I am inexplicably tired.

And a little annoyed at the lack of happenings in this house, but it'll pass. And somewhat annoyed with my brother and his girlfriend. So, they confirmed they're not getting back together. None of my business. And they still got two kids to raise between them. Many folk do. What annoys me is what they're doing over Ellie's birthday; "Oh, she got her five presents, which means I have to get her six presents, which means she has to get her seven presents!" - raising your kids is NOT a goddamn arms race. At this rate, that kid's bound to wind up the first Irish entry on My Super Sweet 16.
They do, after all, fuck you up, your mum and dad. It's one thing when you figure it out in your teens (and then later realize in your twenties not that badly), but it's another thing to see the actual process of fucking up in its early stages.

In my wanderings of the internet, I discovered a greatest hits album of Himuro Kyosuke. For those of you not in the know, he's the one whose "Calling" is on the Advent Children soundtrack. To be honest, I actually prefer "Calling" to its Advent Children Complete replacement, "Safe & Sound". Not only is it a more impressive song, there's a better story behind it. Unlike every other song from an FF, "Calling" wasn't recorded specifically for the soundtrack. It's from the 80's, and was a part of FF7 before there even was an FF7. I remember reading something about Tetsuya Nomura being influenced by the lyrics in coming up with Cloud's story. So it makes sense that the song from Cloud's origins would be used at the end of his story. "Safe & Sound", while not a bad song, was recorded just for the soundtrack, so it doesn't really stand out on its own so well.
Going over his other material (and knowing I would have liked "Calling" whether it was part of FF or not), I'm really impressed. It's a little like when I discovered Gackt, but with a much more noticeably 80's sound and feel. And you know me, I love the 80's. When rock rocked and it was okay to like pop music. And, as I've said before, when music wasn't a democracy. Good times.

taken completely out of context from dar.dreamwidth.org

So, music. I feel sharing some with you. Remember I said I couldn't find a copy of "Half Past Two" anywhere? Mostly true, though I did find it on a podcast of Irish music. Incidentally, I have NOT been able to listen to "The Wild Rover" the same way again ever since Bob Fleming's Folkin Classics (and now hopefully neither will you). Though it be in the middle of a podcast, fortunately I have all sorts of programs for rippin' the everloving audio right out of stuff, so here I can present it to you.
The Stunning - "Half Past Two"
Heard this on the radio yesterday, somewhere between newspapers and red bull. Pointed out the amusing synchronicity of the opening lyrics, but the longer I listened, the more pleasant I found the rest of them. I love how catchy but simple the hook is. More like a ditty, you might say. Fully expressing my boring quiet but livable life. A new personal theme song for the moment, perhaps.

Creedence Clearwater Revival - "Have You Ever Seen The Rain?"
I mentioned CCR a little bit above, earlier. If you'd like to hear more, I can help you out there. This song was used in the final episode of SG-1 (oh, for the days when Stargate was good). I was actually a little disappointed to find out that the only reason they'd used it was because the director had been listening to it a lot in the days before the shoot. But further investigation into the song's origins yielded more substance. It's about Tom Fogarty's departure from the band. so, if it's about saying goodbye, its use in Stargate's last episode makes a lot more sense.
I like that they used such an American-sounding and classic band instead of something more modern/international as is trendy today, because Stargate was always Great American Sci-Fi (I think this is why they used Johnny Cash at the end of Atlantis, too). Unlike Star Trek, they were never afraid to put a national flag on everything. I love multinationalism (indeed, it's what made Atlantis stand out from SG1), and remember SG1 and Atlantis were made in Canada, not the US. I just liked it because I'm used to Sci-Fi always trying to be universal, and it's rare but pleasant to see a national identity for once. They're not the only ones, either, Doctor Who really loves its own Britishness.
...One day, I'm going to put Irish people in space and see how that turns out =p

Shirley Manson - "Samson & Delilah"
And now we kick it up a notch. I rediscovered Garbage through Terminator, but this is not a Garbage song. I love it, I love the heavy guitars, the srong metallic atmosphere, all of it. I'm definitely going to do something with it when I can get the material together. It's actually a very old song and Josh Friedman is most likely familiar with it through Bruce Springsteen's version. Anyway, the song was adapted by series composer Bear McCreary (a gorram genius, I love how he snuck the Terminator theme in there) whith Shirley Manson on vocals (Manson herself debuted in the episode, but the song had nothing to do with the character). To be honest, discovering this song is best done via the episode than here, because it is truly an awesome scene. You're better off watching it, having a bathroom emergency over the awesomeness, then coming back an appreciating the song all over again in its own right.
I love how through hardly changing a line, they take such an old song, such an old Biblical concept and make it intractably about John and Cameron. John because the episode in question is where his badassery begins. Cameron, because you can really see it, more so here than anywhere else, how she's going to be his undoing.
There's a line in Firefly I really love where Saffron seduces folk through scripture (makes more sense than it sounds) and one of the lines is "Til she bring him to his fall". It's supposed to mean an orgasm, but it sounds like so much more. You think of a lot of men throughout history (and fiction!) and it was usually a woman that lead to their undoing. It's one of the oldest stories there is. Now, the moral of the story was almost always presented as "And so, children, that's why women are EVIL!", and so it's no surprise why the big churches were so fond of these stories. But the thing I find interesting, the thing nobody else seems to have wondered, is if you asked these men if they could do it all again, would they still choose the woman or keep their glory days? I'm inclined to think that most of them would still go down the path of their destruction if they could walk it with the woman they loved. How many would gladly choose love over an empire? I think it's time the moral stopped being "women suck!" and started being "men are only human and make human choices". I wanna read more stories where a man's fall over a woman is entirely voluntary and not her fault, dammit.

Patti Smith - "Gloria"
And the topic of women segues us in rather nicely, here. This is Patti Smith's version of "Gloria", one of the greatest covers ever made. For emphasis and just how epic a cover it is, just compare it to Van Morrison's (quite tame) original. I just love Smith's version. I love the slow opening, the build that doesn't burst til halfway through and the return at the end. I love the crazy, schizophrenic feeling of it all, and I love the lesbian overtones throughout. Smith is, as far as I know, heterosexual but androgynous. But the song's not really about her preferences. It's a song about a girl, written by a man and covered by a woman. Usually when that genderswap happens, the lyrics are either changed or not called attention to. Smith doesn't change the lyrics (in fact, she adds a few) and puts even stronger emphasis than Morrison's original on just how desired the girl is.

U2 - "Pop Muzik"
And because I have time to throw in one more, this is U2's cover of "Pop Muzik" by M. It's what they used to open the Popmart tour, with, kinda like "Zooropa" (before it even had a name) blurred into "Zoo Station" at openings on the ZooTV tour. I'm one of those mutants who actually liked the Pop album. Why? Because it's very, very, very rare (especially in my house) to hear a dance song fit for a club that has a beginning, middle, end, lyrics, bridge, chorus, meaning and instruments. U2 beat the dance floor at it's own game, how can anyone not be impressed by that?

taken completely out of context from dar.dreamwidth.org

Just got back from the hospital. My Dad's fine. Think we were all worried we were gonna walk in there and he'd have a tube in him again, but no. The reason they're giving is "Oh, he had a general anaesthetic, so we have to keep him overnight". Despite the other times he had a general. His own opinion, and I'm inclined to agree, is that someone saw "Oooh, health insurance! Get some of that cash, we're gonna need it if we're striking tomorrow!". Guh.

Also, apparently due to missing paperwork, it's possible I am temporarily uninsured. Tread carefully around me. I've been healthy all decade, but you just know it'll be that one time...

Regarding sleep: normality ensues. I think I dreamed about Gina Torres. No, not in that way. I would appreciate it if one person on this boat did not assume I was an evil, lecherous hump (though unf!).
it's good to be about, doing stuff, catching the clock and going "Oh, I'd only be getting up around now". I'm kinda thinking, something Dama linked me to made me wonder if I do have DSPS. A lot of the symptoms seem to there, but they're present in other members of my family, too. My brother, like me, is more of a nice person, and his daughter might be too. Nobody is a morning person, but most of them have much less trouble falling asleep than I do. You know if I had a job working a night shift, this wouldn't even be a problem. ...Especially if I worked at one of the poles, get a look at one of those six-months-long nights, that'd be pretty interesting. I wonder, if your body clock is off, and you move to another time zone, are you then automatically more in sync with the locals, or does your body adjust to go back out of phase?
Anyway, that'll be remembered as an episode. That time Dar tried to stay awake as long as he could while reading Stephen King and trying to fix his Last.fm library. I remember someone telling me once, if you'd like a sample of what madness is like, trying staying awake for days. You won't go crazy, but your way of thinking will change. It's true, you know. You're more likely to entertain stranger ideas (even for me). Like, before I went to sleep, I twittered a line from the end of a Firefly episode where Mal asks if everyone will still be there when he wakes up. Not long after that, it's strange how much my mind was willing me to consider the possibility that everyone (in the world!) really would be gone when I woke up. It's weird how much weight your brainfarts have behind them when you're sleep-deprived. They surprise you with their potency, so you can understand why a person with a tenuous grasp on reality really could succumb to delusions.

