So I decided I want ed to use more reffrences and citations here. Look at the last post! I did such a great job! So I was going to make a reffrence to a post I thought I wrote. And... I didn't.
I didn't even write it and forget to publish it, NO that shit just isn't real. I know I've touched on this topic before else where so I could go find it, but it really is an inordinate amount of effort. It isn't like this is going to be literary theory or the start of an inflamitory political discourse. Or even about high class geekery. Instead it is going to be about me. Yep little old me. I've been doing that alot lately but I've also been Nanoing and that takes a tremendouse amount of time. It really does. Oh well.
Anyway occationally I'll just be sitting around and something will come over me and I'll realize that things are going to change soon. Oppertunities will happen, doors will open, some will shut, but change will occure. Basicly, something will happen and all the sudden my staus quo will be in danger. Now I like to believe that my status quo and I have a healthy relationship. I accept some changes into my life with open, loving arms, and I am generally okay with it. Other times I am fending off said change with a bat and a fist full of furious anger. Also sometimes I accept it with a sort of dull placid inevitablilty.
Sometimes when I get these feelings I feel kind of paranoid and strange. Sitting there with my milk and cookies surrounded by candles all the sudden I look up from a book and go, "change is coming". Utter madness. Then when it does you end up saying to yourself, "Holy shit that just happened". That's the thing though I'll know it is coming but I'll never know what form it will take or how long it will last. This month it seems like my past is coming back to roost. People, some who I haven't spoken to in months, others years, still others 5 years or more are suddently showing up. Other times it is me going out and finding these people who I haven't spoken to and digging them up. Either way everyone who has started talking to me again is a welcome addition to my circle of socialization. Which is rare! Normally there is someone who I just have to throw out or something.
Anyway. I once wrote to Sasha about the ghosts from my past coming to haunt me. This was a time, like now, where people were showing up. However, some of these weren't welcome. She replied that ghosts are alright it is the poltergeists that you need to worry about. To this day I don't understand that. It's okay though because as of right now that's not happening to me and I am glad.
Oh well! I'm heading off, night you crazy kids.
Showing posts with label reflections. Show all posts
Showing posts with label reflections. Show all posts
Friday, November 20, 2009
Monday, November 9, 2009
Nerd Invasion
So let's try this again.
Last friday night was an event called Nerd Invasion, saturday night I held my own event called holy shit I am going to sleep, Sunday night was zomg I need to get my ass in gear novel wise, and now it is monday morning. There is a hurrican on its way but I is really no more than a baby hurricane and it is something that I just can't be bothered to get up in arms about.
So nerd invasion. Man now that was something. To be honest for awhile I didn't want to go to it. It looked stupid, small, and poorly organized. It most definatly wasn't wrong about the second two things but despite everything it most certainly wasn't stupid. Over the course of the last two days it has gotten me thinking about the ups and downs of geek culture and just how much I enjoy it.
It is said, by Socrates I believe, that you can learn more from someone in an hour of play than you can from months of conversation. I absoluely believe this to be the case, I know I've played with enough people to know that the way they conduct themselves during a game is fundamentally tied to thier charecter. That aside, there is also the deisre to play. The want to try new things, be challanged in diffrent ways, to set aside the division between competition and fun and just bloody enjoy yourself for an evening.
That said nothing is perfect. Tempers occationally flaired, and since nothing started on time the whole thing became an unending series of small disasters for the coodinators. But I wasn't one of those people. I was there to have fun. So was everyone else. There is a fundamental diffrence between a large gathering of geeks and normal people. Maybe the low testosterone and lack of sexual sleaze makes for a more relaxed environment, maybe it has to do with the fact that everyone in the room had at least 1 hobby and enjoyed talking about it, maybe it is because most of us have not forgotten how to laugh and have fun. I really don't know what it was. However, geek gatherings both large and small have a certain energy, life, and beauty to them that gathering of normal people just plain lack. At times it almost saddens me, even the girl who spent half the night sitting in the corrner playing her DS seemed to be having more fun that the guy who sits at a bar all night staring into space. Oh well.
It was a good time, a time where I hatched plots to change the world, talked to strangers, laughed, and truely felt accepted far more so than anywhere else. It was a good time and I hope it comes back to see us again sometime.
HIGHLIGHTS!
