Me 40 - Universe 13 billion

Happy birthday to me! I don't have to spell OR punctuate correctly here, because it's MY birtday, my bb-b-b-b-b-birthday!

Well, I'm not older than dirt yet, but I feel like I'm catching up sometimes.

40 years ago - I'm sayin' (40*365)+10=14610 days bopping about on this dirtball- 6 kids, one failed marriage, lessons learned, I don't really want to be 40, I want to be 40 with the body of a 25-year-old, that's what my brains think they feel like, 25. Where's my clone! Get me my clone!

But, some part of me says, it's OK, you're at the top of that hill everybody says they get 'over' at 50, perspective is at it's finest right now - I can see for YEARS in both directions, I have this facility with handling both ignorance AND innocence - because, at this point in my life, I am neither.

40 birthday spankings I don't think I ever got - when I was a kid my birthday was the one day I was least likely to get hit. 40 what? 40 markers along this 14610 day path that arbitrarily define me - the only three ages that matter in this society are 18, 21, and 65 - and I'm smack in the socially irrelevant in-between. Jesus only lived to be 33, I've passed up the rock-star death age (27), and I'm facing middle age like I would a firing squad - with my hand in the air in that age-old position of utter defiance. We'll see about this mortality thing, and I'm right up against it- I know how to throw an elbow, and life better not forget that, cuz I'm on it!

I'm gonna stay up late and read and drink crappy wine coolers and sleep in late... (yeah, right! Those kids'll have me up at the CRACK of dawn.) But I will drink LOTS of coffee and demand presents all day, even when they run out of presents for me, and they will laud me with flattery and abuse of the kindest nature.

Hey, I'm 40, and life is good.

I vote for Indifferent Design

It seems funny to me that, as science (in general) and physics (in particular) become more "developed", more and more scientists have stated that their levels of spiritual connection have intensified through their work.

There is no general statement I can make like that concerning the religious leaders of this world - nothing, say, that compares with the scientific postulation of the Indian Rishis more than 3500 years ago.

It also seems to me that science and religion both work within the duality of "rules" (faith) and "potential" (imagination.) Science has become much more imaginative and intuitive; relying on empirical systems, like Newtons laws, as guidelines that should be respected, but not necessarily held as boundaries.

Religion, on the other hand, has condensed itself to a dense mass of history and tenet that MUST NOT be broken, much less questioned - organized religion has sacrificed the imagination of it's members for the security of dumb faith- "Feed my sheep", Jesus said, but he didn't say exactly what to feed them to.

Anyway, if anyone can prove one way or another whether or not the universe was designed or evolved intelligently, elegantly, or accidentally, I doubt that I'll care at all, aside from the fact that the fighting might stop for a minute while the sides reorganize and regroup for the next one.

I think we should argue about the importance and power of silence.

[continued]

I (as were the Rishi scholars, Patanjali the foremost among them) am convinced that all things are connected, eveything, everywhere, everywhen, everyone.

To make the statement that science and religion are not interwoven is beyond my capability to understand. Both sets of pragma and dogma are designed to seek out the answers to the basic epistemological questions:

1. Where did I come from?

2. Why am I here?

3. Where am I going?

The 4th one I think of as the "Clinton" question:

4. What is the meaning of "is"?

And the 5th one - I call the "Dyer" question:

5. How do I get strawberry ice cream?

Some or all five of these questions are the core and corpus of every religious body of doctrine and revelation, and every scientific treatise. Whether it's the bible, the Qu'ran, the Gita, or the Buddhist Suttas that king Asoka had carved into stone about 2300 years ago; whether it's Newton's principia, Omar Kayam's Runiyat, Rumi's poems, Einstein's general field theory, Planck's constants, or Darwins Beagle diaries- it is evidence of humanity looking for the same thing, THE SOURCE.

Even if we are not scientists or spiritualists or atheists we seek our destinies by observing the past, present, and potentials of both the inner and outer wolds that we inhabit, seeking parity and balance. If that is not interconnectedness, I have no idea what to call it.

10:22 AM - it's a-gonna be a hot one

Sunday here. The temperature will remain in triple digits with a one in the middle for the entirety of the day, as it has for the entirety of the last 12 dyas, or so, and is so expected to remain for the next 12 or so - I live in Hell - I'm facing it.

I was up until 3:02 A.M. - got to page 302 in HP6 & couldn't go another word - checked the clock & it kind of creeped me out a little to see time and page number matching. I went outside to smoke a cigarette, it was about 75 degrees out there and muggy, which is definitely odd for this place. As I was finishing my smoke I think I heard a snake slithering in the bushes, and thought I saw something. It could very well have been the neighbor's deaf-mute-albino-and-mutant-in-other-mysterious-ways cat. I'll never know, the ear infection I have combined with fatigue poisons, motrin, and the two wine coolers I drank while reading combined to punch my lights out- luckily I made it to bed at the same instant I was KO'd.

