The Ever-Changing Narrative (Sex and Violence Edition)

Today, I cruised by the Slacktivist blog to check up on a thread/topic I'd viewed last night - one of Mr. Clark's linkspams to interesting stories found online (the "Smart People Saying Smart Things" series). I rarely, if ever click on all the links in those, but sometimes I click through a few and find interesting stuff.  Want to cringe and horrible puns? Check the "Christian T-Shirt Fails."   (I think it's a good measure of how changed or "backslidden" I've become when I look at stuff like that and remember the church I went too as a teen and how such things were popular... except, somehow, I remember the quality of the shirts and messages as being so much *better* than today.  I had a "Love All, Worship One" shirt once with a stylish fish-symbol done in a sponge-paint style... cheesy? Sure, but not nearly as bad as a Jesus-Staples Easy Button).  Face. Palm.

I once had a job service try to get me a job as a graphic designer at one of those places. After browsing the online shirt message selection, I had a "Run away!" reaction and emailed my job coach with what essentially amounted to a Big Nooooo! (That place's offerings were even worse than bad puns.  A shirt that read "God loves homosexuals" on the front - sweet - until you see the back "He loves people looking for love in all the wrong places."  - I wanted to smack people upside the head with a rolled up newspaper for sheer rudeness if nothing else)! 

Speaking of that... One of the other links on the linkspam was to a story on an LGBT site about an overlooked old church Saint... A Saint who was a bearded lady.  (According to the story, she didn't want to be married off to a pagan king, so she prayed about it and God gave her a beard to make her ugly so she wouldn't have to marry. Then her dad murdered her over it).  The site speculated that perhaps (if she existed) she was a lesbian who was blessed with the beard or an intersex individual and has become a Saint that some in the LGBT community latch onto as patron.  (She's officially a patron of difficult marriages, I think... I just took a glance at the article).  Anyway, today, on the comments to the linkspam, I saw someone complaining about how this person "automatically" is branded "lesbian" rather than "perhaps heterosexual but just didn't want to marry" or "perhaps asexual." 

The commentator was an asexual who is tired of being ignored. 

I can relate.  I mean, though I'm in a technically heterosexual relationship, sex just isn't a part of it - and I'm happy with it. I mean, what do you call a 33-year-old-virgin without any overwhelming desire to "correct" that particular life-state even though I've had no problems "landing" a partner?  I'm pretty sure I'm asexual, or something close to it.  - Now, it only seems to weird people out when I share it (I'm weirding you out right now, aren't I)? And I run the risk of getting accusations of everything from "prude who's going to tell me I'm evil and going to Hell for having sex" to "stupid, pitiable child who just doesn't KNOW life yet because the big "O" is magical" to "What the Hell is WRONG with you?"  (To which I reply - yes. I do have something "wrong" with me. Want me to go into detail about a health condition)?  By the way, if you want to have sex, no skin off my bum - but if you don't know your partner(s) well, use protection so you don't get sick, okay? I care about you.  

I was struck with the thought reading the commentator of "Yeah, it's kind of annoying to have the possibility of my existence ignored again, but... so what?"  I think the LGBT community is in need of Saints and heroes (mythic as well as the confirmed-real) because historically, not a lot of those have been "allowed" to them by greater society.  As an "asexual" I don't feel particularly persecuted - on the grounds of "What's the point of a unicorn hunt?"   I'm content to be a "unicorn" if it helps other people, people who really need the solace.

So, I guess I'm saying, my attitude right now is if, someway, somehow, I become a Saint or a hero of some sort and people in the future want to look to my lack of obvious sexuality as a sign that I can be a hero to their own - go right ahead.

I'm thinking about this because I have a short story in mind dealing with the “change in narratives” regarding life and people that I'm dawdling on.  It’s just one of my possibly-meaningless stories to post on the blog that I'll probably never make money or fame from - about a man who is resurrected after ten years of being dead.  Just spontaneously resurrected - I'm not going to try to explain it with science though the scientists in the story's world will.  Despite the obvious "religious" connotations to what happened to him, I don't want it to be a religious story. In fact, the "victim" as it were doesn't remember an afterlife (yet, he does not dismiss the possibility that there is one and he just doesn't remember it).  He gets people angry at him from both sides because he's unwilling to take one - also, some will be angry at his general existence, because face it, some people would be because it seems like whenever something that’s “not supposed to happen” does, sometimes even for “good,” some people get angry because “The world does not work that way!” 

