The apartment manager told me that they were likely going to replace the range. Despite the fact that it would mean having wasted my time cleaning it, I hope that they do. I wouldn't doubt if this one goes back to '70s or even the '60s. The range isn't why I chose the apartment, but a newer one (I'm thinking they might buy used) would be a plus.
Let me be clear, it was clean on the surface. Under the top, though, it was filthy. When I saw all the old grease, I wondered if you put two cockroaches in there, how many more cockroaches would it create from that food source alone? I'd give it a ballpark of 5,000, but you might as well stop counting after 800. Considering one or two are enough to make me twitch when I see them, hundreds are seizure-inducing.
Last night, I twisted my ankle, an injury unconnected to the move. I was taking out the trash at Dad's house and stepped on a gumball from one of those trees. It hurts, but I've been elevating it, putting ice on it, been taking massive amounts of aspirin and have been walking with a cane. I've been rewarded that it hasn't swollen. Damage from the internal swelling, I'm told, can be worse than the initial sprain.
The truly heavy work of the move is days away. Sunday, I hope. Then I'll actually be living in the place, of course. But I'll be packing up, sorting and moving smaller items for days or weeks. The good thing is, I have time to do it like this.
The bad thing is, of course, that even by the standards of taking my time and keeping it orderly, it's taking forever. I mean, the apartment wasn't extraordinarily dirty, far from it, but the cleaning is taking forever.
But that's part of me and part of my troubles on the job. It seems that everything I do takes longer than anyone else. I'm not saying that as just a gripe. It's true. Every boss, every coworker I've had has noted it. It's what led me to abuse amphetamine and caffeine and part of the reason I'm on disability now. It's not that I'm lazy about it either. I tend to space, my mind wanders or I overthink things. And it's one thing if you're doing it on the job, you might be accused of being lazy. It's quite another if you're moving into a place and it's taking forever because you're cleaning things too slowly.
What happens if I just go faster? I panic. I begin to abuse stimulants because I constantly fear that I'm not fast enough. In fact, I tend to panic and freeze up if anybody watches what I'm doing. I joined theater just to try to get over that, but it was a disaster. I have that problem, but then I also have marginal speech deafness. My hearing has been tested perfect, but I if there are any distractions in public, I can't understand people. For most the time in my life, I wasn't able to hear music lyrics. ADD medications helped with that. I changed my music collection as it totally changed the way I appreciated music. As a child and adolescent, I had a terrible problem recognizing faces. That did begin to get better in my twenties, thank goodness.
That, and the fact that I preferred to play alone as a child makes me wonder about Asperger's Syndrome. But I didn't have parents who gave any credence to psychiatry or neurology, or medicine in general, and my next brother had profound retardation. It was a great irony of my parent's that they and their family were beset most by medical problems that they found dubious, for religious reasons. The upshot was, any problems I had were dwarfed by my brother's. He needed my parent's attention more. Their couldn't deny his problems, but they could they could deny mine.
I rambled. Yes because I'm up late, but I went to bed early and got up in the middle of the night. I'll get an early start tomorrow. Soon, I'll be moved, and soon after that, I'll be settled.
Thursday, September 8, 2011
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Panhandlers and beggers
I encountered two different panhandling situations in the last three days. In one, I gave. In the most recent one, I didn't. Why? Because in the first case, it seemed like it was likely true. In the case tonight, I knew it was a con. However, upon checking, it seems the first one was just a better designed con.
In the one on Sunday, which I reported on Twitter, a bunch of people were walking with collection cups in traffic with a sign up. It said they were collecting money for the funeral of Robert Floyd. I guess that one resonated with me because my family and I just buried my mother. The sticker shock for the funeral was extreme. I can't imagine a family without the means having to come up with $13,000. (The sticker said $6,000 at the cheapest, but when all the expenses were added up, it came to $13k. Mom had made it clear that cremation was not an option.) As my brother said, the funeral director should name his yacht after our mother. Me? I prefer to think his daughter went through freshmen year of college from my Mom's death.
So, I guess it was the right con at the right time for the right mark. Not only did I give, I pulled out of traffic into a Rent-a-Center parking lot and gave five dollars. The teenage girl said it was to bury their uncle Robert Floyd. When I said I just buried my mother, I got no response to speak of.
Tonight I look up the obituary of Robert Floyd, and guess what? Either he's being stored in the closet until the family could afford to disclose his demise and bury him, or no such person died in my area, or seemingly, nationwide in the last week. Or in the last year. A dupe. A con. Or perhaps it could be called "an imaginative beggar's pitch." Buy our fantasy and you'll feel generous.
I gave $5 to those grifters. I should have called the police on them.
Tonight in front of a discount store, I ran into a different grifter with a different beggar's pitch. Unlucky for him, I heard the pitch before, by a guy who got caught in the lie. Moreover, tonight's grifter dressed his story in so many pathetic curlicues that he red flagged his it with less credibility. What are the odds that he's lost, looking for a large municipality (not a street), just got out of the hospital (wearing a bracelet, you see) just blew his money on a prescription (when he walked up to me from the opposite direction of the drug store he pointed to), desperately needs to pick up some kids (in his car, you hope) but his car is out of gas and he only has $1.13 in his pocket? Come on, guy, find one story and stick to it. When I told him no and walked away he said "God bother you." I've never heard that curse before. Hearing that line made the entire thing worthwhile.
The car broke down/out of gas bit I've heard before. It's familiar like a Nigerian Scapam to me. I was with some friends one night in front of a coffee house more than a decade ago when I guy walked up to us and said he needed to pick up his daughter who was in a somewhat seedy part of town, but he was out of gas. One of us actually gave him money. I don't remember precisely, but maybe it was me.
