Rambles from Leora
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Below are the 23 most recent journal entries recorded in the "Leora" journal:[<< Previous 23 entries]
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07:37 am
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Books, Thoughts, and Dreams
So, I realized today that I have been delivered. See, I was born and raised Jewish. The deal, as I understand it, is that the Jews do as God wishes and accept that other people will treat them horribly and God will cause the seed of Abraham to multiply vastly and deliver his descendants to the land of milk and honey. Well, the descendants are a vast number and I have milk in my fridge, honey in my pantry, and the easy ability to acquire more of either when I wish. So, that seems to settle that.
I am reading the Revelation of John. I am finding it quite odd. Unfortunately, it seems to constantly reference things that likely made sense to the readership of the time and for which I am lacking the background understanding. I've been reading the Asimov Guide to the Bible section on Revelation side by side to help gain some understanding, but it isn't as thorough as I'd like. What I really need is an annotated Bible that is much more thorough, but that would cost money and I'm not sure I care that much.
However, it is fascinating. It's not very clear about which parts happened to the author in real time and which parts are visions of the future, so it's hard to say when some bits are supposed to happen. But it portrays Jesus as a lamb with seven eyes and seven horns, which is a very interesting image and I think it'd be neat to see Biblical art of the animal Jesus opening the book with seven seals while the angels (who are described as the animal headed angels with seven wings, I forget the exact description, but they're very beastlike) are standing around watching. I'm not clear on why more religious art doesn't paint this scene as it definitely is visual and interesting.
What I find really interesting is that it discusses the casting out of Satan from Heaven. I knew a lot of the Lucifer mythology was not actually found in the Bible, so this is very interesting. What I found most surprising is that it clearly does not happen until after Jesus has gone down to Earth. In fact, it happens after the Messiah who is not Jesus but who rules Earth during the Apocalypse is born. What happens is there is this woman dressed in the sun and wearing a crown of stars and standing on the moon who gives birth to a baby. Satan in the form of a many-headed dragon tries to eat the baby as soon as it is born but the host of Heaven defend the baby. And they convince God to cast Satan out who until this point has every day been making the case against men to God (as in the book of Job) and then the baby goes down to Earth to rule it like an iron rod. The baby is clearly not Jesus as Jesus is present during this as are the faithful Christians who have died.
So, this implies that Satan was not cast out of Heaven until well into the history of man, and unless you believe that we're pretty far along the way through the Apocalpyse, then Satan is still in Heaven and has not yet been cast out.
It also says that all of the saved are virgins. I'm really not sure what people make of that. The saved also get branded to mark them as God's. The Asimov guide explains how slaves would be marked to show who they belong to, so this was basically marking them as the slaves of God, God's property. I really dislike this notion because it just bugs my body purity issues. I don't like tattoos or even being written on, I certainly don't want any marks. But the unsaved also get branded, so you're stuck having your body messed with by one side or the other. However, since so much of it is metaphorical, you can easily view it as a metaphorical branding. Can you be a metaphorical virgin? A lot of the book does talk about sex meaning very real actual sex, so I doubt the virgin bit is meant metaphorically.
I haven't made it all the way through Revelation yet, but it's really weird. But it does show where the horsemen of the Apocalypse come from. Oh... hmm maybe I should have put a spoiler warning on this post.
Oh, and all of the saved come from the Israeli tribes. I'm not sure how Christians handle this. Do they tend to assume they are inherently part of the Jewish tribes by being Christian? I know that people who convert to Judaism are considered to be of the tribes. So which tribe do Christians belong to?
I tend to have more respect for Christianity when I focus on reading the things Jesus said and spend less time reading the things other people wrote that aren't actually connected to anything Jesus taught. But I do feel like I need to eventually read the bits that other people don't discount. I usually don't take seriously any part of Christianity that didn't come from Jesus. I'll mentally think, oh that was just Paul, so it doesn't count. After all, Christians believe that Jesus is God-incarnate and Paul is just some guy who went around saying things. And John really falls under the same category. However, the problem with that attitude is that most Christians don't seem to view it that way. They take Paul and John and other people that they believe were merely human quite seriously. So, I feel I ought to have a better idea of what they actually said (more or less, I'm reading a translation, which often makes me wonder about details, but learning the actual languages things were written in is just not going to happen. I studied Hebrew for about 8 years and I didn't learn enough to understand a children's book. I have issues with language acquisition).
But it is fascinating. I also find it amusing that the faithful saved when they first get a chance to talk to God, the very first thing they do is to complain to God. I'm also not clear on what it means for the dead to be locked away within the seal of a book, but I'll chalk that up to more weird metaphors.
Anyhow, on a completely different topic, I had a weird dream that was odd enough that I will record it. But as other people's dreams bore most people, I'll stick it below a cut tag.
( also about books )
Tags: beliefs, books, dreams, personal
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07:14 pm
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Things I Sometimes Wonder About
Sometimes I wonder why I don't have a cat phobia. To the contrary, I am quite fond of cats. I know, it may seem weird to wonder why I don't have issues with them, however...
When I was very young my family briefly had a cat. Her name was Vladimir, I think. We'll call her that anyway. Vlad was a problem. Vlad tore up a bunch of clothes in my sister's closet. Vlad was not friendly. The last straw that caused my parents to get rid of Vlad was one night when I was asleep... I was very young at this point. I'm not sure how old I was, call it something like 3 years old. I was asleep... I woke up because Vlad had clawed my face in my sleep. Not even just mildly, I think she managed to draw blood. The cat was gone so thereafter. (She was apparently an unfixed purebred, so she was sold for breeding purposes. Often not the nicest of lives for a cat, but given the circumstances a lot better than it could have been for a cat who clearly was not fit to be a pet.)
Vlad was the first cat I ever knew. And we didn't get another cat for several years. However, when we did get another cat, I don't recall any feelings of fear or concern. I don't recall ever being scared of cats in general, even though I probably didn't want to be around Vlad in particular.
It just seems like the setup was ripe for me to develop a cat phobia, yet nothing even slightly along those lines happened. Sometimes I wonder why.
Current Mood:  curious
Tags: history, personal, thoughts
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01:07 am
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Time and music
Rock Band has taught me that not only can I not sing (I really cannot sing, although I already knew this), I also do not have enough air to sing with. I know that with practice one can learn when to breathe to better sing a song, but I think I simply do not have enough ability to breathe to ever be good at this. I can get better at this, but not be good at it.
