Places to go, people to see, things to do...

I've got a life to go and live.

In deference to my compulsivity, I've deleted my sitemeter and turned off comments. Friends are always welcome to email.

Dissatisfaction is a limited currency I've siphoned off too often, rather than employed to more tangible, satisfying ends. But I've other projects afoot which require my attention, and investment.

Best wishes,

TK/FB

A quick couple of (other people's) thoughts on identity.

My favorite scripture:

For what is inside of you is what is outside of you,
and the one who fashions you on the outside
is the one who shaped the inside of you.
And what you see outside of you, you see inside of you;
it is visible and it is your garment.

Thunder, Perfect Mind
Nag Hammadi library

What a lovely description of the parallel between identity and world view.

It's taken out of context, however:

You who are vanquished, judge them (who vanquish you)
before they give judgment against you,
because the judge and partiality exist in you.
If you are condemned by this one, who will acquit you?
Or, if you are acquitted by him, who will be able to detain you?
For what is inside of you is what is outside of you,
and the one who fashions you on the outside
is the one who shaped the inside of you.
And what you see outside of you, you see inside of you;
it is visible and it is your garment.

Scriptural tips on identity preservation.

I'm not too hip on King James, but the Gnostics were wise.

We are constructs.

The Reckoning

All profits disappear: the gain
Of ease, the hoarded, secret sum;
And now grim digits of old pain
Return to litter up our home.

We hunt the cause of ruin, add,
Subtract, and put ourselves in pawn;
For all our scratching on the pad,
We cannot trace the error down.

What we are seeking is a fare
One way, a chance to be secure:
The lack that keeps us what we are,
The penny that usurps the poor.

Theodore Roethke

I'll probably be out for a few days.

Feeling nostalgic.

There's nothing like feeling stymied by circumstance that makes me nostalgic for the days when everything in the world seemed fresh and full of possibility; I've been too busy lately.

There are a number of us (my friends and I) who are mid-transition. I see ThyGoddess has left a cryptic farewell on her blog (which I trust is a good thing), and I've been wondering if it's time to try something different myself. I'm indecisive - not really ready/prepared to say goodbye, just acknowledging that I'm not around much, and I'm unlikely to be around much for awhile. If I want things to be different than they have been, though, I have to do differently than I have done.

Anyhow, I may not make it back for awhile. In the meantime, though, I did borrow my son's camera so I could snap a few photos as I've been traveling around. I thought I'd post a few of them here, so my friends would know where I've been.

Pony Express Trail Road (note the good quality of the road, Arch).





Boulder Mountain (actually a plateau - up the side, then on top).







Vacation with the kids [the fire dancers (from the Illuminares festival) were taken by a friend with a better camera].











See ya' around.

Eight airports, six airplanes...

300 highway miles, 200 off-road miles, in three days: sometimes, life is brutal.

The airline hub system, for all its convenience, leaves something to be desired - bad weather in Minneapolis suddenly means flight delays all over the country. My airline most resembling the Keystone Cops award? Delta: they changed a gate from here, to there, back to here, back to there.

Gate Agent: All I'm trying to find out is what flight’s at C32?

Whoever gate agents talk to: No. C32 is on G42.

Gate Agent: I'm not asking you who's on G42.

Whoever gate agents talk to: G42’s on C32.

Gate Agent: One gate at a time!

Whoever gate agents talk to: Well, don't change the gates around.

Gate Agent: I'm not changing nothing!

Whoever gate agents talk to: Take it easy, buddy.

Gate Agent: I'm only asking you, what flight’s on c56?

Whoever gate agents talk to: That's right.

Gate Agent: Ok.

Whoever gate agents talk to: All right.

On the other hand, I was driving along the shore of Lake Superior yesterday morning,



and spent my late afternoon here:



How many people are lucky enough to experience a juxtaposition like that in a single day?

July 4th, 2007: How we miss the problems of yesteryear.

The Republic is in piss-poor shape. Whatever little moral authority the US had continues to erode under the stewardship of a duplicitous and corrupt administration, gas prices are up, the fault lines under the economic landscape are rumbling, our enemies continue to coalesce against us (being provided with a baffling kind of encouragement that has proven this administration's trademark), there are distressing indications that our environment might (maybe) be warming up in a potentially catastrophic way, and we recently finished one of the most unexciting NBA finals in history. People have lost such fate in our government that a shocking number of them seem to believe that the CIA (or somebody) framed Al Qaeda, and flew those damn planes into the WTC themselves. I don’t even want to know how many people still believe Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. And I have yet to find a candidate I feel enthusiastic about.

But frankly, we’ve lived in a time of unparalleled prosperity. This nation has survived the horrors of the civil war, two world wars, Vietnam and the cold war. We never had to live with the horrors of the dust bowl, or the depression. We complain about the shocking cost of a form of medical care our ancestors couldn’t have even dreamed of, the high price of petrol (which, when inflation-adjusted, actually looks pretty damn affordable), and the loss of US business supremacy in a world whose economy dwarfs whatever came before. We continue our national struggles with racism, sexism, and classism in a country where I can still order more calories from the dollar menu at the local fast food joint than many people see in an entire day.

