Getting really close to 1000 posts now. Actually, just over if I count a draft and a couple posts I pulled back from public for fixits and never put back out. But technically, TODAY, this one is 997 currently published. One of my private blogs has 759, another has 1831. I have a whole list of blogs, but Pinky blog here is the only personal blog that has remained this public for this long.
Let's celebrate! Bunny is having a sick day, Bunny mama had to stay home from work to take her to the doctor, they've both been asleep on the couch for hours making up for a long, rough night with a big ol' fever, and Pinky has been tucked away amusing herself with 'pinkyguerrero fans' in the search engine. I didn't really expect to find anything interesting, but search algorithms are funny things, and next thing you know, I'm finding my accounts associated with all kinds of weird and awkward things, and sometimes cool stuff. Basically, though, it's all content curation and then hoarding server space. Our entire planet is going to evolve into one giant server orbiting the sun. All these screenshots click to sources.
One thing I ran into toward the last was this ift.tt thingie.
I know, what the wut, right, so here you go, let's learn some fun stuff. First of all, click this next pic to go to its cache source on google. ift.tt stuff is cache, so now you can come off kinda cool knowing that.
Just above that Pinky in da Haus meme you see 'full version, text-only version, view source'. Click view source. All that gobbledygook that you see after you click that is what I see when I right click on all kinds of websites and select 'view source'. Unless a website is right click protected, everybody can see everything about that page, including all kinds of identifier numbers and where graphics are hosted and what your widget settings are. When people warn you to change your passwords to keep you safe from hackers, that's kind of a joke. Any website that has vulnerable 'back doors' can be perused in source mode (disclaimer- I do NOT use source code to hack log onto people's pages or websites, I just like getting the source addresses for their cool widgets and stuff, like the little hearts that spring out of the mouse cursor on Pinky blog), and there are other ways to get all kinds of info without ever having to log in. This is why secure sites are such a big deal for monetary exchange, like banking and shopping. This is why coding specialists make beaucoup bucks. This is also why extra-step verification is important for your accounts, like twitter and facebook. I can right click and see facebook source codes, but facebook coders are very clever and scrunch up the really important stuff. I can still see who visits whose facebooks (if I want to sit for hours matching up long number strings to names), but I can't see when or how often, and I can't see private messaging info, etc. I talk about source code once in awhile in other posts, especially in wassappening.
I just super distracted you. The real question is- Why is THAT particular post coming up in this kind of general search for 'pinkyguerrero fans'? Like, I mean, out of nearly 1000 posts? Why THAT one?
So let's look at the clues, check out the content of the original post called cool kids. Felicity Smoak in the video at the bottom of the post is a brilliant hacker, MIT class of '06. What did we just do? We opened up my code on a post alluding to a coder. Not a single other Pinky post showed up in search in this manner, even though many other Pinky posts use the word 'fans'. Is this something personal? Is this coming up in search because someone else has already done this? Google search is notorious for showing things in rank order, the most clicked at the top, instead of using a catalog system. Google search is a constantly changing information flow, and the more clicks a page gets, the higher it gets ranked in a search engine. It's a stupid game to play, and one I beat by simply infiltrating half the web with my name, lol. (I say simply, it took some time, haha, I'm pretty patient.) But the point is, a cache page is coming up in search. That means someone is clicking on that particular cache page a lot. I wonder why they'd need a cache page, because they could see the post easily enough, right? Sometimes the only way I can see a post outside the U.S. is by accessing the cache page, so maybe that's it.
A completely unrelated Pinky post way closer to the top of the ranking system is Wanna see some more? If you click that, you will get the France page for Pinky blog. I talk about lurkers in that post. Actually, I talk about lurkers in a lot of posts. It's interesting that the France version of that post talking about lurkers is ranking so high in the search, because I'm in the U.S.
And when we add all this up, it's very interesting that a general Pinky search will highlight a combo field of France, lurkers, and source code, especially since I revealed recently that Pinky blog is getting hammered from a single source in France. Coincidence?
Sometimes I talk between the lines in Pinky blog to lurkers. Some of them privately talk back to me once in awhile in real life. Some of them go dark again, some hang around on the edges leaving me alone but I know they're there, and some super lurk and play games on me. I think I might have a very patient game player who has been hanging around for probably at least a year and a half, and if it's the same person this whole time, has been sending me signals for awhile to play back, which I did, and now I'm getting signals to stop blowing them off and really play back, which I am now doing. I mean, how else can I play back except to talk out loud about it, but I'm not going to share the google map satellite zoom from an IP I think I finally got confirmation on and am 79% certain is the same person. That's the thing with playing these kinds of games, as long as I'm playing fair and by the rules (and with one arm tied behind my back and nearly 90% blindfolded if you think about how bad my analytics really are, I complain all the time), I really can't go Ah-HA!
Anyway, the cool kids source showing up in a pinky search isn't necessarily related, and I've had app spam/scam hits from a number of countries anyway, but it's something to think about, isn't it?
Those of you who really read Pinky blog know that I value creators in the dark, artists in the night, writers in pain, and I notice people who don't spell it all out. Several readers have let me know privately I'm hitting all the right nails square on, and part of the reason Pinky blog is important is because I keep it very cool here, no one sees you but me, and most of the time I don't see most of you because we've been talking about using proxy and private search settings, right? Still, sometimes someone needs an internet hug, and this post is my hug to the person who added resuscitation to the rotation in the continuous hammering, like the drumming in the Master's head.
And now, it's time to get back to my own stuff. Pinky blog isn't here to be about someone else's game, although this was a nice distraction on a long day.
I'm not a safe person, but I will do everything in my power to stand between the dark and the people I love. I still make mistakes. I still say stupid things and do stupid stuff, but never out of malice. Some of my friends find me dragging them out of their holes and get a little scared. That's ok. I'm learning not to spotlight and make the world suddenly look at you. But y'all know it's important, right, to be seen. That people know you're there. I hope Holly won't mind me using her as an example. The first two snips were private, but hella cool.
I couldn't help pointing it out. SPOTLIGHT.
I've been saying for the last three years how important fans and fandoms are to me, helping me hang on through the long dark nights, helping me feel like I'm part of something and not alone. Even when I want to be alone, I'm lurking in the dark, watching the webs, finding cool stuffs, enjoying other people's wit and creativity and enthusiasm and love for something. So are you.
I've tried sitting in a dark hole. God knows I love my cave. But even in my cave I can't help starting trouble. It's in my nature to stand up and speak knowing I could be shot. It's in my nature to be real and draw fire, and it's deeply rooted in my nature to love it.
But I know the social discomfort I'm working through is nothing compared to what some of my lurkers are going through. Fandoms know no borders, and I feel like I have a worldwide family out there. Not all my lurkers are aware what's going on or what it's even like to live so close to the kinds of political stress I see people coming from in my trackers, but *I* see you, and I do not and never will take you for granted. I once got after another blogger for blowing her outside views off as spambots. Unless you haven't turned on your spam filters, those dots are PEOPLE.
