Well, friends, this week, I have mainly been involved in two activities. The first is rockin'. The second is rollin'. In fact, in some alternate universes, I am possibly known as the Ayatola of Rock And Rolla.... But... that source is unconfirmed. Though I would be gravely disappointed if it's not so. Speaking of this, note to self. Stop for gas tomorrow. That way, I don't have to gather my marauders and chase down a tanker. Next movie? I think I'd make a lousy Jedi. Master Windu would not approve, Mother Truckers! I would totally disappoint the entire Jedi Council. I just couldn't follow the code, especially with this not being allowed any attachments. See, for me, attachments (to people, places, things, feelings, ideas, moments) are exactly what I need to stay grounded, oriented, with the world in a context that kind of makes sense. Sure, to live completely without connection is a freedom beyond what most will ever know, but to me it is (at best) meaningless, and (at worst) the scariest level of hell and the most frightening existence ever. If one lives their whole life without attachment, then I think they're missing the point of life. Oh, and did you ever hear the tragedy of Darth Plagueis The Wise? And if I happen to fall in love, I can't exactly help that either. Beautiful souls are not as common as pretty faces or attractive bodies. And there is something to be said about seeing beyond the tangible anyway. A beautiful soul and a true heart are the only treasures out there worth seeking. I do think it is extreme bullshit that such treasure can fall into disinterested, disconnected, and uninspired hands. I outright asked someone, "How does a jerk like that win a heart like yours?" Do you know, I would absolutely sell my soul just to have what some feel they have the right to mistreat and neglect. Damn it, just what am I doing wrong? I also said that treasure should be treasured and cherished. I continued by saying that I would never (as someone did) ever say that I didn't necessarily need this person in my life, every waking (and sleeping) hour. How many ways can I tell someone that I love them without saying I love you? I am still counting the ways. Damn it. Here I go again, rambling, whining, pining... How about a subject change? Let's all settle down with a nice clean cup move down. What do ya say? The critters think I'm Snow White. All I need is to break out into song and whistle while I work. Critters everywhere. I do believe there's a bird back here in my work area. I also happen to know there's a cat around here, too. For the sake of the bird, may their paths never cross. Speaking of those woodland creatures, I have encountered an inordinate amount of dare devil bunny wabbits and death wish deer on my morning drives. I would guess it's spring being so close. Otherwise, I don't know. I ain't Snow White. I'm not Elmer Fudd either. Hahahaha. Still, on the dirt road this morning, I had to stop 3 times for the same wascally wabbit. Anyway, it was a beautiful morning with a particularly brilliant and colorful sunrise that almost made waking up worth my while. It takes more than the almighty dollar to motivate me anymore. I have to have some positive happy reasons too. I would imagine waking up next to someone I love would also be nice, but then again it would be much more difficult to leave them behind, than it is to leave my soft, comfortable, yet soulless pillows behind... And even that takes effort these days. And yes, my words will most likely eventually turn to the one I wish were there with me, mornings and nights. As you know, I keep very few secrets from the good Doctor Blog-ieo, or from you, my friends, Romans, robots, and strangers. Not a great many other hopeless causes, pointless longings, improbable pinings, or impossible dreams occupy these words or my thoughts as much as this particular one. So I will no doubt find myself rambling on about it once again, ah, but not just yet. 2025 Milestones. January made for three years since Marsha's been gone. February, my mother would have been 76 years old. This month (March) makes three years since she's been gone, too. April will make 8 years for my second tour in this particular textile factory. (My first was a month short of 9). In May, my parents would have been married for 55 years. In July, my father will have been gone a year. In September, he would have been 77, and Marsha would have been 44. My other sister and I have birthdays that month, too. In October, it will have been 4 years since the second to last time we siblings were all together. In Tallahassee, we went to Gordo's and Prime Time. And despite the serious reason we got together, there were smiles and laughter and it was good to spend the day together. It was the second to last. I don't want to talk about the last time. In November, my kids will be 22, 24, and 26, with my oldest being the same age I was when he was born. It would have also been my 27th wedding anniversary had someone not decided to be a backstabbing whore. Ah, but let's not get started on that, shall we? Clean cup, move down? Yes.. Let's dewit. Oh my poor tummy. Ever eat too much? I did today, and damn do I regret it! I feel like I've got an alien on board. And that particular space bastard is not being very respectful to the mother ship. [Duke Nukem Voice] "Those alien bastards are gonna pay for messin' up my tummy!" "I'm here to kick ass and to chew Tums, and I'm all out of Tums." Heartache alone is bad enough without heartburn to go along