Now it's time to pollute the data pool by giving my own data and thus giving people notions about what sort of info I'm looking for. I'm not surprised I didn't get any answers along the lines I was thinking, but that's fine because I got interesting answers I wouldn't have gotten had I given more of a notion of what I was looking for.
What I meant was more, how do you visualize time? Except, I didn't want to say "visualize" because I don't want to imply that you use something sight-oriented. I have no clue what you use. But here's mine.
To me, time is one giant loop, much like a roll of duct tape. There is a point on it that is the start of time and a point right next to that that is the end of time. All points in the history of the universe, all points that, from our perspective, were or will be exist. A point in time is like a slide, everything that is part of that moment is part of it. One does not move from time, there is no motion. There are simply points, all existing, with slight differences between them. Basically like a flip book except on a giant scale. To me the true identity of any object is summed up by its presence on all of the slides it exists on, making a large four-dimensional shape of what the thing is.
Now the interesting thing I had never thought about that I was asked was which direction does time go in the loop? Since the loop has no motion, I hadn't thought about it. But if you are at the start of time, you go counter-clockwise along it. Clockwise would be looking at things backward in time. This is definitely part of my mental image of time, but I just took it so for granted that I never even thought to consider it. I do not know why time so obviously is counter-clockwise for me.
I do not use a different method for thinking of time based on years or weeks or whatnot. I don't usually visualize time. But when I do, that's how I visualize it.
Current Mood:  thoughtful
Tags: beliefs, personal, questions
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01:27 pm
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Things that are interesting
Two things, both inspired by friends.
One is that I find it interesting how many people find that they manage cash better than they manage electronic funds. They say that cash is more real to them. This makes sense, and if you work this way then it's good to learn that and go with it. I find it interesting because I never hear people say what is true for me: cash isn't real to me anymore. Electronic funds are real. I pay attention to my bank account. The numbers that go into it and the numbers that come out of it are real to me. That's my money. The money in my account is the money I have (or ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) darch and I have, but the plural grammar would be ambiguous in this post as it's not the money that I and the reader have).
Cash is nice. Cash is something useful to have around that will soon disappear. It's not money I can rely on. It's not money I can pay bills or rent with. Sure, in theory I could go to the bank and deposit the cash, but in reality unless someone gave me really large sums of cash, that's not going to happen. And it's almost certainly money that's going to quickly find some need that it gets used on and then is gone, untracked even, leaving no trace in my bank records of how it was spent. I charge almost all of my purchases and carry very little cash. I don't like to take cash out of my bank account. I think this is very much like the issue some people have with electronic funds, except that it's for cash. And I sort of wonder if other people have my version, with cash not seeming nearly as real as electronic funds are.
The second topic is totally unrelated. How do you think about time? Give as much information as you're willing and able to; I may ask followup questions. Does your method for thinking about time vary based on whether you're thinking about a day or a week or a month or a year or a much larger amount of time?
I'll give my answer and some other interesting stuff about how people think about time probably in a followup post, but I don't want to pollute people's answers by giving them anything leaning them toward certain types of answers. A friend asked me about how I think about time, and I realized it's really interesting. I used to ask lots of people whatever question I was currently obsessing about and I found I got tons of fascinating information from doing that. I kind of miss doing that, and now that I have an interesting question am inclined to see what I can learn from trying it out. (Some past questions were "how do you think?" and "what do you value?" usually I'd have to followup with some examples of possible answers for people to have a clue how to answer either of those, but I learned some wonderful things about how people differ and different possible answers to those questions.) On a side note, it's amazing how much many people will tell you about themselves if you simply ask and honestly want to know. They may think you're weird for asking, but you can learn such fascinating things.
Tags: beliefs, personal, questions
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02:14 pm
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Socialized Health Care
There are two arguments people make against universal health care or socialized health care or whatever you want to call actually making sure everyone has health care is. These two arguments are: it'll increase wait times and government insurance will cost more to run than private insurance does.
To the first, really you think it'll increase wait times? I highly doubt that. The only way I can think that it'd increase average wait time is if you're not factoring in things like the infinite wait time that many Americans currently experience. And you're not factoring in the 2.5 year wait time that disabled Americans who go on disability may face. Basically, you mean if we let everyone have health care then the wait times will increase for wealthy Americans who currently don't have to wait because all these people who weren't getting medical care before will now also be getting medical care, with more medical care going around, it'll take a bit longer until the currently fortunate get care. That's possible. You might have to share some of the wait time that currently exists instead of all of it being given in huge chunks to some people. But don't pretend wait times are increasing, they're just being spread around more evenly. Basically, you feel wait times are so incredibly horrible that you're afraid to face the possibility of a little bit of it and because of that you'd rather other people face massive amounts of what you can't handle.
It's hard for me to respect that attitude.
The second argument is that the government's insurance will cost more to run. Yup, absolutely. I've been on private insurance and I've been on government insurance and the difference is that the government's medical insurance does exactly what it says it will. This means that if you get sick and have governmental insurance, you are covered to the extent that your coverage says you are and they pay it out. This is, of course, expensive for them. With private insurance it's a complete gamble. You have no idea how much they'll pay out or for what. Some people end up getting what their insurance claimed they'd get. Some people don't. Some insurance companies are probably better than others. But many of them will work to deny you coverage for any reason, and it doesn't have to be legitimate, because you still need to fight it to get your money back. Fight it and you almost certainly will get some of your money back, but by then you've got five other claims they're denying you money on and you have to fight each of them. And fighting will take months or years, often while you're sick. And meanwhile, they have your money. They earn the interest and if they're lucky, they bankrupt you to the point where you can't afford your insurance payments, then they can drop you and you're all on your own with your bad health. That's cheaper to do, which is why it's so common. The government doesn't do that to people, so since it's likely to actually pay for people to get health care, it'll cost more. Also, since it'll have a higher percentage of people with serious medical problems, it'll cost more. That doesn't mean it's run poorly. We should expect it to cost more if it is run well. It's called not cutting corners with people's lives.
