silveradept | *boink*

Ah, the sound of progress. Well, sort of. Got my meats and cheeses, am doing markup work on my thesis and expanding a bit here and there. Draft due Friday and all of that material. Luckily, it's draft one, so I don't have to have everything in place. That's draft two, due about a month from there, and then one final revision to the endgame. All this, while still fighting off exams, papers, and other engagements. But I'm not really stressed... not yet. The fun's just beginning, and it'll probably be a madcap dash to the end. I can handle this, though. Now, it's not a matter of not knowing what I want to say, it's figuring out how to put it down on paper. I've progressed beyond the wide-eyed initiate into the seasoned squire, getting ready for my midnight vigil and dubbing to knighthood. (Here's hoping grad school will have me.)

There is, as usual, a plethora of apparently unrelated material to follow. Only those that can see between the fnords have a shot at figuring out how it all links together. It may not at all. It ranges from how games, using Monopoly as an example, introduce and reinforce culture, across to the Biology of B-Movie Monsters (most of them are anatomically impossible), all the way down to how to judge a book by its cover. I don't know if it works, but someone's trying.

Around the net, someone appears to be trolling by friending overtly-furry journals and then, when the potentially curious come looking for why, are greeted with a bevy of insults about their lifestyle - it's hard to tell whether it's a joke or not (I hope it is, but even then, it's still a sick joke), and it may be true that one of the commenters really is an anti-fur person. (No links - wouldn't necessarily want to give heat to stupidity - but

goji linked him, and thinks he's cute, in a defenestrating sort of way.) It reminds me of how I was talking with some people about how I was surprised that my state turned out to be a blue one, considering the very red-ness (or at least apparent red-ness) of the not-urban area (which geographically is bigger). Mind you, the gay marriage ban passed comfortably, and that was what annoyed me more than electing an idiot to President (There's a good chance all the candidates were idiots, so that's not necessarily singling out the current Idiot in Charge). It really is the squeaky wheel that draws attention. Too bad that most of us have encounters with other social groups by meeting or seeing their squeaky wheels (thanks, media distortion) instead if their normal folks. (There are exceptions, of course - alternaculture is usually one gigantic squeaky wheel, often by design) I'd like to think that I reserve my judgments on social groups until I've seen enough of them in action to make an informed decision, but I could very well be just as guilty as everyone else of using shorthand.

Then again, as Sketch told me, I think too much about things. And she's right, too. It's the paradox of the Zen master - spontaneous enlightenment through constant practice. I was just about to ask advice from other people on how to get there, but then the oxymoron switch tripped in my brain and I realized that it would be somewhat pointless. About all anyone else could do is as Morpheus said, "I can only show you the door. You're the one who has to walk through it." There's promise when I'm doing band engagements. It keeps the focus down, the concentration up, and it lets the rest of things slide away when I'm doing it right. Zen musicianship, perhaps, but if that's true, I need to be able to drag it across to my normal life. It's really a matter of convincing myself to do it, rather than pihlosophising about it, analyzing it, and weighing out the benefits. I need to not be stopped by doubts and "What ifs". To each situation as it arises, neither thinking ahead nor behind, but only reflecting that which is in front of me, clearly and without distortion, the Way.

Closing out tonight, a powerful piece of poetry, one that holds very significant meanings to me.

sporklord posted it in his journal, and now I'm, doing so in mine, because of the feelings the poem evokes.

Invictus

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate;
I am the captain of my soul.
--William Ernest Henley

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The problem with enlightenment... I believe a koan may be in order...

There was a Master who built a special room in his monastery and each day brought the Novices to meditate so that they could see the door to enlightenment he had built into the room.

One day a Novice approached the Master and said, "Master, each day you bring us to your special room so that we may see the door to enlightenment you have built, yet the room has no walls, only a roof! How can we see a door that does not exist?"

And the Master brought the Novice with him and asked him to follow him into the special room. Then he spoke to the Novice saying, "I can not show you the door, walk out of the room where you see a door and you will be enlightened". And the Novice saw the door and was enlightened.

That anti-fur person sounds like a pain. I can't stand the kind of person who insults "internet crazies" out of the odd belief that he's superior to them on some level. People get a kick out of attacking those who have odd interests. I'm weird enough to slip beneath their radar sometimes, I think. But I do hate to see my friends getting attacked by judgemental nerds with too much time on their hands.

It's not necessarily even that. More likely than not he's an SA Goon who likes to be spiteful for the sake of being spiteful itself.

Indeed. For a brief while, SA was very popular in my little circle of friends. Its pretty funny, in itself. But the fans are almost always idiotic, and closed-minded to the extent that its ridiculous. I have nothing wrong with people thinking I'm nuts. As long as they don't stand in the way of my insanity.

Permit the ignorant a question. More speicifically, though I'm sure I could find it out from wandering the website (findable by a simple Google Search), would you tell me, in your own parlance, what this mysterious Something Awful is, and why it seems to enjoy mounting crusades every so often aagainst other subgroups of 'net culture?

www.somethingawful.com is a site which does some cool humourous rants and photo-shops. Its all good. However they tend to lay on the moral outrage at things like Hentai Games, Goths, Furries, Otherkin, etc a bit thick. Some of the fans take that to mean that they should spam message boards and conduct other childish acts which they think make them seem clever.

A message board I used to go on was spammed at one stage because a member was transgendered and bad at web design, and the person thought we were a Pagan group.

Many thanks. Is there a reason why they might be a little hard-leaning on the "deviants" or is it just an aggregation of the populous there that produced that view?

Well, my theory is that Something Awful serves something of the role of a freak show. They show internet crazies at their worst and make fun of them, because everyone likes to see something weird.

They do so in a way that I find a little moralistic. Comdemning those they dislike. Because of this some of the fans feel the need to take it further, and make a nuisance of themselves.

Its probably the self-righteous sanctimonious Discordian in me, but it really bugs me when a group of people glorify enforcing normality on others. Although the site is good for a laugh.

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