Demons – A Poem

* note- today was a rough day, and the original post went all sour, so you get a poem. Good Luck.

DEMONS

The Demons are on the Hunt,
They’ve scented out their prey!

Panic smells and threat’ning sounds,
fringtened fearsome thoughts run foul;

Fleeing, running trying hard
To slip the bonds of thought.

Reason briefly tries afresh,
To stem the bursting dam.

The demons turn and point anew,
Their quarry briefly free!

His hope is tangible for now
But fleeting is the dream.

Their quarry flees yet once again,
Flitting thither and yon,

The demons note his fresh resolve,
And theirs to match his steel.

The truth is he cannot escape
These coursing hounds of hell.

They dog the victims every thought,
And taste his very soul;

These demons fair and strong of will
Are sons of man, ’tis true.

These demons hide within his thoughts,
And torture his mind, the pain!

I know this tale, ’tis true and sound.
The lies are plain to see.

For I am the man who runs and hides
And these demons, well, they are me.

On Writing, and Not Writing

Let’s start by stating the nature of today’s post… with a statement.

Today is about why I’m not further ahead, a listing of all the things I am doing on a daily basis that keep me from getting the writing I want to do, done!

 

 

 

 

Yep, that’s it.  I procrastinate, lots!

Here’s some of my favorite procrastination points.

Reading – Blogs, E-Mail, Books, etc, etc.

Cuddling – wife, kids, very rarely the cats….  (very rarely, cat’s and I don’t mix well)

Facebook – GAH!  huge timewaster. Should name it http://www.timewaster.com

Facebook Games

—-League of Heros 2 Beta

—-Dawn of the Dragons

—-Legacy of A Thousand Suns

—-I’m sure there’s more, but these are the three worst… really!

Oh and Writing.Com, that’s a good timesink as well, it’s just that I can justify it by saying I’m learning.

And one final point, I managed to procrastinate this week about writing, by hunting down more things to write about…  go figure.

 

Cheers, gotta fly,

Dan.

 

 

Identity

Afternoon, pull up a chair.

Today I want to talk about something that’s been on my mind, several of my minds.

Identity.  Online Identity specifically.  What is yours?  Who am I?  Why are we talking when we have little in common.

How far away from the “real” you is your online identity….  I’ll let you think about that while you watch this skit from YouTube.

God I love Monty Python.  Classic Insanity.  And a good point about identity.  Who are we all underneath the sheen of civilization?  If you were to remove all that is Civilized about a man, who is left?  Will it be the thinker or the Brute?

Here’s another appropriate video…

Yep, and with the advent of the internet, we’re so far beyond that stage that I really don’t know where to begin in explaining what I’m trying to talk about.

Used to be that you could log into a BBS (Text based Bulletin Board System) heck I even ran one for a while called L-Space… and once you’d created an account of who you wanted to be, that person was who you were, period.  Without video-blogging, mass-dissemination of video and pictorial information you were able to be this alternate person (or maybe be yourself, depends on how you were wired).  Now, with Facebook, Photoshop, and VR Sessions that are approaching a level of reality that makes dreaming look redundant, who’s to say if the person you “meet” in an online or non-face to physical face situation is in fact the person they represent themselves to be.

Now, don’t get me wrong, most people are basically honest, most are just fine…

But some aren’t.

I’ll use me for an example.  I’m a fairly average guy, six foot, brown hair, blue eyes, and about fifty pounds overweight (more or less, I think)  with 2.5 kids and a wife, who also works full time…

But online I could be a (ok this is a stretch, but for the sake of the example I’ll use it) I could be a five foot three dirty blond from the Ukraine, who’s just escaped from an abusive husband who’s caused two of the last three miscarriages that I’d had.  And with enough consistency and some minor facts (it’d help if I could use Photoshop, but I can’t, I really really can’t), I could have somebody believing that this six foot average Caucasian male was in fact a vulnerable somewhat diminutive member of the opposite sex…  (granted, this was an extreme example, guy’s don’t make good women, menatally, usually)

*as an aside there’s lots of recent discussion about just this topic over at Mad Genius Club, start at the linked post, and then go back through Sarah Hoyt’s post HERE and Rowena’s post about females as leads just before that.  It’s been an interesting week reading over there.*  Back to topic.

