*Wo*, got hit from the Bermuda Triangle yesterday.
I've had so many hits from searches for Rick Lagina again lately from so many weird places that I am sworn to get all caught up again on Curse of Oak Island first thing after everyone else gets back into routine after New Year's. Concern about both his sex life and especially his demise have quintipled again, and I wanna see why. Apparently, someone in the Mayberry made for TV movie set area has concern about it as well.
Yesterday was day 2 on Bunny's tonsillectomy, so the suckage suckededed really bad. But I think she's about past that part now and will probably be up well into 2021 tonight.
Also yesterday I finally got the last of the kitchen flipping done. My mobile office of 4 1/2 years is no longer a campsite. The long term planning and execution around this took about 2 months, but it's a solid idea. I'll skip details (aspienado wants to include lengthy details, Pinky says no) and just say I wish I'd thought of this way sooner. Genius in slo-mo, as it were.
The only drawback is that @bonenado and I can now see each other across the house into other rooms as we are both on the internet, so I'm already tossing jokes out about making cubicles. It's weirding us out that we've lost our only privacy. This house has no hallways. To be able to sit somewhere in this house without looking up and seeing someone looking at you involves careful angle planning.
I've already lost my first resolution pound. GO ME!!! Yeah, not sure how, I ate ice cream last night. This year's motto is GO BIG OR FACEPLANT, so I'm shooting for the legendary 50 pounds thing. I did it in 2011 in only 4 months. What the hell, right? I've had 20 creep back on since then, and Pinky is putting a foot down and saying ohHELLno, so I guess we'll be seeing who's really the boss of me. We haven't really test driven this new emotionally healthy integrated Pinky personality into the wilds of menu planning yet, so this might get interesting.
My other big resolution (I made only two real ones) is to stop the f*@#G whining and get published, because several friends have been publishing all around me banging my head against the minecraft wall, and another year of that will have me self destructing onto a comedy stage or something.
I just told @bonenado not to throw a protective phone bag away because he's ruined me being the big recycler that holds stuff back in case we wanna sell it. I'm like are you crazy, have you looked up phone carry bags? I actually bought one the year we flew to Houston. It was ridiculously expensive. So he asked about starting an Amazon shop, I said I have no advice, just go do it because I either don't have the time or I'll own it and be the boss and you'll cry. He walked off muttering he wouldn't *cry*, he'd just hate me. I called out across our lengthy office space that if he's successful, I'll toss lots of stuff at him to sell. He said he'll be setting up a cubicle.
So we were out yesterday running around the state and stopped in at Osceola Cheese (picked up an aged swiss, mmmm), and it about knocked me over hearing a young hipster dad asking his 7 year old daughter if she preferred the apple wood smoked aged gruyere or the hickory smoked goat gouda. There's hope for Missouri yet. And she picked the gruyere, correctly enunciating the entire phrase back to her dad. *wow* I expect great things from that kid.
Seriously, they had just about everything except buffalo and donkey cheeses.
Hm. Just discovered I don't have enough eggs to whip up a yummy coconut cream pie for @bonenado. Deep regret reigns over us, for now we must venture forth again. Today is a big cooking day so I won't hafta cook again the rest of the long weekend. Queued in fridge is vension burger for meatloaf and chicken for BBQ, plus we've got chips for cheese and salsa dips and decided to blow the year out with ice cream before we really get serial about the last big challenge on the carb cutting thingy. Ice cream is our kryptonite.
Not sure if I'll be staying up for any kind of ball drop, but I had my party yesterday, and I'm good to go for 2017. Egads, I look like I have no hair at all... It's halfway down to my shoulder blades again and wildly staticky, so I tied it up and stuck a sock in its mouth like a big bad boss. I look like aspienado on drugs. Definitely not demure.
I know, I look like a crazy survivalist to people who don't have a clue what it's like for the nearest actual civilization to be more than ten miles away (30 miles in the other direction). Having a little gas station, an outlying bank, a teeny weeny post office, and a school a bit closer doesn't count. If you think in spaceship show terms, my area is like a tiny outpost in the neutral zone in the vast expanse of space between humans and Klingons. It really is a big deal when I have to drive 30 miles one way to get more than Kraft cheddar blocks. Don't even talk to me about Cracker Barrel. I'll contend with Lisa Marie Bowman that at least one good thing comes out of Vermont, and that's Cabot's seriously sharp cheddar, plus I picked up the Australian cheddar again, which is has a lovely bite. I've got both Reypenaer and Rembrandt aged goudas to compare. Next time I get over that far I'll probably try an aged Manchego (Spain). There was one beautifully oranged laced marble looking cheese called Dragon's Breath that wasn't a bleu, but I didn't look where that one came from and I seriously doubt I'd ever eat, but it was so cool that I had to pick it up and look at it.
I made my first pre-New Year's resolution the other day to buy no more ice cream the rest of the year. I just made my second pre-New Year's resolution-
NO NEW TAGS
Every little bit when my brain is useless and I still feel like being busy, I work on thinning out my tag cloud. I've slowly been eliminating most of the tags I've used only once. No sense using a tag at all if you don't go anywhere else when you click it, right? I mean, I could use it to find stuff in Pinky blog faster, but half the time I used tags willy nilly without that sense of my own library purpose, so that's actually useless even in an alphabetized drop down list of tags. Another example of tightening up my tag cloud is looking for similar tag groups, like autumn, autumn leaves, and autumn peak and fixing them to just all be tagged autumn.
I have a million tags...
So, double on therapies yesterday. Physical therapy was back to a fairly grueling ASTYM, and the rest of the year I'll be alternating every week between that and the spine guy who'll keep working on parasympathetic response, and then my psychologist visit is venturing into a new direction that, even though I've started dealing with on Pinky blog, I'm not ready to talk about yet. It's a little disturbing finding out people you come from could have been targeted for experimentation. Those of you compelled to dig for truthing in politics might be interested in this article. From there, I really think we need to learn as a society the importance of not purposely triggering each other. People who are easily triggered into depression and meltdowns just over mentioning candidacy are, in my opinion, high risk, and suicide can be part of the conditioning.