-The cat eared girl. Man other people do cocain to be more like this person. She was crazy, but in a good fun way. She had a whole bunch of glitter in her purse that she wanted to wear but didn't for fear of being mocked as a twilight vampire. I loudly decalred that it is time we take back glitter from twilight and with her unusual amount of excitment I ended up covered in glitters! It was awesome! Then anytime I walked within a 5 foot radius of her she would run, grab me, and drag me over to her covnversation to explain the glitter thing which was pretty cool.
- "Oh hey Mike good your here start moving these tables". To put this in perspective earlyer I had asked my friend if I volunteered to help did I have to pay to get in. He didn't know but he assumed we still had to pay. So I stayed at home. So when I show up in my suit I get let in before everyone else, because I am in a suit, and I end up moving tables and chairs around. Oddly enough, this isn't the first time I ended up rediculously nicely dressed while moving furniture. Last time though I was in a prom dress which makes it slightly more fabulose.
-That 13 year old. So I spent 2 hours gaurding a door because thats how late they were starting the music. As a result a large group of my friends gathered by the door + extra people hoping to get in. One person was this girl who we immeadiatly made friends with, talked to, and generally had fun with. After about a half hour someone realized she is still hanging around us, she is having fun, and we didn't know her name. Perfect for anime club, despite her age. Still hopefully she will come.
-In the same category of the 13 year old is Pirate Rae. I have no idea what her real name is, but what a fun little person. She apparently does voice acting for anime! But I didn't learn that until 4 in the morning when we were hanging out for the second time. I'm glad I met her though. Her friend was really nice to and was apparently all into me. Compleatly failed on picking up on that though which resulted in varying amounts of hilarity later on.
-Sean and I started to hatch a plot to make the world a better place. It was 5:30 in the morning and I was trying to go home. Yeah the event lasted from 7pm to 12 the next day. I didn't really start to slow down until 4. Anyone who says geeks don't do it longer and harder is an idiot. Anyway, we got to talking about the need for a centeralized meeting space for liberals to gather, in person, on a weekly basis, to discuss things like messages themes and ideas. There will be a specific blog entry on this subject later. It does directly have to do with gay marriage being repealed in Maine. Something might come of it. Nothing might come of it. However, for one half hour between 5 and 5:30 in the morning the two of us started hatching a plan to make this world a better motherfucking place. I just think that that sort of dialoge being possible in a place like that is a thing of pure, raw, beauty.
There are many more things I could list but I need to go to work. I just wanted everyone to know that this happened to me and it was grand. It is something I wish everyone could enjoy. Ah well.
Last friday night was an event called Nerd Invasion, saturday night I held my own event called holy shit I am going to sleep, Sunday night was zomg I need to get my ass in gear novel wise, and now it is monday morning. There is a hurrican on its way but I is really no more than a baby hurricane and it is something that I just can't be bothered to get up in arms about.
So nerd invasion. Man now that was something. To be honest for awhile I didn't want to go to it. It looked stupid, small, and poorly organized. It most definatly wasn't wrong about the second two things but despite everything it most certainly wasn't stupid. Over the course of the last two days it has gotten me thinking about the ups and downs of geek culture and just how much I enjoy it.
It is said, by Socrates I believe, that you can learn more from someone in an hour of play than you can from months of conversation. I absoluely believe this to be the case, I know I've played with enough people to know that the way they conduct themselves during a game is fundamentally tied to thier charecter. That aside, there is also the deisre to play. The want to try new things, be challanged in diffrent ways, to set aside the division between competition and fun and just bloody enjoy yourself for an evening.
That said nothing is perfect. Tempers occationally flaired, and since nothing started on time the whole thing became an unending series of small disasters for the coodinators. But I wasn't one of those people. I was there to have fun. So was everyone else. There is a fundamental diffrence between a large gathering of geeks and normal people. Maybe the low testosterone and lack of sexual sleaze makes for a more relaxed environment, maybe it has to do with the fact that everyone in the room had at least 1 hobby and enjoyed talking about it, maybe it is because most of us have not forgotten how to laugh and have fun. I really don't know what it was. However, geek gatherings both large and small have a certain energy, life, and beauty to them that gathering of normal people just plain lack. At times it almost saddens me, even the girl who spent half the night sitting in the corrner playing her DS seemed to be having more fun that the guy who sits at a bar all night staring into space. Oh well.
It was a good time, a time where I hatched plots to change the world, talked to strangers, laughed, and truely felt accepted far more so than anywhere else. It was a good time and I hope it comes back to see us again sometime.
