Madness Dreaming of Normalcy

Missy made a loud moo in my general direction. I could swear sometimes she’s smarter than I give her credit, but then she has a vacant stare while she chews on some cud. “Yeap, the storms coming girl. Weather man says it’s gonna be a biggin’ so you’re goin’ into the barn.” Another moo pierces the still air as a small dry wind begins to pick up. I taste and smell the changing humidity. “It’s comin on faster than they said. Come on stupid cow, hurry up and get inside.” I get to pushin’ her and pullin’ on the collar. I try to lead her with some hay or some fruit. She doesn’t budge. “You’re the last one. Don’t you want to join your friends?” After just a few seconds a lightning bolt pierces the sky, one second the sky was slightly cloudy, the next a dark cloud was a few miles from my barn. And then the light from the next bolt sends me to the ground. The sound was so loud I could swear it hit me. But instead I look up and see the roof of the barn has caught fire. The cows start to make a r

So I was on Facebook. (I can feel the complete lack of views on this post already.) And I got into words with someone (well.. I wrote the words, they didn't respond back..) about unemployment. The State Governments of a bunch of states have done a lot of things recently to unemployment. Namely, they have mandated that there be restrictions on unemployment based on certain criteria. Some states have reduced the number of weeks that you can receive unemployment. Some have created laws to enforce drug tests on people to receive unemployment. Where I am getting my Info. I... I can't even begin to keep calm about this. Even from a GOP perspective, this is FUBAR. The amount of money that had to be funneled into making these restrictions happen could have been spent trying to make jobs. Or better yet, trying to make peoples lives better on the whole. Instead we get legislation on states trying to diminish the number of people on welfare/unemployment. Hey, I have an idea. If you

I am slated to move back to Florida soon. I'm gonna be living with the mom for a little while. (Trying to pay off student loans and such while being in an environment that doesn't require as much money.) So, to this goal I have been cleaning up the apartment. I'm not going to post pictures, because well.. that shit is embarrassing. Like.. Health Hazard embarrassing. Like... a strain of mold grown here might kill Cthulhu embarrassing. (Assuming the dark lord is effected by such things.) But while I was cleaning.. I thought of this humorous tale. Enjoy. [----------------------] The general walked up and down the line of soldiers. Mostly officers stood before him, ground soldiers trying to peak over their heads while staying at attention. They wanted to hear the words of this man who stood so talk and awe inspiring among them, the lowly scrubs who had been on the front lines since this war began. He stopped pacing in front of them suddenly and let lose a smile. "Men

So in a previous post I know that I talked about not wanting to continue in the calling of being a programmer. And I still think that's 100% true. I don't want to continue being a programmer. But my problem now is being driven by still being a programmer. The truth is I'm bored. I hate the problems that I have to face sometimes as a programmer. No they're not problems of too little wage or the issues of being a wage slave or even some of the work. Some of the work is enjoyable in the same way solving a puzzle or figuring out a riddle is enjoyable. But it's not something I do everyday because it's fun. I do it because I want my paycheck. Something I know should be a driving factor (some would say, the only driving factor) but it's not enough, is it? I do this gig because it pays rather nicely. But I don't enjoy it every day. I don't go out of my way to complete my tasks, working for 12 hours a day doing it. I can sit in front of this computer an

Maybe it's just me, but I find that when I'm writing whether it be a blog post or a personal project I seem to be unable to articulate my thoughts correct if the music has lyrics to it. So a problem arose in my choices for music: I love things like hip-hop, power metal, and almost all manner of rock, but most of those have lyrics. Then I started listening to Instrumentals. Especially where hip-hop is concerned, instrumentals seem to be a very open form of music. Many hip-hop artists probably started out listening to instrumentals, putting their own rhymes to the music as the beat looped in their head, over and over. I try to harness that creative vibe whenever I listen to an instrumental. Except my goal isn't lyrics. (Well, not always.) My goal is to just flow with the music. My words are produced in rhythm to the beats themselves. This isn't necessarily something that's for everyone. I could understand that. I know people who just can't get into hip-hop f

WUI. For those who are working from home, happily signing into remote servers or dropping their work everyday into a shared repository, these people get to do what they want when they want. See previous post. But is it unethical for someone under these conditions to work as they please? Put a different way: If I'm drunk at 4pm writing code (or blog posts or writing my current project) I'm not hurting anyone. I'm getting the work done under circumstances that may be completely ideal. I get to bring up my BAC so I can relax, get stuff done, making connects that I might not have made sober. But all in all... is it ethical? moral? is it ok? Whose permission am I seeking? Isn't freedom the ability to make my own calls? to make my own mistakes? And yet here I am wondering about the ethicalness of drinking on the job. I mean, I write drunk. I'm pretty inebriated right now as I write this. But who can really say that I'm not working my best? Is that me? Am I the

