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Thursday, February 26, 2015

The Endless Horizons - Encrypted Messages

The Endless Horizons - Encrypted Messages

Tso leaned back, fingers unconsciously stretching beneath his tipless gloves.  Digital lines of the Solarnet peeled away from his vision finally as he de-jacked.  The Solarnet here was not encrypted particularly well, and he’d found what he’d needed with relative ease.  Listings of work, job offers and ticket numbers danced across the console.  He’d done a little bit of background work on a few, but the pile was largely untouched.

Friday, February 20, 2015

People - Broken Man - I Was Raped, Does Anyone Care?

People - Broken man - I Was Raped, Does Anyone Care?

What follows is a lengthy, difficult, unreferenced autobiographical writing from an otherwise anonymous poster on reddit.  He uses a throw-away alias, that would be difficult, if not largely impossible to track down.  He even opens with an admission that he doesn't know what he aims to accomplish by posting this story.  I don't know what I intend to accomplish by reposting it.

Only that it is a troubling piece of writing.  It's a human piece of writing.  It delves into a societal darkness that is problematic for us to analyze too closely.  But we need to do a number of things, at least in my reckoning.  First, this man needs to know that we do care.  That the world is changing, and that we listen, and have empathy as individuals, as a culture, as a society for him.  That his story, were it to prove credible is worth listening to.  Second, that our world is changing that twenty years ago, ten years ago...men would never have even imagined that this was a problem.  He delves a little bit into this in his piece of writing.

We don't live in that world anymore.  We're in the midst of transitioning through it, but the world is a-changing through it.  We have a lot of hard questions to ask, and a lot of harder answers to find.  But we'd never know until stories like this, human stories begin coming to light.

So I share it with you, in the darkness of the internet.  In some strange corner of nowhere.  Hopefully it moves you to ask questions too.  Obviously...trigger warnings galore.

Edit: I added this message when I shared it to Facebook...I feel like it might, but maybe doesn't, explain why I put it into a public blog to share. 

This is a piece of writing I read tonight.  Once I finished reading it, I had to go for a walk and think about it.  When I got back, I transcribed it over the course of half an hour, loaded it into one of my private blogs and left it. I keep repositories of writing for myself everywhere, dark writing, tragic writing.  Human writing.

Then I came back five minutes later.  I hadn't shared it. Maybe it was because I was ashamed I had read it? Maybe because I was ashamed for the guy, his story that I had read. It was on my mind. It was on my mind because I didn't know how to explain it. I still don't. I don't know why it is important, only that it is. And in an era where we share images of kittens, and what people wear, or what GoT character best represents us...why would I hesitate to share something important?

Truthfully I'm still not sure. But I'd like to talk about it.

Tuesday, February 17, 2015

Lora - Women

Lora - Women

A friend of mine posted on facebook, a very simple message as a 'status'.

Women get shit done. And I love women.
Just sayin'.

Goodbye - Gilda Radner

Goodbye - Gilda Radner



Bill Murray on Gilda Radner:

"Gilda got married and went away. None of us saw her anymore. There was one good thing: Laraine had a party one night, a great party at her house. And I ended up being the disk jockey. She just had forty-fives, and not that many, so you really had to work the music end of it. There was a collection of like the funniest people in the world at this party. Somehow Sam Kinison sticks in my brain. The whole Monty Python group was there, most of us from the show, a lot of other funny people, and Gilda. Gilda showed up and she’d already had cancer and gone into remission and then had it again, I guess. Anyway she was slim. We hadn’t seen her in a long time. And she started doing, “I’ve got to go,” and she was just going to leave, and I was like, “Going to leave?” It felt like she was going to really leave forever.

So we started carrying her around, in a way that we could only do with her. We carried her up and down the stairs, around the house, repeatedly, for a long time, until I was exhausted. Then Danny did it for a while. Then I did it again. We just kept carrying her; we did it in teams. We kept carrying her around, but like upside down, every which way—over your shoulder and under your arm, carrying her like luggage. And that went on for more than an hour—maybe an hour and a half—just carrying her around and saying, “She’s leaving! This could be it! Now come on, this could be the last time we see her. Gilda’s leaving, and remember that she was very sick—hello?”

We worked all aspects of it, but it started with just, “She’s leaving, I don’t know if you’ve said good-bye to her.” And we said good-bye to the same people ten, twenty times, you know.

And because these people were really funny, every person we’d drag her up to would just do like five minutes on her, with Gilda upside down in this sort of tortured position, which she absolutely loved. She was laughing so hard we could have lost her right then and there.