I think the last big politically incorrect hurdle above all others that we need to overcome is the them vs us mentality, them being anyone who is not us. In the last couple of weeks my blogs have been hit hard by several areas dealing with military incursions and law/justice policies flipping over like pancakes. I can't even tell you how it blows my mind and how honored I feel seeing lurkers regularly coming from dire straits, because fandoms have no borders.
I'm a big leap person. All my life I've been the one in trouble, the one leading the pack into trouble, the one being kicked out of the pack because I'm trouble. Behind all of my leaping has been a solid belief that my all or nothing leaps are important, even when they were utterly wrong. They were important because I learned so much from them.
Some of you know I'm a Jim Kirk fan. Saying it like that is about as understating as it gets, but blogger doesn't allow 30 foot letters glowing into space. I'm not a mommy blogger. I'm not an entertainment journalist. I'm a fan who believes that what we're seeing in our favorite shows mirrors our fears, hopes, and dreams for our own futures. I believe it's important for fans to find each other and keep holding the world together in our hearts and souls while real life keeps blowing it up. I see you out there. You guys are my rock. I especially like that Holly isn't afraid to push me back out of my hole and challenge me. We used to make a game of it, and rock twitter apart, and maybe we will again.
The dark and I are not strangers. You guys know I wanna start bigger trouble than that. I'm not sure if me and Holly could ever break twitter, but there's something going on in this world I want to break really bad, and I see you guys that are watching and I know you'll know when to duck. #aspienado
I've been using this month to slowly turn my ship around under a new star chart, locking down a new heading kind of thing. One of my biggies I've been talking about with my immediate family lately is transparency. I've been so accustomed to hiding challenges and navigating around flaws for so many years that, since I've been opening up and really being more honest, I feel I need to stop dancing around some real things.
First of all, and this really is a big deal and affects nearly everyone I meet in real life, let's just get the whole dog allergy thing dealt with. It's usually not a big deal because I keep to myself, but it's holidays and all the people are pinching each other's little cheeks and saying howdy in person, so I need to be forthright and asplain all the awkward stuff as easily as I can, which in Pinky terms mean ripping the ol' bandaid right off.
I have never told anyone this until now- after hugging several different pet owners over a few years as visits ended (with no pet even being present), my face immediately rashed out and swelled because of indirect exposure, and I had to start slugging benadryl and watch it for an hour in case I had to run in for phenergan and possibly even prednisone. Yes, it affects my health that much. If you own a pet, you are wearing your pet everywhere you go. I didn't say anything because I didn't want anyone to feel bad. Well, that's a lie then, isn't it? I need to tell the truth.
From Dog Allergies on WebMD- "Some people with dog allergies also have skin reactions. For instance, their skin might break out where a dog licks them. Others with more severe allergies might develop hives on their face or chest. People with asthma as well as pet allergies can have especially serious symptoms." Serious means breathing emergency. I usually skip the hives part and go straight to airway with just about every allergic reaction I have, so I am ready for no warning emergency response 24/7. I live this way.
My favorite part about debunking pet allergy myths is scientists finding molecular pet evidence even in homes with no pets (that's a link, click it), because our society is so overrun with dogs and cats everywhere we go, so there you go, just avoiding a dog in its own house isn't enough. I'm also terrified of walking into a home saturated with something else that could cause anaphylaxis, and this includes everything from dogs (medically documented with an allergist) to party balloons, toys, and sports equipment (latex) to everything nuts and peanuts to citrus (which includes cleaners, aromatherapy, and beauty products, especially aerosolized), you get the picture, so it's not something personal against dogs. I would be an idiot to walk into a place where I even remotely think emergency response might become the highlight of our visit, and I know it would make my hosts feel terrible. I know a lot of people still don't get this yet, but if I could get an airline flight shut down over a peanut allergy, I can sure as hell kill your party vibe over a really scary hour of croup and face swelling, which can easily turn into 6 hours in an ER.
I don't expect people to go to this much work, because it's truly exhausting, and it's really not detailed enough to prevent a serious problem. It doesn't address issues like small children spreading contact allergens, what to do when your pet pukes during a visit, stuff like that. Are Your Holiday Guests Allergic to Pets? Here Are 5 Ways to Make Them More Comfortable
I grew up with dogs. I love dogs. I'm not against anyone owning dogs, eating peanut butter, decorating with balloons, and wearing perfume. Instead of you guys trying to make room for one person who necessarily shuts that all down and kills the whole party, just scrape all that off and meet that person halfway in a convenient place for a bit and then jovially say goodbye, no pressures, no hugs, just glad to see someone. And if it really is inconvenient, I am the first person who understands all the holiday pressures and the last person to pile on any guilt over it. I'm a bubble person in a very mobile world, so I mostly live vicariously on the webs. I'm good with that.
My second transparency thing has been playing around with tracking and thinking about making stats public, which involved tests on IP masking and code reinstalls and turned into a bigger headache than it looked starting out. I kept tweaking stuff, like turning off reports on crawlers and bots, wiping out all the IP blocking (I had that so screwed up anyway, all I could mostly see was myself instead of the other way around), generally just making visitor data more accessible. I installed a second statcounter tracker with different settings to see how they compare, and I was fine with the whole visible thing until I zoomed down on the map and actually got a real location, thanks to GPS on mobile, so there is no way I'm making all the stats visible. You guys can see a graph now, that's basically it. No maps.
Even when humans know how to mask their IPs, if they switch to mobile that has GPS locator turned on and ping my tracker without using data masking, I can sometimes see actual locations on a map. (It's rare, but it still happens.) I feel like I would be sloppy to allow all of that to be publicly available. I mean, some people I know check in all over the place on apps, you can see exactly where they are through the day and anyone following on social media can see that (but you can't see all their operating system data like you can on a tracker map), but other people might not want the world to know the actual building they're sitting in. The problem with making stats completely public is that, even with IP masking, a few people can still be zoomed into actual street and building on the map, and I know that because I could see someone in a named daycare parking lot (thank you, Google super zoom) with a timestamp on it. THAT is what I mean by protecting my lurkers by not publishing my stats. There are several of you I can see coming in from named work places, or I can tell how far you drive to work and back home, and it's not because you're careless or because I'm a stalker, it's just stats and I'm so used to seeing mine. (In the old Lexx days, I knew exactly where my 3 biggest 'enemies' logged in from, and one of them pinged from both a work computer and home computer so regularly that I could tell what her work hours were and when she went shopping or out on a weekend.) Most of you are getting really good at the IP masking, which is awesome, but unless you've got GPS locator turned off (I keep mine turned off out of habit), I can still see where you actually are if you are using certain mobile devices and browsers. Not trying to scare anyone, just saying that's why I'm NOT going full transparency and opening access to the awesome map. I wish I could, but I'm not a jerk. Otherwise it would be cute and fun to see all the pings coming in from cities and countries and stuff.
