How time has flown again
2010/02/26 03:17pm

General blahs, probably diet and/or health related, although the weather isn't helping.

I really don't want to go anywhere, but it appears to be unavoidable.

As it often happens, the above started as a MS Paint experiment. But then it caught wind of my mood over my second born, who is perhaps more a mystery to me than any stranger ever could be.

Keeping it simple
2010/02/12 11:36pm

I'm not sure why simple html seems comforting. Lord knows the rest of the world isn't happy unless snorting bells and mainlining whistles.

But as for me, I'm happy grinding this out in a text editor, and painting in, uhuh, Microsoft Paint. It seems like the right amount of effort for what this is all really worth.

Dexter is learning the pain of complication.

If you're not happy doing what has to be done, you're in (for) a world of hurt.

I'm tired of worrying about storage. The bitmap looks better than the jpeg.

The perils of parenting
2010/02/03 09:41pm

My kids are distant.

One is permanently distant, in a seemingly irrevocable way, due to brain mal/mis/non-function earlier in life. It's hard to say what interaction with him is or means. It's pretty much always the same. The repetition of the same patterns. Two word sentences. The incessant saying of things into existence.

The other? I really couldn't tell you. He's only initiated contact with me twice in the last decade. There's clearly no heartfelt need in him to know or interact with me.

I was able to explain it away as many other things, over the years. Teen stuff. Being busy. Anger for my leaving.

But the reality is I'm just plain not interesting to him. Or something like that. I guess I don't really know.

But that's the reasonably reasonable theory of the moment.

Everything happens for a reason (NOT) == admission of non-understanding
2010/01/23 10:46am

I'm tired of "explanations" like "it is what it is" and "everything happens for a reason".

Focusing on the latter a bit, I'd like to state emphatically that nothing could be further from the truth. The truth is that everything happens. But "for a reason"? Total bunk.

The happening happens. After that fact, minds search for and assign reasons. Reason or - maybe this will make it clearer - reasoning is simply mind activity. Seeing it as such, it obviously could not precede, provoke, precipitate, or otherwise cause said "happenings".

Unless, of course, the "happenings" are something the body associated with said mind does something in accordance with said associated reasons/reasoning. And even that connection is arguable.

But bigger things like "earthquakes" or "stock market crashes" or even the weather happening "for a reason"?

Um, no. Not unless there's a mind greater than all that, and all such phenomena are essentially nothing more than its thoughts.

Peaceful, easy, pointless feeling
2010/01/22 10:37pm

Tums to the rescue after Applebee's due to a gift card. Salt disguised as food. Perhaps they chopped up and served Lot's wife.

No dice tonight. Maybe tomorrow, when there's less pressure. I swear my new grip will matter. As always, the left hand is steadier. Fingers split and firm. Land in the same place. Chips outta my way, dag nab it.

Local online BB kind of fun. I slipped off the PC log, but seem to have recovered.

Wonderfully clear thoughts about ineffable existence on today's walk, which turned out to be quite the workout given how much snow I had to deal with on the beach.

Not a whole lot to say. Effort to create seems pointless. For whom? To what end? And not in any morose sense. Just statement of fact.

Same holds for reading. Only work seems clearly relevant. Work rewards. Other creativity is almost entirely one way. Outward. Away. No returns. Hard to justify.

One peril of enlightenment
2010/01/18 11:54am

One would think that enlightenment would make everything simpler, if not downright easy.

And it does that for many things, although of course enlightenment isn't so permanent as the unenlightened tend to imagine.

But it makes one thing even harder: interacting with the unenlightened.

No matter how you try to explain to them the folly of their way of looking at things, they're busy preparing your crucifixtion, is how it seems. About the best you can do is humor them, although that can induce guilt for knowing you're not being 100% straight, and that you're quite possibly encouraging the lingering in their unenlightened point of view. But the Catch-22 is that what good are you to them crucified, or even merely banished? So you hang in there, sly and crafty and such, awaiting their rebirth. You acknowledge that words can't bring them along any more than they did you. It's their own bootstrapping in their own time.

Simple is even better than good
2010/01/17 10:42am

For years I've agonized, on and off, over how best to do this, where "best" included not just what it usually might, but also a reasonable balance between the effort required and likely paltry size of audience.

An now, for the Nth time, I do believe I have it: a single file of relatively humble presentation. A basic "index.html" on a thumb drive, a new entry therein just a cut, paste, and edit away. If you look at the html, you'll see what I mean. And then a simple batch file to ftp it where it needs to be.

Black and white and grey. Fundamental, serious hues. A timestamp that indicates temporal context of content without fretting over timezone. We all understand the time of our own timezone, do we not?

After all, empathy is best practiced where one is.

Too much of a bad thing
2010/01/16 10:45pm

Well, all the recent craps wins were nullfied and a little bit then some by a brutal buzzsaw of a ten dollar table. I battled valiantly, but alas the seven killed me on the don't pass side. I'd likely have wound up even were it not for those and a plethora of failed hardways. But such is the art of craps imitating life.

It can matter as much as I want it to, but given the questionably meaningful existence of said "I", it's hard to say that mattering matters much. There's a whole lot of reality about "self" routinely ignored, just as the bets which the seven sweeps away are ignored in the shadow of any wins - until one's tray is discovered to be empty, that is.

But the discovery of emptiness of "self" turns out to be reason for much rejoicing, given the burden of said beast.

As a matter of fact, "I" do believe I'll rejoice in that this very moment, if not sooner.

Too much of a good thing
2010/01/16 10:33am

'Twas a gloriously free supper of exceedingly fine food, the kind you would think wouldn't cause trouble any time soon. But it did. Not horrifically so. But sleep was restlessness and frustrating dreams. Bladder was forever full. Fingers and eyes full of puff in the morning. A degree of regret, especially after having eaten right for a week or two.

But it was free, you see. And it was good. And it seemed like the sort of thing one should be able to get away with. Or once in a while, at least.

But, no.

A good day
2010/01/15 11:13pm

There's no reasonable complaint against a free meal, or even a measely $5 win on a craps table, given the odds of either.

Health is God, the love of work his son, and reflection in mind his spirit.

Representations are nothing but just that.

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