Anyway, the main meat of the story (if I ever get it written) is that the hapless man finds that people’s memories of him have shifted.  His family and friends all make assumptions about him and “what he’d want” and are made to feel very strange when he corrects them, or chooses something different.  – I want the story to be about how we go through our lives essentially seeing other people as fictional characters a lot of the time – we have our own images of them, our own ideas about them, sometimes even the people we are closest to.  In other words, the story-idea is a play on “Don’t speak ill of the dead” and “Absence makes the heart grow fonder.”   When the dead cannot speak, we make myths around them – good or bad, depending upon what we thought of the person and whether we personally knew them or if they’re just a historical figure. 

The weirdest thing – when first getting the budding ideas for this story, I was pretty sure I wanted my resurrect-character to die in a public shooting (so I could play with the idea of “the martyrs we make – whether or not they ever wanted to be”).  Then, well, news happened…  Okay, if someone shoots up a grocery store anytime soon, consider me one really freaked out writing-prophetess.  I was thinking gas-station-store, that kind of thing, just because robberies there are common… that evolved into a grocer somehow… And if anyone actually does that, even though I’m not sure I believe in an “eternal Hell” anymore, I hope there’s some kind of a “hell” for them.  I hate to be one of those “hangin’s too good” types, but sometimes, I honestly am when I look at all the shit that goes on in the world.

Speaking of violence – here’s another thing I’ve been wondering at for a while in regards to values dissonance and how history looks upon things… I keep thinking that the very “progressive” people of today might be seen as monsters in the future, not for the things they are progressive about, but for side-things.  I keep thinking, for instance, that one day, maybe vegetarianism will win out as the grand moral dietary choice – as is, I have respect for vegetarians, even though I’m a meat-loving butcher’s daughter and well, when it comes to some of the flesh I eat – a stone-killer.  I went fishing yesterday at a nearby creek. I caught four lovely sunfish (they’re small and bony, but I enjoy eating them) and brought ‘em home, beheaded them, gutted them and fried ‘em up with some bacon and garlic.  I am capable of doing that without thinking too much about the fish (I do try to minimize suffering, but they are pretty primitive-brained, so I’m never going to think of them the same way I do people, or even the mammals I also enjoy eating).   I can’t help but think that even as I grow “progressively” on various issues of politics, society, human rights and even spirituality, that history may just look back on me / those like me as horrid because we ate things with faces and / or looked into the faces of what we ate. 

I’m unrepentant, though.  Fish are delish.  Fish aren’t friends! They’re food!

Long Walks in the Graveyard at Night

Long Walks in the Graveyard at Night

Here’s where I confess to something that may have you thinking I’m a Goth or something of that nature, or, at least weird – (but you already knew that, right)? 

I live across the street from a cemetery – an old but continuous cemetery, as in, it is still in use – fresh plots are dug there and there are many modern memorial markers (ranging from, in my opinion, the tasteful to the g-awful.  Who invented the idea of colorizing headstones)? There’s this one poor girl who died young (sixteen, seventeen, I think), whose parents decided to put every hoo-haw known to man on her grave, including a big, plaster Uncle Sam. 

If you do that to me, I am coming back to haunt you.  I don’t care if it turns out that the people who don’t believe in life after death turn out to be right, I will *find a way.*

Then again, I don’t think my family’s too keen on my “Dig up my skeleton and make art out of my bones!” idea. (I know they’d rather Uncle Sam me… Urg).

There are some graves there for the Civil War days, though… faded/worn out limestone where names are barely visible if at all.  They make me very sad because with such long-ago dates, I know that the people who knew those people, buried them and probably used to visit are dead now, too.  If anyone comes to these graves anymore, they’re historians and people making genealogy records – no one who actually knew the people buried there – their smile, their eyes, their voice, their scent… And now even their names are faded on forgotten stones. 