Anyway, music. Like I said, fixed my Last.fm library, and kind of impressed with it. It's a lot handier a tool than I expected it to be. I used to think I had very little stuff by female artists, but now I find I have a lot more than I thought. Not as much as the boys, but more than I thought. It's also been handy for spotting artists you really don't have enough stuff by. I realized I was suffering (suffering!) a dearth (and there's a word you haven't seen all decade, admit it) of Creedence Clearwater Revival. For the unintiated, one of of the single most American-sounding bands you'll ever hear.
So, if you prefer looking over linking, you'll find my on there under the same name as my Twitter, Raidenshred. People sometimes ask me, why "Raidenshred"? We- ...Yes, they do. I dunno who, you know, people! People on the street. Okay, a few people I know. Alright, one person I know. Okay, fine, nobody has ever asked me about my nom de guerre, ya happy? Anyway, it's very simple - it's merely an anagram (though a cool sounding one) of my real name. Like Torchwood and Doctor Who. I put my name into an anagram server once and it stood out in a sea of gibberish.

Sabrina linked me an interesting rant about doing things. Hmm. I'm not really doing things just because it's the end of the decade (let's just say a fire got lit under me), though it's interesting to wonder why stuff that got put off between 1999 and 2005 is starting to ripen.
I wonder if it was 9/11, that horrific birthing pain of the 21st century, suddenly making everyone feel temporary about themselves. You know, "buildings are falling down, maniacs have their fingers on buttons and we could all go up at any minute so there's no point in reading any long books, let alone writing one". Now that a lot more dust has cleared since then, the century has begun to feel comfortable like a new pair of socks. Just a guess.

Oh yes, the decade. I went back looking at old entries. Ugh. What an angry, opinionated tool. I can still remember things I thought then. I can remember pictures I used to have in my head that I'd get bitter and angry about. Now I look at the same pictures and think "What's so horrible about that? It's really nice. In face, it's a damn pretty image, you tosser."
I dunno about you, but if I hadn't been me at the time, I wouldn't have friended someone like that. ...Though I am glad you did. But yeah, character development or what. I actually developed character =p

No fair - I'm average-looking, symmetrical, sweaty, remind girls of their dad AND have been around plenty of women while their were failing their montly NCT because of a leaky carburetor (presumably). I'm five out of six! If it wasn't the damn birth-control pill, I'd be this century's JFK!

taken completely out of context from dar.dreamwidth.org

Iiiiiiii've gone bonkers...

Well, sorta. Not really. Kinda. Having a self-induced Jack Bauer day (minus the terrorism) because my sleeping patterns are all out of whack. I'm not falling asleep til anywhere between three and seven(!) in the sweet, blessed A.M., and not waking up til the day's well into the P.M. hours.
So, I chose to stay up all night, with the plan in mind that when I do go asleep, I'll start waking up again at sane hours. ...Of course, as of writing I'm one or two hours shy of having been up the full 24, and already I feel like my body has taken out a loan the bank of sleep wants me to pay back, with interest. And it's lying to me. It does not tell the truth.
"Oh, just lie back for 20 minutes."
No, you'll fall asleep.
"Well, we'll just have a little nap then. We'll wake back up and continue the strike."
Nope, you'll sleep for a little bit and when you wake up, you'll just want to doze off again. Then you'll sleep for hours, and we'll wake up at 11pm or something and be right back at square one, no!

My body keeps wanting me to make compromises, too. Go to bed at nine. Or six. Hey, why not three? No, no, no, stop it! We're in too far now, we have to keep going to the other side or it'll have been for nothing. And that's the ball I have to keep my eye on.

So, here I am. Several cups of coffee and one supersize can of red bull later. Being tired is a little like being drunk, only you're much less horny and fewer things completely rock. And you can still read. I've been grappling with Stephen King's latest phonebook, "Under The Dome", which is actually quite the page-turner. I know the guys behind Lost are big fans of King, but King is also a big fan of Lost and boy, does it show. Big story, lots of WTFery going on, and there's no build-up, the book starts right where the event begins and you find out more about the implied backstories of the characters as you go along. It's unlike the typical King fare where a character brings their backstory in with them, anywhere between their second paragraph and second chapter. It's hard not to compare to The Stand, but pacing-wise, it's much faster. Three hundred pages in, and things haven't let up yet.

So, what else? Oh yes. Good luck in bad luck.
See, Sabrina showed me how to actually use my Last.fm account, which (like many things) I had no idea was actually more interesting than appeared. It thought it was just a text listing of all the songs people have on their computer, but it's much more interactive and social than that. So, I scrobbled (I keep pronouncing it scrowbled, for some reason) everything on winamp onto my account. Thing is, I use the PC for listening to music, and the laptop, I like to play music on that I can ignore while doing other things. And my stats were reflecting that instead of my actual listening patterns. So, I tried to sync it with the PC instead, but it didn't take. Then I figured I'd try to remove the laptop data, but that just resets ALL your stats back to zero.
I was really tempted to have one of my trademark "Argh, why does this stuff always have to happen to me?", but then I started to figure several things. For starters, my music collection is VERY cluttered. I have a lot of things on winamp that aren't even music. Lot of folk I only have one song by, too. Anyway, since starting afresh has been the theme recently, and I always do better a second time at things, I figure use it as a chance to do just that. So, I made a playlist featuring one sng by each artist I want to show up in my library and left Winamp going all night. I can add in the rest of their tracks later. That way, things will soon be back to better than normal with minimum fuss.

I like that I'm actualy doing things now. Most of the time, I've suffered from fad-phobia. I wouldn't want to get into something, only for it to become horribly dated and I'd be embarrassed by it later. I hate a lot of the things I liked when I was younger, and like a lot of the things I hated when I was younger. But now I've come around to the idea that doing something, anything, is NOT the same as getting a tattoo that says "All Your Base Are Belong To Us". I don't have to worry about looking stupid later, because we're living in the 21st century, where people much prefer looking stupid in the immediate present. Our attention spans have gotten waaayyyyyy too short.
Hey, you know what else is too short? Life. Especially if you spend it thinking that some day you'll actually be able to brag to folks about all the stuff you didn't do, because those are much more interesting stories, yeah.

Da goes back into hospital, today. Gonna go along with him, and should be back on the other side of 3. I'll see how many more hours I can wrestle out of my body after that, then I'll try that sleep thing all the cool kids are doing these days.

By the way, if anyone has "Half Past Two" by The Stunning, could you send it my way? I heard it on the radio, fell in love and lament that the mp3 of it appears to not even exist.

taken completely out of context from dar.dreamwidth.org

I've been trying to track down the hypothesized "Anti-Dar", my evil twin. Or, if you're a complete and utter comedian, my Good Twin. So far we've only been able to make certain guesses. For instance, Anti-Me would live in America, but hate it. I would have voted for Obama, but couldn't. Anti-Me would have voted against Obama, but didn't, because he wouldn't think American politics were interesting. I'm afraid of heights, Anti-Me probably lives and/or works in a very tall building.
With these in mind, we're able to make further guesses. For instance, I'm a libertarian (Oh, quit sniggering.), Anti-Dar would be quite the conservative. I'm a pretty creative guy, I'd love to have a job where I can get paid to be creative. Anti-Dar would loathe anything new and original, and take a job somewhere he could be paid to stifle creativity. I think Summer Glau, to quote The Artist Formerly Known As The Artist Formerly Known As Prince, is the reason God made a girl. Anti-Dar would either despise Summer Glau, or just have the misfortune to be one of those people who kept me on the friendslist too long =p Anyway, in his job as official creativity stifling, he'd cancel every show with Summer Glau in it he could.
So, if I may Rolf Harris for a minute, have you guessed what it is yet? Which broadcasting company in America with a tall building and known for its conservative, cancellation-happy, anti-creativity ways would Anti-Dar work for in a position to terminate shows featuring Summer Glau?
Yes, minions. The Anti-Dar can be located at 10201 W. Pico Blvd, Los Angeles, California. Bring me his head, and you shall be rewarded. ...Most likely with decent shows that last, once I take his place, mwahahahah!

