Where is My Mind?

The Scarlet B Posted on by

Hola dears, welcome to the land of no inspiration. I knew this day would come, as it has to once in awhile. I’m not particularly bothered – as I’ve said before, you can’t be brilliant all the time. And really, I’ve put more effort than I meant to into writing things that popped up on the fly, so that kind of ate into my so-called research time. *chuckles* I’m glad that I was able to help someone in a bind, ’cause y’know… nice to do nice things for people? Now, add in the clincher – I’m full of tasty foods, so my brain has kind of gone off to climax in a glorious pool of gravy and vegetable fragments. Mmm, gravy…

Anyways, hope everyone is having a lovely day, and that my friends back in Texas aren’t suffering unduly in the face of the rolling blackouts. Take care of yourselves – it’s supposed to warm up over the weekend, right? :s

It’s the End of the World as We Know it (Global Warming, my Ass)

The Scarlet B Posted on by

Apparently, the US is getting death by snow right now. The Weather Channel’s front page proclaims that over 2,100 miles of the US are likely to get at least an inch of snow, which frankly, is ridiculous. My friends back in my home town have a high of 22F (-5.5C) to look forward to, while we here in England are enjoying sunshine and 43F (6C). It’s truly a gorgeous day here, though as my husband points out, we’ll likely get the same storm in about 2 weeks.

Joy.

In the meantime, we get to enjoy what looks to be a nice little warming trend, though it’s predicted to come with rain. While miserable, at least it’s a bit less dangerous than what the poor folks in Texas have been putting up with. And really, it seems like winters have gone wacky in general. I went most of my childhood with snow being something seen on TV, and celebrating the ice pellets when they came, since that was the closest. But nooo, now Dallas gets ridiculous snow, which prompts the above quote – global warming, my ass. I get that climate change is occurring, but really, calling it ‘warming’ makes skeptics of us all. And, of course, it doesn’t help that there’s little reference to the fact that we’re coming out of a little ice age, which definitely can take some of the blame for how… erratic… weather seems. Oh sure, we should take care of the planet; it’s the only one we have at current. But it stands to be said that warming and change are going to happen no matter what we do; we can’t magically force the planet to cool… can we? Eeesh, may nobody think up the frankenscience to make that happen… that would be doomsday hilarious. ><

Otherwise, the new government police website is in my sites, and giving me cause for amusement. Did they really think that it wouldn’t be inundated with people? Of course people are ridiculously curious about the crime levels where they live; we took a peeksee last night before it was officially live. And, of course, there are already hilarious and somewhat panicky news reports about how dangerous some areas are – lulz. I can’t get the site to load now (big surprise), but I think it said there were some 120~ crimes in our area. I have no idea how this compares to the rest of our city, or the rest of the country, but I cannot see that being a horrible number. England is such a dense and compact nation that it only makes sense that there would be ‘so much’ crime in such a small area. I’ve seen two in the past two years from my own window, and that’s not even counting all the charming folk who use our street to do their middle of the night drug deals. No, my only qualm is that I do not feel like I have the right to protect my home and property, as is a well-honored right back in the States. I don’t want to kill people for trespassin’ on my property, mind, but I don’t want to feel like I’m going to go to jail if I accidentally brain someone to bits.

I guess it’s nice to know about the crime in ones’ neighborhood, but do we really need to know? I’d be inclined to think that it just serves to fuel those with loud mouths and nervous dispositions about how the world has gone to hell in a hand basket, even if crime rates are lower than those ‘safe’ days we fantasize about (as is the number two point on yet another fabulous Cracked article). I mean, heck, I’m a total net junkie, and I definitely say that we’ve got an information overload; there’s more coming at us than we know what to do with. And while being informed is good, we can generally agree that information in the hands of those who don’t understand it don’t really serve a useful purpose. Oh, it does if it encourages people to learn what they need to know to understand facts, but often as not…

Anyhoose, there’s a toddler who needs chasing, so I’m going to get to that. For those of you in the States – be well and safe. For those of you sunning it up here in the UK? Enjoy our drought, and all of that. 😉