Just before waking up I had two really weird thoughts. One was that I had millions of dollars to do with as I pleased. The other was something about.. pheromones and taking a piss.. but the first one was slightly more enjoyable. I dreamt about not having to clean my apartment, I could just throw money at an army of maids and get them to do it. I dreamt about getting to live where I wanted, whenever I wanted. I could visit friends and family whenever. I could use the money to further my career (as either an author or a software developer.. or both.) and I could have all these things. Then a strange thought popped into my head. There was a point when I had millions, and that's when I was playing diablo 3. I had more money than most of my friends had (lucky drop turned into about 6 million gold and I was on cloud nine for a while) And then.. I ended up spending most of it. I realized that.. in order to get more gold I had to invest in myself. I had to use all my resources to get bet

Well. May is over. I tried to write a story a day, but the challenge was a little above me. Ah well. Time to dust off and move on. This month in June I am going to attempt to write another novel as per Camp NaNoWriMo . I succeeded in writing my first (50k word) novel in November and now I'm going to try it again about seven months later. I'm already about a day behind, but I feel like I have a decently interesting story to roll with. That being said... I'm writing in my blog today instead of climb up the word count on the novel. Hm... I think I find the blog an easier writing experience because I'm writing what I see, what I know, what I think, what I feel. It's easy. It's like doodling in the margins of your homework in math class. It's not suppose to mean anything or do anything for you other than to have you use your creativity (the lightning bugs that flare into life on the surface of your brain) instead of using the logic centers. Some people

Eva muttered and shook against the shackles. The chains rattled around filling the room with a metal grating sound. It really got me on edge when she did that. "Why can't you just behave?" "They walls are talking. I don't like when they're talking." I rolled my eyes at her and pulled her forward, yanking the chain that gagged her around the neck. "Come on, Eva. We have work to do." "I like work. Work helps me keep away the voices." "I'm sure it does, kiddo. Are you ready?" Eva nodded vigorously, almost succeeding at separating her scalp with her neck. "Pineapple." Whatever that means.  I nodded to her and began the mantra. "Whom so ever is broken..." "...Can be fixed." As the words left her mouth her eyes grew a deep blue from their normal brown. Her hair turned to white and she floated just a few inches from the ground. "Whom so ever seeks help..." "...Sha

So, I'm not sure how or why, but I decided that for some reason I stopped making updates. I had a shitty birthday and well, I sort of shut people out for the most part. It perhaps wasn't something that I should have done, but I did it anyway. Moving on from that. I've been having strange dreams lately. Not necessarily Lovecraftian style dreams, (I see enough of that during my day dreams.) I see things more along the lines of: I've been diagnosed with cancer and have six months to live. So, naturally, I freak out a bit. But if I had to measure my life in a manner of six months from this point I wouldn't use that six months playing video games and writing software. I'd sell every possession that wasn't nailed down (sans my computer and my writings). Anything I couldn't or wouldn't I would offer to friends, anything that survived would be given to charity. Then, I'd write. I'd write for hours a day every day until the end. I would write wi

I love the comics on smbc. I'm not sure why, but sometimes I think of concepts for smbc comics that never happened. This next story spun off of one of those ideas. Lucy sat in the waiting room. She arrived early at the Bureau of Reproduction. "There's always a line at the BR. It's what hell must be like," some people joke. She's waiting for the numbers four and two to illuminate on the screen, signifying it is her turn to be served. Today is the day she gets to find out if her and her husband get to have a child. An elderly lady sits down near her. The people seem to be moving at a relatively quick pace. Every now and then she'd hear numbers being called out by an automated system. "Number... TWENTY SEVEN... Please come to the front counter to be served." Lucy turned to the woman next to her, "Hello." The woman nodded politely. "Hello." "So, what number did you pull?" "Forty six." "Ah, y

You know I never really know what to title a piece until I finish it. I always feel like the title is a bit of a ribbon or a thread that ties a story so close together that to remove it takes a deep part of the package away. It's exactly like the bow on a Christmas present. It catches your eye, it's shiny, but it's not the present. It's not the thing that you're really after. Without it, the Christmas present falls flat. It's just not the same. It's paper surrounding a box. Or in the case of a story, colors surrounding letters. "Dude, you did not see an angel." "I'm telling you, he came to me in a dream last night." John said as he walked with Jean to class. "And I am telling you. You did not see an angel. You're starting to scare me a little bit." "He told me that I'm going to become the best writer of this century." "You? The best writer of the century? What was the last book you read bes

I hope you enjoyed intermission between the two new posts. I'd be lying if I said I had a concept for this story, so I might just start free writing and see what pops out. I don't know if I'll like it or not, but I'm just going to go at break neck speeds. "The first time I heard of the concept of an alternate reality game. It seemed like a really cool concept. A few hours later I was bouncing around wikipedia investigating all manner of interesting puzzles that people actually solved within the community." A man stood at a podium speaking out to a sizable audience. Most were silent and gazing, a few speaking to others in soft tones. "So, of course after a while I arrived at the inevitable question: That I could train a computer to solve these games. The craziest part was that I did it." The crowd gave a polite applaud. "Today I am here to show you the worlds greatest learning AI. Kentaro." A screen appears before the audience and a