Now, content! (It happens between Glau fanboying, sucks but you'll have to deal with it).
Sabrina's birthday today, but we celebrated it last night with a trip to a gay bar, gay bar, gay baaaar. And that's the last time we'll mention that song, except to say that it's right, it's easy to spend all your money (at the gay bar, gay bar, gay baaaar) what with €7.90 for a Jack & Coke.
I had a blast, though I need to do a better job of convincing my friends that. In the words of Bill Hicks, I just have one of those faces that makes people ask "What's wrong?", and it's only a little annoying because when I was depressed nobody did, and now that I'm not, people think I still am. I think people underestimate how hard it actually is to look happy with a unibrow. Just ask Bert from Sesame Street. I smile plenty, I just don't like to show my teeth when I do. I've taken to standing with my arms crossed and a big grin my face, like Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. You look like you're amused and enjoying a show, like that.

But yes, fun time, lovely people. I look forward to the day a man can say another man is attractive without having to put the "I'm completely straight" qualifier in front of it like women can. It's something we'll have to work on. But it does show how far you've gotten from school when you can go "Damn, that is one pretty man!" without then thinking (A) you're going to get the shit kicked out of you and deserve it, and (B) you should kill yourself for such un-Catholic thoughts. Eh. Most Popes have fucked more men than I ever would. Truth. Incidentally;
Top 5 Guys Who Would Do It For Me If That Did It For Me:
#1 - David Bowie (any era)
#2 - Nathan Fillion
#1 - Batbale
#1 - Steve Burton (Cloud's voice actor)
#1 - Neil Gaiman

Top 5 Women Who Are Currently Doing It For Me:
#1 - You already know this.
#2 - Annie Wershing
#1 - Claudia Black
#1 - Shirley Manson
#1 - Tarja Turunen

I've started feeling a lot better about my looks, lately. I realized it when waiting in line for the bathroom, thinking "Wow, there's a lot of pretty men in this queue", then glanced over at the mirror and thought "Myself included!". I've even stopped thinking of myself as a case of "Can't pull" and more of "Doesn't pull. As in can, but chooses not to.". Sabrina says I'm even looking younger these days. Come to think of it, on our way home I got called "Young fella" by a passing stranger I could swear was actually younger than me 0_o

So, all in all, good time had by all. ...Despite the lack of Pet Shop Boys. No, not stereotypes! Shush, you! "Actually" is one of the finest albums there is, and YOU should get it. It's excellent 80's synth-pop, quite dark in places and was complusive listening growing up. ...And now I'm wondering if the straight boy who likes Pet Shop Boys more than the gays is more than a little bit like the American who loves all the culchie, bogtrotting, bodhrán music that Irish people don't =p

taken completely out of context from dar.dreamwidth.org

I read (most of) Hetalia: Axis Powers, not really getting most of the jokes (and eventually coming around to the idea that there aren't actually all that many jokes to get). And I'm aware the fandom exists, and it mostly consists of two things;
(1) People slashing entire countries. Rule 34 stopped being shocking sometime during 2006, anyway.
(2) Great. Big. Fucking. Political. Historical. Rampant. WANK!

Neither of which, I particularly concern myself with. I bring it up because I happened to mention on a comm recently that it was such a shame they never included Ireland as England's psycho ex. and also, that they keep making the mistake the Britain and England are the same thing. Nope, England's its own guy and Britain is the flat it shares with its' two roomies, Scotland (the tall, tough badass who can drink you under the table) and Wales (the shy, quiet, poor one who's still a virgin).

Ireland: "Where the hell have you been?"
England: "Busy, okay?! Me and America went over to Afghanistan's place. Trying to fix the place up, and it's taking longer than we'd thought. It's like the guy doesn't even want our help."
Ireland: "Oh, sure, go off gallivanting around! Forget you have responsibilies here! What about our son, huh? What about little Northern Ireland? You're supposed to take him every weekend! It's all I can do to get you to take him for the holidays!"
England: "Hey, I said I was busy, okay!"
Ireland: "Oh sure, goofing off with your BFF America is busy!"
England: "At least he understands me! At least I can leave him alone with Canada and not have to find out he's been blowing him up!"
Ireland: "How dare you! I haven't laid a finger on Northern Ireland in ages! And don't think I haven't been tempted! He's an ugly little funny-speaking loser, just like his father! You know he still uses your money?!? I've been trying to get him to switch to the euro, but oh no, has to use pounds! He gets that from you, you know!"
England: "Like you're one to talk about money, Little Miss Recession! You should hope you don't get your economy back, you'd just drink it, anyway!"
Ireland: "HOW DARE Y-"
America: "Yo, England! Ready to go paintball Iraq's house?! This is gonna be so- ....Heyyyyyy. Who's your cute friend?"
Ireland: "Hello, handsome!"
England: "Oh God!"
America: "England didn't tell me he had such a... picturesque neighbour."
Ireland: "He didn't tell me his friend was so... big and rugged."
England: "Come on, man! Bro's before ho's!"
America: "Hey, watch your mouth! There's a lady present!"
Ireland: "To be sure, to be sure. Oh, begorrah and bless us, all the saints!"
America: "She is so cute! XD"
England: "Dude, she's just putting that on because she knows you're rich! She's only interested in you because you're a superpower! That's why she hooked up with me! She's a fuckin' bitch, man, trust me!"
Ireland: "He so mean to me! And me a poor little famine-stricken orphan."
America: "There, there, it's okay, I won't let him hurt you."
England: "Oh God, again with the fuckin' famine story, Jesus! That was AGES ago! She wasn't even a real country back then! She didn't even have infrastructure! I had to pay for all that!"
America: "Dude, knock it off! I won't tell you a second time."
Ireland: "You're such a gentleman. A real decent nation. We don't get many of those over here."
America: "You think? Everyone always tells me I go sticking my nose where it doesn't belong."
Ireland: "Oh no, it's really nice that someone is that considerate. Do you... invest in a lot of less-developed countries?"
America: "Just the pretty ones."
Ireland: *giggle*
England: "For crying out loud, man! She's a drunken, piss-poor nutsack with an inferiority complex and a violent streak a mile wide! If she were one of your own states, she'd be Alabama!
America: "TO ME SHE'S PERFECT!"
Ireland: "Never mind him. He's just jealous he's not a real superpower anymore like you."
England: "You know her own brother moved upstairs from me just to get away from her?!"
Scotland: "Leave me out of this."
England: "Aw, fine, screw this! You two deserve each other anyway! Here, buy her a drink, she'll let you touch her Shannon airport, go ahead, it's on me! Just don't come crying to me when she tells you she's knocked up with a little terrorism-riddled shithole you'll have to pay to support! Come on, Wales! We're going paintballing!"
Wales: "Ooh mye God, peeple're tolking t'mee, yay!"

taken completely out of context from dar.dreamwidth.org

So, there's this customer we get in the garage a lot, one of the few we still get anymore. (People are just plain, simply NOT getting their cars looked after, so they can save on money, which is why I have no work. Of course, that not getting their cars looked after and not buying a new car either will just come back around to bite them in the ass and result in more work for us, hopefully) and he always asks how I am. Always. Like, even when I'm not there, he asks my folks how I'm doing. I never thought anything about it.
So then, today, my mother tells me his daughter, who was bi-polar, killed herself on Friday. 35 years old. God dammit. That was the same night I finished the last of my three videos and stayed up to upload it. I went on and on about depression and telling people the same things I told myself, and the same time I was doing that, that was happening -_-

And now I know he wasn't just being friendly asking how I was. He'd read me like an open book. I know, compared to things like bi-polar disorder or schizophrenia, depression is amateur hour, and he spotted it a mile off. Now he's going through what he was clearly hoping my parents would never have to.

It's not fair. 35 years old and dead because of some bad wiring. That's only seven years older than me. It's not right that someone should live a short life full of pain and then just die, it's not right. It's not fair they had this horrible illness that took away their ability to think straight and refuse to give up.

