Saturday, March 19, 2005
Would you summon the devil?
How about a lesser demon? How about a malevolent spirit? I've been watching one of the many movies for which this is a central theme, and have been wondering; who, if anyone, would actually TRY to bring these sorts of entities, assuming any of them exist, into their lives? The crazy, of course, and those who are both wildly power-hungry and arrogant (you'd HAVE to be arrogant to believe that you could control beings of this sort if you called them forth, or even prevent them from turning on you and those you love), perhaps some who are so desperate for miracles that they'd allow themselves to believe that evil beings would EVER do good deeds, whatever oaths they gave... and who else? We've all seen/read tales of people who sold their souls to the devil for $, success, the sexual partner of their dreams... but would anyone actually BE stupid enough to bring powers of this sort into their lives to give them the things they should be working to earn?
I'll take this a step further; what if you had the ability to summon a benevolent spirit, or even an angel... would you do it? Don't answer too fast; if such beings exist, and are willing and able to do favors for humans, how can we be SURE they're really "good" in the way we define goodness? Even if we ARE certain, although we probably shouldn't be given the unlikeliness of them sharing our morality, any more than we share the morality of amoebas, we still have to understand that beings with that sort of power could harm us without meaning to, in the same way that we might accidentally crush an ant that we were carrying around, or might wipe us out in a flash of anger (being virtuous doesn't preclude anger, right?), or have a momentary lapse of judgment that destroys our lives. Even if they gave us whatever we wanted without incident, what makes you think they'd withdraw from our lives afterwards? How would you feel every time you had sex or went to the bathroom for the rest of your life, knowing that you were probably being watched? Even worse; if there are good entities, that suggests that there are also evil ones, and, if the good ones take an interest in you, wouldn't it be likely that the evil ones would notice that, and also turn their attention to you, and those you love? What's to stop them from messing with you, even if only to aggravate the good guys? What's to stop them from spending the rest of your life trying to find ways to trip you up, to cancel out the favors you were given? What's to stop them from terrorizing you just for the fun of it?
Although I'm eager for answers as to the true nature of reality, I most vehemently do NOT want entities of any kind to show up bearing revelations, because I don't want to take a chance of becoming a focal point for the attentions of anything(s) superhuman, whether "good" or "evil" or even "neutral"; as I learned the hard way via my experiences with poltergeists in my younger years, no matter how glamorous and exciting it seems to interact with otherworldly creatures, the reality is scary and totally undesirable. As seductive as the idea of seeing deeper into the well of karma would be, nothing, NOTHING, could ever persuade me to ask non-human beings to come into my life; I'm just not willing to risk being the ant.
I'll take this a step further; what if you had the ability to summon a benevolent spirit, or even an angel... would you do it? Don't answer too fast; if such beings exist, and are willing and able to do favors for humans, how can we be SURE they're really "good" in the way we define goodness? Even if we ARE certain, although we probably shouldn't be given the unlikeliness of them sharing our morality, any more than we share the morality of amoebas, we still have to understand that beings with that sort of power could harm us without meaning to, in the same way that we might accidentally crush an ant that we were carrying around, or might wipe us out in a flash of anger (being virtuous doesn't preclude anger, right?), or have a momentary lapse of judgment that destroys our lives. Even if they gave us whatever we wanted without incident, what makes you think they'd withdraw from our lives afterwards? How would you feel every time you had sex or went to the bathroom for the rest of your life, knowing that you were probably being watched? Even worse; if there are good entities, that suggests that there are also evil ones, and, if the good ones take an interest in you, wouldn't it be likely that the evil ones would notice that, and also turn their attention to you, and those you love? What's to stop them from messing with you, even if only to aggravate the good guys? What's to stop them from spending the rest of your life trying to find ways to trip you up, to cancel out the favors you were given? What's to stop them from terrorizing you just for the fun of it?
