313075's blog: "Ghosty's Cherry (sic)"

I really wanted to do some serious writing tonight. I haven't done anything in tht vein in days - but I'm pooped from work, and have been pooped for days now. I have SO much to do. It sucks, as I actually have stuff to write about. I've got at least three or four good creative writing pieces in me right now, plus the regular stuff I do for AC and my blogs. No time, and too pooped to try. I'm going to be off LC for the next day or two, just so I can get stuff written (this place is like CRACK!), and then I'll post it a day at a time or so. Maybe I'll even get some more art work done. Meh.

[This is a piece I wrote for an old blog I had some years ago. I hope you enjoy it.] It's not easy being a fish. It's even harder being two of them. I often find myself torn between dual natures; emotional drives and logical thinking, intuition and fact. My brain and my heart are rarely in agreement on anything. I feel something, and I think another. And too often I choose the wrong voice to follow; either I let my heart lead, and all sorts of calamity befalls me, or I do what I consider the 'sensible' thing and end up looking like an insensitive fool. I find myself resentful of others' good fortunes. I see plenty of insensitive, self-centered people with nice homes, nice cars, nice mates, and I often wonder if, were I to become that shallow, if I could procure some of this apparent wealth for myself. I've gotten to the point where I almost think it's a rule: the more plastic and shallow you are, the more toys you get to play with. Then I think of the fortunes I have had. I have been lucky in ways that would make good comic-book plotlines; to have missed various forms of death because of accident or foolish decisions, not to be homeless because of people who helped me when I was down, not to be in prison for some of the irresponsible actions of my youth, and lucky not to be in a mental ward for the stresses I've lived through. Each and every one of these 'windfalls' were because of what I call "luck", but when I think about it, it wasn't luck. It's not random. It's as if some force, some exterior motivation, has decreed I must meet a destiny, and everything that could happen to prevent me from reaching that destiny is, somehow, delayed or deflected. I should be in complete ruin. I should be dead. I should be mindless, insane, or at the very least, rendered persona non grata. It is as if the world itself will not allow these finalities to occur; it's never been because of my own intentional acts that I have missed my chance at oblivion. I leap from the chopping block, not because the axe falls, but because some unrelated event persuades me to do so. Only afterwards I do look back to see the blade strike the wood, and realize this 'luck' has, once again, saved me from whatever would permanently postpone the next disaster. So, if I'm not to be dealt the final losing hand, why do I keep getting tossed back into the game? It's like being suckered at poker; the dealer knows I'll eventually lose my shirt, but he'll let me keep winning occasionally, just enough to stay my interest in leaving the table. Why do I enter into relationships, knowing this other person I've learned to trust is only going to break my heart? Why do I struggle to make ends meet, when I know something waits to take away whatever I've managed to gain? Why is it that, when death or insanity rears it's head, the final lasting relief is spared my tired and aching insides - leaving me whole, and wholly miserable? I do have intuition. In almost every case, it is this which has stayed the final blow; something inside me says 'go now' or 'do this' or 'stay put'. And if I don't ask questions, I will walk out of the flames unscathed every time - but whatever's left burning is guaranteed to be mine. I have walked away from disastrous relationships before complete ruin befell me, dangerous environments before accidents happen to others, and life situations that would have placed me into inescapable destitution and despair. But in the process, I lose everything else; my home, my loves, my hopes for something better. If I run, I run 'away', never 'to'. If I run, I never know where the destination is; I just 'know' not to be where I am any longer. Thus my duality perplexes and taunts me. My brain says 'look, this is a good thing' and my heart says 'don't, you couldn't live with yourself'. Or my heart says 'this is just great, a happy thing is happening' and my brain says 'you have GOT to be kidding, you can do better than this'. Each time I listen to my brain, I gain something in the world - a mate, a lifestyle, a series of things and resources - only to lose it later down the road when my intuition cries for me to leave it behind. If I listen to my heart, I will find happiness - but my brain is eventually called in to take care of some issue or circumstance that my heart couldn't possibly deal with, and atrocity is sure to be hot on it's heels. One fish wants to strive upstream, to achieve and attain and conquer and rule; the other wishes to float, effortlessly, without care about advancement in physical or emotional circumstances. One must work to pull the weight of the other with it; the other is constantly yanked in a direction life doesn't seem to want to take it. They are tied together, inseparable and unyielding to one another. There is no teamwork, there is no unity. And between the swimmer and the floater, I go no where. I am stagnant while the stream flows merrily by without me. I am left wishing for the Angler and His Net, or at the very least, a good sharp pair of scissors. Oh, that I could only be ONE fish!

