Another Status Update

Seems to be all I do, lately, sorry.

Gonna be writing a lot this next week because apparently they're taking away 99.99999% of our entertainment at work and if I don't do something I will go batshit insane, snap, and start strangling people with a mouse cord. Can't guarantee it'll be precisely on-time - we'll see how people are actually adhering before I say one way or another if I'm going to be a bad corporate slave or a good one. Who knows.

Feeeck.

Ren faire was amazing fun the first day, pretty cool the second day. I got some kind of a ... injury, I guess, on my eye. Light bruising, hurts like a bitch, kinda itches. Sucks. Wore an eyepatch the second day to keep myself from touching it (and to keep other people from noticing it doesn't open all the way right now.)

'sall good. Can see fine, no big.

Sunburn: reminding us pale fuckers why we're not supposed to actually see our primary star much. Also skin cancer, but I don't have that and I am very thankful. Very pink, however. Pain is a thing. Not terribly bad though.

I got a new charm - a "Mysteries" rune in pewter. I liked the cut of it at the faire, and it caught my eye, so I grabbed it up. Bought my pentagram at that stall last year, too. 's good. Guy's accommodating to weird people who get pulled around by their urges, but I guess if you get paid to and cater mostly to mystic types (and people who just think they are) anyway, it's the name of the game, no?

Hum ... So, I had a tarot reading by a lady who's got 30+ years of experience. It was ... interesting. Did a ten card spread and drew three cards for an 'angel blessing' thing.

The 'angel blessing' went as follows (might be colored by me putting on my people-friendly face):

1) Leadership
2) Peacefulness
3) Seeing the Good in Others

I don't really know about 1 - I have a very hard time seeing anything good about myself so ... yeah. You judge that, I'm not capable.

2, though - I hate conflict. I avoid it where I can, and ignore it when I can't. Rarely do I get embroiled in that kind of a thing. So yeah. Makes sense.

The third one ties into the second one - I can see just about every side of an argument and weigh them out equally. I just ... tend to ignore the bad parts when I can, because, well, see #2.

Don't quite completely remember all of the 10-card spread, but here's what I remember of it.

First card: The Emperor, inverted. (A very confused man, lol.) Fits well enough.
Second card: The Devil. (Obsessive. GIMME GIMME GIMME. I want things.)

Some other things turned up. Eighth card was the three of swords (gee, where have I seen you before, you little bastard.) Handful of pentacles, because I do worry over money a bit, don't I.

Things she pegged: "A very confused man" as the self card - Very much a tomboy, almost all of my hobbies are 'masculine' and such. I don't really think of myself in terms of gender, but I'm certainly not terribly feminine, tits aside. I don't actually understand women, and I have no interest whatsoever in mind games and obfuscation. The only times I don't say what I mean ... well, see #2 above. Pick and choose your battles, folks, because fighting is damn tiring and you lose more than you win. Always.

I do tend towards obsessive habits, yes. Granted. Moving on.

One of the themes she kept bringing up was that in relationships, A) I've been burned in the past and would like to avoid a repeat performance, and B) when I'm trying to initiate one, I tend to give far more than I get back ... which is actually how I get burned. I don't generally like relationships besides, and I usually don't actually want most of what people are supposed to get out of them ... also I tend not to initiate them in the first place (what can I say? Everyone I've connected with emotionally now has a relationship physically and is more like a sibling than a lover anyway).

How I got burned in the past? Well, the most recent one, I got what I wanted early on and didn't know how to kick the guy to the curb afterwards. Since, well, see #2, I tend to get entangled in shit I don't mean to and don't want to because it's easier than the alternatives.

So ... yeah. How about that obfuscation I don't do?

Oh, one thing it'd be nice if it were true - she claims that sometime in the next ten months I'll hit some kind of financial windfall that will make me happy.

Gods and goddesses all help me but I can't think of anything.

Maybe I'll win the lottery, lol.

In other news, baby animals! D'awwwwwwwwwwwwwww.

Do want.

... Aw. I did a Google vanity search and apparently my use-name is no longer unique to me. Oh well, on the forums I frequent I'll still prolly be the only one (which is better than I can say for Neko.)

I think we can honestly admit that the schedule is actually Tues-Weds-Fri where I occasionally post on Monday now and then.

/koff.

Sorry, Monday is one of my days off from my Real Job OMG, so I tend to not do anything worthwhile on Mondays.

This Monday, though, they released Dominion. So it's less that I didn't do anything worthwhile - I made a whole bunch of stays for the corset I'm helping to craft - and more that the entire day was spent pwning - and getting pwned by - noobs.

It was awesome.