Although I'm eager for answers as to the true nature of reality, I most vehemently do NOT want entities of any kind to show up bearing revelations, because I don't want to take a chance of becoming a focal point for the attentions of anything(s) superhuman, whether "good" or "evil" or even "neutral"; as I learned the hard way via my experiences with poltergeists in my younger years, no matter how glamorous and exciting it seems to interact with otherworldly creatures, the reality is scary and totally undesirable. As seductive as the idea of seeing deeper into the well of karma would be, nothing, NOTHING, could ever persuade me to ask non-human beings to come into my life; I'm just not willing to risk being the ant.
Friday, March 18, 2005
That old loved and lost line
"It's better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all."
HUH?!!
Isn't that sort of like saying, "It's better to have eaten and gotten food poisoning than never to have eaten at all?" I can't imagine any food so fabulous that the pleasure of having eaten it would make it worth it to have food poisoning, and I can't imagine any relationship such that the pain of losing it would be worth enduring to have had the relationship... after all, the better a relationship is, the more agonizing it is to lose it (the obvious exception here, technically, would be if you were with someone all your life, or at least a big chunk of years, and they pre-deceased you, but this is NOT what's normally meant by "loved and lost").
If it were up to me, every relationship I've ever had and "lost" would have never existed, so that I could have used the time, energy and opportunities to do other things... things that might have lasted and enriched my current life. What might other people be looking at in THEIR ex-relationships that makes them feel differently? I can see being willing to have loved and lost if you got something out of it, such as a child, or maybe a house, or if there was something that only that person could have given you, and if your ex was awful enough that you had to break up but has still somehow remained your friend (I've NEVER understood that one), that'd be some compensation, but *I* sure never got anything from any of my past relationships that'd make it worth it for me to miss an episode of "Queer as Folk," much less to suffer the pain of a breakup... and having gotten some tangible thing from the relationship isn't what people mean when they say that line anyways.
What about the emotional rewards of being with someone? Sure, there were things that were fun in my ex-relationships, times when I was very happy, blah blah blah, but, since I have a life of my own, I would've had fun times and happiness withOUT the exes being there, and, without being involved with them, might have met other men with whom I would've had MORE fun and happiness, or even met my husband sooner, so, again, there's nothing about any past relationships that made it worthwhile having them, and then suffering their loss, when looked at from my current perspective.
Everyone else in the world seems to disagree with my assessment of this type of situation. When I ask people what exactly they got from THEIR exes that made it better to have loved and lost, etc, they talk about the good times; when it's pointed out to them that they'd have had good times anyways, possibly with someone they'd still BE with, they hem and haw, and all I can get from them is the idea that they're somehow SURE they'd have had grim lives without that person having been there, although they have no actual reasons to believe that. When pressed for an explanation of why being with that person that they now usually dislike was better than anything else they could have done with their time, energy and emotions during that period, they give the standard answer of people who know they're being illogical for no reason they can point to; "Well, I can't explain it..." Swell. This leaves me to conclude that either the madly-in-love part of most relationships (which I've never experienced-I'm too analytical to ever see anyone as that wonderful) is such a spectacular feeling that it makes even the worst heartbreak seem minor by comparison, or everyone is brainwashed by all the lovesongs into believing that's the case when it's not, or of course it could be both... I don't suppose I'll ever know.
HUH?!!
Isn't that sort of like saying, "It's better to have eaten and gotten food poisoning than never to have eaten at all?" I can't imagine any food so fabulous that the pleasure of having eaten it would make it worth it to have food poisoning, and I can't imagine any relationship such that the pain of losing it would be worth enduring to have had the relationship... after all, the better a relationship is, the more agonizing it is to lose it (the obvious exception here, technically, would be if you were with someone all your life, or at least a big chunk of years, and they pre-deceased you, but this is NOT what's normally meant by "loved and lost").
If it were up to me, every relationship I've ever had and "lost" would have never existed, so that I could have used the time, energy and opportunities to do other things... things that might have lasted and enriched my current life. What might other people be looking at in THEIR ex-relationships that makes them feel differently? I can see being willing to have loved and lost if you got something out of it, such as a child, or maybe a house, or if there was something that only that person could have given you, and if your ex was awful enough that you had to break up but has still somehow remained your friend (I've NEVER understood that one), that'd be some compensation, but *I* sure never got anything from any of my past relationships that'd make it worth it for me to miss an episode of "Queer as Folk," much less to suffer the pain of a breakup... and having gotten some tangible thing from the relationship isn't what people mean when they say that line anyways.