I know "fair" is just an abstract, subjective human concept that a cold, indifferent planet doesn't care for. Unfairness happens, and the world keeps spinning regardless. But i's still not right. There's better ways for a world to be. Thought about the Singularity - machines building better machines, without the need of humans. Is it possible the birth of our universe was a Singularity? Are we an improvement over God in that we could visualize a better world than He could? No wonder He's obsolete.

taken completely out of context from dar.dreamwidth.org

For those who may be interested in following my brainfarts, they can be found here;
HypertextTransferProtocol/twitterDOTcom/Raidenshred

Needs dressing up. I'm trying to find a Zoo TV-esque background for it. It just seems proper for Twitter. The overwhelming barrage of information, too much in too many small doses and full off too little content. It's not ADD bottled, it's Zoo TV at the click of a mouse. Sadly, I can't find a decent-quality image. Which is a shame, because Bono staggering in front of a screen full of static is pants-shittingly awesome. I wish I had been able to see that tour, if only I hadn't been, you know, eleven at the time.

I had a dream that, amongst other things, I was in a very weird version of WW2. There was a ceasefire with the Nazis, except one upper-class little shit in my squad had gotten to the war late, and looked like he was going to go home without having killed a German. So, he shot an unarmed prisoner, which ended the ceasefire. I don't remember what happened next, but I like to think part of the dream involved him getting fragged.

There was lots of snow all around, which was pretty cool. One of the stranger things was the discovery of these odd stones. They were blue and slightly crystalline, like geodes. They weighed as much as normal rock, only when you let them go, they didn't drop like one. You could keep them up in the air, like a heavy, solid, slow balloon. They moved through the air slowly, sluggishly, like gravity was more of a suggestion than a law. I even ended up trying to juggle a few.
And then something awful happened. Someone said "I don't understand, how could there be enough organic material in the atmosphere to cause something like this?". I remembered it was still World War 2, and I got sick. I've no idea what the relationship was between smoke from the camps and the stones, but I was the only one who knew there was a relationship between them. And we'd been trying to juggle them like bowling balls in bullet time, isn't that special? >_>

Okay, what the hell is going on with Batman these days? For a dead guy, he's remarkably hard to pin down. One minute, he's making bat-graffiti on cave walls in the ancient past, the next he's in a tomb under the Batcave. Which, if that's the case, just whose skull is Black Hand carrying around? Guh!
Speaking of Blackest Night, I've been following it to some degree. Seems like an interesting enough crossover. So interesting, apparently, that Marvel decided to copy it and change the name. Really, Marvel, really? Now that you have Disney's invincible team of superlawyers, you could have just sued DC for having your own idea before you and won, too.

taken completely out of context from dar.dreamwidth.org

A man's insecurities and self-esteem throughout his life can best be measured by his relationship to Phil Collins. For example;

Birth to 10 years old: "My Dad's Phil Collins CDs! I'll listen to these!"
11 years to 15 years: "Oasis or Blur? Actually, I kinda like Phil Collins. ...What? What's so funny?"
16 years to 20 years: "If I ever want to get laid, then no-one must ever know. Phil who? Oh yeah, that guy. Ah heh heh, he fucking sucks, yeah, heh. >_>"
21 years to 24 years: "We've been going out a while, so you're the only one I trust to be able to tell you this... I still have my Dad's Phil Collins CDs."
25 years to 27 years: "Dude, Phil Collins fucking rocks."

He's still no Peter Gabriel.

I can remember the very first time I first felt old. I was in Wales, Soft Cell's "Tainted Love" came on the radio and my brother's girlriend's niece (not as complicated an association as it sounds) said she hated the "old, original". It struck me then that she only knew it through Marilyn Manson, or more likely, Rihanna.
Eh, screw it. I'm proud to be a boy from the eighties, where all the best movies come from. And our gays made MUCH better music than today's gays.

taken completely out of context from dar.dreamwidth.org

Normally, I'd apologize for the amount of Summer Glau present (well, there's not that much of her. Okay, one's wall-to-wall her, but one only features her voice and the other doesn't feature her at all. LOOK! RANGE AS AN ARTIST! =p) but I'm not supposed to say the s-word for a month, and besides, it's not a problem. Something's only a problem if it interferes with your day-to-day life, and for those of you who are new or haven't been paying attention, I don't have a life. That's sorta HOW I can finish and upload three videos on the one day, eh duh.

Let's start with Summer, and God knows we could use some in this weather. ...Except for my poor, suffering Australian friends.

This one, I got the idea for after seeing Simon Toal's rather... unique perfomance of it in "The Friends Of Jack Cairo", with Sabrina. She spent most of it hiding behind her hands and in the abject terror inherent in sitting up the front when the perfomer insists on Audience Participation Time. Still, we had a great night, and I couldn't get this song onto my MP3 player fast enough.
And eventually I figured I could do something with it. Something starring the sexiest woman I know. Something from a fandom that proves the female genuinely IS deadlier than the male. And though that also applies to Sarah and Weaver, hands down, I thought it was funnier if I made John much more helpless and stunned by Cameron than he actually is. ...Which is more or less how I react to girls I like in real life =p
There's several parts here I'm rather proud of. I originally opened with John listening to the song on headphones, and I was even able to get the sound all tinny and small, then turning up to normal from his point of view when Cameron walks into the room. But there wasn't enough footage, and it was more fun to do the juke box intro (also featuring some sound editing I'm quite proud of). There's a couple of other scenes I really like. There's some shots you wouldn't think are from completely different episodes until you look at the watermark, for example.

Moving on to the next stop on our tour...

I'd mentioned before putting together Firefly and FF12. I'd seen other people do it before, but most of them tended to just do the title sequence and leave it at that. I tried to go one step further and include snippets of dialogue, which, you gotta admit, are one of Firefly's strongest features. It was a similar process to Dirge Of Sillyness, only this time I wasn't as free to just run wild. It was a better thing to do overall, I think, to keep who has whom's voice consistent. I had a lot of fun matching up characters who were similar, and then turning it on its head with characters who were completely different. I have my favorite bits, and I hope you do too.
There's one section, you'll know it when you come to it, where I wasn't actually trying to be funny, I was just trying to match video and audio for the sheer challenge of it. I'd have liked more footage to work with, but I'm happy with how it turned out.
Warning: may contain trace amounts of Summer Glau.

And now, all jokes aside...

Not counting Firefly: The Big Damn Musical Episode (6000+ views, wow, really?), this was actually the longest it's taken me to put something together. I think I started it not long after I finished Devil's Arcade. Not that it was technically challenging (although it does feature a lot more effects and titles than I'm used to), but because emotionally it was hard to work with. I'd do a little bit, get depressed, close the project and go do something else, open it again some other time when my mood was strong enough and repeat the cycle. It was like I had to recharge after ever attempt. For some reason, the scene where Cloud and Tifa are shown fighting like a couple instead of talking really got at me, but I kept resisting the urge to cut it out.
Now, you'd think with the events of the last week, I'd be in no mood to come back to it. But it had to be done. Even if it is my story as told through Cloud, it's not just my story, it's something a lot of people go through. I thought it would be a decent thing to do, if I'm going to put something so personal out there, I can also put out the things I've used to help myself get better, and hopefuly they'll resonate in someone else if they're going through it. I'm not so vain to think it'll make a world of difference or so naive that some jackass isn't going to crap a lolfest over it, but it doesn't matter what the result is, it matters that I got it done.
Okay, editor stuff. The repeating image of Cloud walking alone in profile is inspired by something I saw during the live perfomance of the song. The lights on the stage went down, and it was just Bono on his own, without the band. On the screen was a large sorta stick-figure of a man, walking alone in profile, playing throughout. It's an image that just stuck with me, it just sums up depression very well: walking alone, every step feeling the same, turned away and not wanting to face things. That's why I wanted to replicate it here.
The handwriting font and video being almost completely in black and white is an emulation of U2's actual video for the song. The film grain takes ages to render, and I don't know if it comes out in that quality. For audio mixing, I actually used the intro to the song from the video, instead of the full album version. I prefer the slow, lonely build-up at the start. I'm quite proud of how barely noticeable the shift from the video version to the album version is, too.
Also available in HD.

Whew, lookit all that. Surprisingly disaster-free for Friday 13th.
Now what am I gonna do? Take up a hobby, perhaps...

taken completely out of context from dar.dreamwidth.org

Still have not made an inaugural tweet. I know, I know, it's only micro-blogging, not losing your virginity. I'll have you know I've been busy. Doing what? Why, editing, of course. Spent the day finished off not one video, not two videos but three videos! ...It helped magnificently that most of the work was already done, and I'd just had the projects open for too long, but I wanted to feel accomplished.
They'll be uploaded, as soon as YouTube pulls its thumb out of its ass.