HIGHLIGHTS!
-The cat eared girl. Man other people do cocain to be more like this person. She was crazy, but in a good fun way. She had a whole bunch of glitter in her purse that she wanted to wear but didn't for fear of being mocked as a twilight vampire. I loudly decalred that it is time we take back glitter from twilight and with her unusual amount of excitment I ended up covered in glitters! It was awesome! Then anytime I walked within a 5 foot radius of her she would run, grab me, and drag me over to her covnversation to explain the glitter thing which was pretty cool.
- "Oh hey Mike good your here start moving these tables". To put this in perspective earlyer I had asked my friend if I volunteered to help did I have to pay to get in. He didn't know but he assumed we still had to pay. So I stayed at home. So when I show up in my suit I get let in before everyone else, because I am in a suit, and I end up moving tables and chairs around. Oddly enough, this isn't the first time I ended up rediculously nicely dressed while moving furniture. Last time though I was in a prom dress which makes it slightly more fabulose.
-That 13 year old. So I spent 2 hours gaurding a door because thats how late they were starting the music. As a result a large group of my friends gathered by the door + extra people hoping to get in. One person was this girl who we immeadiatly made friends with, talked to, and generally had fun with. After about a half hour someone realized she is still hanging around us, she is having fun, and we didn't know her name. Perfect for anime club, despite her age. Still hopefully she will come.
-In the same category of the 13 year old is Pirate Rae. I have no idea what her real name is, but what a fun little person. She apparently does voice acting for anime! But I didn't learn that until 4 in the morning when we were hanging out for the second time. I'm glad I met her though. Her friend was really nice to and was apparently all into me. Compleatly failed on picking up on that though which resulted in varying amounts of hilarity later on.
-Sean and I started to hatch a plot to make the world a better place. It was 5:30 in the morning and I was trying to go home. Yeah the event lasted from 7pm to 12 the next day. I didn't really start to slow down until 4. Anyone who says geeks don't do it longer and harder is an idiot. Anyway, we got to talking about the need for a centeralized meeting space for liberals to gather, in person, on a weekly basis, to discuss things like messages themes and ideas. There will be a specific blog entry on this subject later. It does directly have to do with gay marriage being repealed in Maine. Something might come of it. Nothing might come of it. However, for one half hour between 5 and 5:30 in the morning the two of us started hatching a plan to make this world a better motherfucking place. I just think that that sort of dialoge being possible in a place like that is a thing of pure, raw, beauty.
There are many more things I could list but I need to go to work. I just wanted everyone to know that this happened to me and it was grand. It is something I wish everyone could enjoy. Ah well.
Saturday, September 12, 2009
...Sooooo 9/11 totally happened
It is wierd because no one really seems to care anymore which is rather sad but it is also rather appropriate. My own feelings about the whole event are mixed and bizarre. On the grand scale of things Columbine had a much more noticable effect on the way I live my life than 9/11 did. I felt that attack far more and it effected me on a number of personal ways that, while are all very interesting, not the subject of this blog. 9/11, by contrast, sort of washed over me in this nonchalant wave. Thousands of people died and it really really sucked but the whole thing just failed to resonate with me. The day it happened I threw someone out of my room for waking me up while he was trying to tell me what happened. When I eventually woke up I came out watched the news for an hour then looked around at my friends and dorm mates. They were, stunned, some traumatized, some transfixed by the tv which had been repeating the same facts over and over again ever since the second tower fell.
I looked at these people and and the lack of information being spewed forth by the news and I declared that it is now movie time, and went and got something light from my room. The Usual Suspects. After that it was like a spell had been broken. They relaxed started to function again, and once the movie was over they checked the news, then we watched another movie. This progressed on wards until late into the night but that first inintial jolt. Man those guys really needed it.
Other people needed it too. People latter on were unable to leave their houses fear for they would miss some valuable piece of news that would some how make all of this make sense. Like litterally they didn't leave their houses for weeks, for some people it became a severe problem for some people. Of course going to collage has shown me that there are pleanty of people wandering around this country whoes parents did a shit job raising. But whateva.
I'm not one for retrospectives of major events. I've never done a columbine one, I don't even know when pearl harbor happened, and I only bearly celebrate my birthday. But hey this is diffrent, and I am not entirely sure why. I didn't do a lot to remember 9/11, mostly I watched part of the first season of Rescue Me.
