want to finish this thought before I stop writing. I sort of believe in Fate and Destiny because life sometimes seems sooo much like one big gigantic story. Like a crazy book someone out there is writing.  I used to imagine that that was exactly the case when I was a kid you know? As I read fantasy books I imagined that the authors were piped their stories through some weird transference medium. That they somehow had a window into other real worlds where these things were actually happening and they were just writing them in words as best they can. Their view of it might be fuzzy and they might not get the real stories exactly right. But the real storeis exist. And authors are just conduits.   That’s what I thought.

And so I wonder also if maybe someone out there is writing our story. Not a God or anything but just some regularly joe taking our life’s events and putting them into a narrative. Making into an epic grand series of novels. Maybe there are hundreds of thousands of people writing our stories making a massive collection of books that together collectively represent all of the lives of people on this small blue planet. 

And also, maybe those books are just reflections, shadows of some grander real story. The true incredible story of who we are that’s already written. Or maybe it’s just outlined with several possible branching outcomes where we can still make a different and shift the story. A choose your own adventure story but the basic events are already in there and can’t be avoided. You will meet certain people in your life and have a roll in their lives and accomplish certain things in your lifetime. That’s your destiny. You will face certain challenges and hardships. That’s your fate.   But how you react to these things. Maybe you have a choice. Maybe you can still screw up and maybe you can still succeed in ways you couldn’t imagine.  Maybe a single slightly different choice can make someone who was meant to be your close friend into a near stranger? Maybe a decision made here or there turns someone who would have been but your casual acquaintance into a life long companion or spouse. But the story proceeds the same either way. You can’t escape your fates or your destinies. Maybe you can’t. I think about that possibility all the time.

But I’ll be damned if I’m going to ever really believe that either. Certain fates, I’ll fight against with my last dying breath. I’ll make them turn out differently. I don’t know if I can make them ideal, but I can at least do all I can to divurge the outcomes that I despise.  And I think I can do it too. I think we can all do it.  I guess in the end I don’t really believe in fate or destiny. If life’s a choose your own adventure book I think there are some blank pages in the back that we can sort of fill out however we please when we make choices that the author never intended.

That’s enough rambling for today. I wish I had more data. I really hate this feeling of uncertainty. When I sleep with it I end up having the dumbest nightmares. Oh well. At least for now, everything seems fine and like it’ll work out ok. I just wish I really believed it.

I just realized that I had recently subscribed to my 100th blog. That’s
right, I said “subscribed to”. That means there’s a full one hundred of
you Xangans out there who have your daily and semi-daily ramblings
piped directly into my subscription browser day after day.



I guess that seemed like a momentous enough occasion for me to justify
taking a moment to confess to you significantly less than 100 possible
readers of this blog my terrible reprehensible unforgivable sin:

It’s true. Sadly true. Can you ever forgive me? No no, of course you
can’t! There can be no forgiveness for such a terrible crime. I throw
myself at thine feet and pray you have mercy upon me.



Perhaps an explanation is in order. You might be wondering why on Earth
do I subscribe to a hundred blogs and don’t read them?  How can that
make any sense?



Well you see the trick is… I “skim”.  I skim everything. My eyes just
glaze over and speed through the words as I page through the
subscription lists. Sometimes I’m not even reading the words at all.
I’m just looking at the pictures!



… hmmm interesting pictures on Xanga these days…


*dazed look*


*shakes himself back to attention*



Ahem,  yeah as I was saying I’m not really reading at all. And if you
have a video on your blog I probably didn’t click the link to watch it
and if you have an mp3 file posted, I probably didn’t listen to it. And if there are interesting events, stories, conflicts, series, contests or whatnot going on in Xanga-land, I probably haven’t read enough to know about it.



This is true even of the blogs I *like*. Heck it’s even true of the
blogs of the people I *know*. I’m not reading it. Sorry. Even if I told
you I really like your blog and I think it’s innovative or creative or
whatever… I’m probably not reading it. If you post something tomorrow
thinking I’m gonna read it. Think again. I probably won’t.