Speaking of making movies, apparently Gantz isn't being made into a movie - it's being made into two movies, directed by the guy behind one of my favorites, "Princess Blade". I gotta say, I fucking love Gantz, because it was such a surprise that it became something you could love. It starts out so cynical and realistically harsh, like a 4chan's-eye view of the world and of humanity. Most people would be put off by the brutality and coldness of the first several volumes. Summing it up pretty easily was "Kei Kurono is a selfish youth living in a selfish world", and for the most part the opening volumes make both of those very clear.
But both Kurono and the story really change and grow from volume eight onward. The single worst night of his life changes Kurono dramatically. He stops thinking with his dick, stops thinking only about himself, learns how to take charge and look after others. But my favorite part is when he meets Tae (and all the scenes in the manga where he shows up). Til that point, he'd been the "typical male", only interested in sexy, dumb girls with large breasts. He's made to go on a date with the relatively plain, flat-chested, sky and awkward Tae as "punishment" for losing a bet. Thing is, this really gets to show how much he's grown, by not treating her the way the old Kurono would have done. Not only that, but when he's given the chance to dump her for the girl of his dreams (the girl of most men's dreams), it just makes him all the more committed to being with her. They're probably one of my favorite couples of all time, and I'm hoping;
(A) she'll be in the movies, since she wasn't in the anime.
(B) they don't get killed. Erm, again. (Long story.) A slightly tall order, considering the more recent volumes feature an all-out full-blown Apocalypse, I just have my fingers crossed they'll both survive. They are far too pretty to die.

Speaking of which, Dollhouse apparently wasn't. Okay, Fox. You can make as much excuses as you like. You can feel free to trot out the same old ones as before. Like, "it was too expensive to make" (you slashed the budget) or "it was getting poor ratings" (because you moved it to a crappy slot and refuse to count how many people Tivo'd it as ratings) or anything else we've all heard before. Deaf ears, trust me. I think you just don't LIKE scripted entertainment, and the only fiction you can stand is the one your news station churns out around the clock.
The reason why the show was cancelled was the simple fact that your reputation preceded you. Something is quite wrong when even the man making the damn thing is afraid to dip his toe in the water. Something is clinically fucking wrong when the reason why people won't watch your shows is the simple fact that they're your shows. People would have given this more of a chance if it had been on a network that didn't have such a bloodthirsty rep. By the way, Joss? I know it's still a little bit too early, but I'm just gonna throw it out there -have you considered HBO? I'm just saying. Or, you could give movies a go. You're better at movies than you think. The new Star Trek owes a lot to Serenity, after all. Hell, even the pilot for Firefly was better than any big-budget sci-fi flick released the same year (TELL me the pilot wasn't better than Attack Of The Clones, Signs, Minority Report or Men In Black 2, I fuckin' DARE ya!).
Well, Joss, whatever you do next, do it without Fox. Make that ballet thing with Summer you keep putting off. Yes, my reasons for suggesting it are less than altruistic, it's still a bloody good idea. In the meantime, Dollhouse fans? I'm real ess-oh-or-or-why for you, I'mma let you finish, but Terminator was the best recently-cancelled Fox show of all time. But if you're planning on a Bring Back DH campaign, you should know that there's a queue and it starts behind us.

Not much else left to say. ...I wish the end of this song lasted a lot longer.
Bom-bwaaa-naaa, bom-bwaaa-naaaaa, bom-bwehhh-neeehhhhh...

taken completely out of context from dar.dreamwidth.org

So, it's Jesus: Fucking Christ A.M. and I keep falling asleep and waking up and falling asleep and waking up and falling asleep and waking up and I came to the sudden conclusion that THIS! This! Is how they drove Crippen mad.

Which is a very roundabout way of saying I signed up for Twitter. Alas, I have not yet twitted a tweet until this twit can think of something other than feeling like a twat (I STILL prefer that word be used to describe a silly person and not a woman's womanly parts, because if a word sounds like a Batman sound effect, it should be too silly to sound vulgar).

Yes, I know said I wouldn't. Here's the thing. You know why I'm reluctant to do things I said I wouldn't even though, oh, only every single time I do them I get nothing but encouragement? It's because somewhere, deep down inside of me, I see a bunch of sociopathic teenage aresholes pointing and laughing at me for being a hypocrite.
"AHAHAH! LOOK AT THAT WANKER! SAID HE WOULDN'T, BUT NOW HE IS! AHAHAHAH! WANKER!".

And so I came to a pile of conclusions.
1 - My brain's imaginary friends are complete tossers.
2 - I'm not as likely to meet said tossers pointing and laughing at me from the back of a bus window as much I was when I was a kid.
3 - Carrying around the ghosts of said tossers in my head serves little more function than acting as a private, silent memorial to tosserhood.
4 - I am not a tosser.
5 - No matter who may take exception to 4 or provide a detailed list of instances and explanations for why that statment is not true, the fact remains I am still not a tosser.
6 - Tossers have had more sex than me, are more popular, have dicks down to their ankles, earn much more money than me, fly to all sorts of exotic locales, have celebrity friends and are never going to lose their hair.
7 - Good for them. It's too bad they still suffer from the incurable disease that is being a complete tosser.
8 - It's a little more important what I think of me than what the imaginary tosseresque avatars of tossers I knew when I was kid think of me.
9 - I never pointed and laughed at anyone for the sole purpose of making myself feel better through making someone else feel bad. Even on my worst days, Me -> does not equal -> Tosser.

So yes. New things are being tried. There's a clearance sale on old excuses and reservations. I don't need them anymore.

taken completely out of context from dar.dreamwidth.org

"Heroes" has been getting a lot of play, lately, because of the anniversary of the Berlin Wall. Though a very powerful song, and one of his finer pieces, that's not what I associate with that song. Or even about "conventional" heroics.
I interpret the song as being about the goodness in people. Or the potential goodness, or even the dormant goodness. In the lyrics, I see a lot of wishing, and a resignation that the world is too big, too bad, too full of evil and ugly to ever be changed. It makes people mean, makes them drink all the time, makes them to do nothing but wish for things to be different.
But in all that ugliness and cruelty, every single human being has it in them to rise and be better than they are, even if only briefly. Even if just for one day, you can do something that asks you to better than you were made. It's not even pulling someone out of a burning house or out of the way of a speeding car. It's the tiny little heroics, the little good in everyone, the things that surprise you when people aren't as cynical or mean as the world they live in. Every now and then, for all the shit and misery the world's drowning in, you'll see something that makes you stop and warm your heart. And it's that thing he was singing about it. That everyone has it in them, just for one day.

Speaking of music, tried to think about stuff I could be doing. Looked at my rather lonely guitar, and thought "Well, I can always try you again. I usually do better at things second time around". Though affording lessons looks like something on the thin end of possibility, for the moment. Plus, I'd rather be in a class than one-on-one. The one-on-one stuff makes me feel awkward, and I need to get myself into a group setting at some point. But like I said, affordability. Not just the lessons, but I wish I had a bass guitar. ...I wish I could afford a bass guitar, so I could instead spend the money on what I actually need.

It's an offence just how much that money is an essential requirement for something as decent as trying to better oneself.

taken completely out of context from dar.dreamwidth.org

Peter Gabriel was right, there's a lot to be said for "so".
Had trouble sleeping last night, but there's a second story of when I did. Anyway, instead of escaping into fantasy, I put myself on the psychiatrist's couch with Dr. Lateral Thinking, PhD (Paid Hourly, Don't ya know) and it was surprising how much the answers I kept coming to had little variation between "So what?" and "Doesn't matter!", and no, not in the bad way that sounds at first, either. For example;
Dr. Me: "So, why do you have to be so hard on yourself?"
Me: "I do bad things, I annoy people, I let them down, I let myself down, I should be punished. So I punish myself."
Dr. Me: "As I recall, you used to insult and make fun of yourself a lot, and you were doing that because you thought you were cutting ahead of the queue, but really you were just making it so easy for you to be bullied that there didn't have to be a bully in the room. Is there really that much difference here? It's still you hurting yourself because you think you deserve it."
Me: "...Okay, that's true. But what about when I genuinely do something wrong I should be held accountable for?"
Dr. Me: "You take responsibility for it, but you don't have to carry out the punishment for it yourself. If you say something that makes someone want to slap you in the face for it, it's their call to slap you in the face if you deserve it, not yours. If you made them mad and they need to release it because you genuinely have done something wrong, you don't get to take that away from them. You are NOT a part of the Darren Criminal Justice System, so stop acting like a vigilante."
Me: "So what, I should just let myself off easily?"
Dr. Me: "More often than you'd think, yes."
Me: "...Isn't that answer just a little bit too simple?"
Dr. Me: "Oh, of course, you want a complicated solution so you can make that the excuse why you haven't tried."
Me: "Okay, let's say I take the simple solution. What about all the things I've done before?"
Dr. Me: "What about them? They're in the past. They don't matter. You can keep feeling bad about them, but it won't change the fact they happened. It's like raging at the lack of continuity on The Simpsons, and you REALLY aren't that guy."

