One As Another

You know something? What meaning does loyalty have? What I am I talking about? Nothing specific but everything in general. Be it marriage, companies, work, and yadda yadda Yoda.  Because (From my personal experience) it seems to me that loyalty doesn't mean jack anymore. When the wind changes, when things get rough, that's when you learn when it counts (or doesn't). Just because they promise you the Moon does not mean they meant anything more than a moon rock being thrown at you.  I swear (which apparently means nothing unless you're using swear words.  I promise (which is so much easier to say than do) What value is one's word anymore? Just a thought. Oh well. Maybe I've just had a rough day. As the song goes, one is a lonely number, and I really have nobody to talk to, aside from Doctor Blog-ieo. I've got a lot of things on my mind and this is my only outlet. It has been 24 years plus one day, since that very last day, but I still remember the man born in 1906. I remember his face. I remember his voice. My Grandpa was not the kind of person one forgets. This man was working in his yard, still pruning trees with a hand saw, working circles around teenage me when he was eighty-something years old. My favorite childhood memory was him taking me around the yard on that Cub Cadet mini tractor of his. Always remembered. Never forgotten. Clean cup move down. Yes, I totally get it. Orange Man is not a god. But, he's not the devil incarnate either. Actually some say that 666 actually represented the Roman Emperor Nero, who persecuted Christians, fiddled while Rome burned, and gave a poor young man a sex change because his pretty face looked like Nero's dearly departed empress. (Which some say Nero killed) Ah, but I digress. Donald Trump is a human being, not Nero, and certainly not the antichrist. That said, neither is he God. We shouldn't blindly follow him as if he were. Still, as Americans, as citizens of the good old USA, shouldn't we want America to win? It's not that I want to see rosy propaganda praising him everywhere, but I am also sick of seeing this "Orange Man Bad" bullshit all down the MSN newsfeed, and how they are always undermining him at every step. The smell of negative bias is strong with most of the networks. It's like they want him (and by extension my country) to fail. CNN and the Washington Post are the worst. While I very much agree that the man is far from being Jesus Freaking Christ, I do believe his heart is in the right place. His biggest problem is that big mouth of his. (Though the fault is not all his) as certain media outlets love to distort and magnify the things he says. The job of the news is to tell me what is happening. Not how to feel about it. Not how to think about it. That's my own council. Do not edit or crop speeches to fit your spin or narrative. Those things are for propaganda, not news. I'll say it like Lennon. Just give me some truth. Social distortion: The irony, despite how often I wonder whether it's social media or the news sites that are the most depressing, is that there are islands of humor now and again. I had one hearty belly laugh that some might not get, but the scrolling illusion made a lady's comment, "I've got one for 50 bucks" appear under some religious post talking about a soul on fire. Really? I think you need to charge a bit more than that! In the digital realm, perhaps the safest conclusion is that nothing is real. They used to say not to believe everything you read. But, they also said that a picture is worth a thousand words. Not so much anymore. So, as John Lennon also said in Strawberry Fields, nothing is real. Furthermore, I say the value of realness greatly depends on possibility and tangibility. An illusion beyond reach is still an illusion. But, does it matter? Sometimes substance, just as beauty, is in the eye (and the mind) of the beholder. Just keeping it real, my friends. Oh well. Hello there, lads and lasses! Tell me, what is with these 'magical' social media posts? Believe me, if I thought they'd bring me lots of gold schillings, I'd be a copy pastin' likin' and sharin! little leprechaun! It's not nice to steal a leprechaun's golden meme! But take it from one who knows: There be no such thing as a magical social media post! If you want gold, Lucky Charms, or whatever, you gotta work for them! When ya see a field of the greenest grass, it's not from gold but the little treasures the bull be leaving there! And there be lots of bull on social media! Okay, from leprechaun to space cadet, here I go. Homini homini homini! I had to give myself a pep talk yesterday. Alright, Space Cadet, listen up! You're not here for people to like you or respect you. (Though it's nice when they do.) You're here for the Buckazoids, plain and simple. You need space dollars for this epic journey. Spaceships don't refuel themselves. Now, I know you're angry. Nothing pisses us space cadets off more than undeserved disrespect. Unfortunately, since there are no air locks to push the haters out of for a scientific field trip offering firsthand experience of the very fact that there is indeed no air on the moon, or that in space no one can hear you scream (or me laughing maniacally at a hater's demise) I guess we're out of luck. Ah, such a tragedy for my dear Fortunato! The catacombs or deep space, it doesn't matter. Both would work just fine. Khan Noonan Sighn