My first step into all this many years ago was a sudden interest during my sociology degree in college in Durkheim's social theory on suicide. The Study of Suicide by Emile Durkheim
If he is correct, then suicide is a social 'disease'. Humans are very group oriented with an innate very early propensity to peer pressure, and this can affect us all our lives. To venture into the sordid underground of groupthink and doublethink conditioning as a root cause of social suicide disease is a big thing. If I were a professor steeped in a thesis project, that would be the bomb. And honestly and very personally, I believe this process is already so much a part of us that we don't even blink any more, and it would mean almost nothing in real terms to simply point it out, even with hard evidence. Everything nowadays is simply drowned out in volumes of reshare and opinionating everything under the sun. The hashtag "is not my" whatever (Cubs, Trump, whatevs) is proof how easily distracted and refocused we are. Just turn anything you want into a suggestible spew game, all the rest is drowned out.
In way more benign but super interesting thoughts, I also ran into the most outstanding article I've read to date about fibromyalgia last night. The History of Fibromyalgia may be longer than you thought
Mine is super severe, and I'm pretty much on leading edge with treatment and functional survival without a lot of big pharma, and given how common and genetic they're finding out this actually is, I really hope the documentation going into the notes on everything we're doing in physical therapy helps other people. Extensive notes have been made on local muscle/fascia/nerve problems and responses to treatment, and it's clearly a whole body response malfunction. I can't stress enough how big a deal it is to come back from near immobility and crashing immune system fail from severe fibro being impacted by untreated diabetes and autoimmune flares during several big viral infections that even moderately impacted my brain. Hurting is not a joke, and people who say they're hurting aren't hypochondriacs. No one wants to hurt. It's taken me decades to reach this point of being taken this seriously, but I had to get serious enough myself to pursue it. I also had to take the chicken-egg debate on full force and fight my way through the idea that depression caused my pain. Like I said- no one wants to hurt. My depression cycles follow a pain pattern that follows a weather pattern, etc, and I had to blog for years to see that pattern expressed. If you are a chronic spoonie and not journaling, START. *NOW*. You might just save your own life. Journaling would also be a useful tool for caretakers. Not everyone can do their own blogging.
Meanwhile, Bing keeps noticing my java probs on Chrome and keeps offering to be my bestie, since it hogs all the java for itself. I almost fell for it until it offered to download Chrome into its own holding cell, and I was all backing off going OK, thanks, it's been great, but... *turn and run*.
Also, side note, this is my third Thursday this week. For some reason I wake up thinking every day is Thursday now. It's taking all my will to bend my mind back to what day it actually is. Today I'm going with the mantra "Tomorrow is Thursday", because I cannot bring my brain around to "Today is Wednesday". It's been weird.
Minecraft 1.11 is out. I've already been bitten by one of the new werewolves. It makes you super hungry and you hafta fight and eat at the same time before you die from hunger. I haven't seen a llama yet. I've also learned to enchant, but I'm saving that for my Bluejacky blog. That blog never used to be bothered, but it's getting about one spam hack attempt a day now, so between that and Pinky blog, I'm wondering if blogger in general is having a hard time with germs. The activity isn't off the charts or anything, but someone has found a way through trash protocols. Surveypalooza doesn't seem to be affected at all. Yep, it's still France making its way through accessible associated accounts. Not sure if this is related, but I had to change my Minecraft password twice within 6 days. Minecraft necessarily uses java, and java is probably the problem because the paper.li embed code I took off Pinky blog used java.
This post got a big more intense than intended. Let's get silly with an oldie but goodie. Cheers to those of you already experiencing real Thursday.
Ah-HA! My scales are lying to me! Thought I'd step off and step back on, totes got a whole different number. Guess it's time to cave and get a new one. Maybe we're in battery death or something.
I remember when I brought this one home, everyone was ticked that it added 5 pounds.
Not saying it's boring now, but I fell asleep during The Walking Dead last night and missed the live tweet. ~sorrynotsorry~ We'd had such a big day, between @bonenado finally getting a deer, putting the first of the lights up, and getting a bunch of vacuuming and other cleaning done. Here, I'll toss a couple of pix here, heads up for the deer pic.
Ok, keep scrolling so it's off your screen.
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WE'RE CLEAR NOW.
Missouri has been back and forth on button bucks (partly in response to some kind of deer disease that periodically sweeps across the U.S. and affects hunting regulations because population controls), but it's still legal and hard to tell from a doe in this level of bracken, even through a scope.
I've about decided I've got a very sophisticated pingback bot looking for a way into Pinky blog. This particular country is very unusual for bot patrols on my blogs, and the last time I had a bot like this was from the Ukraine and it turned out to be an app probing for a hack entry. The only thing I can think of that connects me to France, in a rather strong way actually, is my paper.li newspaper (Pinky Press Review on twitter, auto payments go to a corporate street address in France). They made a big change a few weeks back, restructured how manual controls over content works (I don't like it), and for some reason that change obliterated the embed coding for my blog here, so I just took it out. SO. I'm this close to concluding that they've picked up internet VD of some kind since this big change that is probably ping swarming all their clients now. It started within the last 2 weeks, the same posts keep getting hit over and over like rote every so many hours, and I'm wondering if it's activating in sync with a staff member logging in. The time zone kind of corroborates.
I've been thinking about dropping paper.li for awhile. Maybe it's time to just let it go. I had a good run with it, it was fun to a point, but I can't say I'll look back that fondly on all the content wrangling I kept having to drag through. Maybe I'll let the Pinky Press Review run up through the holidays, and then start 2017 fresh without it.
I just wanna say I have NEVER been bot swarmed in any fashion by SyfyDesigns, and I have links back to Pinky blog and Lexxperience all over that place. Myke has been really tight with his spam controls, and I sincerely appreciate it.
TODAY. Continue the excavation I started in my kitchen yesterday, money and calendar sync, finish up laundry, catch up the dishes, and hopefully keep working on my list thingy. I've been scattered off and on, but haven't been THIS scattered since I went public again. Srsly need to get on the scattered thing with the list thing.
