Who Is The Victor?

Best.  SL.  Umbrella ad.  Ever.

(And don’t worry, ladies, you’re covered, too:)

It’s like beautiful poetry.

(Hey, screw the umbrella, I want her outfit.  Super cute!)

The Magic Pill (part 7)

[This is the seventh in a series of posts that tell a single story.  You can refresh your memory on Part 6 HERE, or start at the beginning if you didn’t read the others.]

And even that, all of that, wasn’t enough to assuage the lurking sense of unease I felt. As new questions kept popping up, no matter how many answers I found, and as I felt no closer to any sort of resolution, I was forced to acknowledge a simpler truth. This has no logical basis, it dawned on me. This resistance is emotional. I’m just afraid! And that sudden realization swung the door forward halfway open. But why?, I thought, sitting down on the edge of my bed. What’s the problem here? What am I so afraid of?

You’re afraid, said the Voice, that it will work.

The statement held no surprise for me, not even a glimmer of amusement at the irony. Welcome back, I thought.

I never left. It didn’t wait for me to ask the obvious question. If it works, then it’s one more thing you’re responsible for, one more thing you have to help provide. And things aren’t going so well in that respect. The Providing Department. You’re worried that pretty soon you won’t even be able to give him the essentials, let alone enhancements. Read the rest of this entry »

At Least Not That I’ve Noticed

The nice thing about pallbearing is, nobody expects you to smile.

Art Imitates Life II

Sweet ride…

No Word From the Zoroastrians

Forgot that it was Good Friday (and Earth Day??) and made Pork with Black Bean Sauce for dinner.  So I more or less offended Christianity, Judaism, Islam and the environmental movement all with a single meal.

How’s That Workin’ Out For You?

We arrived too late.

Har har har!  Of course we didn’t.  There was never anyone to save to begin with.  (And really:  if you feel you have time to write in blood on the walls during the Zombie Apocalypse, you have serious [probably terminal] resource-management issues.)  No, this is a WIP shot of the inside of a building Dragonia was building for a Second Life hunt.  (I believe it’s actually the Zombie Killers Hunt, although don’t hold me to that.)  I gave her a hand with some of the textures.

The finished version wound up looking even better than this.  Lots of fun.

Who’s Your Dali

If you stand your digital avatar in a virtual diorama inspired by a famous painting, so as to duplicate a virtual representation of that painting, is that truly anti-mimetic?  Or is it Art Imitating Art?

It’s Not a Bad Pen

Went to a cattle-call style interview today to explore the exciting opportunities available to me as a Supplemental Insurance Salesperson.  Discovered that “between successes” is the current HR euphemism for “unemployed”.  Stole their pen.

The Magic Pill (part 6)

[This is the sixth in a series of posts telling a single story.  You might want to review part 5, or go back and read the whole story from the beginning.]

I was partially right. The medical doctor doing Jack’s physical evaluations spent the first session bonking him below his knees with a rubber hammer, asking him to balance on one foot, watching him leap up from a lying position and run. She gave us literature, and ran us through another list of background questions. Eighty percent of the eye contact she made while doing all that was with Weaver.  When Weaver commented on or elaborated on something, the doctor would focus on her, and smile or nod as if parsing what she said;  while I was doing it, she would focus on me, until I stopped speaking-  then glance at Weaver, as if to check and see whether or not what I said was really true. It left a bad taste in my mouth, but since Jack was with us the entire time, the few words that came I had to bite down on anyway, for fear of saying something in front of him that would make him afraid, or put questions in his mind that didn’t need to be there.

What is this really going to do to him? I found myself slowly wondering, long after we had left the office. Physically? People like to keep using the analogies to other drugs, other mediators-  how if you’re having allergy problems and need allergy medication, you take it, or how if you’re nearsighted you don’t hesitate to wear glasses, or how if you’re diabetic and need insulin you don’t think twice about using that. But it’s not the same thing-  or at least, it’s all different points on a really wide scale. We’re talking about putting a CHEMICAL in his HEAD for Christ’s sake! Changing the way he THINKS. Aren’t we? And there are all those scary possible side-effects. Sure, none of them usually happen. But they can. I’d rather cut off my own arm than hurt him somehow. Read the rest of this entry »

Two Plus Two

Selling a LOT of copies of the Charred Black shingles lately.  Something to do with the upcoming Zombie Hunt, maybe?

I figure, if I keep at it long enough (and keep succeeding,) eventually D is going to come home with a hunt item or freebie or other product she found that’s made with a texture I did.  That’ll be interesting.  *laughs*

Knife to the Gunfight

Jack: My castle has a super-magnetic floor between the inner and outer walls, that when activated pulls all metal armor and weapons down onto it, making it so that they can’t move.  And the inner chamber has a computer system that sweeps the area for enemies and then fires on them with these turrets if it finds them.

Ace: My castle has rolling logs.

