“Come one, come all, and witness magic…” – ICP

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The snow on top of my car makes a good cup holder.

I think was impressed by the size of my truck. If you’re curious, check out my most recent post.

If anybody’s still thinking about my post from yesterday, the reason I like Transformers so much has a lot to do with the change.

My presentation at Green Spiral went pretty well yesterday, though those of us that are geeks ended up taking things to a level that was over a lot of peoples’ heads, and they got bored. Whoops. Heheheh.

My knee is less swollen, and feels much better, thanks to the ibuprofin. I have quite the mobility, but I’m still taking it easy and being very careful about where I step.

Someone asked me yesterday if I wanted to be a CEO in Ferndale. My answer was an emphatic yes. That’d be interesting if that panned out.

Oh, and I slapped this dude at the meeting yesterday. No, really. I did. With a hooker. Right in the face.

Ok, more when it will agree to be cohesive.

[Discussion] Manipulation

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What is the number to assign to the level of wrong that belongs to manipulating someone into a place where I am happier with them?

Then there is the quandary: What would be manipulation? She is strong enough that she wouldn’t do what she didn’t want to. That’s one of the reasons I fell in love with her.

It comes down to morality and justification of actions, independent and stark.

What is, then, the number value of telling
someone that you’re manipulating them
into a position where you are more comfortable with them
and at the end having them thank you for it?

And can you say that manipulation isn’t simply
making Option A more desirable – in appearance
than Option B and letting them choose?
There are no choices – is not then manipulation
a helpful hand in justification?

There are choices. There can be only choice, otherwise there is no responsibility. The choice to enact my will to alter another’s perception of a situation or of myself for my own pleasure seems to reek of salesmanship, a skill which I usually find contemptible.

Not knowing the pre-existing perception is the problem, and because of this, how am I to judge whether I am selling her something she doesn’t need, or creating the doorway she craves to walk through?

Well, my dear man. Do you believe in insight?
Yes, I thought so. And usually after a few mannerisms
and watching the eyes shift at specific moments
you have an internal knowledge of another persons
reaction. “Manipulation” or “Helpful Justification”
as I like to call it, requires an attentiveness –
are you sure that you’re “Selling” something?
Or is she LOOKING for you to create
that doorway? Is it possible that you’re not
manipulating her… that she is progressing naturally
the way she wants to and that it’s all happy
coincidence?

You, of all people, would use the phrase “happy coincidence” in relation to me and a woman? You have, however, captured the essence of my quandary and your words and mine have met the stalemate that exists in my noggin. I am to make a decision between risking performing manipulation and taking the safe out that is inaction.

So, then, it comes down to the morality of the specific actions that you would suggest. So. Suggest away.

My 1st suggestion is a standard one: if you spend much more time analyzing how you relate to each other then you’re not relating with each other which is far more important. You’ve neglected to mention the possibility that perhaps you’re both moving parallel to each other – that there is NO manipulation – and that there is an undertone of sheer joy in both of you. Perhaps the fact that you relish the shape of her speech, the sounds of her movement and the sight of her emotion is shared. Would this be okay with you? If you had nothing to prove to her and that maybe, just maybe *GASP* she means exactly what she says?

Then I am doomed. The last thing she said, in relation to this, was right after Thanksgiving, when we became “just friends.” As is evident, I am not satisfied (being that it is very difficult when one is romantically in love with a friend) and have the desire to enact change.

I don’t desire to prove anything to her. Forgive me for whining, but I desire her closeness.

She adores me, of that I have no doubt. Whatever metaphor is used, I desire a shortening of the distance between us. And yes, I placed this distance where it is to fit the definition of friends. For my own sanity.

To remove it changes, in my mind, how she and I relate to each other.

“Sometimes my mind plays tricks on me…” – Green Day

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So, I lead the discussion tonight on Techno-Paganism. Should be fine. I’m still really hoping for an active audience. Less work for me, and more material for me to play with. I really, really don’t want to be lecturing.

