Campfyre Stories

This internet age that we live in has really allowed for many people to recreate themselves as they see fit.  Even those who convince themselves that they are the same person both on and offline are only fooling themselves.  It’s that measure of anonymity that allows us to be a little more free with our opinions and thoughts and to say things (in ways) that we would never say to someone’s face.

For me, I’ve carefully cultivated my online reputation.  Searches on FyreGoddess turn up infinitely more results than searches on my real name.  When I’m online I’m not anonymous, I am someone else, someone mostly separated from my real life self, less self-censored, more argumentative, and about as guarded on both sides.  It’s a persona that I have spent years setting up.  There are a lot of people who know (or have known) FyreGoddess, but do not know the person behind her at all.  I fully intend to keep it that way.

But I’ve been thinking about that lately.  I’ve been thinking about how many people have these dual personalities that are kept fairly separate from each other.  I was thinking about how many people I "know" only by their screen name and how many teenagers and young adults have to track both real names and screen names of their friends.

Our names are given to us by our parents and our RL nicknames are given to us by family or friends, usually when we are very young.  It’s a rare case that someone chooses their own name, but I wonder how far we are from the point where people are called (verbally) the name they choose on the internet.

John, Mike, Jason, Mark, Brian, David…  these are all names of people I know, but those six names are the names of probably 15 people I know.  It seems that there always has to be a descriptor to it, so it will be their last name or initial or maybe something VERY descriptive and almost an in-joke ([Name], the viking) so that we know who we’re talking about.  With a handful of people, I’ve just started calling them by the name I use on the blog, because otherwise it turns into an explanation.  I met a man named Jason not too long ago and, when introduced, told him "I’m sorry, I can’t call you that, there are just Too Many Jasons."  He laughed and said, "That’s ok, you can call me [his nickname]."  Thank goodness he took it in stride.

Even my own name is common enough that there are Too Many.  If people want to call me FyreGoddess in real life, they’re welcome to and I will respond.  There are several people who do already, usually because they need a light, but regardless, I see it happening.  I also know people whose handles are based on their real life nicknames because they already had a name that they liked enough to be semi-anonymous online.

But it’s not only about common names.  One friend of mine has a highly unique name, but Miz and I still sometimes refer to her as an old screen name, one she no longer even uses.  Thus does the anonymity lessen to some degree and translate into the real world.

Certainly some people have disposable screen names, but there usually comes a point in time where we’ve decided on a theme of the more permanent ones.  Once we find that one that suits us well, we reuse it and, somehow, start integrating it into our real life personalities, which is remarkably simple, since we’re generally using something that already expresses *something* about ourselves in the first place.

It’s interesting to me that of all the information that I make public, which is a lot, it’s mostly only the names that I shield.  My name, the names of my friends and family, the name of the company where I work…  these are the things that would enable others to actively find me.  It’s that idea that someone knowing your real name has power over you, well, it’s absolutely true.  Someone who knows my true name or the company where I work would open up possibilities that we hear horror stories about online.  So we keep our true names hidden and give out names that may more truly convey who we are.

But onto my point (which I had forgotten, or maybe it wasn’t my point at first, but it is now).  I mean, how anonymous are we, really?  I am sometimes accused of hiding behind a screen name in order to say some of the things I do, and only feeling comfortable saying them because I am *anonymous*.  But how anonymous can I really be when searching on my screen name turns up so much more information than searching for my real name does?  If anything, it’s my real name that’s anonymous, since no one online would know who the hell I am if I wrote using that.

Does it make the things I say any less valid, if I say them using an established online handle?  Or does it actually make them more valid, since I have spent years cultivating the reputation that my name bears (for good or bad, depending)?  How can I (or anyone really) be hiding behind some semblance of anonymity when people know you by the handle you use?

I think it’s just a case of separating yourself depending on the world you’re in.  If I don’t have my inflections, my body language, my physical and verbal mannerisms, then all that’s left is the persona of FyreGoddess, the disembodied words that flow out onto the internet.

