Tag: Hot Writing

I was looking around trying to find things I’d written August 13ths in the past.
There’s really not a lot.
Reading back, though, there’s really four phases of my adult life.
College
After-college
After meeting my wife
After the medical establishment figuring out WTF is wrong with me.
Unfortunately, there’s no individual events I can place on the beginnings and ends of those phases.  Of course, I couldn’t have known the hell that my body was going to go through.  I couldn’t have known that the girl across the table with the shy smile, and pretty eyes would end up being with me.
Today went better than I could have expected at work.  Though it took a long time, I got my infusion.  So we’ll see what the rest of the week looks like.
Today, certainly, wouldn’t be anything I could mark as a beginning or end.
A few days left.  What do I want to write about?

From last year. after Charlottesville….

Yesterday was bad.
A lot of the day I spent watching coverage of what was going on in Charlottesville.
(How does Chrome’s inline spell-check think that I misspelled that?)
It doesn’t matter, though. People are lining up on two sides. I, naturally, hold both groups with disdain. Who’s worse? The neo-Nazis. No question. But the Antifa creeps are just that.
The frearless governor of Virginia told the Neo-Nazis to go home, and don’t come back. Yes. I say the same thing to the fucks who provoked them. I also say it to the people of his party who are trying to shove the party’s racist past down The Memory hole.
But you have to erase anything that might spoil your pretense when you’re going to point to how evil others are.
My take on it is a little different than most, certainly. The more I learn about my lineage, the less I know for sure. I do know that my mostly-white father left Mississippi in the early-70s to go kill a Commie for Mommy, and GTFO of the solid South. My grandmother used to tell stories of how the first time she was eligible to vote, her father (my great-grandfather) told her very forcefully that she was going to go vote for “Hairy-Ass” Truman. No, she went and voted for Dewey, but didn’t tell her dad that.
He was the son of two off-the-boat Irish immigrants with eleven kids living in very-blue Mississippi, and an adherent to Papist conspiracy.

Yesterday saw me getting into it with people on Twitter.  Once again, perhaps even more forcefully than a year ago, I find myself as a party of one.
I’m listening to Dave Smith’s discussion about it on his most recent Part of the Problem podcast.
“I’m disgusted by a swastika, and a hammer and sickle>”  Yep.  Pretty much.
But what happened last year, and the reaction served to further categorize everyone into two groups.
No, there’s not only two sides to every issue.  I can be opposed to both the national socialism, and democratic socialism.
Government exists to protect individual rights;  life, liberty, and property.
Oh, but “property” isn’t listed in the Declaration of Independence!!1!  But it is in the Fourteenth Amendment, saying that the government cannot abridge it without due process of law.
I guess things are lining up miles to my east to try to do this again in DC.
I won’t be going.
But I also won’t fall into lockstep with the predictable filtering tomorrow.

It’s a hot day here in the DC ‘burbs.  I’d just assume not go anywhere until I actually have my Tysabri infusion.  I’m wiped.

Of course, the dimwit Nazis are coming into the District today.  I had a lot to say about what happened in Charlottesville last year, as we hit the one-year mark.  I will write then.  That said, this (http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/401293-some-dc-restaurants-will-refuse-service-to-white-nationalists) showed up on Twitter this morning.

I don’t know what to say about it, other than obey the law.  If I owned a restaurant in DC this weekend, I would likely be open.  I’d be selling bottled water, and nothing else.  That way, I wouldn’t be yielding to the fucking Nazis, or violating the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  My employees would have the day off, and it’d just be me at the door selling water I’d ordered from Sam’s Club at $30 per bottle.

Free-writing on this one.
So what’s up with me.