Not even a week later one of my friends who had been present told me that the same grifter came in the front door at his work asking for money for the same reason: grifter's car was out of gas and he needed to pick up his daughter from a somewhat seedy part of town. Again, the guy mentioned the exact amount of money in his pocket. This time, his mark, or at least his host, was a heartless, soulless corporation, with a guy there who had heard the pitch and recognized Mr. Tough-luck, who then went to jail.
I'll readily admit that I might beg at some time in my life. I mean to say I'm not too proud to avoid it if I need the help, but the line between begging and conning can become very thin. You have no way of knowing if anything they're saying is true. The fact they give precise details without being asked tells you something. People's desire to help can become a magnet for psychopaths. Also, in tough economic times, despearate people tend to listen to the psychopaths. That's how an entire family can be made to beg and walk out in traffic and raise money to bury their nonexistent dead relative, throwing all safety and dignity aside. A family was doing it, and somebody in the family was behind it.
What's sad is there a people who really need the money and help but won't ask for it. The Rush Limbaugh's of the world will say it's shameful whether you need it or not, and whether in crosses the line into grifting or not. No, it's those who use it as a racket who make it shameful for everybody else, and it's it's a shame that the best people should be made to starve, while the worst people are the wheels that squeak the loudest and therefore support themselves very well with begging.
Saturday, September 3, 2011
Moving Hell
For the work that I've done, I haven't got a lot to show for it. The only things I've been able to do so far is buy and move cleaning supplies in, find places to put them and add some extra lighting. Hard to believe that seems to have taken up two days. Of course, delays due to the lock and gas emergency led to some of it. I did get diverted today to looking at the neighborhood's famous open-air market. I bought lunch for three dollars, a bowl of rice and beans. It's a wonderful neighborhood to walk in with plenty of houses similar to the French Quarter in New Orleans, except in brick. Once I'm settled, hopefully before it gets cold, I should have fun just walking it and taking pictures.
I didn't realize how similar these houses were to dreams I've always had. It comes from my grandmother's old neighborhood, where huge spectacular houses of this style, practically mansions in their day, were abandoned, neglected and left to decay. It's the setting in my horror story Wil-o'-wisp. These, however, are mostly the idealized version of that architectural stereotype. As I post pictures, and I will soon, you'll see the idealized and the nightmare version.
The houses on my grandmother's street were mansions by 1860s standards. Unfortunately, after the Civil War, people began to abandon St. Louis. The city had already peaked, in population and importance, by the 1870s. After that, came Kirkwood, which was the first commuter suburb.The wealthy began to abandon Park Avenue near downtown for Kirkwood, the first community of its kind, and other suburbs like it. So, Park Avenue became the poor neighborhood. When it came time to set up public housing, they placed one of the biggest projects, the Darst-Webbe-Peabody project, right on Park & 12th (Tucker).
For me, though, I'm living in a cheap, decent apartment in Soulard, a great old neighborhood. The ghetto spot in the ritzy district. Despite all the troubles I've been having, it's well worth the wait, and I don't think I could have done better.
I didn't realize how similar these houses were to dreams I've always had. It comes from my grandmother's old neighborhood, where huge spectacular houses of this style, practically mansions in their day, were abandoned, neglected and left to decay. It's the setting in my horror story Wil-o'-wisp. These, however, are mostly the idealized version of that architectural stereotype. As I post pictures, and I will soon, you'll see the idealized and the nightmare version.
The houses on my grandmother's street were mansions by 1860s standards. Unfortunately, after the Civil War, people began to abandon St. Louis. The city had already peaked, in population and importance, by the 1870s. After that, came Kirkwood, which was the first commuter suburb.The wealthy began to abandon Park Avenue near downtown for Kirkwood, the first community of its kind, and other suburbs like it. So, Park Avenue became the poor neighborhood. When it came time to set up public housing, they placed one of the biggest projects, the Darst-Webbe-Peabody project, right on Park & 12th (Tucker).
For me, though, I'm living in a cheap, decent apartment in Soulard, a great old neighborhood. The ghetto spot in the ritzy district. Despite all the troubles I've been having, it's well worth the wait, and I don't think I could have done better.
Friday, September 2, 2011
Fatalities averted
The move's not a total disaster, yet. Today I had to call in a gas emergency. The gas man came out and discovered two leaks, plus that the stove was not up to code.
To give a little background, this management company doesn't really "show" people apartments for rent. Instead, the management gives them keys and let them look by themselves, with a stipulation that they'd report something wrong, like a burned out bulb and such.
When I first saw the apartment, I noticed an odor that reminded me of gas. Now, I was immediately skeptical, because I thought this management company couldn't be sending people into enclosed, vacant apartments that are full of gas. But, I did report it on the day I turned in the credit check application, which was a Saturday. I reported it as a smell that was "like gas," but probably not. The regular manager for that apartment wasn't there. The woman I reported it to said that I should tell the manager on Monday. She added that they hadn't got done cleaning it and bringing it up to spec.
Good, I thought, they would find the source of that probably not-quite-gas smell, which I thought was probably the result of grime under the stove-top. I trusted, though, that it would be taken care of, that the woman I talked to would leave a message for the manager, or that the maintenance crew would go through and clean. Then I went on vacation.
I thought no one would rent out an apartment that had an obvious gas leak, and that was a grave, though not fatal mistake. Yesterday I could still detect the smell, though I didn't feel light headed or get a headache or anything like that. Besides, on the stove, the pilot lights were on. No way would there be free gas with that. Wrong again, using errors to support errors.
Last night, I probably would have felt the effects, except instead of staying there and cleaning, I got locked out when the lock jammed first time I locked it. So, I waited for the locksmith and didn't get to clean. Today, I had planned to clean that stove under the surface, and first I was going to shut off those pilots. I don't like pilots on stoves anyway, I was going to use a striker.