It was just one of the best parties I’ve ever been to in my life. I’ll always remember it. It was the last time I saw her.”

- from Live from New York: an Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live

Saturday, February 14, 2015

Life - Valentines

Life - Valentines

"So what did you do today?"

What did I do?

I played 8 hours of Diablo 3, spread out into intervals, Over 24 hours since season 2 launched I raced a character all the way up to 70 alone.  A reasonably impressive feat I think.

I also made myself an omelette, spinach, arugula, chorizo and an excellent, sharp British Leicester cheddar.

I took a walk in the sun for about an hour.

I hung out with a buddy of mine for 3 hours while he hunted monsters.

I wrote four pages of music for a piano composition that I'm thinking about.

Watched a documentary about sustainability, sushi and the bluefin tuna.

I wrote a triptych scene for the first time for a game I'm making.  Each part of the triptych is a similar scene but done in a radically different writing style.

I sorted a stack of about 90 cards by colour and playability for my next tournament.

Chatted with a friend from Romania.

Did a small, 4 inch by 4 inch watercolour painting for a friend's birthday.

Got a bag of popcorn from my sister from Seattle, it's my favourite.

"Oh.  So...you didn't..."

Have a casual sexual hookup with another mid-twenty something celebrating an arbitrary day in February revolving around pink red and white?

Nope.

I'm not even bitter. Today was a good day.

Sunday, February 8, 2015

Quotes - Hayao Miyazaki - On Worldbuilding

Quotes - Hayao Miyazaki - On Worldbuilding

"The creation of a single world comes from a huge number of fragments and chaos." - Hayao Miyazaki

I saw this quote earlier today and have been thinking on it a lot.  I do a tremendous amount of world building in my day to day life, spend hours thinking about character and place, moments and scenes.  I might spend tremendous amounts of time charting back individual items through fictional history.  I find it relaxing, and it warms my brain up.

I've been pondering how many of those weird little indiscriminate strange moments go into everything we make.  When we create, how far out do we look, how do we connect dots.

And then do we have the right moment to step completely outside ourselves and look at HOW we did that.  I don't spend enough time on that.  But I think I did today when I read that quote.

Monday, February 2, 2015

Tragedy - Roald Dahl - Loss

Tragedy - Roald Dahl - Loss

Roald Dahl wrote this heartbreaking account about his daughter Olivia, who died of Measles.

Awful drive. Lorries kept holding us up on narrow roads. Got to hospital. Ambulance went to wrong entrance. Backed out. Arrived. Young doctor in charge. Mervyn and he gave her 3mg sodium amatol. I sat in hall. Smoked. Felt frozen. A small single bar electric fire on wall. An old man in next room. Woman doctor went to phone. She was trying urgently to locate another doctor. He arrived. I went in. Olivia lying quietly. Still unconscious. She has an even chance, doctor said. They had tapped her spine. Not meningitis. It's encephalitis. Mervyn left in my car. I stayed. Pat arrived and went in to see Olivia. Kissed her. Spoke to her. Still unconscious. I went in. I said, "Olivia Olivia." She raised her head slightly off pillow. Sister said don't. I went out. We drank whiskey. I told doctor to consult experts. Call anyone. He called a man in Oxford. I listened. Instructions were given. Not much could be done. I first said I would stay on. Then I said I'd go back with Pat. Went. Arrived home. Called Philip Evans. He called hospital. Called me back. "Shall I come?" "Yes please." I said I'd tell hospital he was coming. I called. Doc thought I was Evans. He said I'm afraid she's worse. I got in the car. Got to hospital. Walked in. Two doctors advanced on me from waiting room. How is she? I'm afraid it’s too late. I went into her room. Sheet was over her. Doctor said to nurse go out. Leave him alone. I kissed her. She was warm. I went out. "She is warm." I said to doctors in hall, "Why is she so warm?" "Of course," he said. I left.

Life - Don't Click Send

Life - Don't Click Send

I had a window open to message you.  Technology is funny that way.  I never wrote anything, but there's a window open for it.

I'm working, watching code spiral through and numbers dance the screen.  An almost...a not notification.  You're typing something to me.  And then you decide not to, and it disappears.  Four times it happens.  I watch it the same way I watch my debug windows and wonder.  It appears again, you're typing.  And it disappears as you delete whatever it was you wanted to say.

I wonder what you wrote.  I wonder what you wanted to say and didn't.  What you wanted to say and couldn't.

I don't type anything, just think in the darkness to myself.

I guess we had nothing to send one another anyway.