As of September 9, 2002:
Jericho, New York and Champaign, Illinois --> Washington, D.C. University of Illinois --> Lockheed Martin Corporation Full Time Student --> Full Time Employee Computer Science Major --> Systems Integration Analyst Associate ~$13,000 tuition per year --> ~$60k salary per year 9 person house --> 1 or 2 person apartment Fencing Center of Long Island and the Fencing Illini --> damn, gotta find a new fencing club...
ROCK ON
I think I'm going to die.
No matter which way I turn, somewhere God could wave his conductor's baton and kill me. When God promises something, he promises something.
I couldn't find the Watkins house and I pretended that my mind was speaking as if it were God. Maybe that's who God is.
But I told myself -- I, the god I pretended to be, and the god that may have shown himself in that pretention, to keep going farther down Caldwell, that mother's directions were too vague and simple to really get to the Watkin's house.
She said "after Lovers Lane." Exeter is also after Lovers Lane, mom.
In the dark, when the street is the sky, and nothing of that reflective bright yellow divider line shows through the thick tangible and obviously wet blackness of tonight's sky, "after" doesn't count. I fly on top of the sky's surface, ripping torrents through the heavens. Trying to find it. The road. The anything that would give me a clue.
Two seconds and my crying explodes from my mind to my face. Two more seconds and my tears are sucked back up when I see the name of the street reflect its green pigments back to my eyes.
I pass by Cal Western. we do printing for them. Here is where the road was, mom knew only its name. The mind who was God, she told me. Just pointed me in nighttime mashed potatoes and told me to start digging. Here's the house, there's the house, there's part of the company, I could define. Mom, she said a mobile home. My brain is scattered all over the road. Here. No here. They should chain that dog up that I just narrowly missed. He's barking, no chain, no consideration, unloved in the current of the rain. His owner wanted him to rage and fury in unlimited rowls and snorts and hisses. His choice, the nameless owner's choice, is between a chain on the dog, or an underbelly view of a car's careless tire.
I knew this dog was not loved. He had no chain on him.
God, where is the pain? If you love me, God, why aren't you hurting me? Give me a chain! Am I not deserving? Am I not deserving of your wrath? Why am I handed life on a silver platter when everyone else arounds me suffers the pits of hell!
Back and forth, back and forth. Unsure. Which house? What locale? Where can I see a mobile home? How did ancient messengers ever find the person they sought? Back then, no one was ever home -- they were all out journeying to give a message to someone they sought...
I pulled in, I gave up and I pulled in. Here, Godmind told myself. This is a pretty flaky house, weak and made of tin. I have confidence, i should have been shattering chattering shaking quaking worrying if this was the right house. Someone's face was familiar in the window. I thought he was there for the assignment I was asked to fulfill. My lazy gut wanted to go home and sleep, but my heart wanted to perform service. It was John Reynolds' face I saw, and I had no fear.
He tells me now that the Watkins house is next door, and this tin house was his. He must have been excited to have a visitor, even if it was by mistake.
John, I'm sorry I didn't visit you more often. I'm sorry nobody did. If I ever find my way back home, I will come visit you time and time again. But right now, I'm here on assignment.
I arrive next door. There are three people already there. No one told me what i'm reallllllllly supposed to do, and I'm a little frustrated because I assumed I would be there with her, the lady in the medical bed, alone.
I watched 4 hours of television. I can't believe I did that. But I played along with the trivia shows, the ones that boast their contestants are the greediest in the world, the one where each and every contestant is from Las Vegas, the one that upgraded to the digital age and fills in letters electronically. The one with the familiar blue screen and Laura Jessup's familiar television crush. I played those with another lady who sat and said nothing. I don't know what to do.
The woman in a hospital bed was there. I have an inkling she was the reason I was there. But she was in her bed. She will not get up, they tell me after I ask what my responsibilities are. I thought I was babysitting. I thought I was supposed to be helping out. Is there anything for me to know, I asked. They said no. I sat for 4 hours. DOING NOTHING.
One of the family friends dropped in for a visit. She approached this woman, nearly comatose in her bed, held her hand, and I saw her eyes pop open. Such a comforting wholesome voice the woman had, and in three words I learned that the woman in the hospital bed was blind and could speak. The smile plastered on her face at the presence of her friend! The woman just beamed in her bed! I prayed that God would give her some sort of relief from all that laying around all day. In my mind I was thinking, you know, other-worldly visions and angels coming to visit her and take her spirit away and bring her back, magical mystery tours of heaven and such. But I think, in reality, all she was doing was laying around and waiting. Like I was. Waiting for it to be over, so she, so I, can go home and do something useful.
