Alex Speaks Truth and Lies

They;re all freakin' crazy

2012-01-21T00:31:00.000-08:00

The woman I'm sleeping with on alternate months, who I love, cannot reconcile the feelings she has for me with her sense of duty to her children.
The woman who wants me that I don't want is growing emotionally and mentally very well, but self-defeats in her new relationship because she wants my hide as a trophy.
The analytical ice woman who sees me as her equal husband is decaying even further, which make her passes as me barely subtle.
Meanwhile, the woman I've been living with suffers greatly from insecurity, which is very warranted.
All in all pretty fun for me. And the sex with #1 on this list is pretty incredible.
Oh my. The nerdy skinny lad of 40 years ago never thought this all would actually come true.

Quote of the day

2011-08-24T22:14:00.000-07:00

Few months later. We are still happily in love. And we've shared a great deal of lust, too. Both are working really well.

But I did want to share this quote she texted me today about 3 PM.....
"My new life is full of cocktails, yoga, & masturbating thinking of you. It's good."

Oh my again.

Dating tip

2011-05-26T09:13:00.000-07:00

Just for reference, when the woman you're interested in texts you "I'm very wet" and "I want you inside me" and she's lying on a hotel bed naked hundreds of miles away masturbating while you "sext" her, I think you have a decent shot.
Oh my.

Really

2011-05-15T22:45:00.000-07:00

My secret wife and I have now had time together as man and wife.
No, not that. Just time in a parking lot in her car. And the most intense kisees I've ever had, and I acquit myself a good kisser.
But she opened up, mouth agape, more than any woman I've been with (never kissed a guy, sorry), a raw, needing, wide open mouth to mouth embrace beyond my experience.
But something I want again. And something I feel still.

No, no idea what to do but love her. That's enough, I think.

This one

2011-05-10T23:22:00.000-07:00

No-one has read this, I know. But if you had, I think this is the one.
I know, I babble about women and my ambivalence and lack of understanding. And it's been true. And there's been a reason.

Now I have a true love. One that I've been waiting 53 years for.

Yes, she's married. Yes, she has 2 children, the youngest 2 years old.

But we've grown to love each other organically, slowly, routinely over 10 years of working together. And two weeks ago she quit to be a stay-at-home wife to her millionaire husband (roughly the same career arc as me, he's a peer of mine at work).

And in those few weeks our feelings towards each other, the understanding, the closeness, the reality of knowing each other through stupid horrible work spats to sharing life's details during the day have blossomed from their coccons into what they really are, a deep and abiding respect and love.

On Friday I asked ner, through text of course in 2011, to be my secret wife. She said yet.

And I kissed her Monday in the park at lunch. Not a big deal in a club on a Friday night. But to us, it was the same as making love for days, it was the same as accepting our vows and marrying.

And I would. There is no woman in the last 20 years who I would shoose to be married to but her, that includes the woamn I've been living with for 16 years.

Romantic infatuation? Hardly. We've both been married 2 times, with lovers interspersed. But this is different. Oh my, teenage talk. It's different exactly because we're not teenagers, we're full-fledged adults who have seen a hell of a lot, and see in each other a soul who's seen the same things.

Seen the same things, and been OK with them We're low-class scrappers who've ended up in the upper crust. We know what these others thin of love isn't, that's just connivence and status.

Don't dismiss this as hormonal maunderings. This is the abused street kid from Jersey connecting with the abused street kid from Louisiana, knowing that the other gets it. The shit our peers, husbands and live-in partners think is real isn't. Holding a woman who knows what real, that one kiss that may have to keep us for months, is better than anything these shadows can give to us.

We're in love, forever. Not in a vacuous way. We may never be "intimate", we may never ever have more than an hour together for the next 20 years. We're us, and when we're together we have a refuge in each other. When we're apart we have a refuge with each other.

Would I hand 3 million dollars over to my live-in partner to be quit of her for this woman? I would.

Would I ask her to toss over her two children to be with me? No.

So we'll see. But this is really love. 53 years. And I have it.

Don't give up.

Let me introduce you to my wife, Heather.

Married

2011-05-06T23:24:00.000-07:00

I am now married. Secretly, and maybe never to be consummated.
But I'm married in my heart, and in her heart, to the woman I mentioned in my last post.