What about the emotional rewards of being with someone? Sure, there were things that were fun in my ex-relationships, times when I was very happy, blah blah blah, but, since I have a life of my own, I would've had fun times and happiness withOUT the exes being there, and, without being involved with them, might have met other men with whom I would've had MORE fun and happiness, or even met my husband sooner, so, again, there's nothing about any past relationships that made it worthwhile having them, and then suffering their loss, when looked at from my current perspective.
Everyone else in the world seems to disagree with my assessment of this type of situation. When I ask people what exactly they got from THEIR exes that made it better to have loved and lost, etc, they talk about the good times; when it's pointed out to them that they'd have had good times anyways, possibly with someone they'd still BE with, they hem and haw, and all I can get from them is the idea that they're somehow SURE they'd have had grim lives without that person having been there, although they have no actual reasons to believe that. When pressed for an explanation of why being with that person that they now usually dislike was better than anything else they could have done with their time, energy and emotions during that period, they give the standard answer of people who know they're being illogical for no reason they can point to; "Well, I can't explain it..." Swell. This leaves me to conclude that either the madly-in-love part of most relationships (which I've never experienced-I'm too analytical to ever see anyone as that wonderful) is such a spectacular feeling that it makes even the worst heartbreak seem minor by comparison, or everyone is brainwashed by all the lovesongs into believing that's the case when it's not, or of course it could be both... I don't suppose I'll ever know.
Thursday, March 17, 2005
To tell or not to tell
How many times have you heard a female say, "I tell my mother/sister/best friend EVERYTHING?" This sounds like a wonderful declaration of closeness, a wholesome and good thing... until a girl hits puberty, and "everything" increasingly includes intimate details of the boys, and later men, in her life, and this is where the dilemma arises:
Which is more important; protecting the privacy of one's sexual partner by keeping sexual and other intimate details a secret, or maintaining a tell-all policy with other loved ones by in fact telling ALL?
Most people have a quick and strongly-felt answer to that one; the problem is, it's not always the same answer. Men may occasionally brag about sexual conquests, but will RARELY give bedroom details about the women they're actually INVOLVED with, much less descriptions of private conversations about relationship matters... and it horrifies them to realize that it's common for women to tell their loved ones (and often near-strangers too, sad to say) everything about them, from their penis size to transcripts of every argument to a detailed sexual scorecard. The women who're doing all this talking make the case that they NEED the feedback of their loved ones to navigate the relationship landscape successfully (which benefits the man, too, although probably not enough to compensate him for the lack of privacy), and, since the other loved ones are far more likely to be with them forever than the man is, it's more important to keep those lines of communication wide open than to shield the man from ridicule... the latter excuse often stops being used once the relationship gets really serious, I hasten to add, but the big picture is that women DO tend to share all the gory details, and to think it's ok.
MY take on this one is; in matters that are non-sexual, and not in those areas of finance and health that are no one's business, it's ok to pass info along as long as it's not a secret that you do so... if a man's got no reason to be ashamed of what he does and says, why would he object, and if he IS ashamed, or knows he SHOULD be, that's a REALLY good time to make SURE other people know what's going on. Is there any gray area with the no-tells? I think you need to be pretty hard-core about respecting how your partner feels about privacy in the health and $ areas, but it's an accepted thing these days that you'll say SOMETHING about your sex life; you can make a case for SOME sexual commentary to be passed along, for example a close friend recently confided the sexual schedule she and her husband had followed to get her pregnant so quickly this time around, but if what you share with your friends/family leads them to refer to your guy as "Minute Man" or "Mr. Teeny Weenie," you've gone TOO FAR.