I used to be a member, but about 6 months ago I cancelled it because I wasn’t going to pay the exorbitant prices and I wasn’t very good about remembering to decline the monthly selection.  Fine.  Done.  Didn’t think about it anymore.

Until today.

On Monday, I looked at my bank account statement online and noticed that there was a charge reserved for $28.02.  I couldn’t match it with any of my receipts, but the number sounded familiar…  I just couldn’t place it - even after asking around if anyone recognized that number for any reason.

On Tuesday, I noticed that there was now a reserve of $56.04 ($28.02 x 2).  Ok, I thought, maybe it’s a restaurant charge…  except that I haven’t eaten out since [whenever] and that charge already went through.  Mystery charge and, at this point, it’s putting me in jeopardy of bouncing an outstanging check.

Today I went and looked to see where this charge was coming from, I mean, it must have cleared BY NOW, right?  Nope.  Still hadn’t cleared and now I’m finding $84.06 on hold!  So it’s the same charge being reserved THREE DAMN TIMES!  This isn’t right at all, so I call the bank to try to figure out where this is coming from, since I can’t see my reserves, only what’s cleared.

The bank tells me that it’s coming from the RYO club and that they’ve sent it for reserve Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.  There’s nothing they can do about it, even though I ALREADY CANCELLED MY MEMBERSHIP, like, 6 months ago, so I should call them and threaten a dispute.

Fuck.

So I go and log into the RYO website.  It’s showing a pending order from 6 weeks ago (!?!?) and there it is, $28.02.  But there’s only one pending order.  Attempt to call and am told that their call center isn’t open.  Fine.  I wait.  Call again.  THIS TIME their automated system doesn’t want to register my selections, so it takes FOR-EV-ER to get a person on the phone.  Meanwhile, I’m checking all the information and trying to see why this is happening.

Turns out, they have old credit card information from my check card that EXPIRED!  See?  I knew that I cancelled that membership, but apparently, the combination of an unused email address, an expired check card (with, unfortunately, the same card number as the new one) and my phone call (6 months ago!) to cancel simply wasn’t enough.

I finally get someone on the phone who explains that they keep running that charge through because my (expired) card isn’t allowing them to charge it.  Ya think?  She removes the card, thankfully without my having to threaten the company, and thanks me for my time. 

At which point I explain AGAIN that in addition to cancelling *that particular charge*, I want to cancel my membership, like I thought I did 6 months ago.  "Why are you cancelling your membership with us today?" she asks.

"BECAUSE I THOUGHT I CANCELLED IT SIX MONTHS AGO AND I CLEARLY DO NOT WANT TO BE A MEMBER ANYMORE!!!"

Never again with the Rip-You-Off of the Month clubs.  Of course, I said that 6 months ago, but apparently, they just weren’t paying attention.

The things that have been on my mind lately are not things I can really talk about on the internet. 

My loyalty to people I have ever considered a friend and not had a falling out with is sometimes a burden, especially when I want to help, think I can and then find out that there’s really nothing anyone can do.  Like I said, I can’t really talk about it.

I’m trying to figure out how I feel about the job I’m doing right now.  I may have options in front of me, if not now, then soon, but there are so many pros and cons I don’t even really feel capable of weighing them.  Again, I can’t really talk about it.

I’m annoyed by things that are not only out of my control, they’re things I don’t necessarily feel like it’s my right to be annoyed by.  It’s not like they actually affect me or anything, but the feelings still remain.  There’s not much left to say about that one.

The touchscreen on my Treo has stopped working consistently.  It periodically decides to not register the stylus and has been doing this since Mercury went retrograde.  I haven’t looked forward to this phase ending quite this much in a very long time.  I would just like my phone to WORK already.  And that’s all there is to say about that.

It’s really a whole lot of nothin’ here, but I felt like I should say SOMETHING…  even if I’m not really saying anything at all.

And no words to say it.

I think I may just have to blame this on Mercury.

