Campfyre Stories

Please, please, PLEASE find me something new.

Something really new.  Not like the joke that I just got for the hundredth time in my email.  Not the words of wisdom that I just read on someone’s blog (that has been hanging on my wall as a poster for the past four years).  Don’t give me the personality test that I’ve taken 500 times and gotten every possible answer on, just to see what the different answers did.  Don’t tell me the joke that I heard when I was 21 or the touching, inspiring story that’s made the rounds over and over and over again.  I don’t want to see the same clip of the same people doing that same thing again, I’ve seen it more times than I can count.

I knew I Like Monkeys before I had an email account (shoot, it was before MOST people had an email account).  I’ve been spanking the monkey and whacking penguins for YEARS.  I turned other people on to the Anonymous Message Server and to Kevin Kelm when his eyes used to follow you around (major points for getting that particular reference).  I’ve seen no less than 10 sites of before and after shots of airbrushed celebs.  I’ve run my pictures through  to see what celebrity I resemble, and which celeb others resemble as well.

People ask me "Have you seen…?" and "Do you know about…?" while I’m "spamming" my friends and family with cool internet things that they would probably never have found before.  Once, when I was always online in IM (as opposed to set to "away" or invisible as I am these days), people would IM me and ask for a link they had never seen before.  every single time, I could do it in less than 3.  Usually I could do it in 1.  Sometimes even if they asked for a specific topic.

I have mixed feelings.  On one hand, it’s pretty cool.  I’m on the cutting edge of useless internet things   On the other hand, where’s the cool stuff for me?  How come I have to go out there and find it or wait for it to find me?

So, if you know of something cool that you think I haven’t seen, please share.  And…  if you’re ever looking for something you’ve never seen before, ask me.  I probably have something you’d like

Dissatisfacton.  It’s like some kind of spring fever, nothing is satisfactory to me right now.

Few things hold my attention for long enough to make a difference these days.  I am flitting from activity to activvity and doing more and more things on a whim (hence the blog redesign, but also things like calling and emailing bands looking for female singers.  Why?  I have no idea, because they’re there.)

I’m trying to plan a trip to visit my best friend which will test my willpower on many different levels.  One of those levels is testing my willpower right at this very moment.  I was "rewarded" with a test for being a good neighbor.   It will also get me to see a band I’ve been waiting to come near enough for me to see them.  It will also give me a chance to see a friend who moved away and probably also give me a chance to…  fix a problem.

There’s this situation I’ve been on the fence about for far too long that I need to end, but it’s not the sort of thing that’s easy to do, partly because of circumstances, partly because of timing.  I don’t like to hurt people’s feelings, but I also have this attention whore quality to me and I don’t take kindly to being ignored or taken for granted, nor for being pushed aside for shiny objects.  I may joke about it, but I do not DO that to others.

I spent the day in the sunshine and it felt WONDERFUL.  I got wonderful quality time with my son.  My relationship with my family is well above par at the moment.  It’s not that I’m not happy…  I think I am.  It’s just that happiness, right now, just isn’t enough.

That’s not right, or it shouldn’t be.  I don’t know.  Something is missing and I’m still trying to figure out what it is.

ED!

He totally rocks for lying to me and feeding my collection in spite of his assertion not to.

I <3 him.

What can I say, it doesn’t take much to make me happy.

(Postcards, it’s about postcards…)

It has been FAR too long.

And I think that Spawn is tall enough now.

I’m thinking Riverside…  I haven’t been there since they became 6 Flags.

Something unrelated got me thinking about this topic again.  The last time I thought about it was when I was still participating on a message board that liked to circularly complain and fight about political topics and current events.  The statement that prompted this particular train of thought was certain groups of foreigners coming to "our country" (any country) and destroying the (national) culture, replacing it with their own.

I’ve heard this statement made by many different nationalities and it always comes down to a xenophobic statement of "They have a cultural identity, I don’t belong, therefore I’m threatened by it."  Which is fine, but that’s not what the people making the statement acknowledge.  Instead of feeling like their missing out on something, which is generally the case, they feel like something is being taken from them.  Something they never actually had.