• ((long description baleeted))  I’m not getting my infusion until next week.  This sucks more than I can even say.  When we move, if we’re close to the neurology clinic, I’m getting away from this bunch of incompetent folks.
• Trying to figure out how to deal with household problems is tough when you’re hours away.
• The new dentist I visited this morning has this weird paint-on fluoride he’s using.  It feels strange.
• I really do like my job, and I feel strange not working during the day.  But I ran out of billable hours, so I’ll deal with the alone time.
• Do I want lunch?  I really didn’t eat breakfast because I was going to the dentist.
• Putting periods on a bulleted list feels very wrong.  At the same time, if I had a 1980s MBA, everything I ever wrote would be in a bulleted-list.  In Power Point.
• I did finally fill the final slot in the Fantasy Football league with my friend from college.  With at least half the league being up here in NoVA, I’m hoping that people will be interested in doing a time or two of drinking.
• It took me three days to get through this one podcast.  It’s incredible how completely out-of-touch some of the folks are.  (And I can’t read that without hearing it in Bill O’Reilly’s voice.  Fuck it.  We’ll do it live!)

I could keep writing, but the motivation has completely vanished.
I wish there was beer delivery here.

Do you think steps should be taken by government (local, state or federal) to help curb the obesity epidemic currently happening in the United States? If so, what steps should the government take? If not, how do you feel the problem of obesity can be addressed?
Like most things, I’m convinced there isn’t anything government can do to help.
In fact, I’ve heard repeated arguments lately that government actually caused this problem with their dietary guidelines.
Some will claim that those are there really at the behest of the grain industry.  Maybe.
No, actually not.  It’s not okay, but there’s nothing that can be done about it, now.  Locking Michelle Obama in a cage isn’t going to fix the overweight sixteen year-old that got fat eating those wonderful school lunches.
In so many instances, it is about calories consumed, primarily.
Newsflash:  portion control works.  I lost a lot of weight after my diagnosis by doing this:  1.  Eat good food.  2.  Accompany that good food with satisfying alcoholic beverages, and 3.  reducing my portion sizes.
Eat what you like.  Cut your portions in half.  If you’re still hungry after you eat the first helping, have seconds.  But cut those seconds in half, too.
I’m writing, because I intend to finish this all out.
At the same time, I’m not tweeting it (which also posts to FB).
Fuck it;  I’m done.  Between what’s happened in the past few days, and Lurch’s proposals for government fucking with the Intertubes, I’m done.
Much like Mrs. Clinton’s bit about requiring encryption backdoors, this is something that just won’t work.  Congress isn’t bright enough to understand that, but I guess if they wanna lock me in a cage, what can I do?
But my question, to many pols of both major parties, is simple:  How many people are you willing to put in prison to accomplish your goal?
Ultimately that’s what you do when you use government to accomplish your political goals.

This floated in front of me earlier today, but it’s the same sort of information reported last week.
https://reason.com/blog/2018/07/31/democrats-tech-policy-plans-leaked
Discussions on and off on Facebook about Twitter shutting down accounts.
I also saw a story earlier today about how “Millennials” (I put that in quotes, because college students today probably aren’t Millennials;  how many of them remember Y2K?  They’re the kids of Gen X.  No, there weren’t many of us, but some have learned how babby is formed, and those would be the folks in college now….) on campus at Columbia couldn’t name the five freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment.  Freedom of Speech was even one of the things they were having problems with.  When reminded about that, well, okay, so long as nobody is offended.  What.  The.  Actual.  Fuck?
But this was actually right around the bit about the ACLU deleted their tweet praising France’s law restricting free speech.
https://reason.com/blog/2018/08/03/aclu-catcalling-free-speech-tweet
Incredibly, the totes-not-evil company (the ones who were a number, and are now a bunch of letters) still has that tweet cached.
But I don’t want politicians deciding what I can read or say.   I would like to ask the people working for reconstitution of the Byrd Organization how many people they plan to throw in cages for reading shit they haven’t blessed.
But, hey, that might be treason, and good enough justification to execute me for treason.

Work happened, and I think management is happy with this weekend’s slogs.

I’ve been going through the old posts to think back on that awful summer three years ago.  Maybe I shouldn’t harp on it, but I got a really shitty deal there.

Is there an aspect of your personality you wish you could chnage?

That’s a tough question. The only thing I can think of is that maybe I’m too trusting of ordinary people sometimes.