What can I say about Dominion ... it's very, very fast paced. That's the main thing. Slower champions, champs that only have a good lane phase, and support are generally kinda boned in favor of A) Backdoorers like Shaco and Eve, B) TankyDPS (as always), C) Movespeed champions (lookin' at you, Janna/Rammus). Stealth gets a huge buff because of the Oracle's nerf/total absence of wards, making all stealth champions infinitely better than they were in TT (since most of them are also carries and very squishy besides), and SR, where everyone with a brain will buy pink wards and pinkeye to curbstomp stealthers. Plus, both Twitch and Evelynn need to do very, very well within their first three to six levels to accomplish anything in Summoner's Rift - in Dominion, the first four levels pretty much are given to everyone, with gold to match.

Everyone dies a lot, because the entire game is teamfights, skirmishes, and running around the map killing everybody else. A pro Rammus player will pretty much carry the entire game due to being essentially omnipresent.

Rather glad I've got a friend who plays a pro Rammus, though.

Because of the fast pace, games snowball pretty hard - even worse than Twisted Treeline, actually. If you start the game and someone disconnects, it's pretty much a given that you're going to lose. On the plus side, however, that means that the game is usually over one way or another in about twenty minutes - exactly how long games that snowball that badly take in Summoner's Rift before the other team surrenders, actually.

I do like the personal score feature - it lets you know who's actually contributing one way or another, providing you a little info as to what you actually did to earn personal score as you do it. For instance, capturing a point is +40 personal score, where you periodically get an additional +5 score when defending a point. The most amusing one to me so far is the 'martyr' points - I suspect it has something to do with dying while defending or supporting an ally, though I'm not really sure.

So far my favorite champion for Dominion is pretty much Singed, though I did pick up Janna, play her, and win all in the span of about thirty minutes total (including buying the champion.)

Favorite quote from Dominion so far: "Dominion has been out for less than a day and I've already forgotten what Summoner's Rift even is, lol."

(So tired, I stayed up until derp o'clock playing League of Legends.)

"Gifted" is the Term

Or: Intellectually Gifted, Socially Cursed

They call it 'giftedness.'

It's a capacity for learning more effectively than those who would otherwise be considered your peers. It's a curiousity and a hunger for new knowledge, and an inability to be fully contented with incomplete or inaccurate answers. It's a talent for nearly every single thing you try, to the extent that there are so many options you become paralyzed with indecision.

It's not really just a gift, but also a curse. Being more intelligent marks you as different - and being different is generally considered a bad thing. Using the larger vocabulary you're 'gifted' with leads to a lot of blank stares. The same goes for any of the knowledge or trivia you've picked up along the way. People just don't care, and a lot of times they'll mock you for caring.

The standards are all higher. I remember as a child, I was actually embarrassed of my "A's" because nobody else really seemed to get them, and I did not have to try for them. A "C" was almost devastating because ... well, it's like getting an "F" if you generally get "C's." I never once actually got an "F" - the closest I ever received was a single "D" throughout my entire K-11 1/2 education (there was a bit of a dispute in my Senior year and I ended up graduating early to resolve it). In standardized testing, the one outlier among an otherwise nearly flawless score was in math - and even that, at about half the rate of my other abilities, was still an "average." My perception remains to this day that I am very, very bad at math, despite at least half of all other people being worse.

In a lot of cases, I tend to think, "I'm not really good at this, everyone else just sucks."

Mom has a funny story: after my first day of kindergarten, I came home and complained that I already knew everything they were trying to teach me. This didn't abate until I reached college. I never learned to study, or had to work to overcome challenges - which meant that in college, I actually started to get the C's, D's, and F's that I often overheard other people talking about, because I never had to work for anything. Even working my hardest, I was disorganized and frustrated with everything, because suddenly, things became hard. I couldn't read during classes like I tended to do as a kid, because I had to actually think about what I was being presented.

Giftedness also leads to social isolation - especially if anybody knows about it. In grade school, when I was first ... let's call it 'diagnosed,' what they did to determine this status was to pull a number of students out of their normal classes and put them through a battery of tests. I remember one of the tests involved a bunch of lines on a paper, and you were supposed to make pictures out of them. I drew some books. Even that early on, I indulged in too much escapism.

From there on, they continued to rip about six of us out of our normal curriculum in order to try and educate us at a level above and beyond our peers ... the problem was, it was ill-organized, ill-directed, and they didn't really try to teach us anything advanced, just different things than everyone else learned. I had a shaky foundation in my normal classes because I missed about half of the content. I was able to overcome what this did to my actual scholastic performance, but I wonder sometimes how well.

One of the other kids actually asked me for one of these noisemakers that I'd gotten - little packets of gunpowder that made a loud snapping noise when tossed on the ground. I gave it to him under the assumption he wouldn't do anything too terribly stupid with it. He got caught using them in the boy's restroom, and I got in trouble for 'taking advantage of someone less intelligent.'