would wholeheartedly agree. There is a contradiction within. There are days like today when I would be absolutely fine with not encountering the first human being all day. Then there are days when I feel invisible, lonely, and yadda yadda Yoda. I don't think it is the individual person that I don't like. I don't think it's the people in twos either. I don't hate you, or you, or you. You're great! It is the group and the crowds that drive me into survival mode. It seems that anytime we as a species get together in groups, things do not go well. It's not you guys. In fact, you're wonderful. But crowds? Nah. Not so well. You see, behind those damned armadillos, and those deer who like to play early morning deathmatch with me (and would destroy my garden if I let them), I'd have to say that humans (in large crowds) are my third least favorite animal on planet earth. I guess, just chalk it up to my being in a shitty mood today. Sorry. It's not you, babe. It's me. I am the grouch today. At least I don't live in a garbage can. Well, Fake Spring is over. Winter is back to make life suck a bit more. Damn it. Well, maybe it'll kill some pollen and knock back some weeds. Sometimes my own body trolls me. Other times (And sometimes at the same time) This fickle weather trolls me. After about a month of nice, warm days... After my garden has come up so very nice and pretty... Flarking winter is about to make a return to try and ruin everything. Mother Nature can go into 'Bitch Mode', especially here around these parts. Fickle, fickle Mother Nature, why do you lead me on so? So very warm and kind for all these days, and now as cold as ice. My garden is beginning to grow in nice little rows coming up out of the ground, and looking so pretty. Now, after three whole weeks, it's going to storm, then frost again. Fortunately, one of the byproducts of my workplace is large, clear plastic bags, so I'm going to grab as many as I can and try to save my plants if I can. I've put too much work into my garden to lose it now. I was hoping to have better luck with plants than I have with people. Should I feel so damn awful for being practically invisible these days? Sometimes I do. Sometimes, I really get to feeling sorry for myself, too heavy in the self-pity department, feeling unwanted and unloved as well as unseen. But the latter two is just my emotion running wild. Being unseen is the only clear observation, the one indisputable fact. It's not that nobody cares. It's just that nobody knows, and most never will. One is incapable of caring beyond knowledge. It's not their fault. Still, it is a lonely feeling, ladies and gentlemen, lonely and empty. And from this figurative storm, I must find whatever refuge I can. Damn I just don't feel like being here today. The falling rain and the distant rolling thunder could be the perfect lullaby in a darkened room. That beautiful television snow could be the perfect ticket to another world, at least for a little while. Sleep is the new party. (And I like to party all the time.) (Just as Eddie Murphy sang it) When you get a few more decades on you, kiddos, you'll know what I mean. As I sit here listening to the sound of the thunder and the rain, my thoughts are too, a bit scattered and stormy, and worrying about my garden. It is one of the ways I keep busy and fight these blues that want to wash over me. Another way is I did a complete backup of my computer files to both HD and M-Disk. Now, if I truly wish to change priorities, it would be a good time to do so. One fully closed chapter. However, knowing myself as I do, I seriously doubt I'll change that much. As it stands, this month makes for eleven years since I wrote my first M-Disk Blu-ray... The files, however, are way older than the disk itself. Now, eleven years later, I've just finished writing my 674th M-Disk. I'm not religious at all, but here I go, knocking on the door of the 700 club. They used to claim a 1,000-year lifespan. Now they just say lifetime archival. Either way, I hope they outlast me by quite a few decades. Really, aside from alternate universes, that's the only life after death I am able to believe in. I just hope there will be somebody willing to preserve it, someone as passionate about this digital pyramid as I am. Remember us! Remember us! Remember us! I can't count on it lasting 5,000 years if somebody else does not intervene after I am gone. It's not just for myself, but for all these people who I love. Also, cool stuff. But all of this is in a possible future I'll never see or know about. Maybe it shouldn't matter to me but it does. It is a lot like wondering about air on the moon when I well know I'll never go there. It's a relevance existing only in my mind, and not in that outer universe... Maybe such thoughts are just a method of killing time, wiling and wasting the time I have left to exist. And if existing is all I shall ever do, then it's quite worth wasting. Life and living is precious. Existence without living isn't worth a damn thing. There had better be more reason for this fight than the opportunity to fight again. Otherwise, going AWOL sounds like a capital idea. Let's see what adventures we can find beyond the perimeter. Power to the people, muthaflarkahs! It gets old being in a place I really don't want to be, watching the sand fall through the hourglass of my lifespan, repeatedly trying to kill time that just won't