Brought to You by the Letter P

The Scarlet B Posted on by

I’ve had Tool’s Parabola stuck in my head for what feels like weeks, though it’s more like week. I’ve always been a fan of Tool – the lyrics are slippery and heavy with portent, the instrumentation is ridiculously awesome, and really, just wow. It still breaks my heart that I never managed to see them play, and I can’t see myself going to a concert in the near future. It’s not the whole ‘zOmg, I’m a parent and can’t have fun!’ thing, but rather, that I just… I don’t really have the energy for it? The hassle of parking and driving and drunks and… meh. It wears me out to even think about it.

Anyways, I’m flipping through the lyrics, trying to figure out why this song is feeling so significant right now. Perhaps it’s because I’m feeling ill; I don’t like being sick, but it makes me feel very physically-based when I am. *chuckles* But then, I can’t really expect myself to explain this, either; I’m more spiritual than religious, and this just about falls into that category. Whatever the case, it’s a good song, so share it around.

In the world of psychology, there’s an article claiming that bright girls are kind of awesome at sabotaging themselves. I’m not really sure how I feel about this particular piece, but then, I’ve been an outcast my entire life. By that blessing of a curse, I don’t really give a damn about fitting into what I’m told to be, and often will do completely the opposite just to be a stubborn bratinka. Now, I’ve got a somewhat crippling perfectionist streak compliments of upbringing, not gender. But this leaves me where I’m either very very sure, or not sure at all, and not much in-between. In-between is where apathy lies, and as I tend to avoid that… *chuckles*

But back to the point – why do we insist that boys and girls must be so fundamentally different that say, they should be taught separately, that the chasm between the two are so vast that we might as well keep pidgeon-holing children into these little boxes to best serve them? Never mind that science shows pretty clearly that the gap between genders is less significant than the gap between the best and worst within individual genders, and that a LOT of how we as a society approach each other is with a hostile assumption that there is no middle ground, only black and white (or blue and pink)? Honestly, I sometimes wonder how we’ve made it this far without just killing each other in fullness. *chuckles*

Of course, it would also help if we weren’t taught that we should raise our children on gold stars and constant and consistent praise, all of which is bad… but that’s an argument for another day. 😉

What other ‘p’ can I muster… oh yes, play! I’d been on a Pokémon kick, but I’ve decided that I should attempt a Legacy game again; this is attempt 4.0. My first three attempts were on my laptop, and all glitched out pretty badly. I figure that trying on my desktop is ideal, as there’s more processor and resource and crap to poke the poor thing along. Amusingly enough, I picked the family name of ‘Poison’, so that’s also a p for you, never mind that I named the family after one of my cats. I’m already doing pretty horribly, if I do say so myself, so we’ll see how it pans out.

For now, c’est tout – I’m going to go back to being a shaky pile of person. Have a nice day!

Something Clever

The Scarlet B Posted on by

Happy Sunday and the like, for all of you who y’know… dig on Sundays. I’m ambivalent towards them – it’s nice to have a day of rest, but it’s also the end of the down time. So bittersweet, that, even for those of us that enjoy working. 🙂

So then, what’s going on in the world today. Firstly, there’s yet another piece about how we’re almost out of internets. I’d like very much to hear about people getting off their duffs and making IPv6 happen already, but I guess it’s just gonna keep hanging while our tubes clog up with smutty cats.

Adding to our household’s vast amusement stores is today’s news that Blue are going to represent the UK for Eurovision. We might guffaw at the act (as is only proper, as they themselves do), but at least it’s a bit more palatable than the last few years of entries. Of course, I only know the last few years of entries, but I get the point – the UK sucks at picking acts, and the whole thing is incredibly hilarious the more seriously countries take it. Seriously, the sums it all up for me entry would be Spain in 2008 – it’s grand. I looove cheese…