So yeah, lot of stuff like that. Going down old avenues of thought and trying to take them apart, going "what's the purpose of this function?" and more often than not coming back with the answer "It has none. Its only purpose was to make you think you suck. This should have been retired years ago, chuck it out!".

I'm trying things I wasn't willing to try years ago, because I thought they wouldn't have worked. Like smiling at the mirror. Briefly, but noticeably. Or smiling at others and getting one back. Or setting a small goal and following it. It didn't work ages ago because I wouldn't try because my general attitude was "It won't work! I hate myself too much! Smiling and tasks won't make the least fucking difference because I wish I was dead!". Yes. I was Mister Sunshine. What do you mean you don't want my autograph? I was huge in Taiwan!

And then, when I slept, I had a dream. A dream I was back in Tallaght for some reason. I stopped by a fast food place to get something to eat, when who should come up to harass me but a collection of childhood bullies, all grown up (laying it on a bit thick, aren't we, brain?). Anyway, after getting their food, bullies sat down where I was sitting quite happily alone because apparently, bullies like dinner and a show. So, they did what bullies do. Starting with that routine bullies always open with, the one where they pretend to be friendly with you. So they can sabotage your trust in first impressions of everyone else for the rest of your life, presumably. The only really annoying thing about them was how little their tactics had changed.
When the main topic of conversation turned to about a girl I used to like and how they all took turns fucking her, I reached across the table, grabbed one of them behind the head and slammed his face down into his food. Well, after a stunned silence, he got up screaming at me; "I'LL FUCKING SUE YOU! I'LL FUCKING SUE YOU FOR ASSAULT! YOU'LL HAVE A CRIMINAL RECORD AND YOU'LL NEVER GET INTO AMERICA!".
I rolled my eyes and said fine, going with them to the police station. I wanted to see just where all this was going. Do I actually believe some people would try to sabotage someone else's life over a couple of McNuggets? Probably, yeah. But it was really just me refusing to beg them not to, which they probably wanted. When we got to the station, surprise surprise, the cops were all immigrants. Which, of course, the bullies didn't like but I got on with fine. For some reason, one of the cops was wearing a Superman t-shirt. Anyway, we got on pretty well, I explained my story, why these guys were doing what they were doing, and if they agreed not to press charges, I would pay for the cost of their Happy Meal, which apparently turned out to be false advertising.

Ah, brilliant am I in my dreams, sometimes. When I woke up, I decided to follow a random thought that popped into my head: "Get 'How To Be Good' by Nick Hornby". It should be noted that despite the title, it's a novel, not a self-help book. Hornby probably got into my head because recently I was thinking I could a video out of High Fidelity set to "A Wonderful Day In A One-Way World". I hadn't the urge to buy the book before the thought entered in my head. It just felt a random, unprovoked something to do. It was only mildly annoying how easy it was to find. And while I was in Chapters, I picked up the new Stephen King one and was surprised to discover Paul Auster has a new book out. ...I bought it, but I'm a little hesitant to read it, just in case I'm also in this one, too. Although the premise does seem to be an old man (woohoo, not me yet!) stuck in his room (...uh-oh.) feeling incredibly guilty over something and having made promises that he's trying to get better (are you fucking kidding me?!?).

The only part of someday being an old man that bothers me is that I'll probably end up being one of those middle-aged guys who goes out with girls half his age in order to make up for all that he missed out on, earlier. ...Then again, I managed to avoid most of the things teenagers and twentysomethings do to try to act older, so there's that for me.
Whenever I see older guys about the same size and hair-color as me, I facetiously wonder if they're my Future Self, come back to have a gawk. And I go "No, that's not future me, I'd never grow a beard, not even as a disguise. I'd never wear a shirt, either."

So, all in all, the only negative thing to happen to today so far (No, world, that's not a fucking invite!) was getting home and my mother saying "I made you dinner because I didn't know you weren't home until Paul told me".
...Ow. My Ego. >_>

People are complicated. But they don't start that way. For instance, take Girl Behind The Counter. When she doesn't even have a name, your interaction is very restricted and entirely uncomplicated. If you see Girl Behind The Counter often enough, you find out her name. Now that she's Sally Behind The Counter, interaction is still somewhat restricted but still quite uncomplicated. Then if you and Sally Behind The Counter get talking and you find you like her to ask her out and she accepts, she stops being Sally Behind The Counter and is just Sally. And then you go on that date, and depending on how well it goes, the ratio of restrictions to complications reverses dramatically. Turns out Sally's just as complicated as you are. And, go on enough dates, find out more about how mutually complicated you both are, she just might become Your Girlfriend Sally. Live with each other long enough, you can grow so used to each other's complications that they start to seem simple again. ...Except when you fight, of course.

No, I don't know anyone called Sally.
Just saying, in your interactions with them, people start off relatively simple shapes and grow into complicated patterns. Like fractals. Yes, I know what fractals are. Try not to faint.

taken completely out of context from dar.dreamwidth.org

I'm supposed to go an entire month without saying a certain word that starts with s, rhymes with "lorry" and is used to express regret at one's actions. Because I say it too damn much.

The problem with cliches is nobody believes you when they're real. ...Does it matter what people believe? Yes, it matters to me what some people think. It matters to me a whole damn lot. But I'm not allowed be unresponsive to what other people are feeling, but I'm not supposed to change myself for their benefit, either. I have to change for me. I have to be selfish to be empathetic. And I don't get it.
-You should be this way.
Okay, I'll be that way.
-No, you just want to be that way because you were told you should be that way. You didn't want to be that way before you knew it was a way you were supposed to be.
You don't know that. You're not in my head. Even if I did say that's how I wanted to be before you said it, there's no way for me to say it and for you to believe it after I said it.
-Even if you did become the way you're supposed to be, it won't change the fact that you came by that way of being only because you were prompted.
Then was I supposed to exist in that state from the start?
-Preferably, yes.
That's not fair!
-Life isn't fair.

What if the cost of all this is that I become like Two-Face in Arkham Asylum. Weaned off the coin onto a dice. Off the dice into a deck of cards. Off the cards onto the I-Ching. The result? Complete and total paralysis. Instead of simple choices (Act/Don't Act) or even a relatively uncomplicated If/Then statement, he ends up with a near-infinite list of actions he can't distinguish, let alone choose from.

The not saying s-word for a month is an easy enough thing for me to learn. It's a simple parameter (hopefully without some awful unforeseen other side like most). When I discovered If/Then statements, it was a blessing. I finally had something that could describe how I think and learn and interact by using something people already understood, instead of carving the shapes inside me into badly-fitting words.

If [action or statement offends] Then
- [apologize]
ElseIf [action or statement is accident] Then
- [apologize]
ElseIf [action or statement offends self] Then
- [silence]
Else [apology not appropriate/accepted] Then
- [seek redemptive action]
End If
- [silence/null operator]

Bits would get added or appended, occasionally removed or rewritten as I learned. This is why I liked the bits in Evangelion or Ergo Proxy that everyone else seemed to hate; long actionless scenes were Shinji or Vincent talk with their inner selves and have their psyches laid bare, examined, re-examined and summarized. It was pleasant for me, even if only to see a voice in someone's head being more articulate then "You suck!" or even "Here's why you suck!" but instead "Here's you under the microscope.". It was nice because it was the closest I can get to a manual. The characters were learning. I got to learn with them.
John Henry and Cameron in Terminator had it pretty similar, too. They were learning, but people still kept forgetting they weren't people and got angry with them for not knowing things they were supposed to. Okay, I haven't killed anyone I wasn't supposed to (or have I? Den-dun-dunn), but I can still identify with that. When you're outside like that, the world looks like a club full of secret handshakes and passwords, and don't you DARE try to fake either, because they'll know and can spot a faker a mile off. Maybe that's why I like those rare little surprises at meeting other Browncoats? For a brief moment, I get that feeling of being on the inside, and that my words and actions will be understood easily and instantly.

On a somewhat related note, here's 5 Horrific Ways Your Brain Can Turn On You Without Warning.

taken completely out of context from dar.dreamwidth.org

I get people wrong. All the time.
I say stuff, and it doesn't mean what I meant. People say stuff, and I take it the way they didn't mean. When I think too much, I'm thinking the wrong thing. When I don't think at all, the results are even worse.