We may never have had it so good. So from where does this perception of deprivation arise? My guess is that its related to a media-advertising driven capitalism where competition for our collective attention is fiercely fought, and sensationalism and catastrophe are pandered in the service of selling you cheeseburgers and automobiles. That I'd even suggest such a problem is a testament to the opulence of the times.

But I would like to encourage everyone to take a step back, today, and consider: things may never have been better than they are right now. Today is the good old days of tomorrow, and people will look back through rosy-hued lenses, and share fond memories of the times when the watermelons sliced at the annual picnic still had rounded corners. Though the nature of our struggles continues to evolve and the problems we face may be dire, that we continue to struggle should come as no surprise – we always have, and we always will.

As proof that things are not much different today than they were fifty years ago, I bring you a song: The Merry Minuet. Sheldon Hamick wrote the song in 1958, and the Kingston Trio released their rendition in 1959 – 48 years ago. My brother and I memorized the words and used to sing it on car trips in the early seventies. Listen to the lyrics and share with me a little nostalgia about the worldwide problems of days past – and today.

Why yes, as a matter of fact, I AM too sexy for my shirt!

Catnapping did me the singular honor of dedicating an illustration to me on Wikifray.


Chrysippus crow
saved up his loot,
and bought hisself
a brand new suit.

A slave to fashion,
this dandy fella
found one that came with
a matching umbrella.

How she knew about my weakness for animal print, I can't begin to imagine.

I'm at a loss for words. [An extraordinarily rare event!]. Thanks, Catnapping!

Paranoia about feeds

Hmm. Beleaguered at work these days and not inclined to write too much. Also not inclined to get around too much, but like to keep tabs on things occasionally. Something did catch my attention today on my comment feed (well two things, really, though the first one was just a curiosity thing – on the aggregator I use, you can’t tell who is saying what to whom). I clicked out off of the aggregated feed and the person owning the blog I was visiting wrote a lengthy post referring (in an unhappy way) to my visit. I wrote a long response, but he’s since packed up all his toys and gone home, I guess.

I’m not inclined to get into it too much unless he wants to discuss things here. So dude, the floor is yours if you want it (if you visit here)*.

In the mean time, (another) word about feebite: it’s an aggregator. You can use it in handy ways if you want to feed comments or posts from one place to another (for example, on wiki it’s used to aggregate comments from various contributor blogs onto a dummy blog, and then that’s fed back to wiki’s front page). Here, I’m using it if anyone wants to leave a comment on one of my posts and not have it show up on wiki (it also, FYI, has the advantage of having truly anonymous comments – no IP logging to match comments to). So far, nobody’s chosen to use it but me. (I’m thinking I’ll keep it there anyway, however, since Feedbite actually started allowing anonymous comments in response to something I’d said.).

If aggregators bother you, then you can easily toggle your feeds to the “off” position (Go to the “settings” section of your blog and hit the “site feed” tab). If you don’t like people reading what you’re saying without being able to see them (on an IP logger) but are ok if someone wants to include you in an aggregator (which is handy, if you don’t want to bother running off to check everybody’s blog individually to see if they’re saying anything), you can choose “short” feeds (first couple of lines). Then, people can there’s action, but to read the entire comment or post they have to click to your blog and you’ll see who’s reading. A number of wiki contributors have done this.

If people reading what you’re writing bothers you on this public and eminently accessible internet, then I don’t know what to tell you. It does make me wonder what it is you think you’re up to when you’re blogging, however.

Beyond that, I dunno what to say. If people want to be “sneaky” (and some do), they use an anonymous IP portal**. If I were inclined to be “sneaky”, then I wouldn’t bother clicking to someone’s page through the aggregated feed. I did “hide” it awhile back, though, when I found out (actually, someone else found out) they’re accessible through search engines. Now the feed is not. I am aware, however, that “hiding” doesn’t mean making something inaccessible (can be backtracked through the referring link).

All the above aside, relationships formed through online interaction are certainly interesting, no? So easy to take offense (and give it), when you’re not looking at the person you’re interacting with. This is the third time someone has reacted vehemently to having their blog on my (now hidden, accessed by no-one but me unless backtracked to) feedbite aggregator.

Is it paranoia, ignorance, or are feeds really offensive in some way I can’t fathom?

I’m inclined to write more about online relationships at some point, but only when I get a little more time. In the mean time, I kind’ve hope people have me on comment feed and will see I’ve posted. Otherwise, pretty much the only people visiting here are coming off a google image search (“Caribbean sunset”, if you’re curious), and I’m just muttering to myself. Again.



*Or email me and I’ll send it to you. [I’m one of those people who keep their email address accessible through their profile, you know?]

**Funny, those – even they can give some hints about the person visiting. For example, language can be listed “English, US” or “English, UK”. I was getting a lot of those latter ones for awhile, but they’ve dropped right off, which either means whomever was using it stopped visiting or they’re using an aggregator of their own (not like I really care).