Anyway, there is no gate on this cemetery.  My area is a nice little town and doesn’t have vandalism problems.  Even if it had gates on the road-entrances, the “wall” is a hedge. And, no, not a hedge made of ninjas for you fellow fans of “The Tick” comics.  I’ve been walking in it at night. I even got a surprise when I once saw a cop car rolling through during the twilight hour, but I wasn’t stopped from walking, which surprised me.  The other night, I was on the paths and saw this incredible moon – a hairline sliver that was red… pinkish actually, but this creepy red moon… It’s pretty neat to walk in a cemetery on a summer night with the fireflies flitting about and a creepy moon.  It’s quiet, peaceful, and at my cemetery, there are lots of very pretty lights people put on the graves – solar-powered lights that charge during the day to hold a little vigil at night.  At least one of the graves has an actual candle that someone continually lights and replenishes. 

It’s sobering to think that this is where we all end up.  I mean, I got to thinking that the other night, under the sliver-moon about how these were people of all kinds of different persuasions and beliefs here (it’s an eclectic cemetery – a walk in the daytime reveals all kinds of symbols, poetry and languages)… and like it or not, whether we believe there is anything “after” or not (or like me, hope there’s something “after” but suspect that there might be a “your mind makes it real” thing that goes on in its final throes )… we all end up headed toward the same essential destination. 

I mean, I think of it this way – If there is something after, you’re going to be different than who and what you are now.  I can’t imagine that anything is in a static-state.  Wherever you wind up, the life you live in the now is the only chance you have to live that life, because if there is another side, things are going to be different there. This is why it’s tragic when people who are selfish and cruel do not change in life (because even if they get some kind of awakening or comeuppance in the hereafter, it’s too late for the now).  I don’t even know if I’m making any sense.  In any case, I think a graveyard should be especially humbling for anyone who doesn’t think in “cosmic” terms, because, in the end, it doesn’t matter if you’re better, harder, faster, stronger, or smarter than anyone else – the genius and the idiot, the strong, brave person and the weakling all find their “reward” in rot.  Are you really “better?”  You cannot control what people think of you after you’re gone, after all.  Today’s heroes may be tomorrow’s villains, or just… forgotten. 

Run the race, but the finish line is just about the same when it comes down to it. You don’t get first place if everyone’s participation ribbons are the same thing as the first place ribbon. Sometimes, I think the meaning of life is death just because with the same finish line, we have to think about how we’re running the race.  In the end, don’t get too proud.  “Winning” at life is an illusion.   

About a year or two ago was when I first ventured into to the graveyard at night. Upon coming home from places and driving past the lot to get home, my man Bob and I grew curious about the weird lights we saw there.  I went outside in the dark, looking over my shoulder for cops and nosy neighbors, and stole into the cemetery to find, that, yes, indeed, people were leaving solar lights on some of the graves.  I told an online AIM friend I had about it, a friend who was atheist-leaning agnostic and she thought I was brave for that and wouldn’t do it alone like I did because “graveyards are spooky.”  I was all “Huh?  Okay, you’re a rational skeptic. You don’t think there’s anything in a cemetery but stones and bodies buried deep. What would you have to be afraid of?  I’M the slightly-superstitious person / person who has some religious beliefs / believes in the possibility of a spirit world and, though I don’t think there’s anything in that cemetery but stones and bodies, either, the remote possibility of getting haunted for disturbing the dead does actually register with me –  and I’m not scared at all!”

(Maybe it’s because I disturb the bones of found dead wild animals for art all the time I haven’t felt any curses…) Unless…said curse is my life… 

I just thought that was funny.  I’m out of touch with said friend – she had some computer problems long ago and failed to get back to me. It’s been about a year… I’m worried she might have grown apart from me as some friends of mine do.  I was putting a lot of my psychodrama on her unfairly.  In a way, I think I may have experienced death a few times without actually dying, because I know what it is to have friends “grow out of me” and forget me, and I know what it’s like to lose touch with family.  It is change, is all…

I remember one night last year or sometime before that, I decided to show Bob the grave-lights and we would up traipsing around the graveyard at night, making discoveries (like the over-decorated Uncle Sam grave in the back).  Bob had been playing “The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess” out of sheer unemployed-at-the-time boredom and he Zelda-ized our little tromp.  “We’re hunting Poes!” he exclaimed. I laughed so hard. 