I opened the top, and the air conditioner blew the pilots out. I don't smoke. I wasn't planning on relighting them, so I didn't bring a striker yet. Instead, I tried to shut off the pilot valves with the tiny screwdriver I brought. If only I had brought some pliers, because the valves were frozen. I looked for a valve to shut off the gas to the stove, and that was frozen, too. Now I knew the place had gas escaping into it, there was nothing to do but get out and call a gas emergency and then call management and give them the short version of what had happened. I set my card table up outside in the gangway, out in the heat, but it was very shady, if laden with mosquitoes. I sat on the stool I brought and it was that way that I met my neighbors.
The gas man came and I told him what happened with the pilot lights and he then he looks at the stove and tells me the pilot lights were out. I began to think he hadn't had a lot of sleep the night before, or something. Then he discovered that the line going to the stove was brass and not up to spec. He checked the furnace, detecting a gas leak there and also detected another one in the basement. By then, the maintenance man arrived. Apparently, it's up to maintenance now to track down the exact location of the leak and replace the line running to the stove. Meanwhile, I can't use the stove.
However, this management company wasn't only sending prospective tenants into a life-threatening situation, but it was endangering the other four people living in the building, including an infant. The apartment manager is there on Tuesday or maybe Monday, I'm going to talk to her. Meanwhile, I'm going to do some research on tenants rights and other legal issues that could be involved.
Of course, I'm not naming this company here. Anything I do depends on what they do next.
To give a little background, this management company doesn't really "show" people apartments for rent. Instead, the management gives them keys and let them look by themselves, with a stipulation that they'd report something wrong, like a burned out bulb and such.
When I first saw the apartment, I noticed an odor that reminded me of gas. Now, I was immediately skeptical, because I thought this management company couldn't be sending people into enclosed, vacant apartments that are full of gas. But, I did report it on the day I turned in the credit check application, which was a Saturday. I reported it as a smell that was "like gas," but probably not. The regular manager for that apartment wasn't there. The woman I reported it to said that I should tell the manager on Monday. She added that they hadn't got done cleaning it and bringing it up to spec.
Good, I thought, they would find the source of that probably not-quite-gas smell, which I thought was probably the result of grime under the stove-top. I trusted, though, that it would be taken care of, that the woman I talked to would leave a message for the manager, or that the maintenance crew would go through and clean. Then I went on vacation.
I thought no one would rent out an apartment that had an obvious gas leak, and that was a grave, though not fatal mistake. Yesterday I could still detect the smell, though I didn't feel light headed or get a headache or anything like that. Besides, on the stove, the pilot lights were on. No way would there be free gas with that. Wrong again, using errors to support errors.
Last night, I probably would have felt the effects, except instead of staying there and cleaning, I got locked out when the lock jammed first time I locked it. So, I waited for the locksmith and didn't get to clean. Today, I had planned to clean that stove under the surface, and first I was going to shut off those pilots. I don't like pilots on stoves anyway, I was going to use a striker.
I opened the top, and the air conditioner blew the pilots out. I don't smoke. I wasn't planning on relighting them, so I didn't bring a striker yet. Instead, I tried to shut off the pilot valves with the tiny screwdriver I brought. If only I had brought some pliers, because the valves were frozen. I looked for a valve to shut off the gas to the stove, and that was frozen, too. Now I knew the place had gas escaping into it, there was nothing to do but get out and call a gas emergency and then call management and give them the short version of what had happened. I set my card table up outside in the gangway, out in the heat, but it was very shady, if laden with mosquitoes. I sat on the stool I brought and it was that way that I met my neighbors.
The gas man came and I told him what happened with the pilot lights and he then he looks at the stove and tells me the pilot lights were out. I began to think he hadn't had a lot of sleep the night before, or something. Then he discovered that the line going to the stove was brass and not up to spec. He checked the furnace, detecting a gas leak there and also detected another one in the basement. By then, the maintenance man arrived. Apparently, it's up to maintenance now to track down the exact location of the leak and replace the line running to the stove. Meanwhile, I can't use the stove.
However, this management company wasn't only sending prospective tenants into a life-threatening situation, but it was endangering the other four people living in the building, including an infant. The apartment manager is there on Tuesday or maybe Monday, I'm going to talk to her. Meanwhile, I'm going to do some research on tenants rights and other legal issues that could be involved.
Of course, I'm not naming this company here. Anything I do depends on what they do next.
Thursday, September 1, 2011
Inauspicious new start
Signed the lease at 5, got the key, and immediately the lock jammed. I locked myself out after I emptied my pockets. I left my cellphone and wallet inside. I had the key, but it wouldn't operate the lock.
In a panic, I drove back to the management office. She said she would open it with the master key but she had to wait for a prospective tenant who was viewing another apartment in the neighborhood. So, I went back and waited for her, and in the meantime took some pictures of houses on the street, but more and more time passed and I got bored. I went back to the office hoping that I wouldn't miss her driving out to me. Remember, my cellphone was trapped in the apartment, along with my drivers' license.
When I got there, she told me they had called a locksmith and that he should be there in fifteen more minutes. I went back to wait. Fifteen minutes came and went. I began to wonder if I missed the locksmith as I drove to the office. Maybe he arrived early. I listened to the car radio. Then, I had to take a piss. With me, sometimes it hits suddenly and extremely. I didn't want the neighbor's first impression of me to be the guy who was caught urinating in public. However, I have to admit, I was scouting around.
Meanwhile, it's 6:30 p.m. and 101 degrees outside. It's good to know humankind has accidentally brought us Hell on earth. How have we offended the earth to cause that shit? In heat like this, even putting the key in the lock causes a flood of sweating.
Well, of course the locksmith arrived and he unfroze the lock immediately and moved the hasp. Then it worked as smooth as butter, or perhaps Astroglide.