The US, for example, has a lot of different sub-cultures and a lot of tight-knit communities.  However, there isn’t one specific group that defines us ALL as "Americans".  i look at my friends and they all belong to different communities.  Many of my friends were in a fraternity.  Some belong to churches and are active to varying degrees.  Some belong to the SCA.  Some define themselves more by their individual friends than the groups they join, but there’s no one defining feature that ties us all together or that ties me to them.  I can’t imagine a single one of them claiming that a community that they don’t belong to would somehow be tearing down their other communities?

Wouldn’t a national culture, then, define us all within the same grouping?  Wouldn’t there be some similarity, some common ground that could, potentially, be torn apart in order for such a thing to exist?  Even in the United States there are people who claim that certain ideas or opinions should not be held - those people can’t even agree that the First Amendment applies to every single American citizen.

I assume there must be SOME nation that has one common thread and holds some sort of national culture to it, but in my experience, it’s not an English-speaking country.  From what I’ve found so far, it’s not any western nation at all.  Even the eastern nations are unlikely, since China’s been having such censorship problems, it’s likely they WANT to have a national culture, but the citizens themselves don’t want to cooperate.

So riddle me this, if there’s no nation that can agree on a single aspect that defines their culture, how can such a culture be threatened by tight-knit communities created by immigrants?  I’m looking for any answer that makes the sentiment that I’ve seen something other than xenophobia because I’d hate to think of some of these people (and they would deny it to their deathbed) as bigots.

And tonight it did.  After (*counts on fingers*) 4, I think, bad movies at the Spectrum, Princess and I finally broke our streak with the MOST excellent Inside Man.  Spike Lee, for my money, can really do no wrong and proves that with this movie.  The twists were unexpected, I love a movie where I don’t see it coming and the casting was fantastic.  I’m sure that Princess (and crew) will be able to move some wannabes to the HBG lists.

And let me just say, it’s about damn time.  Sick and tired of seeing crappy ass movies, whether I pay full price or not!  NYAH!

(On the internet)

Well, I’ve been surfing around a bit and, once again, I’ve been seeing a lot of "why’s everyone picking on me?" blogs and entries.  Sometimes I think that a certain subset of the blogging community is not as internet-savvy as they want to believe they are.

There are a lot of bloggers who haven’t had a lot of experience with the internet before their entrance into the blogosphere.  They have not been a part of online communities or discussion groups, online gaming, wikis, etc., and they don’t understand what a troll is or how they operate.

To avoid trolling myself (fun though it may be from time to time), I’m going to steer clear of using specific blogs as examples.  However, it doesn’t take much to find examples of the sorts of things I’m talking about.  I will however, talk about two that I found, we’ll just leave them anonymous.
Finish Reading »

… and sometimes I hope that’s true.

For the past two years (this is year three), once a year I have known someone who has died a horribly tragic death at a fairly young age.  The first, two years ago, was the motorcycle accident of a childhood friend of mine.  He was 29.  Last year was the drug overdose of my niece’s mother.  She was 24.  Now my friend in Seattle who was 32.  (There was a thing in the paper today.)

That’s three.  I’m ready for this to end.  While I recognize that it could be a whole lot worse, i don’t want to go to another funeral for someone so young.  It’s depressing and tragic to pay your condolences to a parent.  Moreso, perhaps, AS a parent.  What’s even worse is paying condolences to grandparents.

It’s only just starting to feel real to me.  It takes me a while to process these kinds of shocks.  But the more real it becomes, the more I can’t help but think that I don’t want this to keep being a habit.  Once a year for young people whose parents are outliving them is FAR too often.

I just don’t think it’s in my power to stop it.

Why do you keep your blogroll?

This is a real question and one that I wonder about whenever I look at the blogrolls of other people.  Are they all blogs that you read regularly?  Are they link exchanges?  Are they sites you feel deserve your endorsement?

For me, I keep my blogroll of blogs I actually read, or mean to read.  At least once a week I go through and visit all those sites, some more often then others.  When I stop reading a blog, I take them off my blogroll, but that list doesn’t represent the whole of the blogs I read. 

For me, a blog has to have me coming back for more.  If it doesn’t, why blogroll it?  So I only add ‘em when I find myself going back after a specific post has lost interest or when multiple posts catch my attention.

You?

I missed working in a warehouse.  The physical labor always feels good.  It’s a productive achiness that feels good.  Painful, but good.

What I forgot about working in a warehouse is all the dust and dirt and grime.

I’m exhausted, but the shower feels SO GOOD.  And, let me just say, I’m going to sleep tonight.

I could totally do more of this…