(For those not familiar with the Legend of Zelda games, Poes are malevolent ghosts found on the fields and in the graveyards at night and are, in most games, shown holding lanterns.  In “Ocarina of Time,” you can catch them in a bottle and drink the things to boost (or sometimes harm) your health!!! In “Twilight Princess,” they’re demonic entities that stole pieces of a man’s soul and you have to, in your alternate wolf-form, attack and literally rip the soul out of them to help the cursed man in exchange for rewards). 

In any case, if you visit me and stays on a summer evening, I might just walk you across the street and take you “Poe-hunting” beneath a spooky moon.  

Nothing Says "Happy Holidays" Like a Stegosaurous

Some days, I encounter things that make me think "I love America." 

Today, Bob and I went grocery shopping. Before hitting the regular store, we hit the local Asian specialty market.  He's not much into Asian food, but I am - particularly for unique and fun Japanese snacks.  The place mostly caters to the local Korean-American community, but they have stuff from all over Asia, including stuff you find on funny "Engrish" sites - in other words, things you just don't get at the "regular" supermarket.

Okay, so I can get the edamame I'm so addicted to at the regular store, but the Asian market has bags of the stuff for a cheaper price.

Anyway, in this market there was an endcap with Mexcian stuff of all things.  In with all the specialty noodles and sauces and packages written in Chinese, Japanese and Korean, there's part of an aisle with Mexican stuff - the kind of stuff  I remember specialty stores in Arizona that catered specifically to the Hispanic population carrying, stuff I haven't seen since I left the Southwest.  I picked up a bag of Horchata mix.  (If you've never heard of it, Horchata is a rice-milk drink flavored with cinnamon - very popular in Mexico and among Mexican-American communities).  Lilly-white blond, green-eyed me loves the stuff.  Along with Japanese snacks and candy, Korean-style hot-pot meat, stuff made in Singapore...

We got to the checkout and in this Korean-run market, the checkout ladies are speaking to each other in Spanish and one of them saw my horchata mix and was all "What? We carry horchata here?! Dude!"

Just, I don't know - the sheer diversity of it all was really cool.  All these things from so many different cultures and backgrounds coming together even if it's just products and food and awkward white people finding unexpected things hiding around a market.

After this, Bob and I stopped by the nearby K-Mart.  Walking down the aisle looking for winter thermal wear for me to wear under my clothes at my cold outdoor farm job, we saw....  Barak Obama-head Chia Pets - a whole display of them. Granted, there were also Chia Spongebobs and Chia Homer Simpsons and regular old fashioned Chia Pets, but.... our President's head is a Chia Pet.  We are free enough to have no fear of making our leaders into kitch. 

Checking out of K-Mart, there were boxes on the end-wall of lighted Christmas / Holiday yard displays.  One of them (large, boxed, with a picture on the box) was... a lighted, animated holiday stegosaurs. I'm serious. It had a Santa hat on and a red and white striped scarf on its neck. 

It was a lighted, merry stegosaurus.

I think I really love where I live and its culture - it's diverse, delightfully kitchy and sometimes downright weird.  It is awesome.

Politics, As Usual

So, I voted today.  It was just the minor local elections and I really didn't know dip about who was running, but as the neat thing with local elections goes, I got to meet candidates at the polling place - and eat one of one team's homemade gingersnaps.  Still, I had nothing particularly interesting going on today, was healthy, the day was GORGEOUS - perfect for a walk to the center of my small town, and I felt the voices of my ancestors howling me on (not literally, of course - I'm not that crazy yet. You know what I mean).

You see, voting is a right not everyone in the world gets to enjoy and it's a right that people have suffered and died to bring to me.  I kept thinking about how if I were born earlier, my gender would have barred me from participlating in the political process in my own nation.  I figure I should be damn grateful to do my civic duty.

Also, they had coffee - Starbucks coffee.