I remember when we moved into the city, it wasn't a terribly large change for me, because honestly, I didn'thave that many close friends. There were two or three people I associated with, but they weren't really friends. The one person I would have considered a friend who could think on my level (some six or seven years older than I was, who made the wise decision to deliberately fail the talented and gifted testing) made it his life's ambition to get away from the small town and the psychic leeches that made up his family. I wonder where he ended up sometimes. He was the one who introduced me to the wider world of the internet, and online games, for that matter.

I don't really know what the point to writing this all was. Just needed to get it out of my system, I think.

4:04 AM (Error)

Logic not found.

So, this is something that is slowly driving me nuts, and that is, logically, there is no significance to be associated with strings of identical numbers, especially date/time stamps. There just isn't, really. So why does the brain latch onto them? Why does that pop up everywhere as something of significance?

Well, like a lot of other answers given: most writers are human, and most readers are human. Human brains are hard-wired toward pattern recognition and the easiest, most obvious pattern is 11:11 11/11/'11 (which happens once or twice per time zone this year, incidentally, depending on if you use military time or not.)

I latch most often onto a string of 1s, if it was non-obvious. 3:33 too.

Short, thumb-typed post because I'm going to enjoy the weekend with a minimum of stress. Delicious holiday pay and rest. Monday is a normal day off for me but hey, getting paid for nothing is kind of awesome.

Money is also kind of awesome.

Oh, two things: one, is anyone else weirded out by M's description (the yellow hoodie mostly) cropping up in the latest Marble Hornets? I'm aware most of the Mythos regards MH as Not Real But Entertaining And Probably Ruined Your Life, while The Tutorial gets an Is Real And Should Be Your First Stop, but it's still creepy.

Two: expect some gushing in the non-distant future about both Rift and League of Legends. That'd be because they're how I'm currently passing my free time. (My otherwise empty work hours are sort-of dedicated to this cross-stitch pattern I'm working on.)

Lastly, why the title? That's when I started this post, silly! ... It's raining again.

You All Meet In A Tavern

Or: But I don't even drink!

So, tavern-based roleplay. It's like a single's club for dark, brooding, sociopathic menaces to society. I haven't had to stoop to this in a while.

Tavern roleplay, like the aforementioned single's club, is a great way to meet people. The very nature of the place demands people attend. My very first experiences in roleplay, in fact, were through tavern RP - in ancient MSN chat rooms where typing speed determined victory - no lie! Nowadays, if your characters get into a violent conflict of interest and the other guy responds with a rapid-fire series of posts detailing the utterly one-sided victory he's just stolen from your battered corpse, you turn and walk away, slapping him with an /ignore so fast their head spins clean off.

At least, that's what I do.

So, anyway, there are some benefits to tavern RP, but there are some drawbacks as well. Like I mentioned up there in the subtitle (who reads those anyway?), the tavern just isn't the place for everybody. Raise your hand if, like me, you've never set foot in a bar for recreational purposes.

Now, put your hand down; you look kind of silly.

I imagine anyway. No, I really can't see you.

The point is, not every character is going to work well in a tavern. Shy characters and claustrophobes spring to mind. Honestly, would Loner McWoodsy - the high elven ranger so feral he understands his wolf companion better than other people - really spend much time in any civilized establishment at all? Really?

No, not really.

That's what I thought.

Not only that, but what about all these great warriors, mages, healers, and little kids? (I've seen it.) I'm reminded of the scene in the original Mass Effect where Shepard tells off General Septimus for acting like a drunkard instead of the proud military man he's supposed to be.

Assassins I can forgive, since they need a place to meet up with potential employers but ...

I guess what I'm trying to say is, if tavern RP is the only kind of RP you have on your server, there's a problem. And the problem is only highlighted, underscored, italicized, and in bold print when even that's nonextant.

So I moved servers. I'm quite content with the change.

Nothing else to report though.

Po-tay-toes

So, I poked a friend with 'what the hell should I write about' because yeah, still completely and totally dead upstairs.

Yeah, so, he's a smart-ass and says: "Potatoes."

So I'd like to talk to you today about something reasonably cheap that tastes awesome.

Potatoes.

Because my brain is mushy.

Need: One-to-many potatoes, your choice of condiments.

So, you take a standard potato. You wash it off, just hot water or something, make sure there isn't any dirt on it, right? Then you stab it a couple of times with a knife, 'til it's got a few holes in it. Wrap it in a damp paper towel, microwave it say ... one or two minutes, flip it over. Microwave it another one or two minutes.

If it feels kind of squishy, it's done. Otherwise give it a minute or so longer.

