The Horsemen of the Apcalypse, famine, drought, mass extinction and war

Climate change is really big.  It is so big that if we look at all of it at once we will want to hide because it is so fucking scary.  Correction, so FUCKING SCARY.

Sea level rise

Melting of all the glaciers

Drought

Increased storm intensity

Ocean Acidity

Mass extinction

Global War

Yup melting all the glaciers will cause the oceans to rise.  No alpine glaciers will cause droughts in the lands fed by rivers sourced by glaciers.  Droughts in these areas will cause global food shortages and then lead to mass migration and then Global War.

Some areas will receive less rain than they are used to.  These ares will suffer droughts and crop failures, which leads to mass migration and then Global War.

Some areas will receive greater rainfall than normal, but the bad news is more of that rainfall will occur in single events that cause massive flooding and erosion of soil.  This will lead to crop failure, which leads to mass migration which leads to Global War.

Habitat loss due to drought and increased farming by humans will, correction, IS wiping out more and more species of life, often before we know that they exist.  They will be dead and we will be alive so this does not lead to Global War.  Unless you think of the oceans.  Increased ocean temperatures are ruining fish habitats and reducing the number of fish species.  Removal of fish species will reduce the amount of food from the sea.  Causing starvation and mass migration and Global War.

Increased Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere is stored in the water.  CO2 stored in water makes carbonic acid.  Acidity of oceans increase, habitat losses in oceans causes starvation, which leads to mass migration and Global War.  But if the acidification of the oceans goes too far, all war will stop.  Half the worlds supply of oxygen comes from acid sensitive organisms in the oceans.  Death of these creatures reduces global oxygen from 21% in the air to 11%. All mammals and most recent reptiles need 14% oxygen to live, not birds and not alligator like reptiles and not fish and not insects.  Humans are mammals, so all Global War stops and people all die.

If we stop using Carbon Dioxide soon the last one will not happen.  All the rest will continue, because there are positive feed backs in the environment that will  not be put in check for thousands of years even if we try.  That is something that we are going to have to get used to.

For further clarification, mass migration of people from areas of low food to areas of high food will still occur.  And people with food will not want to share, because they will not have enough food for everyone.  Then people with nothing to lose will start killing people that have everything to lose.  They will do it everywhere.  The winners in the poor countries will then go to the wealthy countries and everyone will be at war.

Global War.  WWI and WWII were called Word Wars but they weren't. WWI was a European war that added trading partners and colonies.  WWII was fought in Europe and eastern Asia.  There were no battles fought in the Americas, in South Asia (beyond a skirmish to two), most of Africa, and most of central Asia.  No Latin American nation even participated, the same with most of Africa really.  If the worst happens, the GLOBAL WAR brought on by climate change will be fought in every street across the entire globe with machetes to nuclear weapons.  All for food and a place to stay.

What a downer.  There is a way to stop it.  Embrace Green Energy.  Global Green Energy can power desalination plants and pump water to where it is needed.  This would allow crop irrigation and stop the worst of the famine.  Hydroponic greenhouses would add to global food reserves.  And reduce Global Mass Migration.  Reduce that and Global War becomes less of a threat.

But severe weather, droughts, no glaciers, sea level rise and mass extinction, is not something that we can avoid.  They were futures that we could have avoided, but they will be a fact of our future no matter what now.

Embrace the green to stay alive.

Here is another clip:

part two:

Climate change an wind power

I was watching YouTube videos about Eta Carinae, a star expected to go supernovae any time:

Then I saw a link in the side area that I had to check out:

Then I went to another promising link:

And then I got sidetracked by wind turbines:

and then:

Astronomy, Climate Change, and Wind Power, Oh My feed my Asperger's mind.

There is a connection though, between the last two subject matters, climate change is making the winds stronger so if there is a silver lining in Climate Change, it is that.

oh this is the first post ever on my laptop.  this blog space is very apple unfriendly; I could not get the links to work on my iPad!!

Dark blue again

It seems there is no winning in my life. There is only losing.  There is no such thing as something good.  The best I can hope for is mediocrity.  Good friends, yes, but that is it.  When people want me they need something, and when they get it they are gone.  

If I am not right there for someone, then they go and get it from someone else.  I wish that my suicide attempt was successful.

Things happen to me and I go from zero to wishing I was dead.  I have to find away to get out of this spiral.  But I can't see how.  Everything hurts me.  