Last night, the only way to sleep was by imagining what it would be like if I never spoke again, living without a voice. I'd pretend I had some sort of accident, and I was only capable of listening. In the way of most fantasies, everything worked out better. I never stepped on anyone's toes. I didn't have to look for the invisible barbs on the edges of words. I lost my voice and I never missed it.

But it's reality, it doesn't work like that. I tried that in school, I experimented in not speaking until I was spoken to. Turns out, you can go for days like that. Everything I say always means something else, and I don't find out what it is until after. My development is stunted, I know that. I don't know the things I need to learn, but I'm trying, but part of learning is making mistakes, and I'm running out of chances.
There's so much I need to learn, and only so much patience the people who need me to learn it can have in me. But even there! Got it wrong again! I'm not supposed to learn it for their benefit, I'm supposed to learn it for me!
All this things are just going around and around in my head, swimming like fish but they come out as sharks. Nothing but good intentions all the time. Try to be good, try to be nice, for the love of God, please try to be good. Hope for the best, wish for good, know you'll try to do right by anyone. Best intentions. Worse words.
There's so much in me that I just can't get out because the words aren't right, the audience is on another subject and they've got far better experience at it than I do. So I hear "you said X, but did you know that in this context, X actually means this, you should know this, why would you say something like that?". But I don't have X in me, X isn't what I feel in my soul, X is what came out because that's the shape the words fell into when they left my head. They didn't look like that in there, they weren't so ugly and malign. That's not to say they're beautiful in here, either. I'm just... trying to learn, but ill-equipped for communication.

So I say the words that work like X. I can't convince people that X isn't me, not inside, I can't do it because all I have are more bad words. So I'm supposed to use actions, but I don't KNOW what those actions are. I've never seen them done, I don't know how to study them. I don't even know if that's what I'm supposed to be doing. Isn't that what a sociopath does?
I don't know what it is in me. Is it natural cluelessness? Is it the after-effects of spending too much time cut off from people? Is it another blown wire in my head?

I need to know these things, but God dammit, I want to stop learning them at expense. I'll learn. For God's sakes, I'll learn, if you just teach me I'll learn. I'll learn because I need to and I want to, not because I was told I have to, because I had the wanting inside me before you said that, but it didn't get turned into words until after you'd already said yours, and I know that's lousy timing so there's no reason to believe me, but I have no reasons to lie about wanting to be good. Unless inside I'm not good. And one of the things I've learned so far is that I have to stop believing things like that about myself.

God, more words. More paragraphs that don't look like the shapes inside. It's like trying to climb a mountain with a knife and fork, and even THAT'S wrong too because it's not what it is inside but it's the closest I can get!

taken completely out of context from dar.dreamwidth.org

Dear Future Me:
You're better than this.

Well, that's that. This is how a friendship ends, not with shouting but silence.
Actually, the worst part about it is finding out just how little you mattered to someone you went out of your way for. I don't listen to my instincts because I hate being right, especially about things like this.
You want to feel bad. You want to think how can this happen again when I said I'd do everything to make sure it didn't. You think back to the times you used to be close and wonder just how fair it is that one day that closeness was going to be curtailed by indifference. That one day, you wouldn't even be worth a goodbye. That one day, simply telling her you need to talk about how she's been treating you turned out to be just the landmine she was hoping, waiting and watching for you to step on. That the person who stood in your corner and stuck up for you, one day you wouldn't even be worth so much as a goodbye to them. Not when a fuck you will do.

And so I feel stupid. And foolish. And used.
But you have to balance it. You have to be able to say you did what you could, and more. You made exceptions for her, and she just took those exceptions as an incovenience - why didn't you act the way you were supposed to, so she could justify acting the way she did?
She took your friendship. She took your money. And neither of them mattered. It didn't matter to me, in a good way, because that's what friends are for. It didn't matter to her, in a bad way, because it was just something she could get out of me.
I only feel stupid for having done it again, that's all. But I offered her every opportunity to not be that kind of person. She just took my offers as invites to act worse. And you can't fight that, you can't get a happy ending out of someone who's playing to lose.

You think you know someone. You'd do anything for them. And then they get tired of you, string you along, use you for what they can get out of you, and then look for a pretext to dump your ass. ...Heh, and the pretext finally turned out to be that I didn't believe people were waiting for the opportunity to do bad things. That's good. If you're gonna go out, go out on an ironic note.

But not everyone. Not me. And she only used the nuke because nothing else worked. I shouldn't be the one feeling bad. So why am I?

taken completely out of context from dar.dreamwidth.org

Dear Future Me;
If you're still someone who's still doing things like this, remember how much you didn't want to be. Account for that.

Fine. You don't want to talk, I'll talk. After all, this is the only way we talk, isn't it?
I don't know what the hell has gotten into you lately. All I know is I can't remember the last time we talked as friends. I try to talk to you as a friend. But the only times you'll ever speak to me are when you're calling me an ass and pointing out how wrong I am about something, again. I asked you if there's more than just that going on, you said no and I believed you. And yet, it's all you keep doing.
You are always caustic whenever you're on here, and you are the specific reason at least two friends have given me for why they feel like they can't talk to me on my own journal. But you know, I didn't do what I'm doing now, because I was always willing to believe you weren't just crossing people for the sake of crossing them, or deliberately trying to give me a reason to get pissed at you.

Someone said to me once that one day you would end up trying to drive me away, because that's what you apparently "do", but I didn't believe her. And because I remembered the stuff we talked about back when we still talked like friends, I thought to myself that if that ever happened and you ever tried, I wasn't going to let you get rid of me. I wouldn't get mad at you, and I'd let stuff you said slide. I'd sleep on it, and not dwell, and I'd tell my friends "Oh, that's just the way she is.". I never wanted to lose you as a friend, not for selfish reasons, but because I know you would have felt bad about driving someone away. I know, because I've done it, too. I've always just wanted to be a friend to you, so I made excuses and exceptions.

But last night, you crossed a line.
When you threw absolutely everything that I go through every fucking day back in my face like it was nothing. Like it was worse than nothing, like I should feel privileged, because in your exact words, I have "every fucking every fucking privilege in the world".
How dare you. How goddamn dare you, when you know what I go through. Or do you not even read this? Do you just skim through and look for bits you can act bitchy to me about? You wanna talk about privilege. Okay, let's talk.
- You live in the big ol US of A, which even most of the folk who don't like living there can agree is still heads and shoulders above most other countries. You live in a nation where the most amazing things in mankind's history are just a drive away. I live on a tiny, cynical island that more and more each day I'm starting to realise I'll probably never escape from.
- You have your own job. I can't even get hired to clean a toilet. I'm looking at grown men I grew up admiring wasting away because the jobs they've done all their lives are gone. I can remember, when I was a kid, me and my Dad used to get our hair cut in the same place around the corner from the garage, sometimes at the same time. It was such an awesome place, that barbers. It's gone now. And the guy who used to cut my hair killed himself. Oh, but we are SO coming back to that.
- You have scores of friends. You're always out partying. You just make to make a quick post in your LJ, and you've no shortage of people who want to be around you. I have one good friend I'm lucky to see twice a month.
- You're an only child, center of your parents' world. I'm a middle child. You know what that is? The fucking spare.
- You're living the great and wonderful polyamorous lifestyle. I could never keep track of your girlfriends, you always seemed to have a different one every time we talked. I haven't even been on a date in years. I've never heard "I love you" said to my face, not once, not ever. Closest I ever came was someone telling me that I was good.
- You have your own car. I can't even afford a bike.
- You have your own house. I can't even afford a tiny room like Sabrina has, I'm stuck in the toxic atmosphere of my parents home.

There's a lot more, but I think you can see why getting called privileged from the likes of you is a slap in the face. And WHY did I get slapped in the face? Oh yes. Because in spite of all I've been through, despite the bullying and the beatings, despite the awful things I read about or see on the news every day, I choose to believe that people are more good than bad. You call me naive for that, well, I have a track record of it. I'd rather be naive than misanthropic.
I like to naivete or a sense of humor are my little life-support systems. Yeah, I'm a straight white male. King of the fucking planet, go me. Master of the privilege. Only, out of everyone, guys like me are more likely than anyone else in the whole goddamn world to kill ourselves. And you know why that is? It's not because "Oh, woe is us, we used to run the world, now we're nothing!". Entitlement isn't the problem, in fact it's the opposite. It's being told that as a straight white male, you're ONLY one whose feelings don't matter. You're the ONLY one who shouldn't get help or talk about your problems because as the straight white male, you've got EVERYTHING going for you and you should just be happy you're so fucking privileged. So yeah, that's why the guy who cut mine and my Dad's hair tied a rope around his neck one day. He lost his job and his family and his will to live, but since he'd got being a straight white male going for him, he was too fucking privileged to get help.