I can't see the clock, and I'm due home at 10. Somehow within me my wish came true; the lady turned it to KMPH Fox 26 where there was an official 10 o' clock news. I could only tell time by the television. And this was my signal.
I found myself driving again. driving with my tires straight down, I'm sure of this now. I wasn't so sure a nanosecond ago. Which way is up, the sky or the road. Both look the same. Both disappear underneath my watchful eye.
People who have died and come back, they often report seeing rivers in the air.
They also report sleeping with their windows open, refusing to eat fast food, ripping out their shutters and blinds. Allergies increase. Finding understanding in things they were never taught. "Knowing" the circuitry of a computer by just being with it. Animals are attracted to them. An unsatiable search for knowledge. Rusty talents resurface. Can't listen to hard rock music anymore.
I remember my Smashing Pumpkins tape, long collecting dust. Oh, what talent!, wasted on screeches thrashing my ears and making it unbearable. Maybe i just don't understand anger so fierce, but I just can't take it. I tried listening to Mellon Collie again. Oh, the opening piano is beautiful. Oh, Tonight Tonight is so gorgeous. Oh, how I miss being able to enjoy the rest of the album. But I can't.
The book on near-death experiences and its aftereffects. Beyond the Light. PMH Atwater. Here it is in bold, page 118.
YOU CAN'T FAKE AFTEREFFECTS.
I died somewhere tonight. No one told me that I died, not even God. And if he did, he took his Infinite Eraser and ripped that part of my memory out. Said I wouldn't need it. Said it would interfere with the chains he puts on his Dearly Beloved. Said I would perform just beautifully without that memory.
Driving home I swore I would be dead permanently now. No matter where I turned. I was prepared, but my heart knew how horrible everyone around me would feel about my death. Can I let them go like that? Me myself and I can indeed let myself go like that. I can die. I just can't leave them. I can't. not right now, so sudden and so unexpectedly.
This kind of death happens every day with many many people. I was no exception, why should I be? Godmind told myself, "This is God's will, that you do not die when you are paranoid. Other times God has reserved for you."
I made sure to drive no faster than 40 mph. Which made some Caldwell traveler back there mad. But I'd rather deal with some stranger's road rage than making plans for my own funeral.
I want Angel sung by Sarah McLachlan. I want some rich guy out there to buy a thousand copies of Embraced by the Light and hand them out like candy. I want the color black eliminated from everything but the men's tuxes.
I want my mom to stop crying. I want my friends to understand.
Results in full: Captain Beany - New Millennium Bean Party 122 Guto Bebb - Conservative 1 377 Reverend David Braid - Independent 100 Leslie Edwards - Official Monster Raving Loony Party 187 Bleddyn Hancock - Plaid Cymru 3 827 Chris Herriot - Socialist Labour 1 152 Jeff Hurford - Welsh Socialist Alliance 205 Huw Irranca-Davies - Labour 9 548 Jonathan Spink - Green Party 250 Veronica Watkins - Liberal Democrat 1 608 Labour majority: 5 721 Conservative lead over Socialist Labour: 225
Always would we hack track strum ask for drums misplace names blur faces chant sing forget say it's all inevitable and keep a straight face
Never would we finish accomplish be free be pure find out the truth live to be cool accept the inevitable forget be wonderful
Someday could we grow up finally slip into place question nothing tell fewer lies break the unbreakable be free own only rags play all games forget dry off give up
We must never repent let go get any more humble lose what we've learned stop to think drink any more blood struggle submit forget give in
Twenty-one years and most of a day, I feel like I destroyed more than I created.
May all of you have a beautiful day today. We are all masters of our own selves, and we answer to no one in the end.
(( It's Jeeves's birthday today ))
We also have a Friday breakfast rotation. Everyone signs up on the list, and, on Friday, the responsible individual brings in bagels, donuts, or the like.
This morning, Kevin, the designate for the day, took a vacation day, and forgot to hand off responsibility to a back up. As manager for the team, I stepped up and got bagels.
The people in charge of the paging sent out a special daily test page:
In ancient Rome, a person who forgot Friday donuts was fed to the lions.
This went to anyone at my office who carries a pager. Kevin also got a message stating that the Lions would be in on Monday.