When you visit other sites, if you see a tracker, always check it out. If you can click on it and go to a data site, see if you can see yourself in the stats. If you can see everything about your operating system, IP, and location, so can the entire world, and once someone who for real deep stalks you figures out your patterns on public trackers, they can see with a few clicks what you're reading and when, and sometimes even where from. (Seriously, when you hang out with a group of writers who code their own sites, it can get that intense.) I honestly would never have thought of this stuff if I hadn't had people fighting over something in the past, and it really did boil down to watching public stats. This is why I love lurkers, and I will always protect lurkers. Some day everything everyone does on internet will be completely transparent just because one day it will legally all boil down to that, but for now, we can still be anons, free to glide through the ether.
Ok, I'm worn out. That was way too much thinking for one post. But you get the gist, no more dancing around stuff. 2017 is about 1- getting back to work, and 2- ripping off bandaids.
Most of my life has been spent in an extreme lack of self awareness, so I never expected to hear words like 'narcissism' and 'exhibitionism' from assessment professionals, even long before I started blogging publicly. What used to be considered flaunting has become a vital self selling skill during my lifetime, and as this goes against every grain in my natural born Mennonite background and Asperger's diagnosis, I've worked very hard over the last ten years to overcome the inhibition against sharing myself to the world.
I have an edge, thank goodness. Stage fright means nothing to me, because I can't see myself. I seem to have been born without an inherent self-correcting feedback system that helps me socially map where to fit, how to behave, when to prompt, why a cue is important, all lending to a bungling social klutziness that makes the rest of you seem like idiots in my straightforward black and white world. Learning that my egocentric tunnel vision has likely been my strongest ally in surviving abuses and neglect was eye opening. Basically, I have survived rather intact because I'm too socially stupid to get it.
Hang on, we need a big-word break. Where did I put the latest motivational poster I found? Here we go, click this for gigantic, in case you need inspirational wallpaper.
Everything I am doing online is for me. It started a long time ago with boredom and massive amounts of pain, and if I couldn't find something to amuse myself, I created what I wished was out there. Back then I never thought about who could see what I was doing, didn't care if I got comments and usually turned them off, and more or less giggled my way through the neverending internet gif joke, stickman death, Easter bunny zombie creations on deviantart, and practically absorbed youtube into my brain like an amoeba sucks little dots into itself.
My turn. I'm not good at all that stuff, so sometimes I felt sad that I couldn't add to the things I so much enjoyed. What I'm really good at is being irritating. I love to pull a string here, flicker a flame with my breath there, watch other people come alive when I touch them. I suppose after a lifetime of reclusing like a hermit, it's good to feel like part of the human race on our special little planet.
I've been extra special weird this month. My hardcore lurkers are probably picking up on the encryptions, easter eggs, and operatic formula, the rest of you are lost. I usually make it easy- you come and go as you please, not a big deal if you miss something. Not this month.
As I was working out a new writing style last year for my actual BOOK (no, it's still not done yet), I lightly bemoaned to myself how much more fun a book would be if it could be more interactive, like I make my blogs. Well, guess what- I'm apparently pre-interactive. When the book comes out with its own encrypted sections, they will tie in directly to my blogs. Does this mean the reader must work harder? NO! This means the book will also contain easter eggs, and readers who have gone on this journey with me all these years (yes, believe it or not, a handful of my lurkers go way back, and no, they're not family or friends) will have ohhhh moments as they read, remembering stuff I'd hinted at in blogs now being hinted back at in the book, put the them together and voila, mysteries solved.
Don't worry, the blogs and book will still be able to remain standalone for those of you who don't know what I'm talking about. You know, stuff that happened long ago in a far away land, rippling up spacetime and tearing up lives.
However, since I've wrung this latest epiphany half to death lately, I'll most likely be going back to the regular blogging as a distraction thing while I work privately underground. I'll end now with a brief power point back into real life, real time. Thanks again to everyone who has checked in keeping up with all this. MWAH, love you!
No, I'm still not sleeping. The night before last was a fluke, apparently.
My eyes are making little picket signs.
My house is full of baby cave crickets.
I'm still in love with Sherlock. I know! Sherlock!!! I'm still as stunned by this as you are. Fans are so adorable. If you need some really fun vids today, I piled some up yesterday. You're welcome.
If you remember the old Strong Bad days, then you know what I'm doing. There are four eggs. caution: nothing in this post is meant to be cute or funny
Sometimes a friend tells me not to f#@k something up. And then another friend tells me to sit back and shut up. Sometimes I have a good long think about that kind of stuff. One time I spent 8 years thinking.
I'm a natural born boat rocker, an instinctual pointer outer of incongruity. My tagline for years has been "Forever stepping innocently into the offensive without a thought or a clue."
I. love. lurkers. That is why I will never name names when people do step out of the their shadows and let me know privately they believe in what I'm doing and they've got my back all the way. Readers who don't know what I'm talking about, it's ok to miss the Easter eggs. It's all good.
We all live double lives.
My family and friends quietly watch me publicly socialize with a wide variety of people, everyone from hardcore line in the sand religious and political haters to openly professed hardcore everything else from gays to Satanists. What I'm trying to keep balanced in my public life is that we are all people. We're all figuring out who we are and what we're doing here. Stomping each other flat before we find the ultimate question doesn't fly with me.
I admit I get a little lost sometimes. Who doesn't, right? When I do get lost, I find out who my friends really are. Sometimes I make a big scary decision to open up about something, and in the middle of my private self flagellation a lurker pops out and says Oh by the way, and I melt with relief that someone got it. And they are letting me know they will NEVER tell me not to f#@k up or shut up.
My challenge is seeing all sides. I have a degree saying that I specialize in seeing all sides. I can understand motivations from every angle when I put my mind to it, and I can forgive just about anything once I figure out the motivation.
I'm not the only person on this earth who has seen hell. I'm not alone wondering why people are two-faced and the world doesn't make sense most of the time. What I am, though, is stubborn. I've actually faced up to the idea that something I write could get me in a lot of trouble.
The reason John Watson's life is a mess is because he's unnaturally attracted to danger. His best friend understands that.
I know a lot of my friends aren't ready for that level of intensity. I know I could lose friends. But I also know a lot of lurkers are going to be so glad someone had the guts to say something.
Sorry so cryptic. Apologies to a few who might've noticed I didn't feel particularly patriotic this holiday. If I said one sentence right now that I once had on previous private facebook, I could sit back and watch the internet blow up. But I'm not in the mood to blow up the internet. The only reason I'm writing this at all is because I dragged myself out of the corner again and told myself I was going to slam my face into the monitor if I didn't deal with what's in my head right now.
I believe fans and fandoms are the only thing standing between humanity and hell. As soon as we stop clapping, the heroes die, the darkness descends, and we all go quiet.
I think that what people have difficulty grasping (this is my degree talking) is conditioning. But I'm not here to talk about that.
If everyone on earth is broken, how do we survive? THAT is why I'm here.