Otherwise, the main thing on my mind is the fact that yes, all agree – we’re rather hyperconnected in this day and age. I often feel like the odd one out because I don’t have a smartphone, don’t particularly want one, and even being as net junkytastic as I am, I can go a few hours without juuuuuuuuuust fine. But I realize that I’m a dying breed, and that normalcy is to always have connectivity at all times. And I think I agree that we’re reprogramming ourselves for it, though I cannot concur that it’s for the best. We’re a world that is supposedly multi-tasking, but yet, multi-tasking doesn’t exist. This is something I’ve been working on teaching myself over the past year or two, and I’m glad I have. I still task cycle more than is probably healthy; it’s a hard habit to break. Even now, I’m sitting here writing this, playing a bit of a game on my other computer, talking to my husband, checking website references, etc. But I know this isn’t good, because instead of doing one task, I’m doing a bunch of tasks poorly. I’m causing myself undue stress trying to do it all, rather than knocking out tasks in a specific and orderly order. *chuckles*

But then, we all seem to be happily rushing headlong off of a cliff into oblivion… eesh, makes me sound like my great grandmother, doesn’t it? But that’s sort of the point – when do we cross the line, hit the wall, go that bridge too far? It’s probably further out than I think, we think, but it could be that much closer. We simply do not know, and probably cannot know. Does that mean that one should be hesitant? No, never… but caution isn’t neccessarily bad either.

And as I’m starting to go blah blah rambly, I wander! Have a loverly day and all of that.

People are People (Unless You’re an Introvert)

The Scarlet B Posted on by

When poring through my Livejournal friends yesterday, I saw an excellent link from my KoL friend Synnia. It’s on a subject that is very dear to me, which I will now share with you all:

Caring for Your Introvert: The habits and needs of a little-understood group
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2003/03/caring-for-your-introvert/2696/

Now, I’m an introvert. I do my best to make this exceedingly clear, and work on the presumption that everyone understands what that entails. Apparently, it doesn’t – you extroverts are by and large too hung up on the sound of your jaws yappin’ to realize that there are other ways to live life. *chuckles* Yes yes, I’m aware that statement is a touch mean, but I choose to use it as an example of the standard sort of nasty misconceptions that many introverts operate under. Some of my favorites include the insistence that:

  1. Introverts have no social skills.
  2. Introverts are shy/afraid of people.
  3. Introverts think they’re too good to socialize/are stuck up.

Now, while this piece is a bit with the tongue in cheek, it still makes some very good points in its efforts to educate the extroverts of the world. And, in some ways, I suspect it becomes more pertinent as more and more people come online; this used to be our preserve in a way. I personally think that the Internet has been a wonderful gift to real introverts, insomuch that you can socialize a lot more with a lot less strain. This has its potential drawbacks as well, of course – I know that people often are surprised to find that I am/consider myself an introvert, because I CAN big it up and socialize and have a good time. But much like the article says, it is almost like acting. There is that bit of distancing that is needed to keep the socialization up, though the pain will still land if you don’t take the needed recoup time. *chuckles* And that, mes amis, is why I always have massive fever blisters at weekend meet-ups and cons… 😉

Anyways, I still need to wrangle myself into finishing my story for The Chrysalis Experiment, so I’ll leave it that. And, y’know, encourage everyone to share it with the extroverts in their lives, if only to educate them that yes, we love them… now shoosh!

<3

Clumsy

The Scarlet B Posted on by

Good morning, world. I’d shake your hand, but I suspect that I’d end up punching you somehow. Not that I’m mad at you, mind, but my hands are feeling that sort of clumsy. Which is great, considering that I’m working with a paper cutter right now, hee hee. Thankfully, it’s a contained enough system that the chances of me cutting myself are astronomically small, but still, but still..

So then, what can I say about the world today. It’s Friday, which means… well, it doesn’t really mean much around here. Sure, that’s a few days off of work to do nothing upon, but I’m not feeling particularly needy for it. I can hope to be alive enough to work on my story for this week, which I’m rather behind on. I’ve got a few hundred words and some idea of what I’m doing with it after a week of thinking, but that doesn’t make me terribly happy to be pushing into overtime to do it… y’know, if I even manage to find focus. I’ve been lacking a lot of that this week, which is… meh. It’s not a joyful thing, but I’m not particularly sure I can miracle some focus out of my backside, either. It’s like, yay… I baked a loaf of bread, and that’s been just about it.