There are other objections people can make to insuring everyone. They basically come down to the difference between whether you think we should help the poor or not. Whether we should keep people alive who need help to stay alive or not. That's a fundamental philosophical question and really can only be a matter of opinion. So, I'm not arguing against those arguments. But I will argue against people who try to imply ridiculous things. Although really, it's what I get for listening to politicians. If there reason for being against it is that they think you should die if you can't afford health care or you should become permanently disabled if you can't afford health care, then they can't exactly say that like a normal person can. So their most reasonable argument is difficult for them to make. Or for that matter if their position is entirely, this is what I think my constituents want and I don't give a damn myself, they probably don't want to say that either even though it's an understandable position.
Current Mood:  tired
Tags: beliefs, personal
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07:13 pm
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The Dead
Yes, this occurs to me now because of current events, but it isn't about any actual current events. This is a general question: Why do many people consider it bad to speak ill of the dead?
I can think of one reason, they cannot defend themselves. They cannot tell their side of the story.
However, on the other hand, it can be quite therapeutic to speak ill of those who have harmed you, even if they are dead. It can be quite useful to speak ill of the dead so that the family of the dead better understand how things came to be as they are. Why should the benefit to the living be sacrificed for the best interest of someone who can no longer appreciate it?
I personally hold no compunction against speaking ill of the dead. However, as with speaking about anyone, I think one should strive for accuracy and perspective. One should qualify what one is not sure about. I support speaking truth about the dead. Truth is likely to contain both good and ill. Plus, it better preserves the actual memory of the person, which is all that is left. Let the person be remembered for who they were, and who they were is almost surely a mix of good and bad.
Oh, I can understand not speaking ill of the dead to those who would be emotionally hurt by it. But I also believe in not speaking ill of the alive to those who would be emotionally hurt by it, and I consider it to be a completely different rule about not callously hurting someone when it will do no good. I very much also believe in respect for those who are mourning. Most of my experiences of people speaking ill of the dead though were those who were close family to that person and I feel that they have a right to, especially if it helps them. Although they should respect other family or friends or such who would be hurt by it. But this is again a set of unrelated social rules about being kind to the living.
But I am open to other perspectives, especially as it's a social "rule" that I have no understanding for. Nor is it one that my upbringing actually had.
Current Mood: curious
Tags: personal, questions, values
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01:21 pm
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Frustrations
Lots of little frustrations today.
First off, I woke up from a frustrating dream. I was back at college in a dorm lounge (although oddly, the building was not located on the right part of campus, usually my subconscious recreates my campus fairly authentically) and there were several people there, some I knew from college and some were dream people (freshmen in the dream). And I was trying to have a conversation, but it wasn't going very well. I wanted to make a point, but I kept getting cut off. "The thing they don't tell you when you pick a college is..." and then someone would interrupt to talk about something completely different. I'd start again and get cut off again. And I never did get to finish my sentence to explain, the thing that they don't tell you when you pick a college is that like your High School it will be the setting for many of your dreams for the rest of your life.
I was, I admit, mildly amused that I wanted to make this point while in a dream set at my college, but I had no awareness that it was a dream while I was dreaming. But I still found it frustrating that I kept being interrupted when trying to speak.
I woke up too early and thus feeling worse than usual. I have a headache that is threatening to get worse. I find this especially annoying as I was hoping to do some more weeding today. Weeding is bad for my health as it involves close proximity to allergens, plus lots of exertion. But it's a gain to have the weeds decreased. Today is a garbage day, so if I take out the weeds then they'll pick them up for composting tomorrow, plus it'll make the food waste bucket get to mix with yard waste, which will help keep the trash can less icky. I'm just worried if I do that it'll guarantee the migraine that is threatening. Perhaps I should try drugs.
And I can't find my sample of masala chai. I'm trying a different chai from my new teas that I haven't tried yet, so that's okay. But the masala chai is possibly something I want in quantity, so I'd really like to test it out well, and I've misplaced it. On the up side though, I really do like the roobios vanilla chai, which I wasn't expecting as I usually don't care for vanilla teas (I don't know why, I like vanilla, just something about vanilla tea usually doesn't work for me). But I feel just somehow wrong to have a whole bunch of chais and not to have masala chai, which is what I'd generally think of when I think of chai.
Stupid little things. The fort got finished, its demise got delayed, but I need to take it down today. Can't leave a fort up forever, it gets in the way. But we're grown ups now, and we get to decide what that means.
I just don't know yet if it means pulling out weeds today.
Current Mood:  *sighs*
Tags: dreams, personal
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03:39 pm
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Fun Link
darch sent me to this link which combines scenes from different things to create a story of Buffy and Edward Cullen interacting. It's quite amusing.
On a side note, I've been vaguely thinking of mentioning this for a long time, but when people embed video in their journals, it's nice if you make a link to the video itself, especially if it's on You Tube. I leave JavaScript off for most sites, including LJ. I turn it on on a case by case basis when I really want it. For embedded videos, I'd need to turn on JavaScript for the site that has the video either way to watch it and also LiveJournal if there's no direct link. However, it's not that big a deal, especially as my computer often can't handle watching videos anyway, so I usually skip them. Obviously, it's your journal, do as you wish, but I figure most of you don't realize that there is no way to get to the actual direct link from an embedded video (clicking on the video does nothing). I have no idea how many other people may be affected by this or whether it's pretty much just me.
Now to start considering if I want to take a nap. I got way too little sleep last night.
Current Mood: tired
Tags: links, personal
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06:27 pm
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Interesting Tea Things
I ordered some nice tea from an online tea store a friend recommended. I'm trying to be a proper tea snob, given that I drink tea or tisanes basically every day and most of the time it's all I drink for the day. I'm not sure I am a tea snob though. I still like a lot of cheap tea, even after trying some better quality tea. However, I'm really pleased with the ginger tea (this is tea with ginger flavor), which oddly has a delicate flavor to it that reminds me of the rose gelato. I'm not sure why it should taste this way. Also, while I find that the amount of tea leaves I like per cup is quite variable from tea to tea, I like the ginger brewed with only a small amount of leaves, so it's very cost-effective for a good tea.
Of course, my body always being completely and utterly ridiculous, I find that I often seem to have a very bizarre reaction to ginger for no apparent reason. I quite like ginger. I like a lot of ginger teas. And many of you may be familiar with the idea of using ginger or gingerale to soothe the stomach or help with dizziness/motion sickness. It's one of those bits of folk medicine that my father says actually seems to work for some people and is generally worth a try as it's low risk and if it doesn't work for you, then you can easily find out. However, I find that ginger tea or a ginger tisane without the tea tends to upset my stomach. So, I don't like to drink too much ginger. I have a cup now and then and try to balance it with other things.