"The Cleric is the final line of defense. If the Resistance compromises him, we are doomed." Those of you who actually get this, questions arising might be about Big Brother using the fuzzy lines of political religions to control the masses, but why not make a wild leap and ask Why are they even showing us this? Because if we truly understand doublespeak and conditioning, we are being led into a way of thinking, which completely ignores that the creators of the film and the actors involved are themselves already slaves to this very thing. Why in the world would they show us (in cryptic form, true) what is essentially already reality and then make us think it's a fiction and 'hasn't happened yet'?
The easiest way to keep people asleep is to keep telling them stories. I can't help noticing that the more hero stories there are, and sometimes even the bloodier they are, the more complacent the masses seem to become. As long as we keep opinionating on social media, we aren't out there actually doing anything real.
The most interesting thing I'm seeing across social media is friendships between people who adamantly would never accept different ideologies in their lives because one is able to convince the other that it's all fun and games. We're just playing. And then I'm told not to f#@k it up.
One of those days where I'm flying so fast that I'm warping spacetime hitting all the wrong buttons. This one is just above my blogger bookmark. The only time I ever glance at it is when I crash and skid through my bookmarks. Crashing is what I DO. But when I see it I remember why I'm back.
I used to actually jump into debates like these, long ago and far, far away. Click the pic for a fascinating and exhaustive discussion that rivals Galaxy Quest level fan obsession.
I have a couple of awesome lurkers who made sure I was ok over this last week. I hit that wall again, but you know what? I crashed it. That wall is down now. It took 6 months, and during those months my view count doubled on one month, then tripled the next month, and next thing you know my total view count completely doubled again over 4 months. I have to be on the right track. Even if I wasn't I'd still play, but this...
It would be so easy to quit. I could call this my healing process and say I've arrived where I need to be and let the rest go. It's so tempting on hard days. If I'd never told anyone what I was really up to, I could do that and no one would be any wiser. But I wanna break the world. I would always wonder if I could have done it.
So I'm getting ready to leap another precipice. How far can I take this? How far can I push this? The people who know what I'm doing dare to keep pushing me back out to jump in front of the buses, always right when I need it most.
Pinky and lurkers irl. (The person who made this vid obviously feels the same way about her people.)
Oh, God, yes.
I've got one of those headaches you get from crying for two straight days (I have finally truly grieved). Four years ago this new bit of info would have nearly destroyed me. Two years ago would have at least landed me on head meds. Now? I hulked out and crashed through my own wall. The exhilaration I'm feeling is exhilarating. And now I have a new Lexx word to play with- Lexxhilarating.
My heart can beat with bricks and strings. #PinkyRobot
Dear person using a page opener coming straight to Pinky blog-
I appreciate that you like what you've found. 💗 It's actually quite flattering that my posts are not only bookmarked with direct links, but that you like to open them back up to read, watch the vids, share, or whatever. Page openers, however, open all the links at the same time, which inflates the actual page views one person is making. Sometimes, when page openers are clicked on a lot, they look like spam bots and it's hard to tell if you're a real person, so sometimes being a visitor can make you invisible and overlooked even if you're right up front being my best visitor.
One of the problems with page openers pulling open all the direct links is that I can't gauge how well I'm doing with my reader base. Some of my posts have become super inflated to all time top posts and it's all from one person. We're reaching a point where my monthly stats won't mean anything any more if a third of my daily hits are coming from one person. I won't be able to objectively compare this month to April of last year or eight months ago or whatever because those months weren't inflated the same way by just one person.
I've noticed the bookmarks have changed a little over time (mostly after I brought it up first, which surprised me because it means you're a real person), and that lately there are sometimes fewer simultaneous multiple visits (like 4 instead of 6), which means this isn't necessarily a machine grinding away at my security or that you're simply not as compulsive as you were first coming across, but all the same, you're hogging my data log now, which I pay for, and I'm this close to not caring any more if I ever see stats again, which means I'll not only not notice you any more, but I won't bother noticing anyone else, either. I display public hit counts as a courtesy, but if that number is being overcome by one person regularly clicking a page opener, I may as well just take that off.
I would like to think you're a nice person who is finding something you really like on Pinky blog. This has happened with other blogs in the past, and before the world became a savvier lurker place, I was able to document for several months the daily whereabouts of one person in particular who traveled the world lecturing since his service host wasn't proxied and campuses don't hide their IP IDs. There have been a few other people who've checked on me daily that weren't family, and I even accidentally had a real life person I used to live by cease and desisted because it got really creepy. Since then I've become used to lurkers and don't mind being checked on, in fact, that's why I'm so public now, so that people can make sure I'm ok. I'm just saying, since you live in a different country than I do that isn't typical for app spamming (although you could be here in the U.S. routing dark web style to look out of country), that you are singlehandedly exaggerating my numbers so badly now that I can't help but wonder what in the world is going on with you and I want to ask- Are you ok? And if you're a coat-tailer, like I've been extricating from on social medias, you really need to stop and go get a sandwich or something. I've made all my jokes about people running into Pinky blog instead of porn and winding up staying for the brain candy, and now I'm thinking 6+ months of it is a bit excessive.
In the end, though, I'm concluding that I took the bait and you're actually enjoying the sparse attention and inviting me to try to dig you up, since I've talked about stats so much on Pinky blog. I'm not biting. Sorry about that. I could care less. You could be Johnny Depp and I wouldn't care. I know who reads Pinky blog, and all I will say is you're not alone, and I've had super lurkers for a decade now who are so deep that they really do know #allthethings. But chances are you're not Johnny, and you're not really here for #bencongruity and very clearly not here for Rick Lagina, so you must be here for *me*. Whatever niche Pinky blog is filling for you, awesome.
This is the last time I'm going to acknowledge that this is happening, and only because it's making me feel disappointed. I know, I should be feeling a lot happier about my numbers popping back up, but it's just depressing like this, and I can't pretend this is getting me anywhere special. If you're a real person, I really do appreciate you, but if you really really are a real person, please go talk to someone, because I'm getting a little worried about you. 💟 And if you're the Illuminati, I got the message. j/k
Amusing myself in between chores. 6:30 a.m. and already dishes and laundry are nearly done, started assembling tonight's hotdish (precooked the rice). Kind of easy when I can't get my brain to crawl out from under my chair and get back into my head. Fans who put things like this together are geniuses.
Actually getting through one of my darker weeks. Really don't like sharing what it's like in my head when I'm like this, but this vid covers it nicely.
Then there's real life stuff. Always fun discovering that the second reroofing job wasn't done properly and how in the world we haven't had entire sheets of shingles slide right off over the last 8 years is amazing, considering the straight line winds and even a microburst that tore parts of the roof off one winter, since roofing nails apparently seem to be missing across great chunks that are finally starting to slip around. No, we're not stressing at all, wettest summer on record....
So, Fourth of July. I'm sure we'll get a few poppers for Bunny. Doubt we grill, we're too tired. Besides, couple of birthdays coming up this month, planning and prep for those will probably include the grill at least once.