TOMORROW. Physical therapy, psyche guy, and Hy-Vee for CHEESE. I have looked high and low for several different reserve aged cheeses I enjoy, not finding them *anywhere*. The only place left to look now is Hy-Vee. I live in a strange area, between a super church and lots of other churches and a gathering of wealthy families in our touristy-manufacturing-giant retail metro spread and several big feeding the homeless type operations, stores get wiped out very quickly and regularly for upcoming par-tays and soirees, and this is not the first major hunt I've gone on before holidays. And if Hy-Vee is also wiped out, I'll be looking into an actual cheese store, but I know from experience that doesn't always get me the cheese I want. Had a long talk with a cheese guy one year about how this area really isn't into the finer cheeses, and I was like dude, you run a cheese store, get this cheese in and FIND OUT. A good imported aged cheese lasts awhile, it's not like he's going to lose perishable inventory right away.
Kinda reminds me of the year I looked for saffron *everywhere*. We have it now, but a few years back, no one knew what I was even talking about. I was like hellooooo, we live in a high import area, I can find things from Asia many Americans wouldn't even know exist except for food shows, Indian-American professors and doctors abound here, how can you not know what saffron is??? Meanwhile, I could get cactus, tomatillos, and purple cauliflower...
Anyway. Cheese irk. All I ask for is an aged gouda. I was actually able to find it for awhile. It's gone again. Wah and grrrr. Ok, I ask for other cheeses, too, but you know what I mean. No, I don't want your smoked gouda. Who is wiping out all the good cheeeeeeeese???? STOP THAT.
I'm not the first to coin that word because here it is on twitter. However, I never knew that and I just woke up from a dream with that word in it. The dream also had Van Halen, minecraft, and a crazy weird accident that ripped a guy's teeth out. I think the smash going on in my head was the joy of discovery (Magellan) and the chaos of destruction (Armageddon), set to song and in vivid color and as about as close as you can get to visual of a cross between Snow White's whistle while you build in the minecraft forest and a nasty accident with a bunch of quarry trucks maiming some of the workers. The song was called Armagellan. And of course the admins tried to ban Van Halen from minecraft, and lawyers were able to keep the boyz in minecraft with stipulations and exceptions, but it was all ok because I had ripped their coolest video before it got banned. And then I woke up with The Band Got Banned phrases in my head.
yes, srsly, click
Ah, the coffee is done. We are saved.
So I made the mistake of buying a chunk of aged sharp provolone from a local world import shop this last week. I love aged cheeses, but I've never been around aged provolone. It has a funky smell, like a cross between a teenager's old gym socks and the way puke smells when you've eaten spaghetti. Scott immediately spit it out when he tried it. I can't eat it straight, so I thought I'd try it on nachos. I got those cup shaped Tostitos, put a little chunk of mild Italian sausage in each one, grated a little of the aged provolone over it, and then sprinkled a dash of colby/jack over that just in case, nuked it for a few seconds, and it was palatable. Not exactly delightful, but went down ok. But ever since the quick nuke to melt the cheese, my entire house has smelled like that funky gym sox/puke combo, and it was definitely *delightful* waking up to that this morning. Hufda.
This would be a great song to set to a minecraft fractals smash.
click pic for dictionary, click here for Ben goodies
This is Pinky's brain irl-
Hurtle out door, 5 miles up road turn around to come back for copy of keycode for Kaspersky, printer out of ink, make phone calls about not stopping by to drop lappy off first for Office keycode retrieval and squeaking in late to psyche appointment, squeak in the exact amount of late estimated, fortunately have lappy in tow and show Christmas vids to psyche guy, get to computer store and find out lappy wasn't needed for Office keycode source since it's associated with my MS account and realize I could simply just add new lappy to it, watch tech nerds fail to super facepalm with me for telling me to bring lappy in instead of realizing it themselves, facepalm again because brains the size of walnuts and these are super gamer nerds who don't even know what the Syfy channel is because they live and breathe hard drives, wonder if they understand the concept of joking, wonder if they're in shock because I'm female, continue wondering if they're pod people who don't realize our world is swimming in social media and it's ok to evolve away from dino brains now, shake my head and say it's cool to take a week installing Kaspersky due to backlog and walk back out the door while puns like unBenCumbered rock my head, pile up on paleo MEAT and VEG at Harter House and come home and collapse.
And now I'm about to rip into Old Amsterdam "Intense Character" aged gouda worth over $1 an ounce and let the sensation float me away. This is the most awesome dark coffee pairing I've ever floated away on. Maybe #napclub will consume me soon after and this will all have been just a crazy dream.
click pic for
"37 Cats Inside Things That Are Much Too Small"
I've either broken my Pinky statcounter or you guys have successfully graduated to hardcore lurkers like I've taught you. Blogger says I'm getting steady traffic and shows legitimate referrals, statcounter says "What people? I didn't see any people." But as much as I've messed around with it, it's very possible I've corrupted the config. I could reset, but then all previous data is unrecoverable, so one of these days I might just add another one to pick up from now-ish and see if that works. Still feeling too lazy to do more than muse on it right now, though.
I'm crashing through a depressive cycle this week, which I was expecting because I was a bit euphoric for awhile again through December, so I'm doing all the usual routine stuff that keeps me functional while it passes, like house chores and research. I have a hard time watching TV when I'm like this, so I have ventured into a friend's RP forum for a good story to help distract me through this, and I'm loving it. In case you're new to me and would like more info about my head stuff, I'll put it at the bottom of this post, which you're welcome to skip down to if you don't want to read this next bit.
One of my distractions is writing through the aspie chaos in my head on weeks like this because focusing on a writing prompt helps my mood stay more balanced, so here we go, a whole buncha sex stuffs, lol. Close your eyes if you're easily miffed by discussions that challenge your belief system, whatever it is. I'll tell you when you can open them back up.
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One of the more amusing things I've run into in the last week was a trans friend wanting to know in a protected status update why asexuals were making a big deal planting their flag if they don't even want sex, because it can only be an attention-seeking thing, surely.