with it. Oh, I'm not going to deny that these days I really, really, really need a hug, just not my face and not from a face hugger. I feel like an extremely loud and extended Klingon style belch would help, ah, but no dice. If only I had that warrior spirit. I learned my lesson about antacids anyway. Salt is no good when you have high blood pressure, and those antacids I was munching on might as well have been salt wafers. I don't know how close it came to having been a fatal mistake, just that I got to feeling really bad, oh and that I'm still alive today and I damn sure ain't touching them anymore. Lesson learned. I'd rather just hurt. It reminds me I'm still alive. And hey, I've got work to do. Miles to go, miles to go. oh well, enough about my alien-to-be. Clean cup? Move down? Okay... from tummy talk to nerd ravings. I love technology, and I always have. I am the original computer nerd from a time when we nerds didn't get the respect that we deserve or enjoy today. I love being able to escape into the digital world of my games and fan-fictions and of so much more. I enjoy preserving what I feel to be the best parts of the online world. I feel that we today have the digital equivalent of ancient wonders, Though (like sand) we've got to dig below a lot of BS to find it. Instead of Hieroglyphics etched into stone, it's 1's and 0's etched into different media, admittedly missing that 5,000-year lifespan. (I hope billion year 5D crystal glass becomes a thing). Still, as much as I love technology, and as kind as it has been to me in some lonely times, there is also a danger. Be it my computer on my desk or my smartphone in my hand, it's just a box. And you don't want to spend your life trapped in a box. Speaking of which, it's quite the beautiful day outside, I think I'll take a look around (if I can break away from this place for a minute). And I've got to free myself from so much more than just the box. I can't help how I feel about a certain beautiful someone, but there must be something I can do to lessen the hurt my own feelings are causing me. She's not the one hurting me, It is I. My pain is self-inflicted, but not self chosen. There must be a way for this love to be redirected, some way to complete the circuit, where it brings only happiness to any heart it might touch. No more pain, none for me or for anyone I love. No more pain. Allow me to speak a bit about the concept of free will, because if there turns out to be a god above, then maybe I understand where he's coming from just a little bit and in my own small way. You love someone. You want them to love you back. But their love would only have meaning if they freely chose to love you. Sure, as a powerful god, you could snap your fingers and make them love you, but it wouldn't mean a damn thing at all. Because it's you choosing yourself. It's like all those elections Stalin, Putin, and Chairman Mao "won." Everyone, especially you, would know it's bullshit. Besides, if you love them, you wouldn't want to force them to decide one way or another. Now, I am not much on a belief in the supernatural, but if I were a god, I would want to be freely chosen, rather than (Soviet style) rig my own election. Now, I am but a mere mortal, far from a god, yet.... I just so happen to love someone. I can't make them choose me. I wouldn't make them even if I could because it wouldn't mean anything, and also because I love them. So, in the unlikely probability that I am wrong about God Almighty, then I do apologize for the pain my refusal to return your love has caused. For I know now what it feels like. Forgive me, please forgive me, for that is a kind of pain that should never be felt in any heart. Between two souls, distance in space can be meaningless. There have been people far away but with me. There have been people with me, but far away. With unrequited love, distance is a mercy. Why? Because certain circumstances of closeness just remind me of how far away I'll always be from where I wish to be. To borrow a line from Alice In Chains, Heaven beside you, Hell within. Coming from the heart, from a place far from hatred, this sentiment is born of the very kind of love the poets have echoed through the ages. Oh, and they were oh so much more eloquent than I could ever be. I find myself trying to work through these feelings as best I can. I am way too old to be acting like a child. Yet, there are things I can't help, so many realities I am still learning to accept: That which is within relating to without, and that which is without relating to within. Oh, and I have learned that denying that I feel a certain way is akin to throwing a boomerang at a beehive. The first person to call BS on such a charade will always be yourself. So I accept and I go on. Accepting is the easy part. Going on? Now that takes a bit of work. It involves trying to integrate into the limitations of reality, which I can no longer deny. It is infusion rather than delusion... It's that bit of sweetener with which we wash down that bitter pill. Feelings can not be helped, mine, theirs, yours, anyone's. And none of us are wrong, me, them, you, anybody. It is only action or inaction that make them right or makes them wrong. Bottom line? It is okay to be human. Oh, and life can be a bit of a beeeeyotch. Damn it, I love her. I find myself waiting for something that just won't ever happen. Here I am... Here they could be, given everything in this world that I have to give. Among today's deals, this old soul. It's not come one come