Then you sit it in a bowl or on a plate or something, cut it open, put on whatever you want. For me that's butter or ranch dressing, shredded cheese, some chopped onion, bacon bits.

Delicious.

Pretty filling, too. Rather cheap. Nice break from 'ramen' when your income is 'little to none.'

Fucking economy.

I am bad at recipes.

Reality

I want to get this off my metaphorical chest before anyone comes here for the wrong reasons:

I started this blog on a whim, with the off hope that I might scrounge up some additional cashflow while writing it. Hence the ads (which have become increasingly more depressing, I might add), and the donate button, especially.

This is not another ARG.

This is not a blog specifically started up to document the Slender Man wandering around my house being all spooky and demanding my twenty dollars (I don't even carry around cash ffs).

This is just me writing about whatever happens to be in my head, and yeah, the Mythos has kind of a way of embedding it in peoples' subconscious minds, but I am not writing about it because I want to be ... I don't know, linked somehow to it, leech off its fame, whatever. I'm writing about it because it happens to be there, and I can't really tell my subconscious mind to stop fucking with me.

I don't plan to lie to you about anything. There aren't any secret clues or mysteries to be found here. Sure, I'll omit things - leaving my exact location/name for privacy/security reasons, for example - but I'm not going to lie about anything and then pass it off as reality.

Even the backwards writing and the coughing is easily explained rationally: I've been able to write like that for ages, and it just struck me as the thing to do for that post. And, well, I'm allergic to this entire fucking state. I've always got a minor sinus infection of some sort going on.

This is just me writing about my boring life.

Now, that doesn't mean I plan on, I dunno, going out and telling other people to stop having fun with their ARG, or even to point out that it IS an ARG anywhere else. Hell, for all I know, having never met the people out there or the Man himself, it might well not be, which is a good thought for never sleeping again, now isn't it? Believe me when I say the uncertainty of that has ....

huh. I kind of got distracted reading comics and stuff and completely forgot where I was going with this.

I actually don't think any of that really needed to be said, but since I've got massive writer's block due to not ... really having a ton of stuff going on in my head, this'll have to do.

'Til Friday.

Being sick is really leeching my brainpower.

Sensory Overload

So, in an attempt to be somewhat more cheerful than Friday's uh ... BLACK ABYSS of DESPAIR, I decided I'd elaborate on some of the topics mentioned there, especially the sensory thing, which you might have guessed by the title.

Because describing my perception of the world has always been incredibly cheerful before. Yep.

So, TL;DR: I seem to have reasonably acute senses when measured against other people. Kind of. The end.

For anecdotal proof, read on:

I took some psychology classes in college and high school as electives, because the subject interests me. I can't really recall if this happened in college or high school, but one of my psychology teachers set up sensory tests as part of the chapter on the senses. The one I remember vividly involved the sense of taste: the teacher presented four jugs of water and insisted only one of them had a minimal amount of sugar. This was untrue; all four jugs had a different amount of sugar in them. All four of the glasses of water I was presented with tasted different.

So yeah. That's nice.

The hearing ... hm. I've got a couple of stories on that. When I was very young, they put us through a few hearing tests, one of which was off in a kind of in a quiet room. Essentially, the idea was to raise your hand when you heard a beep, depending on which ear you heard it in. Well, I raised my hand when a phone three rooms away rang, despite the noise-canceling headphones I was wearing at the time. This sense hasn't really diminished much at all over time, probably because I don't really think "bleeding ears" is an acceptable decibel level for music to be played at. On a practical level, this is a huge advantage in my current - and previous - lines of work. At the haunted house, it allowed me to filter through the din of all the ambient noise and music to hear where a group of customers was, pretty much throughout the house. At a call center, it helps when a customer is softspoken and can't seem to figure out which part of the phone to speak into.

Sight is ... interesting. As I might have already mentioned, I've got significant visual disturbances that no eye doctor has been able to attribute to actual physical damage. It's probably some kind of disruption in the nervous system. Or alternatively, y'know, crazy person. I also wear corrective lenses as I am nearsighted. That said, up close especially, my eyesight is fairly acute. In addition, I have remarkable night vision, which is both a positive and a negative. On the positive side, we have all the normal benefits of good night vision, plus things like this post, which was written with the aid of a very dim, green, LED bulb placed across the room in otherwise complete darkness. With the aid of a glow stick, I was actually able to write at almost my normal font size, and read with no difficulty. On the negative side, we have a certain amount of photosensitivity: bright lights are uncomfortable, especially oncoming headlights on the road, for example, but also a bright, sunny day can, if I'm not prepared for it, lead to a bright, shiny headache.