That’s not to say I don’t read *any* blogs. I do read some. But only if
they really catch my attention and capture my imagination or I really
like the style or something. Or they’re really trivially short. I read
the two sentence entries. Usually.  Sometimes I just skip over them too
though. 



Of longer blogs, generally I read the first paragraph. Unless you’re
one of those people who don’t use paragraphs. BTW, if you don’t use
paragraphs…



I hate you.



I wish I were kidding. Those who know me know I’m the farthest thing
from a Grammar Nazi in the world. I don’t care about grammar. I don’t
care about spelling. I think we should replace all da w0rdz w1t t3h
l33t!   I’d be totally happy with that. No problem.



But I draw the line at eliminating paragraphs. God damn it use
paragraphs! It drives me into a murderous rage when I see something
written all as one big monstrous evil paragraph from hell. I hate it. And because I hate it, it makes me want to hate you. 
And you don’t want that do you?  I’m awesome after all. You want me as
your friend. So please please please please please please please use paragraphs.



Heck they don’t have to be proper paragraphs with a main idea or
anything. Just put a line break every few sentences or so. Do that and
I will utterly ecstatic.



[End Side Rant]



So yeah I was saying, if there aren’t any interesting pictures or
anything to draw my attention,  I’ll usually read the first paragraph
and the first couple of sentences and then spot check a few  sentences
here and there. And if I find it more interesting maybe I’ll read a
little bit more. But all in all there are maybe one or two non-short
entries on any given day that I actually read in their entirety. And
some days, lots of days, there aren’t any.



Maybe you’re thinking that’s not so bad.  But wait! I haven’t finished
recounting you the depths of my sins.   You see it’s even worse than
that.   Not only am I not reading your blogs.  Sometimes, in fact far
more often than I should probably admit to in public… I’m commenting
on them anyway!



That’s right. I comment on things I haven’t read every word of. I comment on things I haven’t even read half the
words of.  And so if your wondering why my long ass-ed comment seems to
have like nothing to do with what you wrote… there’s probably a good
reason for it. I probably didn’t read what you wrote. Not all of it
anyway. Heck even when I do read entries, if they’re longer entries,
I’ve usually forgotten what I read by the time I start writing my
comment anyway., so it hardly makes any difference.



But why you say? Why aren’t you reading our blogs? Are we not interesting enough? Do we bore you?



No no! It’s not that. I find soo many blogs so very very fascinating.
Why do you think I subscribe to so many? I’m curious about all of them.
I love reading blogs. I learn so much from reading blogs and I think I
would literally lose my mind if I didn’t have blogs to read. 



So why then?



I don’t know!  I guess… I guess I’m just a terrible terrible horrible
vile person. *whimpers*  So go ahead, Unleash the horrors of your
self-righteous rage upon me!  I deserve it.  I’m a terrible blogger.  I
deserve what I get.



But let me make this last plea for leniency to my most kind and
benevolent readership! At least take into account that I am completely
democratic in my skimming. I don’t place any favorites. I’m skim
everyone with equal measure. Does that make it any better?  Also, I try
to make my comments at least interesting if not necessarily on point?
Does that buy me some leeway?  How about the fact that I read every
single word of every comment placed on my blog very carefully and try
to reply to them whenever I can? Does that help me out any? No?



Then all I have left to do is beg of thee to find it in your hearts to forgive me.



All I can offer you is this oath that I’ll do my best to do a better in the future.



Yes, I’ll try to read more in the future. I’ll try to care about what
you have to say. I’ll try to follow your weird series and odd contests
and strange multi-part rants. I’ll give it a shot reading through your
daily ramblings about the food you ate and the people you beat up or
made fun of and the dates you went on and the clothes you bought and
the video games you happened to play yesterday.  I’ll do my best to
read about your trips around the world and your opinions on politics
and religion and philosophy and giraffes and the month of July. I’ll
even attempt to analyze and comprehend your story stories and your
poems and your artistic collages of who knows what they are supposed to
be. And throughout it all I’ll do my best to leave coherent intelligent
and reasonable comments that are on point and reflect all that you have
to say.