Anyhow, so my order came with a book about tea written for this company. It's all about how wonderful tea is and what types of tea there are and how to best brew it. It's obviously written in part to sell tea. I have no idea how accurate it is on any of its points, although all of the things it wrote about where I already knew something about it it seemed to be correct about. I found two of its points quite interesting. One is that apparently while a brewed cup of tea tends to have less caffeine than a cup of coffee, the actual dried grounds compared between the two has tea having more caffeine. It's just most of that doesn't get into the actual tea you consume. However, another cute thing is it points out a way to decrease your caffeine content if you want to. Brew a cup of tea steeping for only about 30 seconds, dump out the water, then rebrew with those leaves. You'll still get most of the flavor, but less of the caffeine.
I find this an interesting concept. I do wonder how much it affects the flavor, but it does make me wonder if I could enjoy the quite tasty lady grey I overdosed on in a safer way. And it does have face validity... it seems sensible that that would eke off some of the caffeine. Obviously, if you totally want to avoid caffeine, stick to an herbal that doesn't contain caffeine, but I do like some actual tea.
Although I also have a roobios chai that I think I quite like. Roobios is not actually tea; it's a different plant, and it doesn't contain caffeine. I will probably eventually buy a larger quantity of that. I love chai (yes, chai does mean "tea" in some places, but it has come to mean a spiced tea. I recognize that a roobiios "chai" contains no tea and is more of a spiced roobios drink spiced the way one would make a spiced tea, but I suspect most people either will properly understand what I meant by "roobios chai" because they don't know enough to realize what I said is nonsensical or because they know enough to know it is and to know what someone would mean if they say it), but chai is the tea that for some reason most often causes me problems with caffeine (although this has always been when buying them in stores, not home-brewed, so I don't know why it is doing so or the details of what I am drinking). However, I have come to be careful with chais to prevent medical issues. With a non-caffeinated chai, I wouldn't have to worry, which is appealing.
I am still busily exploring my new teas. Although I think something fun about loose leaf is you can create your own spontaneous blends just for an individual cup. This has some of the same interestingness of blending essential oils to make interesting scents for bath products. Given that the flavors in flavored tea is often done with essential oils, it's actually amazingly similar. Although I wouldn't add essential oils to anything I was eating unless I knew what I had was food grade, intended for that, and I knew I was using a safe amount, or in other words, I wouldn't add any essential oils to anything I was eating.
On an unrelated note... boredom is worrisome. That's why I read the little book on tea. It's also why I started building a fort in Madman's room. He's away at LARP. I'll finish it before he comes home. I need to remember to tell him I did so before he discovers it... I was talking about Sukkot elsewhere and how cool it is to have what is basically a fort-building holiday, and well, I was bored, so...
Current Mood: tired
Tags: personal
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09:08 pm
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Pondering
Today has either been really good for a bad day or really bad for a good day. I'm not sure it matters which.
I need to figure out what I want to do with my Dreamwidth journal. I'm fairly sure what I want to do is to unbreak my style, but I simply have not been up to attempting it. I first copied my style over and then set up colors and it worked fine. But after a few days of me not making any changes it changed both subtly so it somehow is just a little harder to use visually, and I'm not sure why. It also changed drastically in that my reading page does not show either usernames nor userpics for personal accounts, although it does show usernames for communities. This means if I want to know who wrote an entry I need to either guess from various clues (which I often can do) or mouse over a link to see whose journal it would take me to. I find this to be a massive deterrent in reading my reading page, but a fascinating problem. I found out that I feel much more inclined to skim posts when I can't see who wrote them, and I'm not sure why as I don't feel this is rational. What I ought to do is hardcode my colors into my layer so that I can switch my style to something else and see if they have anything that would work for me without losing all the work I did to set up my colors when I switch back because they still don't have anything I can use, unless they do, of course. But it's a fair bit of work to do that and I've been too lazy. I wish they had a me-friendly style, and maybe they do by now.
I felt vaguely tempted to install an IRC client today; I don't know why. I don't think I know of lively IRC channels where friends of mine hang out and actively chat anymore other than support ones, and I don't feel like I'd fit in at a support channel these days. Plus, I probably wouldn't know many of the people. I guess I'm just bored and my computer isn't capable of playing Sims 3. In fact, it can't even currently play Sims 2.
There are things I could do, but I'm bored because I'm tired. Most non-boring things take up energy. Most things that don't use up much energy are dull. Well, things will probably improve in a few weeks. I have been very busy for me.
Current Mood: tired
Tags: meta-journaling, personal, social
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02:18 pm
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Random Thoughts
I like to collect intangible things. I had a dream recently with a creepy fairy-taleesque vibe to it where there was a haunted mansion at a carnival, but the cost for admission was two of your names. I didn't want to go in and was rather annoyed with the friends I was with going in and taking the creepy price as part of the atmosphere. Don't they read stories? Never, ever pay an odd intangible price. Get a nice, clear price in money and decide if you want to pay it or not. But if they're asking for your shadow or nix, naught, nothing run away, don't do it. I have no idea what the significance of giving away two of your names would be, but it clearly sounds like a bad idea.
I like names. I find them interesting. Every so often I look into the meanings of names and the origins of some of them. Then I find conflicting information and I forget parts of it and remember other bits and consider that acceptable.
I also collect permissions. They are ~fun~. I used to be a more active collector, so most of my good permissions are old. I got darch to foolishly grant me permission to say "four" as much as I'd like. It was in the context of a game with various rules where some things weren't okay and after I said four, he said, "You can say four as much as you'd like." He pretty much immediately came to regret this, but I feel if there is any chance he is ever going to have kids then it's a lesson he needs to learn. You don't go around casually telling people they can do things as much as they'd like. You need to be sure that you're okay with the result. summer_jackel was going to give me permission to say "llama" as much as I like, but sadly madmanatw was present and saying, no! No, don't do it. But I did manage to get permission to say "llama" 60% as often as I like. This is a touch awkward and it means I need to save up "llama"s, but I do. Oh, I do. And every now and then if I particularly want to I can have a burst of llamas.