I was too cavalier in my response. And it's been 10 years,not 5,that we've known each other, a bit of mis-direction I provide because I'm hyper-paranoid about someone tracing the fake identity back to my real identity.

I do love her, and more importantly (because I've loved many women) I really like her a hell of a lot too. She is a woman who, in my pride, I would love to have on my arm at a society event, more than any other woman I have ever been with. And she's got something I can relate to more than all the others, she;s a kid from nothing who's made herself something, picked up the polish and the walk to match the snobs, just like I have. She's Joan Blondel to my Jimmy Cagny, we're perfectly suited to each other, we get it.
And today we told each other we loved each other. Against the absurd background of her perfect life with 2 kids and an 8 million dollar home with her little pud of a husband. And my perfect life with a community that reveres me and my woman-partner (they think is my wife) contribution and apparent perfect life.

But this one and I are soulmates. Absurd. But we are, and I want that, and I will marry her if I ever have the chance, if I ever, and she ever chooses, to have that chance. And I have not said that of anyone else, to myself, in 30 years.

I love you Heather, and want you to be my wife. If only in secret. If only forever unknown, unconsummated, if only in our hearts.

Another one

2011-05-03T23:58:00.000-07:00

Oh my, hooked another one.
Look, I really don't try to do this. Sometimes it feels like I'm the only decent guy in this city and there is a huge void around every woman.
Then I come along and offer some caring, some listening, and some reality and whoosh, I have another woman attached to me.

The latest is a woman who has been working for me for 5 year. I've always been very careful around her at work, listening, paying attention, sharing thoughts, ideas, and fun. But never more than that, wouldn't go to lunch, wouldn't go out for drinks, wouldn't even have a speck of physical contact. I like her, I respect her, and I like to be around her, but never ever ay impropriety. Hell, she works for me, a hint of anything and I'm fired with a harassment suit.
She quit last week. Her husband (who also works at the same company) and her accumulated enough wealth that she can now stop working and live in her multi-million dollar custom house. With her two kids. And her $400,000 country club membership.
She's all weepy on her last day, how much she'll miss me. "Yes yes" I say and think "I know, but we'll stay in touch".
Stay in touch.
Today we arranged to meet in the park I spend my lunchtime in. I walk across the grass to meet her, now we're not boss and employee, we're friends.
She grabs me in a hug. Not a friends hug. A lovers hug. And for the next hour, all I can share with her, she holds me like we're ardent lovers. Not a kiss, but that's only because she won't turn her face to me for fear of "kissing you like I can't stop".
Yes, I caress her back, her neck, her hair, and lean my head into her to gather her scent into my nose, I am a natural man, I do that because it's real. But I don't try to kiss her lips, I keep my hands where they hold, not molest.
And she moans, and sighs.
I know, come on, sometimes it's obvious, that if I choose to pull her chin to me and kiss her lips we would be making love within the hour. It's not machismo, really, this poor young (38) woman is starving for a man to care, to listen, to just hold in a sensual way.
We did nothing more than that, I walked her back to her car and she clung to me. And finally pulled away, she literally stood stock still with her hands in fists at her side straining not to overwhelm me with her love.

And drove off. Her parting words "text me when you're thinking of me, I love that".

And we'll meet again next week.

And here we go again. Yes, I love this woman too, another. And it is simple. I care. I listen, I put a tender hand on her hair, not as an act, but because I do love the closeness with her, the feel of her body and spirit. And I don't have any restrictions, i will take her in my arms any time, and would caress her and love her, and make love to her, without any concern about my other relationships. Because mine are simple, no marriage, no children, just love.

But her. Married. two kids. Desperate for caring.

I will give her all she wants. I will always be happy, and free, but I fear she will find tears.

But I cannot be other that what I am, and that "am", for some reason, is something she needs and love.

Love.

Love

2011-04-29T23:54:00.000-07:00

I love them all.
Though there are so many more than I expected, than I hoped, than I can understand.
They love me without let or regard.
It's overwhelming.
All.

The switches are th begining of the end

2011-04-17T01:10:00.000-07:00

I'm going to leave Apple pretty soon. And its the right call.

We can't keep this up. Beleive me, I know, I was there the last time we nearly went out of business, and i don't want to do it again. I've pulled millons of dollars out, and there won't be millions more to get.