This thing's a freak, I tell ya. OK, so as I have learned the hard way, be a little industrious when fooling about with the HTML in your profile. I discovered that LC will attempt to re-define, extract, re-code, interperet and otherwise take a hand mixer to your carefully written and oh-so-beautiful code if you edit it right in the box there. You'll end up with style definitions missing, links cut in two, all sorts of madness. The way to avoid it? Notepad, ladies and gentlemen. Copy that code out of there and save it someplace (which every good web designer does anyway, yes?). Make your edits in notepad, then copy and paste into the profile and hit the button. Now, skins. This is where you get to do all that wonderful CSS magic (or, as the case may be, tomfoolery). Before you go screwing about with this stuff, especially if you don't know CSS from a hole in the good Earth, do what I've mentioned above: copy it all out, paste it in nodepad and save it. That way if you screw it up you can save yourself. Perhaps I'll make this a weekly thing, posting little HTML and CSS diddles so people's profiles get in shape. Everyone wants a pretty profile, yes?

OK, so I finally got enough friends on this place that I decided to start a family. Don't ask me why. I'm sure the criteria is different for everyone; mine was pretty simple, I put those folks into the family list with whom I've had more than just passing clicks with. People I interact with most every day or so. I'm sort of a geek when it comes to organization (although, if you were to see the condition of my room, you might dispute that). I'm sure it's a perfectly human thing to do to sort people out in one way or another. Now, I don't want folks thinking I like some people better than others. That's not true, I like just about everyone I meet on whatever level or other. If you aren't family at this juncture, you might be at another. And, let's face it, this is just LC. There's no contractual agreements with anyone here. At least, none that I've signed. ;)

Graphic art is something I do when I'm bored. I'm not bored often; between work and writing projects, I have plenty to do normally. The past couple of days had me inspired to post a few of the things I've done. Almost everything I do is taken from photographs - I re-work them, alter the colors and the histograms, make them more than they were to begin with. Sometimes it takes many layers to create something new - 'The Night Is Young' took twelve different layers, if I remember correctly. 'The Spire' took only one. Usually, I'll look at a photo and something will come to me. An alternate view of the same picture. I'll take that photo and try my best to change it to something as close to that image in my head as I can. 'The Capitol in Oil' was an exception. That graphic is slated for a new blog I'll start sometime into the future, when trips to DC make themselves more readily available. I wanted something light-colored that looked more artistic than photographical. In any case, I plan to do more artwork as time permits. If I happen to find more I've squirreled away (I have a 5,000-odd image collection on the hard drive, usually used for artwork for other people's web sites, and sometimes things I've made get lost in the shuffle), I'll be sure to post them.

So, after a very busy day running about, I came home to find (gasp) I'd just jumped several levels here at LC, got a couple of friend requests (which I accepted after checkin 'em out, you know how it is), and, well, tons of '10's on the ol' profile. Schweet. Only got one shout from some idiot who wanted me to vote on pictures of her wide-open nasty bug hole. Ew. Guess I should have seen that coming. Look, I like the female anatomy as much as the next fellow, but if you're brainless enough to think I'll leap out of my seat at the sight of your clam dip, you are SO wrong. And blocked. Anyway, for all the INTELLIGENT people out there, thanks for all the 10s and the love. It's been an off day and I sorely needed the gratification. :) Thank you!