The other side of the "should you tell?" coin is; should you tell your partner EVERYTHING, even those things that you know the ones involved want to be kept secret, or should you, and your partner, accept that there are some things people don't want passed along to someone's other half when, as is usually the case, they do NOT see that person as a close friend? I think that most men would be thrilled to NEVER hear your friends' secrets, because they usually don't CARE, but I think it's ok to pass along most minor things, as people tend to assume that we ARE sharing them anyways, but for big secrets, which can be identified by the "Don't tell anyone this" or "I haven't told anyone else this" that prefaces them, you should NOT tell, unless you think your loved one is in danger and you need your partner's advice on how to help them. Not everyone is following this rule, though, so if you're the one telling the secret, use some sense; if the person you want to tell it to has a romantic partner, ask them if they'll agree to not pass it along, and base whether you tell them or not on whether or not they agree... and then, expect that some of the people you're trusting will tell anyways, and REMEMBER who did so that you don't tell them secrets anymore.
The question of whether to tell or not is one of those areas that the golden rule does NOT apply to; you should NOT base your decision on how YOU want YOUR secrets to be handled, because the other person may feel very different about it, and feel betrayed if you blab too much, whether or not YOU would be bothered by that same info being blabbed about YOU. Be open about what you tend to share with others, listen to how your loved ones feel about it, and come up with a mutually acceptable set of rules. If, however, a loved one wants you to keep secret their bad treatment of you, or other bad behaviors of theirs, do NOT go along with it; tell, tell FAST, and be ready to RUN if the people you trust think you need to... no one's privacy is more important than your well-being.
Last but far from least; should you tell your partner all of YOUR secrets, and in general every minute detail of your life and thoughts? Of course not!! Even the most loving and devoted man rarely wants to hear all that stuff, and it does NOT build intimacy to tell him the way it does with female friends; all it "builds" is that glazed look in his eyes, because men are just plain not socialized to wallow in personal info like women are. More importantly, one of the "secrets" of long-term relationships is keeping a little mystery, so that you can periodically feel "new" to a man, rather than seeming like a well-read book that's gotten boring... once a man is bored, other women start looking REALLY good. Finally, there are 2 categories of "secrets" that you should NEVER share with a man, even if you're with him 100 years: (1) How he doesn't measure up to other men you've known, (2) Any info whatsoever about your feminine hygiene rituals... keep that bathroom door SHUT!!
Which is more important; protecting the privacy of one's sexual partner by keeping sexual and other intimate details a secret, or maintaining a tell-all policy with other loved ones by in fact telling ALL?
Most people have a quick and strongly-felt answer to that one; the problem is, it's not always the same answer. Men may occasionally brag about sexual conquests, but will RARELY give bedroom details about the women they're actually INVOLVED with, much less descriptions of private conversations about relationship matters... and it horrifies them to realize that it's common for women to tell their loved ones (and often near-strangers too, sad to say) everything about them, from their penis size to transcripts of every argument to a detailed sexual scorecard. The women who're doing all this talking make the case that they NEED the feedback of their loved ones to navigate the relationship landscape successfully (which benefits the man, too, although probably not enough to compensate him for the lack of privacy), and, since the other loved ones are far more likely to be with them forever than the man is, it's more important to keep those lines of communication wide open than to shield the man from ridicule... the latter excuse often stops being used once the relationship gets really serious, I hasten to add, but the big picture is that women DO tend to share all the gory details, and to think it's ok.
MY take on this one is; in matters that are non-sexual, and not in those areas of finance and health that are no one's business, it's ok to pass info along as long as it's not a secret that you do so... if a man's got no reason to be ashamed of what he does and says, why would he object, and if he IS ashamed, or knows he SHOULD be, that's a REALLY good time to make SURE other people know what's going on. Is there any gray area with the no-tells? I think you need to be pretty hard-core about respecting how your partner feels about privacy in the health and $ areas, but it's an accepted thing these days that you'll say SOMETHING about your sex life; you can make a case for SOME sexual commentary to be passed along, for example a close friend recently confided the sexual schedule she and her husband had followed to get her pregnant so quickly this time around, but if what you share with your friends/family leads them to refer to your guy as "Minute Man" or "Mr. Teeny Weenie," you've gone TOO FAR.