This time around went more calmly than the last time - last year was one of the major elections and for that... I was a pathetic revoluionary.  I tacked up signage in the bathroom for the fictional "Screw Them All!" Party.  I was...upset... you see.  I'm still kind of upset with the whole country, but that was my impotent rage slash cheeky joke coming out.  I still have the STA manifesto/rant somewhere on my hard drive, I think.  No signage this time.  No pathetic protests. (But I actually did vote for reals then, too).

The other day, Bob and I were talking about the possiblity of me running for office.  I think I would be a very poor politician.  You see, on a lot of issues - even major ones, I have this way of seeing both sides of things and sitting on the fence or taking the middle road.  I have a lot of strong convictions, but I'm also too much of a mediator for the rigid world of politics.  I mean, if I were President of the United States and people were looking at me for a decision whether or not to go to war, I'd be stuck forever weighing options - cost vs. threat and so forth, even though in my heart I'm a total peacenik.  It'd be the value of Peace vs. the value of Protect my People and my head would spin.  Take that down to minor council issues that are far less serious and probably still have trouble.  Also, the scandal! I could see minor issues of my life being cranked up to eleven in mudslinging ads! And I can see myself slinging (literal, since I work at a barn) manure in response!

I'd have awesome signs, though.  Coming from a graphics background, I appreciate strong, bold advertising.  My signs would be very visually appealing and would contain no clip art - all original work.  I bet I'd have some memorable slogans, too, just because Bob and I come up with the funniest, wackiest things when we're driving along in the car *making fun* of political signs. 

Looking for Meaning in the Land of Poo

At work tonight in the Land of Poo (I work at a horse farm as a stable-hand), I was thinking about how I wish I had a meaning to my life. 

I'm a little upset right now because my duties have been cut back.  I did my normal cleaning of the stalls work tonight, but my work has been cut back to doing stupid odd jobs around the farm for most days because someone else who works there, some new girl, needed more hours.  I don't even know what's going on - if this girl is a friend of a friend or something, but she apparently quit a waitressing job and now needs more barn work.  My significant other put it best talking with me when he came to pick me up: "What they don't seem to understand here is that you NEED this work because you can't work with people.* This girl obviously can."

I'll still be getting paid the same - I have a weird salary kind of thing worked out - it's just that the work I'll be doing is different, but I still cannot shake the feeling that I'm being humored, that I have the work that I have because I am pitied, or because of possible discrimination issues being feared.  Everyone at my job knows I have a mental illness. In fact, I got the job because a friend of the farm's owner worked with (and now runs) a job-service for disabled people that the people I get mental health services from referred me to.

And, no, no one at my place of work knows of this blog.  And I don't Facebook.  So, it's safe for me to work-rant here.

Even with the regular-work (which made me feel needed and useful), it was still... scooping horse poo. I like it better than any other job I've had (with the possible exception of graphic design for newspapers - if my bosses weren't dinguses, and that one job at a zoo - that was fun), but still, it's a low-pay, lowly job without hope of advancement and something that anybody (provided they're physically fit, aren't afraid of horses and don't mind a little dirt) can do. 

And I guess I just got to thinking about how meaningless my life is.  I just don't do anything important, or anything irreplacable.  And it's not like I think I can do better right now, either.  

It seems like the things that I am fairly good at - things that I think could help the world - are things that aren't paid that much attention to. 

I've never been able to make a living as an artist.  My childhood dream was "to become an artist."  It can be said that I live that dream, but the problem is, I've never been able to feed myself on it, or to get my art to be anything "known." The closest thing I've come is the sale of a couple of my painted animal skulls to someone who found me via Deviant Art and a friend.  It came at a critical time for me and my guy... we were being forced out of our rental house (at the Holidays, no less).  That once-in-a-blue-moon sale of my work paid just enough of our deposit for us to be able to keep our cat (pet deposit), so we didn't have to give her to a shelter or re-introduce her to her former feral life.  I also got a graphic design degree (associates) and have done some graphic design work, but it wasn't particularly meaningful.  All I ever did was lay up ads for skeevy real estate agents and Italian resturants. 