I keep reminding myself my parents were slowly losing a 200 acre farm at this age before the final drop off a bankruptcy cliff when the cattle market bottomed out, and our little woes are nothing against the lawyers and banks that got involved with that one. We're still eating well, we have a roof over our heads (insert chuckle here), both vehicles are still running (hope I didn't just jinx myself), and my biggest fear every day is running into a giant spider in the house. So we're good.
Ok, getting the mind off. My brain snuck in unexpectedly while I was distracted with whining. Seriously, guys, I have about fallen over so many times this last month watching my Lexxperience traffic double and triple out of the blue, and now it's just crazy. My top post currently has exactly 300 views on it. I think the blogger widget for all-time and 30-day top posts is broken, because it's not being reflected as a top post in either one. Might just take those widgets off. Anyway, now I have super guilt for letting that blog sit so long without updating, so bat outa hell time. *writewritewrite* I threw this snip into photobucket, click it if you think you absolutely hafta see it bigger. Have a feeling Giggy will give Thodin a run for his money.
And I really hafta share this one, thanx to TScott on FB, really made my night last night. What I wanna know is how the heck this chick suddenly got verified, and as whom, actually. Do the twitter gods think she's the real Sarah Connor because the flurry of response? I'm verified all over G+, wordpress, and pinterest, and I can't get verified on twitter actually following directions.
I'm getting very rambly. Time to focus. Got some writing to do. I hope whoever made this one is unrequited, because that's just a little disturbing, but then, so is what I'm writing.
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Adding this as an afterthought, don't click the snip if you don't want your day ruined. People who've lurked me since the Bluejacky days will recognize this interest. Want a password? ~ask me privately~ (EDIT: I took the password off. Someone's gotta be brave enough to say stuff, and I wanna stay true to lurkers. There's a reason people lurk. I understand both sides.)
I don't play head games. I know some of you watch me on twitter and wonder what the hell I'm doing. Others of you wonder why I'm cool with lurkers that never comment.
God bless America. Yes, I'm in a bad mood. I need a better vid. Someone hug me.
EDIT: By the way, in case people think I make a big deal out of the old days, it's because stuff like this happens after I write stuff like this. I've been watching this go on for years. Since there's no sign whatever of spam being blocked, I can only imagine a bot was put on to hack my password. I really don't know. Maybe it's what's on the front page, I dunno. Bluejacky was the stalkiest blog I ever made. The book is really coming. Whoever's getting spooked, calm down. I'm not out for that kind of blood.
It's a bad habit, isn't it? And you think you're really good at it and no one sees you. Despite all the extra fancy stalker stat tools available, Google and proxies up the ante and the stealth game is on.
Most of you are truly invisible to me. I know, I go on about I can see this or that, but I really can't. I mean, I CAN, but all I see are markers, little bits of fluff you leave behind as you sneak through the bushes. I don't actually see you in the bushes.
I always assume I stand out like neon. Given what I can see on my end, and since I rarely try to actually hide anything I'm doing, if you can't see me in the bushes, it's likely because you are an inexperienced spotter, or I'm accidentally covered by invisibility magic of some kind. I really really don't try to be careful. A few of you are absolutely beautiful to figure out, I so love this game, and it's always thrilling when I actually peg someone down to a real neighborhood, but that's getting so rare nowadays that I hardly try any more.
It's true, I very rarely play the stalker game any more. It's mostly a waste of my time. I could care less who's stalking me (I'm super bored, give me better puzzles), and there's almost no one I care that much about. I bet there are only 5 people on this whole planet I have truly stalked, you know, with a purpose. Out of those 5, one doesn't have a clue at all, even though that person very heavily stalked me for awhile, and was so sloppy about it that I saw every actual location for almost a year, and we're talking world travel. The rest of you are pretty boring, at least to me. I'm sure a few of my darker lurkers laugh.
The real games begin when I train someone to stalk me, and train someone else to stop stalking me. It's actually pretty easy. I have already trained some of you to stay logged into google on your devices so I can't see every little thing you're doing. It cracks me up how fast that happened, just mentioned it one time, *poof*, suddenly I'm getting way more secure looking stats. Yes, I can still technically see you, but not like before. Now it's anyone's guess who is who half the time.
Nothing like having to train you guys how to make the puzzle more exciting and interesting for me, right? It is to lol.
I use to be easy to spot in my own stats, stood out like a flare gun. Then I got a new phone, now it's really random whether I see myself or not, and the only reason I know it's me is when it actually pings all my details correctly- device, browser, location, time. Time is a crucial element. It's also weird, like the slit experiments where one photon takes two different routes to a destination. Some devices ping 3 times if they are coming from outside the country through a translator and a particular proxy, caught one pinging 5 times. Mostly the pings are simultaneous, but sometimes the pings are off by a second or two as the signals split and sync back up.
Not every ping is a 'hit'. I'm pretty sure at least half the hits never get counted. Trackers are really picky, and they all have their own party going. All the same, I've got every eye trained on spam, and Pinky blog is really clean for drawing flies. Squeaky clean. I've seen what can happen when the spam hordes find a blog. After Xanga first came back from the migration, I was deleting a couple thousand spams a day, over ten thousand one week. There was no way I could get a tracker on that, but they had a spam catcher, and I saw every. single. one. of those suckers. I also know they can swarm in on pingbacks from other sites when I link them, because I saw it literally happen a couple of years ago immediately after I linked a particular website. What people don't realize is that we're all swimming in a really thick spam soup, and the only reason any of us have decent internet is because the spam protection coating everything has become so supersized that it's nearly invisible now. Anyway, the hit counters you see on Pinky blog are the real deal, you're 95% people. Yes, I check.
All that being said, polite nod to those who are truly dark and none of my tools catch the slightest little ping. I see a blip once in awhile when someone slips up, but it's all good, I'm pretending I didn't really see anything.
No point to this post. I'm just bored. Felt like talking.
Is Stalking Illegal? The act of stalking is often the culmination of several acts which, when taken on their own, are perfectly legal. Once they are all put together and used to harass or intimidate someone, then it rises to the level of stalking. Sending notes or gifts to a person’s home, dropping by a person’s home, sending flowers or waiting for someone at a workplace are all normal, routine activities. Once these actions instill a sense of fear in the recipient, then it becomes stalking.... To prove stalking, a complainant must be able to show a course of conduct or behavior; the presence of threats; and the criminal intent to cause fear. With two documented incidents, a stalking victim can get a court to issue a protective order or restraining order that directs the stalker to cease all stalking activities.
What *I'm* fondly calling 'stalking' is totally legal. It's actually lurking. It is quietly watching without making contact. I encourage lurking. I love lurkers.