The other side of the "should you tell?" coin is; should you tell your partner EVERYTHING, even those things that you know the ones involved want to be kept secret, or should you, and your partner, accept that there are some things people don't want passed along to someone's other half when, as is usually the case, they do NOT see that person as a close friend? I think that most men would be thrilled to NEVER hear your friends' secrets, because they usually don't CARE, but I think it's ok to pass along most minor things, as people tend to assume that we ARE sharing them anyways, but for big secrets, which can be identified by the "Don't tell anyone this" or "I haven't told anyone else this" that prefaces them, you should NOT tell, unless you think your loved one is in danger and you need your partner's advice on how to help them. Not everyone is following this rule, though, so if you're the one telling the secret, use some sense; if the person you want to tell it to has a romantic partner, ask them if they'll agree to not pass it along, and base whether you tell them or not on whether or not they agree... and then, expect that some of the people you're trusting will tell anyways, and REMEMBER who did so that you don't tell them secrets anymore.
The question of whether to tell or not is one of those areas that the golden rule does NOT apply to; you should NOT base your decision on how YOU want YOUR secrets to be handled, because the other person may feel very different about it, and feel betrayed if you blab too much, whether or not YOU would be bothered by that same info being blabbed about YOU. Be open about what you tend to share with others, listen to how your loved ones feel about it, and come up with a mutually acceptable set of rules. If, however, a loved one wants you to keep secret their bad treatment of you, or other bad behaviors of theirs, do NOT go along with it; tell, tell FAST, and be ready to RUN if the people you trust think you need to... no one's privacy is more important than your well-being.
Last but far from least; should you tell your partner all of YOUR secrets, and in general every minute detail of your life and thoughts? Of course not!! Even the most loving and devoted man rarely wants to hear all that stuff, and it does NOT build intimacy to tell him the way it does with female friends; all it "builds" is that glazed look in his eyes, because men are just plain not socialized to wallow in personal info like women are. More importantly, one of the "secrets" of long-term relationships is keeping a little mystery, so that you can periodically feel "new" to a man, rather than seeming like a well-read book that's gotten boring... once a man is bored, other women start looking REALLY good. Finally, there are 2 categories of "secrets" that you should NEVER share with a man, even if you're with him 100 years: (1) How he doesn't measure up to other men you've known, (2) Any info whatsoever about your feminine hygiene rituals... keep that bathroom door SHUT!!
Wednesday, March 16, 2005
The tragedy of American men's clothes
You don't have to go too far back, historically speaking, to reach the times when men wore clothes in every sort of color and pattern, made of soft fabrics like velvet and satin, and even trimmed with lace and ruffles; how did we get from there to where we are now, where straight men are only allowed to wear unadorned clothes (unless pockets count as adornments) made of a narrow range of fabrics in an even narrower range of dull, neutral colors, with patterns other than stripes and plaid (ICK) being seen as highly suspect? You can still see tiny touches of the past in things like the ruffles you occasionally see on tuxedo shirts, the vivid designs that are permissible on surf shorts, and the Hawaiian shirts that are worn by a handful of men to make people cringe, but in the average guy's life, the only bit of color or style he has is on his ties... MAYBE.
Men used to express their individuality through their clothes just as much as women did, but now they TRY to all look alike; one comic summed it up by saying, "We men like it when we all look alike-it means we haven't made a mistake." How did that happen? What made men stop wanting to stand out visually? When did such a desire start seeming "girly," and wearing plain, boxy mud-colored clothing seem "manly"?
The male half of the species hasn't had some sort of major alteration of the brain structure that made them stop liking the sorts of things they used to wear, and in fact some men are so desperate to have the enjoyment of wearing pretty clothes in soft fabrics that they'll risk social death by crossdressing, so what started American men down the path from what our founding fathers wore (except for some of the New Englanders), which was often more colorful and elaborate than any WOMAN would wear today, to the current sad state of affairs, where any man wearing an innocent floral print, or even something as basic as a purple shirt, is automatically assumed to be gay?
There's no reason whatsoever to claim that certain colors, prints, fabrics and trimmings are "female"; we're not BORN with clothes on, so there's no biological connection between any of this stuff and femininity or masculinity. Now, if I could only find a way to convince my husband of that, lol...