So, do you see what I mean?  Take away the requirement to be who you are supposed to be in this world (me, I was brainy smart so I was supposed to be a doctor or a lawyer, Yech!), even now I’m an accountant with leanings towards charting the stars and sailing the world, or maybe just writing about it…  either way…

Once you’ve removed that requirement to be who you appear to be, who you’re supposed to be, then who are you really?  Are you the same as that perpetual character you create for any and all games requiring a character build?  Are you who you think you are, are you who other’s think you are, or are you somebody else entirely?

I’ll leave it there, I’ve got work to do, and another post to put together for the night.  Let me know in the comments, what is your identity and how close to it do you live?

 

Optimism

Hi everybody.  First a quick explanation, then the picture I have for you.

I was heading out to the car this morning, and after starting the frigid lump of steel, hoping that it would warm up, I went back to put the garbage out for pickup.  Not usually a bid deal, but it’s up the other side deck over the perpetual snow-drift we have here from Fall to Spring.  My boys are kind enough to tramp a path back and forth to the side deck through/over/around this snowdrift, so it’s not too bad hiking through it.

But this morning I had to go back to that spot just off of said deck, because I realized there was something of note there.  My youngest, Aidan, was playing outside last night when we got home (so was Connor), and in playing he had forgotten to put away his toys.  Now, remember, he has no preset ideas about what is a proper winter toy, so here is what he was doing yesterday in the snow, in full snow-gear, in the dark, at minus 10 C.

Two Jokes

Just because I can, none of you are in my Knights of Columbus Group, so here’s two of this month’s jokes.

 

Question:  Why do we have to be quiet in church?

Answer: Because people are sleeping…

 

And the second one…

At the pearly gates a taxi driver and a preacher are waiting in line.  St Peter consults his list and hands the taxi driver a silken robe and golden staff.

“You may enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”

The taxi driver proceeds through the gates while St. Peter consults his list again, and pulling out a cotton robe and wooden staff, presents them to the preacher.

“Just a minute!”  says the preacher, “That man was a taxi driver, and he gets a silken robe while I, a man of God, get only a cotton robe and wooden staff.  How can this be?”

St. Peter smiles understandingly, “Up here we work by results, while you preached people slept, while he drove, people prayed.”

Life Lesson #16

First, a disclaimer- This is from the book I’m reading “How to be Happy Dammit!” by Karen Salmansohn  (I’d buy copies for everybody I know, but I can’t afford it, so here’s the link to Amazon, I’d highly recommend reading it or even buying it.!  It’s funny, relevant and often painfully insightful.

And now, a direct excerpt from pages 100 – 103

Life Lesson #16

The Real Secret to Happiness – in 3 words.

1- Rationalize

2- Rationalize

3- Rationalize

You find it’s helpful to lie to yourself about your past pain . . . and all the rotten things that have happened to you.  And it’s only fair — since everyone else is lying to you too anyway.  Just kidding.  Sort of.  Well, Achem, remember this is a cynic’s guide to spiritual happiness.

You decide to see . . . equals.

Your enemies = your teachers.

Your failure = your wisdom.

Your mistakes = your lucky discoveries.

Your conflicts – your growth opportunities.

Your undesired endings = your desirable beginnings.

Your grapes of wrath = your raisons d’etre.

Your painful feelings = your proud proof that you are dealing with your feelings — Head on!

 

** and there’s a freebee bonus benefit to doing the above [equality formulation] . . .

 

You begin to be less judgmental about your: rage, fear, pain, conflict, and disappointments.

 

That’s it.  The whole lesson, and I’m going to leave it there.  I’d go into how it impacted me, but the fact that I’ve taken the time to re-type it all here, as well as hunting down the purchase link, should be indication.  The whole book is worth it.  Personally I stumbled across it in the library, lucky for me.

Hope you have an awesome day!

Cheers, I’ve gotta get back to work here.  Dan.

Snow.

Remember?

 

That magical moment,

Way back in the fall.

School is started,

and the late harvest ball…

 

The sun is retreating,

The moon in ascent

The ground still squishy,

Not hard like cement?

 

Excited for Christmas,

the anticipation;

The holiday season,

Heralds such love and fun.

 

That magical time,

When we all slowed down,

because the first frost had come

and coated the ground.

 

But now it’s February

The sky’s are still bleak

The holidays past,

Quite more than a week.

 

That magical time,

Anticipation and fun.

But winter I fear,

Ugh!  Yeah, by now I am done!