I've known since puberty that I'm pan (there was no word for it back then) and since high school that I prefer androgyny, although I do also really like strong male and female figures as well. I came out pangender asexual on a public blog in 2008, before it was fashionable for regular people in mainstream lives outside of entertainment to do that. That blog (one of so many I've had) is gone now, so I can't link to it, although several people in my life are aware and are fine with it. I don't bring it up much, although I have written about it here and there.
6-15-15 Khanlock One of the most popular posts I've ever created, and I never mention sexuality in any form.
7-1-08 self stim (this is an ongoing debate I have with my psychologist over aspie-autie kids having no self awareness during compulsive erogenous neuro stim, which I'm sure parents of autism spectrum children have a little difficulty understanding) (The book I'm working on, Existential Aspie, will have a LOT of autie kid POV in it that I don't usually see out in public, based on my personal experiences.)
Plus I've also had fun mocking the whole subject of sex in some of my silly surveys through the years at Surveypalooza.
For anyone in the world looking at that list and the length of this post thinking I must be one of those people who yaps about their sex stuff, rest assured this was very much me most of my life. For those of you who've not yet seen The Abominable Bride, I must put the word "spoilers" here, but seriously, not really much of a spoiler. But yeah, this is me at parties, on dates, through two marriages...
I'd love to source this for you at 5 a.m. because I grabbed it with my phone, but that was 2 days ago and the original tweet is already so buried in the twitter feeds that it would take at least an hour and I'm not feeling that patient.
My issues started early, about the time I hit puberty. I'd been sent to school in dresses for years and fought for my first pair of jeans around fifth grade, which my mom was strongly against until a friend of hers, who had five boys and wasn't that terribly feminine herself, shrugged it off, and they went through a stack of rejects in an outlet dump and brought home bargains, one with a twisted leg, one with a leg shorter than the other. I was ecstatic simply because I'd won. After that my mom got hold of someone's hand-me-down flare leg jeans and I spent a glorious year getting my jeans caught in my bike chain over and over like normal kids were supposed to until the jeans were too shredded to wear.
Being allowed to wear jeans didn't solve my problem, of course. I still had to be a girl. I really didn't care that I was actually a girl, I just hated being continually reminded I wasn't girl enough. I didn't sit right or move right or stand right or behave right, and then when I took things too far it was nice girls don't do that, like shave my legs above my knees. A kid at school actually made fun of my knees having bangs in P.E. Top that one, I dare ya. I wolfed out when I hit puberty, despite being a girl. (Irony has brought a patchy alopecia into my life, and I very rarely need to shave my legs any more.)
I liked being an action figure, along with being the secret genius behind the schemes my friend and I pulled off. I liked running cross country and jumping over fences and out of trees (and off the roof), and tried a few times to jump my bike over things, resulting in some impressive scrapings up and nearly ruining my bike. I liked that boys got to look cool and be cool running around and hated that I was expected to stand around looking demure. I studied how the fastest boys naturally ran differently from girls and taught myself how to move the same way. Same thing with throwing. I practiced throwing rocks and balls over our barn roof after school for days until I could mimic the way the boys at school threw stuff. There was no way I would ever be caught "throwing like a girl". It was bad enough that 'girl' was derogatory, it was worse to not overcome it and just accept it as my fate. All this before I was even twelve, and all my mom could go on about was her exasperation with me. We fought constantly (passive-aggressively, I wasn't allowed to yell at her without severe consequences), and the root of it all was my refusal to be gender typed.
So, yeah, it's a big deal to stand up for being asexual pangender, because I was treatly poorly over being my natural self. It has nothing to do with accepting who I have sex with and whether I sin, but about standing up to a demanding society shoving me down into a tiny little box and not allowing me to shine in my natural capacity with the instincts I was born with. While other girls were fighting to wear hip huggers to school, I was fighting to let my God-given hair grow out on my legs that no one ever saw except in P.E., and I was such a joke already that it wouldn't have made a difference. Believe me, I've investigated every which way hairy legs and nylons could possibly have anything to do with my status as a human being, and that is the tiniest tip of the asexuality iceberg that was my problems growing up in an ultra conservative household. You'd think asexuality would be a plus in a setting like that. It wasn't. I caught all my mother's repressed sexual issues head on and flung them back with vehemence. I look back now and feel quite sorry for her feeling so stuck and frustrated with her own stuff and never being able to verbalize it.
What no one knew at the time was that I come from genetic stock heavily leaning into polycystic ovarian syndrome, and along with extremely heavy periods, I grew an impressive amount of body hair for awhile and developed a fairly aggressive personality. A doctor confirmed in my 30s that I was making way too much testosterone and put me on hormone therapy to help control and regulate that and several other symptoms. (This is coming to light as a fairly common condition.) These are not things I chose. I've always been able to feel the duality in my brain chemicals. I feel very 'boy' sometimes along with the girl. If my brain chemicals are prompting things in my body I have no control over, and these things are in turn prompting behaviors like acting out and aggression, how in the world have I chosen this? As I have learned more about myself, I have come to realize that no one chooses their sexuality. We are caught in waves of hormones and chemicals, and we all do the best we can with what's going on in our brains and bodies. I see no shame in this, and no reason to 'choose' against who we are in order to appease a larger society of anxious and guilt-ridden believers who would rather turn their backs than forgive what they don't yet understand. People remind me of chickens sometimes, the really bossy ones pecking to death those who don't fall into step, out of sheer orneriness. How is continually picking on someone any different? You either love people or you don't. Actions speak louder than words. If there really is a God, and he really does promise a heaven, no wonder so many turn away when they're nearly picked to death for something they can't help and didn't choose.
My second best friend in high school was gay, and the treatment he went through got pretty ugly. A friend of his actually had to leave school out of fear for his life. Anyway, I had no problem being seen with him all over school, so he took me on my only date in high school to convince his mom everything was cool. She dropped us off at a movie, we never kissed, went back to his house, he showed me his bedroom, huge Marilyn Monroe poster on his wall, and he told me I had great lips and should be wearing lipstick. I still think that's a pretty awesome compliment.