Men used to express their individuality through their clothes just as much as women did, but now they TRY to all look alike; one comic summed it up by saying, "We men like it when we all look alike-it means we haven't made a mistake." How did that happen? What made men stop wanting to stand out visually? When did such a desire start seeming "girly," and wearing plain, boxy mud-colored clothing seem "manly"?
The male half of the species hasn't had some sort of major alteration of the brain structure that made them stop liking the sorts of things they used to wear, and in fact some men are so desperate to have the enjoyment of wearing pretty clothes in soft fabrics that they'll risk social death by crossdressing, so what started American men down the path from what our founding fathers wore (except for some of the New Englanders), which was often more colorful and elaborate than any WOMAN would wear today, to the current sad state of affairs, where any man wearing an innocent floral print, or even something as basic as a purple shirt, is automatically assumed to be gay?
There's no reason whatsoever to claim that certain colors, prints, fabrics and trimmings are "female"; we're not BORN with clothes on, so there's no biological connection between any of this stuff and femininity or masculinity. Now, if I could only find a way to convince my husband of that, lol...
Tuesday, March 15, 2005
My latest technical triumph
I've gotten enough questions and comments on friends' blogs over the past few days that I think it's time to explain something; look in the sidebar right above the clock, and you'll see "A warm welcome to my visitors from"... and the city named is the one where YOU live, or, more to the point, the city your ISP is in, or where their hub closest to you is (which might not be that close, if you live in a rural area), or whatever city the chunk of IP addresses your ISP has for your area is associated with. What you're seeing is a JavaScript that reads your IP address and uses the same sort of program that the various geo-locators use to tell where the visitors to your site are coming from to create a custom message for each visitor; it's not a perfect program, as in at least a few cases it's coming up with the neighboring city instead of the correct one, and if you use AOL it'll probably show you as being in Virginia, but in general it works pretty well, and I really like the idea of being able to welcome each of you, if only indirectly.
I found this nifty enhancement by accident; I stumbled onto a European blog that had a welcome that named MY city, and, after looking around to see if by some wild coincidence the blog owner had visited here or something and was welcoming friends he'd made here to his site, I figured it had to be a JavaScript thing. It doesn't create a link, which is unusual when sites provide free use of this sort of stuff, so I had to look at the source code to find the URL to go to to get the code for myself; there are ways to get customized versions of this, and if the message changes you'll know that I've gone that route, but for now I'm too busy and tired (although I DID get a semi-decent night's sleep last night, FINALLY) to focus on tweaking such a minor item.
Just sticking the JavaScript into my template wasn't the end of it, however; the text it creates takes up the entire width of the sidebar, and that meant that it was sticking WAY out beyond the other stuff... it looked AWFUL. So, using what I'd learned about CSS a while back, which I'd used to create an h7 to format my daily quote script, I tried creating an h8 to format the welcome message... and the Blogger system ignored my h8, no matter how I tried to set it up. Some nice tech folks eventually explained this to me; the way that CSS is designed, there's no such thing as an h8 (except with Gecko-based browsers, whatever those might be). It got even better; there's no such thing as an h7, either, although IE DOES accept it, which is how *I* got fooled... if you use any other sort of browser, and wondered why my daily quote stuck way out, or was a long vertical line of individual words (Firefox), all this time, that's the reason-*I* saw it looking just fine. I'm pretty bummed out that, after figuring out how the h's worked starting from ZERO knowledge of CSS, and creating one myself, it turns out that I can't USE what I created, but at least I learned something new.
Someone told me about a way to use a div command to choose the width of an element in pixels, and that worked perfectly on my welcome text; it worked on the quote text too, but that one refused to right-justify no matter what command they told me to try, and no one ever figured out why... there's something in the Blogger template that makes it impossible to right-justify anything below the links list, for reasons that are beyond me. I finally just changed the location of the quote script to be ABOVE the links and the archives, and it now looks the way it should; HOORAY!! :-)
This is a cool time to have a blog; you can get all sorts of neat stuff for free, including the blog itself. The time will probably come, sooner or later, where we'll have to PAY to use these things; when that day arrives, I'll drop all of my sidebar doodads... except the one that extends my welcome to you, my readers.