all. It's you, my love, and only you. One deal, one heart and one soul, all yours, absolutely free. No strings attached, save this old heart. The magic words are ".....And now you're mine." and my response would be, "Indeed, My Queen. What is thy bidding?" I know how I must sound, but here I am, a freaking clown, a totally hopeless fool, aware in mind, but with a totally clueless heart. And I just can't help it. Love is one heluva drug. A fool from ignorance through no fault of their own is always redeemable. But what about we fools who know we're being fools, yet still being fools? Well, maybe Mr. T will still pity us, though if he had to hear all of this, he'd be tired of all my jibba jabba. How in the hell did I get here? Poetry in motion, beauty in spirit, wonder in soul. Serendipity: Never ordered but seemingly made to order. It's like if a genie showed up and said, "Describe your perfect wish." And so I did so down to the details. But, the damn devil's in the details and that genie? Yeah. For some reason, he doesn't like me very much. So he conjures the perfect wish, and then places said wish clear in view but just out of reach. I'd write a strongly worded letter to Larry Hagman, but JR's done left Dallas a long time ago. I bet half the world doesn't get my outdated pop culture references, but hey. Tell me, how does it feel to be perfect? What is it like to never know regret, to have to look up remorse in the dictionary because you don't know what it means? How light are your steps when you have no burden to carry? See, I don't understand. I have never walked a mile on the beach without getting a few grains of sand on my feet. I have never walked a mile in this life without having a few regrets on my soul. I look back on even the times when I tried and still feel like I could have tried a little harder, done a little better, given that one percent more. How can any soul, honest in reflection, live a lifetime of the fault always belonging to somebody else? I'd say 50-50 is an optimistic estimation for most of us, myself included. Have you ever thought of the subtle difference with such contrasts as in between right and wrong, correct, and incorrect? To me, feelings are never wrong (only what we do), but they can sometimes be incorrect. You can also be technically correct but morally wrong. You can hold to the letter of the law, but be breaking the spirit of the law at the same time. The world is not so black and white. And emotions are a logic of their own. Oh, well. The answer to the great Billy Preston is yes. It will definitely go round in circles. Clean cup move down! As I may or may not have mentioned before is that I have a good amount of my baby sister's possessions. She was an avid fan of classic soap operas and had literally thousands of DVDs containing episodes upon episodes. Somebody recently asked me why I keep them. Or worse, why don't I throw them away? Listen, pal, enough of her possessions got thrown away back in '22 before I could put a stop to it. And no, it wasn't ordinary stuff either. Do you consider a Bachelors degree in history from FSU that she worked so hard to earn, fodder for the freaking garbage can? Hell no! These were things that she was proud of, things she put her heart and soul into. Does that make me a hoarder? My answer is, maybe so, maybe not. I don't give a damn if it's hoarding or not. To even mention throwing them away is like cursing in church, something that even a non-believer like me would never do. Bottom line? They're Marsha's soaps, and since they meant something to her, they mean something to me. So, last Friday, I went to Wally World and bought 60 dollars worth of sturdy plastic containers to replace the disintegrating cardboard containers she had them all in. Now, they're neatly stacked and take up a lot less space but are far better protected from the elements stored in my closet. Is this hoarding? I don't give a damn. This is my sister we're talking about. As for my own stuff, my M-Blurays reached a milestone today. Ten Years! A whole decade! Hooray! And maybe for a few hundred more? My oldest M-Disks have now officially lasted longer than my marriage did. Yep. My faithful, loyal, honorable M-Disks didn't become whores and fuck around with other computers. Hooray for those 1000-year M-Disks! At least they stayed true to me. I have made 638 of them since 2015. I guess that averages out to more than one a week, which would have been 520... I'd bet the files on those oldest disks to be way older than the disk itself. Some of them are probably closer to 20 years old, a few even more than that. I started collecting digital stuff in the 1990s. They're one heck of a time capsule that stretches between them and now. My newest disks? I wrote them out just last night. They used to claim a thousand year lifespan. Now, they just say "Lifetime Archival" on the packages. I suppose that's long enough. Though I'd love to listen to a conversation a few hundred years from now about how weird I must have been or what wonderful taste I had in the various media I preserved. Either way is good for me. Most important is all the family stuff, pictures, recordings, and home movies. Not that I ever could forget, but I can still hear my sister, my Mom, and my Dad's voices, any time I want to... Though it will never be like having them back again. But that's a totally different wall of text. So, that's 638 M-Disks, averaging about 20 gigabytes each, some a bit more, some a bit less. So, about 12.7 Terabytes? Including