Long ago a friend of mine gave me permission to tickle him. Few people will do that as I do not generally grant permission for people to tickle me, and even then with serious strings attached limiting the permission. It was a lovely permission. It was especially good when someone else was also tickling him. See, it was a fair fight, until I came into the picture. Because then he had to defend against the other person tickling him and could try to tickle them. But then I could gang up, tickle him, and he not only couldn't tickle me back he had to actively avoid tickling me back. Sadly, too many of my friends learned from this. The problem with close friends is they tend to know me well. *sighs*
I have some lovely permissions from ratatosk that I figure he probably doesn't remember, but alas they aren't very practical. The only ones I can think of require ratatosk, myself, and at least one other person who fits certain criteria being present. So, not much general use. But still, they make for good items for my collection.
And it occurs to me that I regularly abuse permissions my friends give me. In fact, my attitude is somewhere along the lines of: the whole point is to find good ways to abuse it.
Well, I wouldn't do that with some kinds of permission. I'm not going to take advantage of something like having a housekey, nor do I violate people's privacy when they give me access to their protected data. Which may help to explain the contrast with how I am very careful not to abuse permissions I get in more official ways such as private records I have access to from a job, IRC or LJ powers I used to have, that sort of thing.
I guess I try to follow two rules: Don't do anything horribly unethical with permissions and don't abuse them - unless it's funny.
Current Mood: thoughtful
Tags: personal, social, values
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12:22 pm
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Good Social
So I recently saw (in order of appearance) eirias, ratatosk, and kirinn who are all from completely different places that are far away from where I live. They were all in the bay area for completely different reasons. It was really nice.
Kirinn was only around for a bit and had a busy schedule that meant he was pretty tired throughout his time here. So, I didn't get to talk to him as much, but I did get to catch up a bit, which was quite nice.
I was very fortunate to have Eirias here for a couple of days, which meant that while my housemates were at work, I could talk to her and make other people very envious of my time with her. And Ratatosk I got to see both before and after my family gathering, including luring him over to hang out and not letting him leave... well, eventually letting him leave.
And I know why this phenomenon happens, but it felt like with both Eirias and Ratatosk whom I had one on one time to talk with that I could talk to them forever. It reminded me of college. And I know it's partly because they are very good friends whom I wish were in my life more often. But I have some very good friends who are in my life more often, and I don't feel like I can talk to them endlessly. And it's because with Eirias and Ratatosk there is so much we don't know about each other's lives. It reminds me of college because now and then in college I'd meet someone new and just talk endlessly until ridiculous hours with them getting to know them, discussing countless interesting things, learning fascinating perspectives that I'm not already used to because I haven't already mined them for most of them. And then you grow up and you don't get as much of an opportunity to do that.
This is what made me love DaP (a mailing list I used to belong to back when it was more a large group of friends and friends of friends). We would talk about all sorts of stuff, it felt like we'd never run out of topics, and it was friendly and interesting.
I didn't want to let the people go. This clearly means that I'd prefer to see them more often. It's a shame people are so far apart.
But it's also nice to resee old friends I haven't seen in a while and reestablish that yes, we do still like each other. Yes, there is a friendship here. Yes, there is a reason I try to keep this person in my life. It just is also a reminder of how unfortunate it is that they're not more in my life than they are.
I really miss what DaP was for me at its prime. I've never found a good substitute. I've tried. I got into LJ and that gave me many wonderful experiences, but they were different. On the upside, they gave me many wonderful experiences that I hadn't had and were also quite valuable and good. Finding something good that you weren't looking for is also a very strong win. But I never found a replacement for what I lost. And I can't kidnap the people until I've extracted most of the interesting things in their brains (I would try to keep them happy and comfortable while I did it... I'm not a monster (okay, technically I am)).
I'm really glad that I had some very good social experiences bookending my trip to see family. And I am glad I have some wonderful local people that I'm quite glad to be close to. But there are some wonderful people who aren't BART accessible and that's rather sad.
Current Mood:  thankful
Tags: beliefs, personal, social
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09:49 pm
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"It's unpleasantly like being drunk"
I seem to have accidentally overdosed on caffeine. It is quite annoying as I don't believe there is anything I can do but wait for my body to process it. I was brewing a loose-leaf lady grey tea. I must have brewed it too strong or it must have a greater caffeine content then I was expecting (I really wish things would tell you their caffeine content). This is particularly annoying as it was really tasty. Before this, I've only ever overdosed on chai or on coffee. Most teas don't have enough caffeine for me to end up ill. Of course, I don't know how much caffeine is safe, since things don't list their content. I have rules of thumb like less than one measuring cup worth of a standard coffee if I want to stay safe. No more than one chai in an evening, but it can be a large glass. I learn through trial and error.
So, error. Stupid overdose. I feel ill. Sick to my stomach, in a sort of pain that isn't normal pain... it feels wrong. Like a wrongness. It feels like something is wrong and not the way it should be without being truly painful in most ways. And I feel a bit of vertigo.
I forget what caffeine overdoses feel like when I'm not having them, because it's hard to describe. But then when they occur, I recognize them. Fortunately, this is likely to be mild. I'll probably be okay tomorrow. I am, however, switching to decaf for the rest of the night (in fact, to herbal such that there is no caffeine content rather than the very small caffeine content of something where the caffeine was mostly removed).
I have to have caffeine regularly, because it keeps my tolerance up. If I let myself have no caffeine for a long period of time then I run the risk if I ever have caffeine of becoming massively ill from a very small dose of caffeine. This would have been much worse had I not been regularly consuming small levels of caffeine. But I really hate this error. It's the trapped feeling. I am affected and there is nothing I can do to stop it. Now that it's been done, I am stuck with it until the process is finished. hmmm... sounds like a much weaker version of being in labor. Except with no potential benefit at the end.
And mainly I'm upset that the tea was quite tasty the way I made it, and now I know I have to not make it like that again.
Anyhow, this is me, waiting for a mild drug overdose to pass. I figured it was a topic that probably doesn't get written about much.
Current Mood: sick
Tags: medical, personal
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04:11 pm
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Bah
I keep reading about rape, which I don't really feel up to fully engaging about, although I am commenting a bit about the topic in people's posts. But a tangent from a post made me think about abuse. I've also been thinking about stupid, dangerous memes today, so let's discuss some of those.