Smell is one of the less useful senses for me, and I seem to be more easily overwhelmed by powerful odors than most people. However, since most of the people I know are smokers due to the whole "call center" thing, it's not really like I've got any kind of baseline to work against If possible, I completely avoid the perfume and detergent aisles of any store; they make me lightheaded and dizzy. Smell is also one of the easiest senses to ignore in day-to-day life, and one of the harder senses to measure against any other person's regardless.

Touch is ... well, pain is part of the sense of touch, right?

I can't say I feel much of anything acutely, other than pain. And cold. And pain as a result of intense cold. Painkillers don't really work effectively for anybody in my family, least of all me. I also tend to ignore my body unless it's actually in pain, and even then, if I distract my mind, I don't even often notice there's anything to feel until it's excruciating. I do know I have a completely numb patch on my right leg that sometimes hurts when touched. I suspect nerve damage from an early-life bee sting to be the culprit: I had a bad allergic reaction.

I like to run my hands along walls as I walk.
It helps ground me in reality.

I don't think I'm really outside the parameters of normal human functioning, as far as sensory data goes. I just know that some things, like the gentle clicking whir and beeping of my computer's normal operation (distinct from the fan), is audible and comforting, while the high, shrill noise of a supposedly "off" TV sets my teeth on edge, and most people seem oblivious to these things.

So there. Probably the most boring thing I'll ever write.

Hooray.

You probably should've quit reading this at the TL;DR.

It rained today. We're under a flood watch.
It was so cold the rain became a centimeter-thick sheet of ice on my car.
It hurt so much to scrape it off with my bare hands.

2/15/2011 EXPLODING QUIETLY

My thought patterns are a little bit disturbed right now.

If you want a normal happy blog you might want to check back Monday  

NEVER

HA HA HA

LONELINESS:

You are not alone.

And yet you are alone.

So very alone.

LONELINESS:

You are not alone.

And yet you are alone.

SO VERY ALONE.

SO

INSIGNIFICANT 

I hate

everything

There's a RINGING in my ears

I'm probably going deaf. 

You know you say that but you really do have good hearing. How else do you hear the noises in the walls when all else is quiet? 

The sensory tests ... that call the quality agent couldn't even hear words in, raising your hand because you heard a phone ring in the next room over despite noise-cancelling headphones, your night vision is remarkable. Writing normally, by GLOWSTICK. All four glasses tasted different. Hearing the high whine of an "off" TV. Perceiving that there are worlds on worlds of color.

Oh god.

That drawing.

Any kind of free thought is unsettling. Like that simple pencil drawing on black paper. You got an honorable mention for an hour's work.

 I hate everything.

I try not to think too much.

There is static in my EYES.

Usually I can at least outline the chaos

I bet you $20USD I can't read even half of this in the morning.

my head hurts

everything

hurts

Oh my god.

can we pretend (airplanes) = (shooting stars)?

                                     Getting Paid

                        Raspberry Cheesecake Cookies      BEAR!

Life is pretty good right now really, for me.  HAT! COOKIES!

  Think of 

HAPPY

THOUGHTS

Is this what going mad feels like?

If life is so good why can't I just focus on 

That?! 

I should try to make friends in real life.

Beneath the pleasant happy surface you are FUCKING INSANE

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Everything hurts

nanananananananaBATMAN

I feel so alone especially when there are a          I CAN SEE YOU

lot of people I can't talk to around.                        I CAN SEE YOU

OTHER PEOPLE CAN'T RELATE TO ME IRL.          I CAN SEE YOU

                                                                                 Noises in the walls.

I'M NOT             I          Darkest just before DAWN

PARALYZED     CAN'T     oh my god I think

BUT I SEEM       SEE       I'm actually going

TO BE STRUCK   ANYTHING     insane

BY YOU      So ALONE    can see you. "Going"?

So if it wears black clothing, dyes its hair black, is deathly pale, and cries a lot, is it a pathetic emo kid? I think it is. Stupid whiny bitch.
 99% of everything is SHIT                                                                           shutupshutup
So tense. Keep clenching my fist. And jaw.                  shutupshutup
              emphasize everything
Had a bit of a freak-out last night when I got home. Shaking and jittery.
"I'm having a panic attack!" Maybe it's the caffeine?
Is there anybody out there 'coz it's gettin' harder and harder to BREATHE.
Shaking cold                                trying to ... BUFFERING ... 
       BOOM                  .youarenotprepared.                  Dare you to read this.
ramming always works (with a bat)                     Assume it IS just    Then assume
                                                                                       an ARG               even one "Masky"
                                                                                                   takes it as srs as you do. Never sleep again.
If Mom died I'd fall apart. "Daddy" wonder what that's like. 

OHGODOHGODOH
GODOHGODOHGOD                         
OHGODOHGODOH                             Think of something else
                         GOD                          ANYTHING ELSE

Do you really think you could survive?
So when is the flood coming?