There is something I've noticed as an artist: Loads of people think of you as some kind of mystical creature of talent that owes them free art.  Seriously - people want you to draw this, do that and will get a bit angry with you if you ask for compensation for the luxury.  Sure, I'm willing to humor friends and cute children, but sometimes, one has to say that one deserves to eat and have gas, too. (Gas for the CAR)!  It's honestly got to be like what happens to "the guy who knows computers" (like my Bob) - once people know that, everyone asks for free computer repairs.  (He'll do so for friends, but I have reminded him of the taking-advantage).  

As people who read stories here know - I want to be a writer.  Herein also lies a problem.  It seems that the only people who ever get known and change the world in any way anymore with this stuff are already-famous people who happen to write a book on a whim (or have one ghostwritten), or people who "know someone"  (relatives and so forth) in the publishing industry. 

People tell me I'm good (at writing), but I never know if I'm "good enough."  I can say this, though - I'm SICK of people reviewing my FAN-FICTION (not on this site, I post at fanfiction.net and various fandom-specific sites and boards) with glowing praise about how I "should write a novel with my own characters!" because I'm so good.  I DO THAT. ALREADY.  I even have this place and my Deviant Art account linked on my profile/signitures so people can easily click and see my original/non-fandom work, but I still get these reviews from apparently oblivious people). If someone wants to read original work from me, it's not like I make it difficult to find at all. 

Of course, I'm just not sure my work will ever get professionally published.  Not only do I lack the right connections, my work tends to be off-kilter.  It seems like every publisher/agency profile I read speaks of thier people wanting to find something unconventional, breakthrough, so on and so forth, yet, what do I see on the bookshelves and in online book promotions?  Seems like it's all more of the same, status quo.  My genre of interest is fantasy - what do people seem to want in that? The stuff that's popular and has always worked.  (Not that there's anything wrong with that - my very favorite videogame series is The Legend of Zelda and it's a fantasy cliche'-storm. It's what makes it work, in fact - every new game is a play-able fairy tale and the old games are like those old friends on your bookshelf you never get tired of).  

I've been told by a friend that he found my work to have a flavor like that of Madeleine L'Engle - "Quirky with spiritual undertones."  (We were talking about a specific work of mine not appearing on this blog, one of my novels).  Another friend told me that L'Engle took a very long time and a lot of rejection before A Wrinkle in Time was published.  I can see why - it's a very unconventional fantasy story - ahead of it's time, but I think something like it might have trouble getting published today. 

So, if my work is really like that in any way... Yeah... it's probably not going anywhere for a long time, if it goes anywhere at all. 

Then there are people who might see some of the "spiritual" my work and ask me why I don't try the Christian market.  The best explaination of why I'd want to avoid it might be best summed up by this blog post by Buzz Dixon.  "Porn to Christian Media: We're Not So Different" 

In short, I guess I can say that the stuff I'm good at, the stuff I really want to do, the stuff that I think really gives me value in this world is all just stuff that isn't getting known, getting me a living or even anything anyone's going to know after I'm dead unless something really interesting happens in my life.  Until then, I guess I'll be doing odd jobs in the Land of Poo, hoping to keep even that and hoping for a miracle or to find some kind of meaning.

And, no, I don't have kids and don't plan on having any... I'm sure I've mentioned somewhere on here before my being aesexual.  I also don't want to bring kids into the world to deal with a crazy mom. So, no I can't look for meaning in the "normal" places most seem to find it, either.

______________________________

* Regarding my dealing with other homo sapiens...I can deal with human-type entities better online, slightly. Sometimes, even there I screw up. I know that a couple of people who've read me came over from Slacktivist.  My awkwardness is why I don't post commentary there anymore.  A little while ago, I said something stupid and got slammed (to the point that a few people seemed to have thought I was a troll).  I don't think admitting defeat and apologizing even mattered - I said something dumb I was wrong to say, got slammed by smart people and now I feel like I cannot comment there anymore.  I still read the blog, I've just opted to remain silent.  I wouldn't be surprised or even blame anyone who followed my blog from there if you've left/not wanted to read me anymore because of my stupidity that day. 