There are ideas in our culture that spread, but that I think are very harmful. People believe them, often because they don't have much experience with life (everyone starts out this way) and the assumption is that those who are older and/or more experienced than you are should know more about these things. This is somewhat reasonable and you'll make a mess of your life if you disregard everything everyone else tries to teach you, but it does cause problems when there are common wisdoms that are wrong.
The first one that came up today are ideas along the lines of: If someone truly loves me, they'll know what I want and I won't have to tell them. This is a great way to have a bunch of unsatisfying relationships, heartbreak, and never get what you want. It also tangles in with ideas like: It doesn't really count if someone gives me something if I had to tell them I wanted it. And well, yes, for something like that new Sims game that it'd be obvious you want to people who know you, it will be more meaningful if someone just gets it for you (no, this isn't a hint and I already have lots of Sims games and my computer can't even run them these days). But it really isn't the case for things like making time for you when you want company or cheering you up in the ways that work to cheer you up, which are going to vary from person to person. This also tangles in with the idea that whatever you want in a particular situation is what someone else will want, since this is false, this is part of why that lovely person can totally adore you and not do the "obvious" things to express it to you - they aren't obvious.
The ones I was really thinking about when I started this post though are things like kids will be kids, boys will be boys, kids need to learn to settle these issues themselves. Now, this can be true for mild things, but for cases of bullying and physical violence, I disagree. If one child is hitting another child, the child being hit should learn to deal with that the way an adult should, which is by going to the police and filing charges and considering a restraining order. Oh sure, that may not be necessary, and I'm totally in favor of simply scaring a child into realizing that horrible things might happen if they physically assault other people and not punishing non-repeat offenders. But the idea that kids should sort out bullying on their own strikes me as insane. It's part of the double standards that I felt as a child. There are two one is that hitting an adult is assault and a crime, but hitting a child is perfectly okay and normal. The second double standard is that an adult beating a child is an absolutely horrible thing, child abuse, and should be dealt with with the harshest of measures, but a child beating another child, even if just as severely, is no big deal and the child being beaten shouldn't really complain. I've never been able to make either of those make any sense, and I don't really want to. The adult response is to go to the police. The adult response for a child is to go to authority figures and those authority figures should step in.
Of course, this was back in my day when the current parenting model was to mainly leave kids free to grow up and explore and figure it out for themselves. We were fed and clothed and such, but it wasn't odd for a 7 year old with a bike to go wherever s/he wished in town, meet up with other kids and such. The current model is vastly overprotective never letting children be by themselves outside and likely comes with an entirely different set of problems. I'm not too surprised though that the generation left to grow up mainly unaided became overprotective. I'm sure it'll swing again as the overprotected kids have kids. Maybe eventually we'll get to a sane middle ground.
Hmmm this post isn't really going anywhere. It's just meandering around. So, let's get back to relationships, they're more fun. I do wonder sometimes how many people would be better off if they could figure out what they need in a relationship (for the most part, it's okay to work out some of it as you go) and could sit down with their partner and say, this is what I need. Are you okay with this, can you give me this? And if the answer is yes, continue and make sure they can find out what their partner needs and if they can give them that. And if the answer is no, talk a bit more, see if there is some sort of workable compromise, and if not, both people should break up in a friendly, civil manner. Nobody should be blamed, nobody did anything wrong, they just have incompatible needs. It happens. It's unfortunate, but breaking up sooner will be less painful than breaking up later. Then if your partner isn't giving you something you told them you needed, you can gently remind them. If they keep not giving it to you, then you can break up, because some people think they can manage things they can't actually, but ideally again reasonably civilized with less blaming.
This won't solve all relationship problems (not even most of them, I suspect). And people's needs or their understanding of their needs will change with time. Which will require later conversations about these changes or realizations. And maybe the people will grow apart. This will, of course, be painful. But I think mainly I'd like to see people recognizing that sometimes people have incompatible needs and there is no reason to blame someone else for that. And there's no need to try to make it seem like their needs are wrong to justify your own. It's okay to have unusual needs. It's okay to have different needs. And while it's sad, it's okay to have incompatible needs with someone you truly love. It sucks, but it's not worth blaming anyone for, nor sensible. I guess just too often people seem to want to blame someone, because for some reason they can't accept that some things just don't work. That it doesn't have to be anyone's fault. I guess this is partly a creation of the dangerous love conquers all meme. The idea that if you love each other enough then you can always make it work. It would be nice if that were true, and boy does it hurt when you both do love each other and it still can't work. That's a painful one to learn. But I think we'd be better off if people didn't expect love to conquer all. And wasting less time with people you don't work out with seems like it'd give you a better chance of finding someone with which you might work.
I wish this post hung together better. I had other thoughts in my head, but they scattered, so I didn't manage to keep a theme. Some days you just have to live with poorly organized writing in my journal.
Current Mood: tired
Tags: beliefs, personal, values
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06:57 pm
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An ABC Meme
This is long so I'll use a cut tag. But it looked like an interesting meme, so I'll do it.
( random info below )
Current Mood: tired
Tags: beliefs, memes, personal, values
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02:13 pm
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A request and a lot of talk about marriage
The founding fathers of the US did not want to write a Bill of Rights initially. They knew that they could not list every important right and they were afraid that by listing several key rights, they would endanger whichever important rights they forgot. I think they did a pretty good job on the Bill of Rights including majorly important rights like freedom of speech and religion and a right to a fair trial and also rights we usually don't think about because we're so used to them, but were relevant in the day like the right to not have to quarter soldiers (honestly, I think taxing the people and having the soldiers have a place to stay provided by the government makes everyone happier and more comfortable). But they could not think of everything and so we have debates like, well you don't have any explicit right to do what you want to with your own body and the right to privacy isn't literally stated in the fourth amendment. This is exactly what they were afraid of, which is why the last two amendments are what they are. They tell us that any right not explicitly given to the federal government belongs to the state governments and that any right not explicitly given to the state governments belongs to the people.
This has been weakened and it is sad. But it is beautiful if you think about it. We aren't supposed to need explicit rights. The government is supposed to need them. Everything else is ours - the people's.
That's a great principle and it's the basis of my request. I've talked about this before and I just discussed it in a friend's journal, but now I am making an outright request. I would like those who agree with me to not talk about having government get out of marriage entirely and handing it over to the churches. They should instead talk about the government getting out of marriages and handing it over to the people. I do believe this will be best for everyone, including the religious who will still be able to have religious marriages, I shall explain in much detail below.