It pretty much blew my plan for the evening, though, which was to clean it. With record heat, though, the window AC unit has to work extra hard to cool the place. I think I'll drop by early in the morning to activate it so it's cool later in the day when I come by to start cleaning.
I'm taking pictures of some of the houses around the neighborhood. I love the architecture here. It's the only place in town that reminds me of French Quarter, New Orleans, but there are differences that make it even better. (I'm not talking about the sex industry, or lack thereof, either way.) I'll post the pictures I have in a few days.
In a panic, I drove back to the management office. She said she would open it with the master key but she had to wait for a prospective tenant who was viewing another apartment in the neighborhood. So, I went back and waited for her, and in the meantime took some pictures of houses on the street, but more and more time passed and I got bored. I went back to the office hoping that I wouldn't miss her driving out to me. Remember, my cellphone was trapped in the apartment, along with my drivers' license.
When I got there, she told me they had called a locksmith and that he should be there in fifteen more minutes. I went back to wait. Fifteen minutes came and went. I began to wonder if I missed the locksmith as I drove to the office. Maybe he arrived early. I listened to the car radio. Then, I had to take a piss. With me, sometimes it hits suddenly and extremely. I didn't want the neighbor's first impression of me to be the guy who was caught urinating in public. However, I have to admit, I was scouting around.
Meanwhile, it's 6:30 p.m. and 101 degrees outside. It's good to know humankind has accidentally brought us Hell on earth. How have we offended the earth to cause that shit? In heat like this, even putting the key in the lock causes a flood of sweating.
Well, of course the locksmith arrived and he unfroze the lock immediately and moved the hasp. Then it worked as smooth as butter, or perhaps Astroglide.
It pretty much blew my plan for the evening, though, which was to clean it. With record heat, though, the window AC unit has to work extra hard to cool the place. I think I'll drop by early in the morning to activate it so it's cool later in the day when I come by to start cleaning.
I'm taking pictures of some of the houses around the neighborhood. I love the architecture here. It's the only place in town that reminds me of French Quarter, New Orleans, but there are differences that make it even better. (I'm not talking about the sex industry, or lack thereof, either way.) I'll post the pictures I have in a few days.
Happy heart, nervous, abused stomach
Sometimes when I'm nervous with anticipation, I don't eat wisely, in fact, I get eccentric. That happened yesterday, and my stomach is suffering today.
I changed my diet recently anyway. I've gone on a variant of the Adkins Diet. My Dad asked me why, and I said, "Because if you're a male over the age of fifty, your chances of developing heart disease are over ninety percent." He looked at me startled, like Mr. Three Heart Attacks, two stints and quadruple bypass thought I had nothing to worry about. Immediately he realized how weak his argument would be and let it drop.
The attitude seems to be in my family, and actually in a lot of families, that one shouldn't show that much concern for one's health. There's a shame involved, or perhaps a concern for being thought a hypochondriac (and I've psychosomatic illnesses before). Or that diseases should be regarded as God's choice. That translates to mean "random and out of our control." Trust prayer for your health. What's left unsaid is, trust laziness for your health.
Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the world. No, it's not exactly the result of the Western Diet, though the Western McDonald's diet might bring it on sooner. In physical terms, there's a major engineering/logistics challenge to providing trillions of cells with oxygen and nutrients. Probably the evolution of the circulatory system to solve it was the reason for the old "Cambrian explosion," where thousands of macroscopic animal species of novel variations suddenly evolved 530 million of years ago.
However, this means that the circulatory system is also the weak link in animal physiology. It's most important and most prone to catastrophic failure. Though cardiovascular disease is random, it's random like poker and not like roulette. You do have some control, some actions you can take to effect the outcome. Diet is known to be important. Controlling inflammation in the the blood vessels is also important. It's important not to eat things, like trans-fats or excessive sugar, that actually irritate the artery walls. Of course it's also important to control weight for many reasons. I won't even go into smoking and the ways it sabotages your circulatory system.
The Adkins diet is almost all fruits and vegetables. You keep calories from fat to less than ten percent total calories consumed, and avoid poly-saturated and trans-fats. This makes it almost totally vegan, the only animal product you're allowed to eat are egg whites. It restricts you on grains. You could snack as much as you want on fruits and vegetables. However, the diet is designed specifically for people who have had heart attacks and need to reverse cardio-vascular disease. That doesn't include me, so, I'm not that restricted. I'll eat a serving of meat once every other day. I don't totally avoid dairy, and add the occasional egg yolk to my food. I don't avoid high fat vegetables like olives or avocados. Instead of less than ten percent of calories from fat, I'll go with twenty, especially when I snack of vegetables that have far less fat content than ten percent.
With the move on my mind, where did this get me into trouble? By snacking on carrots, radishes, adding some pickled okra (high salt, I know) and olives to the mix. (Bean-O or anything with simethicone is a must with this diet anyway, otherwise you become a pariah.)
I chowed all this down at bed time and when I woke up, I knew my stomach had penciled in half my day for intimate time. The toilet has become my workbench for at least a few more hours.
Except for that damn okra, I know my heart is joyful at least. Oh, what price love. .
I changed my diet recently anyway. I've gone on a variant of the Adkins Diet. My Dad asked me why, and I said, "Because if you're a male over the age of fifty, your chances of developing heart disease are over ninety percent." He looked at me startled, like Mr. Three Heart Attacks, two stints and quadruple bypass thought I had nothing to worry about. Immediately he realized how weak his argument would be and let it drop.
The attitude seems to be in my family, and actually in a lot of families, that one shouldn't show that much concern for one's health. There's a shame involved, or perhaps a concern for being thought a hypochondriac (and I've psychosomatic illnesses before). Or that diseases should be regarded as God's choice. That translates to mean "random and out of our control." Trust prayer for your health. What's left unsaid is, trust laziness for your health.
Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the world. No, it's not exactly the result of the Western Diet, though the Western McDonald's diet might bring it on sooner. In physical terms, there's a major engineering/logistics challenge to providing trillions of cells with oxygen and nutrients. Probably the evolution of the circulatory system to solve it was the reason for the old "Cambrian explosion," where thousands of macroscopic animal species of novel variations suddenly evolved 530 million of years ago.
However, this means that the circulatory system is also the weak link in animal physiology. It's most important and most prone to catastrophic failure. Though cardiovascular disease is random, it's random like poker and not like roulette. You do have some control, some actions you can take to effect the outcome. Diet is known to be important. Controlling inflammation in the the blood vessels is also important. It's important not to eat things, like trans-fats or excessive sugar, that actually irritate the artery walls. Of course it's also important to control weight for many reasons. I won't even go into smoking and the ways it sabotages your circulatory system.
The Adkins diet is almost all fruits and vegetables. You keep calories from fat to less than ten percent total calories consumed, and avoid poly-saturated and trans-fats. This makes it almost totally vegan, the only animal product you're allowed to eat are egg whites. It restricts you on grains. You could snack as much as you want on fruits and vegetables. However, the diet is designed specifically for people who have had heart attacks and need to reverse cardio-vascular disease. That doesn't include me, so, I'm not that restricted. I'll eat a serving of meat once every other day. I don't totally avoid dairy, and add the occasional egg yolk to my food. I don't avoid high fat vegetables like olives or avocados. Instead of less than ten percent of calories from fat, I'll go with twenty, especially when I snack of vegetables that have far less fat content than ten percent.
With the move on my mind, where did this get me into trouble? By snacking on carrots, radishes, adding some pickled okra (high salt, I know) and olives to the mix. (Bean-O or anything with simethicone is a must with this diet anyway, otherwise you become a pariah.)
I chowed all this down at bed time and when I woke up, I knew my stomach had penciled in half my day for intimate time. The toilet has become my workbench for at least a few more hours.
Except for that damn okra, I know my heart is joyful at least. Oh, what price love. .
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Movin' Ramble covering communism, paleontology, vacation and poor Internet service
I'm now officially in the middle of the move after talking about it for half a year. I found the perfect small apartment in the perfect vibrant neighborhood. The move is going to be a trick. I don't really have a lot to draw on in terms of help. The standard stuff moves first, the bed, the desk, a dresser, and the PC. To my surprise, Charter can't hook up the Internet for a full week. What's with that, Charter? Are you trying to tell me I'm living in a 3rd world country that can't keep up with Taiwan in Internet service?
It does remind me of my days in the communications industry in the years between the dot.com/telecom crash and 9/11, working in Internet maintenance. I remember the empty feeling as management realized Internet usage was only growing at a quarter of what they thought. I realized that they couldn't get the capital to improve the Internet from private sources anymore. We've privatized everything with the Internet, and so we're under-capitalized and lagging every industrialized country. We have the narrowist Broadband.
You might tell that I'm not a capitalist. I think the capitalist ideal is a fantasy on par with "Lord of the Rings." It's really in to regard communism as a failure. While I don't have faith in communism, and I haven't read Marx, I'd say Bolshevism and all it's spinoffs are proven failures, but Marxism? Communism? I don't know. Also, everyone I heard attributes it to "central planning," when that's really what just about every company does. What the capitalist groupthinkers fail to consider is that Bolshevism was run by terror and enforced conformity. Maybe that was the reason for the failure and not the central planning? After Stalin, the most terrifying dictator, died, communism began to unravel, but it did take more than forty years to unwind.
We probably won't find out in my lifetime if other forms of communism might work, since it has been buried before the autopsy, and it's not going to be disinterred or reconsidered for a while unless people become desperate. It certainly does look to me like the wealthy in this country are doing their level best to prove Marx right after all, with the banking-mortgage scandals and TARP.
I went on a cheap vacation last week, to the beautiful Black River. I need to find out why it's called Black. It must have appeared different when they first named it. Now it was low, almost a creek. It's spring-fed, and almost all the water in it was spring-water. I do think about the Ozarks and how old those hills are. They're an eroded mountain range that go back to the Cambrian Period. For you Creationists out there, that's about five hundred million years before God discovered the earth. I just wish my State had dinosaur bones, but it was above sea level during the time of the dinosaurs, so everything washed downhill.
The vacation gave me a chance to sleep in a quiet place for a week, I came back feeling revived. Just in time for a move.
Usually, I meet with my writers group every week, but I might not have anything to present to them next week simply because of the move. I hate that, though, so I'll try to eek out something: a poem, flash fiction, anything.
Friday, August 5, 2011
My Depression: SF & Fantasy fans and Alienation
I lost a week to depression. It also effected my work in terrible ways. I was appalled and more than a little embarrassed at the critiques I got on Monday. I'm guessing now I wasn't quite myself when I wrote it. The depression wiped out a week of my life.
Two nights ago, I went back on my Trazadone. It's the one anti-depressant whose side effects I hate, but its very effective. Immediately slept 11 hours that night, with pleasant dreams and got up in a good mood, if a little stiff and with a painful muscle spasm in my shoulder (side effects). I hadn't been able to sleep, and at this rate, I should be caught up within a week.
Besides catching me up on sleep, it's the one anti-depressant that does prevent the heavy, downward swing, when combined with Buproprion.
People point out that we're over-medicated in the US, where doctors are wined-and-dined, and otherwise encouraged to prescribe medications. That all might be true, but if nobody has noticed (and there's a lot of people who haven't) things are very depressing now. Our economy is wrecked; our political process is corrupt; the citizenry is mis-educated and misled; the environment is being destroyed, and the world is overpopulated and full misery that will only get worse.