I found this nifty enhancement by accident; I stumbled onto a European blog that had a welcome that named MY city, and, after looking around to see if by some wild coincidence the blog owner had visited here or something and was welcoming friends he'd made here to his site, I figured it had to be a JavaScript thing. It doesn't create a link, which is unusual when sites provide free use of this sort of stuff, so I had to look at the source code to find the URL to go to to get the code for myself; there are ways to get customized versions of this, and if the message changes you'll know that I've gone that route, but for now I'm too busy and tired (although I DID get a semi-decent night's sleep last night, FINALLY) to focus on tweaking such a minor item.
Just sticking the JavaScript into my template wasn't the end of it, however; the text it creates takes up the entire width of the sidebar, and that meant that it was sticking WAY out beyond the other stuff... it looked AWFUL. So, using what I'd learned about CSS a while back, which I'd used to create an h7 to format my daily quote script, I tried creating an h8 to format the welcome message... and the Blogger system ignored my h8, no matter how I tried to set it up. Some nice tech folks eventually explained this to me; the way that CSS is designed, there's no such thing as an h8 (except with Gecko-based browsers, whatever those might be). It got even better; there's no such thing as an h7, either, although IE DOES accept it, which is how *I* got fooled... if you use any other sort of browser, and wondered why my daily quote stuck way out, or was a long vertical line of individual words (Firefox), all this time, that's the reason-*I* saw it looking just fine. I'm pretty bummed out that, after figuring out how the h's worked starting from ZERO knowledge of CSS, and creating one myself, it turns out that I can't USE what I created, but at least I learned something new.
Someone told me about a way to use a div command to choose the width of an element in pixels, and that worked perfectly on my welcome text; it worked on the quote text too, but that one refused to right-justify no matter what command they told me to try, and no one ever figured out why... there's something in the Blogger template that makes it impossible to right-justify anything below the links list, for reasons that are beyond me. I finally just changed the location of the quote script to be ABOVE the links and the archives, and it now looks the way it should; HOORAY!! :-)
This is a cool time to have a blog; you can get all sorts of neat stuff for free, including the blog itself. The time will probably come, sooner or later, where we'll have to PAY to use these things; when that day arrives, I'll drop all of my sidebar doodads... except the one that extends my welcome to you, my readers.
Monday, March 14, 2005
Crushed by exhaustion
Have you ever had that feeling? When you've had so little sleep for so many nights that you feel like your head's in a vice? Thanks in large part to my husband and I having different schedules, and my inability to get to sleep when he's up banging around, I've reached the point that it honestly feels like my body will just give out; my eyes don't want to focus, my legs are wobbly when I stand up, my balance is shot, and I feel like I'm fading away from the world. What am I doing blogging instead of sleeping? Because my husband is, as always when it's late Sunday night, scrambling to get some of the things he promised he'd do "by the end of the weekend" done, because he didn't do ANYTHING all weekend but mess around, and I'm stuck battling with him instead of getting to bed.
Does anyone want a slightly used husband, VERY cheap?
I haven't been this sleep-deprived in a long time, and I'd forgotten how surreal it feels, how hard it is to make my brain function; I cringe to contemplate how long it's going to take me to edit this post, as my typing, which is dreadful under the best of circumstances, deteriorates to near-unintelligibility when I'm this groggy. When did getting a decent amount of sleep become so HARD? There are always so many things to do, the day flies by, and then suddenly it's midnight, or 1AM, or 2AM, and I'm trying to sort out which things HAVE to get done before I'm out of touch for 8-10 hours, and my husband gets me sidetracked every 5 minutes, and... suddenly, the SUN is up, and I haven't even laid down yet. It's so easy to stay up a little longer, a little longer, a little longer... then, when things calm down, it's so HARD to go to sleep even a tiny bit earlier, much less the HOURS earlier that I'm going for; I usually have to resort to taking a big dose of melatonin, which I HATE doing... especially since the very next night, with the worst of my exhaustion eliminated, I'm effortlessly up until dawn again.
Hello, karma, are you out there? I'm exhausted. It's hard for me to get even ONE good night of sleep a week, 2 such nights in a row is rare, and 3 is nearly unheard of... and it's gotta stop. WithOUT something tragic occurring, I'd really like something to change to allow me to get back to a sleep schedule that's more like a human being's and less like a vampire's. Send me a little help, ok?