DON'T                The                  lol                f
NEED              rap has              plants          o
ANY              eaten my            grow              r   Red Robes
THING           Pandora    c        better           g         HANDS ARE SMALL
OR                   PAN         o             to             e          NOT YOURS
ANY                DOR         l         DEATH       t              MY OWN
ONE                     A         d         METAL       the              IDIOT
                        EAT YOU                               world        I hate you
OF                      Insignificant           what           More out of space than empty space
HIGHER       Little Blue Planet           am       Set the world on fire
PURPOSE                                              I?
       There is no one to answer.   Have always felt like I'm being watched
I don't feel safe.                 PARANOIA IS BAD OKAY. 
I don't feel safe in my house right now.            Shaking
I can see the light flickering every so often.         Cold            Automatic writing
I walked in tonight and I went straight for my sword.                        Shaking
                                          HANDS ARE SHAKING COLD              Cold

Sleeping with the light on again.
Blood red.
I DON'T FEEL SAFE

 MONSTER

INHUMAN 

YOU'RE NOT SPECIAL

YOU LIKE TO PRETEND YOU'RE SOMETHING SPECIAL BUT YOU'RE NOT
SELF-
IMPORTANT          YOU PEOPLE ARE ALL SO DAMN 
    FUCK 
EVERYTHING

Mom claims to have spoken to a psychic I never met who claimed that she was descended from some kind of red-robed ... folk. Powerful folk. But she's protected. BLOCKED. An angel guardian and an island of blissful ignorance. I am not protected. I don't think.
 I feel sometimes like there is something waiting beyond sight, waiting for me to drop my guard.

COLDCOLD
COLDCOLD
COLD
COLDCOLD
COLD

CAN'T SLEEP

So Cold

I think I'm really going mad.

Irrational

Can someone be said to be suffering from a crisis of (absence of) faith?

I think I have diagnosed a key problem with my psyche: I have significant difficulty with belief.

I have been raised as I think most Americans have, with an odd duality. At once we are told to believe only in the rational and quantifiable and logical, the hard data and concrete proofs in the world, yet then also we are told of Santa Claus, God, the Devil, tarot cards and Slender Men, and we are supposed to sort which of these are fiction from the facts.

I don't believe in God. Not really. I don't believe in God or Jesus, Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy, Slender Man or the Devil himself.

But I also cannot so blithely discount myths and legends, magical and unquantifiable lines of reasoning, just because I have not personally experienced anything that counts as hard, logical proof. There is an incredibly large chunk of my mind that simply wants to believe in something ... more. Something beyond the dull mundane world of phone calls and little handheld computer-phones and sleeping peacefully in my blissful island of ignorance. Some part of me wants to get the chance to talk to Cthulhu, no matter how much it would shatter my mind. I think there's a very real desire to be special or important, and I think most humans experience it, and I think that's part of why we devise our little religions with us as the center point.

This inability to decide leads to an ... unease, we will go with unease. There is a schism in my personality, a hard line between a very serious, stony side which believes only in that which I can see and feel and touch, research and prove, and a more ... childlike innocence, a willingness to believe and an enchantment with the fantastic.

I love the idea of magic.

I hate the idea of magic.

No, I really don't want you to try and convert me to your religion. What really makes you think it's all that much better and more true than any of the hundreds of other lines of illogical thought? What makes you think that believing in an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent deity (who actually still gives a damn about humanity, not to say a reality that, being omniscient, he/she/it knows inside and out, from start to finish) that rules over everything is any more reasonable than believing in an omniscient, omnipresent deity that gives out material wealth to small children over the course of a given holiday season (be it the Easter Bunny's chocolate Cadbury Eggs or Santa Claus's gaily wrapped presents)?

Yes, I really do want you to try and convert me to your religion. There's a certain ... comfort ... to belief. There's a joy in feeling as though you are a small part of something larger than yourself. The idea of being a large part of that selfsame entity is intoxicating, if foolish. There's a wonderful relief to the idea that a man with a gun might not completely and utterly end your consciousness just because your brain - and all of your chemical, emotional responses - have been shut down. I only ask for the one thing no religion seems able to provide: proof that cannot be explained by any other means. Proof that does not rely upon confirmation bias and self-delusion.

There's a reason I identify as Agnostic but actually don't try to think about it too hard.

My head hurts.

Now excuse me while I go sleep with the lights still burning because I can't disbelieve in the Slender Man just because He's probably fake.

Sleepy Freewrite

21 Jan 2011
Sleepy Freewrite

I need more sleep than I'm getting
I am having so many problems focusing I need to make the computer read it to me while I read it with my eyes. LOLOLOLOLOL

Slendy ruins techno and makes the TV antenna's loss of signal more worrisome than it should ever be.