The switches on the iPad 2 are a signal. Go find an Ipad 2 and an orignal iPad and you'll know what I mean. Run your fingers over the on/off switch, or the mute switch. On the original iPad they are understated, smooth, and comfortable. On the iPad 2 they are clunky, harp-edged, and "funny" feeling.

What does this mean? Means we,or in this case Steve, did NOT sweat the details. These switches are crap. We shouldn't do crap. But there it is, a crappy feel.

If we lose the total eperience, we lose all we are. And these switches are a symbol of SJ not being totally involved, a symbol of our losing touch.

We're done. Time to go.

Easy

2011-04-01T23:25:00.001-07:00

I'm just a guy.
I don't abuse women.
Physically or mentally.
I just listen, support, and challenge.

This must be unusual.

What I get is love, just for being, well, OK.

I like that, but it's weird. Isn't every guy like this? Or rather, are other guys such jerks? I can't believe that, but it must be true.

Heather, Carolyn, Beth, Amy, if I could hold you I would, but that wouldn't be fair, right, or true. But I do love you back. And I will never hurt you.

And I'm happy to be me.

New life

2010-11-06T13:51:00.000-07:00

And so it goes. Speaking about death last time brings life.
Frieds of ours just had a child, a little, 2 day old sqweaky bundle.
Eyes wandering, arms flailing, 6 pound bundle.
Cute? I dunno. But real, really new. Something that will outlive me nestled in my lap making grunts and hicoughs.
Ah me, these things mean it goes on. Which is Good.

A shadow

2010-08-04T23:57:00.000-07:00

I've got a bit of a death shadow hanging around me lately. 2 humans and two cats that have gotten close in to me in the last three years are dead, all in unusual ways.
Dunno what it is, or if I'm directly responsible. But I'm the one outside thing that entered their lives. and now they're dead, all from unusual causes. Two women dead, one choked on her own vomit, one died the day a new liver was available to complete a transplant for her. The cats I won't mention.
In all cases I enhanced their lives, either gave them new freindshop and perspective, or gave them happiness in the case of the cats.
And now they're dead
Interesting.

Newshounds

2010-05-11T09:47:00.001-07:00

Folks pay a good bit of attention to television trucks, news reporters, and other media sightings.

I used to think that the feeble attempts to get on camera were motivated by an egoism. But that didn't suit the strange attraction to passing TV vans.

Figured it out. We're so conditioned to believe that what the media shows us is important that we think any presence of a media member must mean that something that needs to be brought to our attention is occuring. We must see what they're seeing, since it must be relevant and important.

Same as getting on camera. It's less about look at me and more about I'm on TV, I must be important!. It's a media driven validation of our own existence. If I'm seen, I must have some value.

People pay way to much attention to me.

2010-04-22T12:53:00.000-07:00

There are too many folks who pay way too much attention to me.
No, not the me here, this is a fictional character that only a handful of people have read.
I mean the RL me. Folks know everything about me, research things I've done, and talk to me about it.
I ain't that interesting, it's really weird.

Weird and sad. Because I have a somewhat interesting career and life, folks watch it because, in my opinion, they have next to nothing in theirs except for disappointment.

Screw that. Pet a cat. Watch your children play in mud. Look at a flower.

All of that is much better than paying attention to me. stop it.

And it goes on

2010-03-29T23:42:00.000-07:00

OK, so, here we go.
This woman who I haven't seen in 35 years wants to be in a relationship with me now.
What the hell.

When I was 17 I couldn't get a girl to look at me.

Now that I'm 51 and a decent person (i.e., not an unmitigated jerk) I have too many women wanting to be my gal.

Look, universe, it isn't a change in me. I'm the same guy I was in '76.

What Happened to You!

This is reallly a sad commentary on what the hell we do to women as they get older. There is a fear here that I can't understand..

Ah, all for tonight. Too muchwine and chatting. I love you all, dears, but don't know how to make you all happy.

Jealous? well, yeah, I am, thanks.

2010-03-23T21:18:00.000-07:00

How absurd is the following;
A week and a half ago I got in touch with a woman I knew in High School, 35 years ago. We went out twice way back then, and barely kissed, then never saw each other again.