a lot of obsolete stuff I've replaced in other places over the years. My stuff on hard drives is about 7TB these days.... That 7 on hard drives, I have exactly 5 copies of, 3 at home, and two in a bank vault... Can't be too careful, can we? I have put a lot of myself into this. It may seem unimportant to others, but it's all I really have. Still, the family stuff is the big thing. Anything else in there could probably be replaced. Well, there are also things I built, rather than simply found that could never be replaced. I'm still here, but the person who built them is long gone... Such is evolution. Aside from family stuff or things I've built, there are also a few rarities that might be a bit harder to find, old game versions, websites that have completely disappeared, things like that. Then, I've got Doom levels by the hundreds of thousands, more that I could ever play in a lifetime. And as with everything else, it seems it's all about the getting, rather than the playing or the having. Well, the other part is in the keeping and the preserving. I'm building one hell of a digital pyramid, one to rival all the Egyptian princes and Pharoahs. And it will forever be so that I will never let your levels go. I just hope I find someone who shares this deep interest before I die. The king must have an heir to ensure the future of the empire. I have my sons, but they don't exactly share my hobby of being a digital pack rat. One less than major but still significant reason for my digital hoarding is to eliminate bullshit ads from my life. I don't just slightly dislike them. I hate them. They do not simply annoy me. They absolutely piss me off! I know it's a necessary evil, but I've just got no patience for advertising anymore. I listen to my own music tracks because I just can't stand radio. (Though at work, I have no choice) They've basically got two characters flapping their gums all the time, shilling shit that I don't want. The beeeeeyotch and the testicularly challenged male. They never shut up. I know it's not the same two, but they sound so much alike that they might as well be. And as fast as either one of them can wag their tongues, either one could do efficient time in prison. Get em off quickly as to be left in peace. AHHHHH! Next? Oh, these dark thoughts those two inspire! If I could reach through the speakers and slap em both hard like a pimp, or maybe close off a tracea or two with a nice Darth Vader style force choke, "I find your lack of shutting the hell up disturbing." I don't understand how this is supposed to make me want to buy their shit. If they were selling toilet paper, I'd just wipe my ass with the Sears And Roebuck catalog for the rest of my life. Shut up, just shut up. I can't stand it anymore. Instead of annoying people with that flapping tongue, start pleasing them instead. And this concludes my diss to the beeyotch and the testicularly challenged male. Notice I did not say man. That would have been one hell of an overstatement. As Freddy Krueger would say to them, "Who gives a fuck what you think?! Now try selling this, bitch!" [Attacks them with glove]. "Ahhh hahahahaha!" Thanks, Fred. They were a total nightmare. I guess it makes sense that they shill so hard for crap I don't want and would never buy. The things I'd spend money on need no advertising. I mean, I never saw a beer salesman, have you? Okay, I've seen plenty of beer commercials back in the day. And not the first beautiful woman showed up like they always did in the commercials. False advertising, man. But... One doesn't have to advertise what I'm gonna run by the store and buy anyway. It's the same for pizza. I love pizza, and pizza loves me back. Nothing is unrequited about that particular love... Beer and pizza. Sweet possible reality... You-know-who? Sadly, bittersweet fantasy. Awwwww. Damn it. Made myself sad. Beer and pizza, please console me. (looks at forklift) Err, I mean, pizza please console me. Beer, I'll see you tomorrow, maybe? Depends on how I feel... Actually, I have been known to go without it for weeks at a time, which is nothing when I think about what else I've been living without... Welcome to the forlorn legion, to the freaking desert, and please call me Wie of Arabia. I wonder when it last rained on the planet Mars? This feels like a dry spell of Martian proportions. No wonder Marvin had an Immodium PU 38 explosive grumpy mooderator. And I, too, am tired of the Earth obstructing my view of Venus. Vaaaary angry indeed. Hey, I still love me some loony tunes. Wile E Coyote, super genius. Bird seed and bat suits, earthquake pills, and Rocket powered roller skates. ACME had everything. Well, the week is almost over and I am so glad. I have had enough of trucks, trailers, clown cars, and folks who aren't smart enough to realize how stupid they look riding around in them. I am tired of stuffed shirts and being stared at like a lion in a cage. Now, I understand why they might maul now and then. Grrrrr. Put em up, put em up! I'll fichya both togeddah if ya want! A-Wooooof! How fresh do ya stay in dat can? I charge double for an audience, ladies and gentlemen. I don't rock and roll for just anybody. Oh I am so ready for a morning when I can wake up as slowly as I want to, and it be well after sunrise, too. Night is for sleepy. Day is for wakey. Quit messing with nature! An old lion like me doesn't like it when they rattle this cage too damn early in the morning. Roar, baby, roar.
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