He hit me with his ||||||||.
That's cool  ._.

There is a numb spot on my leg. It itches.

I am running out of paper

An if ye harm none
ABOVE ALL ELSE HARM NONE

Tappa tappa tappa 40k songs guy has music in his mind and it is hard to ignore when it escapes

ONE BY ONE HIS SPOTS FELL OFF
( X )
Splendorman -> Slenderman

I wonder if you can see the Slender Man in any other way than film if you are not his intended victim.

If the Slender Man was real and he abducts children and he always appears on film why is He not in more proud parents' home videos?

IT'S SPLENDOR MAN!!! :D

I can hear the music someone else is listening to at the other end of the table and only just cannot make out the words; it is very LOUD.

Wanna sleep. By the time this is read I will have moved to an easier work schedule and my brain will be less mushy. I am so tired and it is hard to keep my eyes open.

I can see the reflection of the overhead lights and my hair in my glasses which is cool. I watch shadows and reflections as much as the real world.

Burning eyes are burning. TIRED AND COLD my eyes burn

Mtn. Dew: Because we as a society have become too lazy to spell out "Mountain." WTF.

"I before E except after C."
"Well, what about 'leisure' and 'seizure'?"
"Ah, |||| it."
English is the language that beats up other languages and takes their loose grammar.

Germ-X smells like dying germs.

THIS IS DRY READING.

So very bored in the brain I am so tired.

|||| you SLabs. Only one Labyrinth, but everybody calls it SLabs. Why is that? Because SLabs is a subsection of HELL where bad tanks go to DIE. |||| you SLabs.

"Where were you when the world stopped turnin'
on that September day?"
America is self-important.

I can smell food because someone has food and I am hungry ANGRY SIMLISH AND ARM WAVING MY MOODS ARE RED-LINING I HATE YOU SELF.

Mood swings, of a sort.

I want a nap.
I want a nap.
I want a nap.
I want a nap.
I want a nap.
I want a nap.
I want a nap.
I want a nap.
I want a nap.
I want a nap.
I am not allowed to sleep.

My hand has fallen asleep and when I twitch my fingers I can feel fizzy blood tingling in my wrist and palm and fingertips all the way up to my elbow. I punched my wall on accident and my finger started bleeding it still hurts I think I have a minor infection.

TRUE ART IS ANGSTY.  I CAN'T SLEEP JUST WANT A NAP TO SLEEP IS THAT SO BAD?

Isn't it nice to have a computer that will talk to you?

TRUE ART IS INCOMPREHENSIBLE AS IS THIS READING MY EYES HAVE GLAZED OVER IT ISN'T VERY HARD I JUST CAN'T FOCUS RIGHT NOW AT ALL.
There are still things to do
And it is important that I do them
The channel keeps changing in my head and I have no control over the remote I can't focus I can't focus I can't think I'm so tired I don't know anything why am I so tired?

I am also sick.

Less than three, OMG LOVE COMPUTER FANTASY
Out of space now KTHXBYE

Who Am I?

Back in the game again, and the game is so very, very pretty now.


3:27 PM 1/29/11
The sun is so bright it hurts my eyes. I feel like I've made some kind of momentous, world-shaking decision just now ... if only I could remember what it was. Ah, well.

3:35 - I'm awful tired - since the closest civilization is the Imperial City, I guess I have to hope the guards won't recognize me. What did I even do to get arrested?

3:50 - Eugh, it's raining.

4:18 - Joking around with the guards is probably a good way to get locked up again, but it really seems like nobody else knows who I am, either.

4:23 - I meant to take a nap, but apparently instead I fell into a coma that lasted until morning. Ah, well.

4:32 - It's like I didn't even exist before I woke up in that cell. By Azura ... am I even real? "Perhaps the Gods have placed you here so that we may meet." Chilling, old man.

4:42 - I have memories of being a spellcaster - I remember how to use several spells, and I know what many more of them do. Maybe someone at the Arcane University will remember me? It's all I have to go on.

5:13 - Spoke to a woman named Bothiel. Have problems telling Bosmer from Altmer half the time. Bah. She handed me a list and said it was most urgent that the items on it be collected. Apparently some kind of bandits attacked the Orrery. Maybe I'll help out. I'm pretty sure Bothiel doesn't like me. Well, I don't like her either.

5:23 - Have decided to look up my own status in the Mage's Guild. I have to have learned it all somewhere, right? Starting with Bruma. Somebody has to know who I am.

$15 Social Life

So, let's play some Elder Scrolls. I haven't done that in a while, and TES5 has been announced. Glee and joy, Skyrim!