The Day a Monster from Anime Attacked Philadelphia

On a fine Thursday in July, Philly became Tokyo 3.  Aaaah! It's an Angel from Neon Genesis Evangelion!  Call NERV before it destroys us all!!!!!!

Actually, it's supposed to be a space station, I think.  That's what it's called.  It's the stage for U2's 360 Tour!

And here is me in front of it, wearing my shirt from the Vertigo Tour when it came to town. 

Seeing as U2 is my favorite band (yeah, I know Bono has one of the biggest egos out there - I like their music and am not apologizing, so shut up... In fact, I find it kind of cute that these guys think they can save the world - aw!)  my Bob got me tickets (and what he had to go through to get the tickets!) as a birthday gift because... hey, he's got a job now and we aren't scraping together every last scrap to pay the rent anymore, yay! 

I think the band, as over the top as they are, were upstaged by their stage this time.  Lookit this thing!

To borrow a lyric: "I've never seen a moon like this - can you see it, too?"  The moon rising over the outdoor stage was neat, as well as the airplanes overhead banking to see what was going on. 

Kinda looks like a temple, actually - the temple where people worship Bono.  Nah, still looks like it belongs in Eva.   (Unfortunately, that wikipedia article has no picture of the Angels - the series' monsters, nor does the TV Tropes page for it and I am too lazy to go searching for images, but, yeah, they're weird and if you've seen the anime, you should know why Bob and I were referencing it while looking at that stage). 

Bob and I started out our day by getting up (in the afternoon, as is my way), and heading to a Bob Evans (resturant) to stuff ourselves with sausage gravy (It's like... what you get when you render a pig. My apologies to all my Kosher, Halal and vegitarian friends, but it's one of the things that makes life worth living for me and it makes me think that it's too bad for Anthony Bourdain that he doesn't do chain resturants).  We headed into the center of the city, noted that the line to see the Liberty Bell was too long (I decided I'll only do something that touristy if I ever get my parents over for a visit).  We walked around Chinatown and I bought some ink to replace the half-spent stuff I got the last time I was there. 

We got to The Link (Lincoln Financial Field) and I got blindsided by a One campain activist and wound up signing a petition.  "Vaccines for poor people" - I mean, how could I refuse? Then Bob and I took some photos, snacked on pretzels, did some "Planespotting" of the aircraft overhead and generally waited around for three hours because we thought things were going to start sooner than they did.  The opening act was Interpol, and after that, we got a half hour or so of interesting statistics.

Then, there was the concert, which was very much fun - and full of dancing by our drunken neighbors in the seats around us, and me throwing up peace-signs, and Bono praising our sports teams and cheesteaks (I cheered for that, though most of the crowd was silent!), and at one point, the audience was led in singing "Happy Birthday" to Nelson Mandella, and Bono swung around from his lighted microphone like an idiot even though he's been recovering from a jacked-up back.

I swear rock stars suffer perpetual mania.

All in all, I had fun.

RUUUUUNNNN! IT'S GOING TO DESTROY US ALL!

Longing for Old-Timey Ways...

Just in case anybody actually reads this (such as my AIM friends who never comment because they don't have blogs and facebook junk or just because they have nothing to say)...

Due to an electrical problem at my apartment, I've been forced off the grid for a bit. The problem started yesterday and will probably be fixed sometime this afternoon, but if not, it may take a few days. 

Its interesting to see just how dependent the average modern American has become upon technology and electricity. I was watching a TV show on Discovery Channel the other day (when I had the TV) all about how a solar flare could knock out the grid without warning.  My guy had to scramble to get ice to put in a cooler to save our food... I'm wondering just how I'm going to get lunch without a microwave (dunno if I have enough money on hand for fast food, spent much of of my spare cash on lunch yesterday before we knew we had this problem).  If worst comes to worst, I could have cold leftover tempura... but I don't know what Bob's having.

Makes me wish for a root-cellar and a wood-burning stove. 

Why I'm able to type right now is becuase Bob has a laptop with a battery he charged using our car (I think, he bummed something to get it charged) and were bumming someone's stray wireless signal. I can't use it for long.

Just letting people I know and love in the Wired know that I'm out for a while.