The government getting out of marriage sounds good, but is actually quite complex. I'm not sure it's practical and were it to happen, I think it'd take time. But what I mean by that is that the government should enforce contracts. Part of marriage is the marriage contract. People could still have those contracts and the government would still enforce them. In fact, I think marriage contracts should be easy to obtain for people, because asking everyone who wants to get married to write their own legal contract is likely to lead to a lot of bad contracts. However, we can call them something like "standard union contracts" or some such. And the key thing is, you wouldn't have to use the default one. Everyone could choose to enter into the contracts of their choosing, and those who like the traditional contracts can use it. Of course, from what I hear most married people don't even read their marriage contracts before signing them, but then people also sign leases without reading them and it's a bad idea I wish I could break people of. However, providing the standard contract would allow people to continue to have legal marriages that work the same way they do now and also allow those who would like numerous of the contractual relationships of marriage (such as the right to oversee each other's medical care in case of the person being incapacitated) to form contracts that do so more easily. It might even get people to think about their marriage contracts and what they are signing up for, which would be wonderful, but is probably me being way too optimistic.
So, the government would be exactly where it belongs, in contract enforcement. (Yes, I know the government getting out of marriages raises difficult questions for laws the government has based on marriages such as citizenship and social security, but this is why I said it wouldn't be easy, and discussing that is a long tangent I don't want to bother with, this is assuming you support the idea of the government getting out of marriage in the first place, if you don't then my request doesn't apply to you).
Now, if the government got out of marriage, it should then flow to the people. Each person could decide for him or her self what constitutes a marriage and whether or not he or she is married. This strikes me as appropriate as I feel that the only people who can make a marriage real and meaningful are the people in that marriage. If you are married and want your marriage to be important and meaningful, you need to give it importance. You need to treat your marriage with respect if you want it to seem meaningful. This has always been the case, and I am in favor of people taking responsibility for their own marriages.
Now, some of these people are religious. A marriage won't be real to them unless they feel it has the sanction of their church, temple, etc. or is otherwise blessed by a deity. That is fine. When they get married they tie that into their marriage. They should not accept a marriage that does not meet those conditions, such as being in their house of worship and sanctioned by their religious leader. They take the rights that are theirs and they voluntarily choose to submit to the dictates of their religion. This is much like not eating on Yom Kippur or giving up something for Lent or to use more fun examples, like building a sukkah for Sukkot or making time to be with your family on Christmas. You are not legally obligated to do so, but you may consider yourself morally obligated to do so if your beliefs are so inclined. And the fact that it is voluntary gives the act a lot more meaning, at least to me. You choose to follow your religion and to give your marriage to your faith and make them a part of each other. That's fine if it's your choice. Someone else can choose not to. That's freedom of religion.
The problem I have with people saying the government should get out of the marriage business and hand it over to the churches is twofold. First, we've just shown that marriage is important to a lot of people. It holds emotional significance that has a value to a large percentage of the population. So, why would we hand it over to the churches as if it were valueless, a trinket we're willing to give them? And second, I feel it is important to keep the principle that the rights that are not the government's belong to the people. I don't like giving up any of my rights, no matter how small or how unlikely I am to need it, because it's a bad precedent and also because I may find that that right is more important than I realized when I gave it up. We have no reason to give this right up, so let's not just hand it over. Let marriage go back to the people, each one to decide how to use it and what it means to them, let the government enforce contracts, and let churches, temples, etc. continue to lead those who wish to be lead by them, performing religious ceremonies for major life events as their beliefs hold and for those who share those beliefs.
Current Mood:  busy
Tags: beliefs, personal, rants, values
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07:07 pm
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Books I Read
So, I read How Children Fail. How Children Learn was doubly recommended to me, so I figured I ought to read it, but I decided as I will likely read both How Children Fail and How Children Learn that I'd rather read them in the order they were written, so I read How Children Fail. It's a book about education written by a teacher based on his observations in the late 1950s and early 1960s. It was definitely interesting and I think people interested in education or homeschooling might be interested in the book. He wrote two books about homeschooling, one especially focused on it called Teach Your Own, but I haven't read it, so I can't say much about it. However, this book made me feel like someone else had some notions about the hardest problem I found when substitute teaching. It was a child who managed to successfully solve the problem, If bananas cost 4 cents each and I buy 3 bananas, how much will it cost? But then could not find the solution to the followup problem: If peaches cost 4 cents each and I buy 3 peaches how much will cost? I had no idea how to help a child who could solve one but not the other. I had only a few minutes to deal with him, and I was stumped. I do feel it would have taken more time than I had, so there really wasn't much I could do. But this book actually gave me some insight into how such a thing can happen.
I also read Please Understand Me, because I figured I'm enough into the MBTI that I ought to read something more official on the subject than having just gotten my info off the web. However, the info I got off the web meant that I didn't learn much from the book. However, I did find the information about different kinds of leaders and the different kinds of encouragement that work on different types to be useful. I think it might have been good if I'd read that back when I was a support admin. I might have been better at encouraging people who seek different kinds of encouragement than I am used to. Unfortunately, the descriptions of the S types made me like S types even less than before I read the book. I try not to dislike S types, because it's too much like prejudging people, they are 75% of the population, and I actually know several people who type as S and are amazingly awesome people. But while the goal of the book is to show how every type is valid and good in its own way and that we should learn to better accept differences, it just didn't accomplish that for me.
I read The Giver, because it was in a pile of books at the condo, I've never read it, and I've heard good things about it. It was enjoyable, but I feel slightly overhyped. It also seemed subject to too much fridge logic. Plus, I don't know if there's a particular trope for it, but it felt to have the same problem as the Harry Potter books do in that the author didn't seem to do some basic math. None of the math would have made the story impossible, but it did make the culture improbable. We get facts about how many children are raised each year, how many children how many people have, how many children adults are allowed to raise, etc. And it just doesn't add up to making the culture formed likely. Possible, yes, but the numbers seem off. It's also supposed to be a dystopia and it is. But since the whole thing is told from the point of view of a child, it's not clear to me that it's actually as bad as I think it wants to be. There are a few bad parts to it, but in order to really judge it, I'd need info not provided. It's possible to have a fairly similar effect in a society that simply likes to shield children from some of the less pleasant realities until they are older. It might not be that there are secret horrible things to the extent I think you're supposed to feel there are, it might just be they think an 10 to 14 year old boy isn't ready for them. But it's a children's book, so you're clearly not supposed to consider that possibility.