There are lots of ways you can make yourself more invisible and harder to find on the internet, aside from the usual overwhelming tangle of settings in silly places like facebook. I can find just about anything or anybody on the webs if they haven't absolutely completely covered their tracks. It's not hard to do. I'm not challenging anyone, I'm just saying that as careful as you think you are being, all you have to do is put something into a search bar to light up someone else's stats pages. You might choose 'browse anonymously' within a certain parameter setting on a particular host site, but that doesn't mean you don't show up somewhere and someone can see exactly what you're doing.
Why am I saying all this? Because some of you are still so innocent. I guess I just have this instinct to protect, and I do that by pointing out the obvious. I'm not an expert, and this isn't a tutorial, just a touch base congratulating some of you on paying attention and tightening up your surfing security.
On a personal note, I can't seem to get warm and this keyboard feels lovely. I can see why cats lie on keyboards. It's a glum windy cold gray day and I keep wandering off into the more depressing videos. I don't know what to do about it, so writewritewrite, right? I think I'd be a little more chipper if the 'country beef ribs' hadn't gone hard on low slow heat (really bad sign I paid too much for the package presentation) and I'm trying to salvage them in the crock pot now (Can cooked meat still be tenderized?), but HEY, I got my Christmas cards addressed. Go me.
I guess it would be nice of me to share this in case you'd like to get started on learning more. Not The Same: Invisible Web and the Dark Web Good luck making your way through that horrendous kersplat of advertising. I generally steer clear of extra work (don't laugh), prefer simple point and clicks whenever possible. Please, I beg you, put a Google alert on your name. Not all it's cracked up to be, so kind of biting my tongue on that title. Yes, some of you remember I've already mocked google alerts. There are a couple of people on this earth who would probably be mortified to *cough* see how often their names *COUGH* have been searched by one person *hackCOUGHhkhrrkhk*. Coughing captured in writingIs there an onomatopoeia for coughing? If not, how can I capture it in writing?onomatopoeia
Someone needs to save you if you're still here. I'll quickly flee the page, you're probably more stuck than I am.
I generally don't care about impressions because I still think they're just a 'possibility' count and not actual 'eyes on', but I really like that my July top media tweet has passed my June top media tweet. These snips click back to source tweets, which don't have the pic addy in them.
June- Remember, this is during a live tweet of the hottest show on TV.
July- This is ME. My own stuff, not a live tweet, just me, and more likely had eyes on actual tweet. The tweet that followed it giving actual location link to the post got 148 impressions and some sweet stats on my blog that day, which means impressions translated to engagement.
Again, impressions means "Exposure is the total number of times tweets about the search term were delivered to Twitter streams, or the number of overall potential impressions generated. When we say "impression", we mean that a tweet has been delivered to the Twitter stream of a particular account."
It's not anywhere near the most viewed post I've made, but I think speaks well for what I'm doing.
Why is this important? Because as much as I write, and as much as I've shared about my stuff, I still have days where I believe this public hanging on and moving forward is just a hokey game I made up that really doesn't mean anything and it would be so easy to let it all go and just never share any more. It would be so easy to slip away and never notice the effect of leaving it all behind.
But I know better. I've left it all behind before. I've seen the numbers jump up and down, I've seen years of dots pop up on maps, I've seen what I know is out there- lurkers looking for something to hang onto. And I am one of you.
I know there are loads of you out there that will never make real contact, never let anyone know you're on the webs looking for people and watching them live their days, never say "I love you" and "Thank you" and "I miss you" because you're afraid or too sad or don't believe they'll care. But you know what? They lurk you back. I know I have old friends out there who check on me, just like I check on them. I finally found someone yesterday who stayed underground for years, and I just want to say I love that cute house, the flowers, the scrapbooking (such an artist!), and I'm sorry I was so dumb years ago. Yes, I know, that person might never see that sentence with over 700 posts on Pinky blog now, but at least I said it, and it's important because she's a real life person who was there for me in real life and you know me, I suck as a friend.
I finally found a couple of other people, too, from high school. I'm pretty sure they'd have no idea who I am on the webs, but they were nice to me (that's actually pretty rare in my real life), and it was nice finally finding them and seeing they're ok and have families and other things going on. I still haven't found this guy yet. This is the guy I faked a date in high school with (my only date in my entire public school career) so his mom would back off, and he told me I have good lips for lipstick (which eventually inspired my 100 Girly Questions Survey).
I'm all nostalgic since I started the neurontin. This is day 11, and it seems like all these people are popping up in my head now like I wanna go back and give them hugs and stuff. Life is hard, some of us got through some weird stuff together, and our moments are unique to us. We lived on the same earth in the same space and shared the same time, and none of that is gone. For some reason, the neurontin is making it all fresh again, and I'm seeing things through much older eyes and wondering how in the world I got this far at all, and maybe I was just really really lucky to have these people in my life when I did. Or blessed, however you want to look at it.
Some of us have only one or two real friends at a time, and it's excruciating to go through life changes and lose friends, for whatever reason. It's important that we don't let go thinking we have no friends. They're still out there, wondering about us. Maybe they can't see us or find us, and maybe we can't see them or find them, but that doesn't mean someone isn't thinking about you right now. Don't let depression lie and tell you no one ever does.
We don't always make it easy for people to check in with us. Life is busy, schedules are all over the map, tiffs and disagreements make things weird, and we kinda hide so we don't get shoes thrown at our heads and stuff. (Some of us step out and throw shoes and duck back in, that's kind of a bad habit.) But there are sparkly dots out there on our earth in our time who really do think about us, just like we think about them.
I have a revolver map at Lexxperience.com. I've never put one on Pinky blog because I know some of you really like your privacy, but guys, this blog gets 3 times the traffic that fan blog does (revolver maps only shows about a tenth of all time views blogger says I have, which means repeat readers, which is really super good), from all over the world, people who know me from fandoms and social medias and real people I know and just lots and lots of dots. I know what I'm saying about lurkers. If I can get that many dots being a weirdo, imagine what you would get if you opened up being a real person with a real life for your friends and families to check on. I mean within reason, right? There are so many of you following me who live with depression like I do who don't believe people care because someone isn't responding or commenting or checking in asking how's it going, but if you could see the dots... You would know people really do check on you. Facebook and twitter don't let you see that. Just because people don't jump when you update, don't ever believe other people don't care.
If you make it hard for people to find you or be part of your life by forcing them to out themselves just to see what you're doing, you will always wonder why people "don't care". People read Pinky blog all the time, and barely a soul ever 'replies' to me about the content in private, no one carries it into convo elsewhere, and for all intents and purposes, it would seem like my content is being ignored outright by people I care about the most, but it's not. I give people their right to privacy by not forcing them to interact. I get the whole incognito thing we all live with, the masks we keep in place, keeping the inner turmoils separated from the outer interactions. Sometimes crossing those streams just winds up with a lot of really misunderstood and very hurt feelings.
Pinky blog is like a present to people. I don't know how else to be good for people or be there for those I care about, so I do what I can with Pinky blog. I've been very surprised this is what it's turned into, because this wasn't part of the original plan coming back out public, and yet this is the most successful thing I've ever done. Being real is the most important thing I've ever done on the internet. I'm very thankful every day I'm part of a group of good people who help model that online.