But the one thing, above all else, the one thing I can't believe from you, in all this, is that someone like you would actually SAY to someone that whatever they think, feel or believe doesn't matter specifically because of their gender, sexuality or race. I can't believe YOU, of all people, would do that. When you fucking KNOW that hurts! You know it does! No matter WHO you say it to, Ali, it fucking hurts.

taken completely out of context from dar.dreamwidth.org

Thinking too much, doing less. Keep coming back to thoughts about things like deep time. Like in space, we toss the tiny words "light years", "eons" and "epochs" around to describe how long those humanless rocks and cold suns have been spinning around lonely, mostly empty galaxies in thick black, oily nothing between anything. Billions of years, they say. Billions and billions of years. Big number, yeah. But they call go by in seconds. There goes one. There goes another. Nothing done with that one. Nothing done again here, either. And they'll never come again. Trillions of lonely seconds, out there in the gulf. We use quick words to describe how long it's been, but it was all so bloody slow and empty. How many seconds does it take for a planet to form? Terry Pratchett was right, how much time does the bottom of the sea really need? Trillions of seconds, pissed away, and life's still too short (apparently). God must love seconds, He made as many of them as He did atoms and stars. So why are so many of them going to waste? Most matter is a void between atoms. Most space is a void between stars. Most time is a void between events.
Why, if anything was going to exist, this great monument to nothing at all?

Yeah, I'm still prone to random bouts of philosophy. It's funny, I keep having to remind myself I'm not depressed. Driving through the park (Phoenix! But we don't mistake coincidence for fate) because the route to work has been changed. Yes, work, there actually was some for me. For once. Anyway, driving through it and looking at the morning mist over everything and the deer in the distance.
At first, I think "What a melancholic sight..."
Then think; "What? No it's not! Stop that, you're not depressed!"
And then; "Oh right, yeah."

So yeah, there was a little work for me in the garage. But I suppose two days in a row would have been too much to ask for. Ma says I don't involve myself or join in much when everyone's talking at teabreak. Thing is, I don't want to join in what I can only describe as Bigotry Bingo. Wanna know how to play? It's very simple.
1 - Get a scorecard and fill it with a short list from a selection of minorities.
2 - Like you get gays, Muslims, black people and Jews.
3 - Someone else gets Asians, the British, Indians, Polish, and so on.
4 - Everyone sits around bitching about the minority that is destroying the country, a load of shifty bastards, should be sent back where they came from, lured children into their gingerbread house, etc, etc.
5 - First one to get every minority on their card wins!

It's old, it pisses me off, I don't want to take part (probably because I fucking read too much and aren't ignorant enough to contribute anything but disapproval). And they're not even racist, it's worse, they're "Not Racist, But". I have NRB coworkers and family members. I'd keep expecting them to burst into choruses of "Dey Took Are Jaabs!!!", only that'd be too funny to happen. ...Though I should probably chip in with that next Bingo game, huh?

I just, I want a job of my own without that, I want a life of my own with them at a comfortable distance. I want to go out at night and not have to say where I'm going or be expected back. If I want to, I want to be able to go for a walk at four in the morning and watch the sun come up. I don't want to explain myself. I just want to live.

There's been a lot of wanting all round, lately, if friends are anything to go by. People wanting affection. People wanting to give affection. People wanting to be left alone. People wanting to be happy in themselves. There's so much wanting, and life isn't coming through because so much is getting in the way. It's the great paradox, isn't it? I want so much to take life into your own hands and live it the way you want - if only life would LET you.

Which reminds me. Watching FlashForward. It's interesting in concept, but at the same time mildly annoying in its fatalism. Nobody seems to be fighting against their fate, or looking for clever ways to subvert it. So, you're wearing that bracelet on your right arm in that vision of your future? Here's a thought, why not just wear it on your left one and keep wearing it there, and you've thwarted your prophecy. Worried you've just met the man you see yourself leaving your husband for? Scream at him, yell at him to fuck off and drop dead, remove any possibility of a civil relationship! That old Nazi bastard says he's getting out of jail? Pull a Jack Bauer, torture his third reich ass until he tells you what he knows and kill the fucker (it's LONG overdue!).
But no, they just accept it. At least in Lost, they at least tried to fight it. Nowhere near as much as they tried in Terminator, mind. That's right, you all should be following Sarah Connor's example.

You know why I find post-apocalyptic settings so interesting? They make every day mean something. When you're surviving, every day so far is a day you haven't died. Where just living means you're winning. Trying to remember the last time I lived a day that actually meant something.

taken completely out of context from dar.dreamwidth.org

So, good news, bad news.
Good news, I found my bad guy. I'm rather impressed with him.
Bad news, thinking up stories and ideas in order to get to sleep doesn't seem to work so much anymore. I didn't fall asleep til about six a.m., thinking up my bad guy. Usually I just think and think and think until I forget I'm thinking and I fall asleep. Lately, the second part ain't happening, and I've never been much good at stopping the first.

So yeah, I'm writing again. I'm balancing a tightrope, trying to keep it up. A good sign is I'm not reading back every line thinking "THIS IS SHIT THIS IS SHIT THIS IS SHIT THIS IS SHIT". I am a little annoyed at how slow it's going, but I remember how bad things used to be when I just wrote without thinking or planning.
That's another thing. I can plan out a story with the best of them. I don't know if it's a strength or a failing that I can look at a fandom and appreciate it as it is instead of going "This is how it should be". I don't go thinking "Ooh, that character should go with that characters just 'cos I said so!". And when you're in tune like that, I think you get a better idea of what's more likely to happen and what's not.
So, I can make plans. I can say I know what X character is going to do, what's going to happen to Y, and why what other fans would want to happen for Z shouldn't. I see timelines, I see arcs, I see interactions and characters. So how come I never can when I'm trying to think up original stuff? When it's someone else's work, it's like playing with lego or editing, you know what bits go together and what doesn't. When it comes to my own stuff, I just get a vague idea.

...And the persistent worry that talking about stuff I'm doing is jinxing it >_>
Nah, my projects aren't jinxed. Just awaiting the return of my energy and motivation.

Okay, I'll say this. I like John Connor. I have a habit of (a) liking characters most other people don't (Shinji, Squall, etc) and (b) ending up liking characters and people I originally didn't take or or get along with much, respectively.
Some people and things I used to hate like crazy when I was younger, I love now. People I was sure about and kind to and trusting from the start ended up turning around and stabbing me in the back. On the other hand, people I had a rocky start and/or plenty of fights with are the single most important ones in my life. I love them unconditionally, and I'd walk through the end of the world for them. I'd do all the things for them I'd never be able to for myself.

Ah, doing things for myself. I always think I can't, and I run into blocked doors and obstacles and constant reminders of "You can't do this, you can't do that". And then I go and do things all by myself (usually by not listening to myself) and I do big, awesome things. ...That, more often than not, have had terrible consequences. The moral of this story seems to be that I shouldn't, but it goes over my head compared to knowing that I have strength and resourcefulness that surprises the hell out of me.
This is one strong reason why I like John, he reminds me of myself, and I love that for once I can say that about a character and it not be self-deprecating. He's constantly got obstacles and people in his way, and constant reminders of the things he can't do that come naturally to everyone else on the face of the planet. But then he goes and does things all by himself, without his mother and without Cameron, like following the Coltan shipment or confronting Jesse, and then you see just why this guy is so awesome.
So yeah, it's nice to have something positive I can relate to in a character. I'm sitting here, in my parents house, very dissatisfied with the state of things. Living in this house for too many years longer than I should have has retarded my development as a person, and I guarantee that's the only place you'll see proper usage of that word on the internet today.
I spend all my time between the laptop, the PS3 and books. And not for the reasons I used to. I'm lone, I'm not alone. And since that's been the case for, oh, a few years now, I think I'm sufficiently levelled-up in self-reliance for my own place.

I feel like if I could just reach out and grab my own job all by myself, then that would be nothing but awesome and a sign I'm finally playing this game for real. The NPC has told me the bridges are open. Now, if I could just pay the toll...

taken completely out of context from dar.dreamwidth.org