It’s been over a year since I’ve been accosted by someone proselytizing about religion.  This does not mean, however, that I have not been accosted, nor that people haven’t been proselytizing.  In the past week, two things happened that made me roll my eyes more than a little.

The first was the 9/11 "Truth" brigade.  This is one conspiracy that I’m intimately familiar with because of the time I spend on Digg.  I try to avoid it in real life, though, because I know the vehemence that these people bring to their belief in this overall conspiracy.  So when I was standing at the bus stop last night, I was approached by a man who asked me, "Have you heard the Truth about what happened on September 11th?"  He had pamphlets and was trying to push one on me. 

"I am very familiar with the whole thing," was my response, and it’s true.  Not only do I know all the arguments for their side of the story (controlled demolition, PhDs and scientists who, though they are theologians and biologists, claim to know more about engineering than, say, engineers…), but I also know all the counter-arguments and am pretty familiar with the NIST report.  The only bit I’m not entirely clear on is, outside of Alex Jones making copious amounts of money from this conspiracy theory, what they want that will make them feel satisfied.

The response I got was a big smile and "Fantastic!"  I think that he assumed that he had found another believer, when that really couldn’t be further from the truth.  But in the interest of not getting into a heated argument at a busy bus stop, I declined to correct this assumption.

The other encounter I had was a few days ago, and it wasn’t actually me directly, but I found the whole thing rather disturbing.

Now I’m a very tolerant person.  I don’t belittle people for their religion or lack thereof, I just don’t want to be "converted" and as long as you respect my beliefs, I will respect yours and we can discuss.

I was on the bus, sitting across from a single dad and his (I’m guessing) 9 y/o know-it-all kid.  The kid was snotty and entitled, but as I listened (I wasn’t listening in, but you couldn’t avoid hearing them), I learned some of the reasons why this kid wasn’t a happy person, and he is going through a very hard time, through no fault of his own.

Dad and son were trying to make reasonable conversation with each other when a man, who was getting off the bus, distracted dad by pointing to something that had fallen to the floor of the bus.  When the dad leaned down to get it, the man pushed a pocket-sized pamphlet into the kid’s hand.  It read, "Is there really a God?"

It was an atheist test.  And propaganda that was passed on in an attempt to woo this child from whatever religion he has thus far experienced.  Honestly, it wasn’t so much that this pamphlet was given to the kid that bothered me, it was the WAY that it was done.  Underhanded and sleazy and, seemingly, trying to "save" the kid from himself or his family.

The thing for me is that I do believe that people should be able to speak their mind or to go out of their way to share information with others, but it HAS to be a choice on the part of the people who are listening.  I don’t think anyone should be forced to listen and I don’t think that parents should be distracted for long enough for you to attempt to subvert their child.

It seems like there is sometimes this idea that if you believe strongly enough in something, then it makes you correct.  Faith-based reasoning rarely holds up for me.  Even this atheist was operating under some assumption of faith.  There is a difference between a lack of belief in a Higher Power and a belief in a LACK of a Higher Power.  This man was the latter, and I think this is a relatively new breed of atheist.  I don’t like it.

I don’t want to have to fear that going out in public means that I have to go out of my way to avoid attempted conversions - to or from anything at all.  And the problem that I have is that these situations are not confined to organized protests or marches, these are people who are catching their opportunity whenever they feel they can by blending in with the crowd.

And, for me, I start off with the assumption that, despite your beliefs, despite your eccentricities, you’re no different from anyone else…  but that moment when you slip through the crowd and tell me that you’re one of the select few, who knows the Truth, that’s the moment I write you off.

It’s really kind of a shame.

It’s probably been 6 or 7 weeks since The Gamer Girl and I have talked.  Not because we’re fighting or because we don’t care, simply because she is just SO INSANELY BUSY that she doesn’t have time to call and I feel bad about interrupting her busy life.