Oh yes, I did spot an interesting bit of news earlier. Apparently, Amazon reports that the sales of e-books has outstripped the sales of paperbacks on their US site. I know it says that it doesn’t include free downloads and that the sale of paperback books is growing as well, but I’m still curious as to what this means exactly. Is it counting newspapers amongst the e-books? What, exactly, is defined as an e-book? Does this mean people are reading more in general, or? Because conversing casually with friends and acquaintances seem to indicate that the personal experience for most of us is that people seem to think you’re from the past if you’re reading (not specifically related, but lulz all the same). So while I can hope that it means that people are out  there genuinely reading, I’m kind of guarded as to whether or not find this good news. But then, I prefer the heft and the smell and all the things that make reading reading. I’ve met very few pages/covers that my hands didn’t adore (the notable exception being a box set of His Dark Materials I purchased eons ago; I could not STAND to touch the covers, they felt so strange!). I will admit that I’m interested in the e-ink thing though, if only because my eyes have so much pain and suffering from the normal backlit screen-a-ma-bobs that are the norm in this day and age. Though obviously, it would probably be a long time before we saw e-ink as a monitor, though, at least, we know they can do it in colour!

And now, methinks that’s going to be enough for the day; I’m amazed I squeezed out that much. *laughs* Perhaps I’ll find something even more cogent to speak about… stay tuned and we’ll see? 😉

Noise and Static

The Scarlet B Posted on by

As I sit here today, I realize there is almost nothing on my mind. In fact, I’d be lying if I said that my brain was capable of carrying on real thought; it feels more like jellied mush. Whether it is because of the weather or medication or general malaise, I will likely never know. All that is pertinent is that I’m mush-like, and have become increasingly so all week. This too shall pass in time, but for the moment… it’s not exactly my idea of fun.

And, of course, when I’m in this state, I become increasingly apathetic about the world outside of my demesnes. Should the Royals get jobs, should we deep-fry the hackers, there’s a third Olsen, and zOmg, there’s someone out there anti-Glee – it’s all there, but I just can’t muster a give-a-damn.

Calm yourself, just calm yourself…

I realize that we all have days like this, but I do so wish mine didn’t pile atop each other. *smiles* But that’s just the way; my life is a wave or something. And while I was having a rather good conversation with one of my best friends earlier today about mood and people and bonding and friendship and the like, I’m not sure that’s something that I’m fully inclined to discuss in a public forum. I mean, it’s not dire in the scheme of things, but I don’t like feeling vulnerable. Admitting that it feels like I’m a chasm away from every other person in the world isn’t exactly the most confident statement to have to make, whatever its veracity. To admit that even with loved ones, the closest you manage to ever feel is fingers brushing across a ravine, that everyone else is miles away past that… it’s not a particularly nice thing. That most positive emotion is not something I can receive because I don’t trust the motives or genuineness of it.

Oh wait, I did just admit to all of that, didn’t I? Ah well – welcome to my world. I am my own island. I don’t particularly like it, but I don’t really have any idea what to do about it, either. I only trust spontaneous positive affection, if that. And because of how I am, I almost never let anyone know when I’m upset or feeling poorly, because it comes out so big that I’m desperately afraid someone will mistake it as attention whoring. I’d honestly rather off myself than attention whore; I abhor those who ruin genuine bonding and polite society with their desperate need to be acknowledged. I abhor it because I don’t really know how to undo the damage it’s done to my soul; as this particular best friend knows, I have a family member whose behavior reinforced my particular beliefs to be this way by his or her abhorrent attention seeking. Do you think it appropriate to have to deal with someone saying ‘I love you!’ 20 times a day? I surely don’t…

Anyways, meh. Have some insight into the downside of things. I’m holding up alright and will probably boost my mood with some wonderful baking tonight (nothing beats freshly baked bread for mood elevation!), and as always – this too shall pass. 😉 In the meantime, I hope everyone is having as good a day as possible, ’cause I genuinely do wish 99.5% of people the bestest. And those .5% I don’t, well… *chuckles*