I like that show and I LOVED the first season of it. The first season really seperated out the diffrences between us and them. These were all people who were actually there at ground zero pulling charred mangled bodies out of the wreckage. All the charecters in the show were fundamentally damaged by this event and as a result their ability to deal with the world around them was also fundamentally changed. They just wanted to go on with their lives and they couldn't. They were stuck, held down by the crushing weight by something so enormous that I can't even really comprehend it. And yet...yet these people were there for all of it.
I think one of my favorite episodes is when one of the firefighters went to a post traumatic stress group and discovered it was full of housewives who got scared of the tv. No one in the group was actually there, and they had no idea what post traumatic stress actually was. The way he chewed them out was fan-freaking-tastic.
Sadly later seasons start to fail. It becomes less about damaged people and more about sevearly bad people who have shit things happen to them. Its still good but it isn't like that first season. That first season tapped into a pulse, it was smart, funny, sad, and it collected the feeling of a unique moment in our history that you can't ever really understand, unless you were there. Of all the media to come out surrounding 9/11 that show got it the best.
They didn't make it about politics, or conspiracy theories, or any of that other shit that people try to make 9/11 about. Michael Moore is paticualry bad about this as he will just sort of throw around planes hitting a building because it makes his point better. The thing is that 9/11 wasn't about any of that.
It was about people. That day thousands upon thousands of people had the worst day of their lives. Its worth reflecting on.
I know that years from now people will forget about 9/11 just like I forget about the bombing of pearl harbor. Already people let the day pass without any real thought. Although I would rather that then it be turned into another shopping day, which would be extra fucking lame.
Alright I said my piece. Yep I reflected and everything. So I am moving on to a different topic. Mmmmyep
I looked at these people and and the lack of information being spewed forth by the news and I declared that it is now movie time, and went and got something light from my room. The Usual Suspects. After that it was like a spell had been broken. They relaxed started to function again, and once the movie was over they checked the news, then we watched another movie. This progressed on wards until late into the night but that first inintial jolt. Man those guys really needed it.
Other people needed it too. People latter on were unable to leave their houses fear for they would miss some valuable piece of news that would some how make all of this make sense. Like litterally they didn't leave their houses for weeks, for some people it became a severe problem for some people. Of course going to collage has shown me that there are pleanty of people wandering around this country whoes parents did a shit job raising. But whateva.
I'm not one for retrospectives of major events. I've never done a columbine one, I don't even know when pearl harbor happened, and I only bearly celebrate my birthday. But hey this is diffrent, and I am not entirely sure why. I didn't do a lot to remember 9/11, mostly I watched part of the first season of Rescue Me.
I like that show and I LOVED the first season of it. The first season really seperated out the diffrences between us and them. These were all people who were actually there at ground zero pulling charred mangled bodies out of the wreckage. All the charecters in the show were fundamentally damaged by this event and as a result their ability to deal with the world around them was also fundamentally changed. They just wanted to go on with their lives and they couldn't. They were stuck, held down by the crushing weight by something so enormous that I can't even really comprehend it. And yet...yet these people were there for all of it.
I think one of my favorite episodes is when one of the firefighters went to a post traumatic stress group and discovered it was full of housewives who got scared of the tv. No one in the group was actually there, and they had no idea what post traumatic stress actually was. The way he chewed them out was fan-freaking-tastic.
Sadly later seasons start to fail. It becomes less about damaged people and more about sevearly bad people who have shit things happen to them. Its still good but it isn't like that first season. That first season tapped into a pulse, it was smart, funny, sad, and it collected the feeling of a unique moment in our history that you can't ever really understand, unless you were there. Of all the media to come out surrounding 9/11 that show got it the best.
They didn't make it about politics, or conspiracy theories, or any of that other shit that people try to make 9/11 about. Michael Moore is paticualry bad about this as he will just sort of throw around planes hitting a building because it makes his point better. The thing is that 9/11 wasn't about any of that.
It was about people. That day thousands upon thousands of people had the worst day of their lives. Its worth reflecting on.
I know that years from now people will forget about 9/11 just like I forget about the bombing of pearl harbor. Already people let the day pass without any real thought. Although I would rather that then it be turned into another shopping day, which would be extra fucking lame.
Alright I said my piece. Yep I reflected and everything. So I am moving on to a different topic. Mmmmyep
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