Since many of my friends are gay, trans, alt, and whatever (I'm finding out there are a LOT of orientations out there), I barely even think about this stuff. I can swim in sex and never blink an eye, I am that asexual. Once in awhile my head turns, yes, but I miss unbelievable amounts of subtext and even blatant sex references in convos while at the same time I see it all around me much like a botanist would a forest. I grew up on a farm and know quite a lot about sexual anatomy and birthing and then wound up in nursing school for awhile, and I'm not squeamish at all, just terribly inexperienced with the social exchange that must accompany actual coupling up. I imagine I'd make a really good whorehouse madam or brothel priestess, sort of above it all and running things.
As for sex, I actually like it quite a lot, I just don't feel the need to share it with other people, and my asperger's makes it difficult for me to get past all the extra sensory overload anyway. Ever wonder why alcohol and sex go together? The entire human race would probably have died out long ago if it weren't for rape and alcohol. Yes, I actually believe that. I don't think most of the world has a clue what normal sex really is to begin with, especially belief systems that squelch women and children into third class citizenry, whether it's obvious or not. I grew up pretty third class right here in the United States. No one ever asked me growing up whether I had fallen in love with anyone. That just wasn't even a thing. The only reason I don't make a bigger deal of it is because I've met so many people who've actually been held hostage or have been owned either by default (family) or purchase (seriously, child trafficking) specifically for sex. Yes, right here in the United States. I've seen ultra conservative right wing Christians wink past the obvious under their noses to debate whether a divorced person can remarry without it being adultery, and I just walk away. Righteous people exasperate me.
Anyway, so I rarely find myself discussing the actual rights and wrongs of anything sex, but here we go. I grew up conservative, so naturally I start with the 'legalism' of faith. I'm not against faith, I'm just tired of it being used as a weapon or a shield.
The problem with debating about the natural order of nature being the correct way for things to work, especially if we are assuming a deity setting it all up, is running into little monkey wrenches like finding out male otters will steal harbor seal pups away and pleasure themselves on them to death, or that crabs will mate with so much gusto they kill off females that don't fight to get free. The instinct to mate is only that, a blind driven compulsion. The object of the mating, ideally, results in healthy offspring, but as we share more and more to the internet, we see a growing number of cats and squirrels doing sex trains, hunters having to get out of the way of elk or deer attempting to mate with their vehicles, the odd horse here or there rearing onto a police officer or rodeo clown for sex, dolphins happily pinning humans down, and I'll go so far as to say I actually saw a spider mate with a dead spider hanging limply in an old web, which is arachno-necrophilia. If natural sex has a directive for what is morally correct versus what is sinful, I'm not seeing it expressed so much as mowed over in the world around me, and I'm sorry, I can't blame all that on a fallen angel. And we must admit humans have been overseeing all kinds of breeding programs throughout human history, from cattle to fruit flies, and everything else on down to plant life. Anything that has DNA has been interfered with sexually by humans out of experimentation and the incentive for financial gain, which increases power, not to mention the food supply.
I saw this going around facebook yesterday (originally posted last summer), someone else doing research on why homosexuality is natural and important across the animal kingdom, and I agree it comes in pretty handy. (I'm not going to copy it here, sorry.) Case in point, my step daughter's mom has absolutely no natural mothering instinct just because she's a woman and gave birth. I grew up on a farm, we had farm animals like that, too, particularly noticeable among very young first time mothers, everything from cats to sheep and goats. If a first time birth is scary and too overwhelming, the mom rejects the babies and it's up to the kindness of strangers to make sure they stay alive and survive.
The Kindness of Strangers is a popular title when you run a search on it, but my first experience with the idea was a very thick textbook style research on orphanages being what saved quite a bit of old England during the dark ages, because so many people dropped babies and children off at churches that half the population could have died out if someone else hadn't raised the children. One of the concerns the priests had back then was that the children eventually wound up in brothels and it would be a sin for a father to be having sex with a prostitute daughter, even unawares. My mind was blown over this particular after so much else had been dismissed as not sinful, like an entire society making it impossible for parents to raise their own children in the first place between so many hard laws and taxing the people nearly to death (church and state were co-complicit in this). Humans have a long history of males raising children through rough patches. Whether the males were gay or not is kind of beside the point. Monks around the world have been taking in children as long as religions have existed. Those with nurturing instincts gravitate toward nurturing. Simple concept. We see this with pets, too, and with other animals both on the farm and in natural settings.
I once watched, in my own backyard, a bluejay swipe a baby bird out of nest, carry it to the ground, and viciously drill its beak through the baby's head. What got really interesting was not only the distraught parents darting around, but the anxious cowbird couple that hovered around the ground within inches trying to stop this from happening with their efforts to distract the bluejay. That baby bird had two sets of parents. Why does this happen in nature? Because there are killers out there. Because life is really hard and sometimes it takes a whole crowd of people to make sure babies survive. Perhaps human societies formed out of this very need. Perhaps the origin of society lies within the nurturing instincts of both male and female strangers feeling upset that babies get killed, and cooperating to keep babies alive.
I've mentioned I have a sociology degree, right? I was originally going for an anthropology degree but my college only supported a minor at the time, despite housing one of the most famous archaeologists in the world. I blame the bible belt. Sorry, got way off track. But my point is that sex hormones working properly enough to get babies born doesn't mean we're working properly as people. Pretending to fit into gender roles because a belief system requires it doesn't assure the proper survival of humanity. If anything, it encourages secret taboo behaviors that can't be talked about without severe repercussions. Trying to make people fit into standardized molds of any kind has a tendency to backfire into years of therapy at the very least, rampant public shootings at the very worst. A healthy sense of self within an accepting group creates an optimally functioning member of society, does it not? This is really basic stuff, not quite sure why it's still so hard for so many people to grasp. Oh, yeah, religion and politics. That.