I’ll try. I promise.



But I can’t make any guarantees.  In my heart of hearts I’m a natural
skimmer. It is not in my nature to read things in depth. But for the
sake of the great and extraordinary community that is Xanga, I will try.



Oh and if you read this and reply with anything along the lines of
“that’s OK, I’m not reading your Xanga either” I’m going to throw a pie
in your face next time I see you.



Happy Friday all!

(addendum – actually there are some bloggers who I do read virtually every entry word for word of, but I’ll never admit who those are, yup I’m a liar and a deceiver too.)

Click here to claim your blog on Blogged.com

I’d totally forgotten I did this. But yeah I’m on this blogged thing too. Feel free to drop by and write mean things about my site on there. Or whatever.

We human beings are possessed of a disease called:  the desire for absolutely unconditional acceptance

Don’t get me wrong. We like to strive. We love to better ourselves. And nothing motivates us more to do so than the good regard of the people we care about. We want our loved ones to not just like us but respect and admire us too. We want them to look upon us and see a person worthy of knowing, worthy of being their friend.

If we stopped there maybe everything would be a-okay. But no. We are selfish creatures. We want even more than that from another. Or at least from someone.

So we’re always asking something like… well

What if I don’t?

What if I don’t get better?  What if I don’t go further? What if I don’t grow? What if I don’t live up to my potential? What if I don’t become more than I am?

What if I’m not kind? What if I can’t help anyone? What if I never change anyone? What if I can’t fix anybody’s problems?

What if I can’t stop myself from being pushy or arrogant or smart-aleck or rude or disgusting? What if I lie? What if I cheat? What if I deceive? What if I can’t make myself be the person that others need me to be?

What if I hurt people?

What if I fail at everything I try? What if I lose? Even if I try my hardest, what if I just can’t do it? Not any of it. What if I’m not good enough?

What if everyone hates me? What if no one ever cares about me? What if I never fall in love? What if I’m never really happy? What if.. at best… I can only pretend to be?

What if I never make something of myself?  What if I don’t ever find the things I want to out of life? What if I’m never motivated? What if nothing ever means anything to me? What if I’m always childish? What if I never get organized? What if I’m always lazy? What if I waste my life away on trivial things?

What if I can’t become stronger? What if I’m not smart enough or wise enough? What if I’m weak? What if I’m a coward? What if I break down? What if I fall apart?  What if I run away?

What if I give up?

What if I just… let myself go? 

What if I die?

Those are the questions we ask. We don’t want to be this way. We want to succeed. We want to be happy. We want to live! We want good things for ourselves. But we’re also wondering always… What if I won’t?  What if I can’t?  What if I don’t?

We don’t want it to be this way. Lots of times we don’t even really believe it might turn out this way. But we know, better than anyone, that the possibility exists. And all along inside us is that overwhelming desperate fear. Not that these things will happen. No. That’s not what scares us. 

What scares us is that we don’t… and then because of that we are rejected. That nobody will be able to accept us once they know the terrible things that we’ve been and that we are capable of being. We’re afraid everyone will just give up on us. Just totally abandon us.

And then we’ll be all alone.

So that’s why we’re always looking for that absolutely irrational, totally ridiculous, completely incomprehensible unconditional acceptance. We’re trying to find the person or persons who can give it to us. We’re looking for the people who will say it’s ok. No matter what. It’s ok.

And we’ll push them and challenge those people too. Even if we think we’ve found it, or nearly it. We won’t believe them. We might, even part of us, hate them for it. “How dare they pretend to care about me?” We’ll think. “They don’t know a damn thing about me. About what I’m capable of.”

And unfortunately, most of us, because we are rational, because we never really were that unconditional in the first place, will, when faced with that challenge, give up. And then the person, through his or her own fault will end up just as they feared they would become. Alone and forgotten.

Is there a better way?  Can we change ourselves so we don’t need absolutely unconditional acceptance? 

