Off By One

Well, it’s been a bit; I’m not sure why, but I’ve been undermotivated to blog lately, which has resulted in an ominous quiet from the site.

Here’s a bullet-point update on my situation these days:

• I’m biking to work pretty much daily now; it’s about (I’m told) 6km each way, so it’s a bit of exercise I wouldn’t otherwise be getting, and it’s pretty decent exercise. It’s excellent that our workplace has a shower.
• I’m taking class in the morning and working late, which means that anyone that wants to make plans with me has to take into account that I won’t be home until 7:30 or so each weekday. Having said that, I’d love to do evening things with people, so please call any time.
• Work is up & down; I want to work on new things, but old things keep cropping up.
• Char is away this week, and I miss her.
• XBMC is the greatest thing since sliced bread. No AppleTV for me, my new (old) Xbox does everything I would want the aTV to do.
• I’ve read a few books recently, notably “Infidel” by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, which I bought for Char. It’s excellent, and I highly recommend it.
• On Sunday, with the blessings of Lyal and the qualified non-refusal of a shoulder surgeon, I’m going to fly again.

Don’t mind the name; it’s kind of an inside joke.

So, being typically a couple of days behind the curve on the Daily Show viewing, I just got around to seeing the episode that aired on 28 Feb, and it had a “Back in Black” segment that dealt with — among other things — Daniel Radcliffe appearing in Equus, which includes a full-frontal nude scene, and is not a play for the kiddies.

So, some dumb bint on a news program referring to this event trotted out the same old crap I hear every time any connection — however tenuous — is made between the world of media for children and things that adults are ostensibly capable of understanding: “her young son saw these pictures televised, and he was really confused. Isn’t there a danger here?”

My response: Stop Breeding.

Seriously, just bloody stop, already. If the mechanics of reproduction are confusing and dangerous, stop using them. We don’t want more of that bloody attitude anyway, and really, you’re probably too insecure to be good in bed anyway. Here’s a tip, though: If the idea of an actor stepping outside of your comfort zone is dangerous, you need to grow the fuck up. I can’t emphasize this enough.

God damn, this angers me. Your confusion, you pathetic excuses for parents and human beings, should not be projected onto your children, whose only confusion comes from wondering why their parents are all flustered whenever they ask about any part of their bodies in between the tops of their thighs and their navels.

Grr.

Okay, I’m just being incoherent here. I’ll stop now.

I had a peculiarly disappointing day yesterday. Not the whole day, but a part of it really shook my faith in the ability of people to grow in a positive direction.

I took a bit of time to look up one of my old classmates, call him D for the sake of anonymity. D was one of the people that i attended school with from the beginning through to grad, and I remember always having a fair amount of respect for his native intelligence. We were never great friends, but he wasn’t one of my principal tormentors either.

Now, D has a pretty good life — he’s getting married, owns a business — which I was happy to see. However, he also believes that the world is young, it was made some excessively short time ago at the behest of a supernatural entity, carbon dating is a sham, evolution is wrong (note, not “Natural Selection is wrong” — I got told that natural selection works fine, evolution doesn’t) and, well, you get the idea.

I hate to lose respect for someone like that. But all of the residual respect that I once had is gone now, and I’m left with a feeling of profound disappointment.

I don’t know why, but for the last few days — say, a week or so — i’ve been feeling just… raw. Scraped thin. I don’t think it’s tired, per se, although that’s not helping, but i feel like…

I feel like i always do before things go bad, that’s how i feel. It’s a feeling of impending doom, hanging over my head, and i don’t have anything i can see telling me what’s coming. Life isn’t perfect, but I can’t see any signs that the really important things in it — School, Char, friends — are going anywhere…

Yeah, i know… “precognition”. Feh. Pseudoscientific bullshit psychobabble. Crap. But this is a feeling I’ve learned to heed, because it’s been right more often than it’s been wrong. It’s not deterministic or anything, but it makes me nervous all the same. I only hope i’m wrong and my life — so good until now — isn’t going into a tailspin around me.

Wish me luck