Some days are good, some days are bad, some days are days...

"People find it far easier to forgive others for being wrong than for being right."
-Albus Dumbledore

Remove Parental Control from PowerDVD 5

I had to figure this out because, CyberLink would not help. Fuck them.

To remove parental control on PowerDVD 5:

1. Run RegEdit
2. Find the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\CyberLink\PowerDVD\Users

3. Remove all the information except the default value.

Now, if you want to KNOW the password without deleting it - do steps 1 & 2 above, and look at the key values for the users listed. Simple Hexadecimal notation that you can check against any ascii standard chart.

Amazon Backs Down - Eats a Crow, and Shits an off-hand aplogy

I think they had to focus-group this - they probably didn't actually eat a crow - but I bet they did eat the head of whoever sent the email in my previous post.

Hello again from Amazon.com.

We wanted to let you know that an earlier e-mail message you received
from us regarding your order for "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood
Prince" was sent to you in error. We sincerely apologize for the
concern we caused with this incorrect message, and hope you will be
thrilled to know that we've begun preparing your order for shipment
and we are confident that it will be delivered on Saturday, July 16.

Most books will be delivered by U.S. Mail, either with your regular
mail delivery or in a separate, special mail delivery. Some orders may
be delivered by UPS.

You should have your copy (or copies) of "Harry Potter and the
Half-Blood Prince" in your hands no later than 7:00 p.m. (in your time
zone) on July 16. Because our carriers are delivering hundreds of
thousands of books on that day, we do ask that you wait until 7:00
p.m. before contacting customer service if you haven't received your
order.

Although we're not requiring a signature, we still recommend that
someone be home to accept the package (wizard attire is not required),
as the driver may not leave it on your doorstep if they don't feel
it's safe to do so.

Again, we apologize for the error that caused us to send you an
incorrect message.

Thank you for shopping at Amazon.com, and happy reading!

Harry is coming! amazon.com can ...

Go take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut.

---

Back on January 6, 2005, I placed my order for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, to be released on July 16, 2005.

Sometime in May I checked to make sure everything was still there - and a surprise was mine. Amazon told me that, if I ordered before July 11, 2005, I would be GAURANTEED delivery by July 16, 2005, or the book would be FREE (I would still have to pay the shipping.)

I even have an order tracking status page!! Wow!

Woohoo! FREE! So, today I get this e-mail:

Hello from Amazon.com.

We're happy to let you know that we've begun preparing your order for
"Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" for delivery.

We're working hard to make sure you get your order as quickly as
possible. However, please note that we can't guarantee that your
book(s) will be delivered on July 16.

You'll receive our usual shipment confirmation e-mail after your package
leaves our fulfillment center.

Thanks for shopping at Amazon.com, and happy reading!

And, of course, there is no longer ANY information about their PROMISE to deliver on time or to refund the cost of the book - I'm still going to relish every word that J. K. Rowling has so lovingly written, but Amazon.com can go fuck themselves for ever.

Forsaken

I have spent the last ten minutes or so in a frustrated rage. I am so knotted up with it I can type, but it feels like I am punctured by every key I press.

I feel like I've been having great sex with the love of my life and she had died, just gone all taut and then limp against me. My head hurts and I will NOT cry because I cannot have what I want, and I WANT it, it was in me and it's gone and I WANT the rest of it.

That's how I feel- makes no sense, right?

I ordered Amelie from Netflix, popped a wine cooler, poured it over ice, and started watching the film. God DAMNIT, I am SO angry! I watched the film - got to the part where she's writing "Today's Menu" on the glass, the guy Nino is sitting there, pulling a Jay (sans Silent Bob) with the sugar, and the fucking movie freezes, spaces, pixilated, bodies overlapping - I don't know who I'm looking at, and then I see Amelie's father turn from a closed gate to see his garden gnome back in place - all the joy has turned to pain and I have never felt this way about a film- I feel like my blood has been removed from my body and all I want is one more drop.

For those of you who didn't get it plain and simple - this fantastic, beautiful, sweet film FROZE FROZE FROZE on me - died like a lover with a brain blossom blown!

God is merciless with the little jokes, yeah, and I just care- that's it- it's so unfair to have something cut off like this- I have had lovers go cold on me, I have gone cold, this is worse- to have beauty so rudely stopped- this is cruelty, this is agony.

I'm going to go smoke and try to figure out what this means.

Friendship

I got an e-mail from a friend whom I haven't heard from in a while. Just to read her words brings more light into my day - things seem brighter, sharper, more meaningful after reading the 2 paragraph note.