I realize there's a lot of good news out there. Crime is down. Teen pregnancy is at record lows. Automotive fatalities are as low now as they were in the 1950s. Those are things we had pipe dreams about in the '70s. New transmissions and mortality rate for HIV are down. The Mexican Gulf seems to have recovered from the Deepwater Horizon spill (though I'm still skeptical about this one).
Still, the bad news is overwhelming, and I'm not the only one who finds the bad news both sobering and a reason to get drunk. It may be true that doctors prescribe a lot of anti-depressants, but it's also true that most people willingly take them. They at least feel that there's something wrong.
Additionally, we wouldn't need so much escapism, so much media committed to SF and Fantasy, unless people really needed to remove themselves from the world. Look at any top ten list of box office movies in the 1930s-50s. There was not one SF or high concept movie on the list. In the early '60s, eight of the top ten shows on TV were Westerns.
The 1930s, remember, was the time of the Great Depression. The 1940s was a freaking World War. Yet, the movies were set in the real world. It appears that something in this world is somehow more stressful than the Great Depression and a World War.
SF geeks have received such a bad name recently (being called Fanboys or Fangirls). Not that they've ever been too well regarded, except now, people who actually make movies aimed at them admit to holding them in contempt (see Zach Snyder talking about his movie Sucker Punch). Not to mention the fact that those who see SF and Fantasy movies hold them in contempt. That's a bizarre case of self-hatred.
Nevertheless, they're people who feel alienated from the real world. Some are very intelligent. However, they have little or no power to effect what's happening now. To be accurate, in a culture that worships athletes and physical prowess, they aren't asked. They feel a disgust with what those in power are doing. Totally out of power, of course they find the real world boring. That's what I see in their personalities.
So, the geek looks to the future, after everything that's presently happening in the world becomes insignificant. They either escape there, or completely into a different reality, like fantasy. Or movements like “Goth” which celebrated the power of being dead. In some cases, however, they read or watch “cautionary tales.” Like the little girl in Pan's Labyrinth, sometimes fantasy doesn't let you escape your fear. Sometimes your terror enters your fantasy and it's no longer an escape. Usually, though, it's sublimed into a form you can fight in a way you can't in the real world.
Then there's also horror, my current genre. At it's lightest, it's an escape. At it's heaviest, though, it shows you a fantasy more frightening than reality. If anything, it makes the real world look better by comparison. It's also a way to ask disturbing questions that are real. A way, perhaps, to wake people up.
SF and Fantasy only became hot since the 1960s. I think it's from alienation. What else has changed in this culture that would explain such a great change?
So, now we have SF and fantasy and we have video games. Like religion, I'd call them the opium of the people. Or maybe religion is the opium while SF and fantasy is the crack and video games are the crystal meth of the people.
With me, that opium doesn't always work. For one thing, I know it's supposed to be opium. A layer of denial would probably make these far more effective.
Though, use of this metaphor does make me note that people do get high just to escape. The tendency to use drugs and get addicted to them, however, is set by biology.
I don't really escape from reality, though. I take medications to prevent it from getting me down. I used to have manics, too, a few were life-changing experiences, but those don't happen so much anymore.
So, now that I'm not down, I'm going to be working on my various projects. I'm going to submit my short story Wil o' Wisp this weekend. I'm keeping to who a secret. Let's just say, I'm starting at the top of the market and I'm working down. Thank you, Writers' Market!
Two nights ago, I went back on my Trazadone. It's the one anti-depressant whose side effects I hate, but its very effective. Immediately slept 11 hours that night, with pleasant dreams and got up in a good mood, if a little stiff and with a painful muscle spasm in my shoulder (side effects). I hadn't been able to sleep, and at this rate, I should be caught up within a week.
Besides catching me up on sleep, it's the one anti-depressant that does prevent the heavy, downward swing, when combined with Buproprion.
People point out that we're over-medicated in the US, where doctors are wined-and-dined, and otherwise encouraged to prescribe medications. That all might be true, but if nobody has noticed (and there's a lot of people who haven't) things are very depressing now. Our economy is wrecked; our political process is corrupt; the citizenry is mis-educated and misled; the environment is being destroyed, and the world is overpopulated and full misery that will only get worse.
I realize there's a lot of good news out there. Crime is down. Teen pregnancy is at record lows. Automotive fatalities are as low now as they were in the 1950s. Those are things we had pipe dreams about in the '70s. New transmissions and mortality rate for HIV are down. The Mexican Gulf seems to have recovered from the Deepwater Horizon spill (though I'm still skeptical about this one).
Still, the bad news is overwhelming, and I'm not the only one who finds the bad news both sobering and a reason to get drunk. It may be true that doctors prescribe a lot of anti-depressants, but it's also true that most people willingly take them. They at least feel that there's something wrong.
Additionally, we wouldn't need so much escapism, so much media committed to SF and Fantasy, unless people really needed to remove themselves from the world. Look at any top ten list of box office movies in the 1930s-50s. There was not one SF or high concept movie on the list. In the early '60s, eight of the top ten shows on TV were Westerns.
The 1930s, remember, was the time of the Great Depression. The 1940s was a freaking World War. Yet, the movies were set in the real world. It appears that something in this world is somehow more stressful than the Great Depression and a World War.
SF geeks have received such a bad name recently (being called Fanboys or Fangirls). Not that they've ever been too well regarded, except now, people who actually make movies aimed at them admit to holding them in contempt (see Zach Snyder talking about his movie Sucker Punch). Not to mention the fact that those who see SF and Fantasy movies hold them in contempt. That's a bizarre case of self-hatred.
Nevertheless, they're people who feel alienated from the real world. Some are very intelligent. However, they have little or no power to effect what's happening now. To be accurate, in a culture that worships athletes and physical prowess, they aren't asked. They feel a disgust with what those in power are doing. Totally out of power, of course they find the real world boring. That's what I see in their personalities.