die. Time touches every person, every place, everything, but nothing ever touches time. I would suppose time itself is immortal. Although in that far future day when that very last proton dissolves into nothing, time may still exist, but it shall no longer have any meaning whatsoever. I'll be long gone, scattered across the cosmos in whatever components that may be left of me.... But my vindication shall be that lack of meaning, that lack of time. And for that, maybe I can rest in whatever pieces may exist after the breakdown of matter, that long disappeared fabric of all things. This is how I know forever does not exist. Long ago, everything began. Far in the future all things shall end. Zero and infinity are both anomalies, each unexplainable in their own ways. But they're not the same anomaly. If you started at zero, but in finite time, you can never reach infinity. Not in 13 billion, not in 13 trillion years. One might reach numbers we can't imagine, but such numbers are still finite. Forever does not exist. Neither does infinity. Everything begins. Everything ends. See what happens when I have too much time to think? Yeah. I am the metamorphis. Okay... Enough with the heavy heavy. Clean cup move down! Last night I found an audiobook online of the Shawshank Redemption read by an AI Morgan Freeman. After that, I found a Silence Of The Lambs audiobook read by an AI Anthony Hopkins.... Cool stuff. But what I'd really like to find is an audiobook covering the Back To The Future trilogy read by an AI Christopher Lloyd. I wonder if it's out there. It most likely is. The real question is does it really sound like him? Some fall far from the target. Even Morgan only sounded like Morgan some of the time. Okay, on to the next random topic. There are many types of angels I refer to in these ramblings. Most are celestial, some are the very universe I write to. Maybe there is another, just one who happens to be a living, breathing human being, yet so much more, inspiring a celestial song in my heart... Who I sometimes refer to as my angel. Though the my is a lie. Nope not mine, and neither claims me. Though I wouldn't mind. (I'm a penny, pick me up) Ah, but that's not happening. The poets have written through the ages of unrequited love. My lack of eloquence is the only difference. I have felt this way for years, not fading at all, yet I know logically I am not even the backup plan. I am just the friend. I only wish these feelings were just a passing phase. Friends, once you realize how difficult it is to change your own feelings, you will also realize just how much harder it must be to change those of somebody else. It is indeed a wish of the poets, right alongside moving mountains or reversing the flow of time. Far be it from me to tell you (or to tell myself) to hang it up, give it up, or abandon all hope. It is such a harsh thing to say. It is such a cruel thing to say. Even without malice. Even when it is the truth. Even when a true friend has to say it. Such is the conundrum of mind against heart. I'm missing a certain angel today and I hope she is okay. Though I really shouldn't get so carried away. Some things are simply beyond our control. Worrying and obsessing won't make any difference. This is the advice I did my best to convey to someone. A believer would suggest praying and putting what is out of your hands into the very hands of God Almighty... I just told them to be as supportive as they could, and hope for the best. I couldn't give the ready example I had in my head, because it involves certain feelings I have for that someone. I can't change my own feelings, and I certainly can't change hers. Maybe that's why I wish I could have had some better advice to give. Why? Because I care very deeply and hate to see her in such distress. The compulsion to be Mister Fix-it is very strong. The friend zone is the loneliest place on earth. Still, maybe I should be grateful those burdens are simply not mine to carry. That job is for he who stands where I wish I were. Most importantly, I've long learned the harsh lesson of trying to be that Mister fix-it. The pull is strong. The dream is intoxicating. Who doesn't want to be the hero, save the princess, and finally win her love and gratitude? But it doesn't work that way. You can not rescue someone from a place they do not wish to leave. Heroic knights, dragons, and princesses make for great storybooks and video games. Not so much for real life. Either you fight the dragon together as a team, or you're the fool who thought he was a knight until the stage came crashing down. How do I know? Been there. Done that. And the tee-shirt sucks. Remember: Rescue each other. Problem is, ladies and gentlemen, is that our own biology works against us. You don't need drugs for chemical confusion. Your own body makes enough to flood the brain without one being crazy enough to introduce more. It's this certain chemistry deep within the brain that makes it all so confusing. As the emergency medical hologram once sang, it's all so very illogical. Tell me about it. One saving grace about getting older is that the confusion does fade a bit to let logic take over a bit. These days, if it wasn't for emotion, I could say that I am old and I don't care. But... I am not quite there yet.  Such is the way of The Force. Yadda Yadda Yoda. When 900 years old you reach, give a flip you will not. <(-  _  -)>