Looks like I’ll have time to go and get groceries and stamps before the Green Spiral meeting, too. Hopefully, my slowness will be beat out by the fact that I have a list of what I’m shopping for. This should cover lunches, dinners, and snacks for at least a week.

The next challenge to surmount will be cleaning the kitchen. I’m talking mopping the floor, cleaning the counters (which have several layers of sticky substances on them) until they’re absolutely spic-and-span, and cleaning out the microwave. Screw trying to clean the fridge. I don’t have the desire right yet to combat the tribal life forms that have evolved in there.

I once asked one of my ex-girlfriends if she knew why I loved Transformers. She hazarded a guess, which I didn’t contradict. It was the control, she said. The enacting of change upon an object. I asked her, what about the puzzle-solving aspect? She said that that was a bonus. She was wrong. It’s not about either of those.

Right now, I miss my ex-roomate. I so very much want to do ritual with him.

Right now, I very much want to have a job lined up for Detroit. Right now, I am fierce with the need to make that happen. Right now, I’m wondering if it’s a good idea.

Stuff.

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So, Pleeb is effectively down until the server move and the site re-design gets done. Which I’ll be helping the Tie work on tomorrow night. You can still read posts and such, just writing posts would be silly, because the backup is being taken right now, and anything posted in the interim will be lost.

Is it legal for a pharmacy to take a perscription that says “this many tablets of 600mg Motrin” and fill it with “this many tablets of 600mg ibuprofin”? Either way, I hope it helps the swelling in my knee. Any woozy side-effects are met with mixed feelings, instead of the usual welcoming open arms. Also, I got my blood pressure medicine re-filled. Rite Aid pharmacy takes forever and can blow my left nut.

I think my doctor was surprised at my general good mood, and how calmly I recounted what had happened, and perhaps how knowledgable I was about it. Not like I haven’t been through this before. Heh.

More when I have time to think.

[Poem] Open 24 Hours

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There are these old men, all conversing
and gesticulating at a table;
They remind me of aging mafia.
They remind me of aging us.

One of them is our old landlord from
THE LAIR
He stopped by to see how his customers
like their coffee.
He doesn’t remember the purple-haired
fat boy in a suit (double-breasted)
from the court room.

Of course, he always used to call me Aaron.
That pissed me off

I wonder what miscreants and high society
I’ll run in to and
bring together
in the next town I plant my roots in.
Not town.
City.

I wonder what it looks like;
that mark I left on this place.

[Carnival] Transpatial configurautomaton.

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“Stupid horse. Stupid cat.”

His nose burned. A lot. His back ached. A lot. His knees were sending lightning bolts of pain up and down his legs. A lot. And this gods-forsaken carousel horse was still on his back. And he’d walked a total of five miles in a generally eastward direction.

“Mother beetches.”

He unceremoniously dropped the wooden piece of art (it really was beautiful) onto the sidewalk. He stretched and grinned as about twenty pops resounded from his back. It was one of those nights where you just don’t say that it can’t get any worse, because it will.

“Well, at least it can’t get any worse.”

That’s when the Mack truck hit him. No, seriously. A big, 18-wheeled, Mack truck. Smacked right into him. It surprised him too. He wasn’t as surprised as the driver was when he discovered that Dragon wasn’t meaty chunks on the pavement. The semi rolled to a halt, and Dragon peeled himself off of the grill of the truck.

The driver blinked. He didn’t quite understand what he saw. His rational mind told him that something like this couldn’t exist, and was purely impossible. His instinctive side told him, “Run you stupid fuck!”. He just kind of stood there, torn. That was when the war hammer inverted the left side of his skull.

A hulking thing bellowed into the night, celebrating its kill. Its neck was far too long for it to be human, that and the slightly wedge-shaped head. It stood upright, though, and grasped a war hammer in a five-fingered (although scaled and taloned) hand.

No one credible believed their eyes when they saw the figure flapping lazily through the sky on scaled wings, holding a brightly-painted carousel horse in its feet, heading vaguely eastward.