I don’t think so. No. I don’t think we should have to. It’s an abnormality true. A corruption of logic. So maybe in a cold hard rationalist objective analysis we can see that it’d be best for us as a species if we just gave up on it and we were all more realistic about the limits of human tolerance.

But I don’t want that to happen.

Maybe I’m naive, but I think there’s a better way for us to deal with it. I think we can go on diseased though we are and be happier for it. There’s only one thing we have to change in order to do that too. We don’t have to stop wanting that absolutely unconditional acceptance.

We just have to be willing to give it to someone.

And once we start doing that. Each and every one of us, accepting someone, if only just one or two people, unconditionally, no matter what, then maybe we’ll each find others who will do the same for us. When we need them to.

Then there will be someone whom when we angrily challenge then and say:

“Oh yeah? Well what if I don’t?! Huh? What then?”

The honest true answer will always be:

“I’ll still love you anyway.”

The number of people I’ve tried to convince to start a Xanga or start writing entries in their Xanga: 

5

The number of people I’ve succeeded in convincing to start a Xanga or start writing entries in their Xanga:

ZERO!!

(>_<)

I guess I must not be very persuasive.

Have you ever gotten anybody to join xanga? How about gotten anybody to become a more active member of Xanga? 

If you have, how did you do it? Can you suggest any good strategies to use in recruitment?

Wow this is an amazing question. A year ago I was living in a small apartment in Elkton, MD right on the border between Delaware and Maryland. I was working for a small telemarketing firm as a programmer in a job I was fairly good at but disliked. But I disliked it less than I had ever disliked it in the past. It was the least intolerable that it had ever been. heh. And like I said I was good at it and it was stable and I was slowly making progress making things better and earning more respect from my peers and all that. I earned more than enough to survive easily. I had no significant debts except my college debts which were easily manageable and I’d just paid off my 2006 Mazda. Everything was completely and totally stable.

And I was really and truly completely unhappy.

Only here’s the weird thing. I didn’t even know it.  I went about my daily routines and I had no idea that I was miserable. There wasn’t anything *bad* about my life you see. Nothing at all. It was just that there wasn’t anything particularly good about it either. I barely heard from my friends, new or old. And though I saw my immediate family often we didn’t do all that much together. I was sort of just getting by.

And I had no idea that in about three weeks I was going to randomly decide one Friday night that I was going to quit my job on Monday.

Had you told that person in a year he’d have several brand new friends, be living in Indianapolis, after having spent six months unemployed in DC, and now having a completely different job with his own office, and be borderline poor in spite of making much more money than I had before and having a much lower cost of living, considering taking on a roommate, thinking about selling his car, and sitting here writing a xanga entry about it while listening to Simple Plan on a new ipod he just got in the mail today… probably the only part of that he’d believe is the part about writing about it in Xanga.

That’s life for you.

I’m much happier now.

I just answered this Featured Question, you can answer it too!

So the only difference between a conspiracy theorist and a critic so far as I can see is that the conspiracy theorists have more respect for their subjects.

Take for example the issue of the current administration’s policy on condoning and encouraging torture. Now the critic says “what a bunch of dumb asses they are!”  And we get it right? I mean they’ve gotta be really stupid if they don’t realize that torture will be a great recruiting tool for the enemy and that if we torture the enemy then the enemy will likely torture our own troops and that torturing damages our reputation abroad.  And we’ve got to have seen all the historical evidence of cases where torture has been used and how utterly ineffective it has been at procuring reliable information as opposed to other better and well tested techniques. Not to mention the scientific studies that have demonstrated conclusively the very same thing.

So the critic throws up his hands in despair and says “what can we do when we have such bone heads in office?”  and “isn’t there any way we can educate them to see the error in their ways?”  That’s the critic for you.  He thinks they are dumb.

I tend to be closer to the other side.

I don’t think they are dumb at all.

The conspiracy theorist takes it as a given that people who obtain that level of power are *not* dumb. They may be delusional and even insane but certainly not *dumb*.  Why do we take that assumptive stand? Maybe because to believe the alternative is just way too dang depressing. If they *are* dumb and got elected, then what does that say about everyone else? “In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is King” right? So that must mean we’re all not even half as bright on average as our moron leaders. That makes us an unbearable, incomprehensibly, mind numbingly stupid people on the whole. 