Maybe Snow, Maybe Not (and Other Randomosities)

The Scarlet B Posted on by

As I sit here this fine evening, I’m tempted to plaster myself to the window. There’s the vaguest chance of snow tonight, and me being from where I’m originally from (the land of Yeehaw and Y’all, that country best known as Texas), I’m a sucker for it. It doesn’t matter that I’m pushing 30, the white stuff is still magical and awesome to me. Even if I don’t go run out and roll about in it much, it’s still awesome – it’s pure potential. Anyways, be happy that most of you probably missed me over the winter and that you’ll likely have to wait until December before I start going on about it again, eh? Because I will go on… and on… and on… and well, you get the idea. 😉

I’m a bit annoyed today – I had some really good ideas to scribble about this morning… and then I accidentally turned off my computer and lost the lot. I’d spotted some pieces about some of my favorite harpings on – that everyone is going to need to cut back, that we cannot maintain such decadent lifestyles, etc. And it made me go woohoo, because it was good filler for trying to explain some of my stances about life and society. It’s not that I don’t want people to have nice things – it’s wonderful to be able to have nice things and have good times and the like. It’s more that it’s not sustainable, and it was stuff that explained it better than I could. I’d also taken part in the BBC Lab survey on British Class, and my results on that were most DEFINITELY lost by my accidental shut-down. I didn’t even get to finish reading them, I was so irked. Not that it was completely accurate – if we based my life on the past year, then I have absolutely no cultural interests whatsoever, since I barely managed to do anything museum or arts based. *chuckles* I debate taking it again, but I don’t want to skew their data set just to find out what I missed on seeing. I keep looking to see if, perhaps, there’s a saved results in my profile, but alas, alas…

Oh, or I could notice that ‘view your feedback’ button. Good job, dork, good job. <3 At least now I can be amused that my coat of arms is, apparently, a Playstation controller! Anyways, I’ll maintain that class only matters to those who are fussed about keeping up appearances, or being better/different than someone. Since I don’t care to, it personally means nothing to me. But as I’m still doing my best to understand British culture and its history, it’ll be interesting to see what the results of this survey are, if only so it broadens my understanding of things. I realize that my opinion might not match to fact, but I think it’s not too far off after comparing it in multiple cultures/countries. 🙂

Also, I realize I might need to learn more about the words of Immanuel Kant, if this article is any indication. He didn’t come up in my philosophy class back in my attempt at college a decade ago, else I’d’ve probably glomped on him fairly hard (if this first glance is any true insight). Really, I need to get back into reading philosophy and philosophers, period; I enjoyed the heck out of it back in school, so it might behoove me to brush up on it this year. The only other thing I could think that I’d specifically want to brush up on/study/take a class in would be psychology. That was my other love in college, and it always drove me around the bend that the only offering of abnormal psych was at a time I absolutely could never make it if I still wanted to have enough money to keep my poor dying car running. *chuckles* Maybe I should just poke around Amazon, see if there are any likely texts worth checking out… seems a good option.

And now, me and my chilly hands are going to go try to write some story bizz. I managed like.. two sentences yesterday, which just won’t do. But then, it wasn’t a total bust – some of that time that could have been spent cranking out words was used researching some relevant bits, so I don’t feel totally horrible about it.

<3

Doo Dee Doo

The Scarlet B Posted on by

Another day, and another day of almost nothing to say. Oh sure, global unemployment has hit dangerous levels, but this is only surprising if you’re silly enough to think that the current Western lifestyle is sustainable; we’re going to run out of third world eventually. :p We can’t all be rich, we can’t all be famous, and we can’t all be middle class – get it through your heads. *laughs* More than that I cannot really say, considering the fact that I’m no economist, nor do I have any desire to be one. It’s just, y’know… stating the obvious. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and a lot more people get poorer ’cause they get tricked into thinking they can be rich – circle of life and all of that.