Honesty- I'm having my typical heat index headache on top of a seasonal allergy surge. I'm already taking what meds I can, so I just have to deal. I'm going to put on a little music and go work on today's chore list. Hugs to all you guys who are having trouble dealing right now.
I started this Monday morning and came back to it through the day.
R.I.P. all-time fave sock.
I've never had a memorial for a sock before. I would wonder if I've gone off the deep end except I'm at home around bedrock already.
So last night. SPOILERS.
"Hodor".
Imagine experiencing your death many years before it ever actually happens, never ever ever being able to talk about it, and then someone else experiencing your death with you both at the end of your time and the time when you lived it during a massive seizure. And then every single time something bad happens in between the seizure and the final end, it triggers those memories of previewing your death, and you suffer PTSD the rest of your life over something that hasn't even happened yet.
"Hodor".
That got me. That was such a brilliant idea, brilliant writing and filming and acting.
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One of those coming back to this days. I just woke up from one of those super detailed dreams where you know something is another way somehow, and you do everything in your power to not only remember it in your dream, but actually find it again, and then go wow, yeah, I remember doing this, and it goes on and on, and then you wake up- none of it was real.
When I was at my glitchiest after the brain fail and time order flew apart and memories became elusive, I had dreams about losing and looking for stuff, and one of the most difficult types of dreams to deal with was knowing I had another blog or page or something 'out there' and I couldn't remember the web address to find it. Since this has really happened because blog hosts and websites are fluid and flutter in and out of real time like leaves on a windy day (I've lost Yablo's House on AOL hometown, which was 7 or 8 pages of interactive fun, plus a geocities site I dearly wish I'd been able to screenshot, plus others), anyway, since this really happens (some of you saw me go through the Xanga server move and how terribly depressing it was), waking up from one of these dreams is ~difficult~. Pretty sure anyone who's lost all their junk in myspace or suffered facebook problems totally gets this. It's depressing.
Well, I just woke up from one where I had finally found one of the neatest pages I'd ever made, and I was so happy. I was finally able to access it and was thinking about moving some of the content because the ads had overtaken everything and my own content was so far down my own page that it didn't even show up until you scrolled, which meant half the visitors probably thought the crap at first load glance was my content and it wasn't. And I remember saying in my dream- "You can tell what's really my stuff because my blogs are ad-free." I woke up and rolled my eyes...
I like excavating around the ores, like an archaeologist gently lifting bones out of the earth
I haven't mentioned this in awhile, but have you noticed Pinky blog really is ad-free? And that I don't have any kind of button or link to paypal or gofundme or any other kind of donation page? (Ditto on my Lexx blogs.)
Google analytics recently let me know that this site is too big for the crawlers and I need to set up a site map. This blog is now well over 600 posts long, and I don't have a single ad anywhere on it. I've never monetized. Every link I put on this blog is my personal recommendation or link-back to someone else's content that I get neither paid nor compensated for. And this blog is worldwide.Kewl.
having way too much fun with lava challenges
But that dream reminded me it's the time of year for me to get ready to pay for my ad-free stuff on Xanga, which includes my original Lexx blog. On top of some of the ad-free investing, I've got 4 domain pointers. All of this investment comes out of pocket because I consider my blogs a hobby, not something I'm doing to make a living. I do this for me because it helps my head to writewritewrite and play with code. Blog hosts that insist on interrupting this process don't get used much, unless I'm using them for something else. WordPress is set up for gravatar verification and not much else except place holding and private content archiving. Maybe one day I really will have staff and open up the WordPress blogs in all their imagined glory, but for now, we wait.
I do wish my dream had been real. I wish I really could get all the content back I've ever lost. It's bad enough to have your blogs and websites closed out from under you, but even worse to delete your own content and then regret it years later. There is nothing more PTSD triggering on the internet than settling down roots in such a transient environment. I've even lost everything dear in an interactive gaming site because I didn't know it was beta created by a genius kid. Lately, Minecraft has updated, and now I'm nervous as hell that everything I've built on a 60-player server will be dumped before the end of the year because it's all outdated now.
lol, looks like Christmas season
You see why I get so many screen shots and vid captures now? Imagine not only losing the game you love because it shut down, but losing your memories of it. Thank goodness it was temporary, but the attempts at memory reconstruction have been nightmarishly depressing. I think I mentioned last fall that I was finally able to reconstruct a fairly accurate time line of ten very scrambled years in my past between severe PTSD over those memories and then the brain fail during a nasty viral illness hitting my nervous system.
It can all go *poof* at any time, every bit of it. Memories are the most precious things we have, next to living relationships, and the most fragile part of our existence in this world. All our silly squabbling over politics and opinionating over what we believe are nothing compared to being able to recognize someone we love, smell something lovely (I love the smell of fresh made alfalfa hay in the field), and taste our food. I've lost smell and taste for months at a time, I've nearly lost vision, partially lost a little hearing (and lost my ability to sing on key because I went tone deaf in one ear), and I'm still fighting not to lose what I can feel in my hands. I think I've mentioned the year my entire head, face, sinus, and even throat suddenly went numb. It's very unnerving. (Get it? haha)
I don't sweat the small stuff. Every day I'm getting through something, but one of the most important things you can know about me on the internet is that I will never ask readers for money. I write because I love to write, I share because I believe it's important, and I pay because that makes it more fun for me. I take ownership of my own content.
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Now it's Tuesday afternoon.
Ok, here's what's really going on with all the deep mining pix. I get these weird association obsessions because that's the way aspienado deals with stuff. A friend is moving this weekend, has about a 20 hour drive, and I guess this is kind of my way of being there in spirit. While my friend packed, I purged and organized all my minecraft chests and stocked the store because it made me feel like I was helping. And now that we're down to the cross country wire, I'm obsessively digging my way through the bottom of the world to a destination myself. Our township is pretty much in the -8000s longitude, and I have this weird curiosity to see whether I can follow a latitude line underneath all the things to the original world spawn point, which is 0,0. My latitude start point is -510 and I'm trying to stick to it as much as possible at a 5 block level up from absolute bottom of the world. I've been circumnavigating very dangerous lava beds and water, and part of what I hope to run into on my journey is 1- a stronghold, 2- a mesa biome, and 3- like I said, world spawn point. I've been watching the coordinates and designated biomes move past above me, have taken a few notes of places of interest I'd like to go see when I'm back out on top, like the ice mountains biome. I've already tunneled completely under two different oceans and several very different biomes and haven't yet run into a single other demarcated township through which I would technically be griefing if I kept tunneling without going around. I'm in multiplayer, so I'm really surprised I've had all this untouched wilderness to myself, and I'm seeing wonders no other eye has seen. I'm also getting really, really rich. I'm plowing through some pretty sweet ores down there. Anyway, I've got at least 5000+ more blocks to go to get anywhere near zero longitude, then I turn and zero down on the latitude. After that, who knows, I might keep on going for awhile. Something to do in between chores while I'm counting down to Memorial Day weekend.