If I believed that I think I’d just shoot myself right now.

But if we believe the alternative that the people in power aren’t dumb at all. That they are well aware of all the obvious facts about their activities, such as torture, then our own hope is to find the most likely most rational explanation for why they are doing it anyway.  What could their goals *be* such that their choices make sense in spite of all the bad things and dumb things we can all see resulting from their plans and decisions.

And ironically it isn’t at all hard to come up with a plausible explanation that fits it altogether. All you have to do is remember Machiavelli since he pretty much fully described the techniques all those years ago. These people are doing exactly what is most rational to obtain and retain power. They are manufacturing an enemy and strengthening that enemy to rally public support against that enemy. That’s how you get powerful. That’s how you earn money. It works. It’s worked for generations. It’ll work tomorrow too.

And of course now you’ve probably put me on your “crazy” list and decided to ignore everything I will ever have to say on the issue of politics again. This is normal expected behavior too. It’s part of the strategy. You limit certain frameworks of acceptable beliefs in order to constrain public opinion and direct it along the pathways you need it to be. Anti-rant, anti-emotion, anti-abnormality, and anti-critique bias all play a part here and are harnessed to the ends of the power seeking.  Anything said in an emotional way as a rant is dismissed in part because the person is seen as a “ranter”. Likewise if you were to whine or seem giddy or whatever. See my essay on anti-emotional bias for more information.

Likewise anything unexpected and not a part of the standard public dialectic will be ignored at first. The barrier to entry into the norm of communication is very high. A theory, however, plausible, has to also be palatable to the people setting the agenda or to enough news media outlets that the word can get out. Alternatively, and very rarely, an idea can pick up steam amongst the masses to the point where the media has no point but to take it up. But that almost *never* happens.

All this leads me to find political discourse rather overwhelmingly uninteresting. We have a leadership that is either insane or morally bankrupt or both, but a populace that looks down upon them not for those characteristics but rather because they are “dumb”. We think we’re sooo much smarter than those idiots in charge. It’s our hubris that is our downfall.

And that’s why they always win.

So a part of me wants to write stories for a living.  Only there’s one big problem with that life’s plan. I’ve only ever had four story ideas in my entire life. I mean real meaningful story ideas that I think would be worth writing. Not crap random stuff that floats into my head every once in a while. Four stories that I think I’d care about. Four stories that I think need to be written. And so since I don’t get a lot of practice, I’m not very good at it either.

Each of them sort of came into my head pretty much full formed and I’ve just been trying to find the will to write them and the skill to do them justice.  So far I’d only written one. That one I wrote the very day it popped into my head and I shared it with only two people. 

They each reflect a lot of myself. But they are also intersections of
my consciousness with my understanding of some of the people I know. So
it makes it uncomfortable for me to share it.  But whatever. This one I think I can share.

Here’s the second story.

*********************************************************
Imperfect

He was old. To look at him that was the only thought
that would pop in your mind. Old. So very old. Every movement seemed to
groan with the reflection of a lifetime of motion. To look in his eyes
was to see a eternity of aging.

The child
saw him there, sitting on a log in the alley whittling away, whittling
away with practiced precision. What was he carving, she wondered? He
was there every day and every night. Whittling away forever.

One
day the child found the courage to approach him. She walked into the
alley boldly as can be, false bravado hiding her nervousness.

“Hey mister whatcha doing?”

A grunt. And still whittling, whittling.

The
child looked around the alley and her eyes soon found a small carved
wooden figurine. It was beautifully done. Carefully constructed. An
image of a glorious bird about to take flight. Majestic and brave. Head
held high. Eyes shining.

An exclamation of
pure glee from the mouth of a child caused the carver to look up from
his work. He saw her rushing forward and grasping the little figurine
turning it over in her tiny hands. Looking at it at every angle like it
was a treasure made just for her.