What is often missed in gay debates are some of the secrets and problems that create conflict for a few caught in the middle of it. Gender reassignment isn't always a prerogative. Sometimes babies are born intersexed and a gender assignment must be made, creating conflict later as the brain matures into the 'wrong' hormones. Once in awhile an accident happens with circumcision and a boy is brought up as a girl. And sometimes a distressed parent with severe depression (and quite possibly other mental illness) just ignores the baby's gender and raises it oppositely. I met a guy that happened to. All his young child photos are in dresses, and he seems to be a girl. Somewhere in grade school his gender suddenly flipped because it became obvious, and he's dealt with that the rest of his life, plus being suddenly rejected by the parent who did that to him. He's not alone. Babies are like dollies for people in emotional pain. Likewise, how many girls are there who feel the fail when their parents really wanted a boy? Or passed themselves off as boys or men so they could do something females weren't allowed? I could go on and on. Gender issues aren't always about the individual being different, and they're not always rooted in the individual. Society creates gender problems before people are even born into their genders. Then entire lives are spent teaching children to hide things and perform for society.
In case you still haven't seen The Abominable Bride, the speech Sherlock gave near the end on women's suffrage was spot on, and in our own day and time, I would extend these thoughts to everyone on the planet. Here, go buy it right now.
The gay debate is not a simple one. There can be no black and white right or wrong or stamps of religious and political approval or disapproval if we don't have the whole story on each case. To deem any one person at fault for something beyond their control (so many maladies in this world are beyond our control, are they not?), and then to ostracize and lump individuals into a generic group and then make the entire group outcast from society in one fell swoop is as heartless as throwing unwanted pets out of moving vehicles onto highways. I say it this way because most people I've met would sooner have a tender heart for a derelict, abandoned, and abused animal than they would a mistreated and shunned fellow human being. We don't judge animals so harshly, and we are so much faster to stand up for their neglect and abuse, but that doesn't restore my faith in humanity as long as I'm still seeing humanity abuse, berate, and neglect whole chunks of its own over misconstrued opinions and ideologies. No wonder human trafficking thrives in all countries around the world, even under the very noses of the most adamantly religious and faithful- we so easily throw out our own.
There has always been a thriving underground of human trafficking and sex slavery beneath every civilization, and anyone studying human religious and political history and social psychology knows this. Perhaps the initial reason it wasn't ok for gays to come out was because once they did, they could no longer be secretly shuffled through an underground ring of perverted religion and politics, opening up many cans of worms, as it were. It's ok to see cabaret and S&M openly expressed in the entertainment industry going way back (war and sex seem to be market buddies), but it's not ok to admit it's real and all around us, and that accepting each other the way we are will save lives.
The answer between my trans friend and I wound up being how ridiculous all sexuality issues are in the first place, and we left it at that. It's not a competition for attention any more than any other sexual issue. It's people openly standing up for who they are, just like all the rest.
And yes, let's all facepalm and have a good laugh imagining Sheldon Cooper incorporating asexuality into his Fun With Flags series.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
You can open your eyes now.
In case you skipped down for my head stuff-
On top of autism spectrum, I do have a 'mood disorder' diagnosis, although it's never been formally called bipolar, and this last fall I got 'adjustment reaction disorder' from my psychologist after I told him I finally processed through my friend's murder and my mom's death, since both of them happened years ago. Emotional shutdown can be pretty serious, but you guys know that because I'm always talking about it. I keep a standby team of touch base friends within reach, and about once a week someone is making sure I'm doing ok. As long as they see me out in public tweeting or facebook sharing or blogging, they know I'm not going down the rabbit hole. One of my constant goals is holding my weight steady and keeping a regular sleep schedule, both of which are high priority when I check in with my psychiatrist every 6 months. He literally counts pills. I'm allowed half a xanax 3X a day and that's it. I'm mostly otherwise managing to handle my anxiety disorder with diet, which I believe is directly related to diabetes and glucose spikes. As long as I can continue to self monitor and report in regularly, I'm allowed to stay off other head meds. It also helps that @bonenado oversees everything in my life and that I trust him to notice when I go off track and help me get back in routine. He's pretty cool about it, we laugh a lot.
~I'm kidding~
Off the subject, I have discovered Black Diamond Premium Reserve cheddar, aged 2 years. I'm the sort of person who will skimp on everything else in my life to spend $20 a pound on very hard to find cheeses, like aged gouda, so if you guys can find this one, it's totally worth it, even smoother and sharper than Cabot's Seriously Sharp. (Black Diamond is Canada based, Cabot is Vermont based.) I actually found it in the fancy cheese section in my local Walmart, so there you go. Good luck. It is absolutely wonderful with morning coffee.
Let's see, what can I find to get me out of here now and moving on into my day...
Must be the Hello Kitty burger for bikers and truck drivers
I was actually searching 'pink cheese Halloween' to see if I could gross myself out. Why yes, yes I sure can. But try it yourself, there's some pretty cool off the wall stuff in images. Some of you are actuallyprettysick. (3 clicks there) And some of you work way too hard, but wow. I know, I skewed wildly off the pink path here.
Totally got stuck in the cheese party tray search on pinterest. Just click that and mind blown, ok? I'm not even going to tease you with a snip. It's too dangerous. I like to never got out of there.
O_o Night ruined. Here you go. Decadence threw delicate out the window and shoved the red velvet oreo truffle brownie bars from hell in my face. Pinterest has got to be an evil plot to take Americans DOWN.
Getting the boink off of pinterest. You guys need to get on the evil Martha Stewart stuff. I mean, make MOAR. (I know it's scary how far her reach is dredging the internet of anything slanderous, but I don't think your kids' lives will actually be threatened or anything.) (I could be wrong- Why Martha Stewart is Inherently Evil.)
Yeah, who knows why google thinks this pic clicks to that site. Weird.
Nah, Snoop just helps the *cough*Illuminati*cough* push the soft porn industry. ~Alledgedly~. I love Snoop, he rocks. You guys know I'm joking, right? The soft porn industry is a respectable cornerstone of our country. (I actually like that vid. Check his suit. No one could get away with that suit and make it look awesome. He owns it.) (If you guys have a problem with anything I just said, sprinkle some pink salt on it.) (I had a rough day, ok?)