We haven't heard from Kevin yet, though one guy did get a call on his cell phone.
Hey, you have to keep the job interesting.
He may be a good engineer, but he is a manager in the same sense that a woodpecker is carpenter. He is charge of some people, that's about the extent of his managerial abilites.
One week before I am sheduled to leave, a fact that he has known for months, still I have no replacement, but he has asked me to implement a metric ton of changes, most of them off-the-cuff.
Yes, he wants value for his money, but darn it, management is about planning and timing. This is like a paniced seagull.
On an inspiration, he also asked me to move all the strings returned to the user in the program into a resource file or database where he can edit them without messing with the program. This is not a Win32/C program with a resource table, it is a website in PHP and Java. I should have laughed out loud, but all I did was mentally move it to the bottom of the priority list, which is already too long.
I didn't tell him that the new 1.4 version of java is finally out of beta, for fear that I'd be asked to "just quickly" roll it out on Friday before I leave.
What really boggles my mind is the complete lack of any conception of the need for a shakedown period. I finish all these changes on next friday and then walk away, and it all works perfectly. Never mind that it's never done that yet, not on this project, any other that this company has been involved with, or come to think of it, any other software in history.
But being proactive is not one of this office's virtues. Patching that patches is the first order of business.
But he is not a person to whom it is easy to tell things that he doesn't already know. Not easy to disagree with.
I am taking pride in making this program, this site work. Out users like us, and I get off on that. I'd gladly hand it over to someone else, but my boss is determined to mess it up and he doesn't have the faintest clue that he's doing that. If I do tell him he wouldn't understand.
I'll do what he says, it's the path of least resistance but I don't like it. It's unprofessional.
Two other employees are leaving in the near future, one with a personality clash with my boss. This would be OK, except he many years of hard-to-replace operational knowledge. This was supposed to be an easy six-month contract, don't get too involved, don't commit long-term. Sadly, all I can hope for is that I am far away when things do go wrong. Work is like that. You do all you can, and when it's over you never look back.
OK, so you teenagers get to do bullshit angst dating stuff in daylogs, so therefor I get to do this. Vent over.
StrawberryFrog Sorry people, I was suddenly cut of from the net at lunch today. As I was asking but 12 hours ago: is wharfinger really theonomist as is claimed by dannye in raising the bar call SF: best ask when he's not around. dem bones I thought I was theonomist? Wait ... maybe I'm kenata. Aw, hell... I can't remember. EDB has swallowed StrawberryFrog. moist noder flesh ascorbic SF: why don't you ask him yourself ascorbic EDB: shall we take that as a yes? fondue well spin my nipple nuts and ship me to Alaska! Igloowhite no way motherfucker - I'm Kenata! Gritchka Some editor's been putting libellous pipelinks in again!? --OutpostMir-- bones: don't you keep a list of stuff like that? sheesh. Tiefling /em grins wharfinger Fuck that, I'm everybody. Tiefling I'm Spartacus! Sondheim No way dudes, IM kenata, but IB doesn't know it yet...I got him to marry me so I could napalm the wedding --OutpostMir-- Teifling: And I'm the hospitals John Doe wharfinger ^Davion^: That's just what I'd expect you to say, nate. Saige ok, here's the truth - all of E2 is a fancy computer simulation, tested out on the internet. YOU -yes, you- are the only person on this site that's real. Gritchka I'm theonomist, and so is my wife. 2002.02.15 dem bones says Hang on ... I'll see if I can't get you out of there ... NEVER TYPE THEONOMIST IN THE CHATTERBOX! wharfinger Saige doesn't mention one important feature: The simulation is designed to provide *misleading* *hints* which are plausibly close to the truth, yet lead you in a completely wrong direction. dannye Some damn malicious god put that pipe link in that w/u. And they've been making lewd and obscene nodeshells w/ my name on them. And one of 'em stuck his dick in my ear. Nathan, this is unacceptable! 2002.02.15 dem bones says Yikes ... it's all just a joke.
Dannye's pipelink now reads go fish. Still, the prose styles (and content) are very similar.
I know that the whole thing is supposed to be be a joke, but ideosyncratic humour doesn't travel well. I learned that after most of my 'funny' w/ups were nuked. On this site, we must make at least perfunctory observances before the altar of american values.
In the last week, I've lost a girl I could honeslty see myself having children with and living with into old age. She loves God so much, she can't be with me. This is no reason to be angry or bitter; I actually feel a sense of peace. She's in my life, that's all I need.