He grunted and carved and remembered.

————-

“The
king’s shipment has to be delivered by nightfall. That means we’ve got
unload those crates in record time. We have to be perfect today boys!
No mistakes”

Fourteen and gawky with his
head in the clouds. He remembered doing his best. Straining on the
ropes, using all his strength as the rain poured down all over him and
wishing more than anything to be some place, any place else.

But
he doesn’t remember how or why the ropes slipped. Was there a
distraction? Did he just forget to hold on. Did the water slick his
hands too much? He’d worn gloves just like everybody else. And nobody
else dropped there’s. Nobody else.

The
tumbling barrels rolling and bounding about he remembers. He remembers
seeing the two boys leaping into the frigid bay waters to avoid being
crushed. He remembers his father and his elder brother
jumping fearlessly into the water to rescue them.

And he remembers standing there, staring at his hands too shocked to move. Helpless and failing.

No one was hurt. No one had yelled at him. No one had beaten him. They’d all studiously ignored him.

And then later that conversation he overheard between his mother and his father.

“We were lucky. The King didn’t void our contract and nobody was hurt. But that boy, I swear, he just doesn’t know how to apply himself to anything.”

“Oh don’t be ridiculous.”

“I
don’t know, Molly. It’s not just this. I don’t expect him to follow in
my footsteps. But how will he make anything of himself the way he is?
He spends all his time in his room doodling away on those drawings. He
doesn’t know how to focus to hunker down and get to work. What’s going
to happen to him as he gets older?”

“You just leave that boy be Bill. He’ll be fine.”

And that long despairing sigh had followed him right up to his room where he’d cried himself to sleep.

——————–

“Did
you make this?” The child exclaimed. She stood right before him now
hands coupling the little figurine eyes shining with delight.

“It’s beautiful!!”

Those eyes were painful to look at. He was too old now. The light hurt his eyes.

He
gestured with his head though toward the direction of the corner of the
alley.  Her eyes followed the course of the gesture and alighted upon
stacks upon stacks of carved birds each majestic and exquisite. Each
an image of a bird in flight or about to take off. Each beautiful in
its own way.

The child rushed over laughing in glee picking through them examining each in kind, eyes alight with wonder.

“They’re amazing! Can I have one? Pleeeaassee.”

He
nodded absentmindedly and tried to ignore the nuisance fluttering
about in the corner of his work space. He continued to carve. But his
memories were harder to ignore.

————————

He
had presented his masterpiece. A carving he had spent almost a full
year on. It was a stylized representation of of the dragon that appears
on the King’s crest with an image of the King and Queen riding on its
back in full majestic glory.

His friends
had all told him it was beautiful. They had said surely this time it
would be enough. Finally, he’d graduate from the academy and be
accepted into the King’s court as was of the royal artisans.

The
sharp eyed man had examined it slowly. His face expressionless. Going
over every line and curve with precise and measured examination.

Finally he spoke.

“It is far superior to your previous works. Adequate.”

A long pause. Hopes raised. Maybe it would be true! Maybe he hadn’t done it all for nothing! But there was more.

“But
here at the royal academy we require more than adequacy. We strive for
perfection.  Your work would do well at any small town artist studio.
But it is not a thing suited for the eyes of royalty.”

“What?”

He didn’t hear the words. Not those words. Impossible.

“You’ve been here three years no?”

His fists clenched. His teeth grinding. He nodded.

“In
good conscience I cannot allow you to continue your studies here.
You’re skilled. But I do not believe that you have the talent to
succeed here. You’re much better off seeking your fortune elsewhere.”

“Elsewhere…”

“I’m sorry Girard. This is for the best.”

“Best…”

He didn’t say anything more. He couldn’t bear to hear any more. So he just turned and walked away. Dreams shattered.

“Hey!” The sharp eyed man shouted after him, “You’re forgetting your work.”

“elsewhere… perfect… best…”

He muttered and walked and didn’t turn back.

——————————-

“Hey Mister.”

The child’s tiny hand shook him out of his reverie. Old eyes stared into the young.