Now we're chatting a bit in email and Facebook. She's still the quick witted, Jersey girl I was attracted to then. But Lets review the bidding;
I live in NorCal, she lives in SoCal. I have a woman I've been living with for 16 years. I have a mistress that I've been seeing for 20 years.
So why in the hell did I just get a pang of jealousy when I saw her check with another guy on Facebook if they were still on for Thursday?

Seriously, what the hell? There is no conceivable way that I should be affected at all by that.

But I was.

It's a nutty world and I'm driving my own bus here, people, watch out.
--alx

What more?

2009-12-17T00:34:00.000-08:00

I'm listening to a '70s internet radio station, and feeling nostaligic. Notstalgic about the things I didn't do, the girls I didn't screw, the jobs I didn't have, the opportunities I missed.
But I'm right now, at age 51, a multi-millionaire. I have a near-wife I've been with for 15 years who loves me. I have a mistress who I've known for 20 years who would collapse if I stopped seeing her. I own property in 2 states and 2 countries. I have a professional reputation that most people would envy, I'm a key "player" in my company and industry.

What more?

Any different decision at any point in the last 30 years would have changed things, but would it have made anything better? I might have $20 million instead of $6 million. I might have a wife who gave me sex more often, jeez, like I care. Or a name in the paper 20 times instead of 10. Or a Maserati instead of a $60,000 Volvo and an airplane.

What more?

What more is this: Wanting more is Good. There are things that I will still do, mousic I will still write, video I will still produce, books I will still write, help I will give to others to make them succeed.

What more?

All because of that question. There is more. There is everything. And I want it, and will never get it. Which makes More work.

The way to do it

2009-03-27T10:01:00.000-07:00

Last night I watched Michael Caine in "Get Carter", 1971, available in instant play from Netflix.

Thats the way to do it. Go watch it and contrast with Slumdog.

Get Carter is not a happy film, it's a achingly real depiction of barely above poverty living, street crime, and an overall hopeless environment. What S.D. could have been.

Carter pulls no punches. And it delivers. Caine has fewer lines in Carter than the young man who plays the lead in S.D., but his ability to *act* develops a complex character that you get to know intimately. His supporting cast has even less to say or do, but even characters who are on-screen for 3 minutes total are presented in a way that you know them, you empathize with them, you care about them, or you despise them with straightforward dialog, superior camerawork, and a deft touch at the editing desk.

No happy ending. A brilliant film about an ugly story, with the best actor ever asked to play a bloodless, chilling, character with realism and humanity.

watch this film.

Slumdog Millionaire and the Acadamy

2009-03-24T22:03:00.000-07:00

The heart of what's wrong with the Acadamy of Arts and Sciences Awards is evidenced by the Best Picture award given to Slumdog Millionaire in February of 2009. And a hint at who controls the Acadamy. That is, if you needed a hint, anyone who takes a second to look at the money needed to support that industry knows where the control is coming from.

Slumdog is not well acted particularly. The male lead envinces few emotions or any particular strong character traits. The female lead is even shallower, we barely know a thing about her. Supporting characters are thin charactures of standard prototypes. So it wasn't the acting.

The plot is both trite and vastly incomplete. Trite rags-to-riches, offering nothing particularly new but the random chance that the game show questions had a analog in the young man's life. That's syncronicity, not plot.

The development of the plot is even worse. The Why of any of the actions or motivations, other than the foundational survival ones, don't make sense. And the links that are drawn are again, trite and incomplete.

Why did S.D. win?

Guilt and control. A classic Acadamy guilt/control award.

Slumdog was the first exposure most Americans (who have the most influence with the Acadamy) had to the realities of a Mumbai slum to the near-real level of dispair, filth, and density. The middle class were hit with a huge load of guilt seeing that, and the lower class were hit with a huge sense of sympatico, that's where they are.
Then the Industry took over.
Add dashes of humor, a happy ending (for two of the 19 million people in Mumbai, at least), and a rollicing dance number at the end and the perceptions were made to serve.
The middle class got to shrug off the guilt with no pain or action. Look, they may have come from a slum, but aren't they happy! Happier than I am, so it must be OK to grow up in a slum!

Here's an acadamy award for making us feel guilty for 40 minutes, then spending 40 more minutes making all that guilt melt away and we leave the theater feeling happy.

Here's an acadamy award for showing you someone worse off than you who gets out of it, so please don't complain or riot, just work hard and learn from tv.