So, I'm a bit behind. But that'll be ok. Today will be a double feature for stories. That should catch me up well enough. The idea for this story came to me at a denny's this morning. I liked it enough that I'm writing it. "And we're walking, we're walking... Stop here. Can everyone see the exhibit?" A voice said into the minds of all of the museum goers. It's voice expressing the sentences with perfect precision and articulation. "This exhibit is about the age of the internet. It's history is a bit lost to our current archivers, as it was completely dismantled in the early 2100s. A lot of the data that was produced in the century following its invention was unfortunately lost, however we have recovered many artifacts from it's early stages." The holographic hand of the tour guide waved toward the flat surface behind it. The wall acted as a display showing different images and text along it in a slide show format. "Based

So, for the remainder of May I am going to use my blog as the launching post for a brand new challenge . You get to be along for the ride and see how things turn out. I am technically writing this post (and subsequent story) on May 2nd (not May 1st) but I worked my job for 12 hours. So... sue me. Usually when I write stories (see Day 4 ) I'm someone who needs to explore who my characters are and what they're doing in the rough draft. Rarely would a writer of any repute use most of my exposition in a "real" story, but that's just how I write. I have to know where I'm going through exploration. I don't like being told where to go no more than I like planning where I'm going early on. So, in the next month you'll have to forgive me while I flood this place with fiction. I won't apologize for it though. Finding her was the easy part. She had left a trail for me, so long and narrow that I almost believed I was being lead to her. Perhaps this is

Today is gonna be a short post. It's a tough one for me so, here goes. Today I honor the memory of a dear friend of mine, Timothy Lee Rackley, who four years ago today, at 6:30 A.M. CST (approximately one hour from when I'm writing this) took his own life with a bullet to the brain. In his suicide note he had said that he could not fit in with society or what it required of him. He ended his own life instead of living one of misery and/or torment, self-inflicted or otherwise. Sometimes I envy him. I haven't been feeling well since I got out of bed, today. I feel like shit, I'm going through the motions of my life, but I feel beaten and defeated. I feel that I am not where I'm suppose to be. I feel like I'm making the best choices I can but those choices aren't making me happy. I can't explain it. I've been trying so hard to find out what it is I want for my life, but every time I try it ends in failure and depression. I feel like I don't be

Once there was a dead man. He died just as he had lived, working in front of a computer day in and day out. His heart had finally caught up to his sedentary life style. The smoking and drinking didn't help, at least not for his health. But what finally got him to the end of his life was the work. The work consumed him. Everyday he would roll out of bed. He would walk the twenty two steps to the desk where he worked and he would type. And type. And type. Until he was tired, then he got up, walked those same twenty two steps and slept. On weekends he would drink alone in his apartment and work drunk for as long as he could. Smoke breaks took away from his work so he began smoking from his desk. On the day he was to die he had just finished working, and moved to get up. He stretched his long fingers in a weave until they clicked. He started walking back to bed and on step twenty one he felt an ache in his chest. His mind reeled at the sudden onset of pain. He looked to the dresser n

So, this kinda might be cheating (I wanted to create a space where I wrote just about my thoughts/opinions/dreams/life etc... but, no on lives in a vacuum), but I'm going to post something that a friend on facebook said. For the purposes of this post, I will edit slightly. To whomever broke into [my significant other's] car and stole my [bag] by smashing in the back window: fuck you! The world would be better off if you got shot in the face. I cancelled all my cards before you could use them. Enjoy the 20 bucks in cash you got. This is why I will never vote democrat. If it was up to me all you shit bag piece of shit non contributors to society would just be killed. Fuck you. Karma will get you. Fuck you. Pardon my language.

So I don't want to give an extensive list of who did this technique first. So I'm just going to gloss over all the people who came before and try to focus on the subtle ironies and humor that comes with writers writing for writers. Let's clarify. It's the kind of story that Kurt Vonnegut might've written if he included himself in his own story. The kind of story where he would interact as a writer with his characters (some of them being surrogate characters for himself, he would even go so far as to make them writers as well) and he would see through them as the author sometimes does and his characters would ask things of him and his God like powers. And all the while, people would have their minds blown and enjoy that feeling. And that's good. English professors would dig deep into the book's text finding every subtle nuance with every single word put under the microscope. And that's pretty good. And then there are his fellow authors, his peers, who

Ah Apple. The pinnacle of usability, ease of computing, and price. For a very long time I thought that apple was the opposite of the old phrase, "You get what you pay for." To which I mean, I was not convinced that such a high price tag was indeed worth the ease that the computer gave. I sat around dealing with the small tricks and hacks I needed in order to get windows to do what I wanted. I just accepted that having a development environment that was sometimes wonky, didn't have the power and flexibility of command-line prompts (like unix/linux) with a clean UI that just made sense. For a long time I sat around and hated Mac, blindly and ignorantly. Then I got a new job as an iOS developer. Naturally, I would have to purchase a Mac in order to work as an iOS developer. So, took the time to grab a Mac book pro and have been using it for two days now. ... Holy fucking hell. I'm fairly certain that there is no better computer for development on the market. The OS