Like Fine Wine

I hope the tax man appreciates the delicate bouquet of bitterness, despair and coffee in the saliva I sealed the envelopes with.

from the Comments: Compound Interest

From the comments on Two Cents With Interest, Neuro writes:

I’m not sure I agree with you. If I sub in your definitions for work, one gets:

“You can make any relationship continue and be useful/pleasant/satisfying (u/p/s) to the people in that relationship, regardless of the relative age of the participants (or anything else) as long as your goals are the same. And if your goals are somewhat divergent, then you can still make it u/p/s, as long as you have other things in common, like similar past experiences, or a shared cultural background, or that both parties are open-minded to the past experiences and cultural background that each brings to the relationship.”

Is it just that you are assuming that attraction, chemistry, spark, respect, “getting” each other, personal admiration, trust–  in a word, love–  is there from the beginning to the end, too? Because my point here is that the way all this is written it almost reads like an arranged marriage. I submit that one cannot make any romantic relationship work, despite having common goals, background, and open-mindedness to one’s cultural differences. I’m sure there are many women who I could tick off these items with CHECK, CHECK, CHECK and although I might be great friends with them or collaborate with them harmoniously I would never want to be with them romantically in 1,000 years.

I could have all the common goals and life background and cultural openness in the world and if she laughs the wrong way, well, game over.

My point is, I feel that although what you are both saying is certainly of value and ought to be taken seriously within a relationship, the dominant factor in a relationship is the much harder to quantify “certain something”. It’s so dominant, in fact, that it almost makes a mockery of all our machinations toward making a relationship work.

(And the “dominant certain something” is itself at the whim of biology, timing, imprinting, belief, etc. E.g, one study showed that fertile women prefer more masculine looking men when they are ovulating.)

Yoko responds:

[Attraction, chemistry, etc.] are all different things. The attraction, chemistry, and spark fade in time. What takes its place is the admiration, trust, and “getting each other”– but these qualities don’t happen right away, but develop over time. What helps them to develop is to be aware of where someone is coming from, which helps when there some commonality or “work” towards understanding.

[re “I could have all the common goals and life background and cultural openness in the world and if she laughs the wrong way, well, game over.”]  I think we’re coming from different angles here. I think to *start* a relationship, that “certain something” (spark, chemistry, etc.) definitely is what brings people together. But for me, at least, that “certain something” doesn’t keep the relationship going for more than a few months. What does is the understanding, the common direction, what have you. The more you get to know a person, the more you get to know his/her quirks, and maybe those outweigh that spark. But also, the more you get to know a person, the more you come to realize that there are more aspects to being with him/her that “net positive” and thus makes it worth staying instead of ditching because of something like the wrong laugh.

I like it when intelligent and articulate people discuss the different facets of a topic politely and rationally. It’s a lot easier than having to come up with coherent debate points myself. ;)  I wish the two of them and few other people I know had SL avis, so I could host that virtual dinner salon I keep threatening to.  :D

Sadly, I don’t feel like I have much to add by way of clarification.  I was going to make the observation that in my own experience, I’ve never had a relationship get easier.  All the relationships I’ve ever had have always started out seeming very intuitive and unencumbered, providing whatever benefits they provided without the need for “work” or maintenance or complex thought, and then gotten progressively more and more difficult, requiring more work and more maintenance and more complex thought as they went on.  (And then, err…  failed.  <shifts uncomfortably>)  Whose point that reinforces, or whether that’s just a by-product of my particular maladjustments, I’m not totally sure.

Two Cents With Interest

A long time ago, Nickykaa made the observation in his on-line journal that he and Argus had been discussing relationships, and had both independently come to the conclusion that they weren’t much interested in dating women who were significantly younger than themselves.  I made the rather pithy comment in response that I had a lot to say about that, but that every time I sat down to write about it, I burst into flames.  (I believe I also gave him permission to shovel my ashes into River’s sandbox, so someone got some use out of them.)

I go back to that comment in my head from time to time, for reasons I cant fully explain, and actually what I have to say about it, such a long time later, is this:  you can make any relationship work, regardless of the relative age of the participants (or anything else) as long as your goals are the same.  And if your goals are somewhat divergent, then you can still make it work, as long as you have other things in common, like similar past experiences, or a shared cultural background.  It isn’t that dating someone much younger than you are is inherently bad;  it’s just that it makes either of those prerequisites for success much less likely to be true.

“If that was worth a journey of a hundred and ten days to hear, you had best listen to it.”

The Magic Pill (part 5)

[This is the fifth of an ongoing series of posts telling a single story.  You can read Part Four to refresh your memory, or go back to the beginning and read the first part.]

“Discussing it” took the initial form of a division of labor. “You contact the school,” said Weaver, “and tell them we want to get a 504 plan for him. I’ll look into who does the physical evaluations for meds and what my insurance will and won’t cover.”

“Mmmph,” I grunted. Medical insurance or talking to teachers? I’ll take Talking to Teachers for 300, Alex. “Okay.”

I typed an e-mail to Jack’s teacher, since that was easiest place to start. Blah blah blah Jack now diagnosed with ADHD. Blah blah blah intend to request 504 plan. Blah blah blah… I stopped, read over what I had. …Would like to make sure we get your input on the viability of this as an approach strategy, possibly in advance of any formal meetings, since he spends so much time under your direct observation. I couldn’t have put my finger precisely on why I chose to include that last part, but it was true, and it made it seem less like a mandate and more like a team effort, so I figured it couldn’t hurt. Read the rest of this entry »