The Acadamy rewards that type of film, since it keeps people coming back to theaters when they are out of a job in the worst economic downturn in 80 years. Fake happiness and reward on a movie screen have been keeping the poor, the scared, the bewildered coming into movie theaters for a very long time, and the big money that funds films wants that false hope on the screen every week.

And this year, picking an Indian film, is the seal on a pact across the oceans for both industries, Hollywood and Bollywood, can continue to foist tripe on a terrified, hopeless, and poor populace and keep them in check. Rewarding too the clever film that talks to those who have a little and who might think of helping someone else, might be feeling a little guilty, and tells them that No, no, really, those people are fine and they're all really happy and can get rich, richer than you!

Enjoy your award, Slumdog.
For all you aspiring filmmakers, camera operators, script writers, and so on who think that your vision and talent, who want to create a Slumdog story that ends in the death and dispair that truely surrond Mumbai (or Mexico CIty, or Detroit) every day, will get you that award, sorry, this year's awards once again demonstrate that the top awards will always go to that which keeps the Acadamy in power, not Art.

There's something dishonest about Spring.

2009-03-16T21:28:00.000-07:00

There's something dishonest about Spring
Every other season is forthright and direct. Summer burns, winter chills, fall promises change that surely comes.

Spring is obscure and incomplete. Spring presents the dream of rebirth and change, but the result are old boughs showing new leaves, old bulbs re-flowering, streams waking to bubble through the same old banks.

What gets reborn? Nothing. Spring is the beginning of the same old cycle, nothing new, nothing changed.

Or is it? The obscurity of differentiation, the epoch-long process of evolution, makes it's changes in Spring. Those changes are too minute to be anything more than a hint, a wisp of vapor across the vast sky of life.

Change? Well yes, but no-one will really ever know.
--alx

One thing I never mentioned about my woman friend....

2008-10-14T21:17:00.000-07:00

When we're kissing, I know just when her receptivity to going further in a lovemaking mood occurs.
There is a tangeble physiological change, I can literally feel a slightly electric tingle on the tip of our tongues, a slight acidity gets added to the taste of her, and I know that we're going to be going as far as we can as quickly as we can.

Only this one woman, none others.....
--alx

Ambient DOESN'T HAVE WORDS!

2007-07-17T21:13:00.000-07:00

Dammit, if you're going to list your music or radio station as being "ambient" NO WORDS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I want chill, I want a soundscape swirling around me while I'm either drifting, or really focused on something.
Throwing some (usually spoken word) crap in on top of that completely ruins the "ambient" mood.

NO WORDS IN AMBIENT MUSIC RADIO!

The Carbon Debt lie

2007-06-19T22:08:00.000-07:00

Human's impact on our environment is real, just like a beaver's impact on a stream and meadow.
How much impact we truly have, and what real impact this has on the Gaian system, is ripe for debate, and the debate is a healthy one.

Some side-effects of the discussion, however, are dangerous and disturbing, while cloaked in the robes of righteousness. Paying your "Carbon debt" is one of them (see http://www.mycarbondebt.com/ and others).
This site, and others like it, only serve to feed one of the worst aspects of the human psyche, the belief that you can cure all your damage, clean up all the harm you do, in a magic pill or by writing a big enough check.

Paying your "carbon debt" is the environmental equivalent to getting a prescription for diet pills, then heading to the ice cream shop for a triple cone. It’s the equal of sending $50 to UNICEF then buying cheap sneakers from Viet-nam.
Paying someone to plant a tree in your name does not allow you to drive a 450 horsepower truck.

Reducing greenhouse gas emissions are simple. There isn’t any mystery, there isn’t any advance education you have to undertake. Don’t avoid the simple things you can do and justify your continued wastefulness by saying “I’m paying my carbon debt!”.
How about just not going so far in debt in the first place? How about being accountable up front, and don’t pretend that a token donation to tree growers reduces your responsibility for cleaning up your act permanently yourself, now, in your house, in your car, in your habits.

You can’t buy your way into heaven. That is true in the physical realm of ecology as it is in metaphysics and religion.

Clean up your act.

How much is enough?

2007-06-07T01:06:00.000-07:00

When I was a young man in the USAF making $271 every two weeks, I knew I wanted more, I needed more to enjoy myself and more importantlhy, not have that edge of fear, the sense of disaster looming around every corner or mistake.