“Are you ok?”  

The
man spotted the little bird in the girl’s hand clenched too tightly. He
snatched it out of her hand. Examined it with a practiced eye. Looking
over it for damages and also for mistakes. For imperfections…

“You have to be careful with these.”

He spoke to her for the first time. 

“Hold them like this.” 

He showed her where the supports were. Where it was meant to be held.

The smile she gave him was blindingly sweet. 

“Thanks! I still haven’t found the one I want. Can I keep looking?”

“Do whatever you want.” 

She rushed back over to the pile of the figures going through them again but more carefully this time.

The
man’s eyes turned back to the crafted figure he taken from her. This
one was a sparrow. Why’d it have to be a sparrow?  Just like the one he
had tried to give her all those years ago.

———————————–

It
didn’t matter. He’d decided back then. He didn’t need fame or glory. He
was content with his little shop making his living as best he could. He
loved his art. He had friends here. And there wasn’t so much pressure.

And she was there. 

But she was leaving.

He’d
decided that he needed to do this thing for her. To give her this one
gift so that she would know what she meant to him. If he could do that,
it’d be enough for him. He’d make it perfect. For once in his life he’d
be perfect. For her.

For months he’d cut
out everything in his life. He nearly bankrupted himself in acquiring the highest quality woods, the best paints, the most effective tools. Every ounce of his free time had gone into
it. Carefully. Carefully. Painstakingly etched. So many details. He
would miss none of them. This would be a thing of beauty worthy of her.

He’d
delivered it to her door with a note. Then that evening she’d come to
him as he’d known she would. They’d met outside of his studio in the
field near his garden.

She’d been holding
it. The little sparrow statue.  She held it carefully afraid to do it
damage. He’d smiled at that.  She’d always been the only one who had
understood what his art meant to him. Or so he’d thought.

“Girard.”

He loved hearing her say his name. His heart was beating so fast.

She held up his treasure for her.

“This is… I can’t accept this.”

She was serious but he laughed at her lightly.

“What are you talking about, Lori? I made it for you! Of course you can accept it.”

“No. I really can’t. It’s too much. And you know I’m leaving.”

“I know. That’s why I want you to have it. To remember me by.”

There was a long silence while they each tried to find words to say to each other.

And then the dark thought like poison had entered his head.

“Or is… is… there something wrong with it? Do you not like it?”

“No! No!” She’d been so quick to deny.  “It’s nice. It’s just that–”

“It’s nice…?!?!”

He
snatched the figurine out of her hands.

“You’re holding it wrong” he muttered.
 
And then he started turning it over and
over in his hands looking for blemishes. Looking for mistakes. Where
had he gone wrong?

“Yes. It’s very nice Girard. And I’m grateful. Try to understand. It’s just that… I’m with Joren now… and you know he’d never understand…”

“Only NICE… ?”

She was speaking but he wasn’t hearing her.  She’d put her hand on his arm in a comforting gesture.  It was just too much.

“nice… just nice…”

It
only took a split second.  He’d taken the carved statue, raised it
above his head and thrown it down at the ground violently. It
shattered. And it revealed the circular treasure he’d carefully hidden
in its hollow interior.

She’d been shocked.
She took two steps back in quick succession. Backing away from him.
He’d looked in her eyes one last time glaring at her. And her eyes held
more than shock. Fear danced in the edges. How could she think he’d ever hurt her?  But it was the pity in her eyes that ruled the day. It was the pity that made him turn away.

“Girard”  she reached out a hand toward him. He didn’t turn back.

“I understand. I know why you can’t accept it.” He’d said. Those were the last words he ever spoke to her.  He’d walked away.

“Girard!” she’d shouted after him. And then quieter. “I’m sorry.” He heard the words but they didn’t register. He kept walking. She hadn’t followed.

When
he was far too far away for her to hear him he’d finished his thought.
Whispered the words fiercely at himself with all the venom spewing from
his broken heart.