This is from a week ago. It clicks to source, which clicks to this clip. I've spent the whole week thinking about this.
I don't fish for compliments, but I do take them seriously because I'm a difficult person to be friends with even on good days. A few lurkers have also let me know that they get what I'm doing and they're glad I'm doing it. In a very mixed up world, so many of us get lost in the dark, and like so many of my own lurkers now, I spent years sifting through the webs on very long dark nights and very sad empty days looking for little lights that let me know I'm not alone- I'm not alone feeling sad, I'm not alone feeling scared, I'm not alone feeling lost. I'm an autism spectrum super spoonie who has navigated blindly through terrible loss and frustration and anger, rebuilding my world tiny millimeter by millimeter up what seems like a very steep and jagged mountain looming over a nasty chasm. I know the ins and outs and angles of depression very well. I know how easy it seems like it would feel sometimes to just let go. I know how hard it is believing that hanging on is the right thing to do.
Pinky blog is a map I'm working on, the path I'm finding little by little up my mountain, and I share it because I believe that what I'm figuring out about how to survive is good and healthy for not just me, but for other people, too. I believe it's important to share what we learn, the joys and pains that helped us learn, and the hope we find in ourselves along our daunting journeys. It wound up turning into a love letter to a lost friend, and continues to grow now that we've been reunited.
Depression comes to us all in some form sooner or later. There is no contest over whose is worse or where it falls on a grading scale as simply sadness versus a diagnosed chemical imbalance. Depression is depression is depression. Sooner or later we all experience some level of depression, because we all live in our brains and we all experience life.
It's very important that we not tell each other to be quiet about our stuff, or to pretend everything is ok when it's not, or to make a game of self harming or self medicating for attention. Over this last year I had to make a very hard decision about disassociating from people who have quite severe depression in my opinion, but who have become so toxic that they think it's funny or 'right' to corrupt others around them into fellow self harm for the sake of words like love and friendship. It can get pretty twisted up, and since I've been there, I get it, but I cannot keep saying it's ok just because I'm friends with someone. I have other friends sinking in quicksands and stuck in quagmires who watched me try to keep my balance doing that, and in the end, all it did was hurt other people I care about, mainly lurkers teetering on brinks. Being a public person on twitter has consequences we don't always see.
If I'm part of hurting other people through ignorance and neglect, thenI am part of hurting other people. One of the saddest things I keep running into in the entertainment industry (which now seems to include twitter and blogging) is the idea that we must play the game to get brownie points, because someone 'above' us has some magical power that will wash down onto us if we do that. NO.
Everything we do in a spotlight sets examples to other people. I've been a very bad example a number of times throughout my past. I even nearly got a young man (and several others, if I think about it) killed because I was such an idiot. What brought us together was sadness. What blew us apart was self medicating to the point of neglect of our own safety. What we really needed was words.
We needed to hear I love you from people who made us feel bad. We needed to hear kindness from people who used their own emotional messes to manipulate us for their own reasons or beliefs. We needed to hear forgiveness and gladness when all we seemed to get was accusations and fault finding. We ran away to find each other, and everything only got worse because we didn't know how to start saying new words, so we found them in drugs and alcohol, and in very loud places where people wink at the way newbies are used up like new toys while people are reassuring them they love them.
I won't go into again how and why I found myself wrenched away from that pit of human despair, but I will say find your words. YOUR words. Not someone else's words. Don't get into the habit of repeating other people's euphemisms and catch phrases. SAY YOUR WORDS. We are here on this earth to say words because nothing and no one else alive here can. (We make up stories of animals and space visitors that can talk because we dream, but WE are the ones with words.) It's up to us to get this figured out. And if you can't say them, then type them, paint them, sew them, build them, create the things you see in your heart because you love them. Live your words.
But never tell someone to shut up when they are telling the truth.
If you don't like the truth because it opens up your own can of worms that you hide, you need to be dumping those worms out and turning them into words yourself. If you don't like the truth because it exposes something you keep secret, you need to stop either creating secrets to keep or holding secrets that others tell you to keep. If you are part of creating lifetimes of sadness in other people, you need to look into what is so broken in yourself that you would keep breaking more people. But pretending everything is ok isn't the solution to anything. I see far too many people doing that.
The best television is when we see characters tear themselves open and reveal truths, or discover truths, or fight for truths. But in real life we get addicted to TV shows and self medicating because we don't live our truths. Think about that.
The coolest people on earth, I think, are the ones who rip themselves open and shred themselves apart looking for ways to share how to see truth. The best entertainment on this earth is that which pulls us into that emotional abyss that makes us really feel something. But the most ironic thing about ALL of it is that the entire industry rests on real people keeping secrets, and the viewers using the merch of industry as a catatonic because they're afraid to deal with real truth themselves.
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Now it's Wednesday morning.
I haven't been able to decide whether to post this or not, rewrite it or not, possibly delete it or not.
"We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams." Some of you know this from Willy Wonka, but he was quoting Arthur O'Shaughnessy.
“We are the music-makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams.
World-losers and world-forsakers,
Upon whom the pale moon gleams;
Yet we are the movers and shakers,
Of the world forever, it seems.”
I got this snip on 2-5-16.
The witch thing in the title came from a dream a couple nights ago. Silk touch is used to enchant tools and weapons, and I've been thinking about making another silk touch pickaxe for removing ore blocks intact and using them as part of my evil lair construction. 'Distressed' ore just looks cool. I wish they had purple ores for amethysts. I think the witch thing came from me getting blasted in the face with potion again the other day, and as I was staggering away I accidentally hit inventory and noticed there was a little ball and chain emblem and a countdown going on for 'slowness'. No wonder I can't seem to win a witch fight, I'm in slo-mo. Good grief.
I'll be very curious to see if the 'Frontier invasion motif' adds history to what comes after the Enterprise series. For old and new fans alike, let me remind you that the entire series rests on Vulcans first discovering humans in First Contact, and as we watch developments throughout the Enterprise pre-TOS history series, we see humans and Vulcans struggling with precedents and rules about noninterference and very accidental, very dangerous and destructive (to Earth!) involvement because there is a race out there that is greatly offended about humans showing up and exposing their secret design to control the galaxy, and they use time as a weapon in ways that not even Doctor Who could fix. Enterprise (the series) does a very nice job setting up for TOS, and since Justin Lin is a huge fan of the entire franchise, I really hope he continues this filling in bits of ST history.
Ok, that got my blood pumping this morning. I'm kind of Schrodinger's cat today, playing phone tag about an appointment that got moved and just missed the office last night, so I hafta be ready first thing this morning for just in case whatever. Got a great start on my new list stuff yesterday and then fell right into #napclub and next thing you know, the day was gone, but hey, at least I actually made a The Flash live tweet, yay!
Storm rolling in and might hafta unplug. Time to get moving.