It's 25 years later, I've been at a sucessful technology company, I have several million (yes, million) dollars in the bank, and I still have the fear.
If I spend $100,000 per year, and ignore any income from investments or interest or anything, I have enough money to last me until I'm 80. 80. 80, and probably in my dotage. Spne less, and I last until I'm 100.
And still I fret.
What the hell.
If I had a billion dollars, would I still feel this way?
What's the pressure that drives this? What's the right amount? Am I reacting to reality, or to the weird pressures put on us societally?
Of course I also know that I could spend a million dollars in silly stuff in a year. Buy a fancy car for $500,000, spend $35,000 on a watch, upgrade my airplane to a jet, there are temptations lurking at every corenr.
The question is this, and the one I ask you to ask yourself: What makes you reallly happy?
I don't know yet. And I've got $3.5 million in cash.
What the hell.

I'm tired of "I had a hunch"....

2007-05-25T21:27:00.000-07:00

"I had a hunch". "I had a feeling". "It jsut came to me".
Bah.
We (you and me reading this) are a huge mass of sensors connected to a massive processing device with huge, near photographic storage and a particular expertise in pattern matching.
OF COURSE we're subconciously recieveing and processing information and some of it become relevant. "I had a feeling something was wrong with my car, I took it into the shop and wow, it was almost busted!"
No, you careless thinker. Your butt, hands, and feet have been recording vibrations from that car for the last two years, and the pattern of recordings changed and that became that "feeling". No, it;s just your brain doing it's normal, expected, job, please stop treating "hunches" and "feelings" like they're some psycic mystery.

Don't be a rule-breaker!

2007-05-01T21:00:00.000-07:00

Without a very good reason.

Pop culture is full of the "think outside the box", "be a rule-breaker!" chants.
That's as absurd as being a slavish rule-follower.

Rules, and "the box" that folks think in often come from very important reasons, and tossing them away without good reason is ignoring 5,000 years of experience.

Flying regulations are a great template to use in "rule-breaking". Pilot's have to learn hundreds of rules and regulations to be allowed to fly. Pilots often refer to each FAA flying rule as being "written in blood", the rules for flying have evolved through people dying, and a rule being written to insure someone else doesn't die from the same thing. Those rules are "good", pilots would be foolish to be "rule-breakers" since that would probably just kill them quickly.

But the other thing pilots read in FAA regs is rule 91.3 is this one "the pilot in command may deviate from any rule of this part to the extent required to meet that emergency", in other words, if you have a compelling reason then hell yes, violate any rule you want!

Use that as your template. And instead of hollering "Be a rule-breaker!", use your own mind to determine whether a rule is valid or not.

Time is very elastic

2007-04-23T19:58:00.000-07:00

And it's up to you to manage it.
It starts when we're very young, the agony of waiting those days or even hours to a special event. And it continues through our life, both with things appearing to happne rapid-fire as well as the drawn-out waits.

And it's celebrated in our popular culture and in our history. The elasticity of time perception is the basis of many stories, and a common workplace topic of conversation.

So.....USE IT!

It's an amazing power that every human apparently has, and few of us take advantage of it. And you can, each and every one of you.

Now that you KNOW that it's a real part of your lif, twist it around from being an angoy or a sigh of "too short", flip it around and use the obvious power of your mind, that you've experienced a hundred times uncontrolled, yourself.

If you are having a great time, s t r e t c h it out! Appreciate it, and will it to be percieved as happening longer. Don't envision the end, envision it continuing!
When you're having a bad time, or a boring time, invert the dullness by visualizing when it's going to be over.

It works, kids. It happens to you now uncontrolled, focus your mind into putting a power you clearly already have to use for yourself.

I do love her

2006-02-08T01:03:00.000-08:00

I try to resist. And I thin she tries to resist.
We love each other, and cannot, or will not, be together.

I can't bring myself to leave the relationship I'm in. Why? I don't really know. Lots of reasons to do so, and an vague intangeble that says stay. And the vagueness wins.
And she wants an ideal, I think that isn't me. Not that she will ever find that ideal, I know deep in my heart that she won't. But she holds out that hope, which would keep her from being happy with me.
So we're stuck

Depply in love with each other, and deeply attached to each other, and avoiding the hell out of each other.

And, damn it, we've been doing this for 15 years!!!!!!!!