I have been turned to the sparkly vampire side. Nope, haven't read the books or seen the movies, just ran into this quote and I have this thing for feldspars (granites), which are sparkly cool sometimes. I don't bug you guys with my lifelong obsession with rocks, so ok, this is surprising news.
Edward in the sunlight was shocking. I couldn't get used to it, though I'd been staring at him all afternoon. His skin, white despite the faint flush from yesterday's hunting trip, literally sparkled, like thousands of tiny diamonds were embedded in the surface. He lay perfectly still in the grass, his shirt open over his sculpted, incandescent chest, his scintillating arms bare. His glistening, pale lavender lids were shut, though of course he didn't sleep. A perfect statue, carved in some unknown stone, smooth like marble, glittering like crystal. - Twilight
Now I'm scouring one of my private blogs for a pink feldspar post and ran into this title "the prune pit of my soul", cracking up. A snippet from Oct. 22, 2008.
Oh yeah, I keep forgetting to tell you about the red sock. Remember the other day I said there was something or someone messing with the remote and my phone? Well, it's also playing tricks with a red footie I've got. In all my years here, I have NEVER lost a sock. I'm extremely fastidious with laundry, almost obsessed with sox. So a couple of weeks or so ago, maybe end of September, one of my red footies disappeared from the hamper. It was near the bottom, I was sorting clothes, both sox shoulda been there. I went ahead and washed the single sock. A few days later I mentioned to Scott that it was weird that my other red footie hadn't shown up anywhere, and the next day I walked into my room and it was on the floor where I sort clothes, just laying there all by itself.
So, last week it happened again. Same sock. Sorting clothes, only one sock, went ahead and washed it and put it in the drawer. This time it was gone over a week. I finally mentioned it to Scott again. The next day I was walking out of my room and happened to glance down on the floor left of the door by the wall, where Scott puts old raggedy clothes to cut up for rags at work to clean his press with. These clothes are usually nicely folded because I'm such a bean brain about folding, I can't stand not folding. So right there by a little pile of ratty jeans was my sock, sorta tucked back there but obviously sticking out. There was no way that sock could have been dropped into that position. I called Scott over, happened to be on a day he was home, and I said look, my sock, and he's like, hey, I was *just* doing something there, and there was no sock...
There are other titles, like "the healing powers of evil laughter". Probably shouldn't share that one. Here's a snip from April 14, 2008.
I've got to stop telling my dad everything. He told me last night that antibiotics are poison and I wouldn't have gotten the ear infection if I had been putting hydrogen peroxide in my ear at bedtime. You can't tell the guy it won't penetrate the eardrum to the inner ear infection because he swears it leaks through and comes out his tear ducts. Fine. I hope it fizzles all the way through. Nut.
Wo, totally forgot I had this! Ok, never mind. >=l Blogger won't play the flash. I actually have this embedded on an old private post, it's really cool. Anyway, click for the llama song. If flash is truly going the way of the dodo, that will break one day and not be viewable, and it's the original site. Cool, I was able to pull a download from my Torch. Oh, yeah, this was in that post, too. March 31, 2008.
Jaizzy was a little freaked this evening, had never seen Scott in basketball shorts before. Refused to go in her run until HE was IN the big house. I told her he molted. He'll grow his jeans back tomorrow. Not to be ~that~ sort of person, but she got a little snooty about it. I reminded her we didn't act like that when *she* molted. Still, she was just shocked... It nearly put her off her little cob of corn.
Scott crawled in the attic today and nearly fell through the deck ceiling. That was a bad noise. He was a little miffed that I didn't jump up and check on him. I figure I made it through him crawling all over the outside of the house on scary looking scaffolding and ladders in the past that could have dropped him 4 stories to his death, probably wasn't much to worry about him just falling through a ceiling.
I think he likes it when I hover nearby cringing. It means I love him. I'll have to hover lovingly next time.
Last week Scott put chew sticks of death in my car to kill the mice. I lightly complained Friday that my car smelled like death. He blew it off. He got in my car this weekend and came in kinda green, took the vacuum cleaner out there and really worked. The smell is still there, no telling where the little corpses are mummifying. If he'd been able to figure out how to pull the back seat apart, my car would have been strung apart all over the yard.
I get to drive to town the next two days. Goody...
March 28, 2008. I do NOT miss those headaches.
Yeah, well YOU try driving with a maniac horsefly dive bombing your head. >=l
I said that to my other self, who pointed out that I was driving like an idiot. I challenged that other self to step up and make everything all better sometime instead of just waiting until I'm drugged on a highway to criticize me.
And where the heck did the horsefly come from?!?!?!?!?
Still have the migraine, a truly beautiful work of nervous system art that I'm sure will be admired by millions of brain cells throughout the day.
Survived not only Walmart, but the surprise of all my antifreeze vaporizing into another dimension. I think I'm caught in the middle of the ~gasp!~ *Mice* *Wars*. They're plotting back after Scott cleaned their nest out of the glove box and chased the babies out of the trunk. I think it's like a tribal thing, they paint tiny stripes on their little faces and stick a feather on their tails and wave little sticks before they swarm through the dark and bite little holes in my rubber hoses.
It was a bad day for it. The temp said 38, but the wind chill had to be down to freezing. My head throbbed so bad every time I got out of the car. Pumping gas was almost like floating through the eerie tunnel in Willy Wonka's factory, first version. Not sure how I got through it.
I know, I know, I'm still looking for that pink feldspar post. Hang on. It's not helping that I'm in the pre-title era now. I keep getting hung up on little stuff like this, from the day before that last one.
Jaizzy does not like squirrels mating. Their ~luv~ chirps sound too much like someone got pounced on by a hawk.
I got to thinking- we complain about public cell phone overuse, right? Imagine being a small animal trying to put the moves on and everyone within half an acre yelling SHUT UP!!!!!
March 21, 2008. I keep telling you guys I grew up like this. I grew up like this. My dad was *~convinced~* the world was going to end any second -my- -entire- -life-. Imagine growing up absolutely terrified ALL THE TIME. 'Tis why I mock now.