In fact, the last time we talked was back in August and, in fact, it was because SmackFairy called Daisy (again), I’m assuming because THEY missed each other…  Of course GG and I talked once the connection was made, but I was rather amused that it took our smartphones being smarter than we are to get us talking to each other.

But I’ve been thinking about GG lately and wondering how she’s doing, to the point where I wrote her an email, but then I decided not to send it, and then couldn’t remember if I had sent it or not.  (Which I hadn’t, I checked.)

So imagine my surprise when, after NOT sending the email that I wrote the day before, I got a call from GG last night.  Except that I didn’t get a call from GG, DAISY got a call from SmackFairy, which led to GG and me talking for…  wow, like an hour and a half?  And that was just the highlight reel.

So we decided that, in the interest of keeping our VERY SMART phones happy, we should just schedule a day/time to talk to each other every week.  It’s not for us…  it’s for them, really.  Because if we keep making their love that much more difficult, they may wind up giving up on each other and finding mates of their own make/model.

And then how are we going to be able to buy Romania?

Certain members of the online community where I am active have decided that the best way to attack me is to mock me for my online handle. It amuses me to no end, since I can’t conceive of people actually being offended by wrongful suppositions of their character that are based on nothing more than a made-up name.

But what I find especially interesting is that every day since this started happening, strangers on the street have been asking me "Do you have a light?"

FyreGoddess, indeed.

Well I’m FAR too tired to go ahead and talk about all the events that went along with the EdWood Film Festival, like the microsodes themselves, or the lamest party ever, or the short films or the awards event at Ballinger’s, so I’m only going to say this much.

The microsodes that Spawn was in ("Lost Kids") won:

Winner: Best Producer, Best Screenplay, Best Cinematography.

Runner-up: Best Merchandising, Critic’s Choice for Best Microsode, People’s Choice for Best Microsode.

Woo! 

I should be getting a copy of his microsode from his director very soon.  I also intend to buy the DVD when it becomes available.  Maybe I should have a party.  Maybe I will have a party, but right now I am far too exhausted to even think about it.

They say that the road to hell is paved with good intentions and, I think, that is never more true than when it comes to the people we care about the most. We’re so afraid of hurting the ones we love that we often wind up hurting them more by trying to protect or shield them from bad things.

I’ve never really been a believer in keeping the truth from people - often to my own detriment. I often find that I have severely pissed someone off, simply because I told them things they didn’t want to hear. The good thing is that I have been blessed with friends and family who can accept that about me and, even if they become angry that I told them the truth, they come to realize that I had their best interests at heart. One friend, in particular, calls me regularly to “tell me what I already know. I need to hear it out loud.” She calls me her Voice of Reason, and she does the same thing for me.

Sometimes, we even go so far as to convince ourselves of the opposite of reality, because we are focused on not hurting another person. This is never so evident as when we find ourselves having to end a relationship that is just not working. I can tell you, in all honesty, that everyone I have ever truly loved, I love still, even if the “in love” part has fallen by the wayside. That is, often, the most difficult hurt of all, because it hurts both parties.

Can anyone say, in all honesty, that thwy have NEVER stayed in a failing relationship, once they knew it was truly over? Perhaps those who have had only a handful of relationships total, but even then I bet it’s few and far between. We become so preoccupied with making it not hurt, or hurt less, that both parties wind up battered and bruised by the time it’s really over. I suppose you could call it optimism, but it’s probably self-delusion above all else

No one wants to be the cause of suffering, not really. So the question, in my mind, comes down to this: Why do we convince ourselves so fully that prolonging the agony is somehow going to make the ending happy?

(From PumaViking, who has the best memes.)

These are the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing’s users (as of 10/2/07). As usual, bold what you have read, italicize those you started but couldn’t finish, and strike through what you couldn’t stand. Add an asterisk to those you’ve read more than once. Underline those on your to-read list.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina 
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
A Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
*American Gods
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
*Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
*Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
*A Clockwork Orange
*Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
*1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes : A Memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
*Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
*Slaughterhouse-Five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an Inquiry into Values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers