Right, then.

Today was okay. I went to the funeral and the procession to the grave. Hail, Bill, farewell. As a result, I met some most interesting people and found that others had connections I was unaware of. I refereed a football game (well, it was more trying to keep order rather than referee - if they ever want a well-done game, they'll have to give me more officials.) and then went to a late snack with both sides. Nu won, 34-0 over Delta Upsilon.

On the "to-do" list tomorrow is printing thesis, a little bit of consumerism, and then the progressive. I also need to remember to change my clock over to the right times tomorrow night so that I get up for my rehearsal at the right time on Sunday. That's rather important. Beyond that point, since the banks are closed, I think, I'll have to wait until Monday to get the rest of my important bits in order.

Since yesterday was the Fool's Day, here's ten news bits that look foolish but are true. Mixed with the iCopulation device for your iPod, things were a bit strange yesterday. Perhaps I should feel your head or read your face to see if you're weird, too.

For the technical types - Mozilla seems to be acting up a bit. My preferences are set to allow images, yet images from a certain site, like photobucket, aren't being displayed when I want them to be. Is there, perhaps, some command I've invoked that makes the browser not want to go there? How do I get back my functionality, anybody know?

For the rest of us - I get the feeling I've done this before, but I have the need to ask an apparently random and silly question. It involves the concepts of Soulbonding, so those who have no interest in the subject can safely stop their reading now.

I'm sure I've described the various inhabitants of mental space at one point or another, but another of the odd things that struck me is that my core characters are designed in such a way as to be extremely flexible with their environments. While they have developed histories and ideas, they can be transplanted to new places and worlds, and as soon as I pick up the systems behind those worlds, or as I'm picking them up, the characters can be tweaked sufficiently to make them compatible with a new universe. This often happens in worlds of books - I can integrate my character with the world, often in a rather Sue-ish way to start, but as I get a better hold on things, they can hold a parallel adventure to the plotline of the actual book, with some interactions and new directions. In a sense, my characters spawn alternate universe-selves, but they are often held together as one character and temporally displaced, so that one adventure takes place earlier, another later, but a lot of them seem to have concurrent temporality. The character flits through dimensions or holds alternate selves that at some point collapse into one.

The point of this ramble is that I wonder if others are the same way. When people describe their experience, it is often of "defined" characters existing in shared space, but they are unquestionably unique - they would not mix well with other people's Bonded conceptions of that character. Mine do. B/Verse Silver holds some differences from, say, QFG character Silver, but the two are compatible to the degree that they can be merged into one character (and are.)

Then again, I tend to construct new characters in established universes - Silver and the core started that way, as are the more nascent ideas of the Old Haibane and Alex, the struggling magic user (yeah, I know, same name - it seemed right for him, though, and until he gets a different name, that's the one I'm using. He's from the Someday's Dreamers universe) Perhaps it is a by-product of this method of construction that my mental space does not have a hundred-thousand inhabitants. The only character that has stuck around and is actually a player in her universe is Last Exile's Alister, and it's only because I might write something exploring her background - she's an interesting character, of what we see of her in the series. In that sense, she might be a more traditional Bond, if she gets to that point.

Rambled again. Anyway - is my way of doing things a unique one? And is it good or bad that I do my constructions this way? Or am I just being thoroughly confusing? (If so, ask some questions - I'll do my best to answer.)

You'll excuse me for waiting...

...but I wanted to make sure that all the potential deaths had happened before I started in on talking about any of them.

I've talked about Bill's death - he was a great man - I'm sorry I didn't get to know him more, but college kept me away from a lot of what was going on there. Even not knowing him all that well, I miss him. I think his absence will be most felt when the anime group meets Saturday next. We'll figure something out, though. JAMS should live on, even if it looks like the core group is scattering.

The Schiavo death - a media frenzy. Sharks everywhere, people fighting and ignoring the rules of law to try and get their own agendas across. I wonder what this media blitz covered up that was happening in the world - the Pres will come back to try and get one person's life where it's convenient, but hasn't done a whole lot about the multiple and consistent killings in the rest of the world, like Sudan. I suppose what Stalin (?) said was right - "One man's death is a tragedy. One million deaths is a statistic." I am more concerned over the media circus than the actually details of the case itself. Those who brought it into such public eyes should be drawn and quartered. What they might get is something just as bad - infighting between the governmental units.

And after a long life, Pope John Paul II has passed away. Since I was raised in a Catholic household, and have relatives who are priests, this is something important to my lifetime - John Paul II has been the only Pope known to anyone of my generation, and possibly of the generation before. At the same time, while he's been around and I've heard bits occasionally about him - I didn't pay much attention. but as he was dying, I couldn’t help but think that this was the same sort of media circus that accompanied the Schiavo case - suddenly, everyone was paying attention because the pontiff was dying. There's just something not right about it. Once the new Pope is elected, unless he does something drastic, he will return to the background like the last Pope did.

Something like this should be a segment of the evening news, sure, but it's not something that requires the media or the world to stop while we wait for him to die. Perhaps I'm just being bitter towards Catholicism in general, but things ring false here. Wasn’t there a Scripture remark about "Beware of Pharisees, who go about praying loudly in the streets" - not an exact translation or recital, mind you. An expression of grief is acceptable - thousands of devoted people praying tribute, good, but the constant presence of the camera and the feed to the media makes it all seem like a farce. Perhaps I really am concerned that those passing on should do so with privacy and dignity, especially if they are famous (or made to be so).

This many passings in these times brings us to think about our own mortality as well - as much as I want to be remembered and inspiring to many, I would rather be remembered as the hero of lore, who always has a witness but never has a crowd. It is also true that many of us could not exist tomorrow - an unsettling thought. Yet as we grow older, that thought is a necessary one.

Best to stop now, before I ramble incoherently about things... I'm already feeling a bit pointless in this.