Does anyone want a slightly used husband, VERY cheap?
I haven't been this sleep-deprived in a long time, and I'd forgotten how surreal it feels, how hard it is to make my brain function; I cringe to contemplate how long it's going to take me to edit this post, as my typing, which is dreadful under the best of circumstances, deteriorates to near-unintelligibility when I'm this groggy. When did getting a decent amount of sleep become so HARD? There are always so many things to do, the day flies by, and then suddenly it's midnight, or 1AM, or 2AM, and I'm trying to sort out which things HAVE to get done before I'm out of touch for 8-10 hours, and my husband gets me sidetracked every 5 minutes, and... suddenly, the SUN is up, and I haven't even laid down yet. It's so easy to stay up a little longer, a little longer, a little longer... then, when things calm down, it's so HARD to go to sleep even a tiny bit earlier, much less the HOURS earlier that I'm going for; I usually have to resort to taking a big dose of melatonin, which I HATE doing... especially since the very next night, with the worst of my exhaustion eliminated, I'm effortlessly up until dawn again.
Hello, karma, are you out there? I'm exhausted. It's hard for me to get even ONE good night of sleep a week, 2 such nights in a row is rare, and 3 is nearly unheard of... and it's gotta stop. WithOUT something tragic occurring, I'd really like something to change to allow me to get back to a sleep schedule that's more like a human being's and less like a vampire's. Send me a little help, ok?
Sunday, March 13, 2005
Karma and the vibration of strings
If you're a long-time reader, you know that I used to say that the different aspects of karma (such as synchronicity, souls and psychic energy) could be different actions by the same "stuff," OR, indicative of different varieties of "stuff," analogous to how the electromagnetic spectrum is, with the different sorts of forces all being the same basic kind of thing, but X-rays are still very different from radio waves are different from light; I gradually stopped saying the "or," in part because it got old tacking it on every time I mentioned how everything was made of the energy of karma, but also because, even though the concept made intuitive sense to me, by Occam's Razor I knew that I needed to pick the simpler idea, that there was just ONE form of karma, unless I had a good reason to do otherwise, and no such reason existed.
I was typing up my affirmations right before starting this post, and in my head I was seeing the image of swarms of strings, all pulsing and glittering in different colors, that the Nova shows had used to represent them while discussing string theory, and the thought floated into my head that THIS was probably how karma worked; the different vibrations of the strings could produce, not just different kinds of matter and the familiar kinds of energy, but also the different kinds of KARMA. Since the vibrating strings are "known" to exist (in quotes because this is after all a matter of theoretical physics, and, although pretty thoroughly proven by higher mathematics, strings can't be seen or verified to exist via experiments... YET), applying Occam's Razor gives us as the simplest way for karma to work that it follows the same pattern as everything else, with a different vibration for each different thing... which, with exquisite elegance, STILL allows all parts of karma to be made of the same thing, because it all boils down to strings.
I've gotten an amazing # of insights from the 1st DVD of the Nova series on string theory; I can't wait to get the 2nd DVD, and see what new progress I can make.
I was typing up my affirmations right before starting this post, and in my head I was seeing the image of swarms of strings, all pulsing and glittering in different colors, that the Nova shows had used to represent them while discussing string theory, and the thought floated into my head that THIS was probably how karma worked; the different vibrations of the strings could produce, not just different kinds of matter and the familiar kinds of energy, but also the different kinds of KARMA. Since the vibrating strings are "known" to exist (in quotes because this is after all a matter of theoretical physics, and, although pretty thoroughly proven by higher mathematics, strings can't be seen or verified to exist via experiments... YET), applying Occam's Razor gives us as the simplest way for karma to work that it follows the same pattern as everything else, with a different vibration for each different thing... which, with exquisite elegance, STILL allows all parts of karma to be made of the same thing, because it all boils down to strings.
I've gotten an amazing # of insights from the 1st DVD of the Nova series on string theory; I can't wait to get the 2nd DVD, and see what new progress I can make.