2011 keeps popping up in conversations or things I'm googling online. Seems to be a convergence point of some kind for world catastrophe. First of all, dire warnings about solar storms severely disrupting emergency and airline GPS systems and networks scrambling to reconfigure satellites-- if this happens, it's a pretty sure bet that there will also be cell phone and television problems galore. So there is that. Then Dad is adamant that the tribulation will start around 2011, with the rapture occurring on May 21, 2011, and many wacko preachers concur, some saying it's the end of the Church Age. Then you got some weirdos coming out of the woodwork about it withAfrican Queen of the Hive Draconian Winged Serpents are returning to Earth on, the title cut off, but it should still get you there, and if you wanna see just how idiotic people can be in this information age, there you go. And on top of all that, the Mayan calendar ends in 2012, and Nostradamus 'predicted' (some say) the earth lining up with the center of our galaxy (which happens every 25,000 years anyway) around 2012ish, bringing worldwide flooding and disaster and whatnot. Then, if that weren't enough, cosmologists say our earth could be hit at any time by gamma bursts from a star 'near' us that is ripe to go supernova, which would fry one side of the earth, basically causing all the stuff in Revelations, including seas boiling away, flesh melting off bones, etc.
Aaaaaaand we're all still here. Moving on. March 9, 2008.
Ow ow ow ow...
That was my feet. I let them type. They've been very verbal this weekend. They said if I wanna go anywhere else today, let my lips and fingers do the walking, and they'll do the talking.
I'm obviously going the wrong direction, should've started at 2007 and come forward. But in case you ever find you have a bird on your head... I might be getting close.
Oh, wait, I was on it. That's part of my pink granite obsession stuff.
Now I shall torture you with an excessive amount of ocean and pink feldspar pictures, part of my obsessive nature. My original pink feldspar post was on April 22, 2007, in case you feel compelled to check it out. Basically just said it was my fave stone, that I think it looks awesomely cool in high class buildings, and I posted a few pictures I found on the internet. Skip a bunch of stuff. Now we come to how we tie in my obsession over rocks to sparkly vampires, as per that quote way, waaaaay back there. Keep in mind this is pre-Ike, which took out some of the sea wall. (If you're not a rock history enthusiast, skip this, I have photos below it.)
So yeah, some of you are going, wow, I'd like to know *more* about that pink feldspar! Well, guess what... I looked it up!
Granite Mountain is a solid dome of pink granite (pink granite is also known as Sunset Red) rising over 860 feet one mile west of Marble Falls, Texas. Since quarry operations began in the late 1800's, the distinctive pink-red colored rock has been used in the construction of the Texas State Capitol in Austin, Texas, and also for the construction of the Galveston Seawall.
Granite Mountain is a huge dome of high-quality pink and red granite, prized worldwide. Quarrying began in Marble Falls, Texas in the 1880s for construction of the Texas Capitol. An unending flow of the superb material has continued ever since, yet the bulk of the dome has hardly been diminished. Visitors are not admitted to the quarry area.
Enchanted Rock looms over the Texas hillcountry like a massive bald mountain, an enormous dome of pink granite that rises 325 feet above the small stream flowing at its base. Covering over a square mile, the formation is second in size only to Georgia's Stone Mountain. Over the years, rumors about the rock have been plentiful: it glows in the dark, human sacrifices were held on its smooth granite surface, it moans at night, it hides veins of gold and diamonds, and it is haunted. Everything about the rock, from its name to its legends, is enchanted.
The Galveston Seawall, USA, constructed in 1902, is a seawall that was built after the Galveston Hurricane of 1900 for protection from future hurricanes. The Seawall has never been overtopped by a storm surge from hurricanes but waves from the storms have caused considerable damage to buildings that line Seawall Boulevard. Texas F.M. 3005, otherwise known as Seawall Boulevard along the wall, runs along the Seawall. The seawall is presently 10 miles long. It is approximately 17 feet high, and 16 feet thick at its base. The seawall was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1977 and designated a National Civil Engineering Landmark by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) in 2001. Many miles of the wall are painted with murals, called "wall art". These huge murals are painted by children, and depict underwater life. The art is designed to make the seawall more interesting to visitors.
'Pinky' actually goes way back, but that was the first blog I ever came out as Pinky, which has since become a sort of splinter personality blog that interfaces all the rest of my weird stuff. You guys will find out why it's important later.
I'm generally not a pink person, but there are some pink things in nature that really capture my attention. One of them is a granite called pink feldspar. I first saw it in the form of the inside walls of my main bank, many years ago. Wow, pink granite, and all polished up like that looked like the creme de la creme of building materials. If you wanna look like a successful bank, go with that soft pink granite. It just whispers diamonds and 24k gold and large bills in small suitcases.
I didn't find out what it was until I took a geology class in college. I don't know why I'm so fond of that particular stone, but I guess other people are too. I think last year or so there was a racehorse I saw running named Pink Feldspar.
For some reason it's on my mind today, so I found a few pictures and links. The first pic is an extreme closeup of the crystal formation. One of the links is a company that uses it inside buildings, looks so fabulous and ~mmmmmmmm~, rich.
Ok, back to real time. If you have actually made it this far, 1- I love you, and 2- my apologies that I can't serve you refreshments. This was my roughest PT day so far. Since I'm doing so well (compared to years past), we're trying to push me and find out if I still have a solid wall I hit, because years of chronic fatigue and flare ups seem to be evaporating. I do feel rough, but I'm not curled up in a ball, yay! The hardest part is already over (used to take me days to recover from way less than this), and I'm excited that I'm able to handle so much more now. Yeah, it's hard, but so is being Madonna, right? She's fifty-frickin-seven and still all over it, so I'm thinking by the time I'm 57, I'm going to be pretty fabulous myself. She works hard, I'm working hard. Anybody who wants something works hard.
Time to chillax and watch some vids. Dark Sherlock is a thing.
Ok, I don't know about you guys, but I need a brain cleanser before I go to bed.