Second point - I started reading the bible. I'm actually reading the bible. I've never wanted/needed to before. I started reading to understand how she thought and why she does things. I'm now reading it for me and I feel honestly better for it. I'm questioning and enjoying it and this has to be good.
I e-mailed someone I really hurt in the past. I don't know if she'll reply but I hope she does. I did it through Friends Reunited, which is kind of strange because a)she wouldn't consider me a friend last time I spoke to her and b)can you be reunited with someone who tells you to go away and never come back?
July 30th. I got over this. She nevers calls. I can live with it. Phew
D. and I started talking about Hell last night while we were driving from Asian Cuisine to Mozart's Pastry Shop in search of dessert to cool the fiery, oniony Mongolian goodness we'd just consumed.
We'd segued into discussing Hell after talking about the Tommy Lee/Pamela Anderson sex tape. D. was speculating at the level of torture that would be involved in having to see that tape, and nothing but, over and over again for eternity. He offered that it might be a suitable afterworldly punishment for Corrupt Politician X.
"What do you think?" he asked.
I pondered Hell and all its meanings. "I think Corrupt Politician X should be reborn as a crack baby in a ghetto," I replied.
"Ow, you're vicious," he replied. "But what about Corrupt, Falsely-Pious Politician Y?" he asked.
"Crack baby. Ghetto," I replied.
"Now, wait a minute," he said. "They can't all be crack babies. And we're talking about Hell, not reincarnation."
I shrugged. "Well, first, I think reincarnation is a better way of handling things than sending people to Hell for all eternity. Make 'em do it over 'til they get it right. But if we're talking about Hell, I think that the only reason someone should go there is if they've hurt other people in a bad way. And the only logical punishment is to have to experience the damage and pain they've caused firsthand. If you're a rich politician born to a family of power and you cut funding for social programs so your country club buddies can get a nice tax break ... into the ghetto you go."
"Take Kenneth Lay and the other responsible Enron execs," I continued. "Clearly, what they need most is to live the lives of the employees they've ruined."
D. nodded gravely. "Well, that might actually generate some genuine repentance and understanding."
"Exactly," I said. "What's Hell good for if it doesn't forge a better soul?"
We reached Mozart's and found dozens of yummy desserts in glistening their display case. After much deliberation, we selected a tiramisu, a petit four, and a fruit-covered cheesecake slice to go. The manager handed me a single long-stemmed red rose along with our boxed goodies.
"But what about the Pamela Anderson tape?" D. persisted when we got back to his truck. "Who deserves that punishment?"
"That's easy," I replied. "Whoever marketed the damn thing in the first place."
We got back to my apartment and found midnighter and /jen sitting in the living room. midnighter had brought me and /jen single roses, cards, and big boxes of chocolate. We all got glasses of milk and shared around the Mozart's goodies and the chocolate while we laughed over silly jokes. Then, D. and I curled up on the loveseat and we all watched a video /jen had rented. She'd apparently expected to sulk alone at home that night, and was pleased that we successfully foiled her plan.
"What about Heaven?" D. whispered after the movie was going and the lights were out.
"Maybe it's nights like this," I whispered back. "If that's what we get, I wouldn't mind a bit."
Introduction: When drugged on Prednisone up it is a good plan not to get any wild ideas into your head. These ideas might include feeding your anenomes even though you don't have any tongs.
Complications: When dealing with anenome feeding often one must look out for the Sea Snake (Rudy) and the Moray Eel (Murray) as they are often food hogs. However, in recent days a Lionfish (Mufasa) was added to the tank. These Lionfish are poisonous and extremely mean.
Experience: Past experience has proven that I can out race Murray and Rudy if I am quick enough. Murry is nocturnal and Rudy is mindnumbingly stupid which have both worked to my advantage. Mufasa, however, I had no previous experience with.
Execution: Under the influence of heavy meds, I believed I was fast enough to outrun Rudy, Murray, and Mufasa. I waited until Mufasa was on the otherside of the tank and I proceeded to feed shrimp to my anenomes. I saw a flash of movement as Mufasa darted for my hand with his mouth open and spines flared. (Note: Lionfish mouths are huge. They swallow other fish whole and can easily bite your finger to the knuckle. Imagine a mouth with some fins attached.)
Resolution: I jumped back flinging water all over the floor, incurring the wrath of my downstairs neighbor for the noise, and yelped like a little girl.
Conclussion: I am a moron when on drugs and wont do that again.
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