I've been thinking a lot about my friends lately. I've been thinking about them a lot because I don't see them anymore - they're all hundreds, if not thousands of miles away. I think about them because they're closer to me than the illusion called family I put up with for most of my life. I meditate upon their faces and feel their hands touch me, their arms hug me, I hear their voices saying things to me that define them as individuals, I visualize them smiling, concentrating, laughing, shouting, spilling their (or my) coffee, writing, playing guitar, singing- and I do what I can to not be attached to the fact that I'm here, and they're ... elsewhere. Sometimes I do well at this, other times I fall short of my set standard. C'est la vie.

I have lived through some pretty fucked-up definitions of friendship. I know people who call friends what I would call drug-buddies, fuck-buddies, drama-buddies, someone who's got money to lend or dope to front, anyone with a car, anyone with a place to crash. These people define friendships as a form of social contract - exclusive right to time, information, or resources.

The adolescent in me remembers being in high school and being friends with everyone, although I don't remember really liking most of those people- funny, but I seem to retain more respect for those kids I thought were my enemies.

My friends - I value them, so much so that I dream about them, not because I miss or need anything from them, but my dreams are vivid when my friends visit them. I have their voices firmly in my head, my inner voice is sometimes a chorus, more often than not a cacauphony of concerting and conflicting opinion, I can banish boredom listening to people, some of whom have never met, debate and laugh at and accept images and statements made by each other- all inside my mind's eye.

I feel fortunate to have such friends as I do - all of them are younger than me now - those friends I have had who are my age or older have mostly killed themselves off with drugs, alcohol, loneliness, and evil dreams; they're not necessarily physically dead yet, but have sunk into an oblivious quagmire where I cannot follow. I think I may be growing younger in the light of this age of spiritual opening and technological enmity, where information is so pervasive that it means nothing anymore - the only valid direction I can find is through intuition, inspiration, empathy, and compassion. The people in my life that I value most seem to understand this, and some articulate it far better than I. The people I love are wallflowers in this death-dance that we call civilization - they walk through the lights and noise and they dance through crowds with tears for the lost and a ready smile for those who notice that their feet don't quite touch the ground. How divine a madness is the silent pathway through this world of machine noise and empty doggerel that calls itself politics and humanitarianism.

I am glad to have friends that I expect nothing from - they give what they can whenever they can, they will not play codependent games to prove or acquire the proof of friendship, they ask nothing- they just call, or write, or come and stay for awhile, and leave when the time is right, and the time is always right. Emotions are not frowned upon, nor is the insanity that invades us all from time to time- perfection is not an issue. The sharing of my friends is open and unconscious, there is not pressure or frenzy or lack- when people know they have everything they're not worried about running out.

I'm posting this because I feel good about it - it's not complete, and I'm too tired to go on, and, if you're my friend and you're reading this- good!

Magnolia

Magnolia

A fine film that I highly recommend- great acting by everyone involved, and a great soundtrack featuring Aimee Mann.

Patriotism

Another fourth of july come and gone - people screaming in the parks of america cheering the 400+ years of tyranny this politically indoctrinated landmass represents. Another burnt left index finger - wahoo...

Another year, another batch of barely legal, suck-ass fireworks. The police come around if you fire off decent ones. The police come around for anything that signifies independence. Can't drink a beer on the street, can't smoke a joint anywhere, can't call the president a fucking moron who's losing a worthless war to line his own pockets- hang on - someone's knocking at my door...

Bad mood

I am irritable, I am tired, I know I won't be sleeping, though. It started last night when the kids' mom came over to visit. By the time she left I wanted to do her bodily harm, for no apparent reason. Her mother came, too, for a short time- she brought my oldest daughter home from where the shuttle dropped her off after camp.

I have been in a foul mood for 24 hours now. I've tried to call friends to talk to. No luck getting through. I took my kids swimming, and had a miserable time. They started playing Jesus music at the city-operated pool - now, I don't have anything against Christian music, per se, but hearing at the Municipal Pool int he middle of Mormonland (deep behind the Zion curtain), PISSED ME OFF - I mean to the point where I needed to leave.

I tried taking a walk by myself to the gas-station - I bought cigarettes and a Big Slam Dew- everybody I encountered seemed happy / content / adjusted - whatever. I've tried chain-smoking. I tried reading aloud to the kids. I told the kids that I'm in a horrible mood, have no idea why, and just to please leave me alone. They seem sad and inadequate because they can't help.

I tried playing my guitar for awhile - it all just sounds like a mishmash of noise.

I tried surfing the web for jokes, they piss me off. I tried looking a pictures of stupid / funny thing - no good. So, I figured I'd just sit here and type, and it's not doing anything but irritating me more because I'm not saying anything!

I don't want to do anything, not even this.