I'm playing The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. It's kind of my favorite, partially since I got introduced to Morrowind after Oblivion's release and the graphics did not age well. My $15/month goes to playing WoW as a glorified chat room, while in the foreground the character creation screen boots up. Ah, Oblivion, how I've missed you.

12:03 PM 1/29/11
Behold: in darkness, a doom sweeps the land ...

12:04 - You know, this game's facial graphics haven't really aged well, but the rest of it is still beautiful.

12:05 - Dunmer for min-maxing, or Bosmer for looks. HM.

12:09 - This persistent "staring at the sky" thing is seriously starting to bug me. Given my plans for a Dunmer to be the new Madgod, sure. She can be a space cadet.

12:16 - She looks dull, and a bit sad.

12:19 - Aha! Almost fixed the sky-staring thing. De-de-de. Looks more severe now. Blah. Sliders.

12:24 - I wake up in a corner of a cold, dark, cell. My head hurts like it's been kicked in by an entire herd of horses. I don't even remember who I am. Where am I? Why am I here? By Azura ... everything hurts. I can hear something in the distance ...?

12:34 - 'scuse me, playing with the skin color now. I made a goth! And she has a name. Amelie.


12:42 - Now what? There's a Dunmer in the other cell ... gah, I'm so confused. All this talk of destiny ... can that man have really been the Emperor? They left the secret passage open behind them. Since my options are "follow" and "Rot down here forever," I guess I'll choose "follow."

12:47 - There's no way this can end badly.


12:53 - I must have been some kind of badass before getting locked down here. I've got skills I'm pretty sure a simple commoner shouldn't. Lockpicking, swordplay, spellcasting ... I found some heavy iron armor, and it just felt right to put it on.

12:59 - My stomach is growling ... looks like grilled rat is what's for dinner.

1:03 - Regretting using fireball as a torch: vicious, murderous rats everywhere.

1:14 - Why would the goblins be standing at the bottom of a log trap? They're all greenish ... and crushed. Wonder if any of the loot is usable. (Answer: No.)


1:23 - I feel like an invisible hand is guiding me sometimes, sure. But the Nine Divines? I don't know if I believe in your human religion, buddy. Meh. Trying to remember if my birthsign was Thief or Warrior. I'm not feeling especially lucky, but maybe we'll turn that around, yeah?

1:40 - I've got a real torch now. Hooray.


1:41 - IT'S A TRAP.

1:45 - But I liked Captain Renault's sword. I guess I get to run an errand for the Empire. I do feel a bit guilty, letting the Emperor die, if I'm such a badass.

1:58 - Trying to improve graphics. Oblivion has stopped working. Dammit. Fucking crashes.

2:29 - Research online suggests SaveINI from the console. Hooray! Of course, there's no way to open the console with Vista or later as your OS ... Spell of Open The Damn Console, 'kgo.

Paranoid Freewrite

And a Friday Freewrite!

I'm actually considering, with the sheer volume of writing I'm doing right now, to change it back to at least M-F, every day.

Ah well, who knows anyway. ON WITH THE POST!

Paranoid
Freewrite!                      See you.                            Rar tentacles!

I have something on my mind, is it obvious?

You know, I really don't think the whole Slenderman thing is/is not real. Skepticism is extant but still causes paranoia. Go figure. Very suggestible with an already-present tendency toward obsessive thought. lolol.

Scars on an eye                     eyePhone                               water                     Out of
may not cause                    How is                                      damage                  warranty
blindness, just                       time found                            to be                       _
(less complete)                 to blargh and                              killing                    |  \ ET
vision loss.                                 POAST?                            phone                 |_/ AH
                                        smrtfone.                                                                  OMG(s?)
People             How is money supplied by presumably jobless people
Pinatas 4 more  for food and sufficient gas to continue running?  MY WHOLE MEAL COST
personable                                                  $20!                               FIFTEEEN CENTS
portrayals                Snow is very wet                                      If Slendy
                              and also snowy and in addition cold.     turned up it would        FAIL
Blarghing                                                                              be INSTANT hypothermia
in tha                                                                                  death. So cold.
rainz,                SO IF YOU GET OBSESSED
'm blargh     WITH (SLENDERMAN) AND THEN YOU
ing                   LOSE                   SLEEP AND                          Achoo!
in tha              THEN                  YOU HAVE A
rain             DIMINISHED IMMUNE SYSTEM                              COUGH
                     IS IT PARANOIA, SLENDY-SICKNESS,                      OF
                    OR ABJECT STUPIDITY WHEN YOU                        DEATH
                    CATCH A COLD?

Ramen Noodles: The official
foodstuff of runners.

Buy a bike: Ramen is cheaper than gas.
L( X )L 
     ___
|---|_|_
_|_|---|        <---- ((That's a symbol I like. It basically reads HI four times.))