“I know why. It’s because it was imperfect.… Just like me…”

————————–

The girl was still there. Still there. Suddenly the sight of her going through his treasures enraged him. She had no right.

He
stood slowly on shaky legs not used to carrying his weight. He walked
over to the pile with fierce determination and started kicking at the
statues. Smashing and stomping them.

The child shrieked in shock and jumped out of the way in a hurry. 

He
ignored her.  With a strength of will and purpose he had not been able
to muster in years he set about dismantling these works of a lifetime. 
He stomped and smashed. He kicked and thew them. He was on a rampage. 
He grabbed hand fulls of them and tossed them against the wall. He took
some of them one at a time and crushed them in his fists. He watched
their tiny bodies fall apart leaving bits of wings and heads lying
about. He felt the wood chips digging into his hands making them bleed.
It felt good. They broke so easily. They were all made hollow you see.

All
along he was muttering to himself over and over again too quietly for
the child to hear. Muttering one word over and over again like a
ritual. “Imperfect” he muttered.  “imperfect. imperfect. imperfect…”

Finally
his strength left him. He was old and not even adrenaline could keep
him going. There were still plenty he hadn’t managed to break. He just
didn’t have the energy. He turned wearily toward his stump.

And
saw that she was still there. The child. Her eyes were wide like saucer
pans. She’d backed off. But she hadn’t run away. Why hadn’t she run
away? From this maniac? From this monster? Why? Lori had been like that
two. She’d stepped back. But she hadn’t run away…

Girard
collapsed down into his stump and buried his head in his hands and
finally let the tears come. He wept and wept unreservedly.

Somewhere
in the back of his mind he was aware that the little girl was creeping
forward to dig through the stack of carvings again. Looking for
survivors. He hoped she would just hurry up and grab one and leave him
to his miserable memories in peace.

He
thought about how his life had changed after that day. He’d sold his
shop. Stopped doing his art altogether. Moved to another even smaller
town and become a carpenter. He’d been relatively successful at it too.
Fixing tables and making chairs. Not art. But customers would exclaim
at the little artistic touches he’d put in some of his creations. It made
him slow to complete his work, but the town didn’t have anyone else so
they appreciated what little he did for them.

He’d even made
friends. Well acquaintances really. He never let anyone get close again.  He
still heard from his family too up until the day they each passed
away.  And Lori too. She sent letters for years after. And somehow they
found him even though he moved. But she never visited. And he’d burned
her letters unread.

Eventually everyone
he’d known and cared about was dead and gone. He’d somehow outlived
them all. He looked out and saw only a bunch of strangers. Aliens where
his life had once been.

And so one day
he’d just gotten up and left. Walked off. Left his practice behind.
Ignored everything and everyone and just walked and traveled until he’d
come upon this place with this log and he’d sat down his feet too weary
to take him elsewhere. And so there he’d stayed and carved his
figurines over and over again.

Not much to show for a lifetime. A collection of broken hollow birds.

He’d
thought his tears were long since all spent but he found he had wells
of them he’d never imagined. They kept falling and falling.

Finally his reverie was broken by a light tap on his shoulder. He tried to ignore it at first.

“I want this one.”

Involuntarily he looked up. And there she was. The child
standing right before him so close he could hug her.  And she was
holding her tiny hands cupped up in front of his face.

And then he saw it. Impossible.

The
bird she’d found was not like the others. He’d carved it when he was
drunk on St. Valentine’s and filled with self pity. He’d done it in one
day. Not painstakingly like the rest. Carelessly, unhesitatingly pouring his heart into it.   It was a poor thing. A crippled bird with
broken wing and misshapen foot. One eyed and curled into a little ball,
it’s head tucked under its wing as if trying to hide its face from the
world.

Those other glorious beautiful birds. They had all been meant to be her. To reflect her spirit. But not this one. No not this one.

His voice broke.

“Why? Why that one?”

She
looked up. Her innocent eyes delving deeply into his. How could one so
young see so much?  She tilted to her head to one side and smiled
beautifully and spoke with the kind of perfect sincerity only a child
could muster.  She said:

“It’s perfect.”