Well, for whatever reason, I can't seem to reach Blogger tonight. Hope that's not the case with everyone ... my sites will get lonely. ;) But, since I can't get there to post what I was going to post, I'll post it here. Why not. Now, some of you might find this trivial, and I admit, 95% of it IS trivial. I don't put much stock in such things. I have bigger and better targets for my attention. I am not a handsome man. That photo of me is rather deceptive - it's me, alright, but hey, I'm wearing a hat and sunglasses, and the colors are all funky. It's not just artistic. Normally this doesn't bother me. I'm not a brick shithouse in the muscles department, and, well, I've bad teeth. Very bad. Nothing I can do about it; I was born with a low enamel count and I've had the teeth I do about ten years longer than the dentists and doctors told me I would, so I count myself lucky. Eventually, I'll have the 6 grand nessasary to get all new stuff, but until then I don't smile much and avoid photos that reveal that shortcoming whenever possible. Today I was talking with the neighbor lady, who happened to be in has backyard with her young son - about seven or eight years old, I think he is. Ahh, kids, you can always depend on them for an up front question, innocent of such things as embarrassment and the like. That little boy looks dead in my face and asked me, 'what's wrong with your teeth?' He wasn't being mean, he really wanted an answer, I could tell. His mother quickly apologized and shushed the boy, and I admit I was taken back for a moment. I knelt down so as to be eye level with him and asked him if he brushed his teeth every day. 'No, not always', he said. 'Well, if you don't, you might end up like me.' I bared a big semi-toothy grin so he could see what was up. He looked a little upset at first, then he asked me if it hurt. 'No, not for me; I have something wrong that makes my teeth like this. They almost never hurt. But if you don't take of yours, which are real strong, yours would, and I'd imagine they would hurt all the time. So, you should always brush them.' He agreed, and further stated that he would brush his every day from now on. The neighbor and I spoke a little longer, then I came back inside as I had more writing to do. I wonder if I had any lasting effect on that kid. It makes it very difficult getting jobs. It makes it difficult getting dates, too, and understandably. I have a girlfriend who looks past that, and she's great for it. Still, I'd like to get it taken care of eventually, when I can afford it. Anyway, that's what happened today. I just wanted to get it off my chest.

I am now pulling extra hours on my job, since I have a small vacation coming - the few days after the midterm elections our office will be closed (yeah, I saw this coming) and they'll let me work some overtime to get the extra money in. This cuts down on the time allotted me for writing severely (it was what I was planning to do with my Saturday; oh well). I am starting work on the aforementioned writing project for Britannia!, plus I have to put something together this evening as a game content publish is coming in over the next few days, and I want to get the jump on the other sites. I also intend to get at least one more 'freelance' article together for AC before I start on the asked-for stuff. So, two full articles between here and Sunday, and a start on the bigger stuff at the very least. Who ever said writing was something they did in their free time obviously wasn't doing much else to occupy it.

You think you're pretty clever, eh? I'll fix you. :P And you other smartypants types, no giving away the answer utill 'Aloverssunset' posts ... I mean it. Grr. Here's the puzzle: You are lost in a labyrinth. You finally come to what you know to be the exit: two doors, one of which opens to eternal freedom - the other, to instant death. Each of the doors is guarded by a robot. One always lies, and one always tells the truth. Both the doors and the robots look exactly alike. Of course, you have no idea which robot guards which door, or which of the doors or robots are which either. Thankfully, you can avoid taking a 50/50 gamble on the doors by asking one robot a single question. What is the question?

I finally finished my Haloween article (yeah, I said I wasn't going to write it, I think; oh well, I did anyway) and posted it to AC for approval; I'll send up the link as soon as it's available. I'm starting a large project for Britannia!. This involves a lot of game time; I'll be doing a series on some of the 'peerless' monsters in the game, with screenshots, so it will take a while, probably a couple of weeks (there are, what, eight or nine of these things) to complete them all. Let's hope I can keep my deaths to a minimum while doing it. Sometime this evening, I [did] put clickable feeds to my main blogs on the profile page. This saves me from having to create links to those pages when new stuff appears. No technical knowledge required. Ain't life grand? I have several other writing projects to work on from AC over the coming weeks, too, so if it looks like I'm not on here a lot over the next week or two, it's because I'm typing my ass off. I'll stop in and say hello on occasion, don't worry.