At least some people aren’t getting poorer from ACS:Law’s madcap antics – they’ve announced they’re going to quit being harassing asshats. I am very pleased to hear this, insomuch that the whole situation was poorly handled. Sure, content owners should expect recompense for their intellectual property – this has never been the argument. The argument is why they should expect to get paid a fortune for levels of flappers when there is often a free version of a product available online. I know – a lot of the complaints are more geared towards the entertainment industry, but for the sake of ease, I’d rather go for things like Photoshop and browsers and the like. Sure, Photoshop is the bestest, Word is the bestest, etc, but there are so many just-as-goods available for free. Examples for those two specifically, of course, being Gimp and OpenOffice. Anti-virus software is often another great one to point out – I always had problems with viruses with I had Norton or TrendMicro installed, but it wasn’t the case once I switched to freebies like AGV and Ad-Aware and so forth. I like having the option to have full basic protection with the chance to buy more peace of mind as I want to, or to donate, etc.

… *watches train of thought careen off of a cliff*

Thinking – she’s not with me today! But that’s okay – we can’t all be on all the time. After all, we have to have bad/down times to learn from. Improvement cannot be made without mistakes, blah blah blah and sundry. And really, why worry about it? There’s already too much worry about the most trivial things in this day and age, and I’d rather spend my time zoning out cheerfully than fret. Of course, I’m saying this as an incredibly anxious and fretful person, hee hee…

Anyways, maybe I’ll have something more tomorrow – we shall see. For now, I hope everyone is having a nice day, staying warm, etc. I’m going to go keep trying to poke my brain into writing mode; there’s another blog to do, and I need to flesh out my story idea for this week. I DO have an idea, but it’s so fragile that if I breathe on it wrong, it shatters. I’ve done this half a dozen times today, and I’m almost tempted to just dive in head-first and see what comes out thaddaway!

Flying By the Seat of My Pants

The Scarlet B Posted on by

Hooboy and howdy – I have nothing in mind to blather about this fine day. I’m dozy, I’m chilly, and it’s Monday – I don’t like Mondays, ’cause I’m a sane person. *cough* Okay, as sane as any person who stays home to be drowsy, play Pokémon, and vaguely think about doing chores is… which probably is a lot saner than I give myself credit for.

My Pok̩mons Рlet me show you them. <__<

But really, I have been playing this damn game in many incarnations since the 90s. That’s right – I’m such a motherfracking adult that I’ve been trying to catch them all for over ten years across three decades. I admit that I’m a few generations behind; I’ve played a bit of the third generation games, but that’s been it. That’s fair, considering the most advanced Game Boy system I own is a pair of Game Boy Advances I bought in 2001/2002. *coughs* I’m currently doing Silver for the n-millionth time compliments of Virtual Game Boy, but this time I might even finally get to trade with myself – yippie! Of course, it would be nice if the husband had pointed out this option before I got hours deep into a game on my old install of VBA – tinysigh!

But still, I cannot be terribly upset. If there’s one thing that makes a game good for me, it’s replayability. One of my favorite games is from 1994, and it’s one of my favorites because it is nigh-on infinitely replayable. Pokémon, The Sims, Sim City, Caesar, Evil Genius, Civilization(s) – these were all games that have gotten me through the years because they’re fun to play again and again. Understandably, replayability is something that, I think, isn’t considered as much these days – how can they get your money if you’re not buying the sequels?! But then, even with these games, the sequels WERE purchased, as were expansions, tack-on merch, the works – it’s possible to proudly present a replayable game and still have ample gouging options.

I also think part of it for me is that I don’t find having to panic and slam lots of keys ideal gaming. I don’t like real real time, ’cause my brain starts melting trying to keep up with everything. No, I like it slow with an option to pause and think. It’s sort of like that scene from the second Back to the Future movie – I need to use my hands like a baby, all slow and cumbersome and the like. Sigh, and to think I USED to have above average hand-to-eye coordination… *grins*

I keep trying to think of things to add to today, but I’m a bit at a loss. It’s just one of those days, I suspect. 🙂