I read Ella Enchanted, which also seemed a little overhyped. It was fun though. It's a modified version of Cinderella and it does a good job of making the story its own story while keeping some of the trappings of the traditional Cinderella story. It reads a lot more like an original story that happens to fit the Cinderella plot in a few ways. It also portrays what it is like to be a 15 year old in love. And oh yes, that seemed very well done. That is what it is like to be a 15 year old in love as far as I know it. Which was sweet and amusing and a little bit sad for me now not very much like a 15 year old in love.
Oh and I read the second Sharing Knife book by Bujold. I'm not sure I should judge the books until I've read the whole set though. I'm enjoying them, although not quite as much as the other Bujold books I've read. That is, of course, a high standard though. But it is nice to see another world invented by Bujold. She crafts interesting worlds, and this one is very different from the others of hers I've read. I am curious to learn more about it. It clearly is meant to intrigue you and raise questions that possibly may be answered eventually.
Current Mood: tired
Tags: books, personal
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08:51 pm
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I'm Home
I'm home. I'm tired. I had a good time. I read a lot of books.
Hawaii is loud, colorful, and extroverted. Seriously - land of the extroverts.
Also, a land that doesn't seem to have many disabled people, much understanding of disability, and not many accommodations for it. I saw a lot of stairs to places with no ramps. There didn't seem to be much public transit. And the people sometimes were really weird to me. There was one guy who was sitting at a table near where we were going to sit. I was trying to decide which chair I wanted when he reached over without getting up, pulled out the chair closest to me, and put his hand on my hip as if trying to combine the two of us. I do not like having strangers touch me. There was another time when I was walking in crappy flip flops and stumbled just a tiny bit and kept walking. This may or may not be relevant, I don't know. A woman said to me while I was walking to the foot wash to wash sand off my feet, "Don't be afraid." I was confused as I had absolutely no idea what she thought I might be afraid of or why she thought I needed someone to order me about what I should and should not feel. I told her, "I'm not, these shoes are just hard to walk in." Oh yes, also sidewalks just end semi-randomly with more street left and they often do not have curb-cuts.
Everyone wants to talk to you. A lot.
However, it's also beautiful. I saw lots of colorful flowers, some of which seem to only exist there. It's really warm, but it wasn't so hot that I was miserable from the heat, so that was really nice for the most part. Most things were really expensive (even compared to the bay area), but I had some really good food there. And there is a pizza place that has heads of roasted garlic for sale. The ocean is very nice. And on our first night in, we were driving to the condo and I looked out in the direction of the ocean and I couldn't see anything. It was night and it was like an endless field of nothing. Perhaps if my vision were better it wouldn't seem so much like an endless field of nothing, but I quite liked it.
There were also lots of interesting rocks and nifty waves. Also, apparently, lots of fascinating beetles, but I didn't notice them.
I had a good time. Unfortunately, I massively exerted myself and will probably be badly worn out for quite a long time, especially as there are several things I must do this month. But it was lovely.
Eventually I will likely post about some of the books I read.
Oh, and in very sad news, the chain for my pendant broke. Now I need to find a new chain. The chain was very old and wasn't expensive so it's not surprising, but I need my wearable magnifying pendant; it's so incredibly useful. I need to figure out what I can put it on now.
Current Mood: tired
Tags: personal, social, values
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05:25 pm
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AFK
I'm flying out tomorrow and will be gone for a bit over a week. I don't know hnow how much net access I'll have, but basically I expect I won't be reading anything until I get back. I may or may not reply to emails. So, I'll likely miss things people post. Please let me know if I miss anything particularly important.
There are many other subjects I've considered writing about, but none of them are important. I don't really have much to say. So, I suppose that will do.
Current Mood: busy
Tags: personal, social
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03:10 pm
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It's been a long time
It's been a very long time since I've been a support admin. But this still makes me somewhat sad. Part of me is tempted to give advice, but the rest of me says, you moved on, other people are in charge, and they will deal with things the way they choose to and they don't necessarily want to hear your opinions on the matter. Plus, I don't know what is currently being done on such matters as recruitment and retention, so it's possible I have nothing to add.
I just know I spent a good part of my time as an admin constantly focused on recruitment and retention. They are both such vital issues. And there is a 3 to 6 month lag on really feeling the affects, so you have to look ahead several months to prevent the problems from happening (if you can) and to prepare.
I also remember times with people complaining about us having too many volunteers and how it was bad for morale. And times with too few volunteers and how it was bad for morale. It is pretty much impossible to always stay at an amount that is really optimal. But I prefer the problems of too many volunteers.
They couldn't have avoided this. The problems weren't Supports. I don't mean to imply they were. I just wonder what measures were taken and are being taken. I do think encouraging the volunteers to be supportive of others is a very good step they are taking.
I left. I don't want to go back. I've been watching things on and off over the years. But it's their realm now. I wish them good luck with it. There always have been challenges and always will be. I bet they'll get through this. Support has gotten through things before.
Current Mood: distant
Tags: meta-journaling, personal, support
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12:26 am
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Star Trek
So I just saw the new Star Trek movie; it was fun and I enjoyed it. I'll save most of my comments for below the cut tag. But I would have enjoyed it more had all of the people in the theater saved their commentary on the movie for any time other than during the movie.
( here there be spoilers )
Current Mood: headachey
Tags: movies, personal
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01:26 am
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A link on paraphilia and the DSM V
There has been some reporting on this issue, and the reporting I've seen completely fails to raise the points in siderea's post to the extent that it gives a completely different view of what the proposed changes are. As I have mentioned what I had read to at least one person and I've seen some people talking about the proposed change, I'd like to suggest people read her post on the matter. I haven't had time to look into the issue myself, but I tend to trust Siderea. Also, she has a quote which is useful to read.
Current Mood: thoughtful
Tags: links, personal, psychology
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07:34 pm
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Just so you know
"They make margaritas out of alcohol."
This public service announcement brought to you courtesy of the drinks menu at Chili's and a somewhat intoxicated friend.
Current Mood: amused
Tags: personal, social
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