So, the geek looks to the future, after everything that's presently happening in the world becomes insignificant. They either escape there, or completely into a different reality, like fantasy. Or movements like “Goth” which celebrated the power of being dead. In some cases, however, they read or watch “cautionary tales.” Like the little girl in Pan's Labyrinth, sometimes fantasy doesn't let you escape your fear. Sometimes your terror enters your fantasy and it's no longer an escape. Usually, though, it's sublimed into a form you can fight in a way you can't in the real world.
Then there's also horror, my current genre. At it's lightest, it's an escape. At it's heaviest, though, it shows you a fantasy more frightening than reality. If anything, it makes the real world look better by comparison. It's also a way to ask disturbing questions that are real. A way, perhaps, to wake people up.
SF and Fantasy only became hot since the 1960s. I think it's from alienation. What else has changed in this culture that would explain such a great change?
So, now we have SF and fantasy and we have video games. Like religion, I'd call them the opium of the people. Or maybe religion is the opium while SF and fantasy is the crack and video games are the crystal meth of the people.
With me, that opium doesn't always work. For one thing, I know it's supposed to be opium. A layer of denial would probably make these far more effective.
Though, use of this metaphor does make me note that people do get high just to escape. The tendency to use drugs and get addicted to them, however, is set by biology.
I don't really escape from reality, though. I take medications to prevent it from getting me down. I used to have manics, too, a few were life-changing experiences, but those don't happen so much anymore.
So, now that I'm not down, I'm going to be working on my various projects. I'm going to submit my short story Wil o' Wisp this weekend. I'm keeping to who a secret. Let's just say, I'm starting at the top of the market and I'm working down. Thank you, Writers' Market!
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
The Party's Over: The End of the Internet.
I know I haven't written in a very long time. I have a lot of excuses for that: my mother died (more on that later), I've been concentrating on fiction writing, depression, and maybe at other times just plain laziness. More than anything else, though, I'm not sure what direction I want to take this blog. I decided that I won't discuss family- - too many privacy issues over the net. That's about 40 percent of life I can't discuss right there.
Without knowing the exact direction, it's hard to get attached to it. I have to somehow fit it into an hour a day at most.
As a horror/fantasy writer, I guess one thing subject I can write about are real-life horrors. There are so many bad trends today. Like the political process, the economy, and "everything else," that is to say, the environment. I'm not an optimist. Because I'm an atheist, I don't think a God is going to save us from any of them.
Today is a minor horror: I'm foreseeing the end of the Internet, the only thing that has made last ten years tolerable.
A story by Gerry Smith in the Huffington Post tells us of a massive, apparently coordinated global spying operation reported by McAffee, most of it targeted in the US. The attacks were leveled against both companies and governments. “The data stolen included closely-guarded national secrets, source code, email archives, negotiation plans and exploration details for new oil and gas field auctions, the report said.”
“Last month, the Defense Department said foreign hackers infiltrated the network of a defense contractor in March, stealing 24,000 military files in one of the most devastating data breaches suffered by the Pentagon to date.”
The economic consequences alone are staggering. Dmitri Alperovitch, McAfee's vice president of threat research said that there has never been a transfer of wealth like it in the history of the world.
By now, it's apparent that the Internet, and computers in general, cannot be secured, that companies can't trust putting their data on them. The general public also is probably realizing the same thing. Privacy is going to come back into vogue.
The obvious, if unpalatable solution: don't put things on the web. I could see a backlash now where people and companies begin to withdraw from the Net: a great exodus. This will throw marvelous future we have come to expect since the 1980s into reverse. Markets will grow for “web-free” products and processes. Calls to do away with web anonymity and privacy will accelerate the process. People will come to see the web as predatory. Expect a surge in orders for “brick 'n' mortar” which might or might not help the company depending on the wealth lost by Internet based services. Expect also a surge in the use of plain old paper.
This has come in the wake of a few other problems that will also stymie the Internet. The upcoming lack of net neutrality will make it a less rewarding experience. Fewer people are going to want to sign on.
Innovation on the web is not going to be as bright and shiny now, either. Our stupid patent system, that allows anyone to patent the “picking your nose” process, is bringing innovation to a standstill.
Companies can patent anything with broad strokes and then sue over any product that rhymes with their patent is killing innovation. It's going to be difficult to reform the system, now that patent suits and their defense are a multi billion dollar industry. The lobbying against leaving it broke is going to be fierce.
It's adding up to the end of the Internet. The death of the dreams of the 80s & 90s. The Internet will have a niche. Just don't expect it to be the economic and innovation driver that it has been.
Without knowing the exact direction, it's hard to get attached to it. I have to somehow fit it into an hour a day at most.
As a horror/fantasy writer, I guess one thing subject I can write about are real-life horrors. There are so many bad trends today. Like the political process, the economy, and "everything else," that is to say, the environment. I'm not an optimist. Because I'm an atheist, I don't think a God is going to save us from any of them.
Today is a minor horror: I'm foreseeing the end of the Internet, the only thing that has made last ten years tolerable.
A story by Gerry Smith in the Huffington Post tells us of a massive, apparently coordinated global spying operation reported by McAffee, most of it targeted in the US. The attacks were leveled against both companies and governments. “The data stolen included closely-guarded national secrets, source code, email archives, negotiation plans and exploration details for new oil and gas field auctions, the report said.”
“Last month, the Defense Department said foreign hackers infiltrated the network of a defense contractor in March, stealing 24,000 military files in one of the most devastating data breaches suffered by the Pentagon to date.”
The economic consequences alone are staggering. Dmitri Alperovitch, McAfee's vice president of threat research said that there has never been a transfer of wealth like it in the history of the world.