- She's the only preson in the world I am truely honest with.
- I'm the only person in the world who accepts, and enjoys, all her foibles.
- We like doing the same things.
- We're fantastic in bed together (on those rare occasions where we've let ourselves be).
- What the Hell.

Ahhhh, dammit it. I Love you, Beth!

The Goal, part 1

2006-02-01T00:14:00.000-08:00

The story starts, and continues.

I'm always so torn about the essense of me. yes, it's a stupid What's the point Of Life entry, jeez, at 47 you would think I'm past that.
But, but, but, people seem to take this sooo much more seriously than I do, I feel like I should actually care about this stuff more than I do.

I talk to people who consider themselves spiritual, or even Zen, and they just seem to be so far from understandng what they are professing to beleive that I start thinking I'm very wrong. But I ain't.

If you are Zen, then nothing matters. It doesn't. That doesn't. This doesn't.

There is NO GOOD AND EVIL for those of us who profess to not beleive in a God, either through Zen, Earth Mother, Universal Conciousness, or whatever.

C'mon folks, you're saying it, believe it! The Universal Mind doesn't have good and evil, it has Stuff That Is. Stuff That Is doesn't have a sham human moral component, is Just Is.

There isn't any universal Good and Evil unless you beleive in a master arbiter of values, like the christian god. If you don't beleive that, then please stop talking about moral characteristics of universal behaviour.

Please at least TRY to be consistent, people.

I guess this really frosts me becuase I am a truely amoral being, and when I meet others who profess to being amoral it turns out tehy ain't, they do have capitol G Good and capitol B Bad in their minds. Sheesh.

And dammit, I'm not a psychopath when i say that slitting a persons throat is not Evil or Bad. Death has no moral component, you say it in general, but you can't apply it to a reality!

And NO I'm not saying (nor did many Zen teachers) say "run about slitting throats!". There is still a strong social, community, pressure that makes slitting throats NOT part of a healthy human community. But it ain't Evil, it's just downright unsociable!

And unsociable is MUCH more relevant to human interaction than Good and Evil! Good and Evil never brought in a harvest of wheat. Community cooperation did.

OK, this isn't helping. Y'all need to understand what you mean and act right, OK?

My girlfriend is getting old

2005-08-11T15:08:00.000-07:00

I have a woman friend that I have been very close to (near marrage a few times (but thats a different story)) since 1992. A beautiful girl, petite, elfin, and full of sparkle.

I was visiting her home a few weeks ago, and she handed me some picutres one of her friends had taken of her.

I looked at them and gasped to myself "who is this middle-aged woman!"

It was shocking. I look at her, and I see the vivacious 35 year old I met in 1992. Handed pictures with an unknown backdrop and clothes I've never seen before, and I'm suddenly looking at a 47 year old woman I have never seen in my life.

Then i look back at her live, and try and remove the vibracny and memory from my vision. Yes, she is old. Yes, I am old.

But that's a real effort. Stop thinking about it, and she once again looks to me to be the beautiful young thing I've always loved.

Who you are and how you appear mean nothing without context. I see waht I want to see, not the harsh strobe-lit reality, and I'm OK with that.

Theodore Sturgeon, Robert Silverberg

2005-01-13T22:57:00.000-08:00

No two Science Fiction authors changed the genre so much, in that period of time known as New Wave, late fifties through the mid seventies.

Both men did what none had successfully done before, and few have done since, is focus soley on the human psyce in a speculative future, or in a speculative situation, leaving the tehcnology aspects of the speculation to be background objects. Important background objects, certainly, since telepathy, spaceflight, alternate energies, unique planets, often servered to define the characters basic motivations, but thats the extent. You had to know the "science" in the story to understand the motivations, but neither author wanted you to pay much more attention than that.
By the way, this became more pronounced in Sturgeon as he aged, and less pronounced in Silverberg.
What did this give us? It gave us two startling authors who pressed the boundries of what people would feel and think beyond the reality we live in today.
Silverberg taught us what it feels like to be a telepath in "Dying Inside", for example, not waht you could do with telepathy. Sturgeon described the morality and ethics of a group mind in "And baby makes Three", didn't focus on the superbrain.