I don’t think my boss is out to get me.
I don’t think the government is out to get me.
I don’t think evil corporations are out to get me.

I’ve never attributed to malice what could more easily be explained by ignorance or stupidity.

“They’re not bad; they’re just stuid.”

Maybe that makes me a fool.

But, whatever. I could spend lots of spoons thinking about how I’ve been fucked over. But I don’t have enough to waste.

I think, maybe, this is still true.  At the same time, I’m comfortable with how I approach others, even if it means people sometimes take advantage.

All that said, I will break contact.  If you’ve done something that’s hurt me, I can basically write you out of my life.  I only have so many cycles.

What I’m not going to do is go out of my way to make things awful for you.

The news of the past couple of days is that Apple, Stitcher, et. al., have pulled Alex Jones off their platforms.

On my initial response, I was okay with this.  But after thinking more about it it, does that really serve any purpose, and what implication does it have for other things that aren’t your cup of tea.

Nope.  Keep it running.  Trumpet it.  If people don’t like it, they’ll be the editors.

After writing yesterday’s bit, I realized that I hadn’t been reviewing my first summer of writing, in 2015.
My thoughts went there as I was thinking about why I”m doing this, and why I’m not getting the same sort of satisfaction from it as I did back then.
I’ve spent this weekend working.  Something north of ten hours yesterday, and about half that today.  Thanks to that, I may be finished roughly midday Thursday, which is more than okay, considering I have an infusion Thursday afternoon.  (And that is interesting, normally by this point, I’m absolutely exhausted.  I mean, I am, but I do feel a lot better than I would have the last few years….)
So, taking it back to 2015,
 
Write about your relationship status. How long has it been? Is it still good? If so, why?
I’ve been together with my wife for over nine years now.
We just work. And it really never feels like work. She’s the only person I’ve ever been with, where the experience is essentially effortless.
It’s a big freaky that I’ve been wiht her almost a third of her life, now, but…
At the same time, part of me asks, “why analyze this?” We love each other, are each other’s best friends, etc.. What’s to explain?
I do miss her every day I’m away for this shitty job, though.
That’s been as, if not more difficult than my medical maladies.
I feel better when I sleep in my own bed, next to her.
There’s really not a lot more to say about it than that.
Three years after writing that, I sleep next to her every night, and that’s a good thing.
Yes, we’re somewhere else.  Yes, we’re not on our own.
But we will be soon enough.
Last night, since we’ve got run of where we’re staying, after I finished working, we ended up just sitting and talking.
How many people can say that they can do that, really?  We do fit with each other, so it goes.  And I hope it does until I die.  I don’t want anybody else, and I can’t imagine being as comfortable with someone else.

End of the first half of writing.  Good thing, but, eventually, I’ll get everything setup the way.
I don’t know.  I feel a lot better this year than I did the previous two.
I’m maneuvering in to probably where I belong.  I really wish it paid more money, but whatever.
Meanwhile, I have recruiters nibbling constantly.  At the same time, part of me wants to stay where I am.  I do like the people I’m working with, and the work I’m doing.
It’s different;  I haven’t had that in I don’t know how many years.
The material desires that would have consumed me in the past are just gone.
Maybe that’s strange.  Maybe.
But what can I say?  Perhaps I should reanalyze things on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.
So much of what I’d been trying to do the past few years was really just about keeping things afloat.
I’ve succeeded, though.   I’m still alive.  I still love my wife, and I think that feeling is mutual (most days).  There’s light at the end of the financial tunnel I dug for myself.
I’m still alive.  My wife still loves me.  I can sorta look at myself in the mirror.
This weekend, I will work.  I am 100% okay with this.  In my previous roles, that would have driven me completely insane.
Part of my impetus to write previously, though, might have been my dissatisfaction.  It was something to do to divert my attention from the bad shit that was going on.
I don’t have that anymore.
I do plan to stick with this for the month, but I might not do it next year.
NoJoMo in November will require additional prompts.  We shall see.