By now, it's apparent that the Internet, and computers in general, cannot be secured, that companies can't trust putting their data on them. The general public also is probably realizing the same thing. Privacy is going to come back into vogue.
The obvious, if unpalatable solution: don't put things on the web. I could see a backlash now where people and companies begin to withdraw from the Net: a great exodus. This will throw marvelous future we have come to expect since the 1980s into reverse. Markets will grow for “web-free” products and processes. Calls to do away with web anonymity and privacy will accelerate the process. People will come to see the web as predatory. Expect a surge in orders for “brick 'n' mortar” which might or might not help the company depending on the wealth lost by Internet based services. Expect also a surge in the use of plain old paper.
This has come in the wake of a few other problems that will also stymie the Internet. The upcoming lack of net neutrality will make it a less rewarding experience. Fewer people are going to want to sign on.
Innovation on the web is not going to be as bright and shiny now, either. Our stupid patent system, that allows anyone to patent the “picking your nose” process, is bringing innovation to a standstill.
Companies can patent anything with broad strokes and then sue over any product that rhymes with their patent is killing innovation. It's going to be difficult to reform the system, now that patent suits and their defense are a multi billion dollar industry. The lobbying against leaving it broke is going to be fierce.
It's adding up to the end of the Internet. The death of the dreams of the 80s & 90s. The Internet will have a niche. Just don't expect it to be the economic and innovation driver that it has been.
Sunday, June 5, 2011
Why do I write best in my darkest moods?
I spent my whole life, and I mean thirty-five years fighting the stereotype of the neurotic, moody, unstable artistic type who labors out his creations on the edge of sanity, goes in and out of the hospital or rehab, and dies tragically of suicide, or of a drug overdose. More than likely he dies in poverty with a trail of wrecked relationships.
In the middle of adolescence I saw this as a distinct possibility and tried to avoid it. The main step in avoiding it was to take care of my sanity problem and try to clear the depressing and disturbing thoughts from my mind. Or avoid them as a writing subject. Meanwhile I tried my best to avoid writing about the things screaming in my mind or visions that brought tears to my eyes. No, that wasn't going to be my life. I was going to be someone who had it together, who could hold down a real job and write.
In an important way I succeeded. I avoided drugs and alcohol throughout my life. I might have been hospitalized, but I was never in rehab. So I never complicated my illness with drugs. Nevertheless, I totally failed at everything else. I ended up putting myself through thirty-five years of writers' block, social withdrawal and loneliness. I stopped writing, stopped even reading. I held terrible jobs because I couldn't get myself together enough to get and keep a good one. I went bankrupt due to massive spending mostly on things I didn't even keep or on pure whim. I gave a lot of money away too. Few remembered it.
I ended up imploding. I quit my job and my sister and parents had to rescue me from homelessness. I never asked them. I'm thankful. I might feel differently at times, but I was lucky then to have my tattered, dysfunctional family.
It was the same family I started with. I've never been married. Relationships have been difficult creating that loneliness problem.
I went into the hospital and had the depression zapped out of me. Rebooted with flat-wave DC current, I realized I had to approach my life differently. Maybe it was self-censoring my darkest thoughts, emotions and fears that ran my life into a concrete wall, that embittered me and that took away my pride.
I'll never say I had the most miserable life. Objectively speaking, it isn't close to being true. Though I can't be called blessed, most people have lives worse than mine.
But for some reason, the dark moods and the traumatic memories are a storm of excess emotions, words and visions. I can't ignore the creative energy of it and be successful as a writer. Or be successful in relationships, or strangely, have any pride. Truth is, it's most of what I am. I write till it hurts, if I don't have tears eyes writing it, it's no good.
Yes, and so, I'm in a terrible state today. And what do you know? It's great for writing horror. I hope the fact that I feel better now that I've written this hasn't disrupted the flow.
In the middle of adolescence I saw this as a distinct possibility and tried to avoid it. The main step in avoiding it was to take care of my sanity problem and try to clear the depressing and disturbing thoughts from my mind. Or avoid them as a writing subject. Meanwhile I tried my best to avoid writing about the things screaming in my mind or visions that brought tears to my eyes. No, that wasn't going to be my life. I was going to be someone who had it together, who could hold down a real job and write.
In an important way I succeeded. I avoided drugs and alcohol throughout my life. I might have been hospitalized, but I was never in rehab. So I never complicated my illness with drugs. Nevertheless, I totally failed at everything else. I ended up putting myself through thirty-five years of writers' block, social withdrawal and loneliness. I stopped writing, stopped even reading. I held terrible jobs because I couldn't get myself together enough to get and keep a good one. I went bankrupt due to massive spending mostly on things I didn't even keep or on pure whim. I gave a lot of money away too. Few remembered it.
I ended up imploding. I quit my job and my sister and parents had to rescue me from homelessness. I never asked them. I'm thankful. I might feel differently at times, but I was lucky then to have my tattered, dysfunctional family.
It was the same family I started with. I've never been married. Relationships have been difficult creating that loneliness problem.
I went into the hospital and had the depression zapped out of me. Rebooted with flat-wave DC current, I realized I had to approach my life differently. Maybe it was self-censoring my darkest thoughts, emotions and fears that ran my life into a concrete wall, that embittered me and that took away my pride.
I'll never say I had the most miserable life. Objectively speaking, it isn't close to being true. Though I can't be called blessed, most people have lives worse than mine.
But for some reason, the dark moods and the traumatic memories are a storm of excess emotions, words and visions. I can't ignore the creative energy of it and be successful as a writer. Or be successful in relationships, or strangely, have any pride. Truth is, it's most of what I am. I write till it hurts, if I don't have tears eyes writing it, it's no good.
Yes, and so, I'm in a terrible state today. And what do you know? It's great for writing horror. I hope the fact that I feel better now that I've written this hasn't disrupted the flow.
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