And beyond the basic human focus, both went to extremes in emotional depth that science fiction had not had before. Sturgeon to the transendental, the upbeat philospher of SF. Silverberg to the depths, the dark vision of the emotional wreakage that any technology or speculative future could create.

Read them

Black windows scare me

2004-12-19T01:20:00.000-08:00

Black widow spiders scare me.
I don't scare easily, I can give or take most things, irrational fear or overreation is not part of my personality.

But I really really do get scared when I see a black widow spider.
Why?
Because there's death with no reason.
It's death (or serious injury) when neither of you really meant it. I don't want to hurt the spider, the spider sure doesn't wish to have anything to do with me. But putting my hand in the wrong place, reaching for a dropped wrench behind my toolbox, and zap, I interfere with her world, and she reacts in the only way she can, bite, injury or death.
for nothing. And, no way to know it's coming.
Heck, I can avoid a coyote or a cougar when I see one on a trail. A rattlesanke gives me fair warning. I know I;m not welcome in cerain neighborhoods.
But a black widow can be anywhere (under this keyboard), living her own life, and not even prepared to warn me of an intrusion into her live. And the only way I can avoid any possible place she may be living is to never go anywhere.

Scary.

There are a hell of a lot of naked people on the Web!

2004-12-10T14:04:00.000-08:00

I like to look at naked women. Growing up, you could see maybe 30 naked women a year in the various magazines and the one or two 16mm films you might see a year.

But now, golly! Go to a site like www.aminaked.com and borswe for 15 minutes, you'll see 100 different naked women! There are pictures of hundreds of thousands of different naked women, and naked men, on the internet!

This isn't a moral issue, just a sheer volume issue. Looking at this mass of naked flesh, you gotta ask who they are. Is the woman in the next cube over from you in a 17 jpg set that you'll hit next ? Is the guy you went to lunch with in a rubber mask and nothing else on some S&M site?

See, naked men and women use to be kinda a profession. You'd be a Vegas showgirl, you'd be a naked magazine model, or you'd aspire to that.

But the sheer amount of pictures the Internet demands means that we have a whole HELL of a lot of casual nakedness, people who just got naked for fun.

I don't know what this means.

But there are a hell of a lot of naked people on the internet.
--alx

Cartoonists, stop whining about schedules!

2004-11-29T15:31:00.000-08:00

I read a lot of web comics, and I support a lot of web comic strip artists through periodic donations

But I am really really tired of "Sprry, my life is complicated, no comic today" "Oh, I posted a schedule, but I can't make it, my son has soccer!" "Gosh, I wish I could keep to a schedule but I had friends over!"

Just shut up. Publish when you get around to it, if you don't have something to publish today don't make up a lame excuse that no-one cares about, ust say "no comic". Otherwise it really sounds like whining. well, it is whining, and not very good whining at that.

And if you know you're an erratic publisher, DO NOT put up a publishing schedule. We'll be there, you don't have to pretend you're gonna make every Tuesday & Friday (yes, that means you Rudi).

I love web comics, and the artists are all great. Keep doing your thing, it's part of what makes the Net work, and I'll keep doing my part by sending you a few bucks every now and again.

But don't make lame excuses.

You reallly should document your code

2004-11-27T22:41:00.000-08:00

As I sit here late on a Saturdya trying to figure out exactly WHAT this code I wrote 10 years ago is supposed to do.
It should be a reasonably straightforward find routine in a linked list of MIDI objects that I create, but I appear to be doing something clever to multi-search and jump-start the next search. And I don't want to waste time figuring out why the hell I'm doing some things, and I didn't write any comments nor use symbolic constants, just raw numbers.

Arg. THink I'll just write it from scratch, it's easy enough.

RUN!

2004-11-27T09:48:00.000-08:00

If Morgan Freeman EVER calls you, RUN!

I have way too much proof to support this. If Mr Freeman is ever the warm, deep, voice on the end of your telephone line when you pick up, start running. Leave your house, your car, your workplace, and just RUN!

Mr. Freeman's calls fortell death.

Farms are scary

2004-11-26T10:42:00.000-08:00

Ever thought about a farm? I mean really thought about it.

A farm is a place of misplaced hopes, betrayed trust, and death.

Nothing happens on a farm that is not centered on death. Corn is planted to be ripped down and eaten. Sheep gambol and gyre in the fields, to be led to the slaughterhouse.

A farmer is a death dealer.