Seventh needed me on Christmas, but I was in cellphone no mans land with a cellphone that was dying.  Now she does not want to talk to me.  She went out and got laid to try to forget.  If I was there for her it would not have happened.  Because I love her and respect from the top of her head to her toes.

This was not the first time that I have not been there for someone.  Every time that it happens I am with family.  It makes me wish that I had offended my family and stayed home

I can't cry.  I can't go out.  I can't do anything.  I can't even kill myself. 

I don't see worth in anything I do or I have done.  There is no value in my life.

I want to die

The end or the start?

Christmas time again and laid off as usual.  I have e reading bug and the itch to write, but I have also a strong depression on the way that threatens to turn my ambition into velleity.  Come with that I have been obsessive towards sex as well, even by my standards add MPTR has suggested that she wants a good poke.  My resistance is low, but there is a real fear that this will end poorly; not with me heartbroken again but dead.  So I have been throwing a lot of shit at the wall hoping that something will stick.  

Thank fully there are books, the one thing that distracts me a little from sex.

Read Terry Pratchett's new book, Dodger.  It is not of the Diskworld series, which I was looking forward to, but another Earth based fantasy, this time in Early Victorian London, I time I know little of but a fascinating time none-the-less.  Dodger is a Tosher, someone that makes their living scouring sewers of London for loose change when he hears a woman being beaten by thugs and comes to her rescue and into the intrigue of the aristocracy of the time.  Will he marry the German Princess he rescued?

Then it was into more London fantasy with Ben Aaronovitch's Moon over Soho and the third in the series that I read so fast and hard that I can't remember reading the title.  Five stars each.  Basically a cop turned Apprentice Wizard investigating crime with an unnatural bent.  Gods, wizards, goblins and more mixed with a history of London that you pick up by osmosis whether you like it or not.  After reading Dodger, I was surprised that they tied in so closely.

 

If I was smart I would have read China Meiville's Un Lum Dum next which also parallels the London underground too, but Peter v Brett was practically screaming at me to find out what next is going to happen to the Characters of The Warded Man, in, Desert Spear.   How I marvel that he let me look at one of the villains of the first book and even got me cheering for him a bit.  I am barely a quarter of the way through though and I am already reading and time is passing me by

I had wanted to start a big writing project this winter.  I was thinking of posting it here for people to read as I write it, if I can get the sex out of me and get down to writing.  Really it is a drain.  I hope MPTR leaves me out of it.  She won't and I have been getting desperate, for any type of love.  She will be the end of me.

Gender problem

MagicEyes tried her damnedest to impress upon me the he ideas and the things that she thought important.  One of which was gender.  Lots of people are tackling this issue now days, so I guess it only apt that I fell into orbit around her and was challenged to alter my views.  Well I have and I will try to articulate my own ideas.

There is only two sexes, male and female identified by their reproductive role and/or their sex chromosomes.  There are other sexes, but they are variations on the those two, like hermaphrodites and such, but effectively only two.  

Gender, however, is not the same as sex.  While sex is arguably specific, gender is a spectrum, a range between two points, Heterosexual and Homosexual.  Gender is two aspects, both of them also spectrums, self identification and sexual preference.  

Self Identification: is how a person feels about themselves as to their own true sex.  There are some interesting sex differences between the social stigma of the sexes on this point.  Masculine females suffer minor derision from within the majority of the sex, called tomboys because they prefer to things society views as male.  But it is feminine males that suffer the most censure.  A girl that is interested in football growing up has some casche value and can move between the male and female spheres of influence, but not so for males who have interest in feminine ideals.  A boy who wishes to play with dolls or even play girl's games is openning themselves up to bullying and genuine beatings.  Society's message is that it is acceptable, but not encouraged, for a girl and later a woman to prefer a male lifestyle; the range of epitaphs range from "cool" to "butch" and rarely "dyke". For boys and later men, society's message is almost always negative, skipping the positive and neutral tags, to jump right into the homosexual slurs.

And this is why men are all fucked up.  Women, their self identification is an acceptable spectrum, but for men only being male is acceptable; if a man cannot stick to the one point and fits more on the spectrum he is made to feel female.  Men fit on a scrum too.  I am self identified as firmly on the spectrum.  I like some things male and some things female, according to my society.  Truth be known, I think I am mostly female identified.

The other spectrum is Sexual Preference: basically which sex do you prefer to be with sexually.  Luckily in Canada, this is not as big as it used to be and it is certainly better than many counties.  The range is between of preference is between preferring men sexually and preferring women sexually.  Most people are heterosexual, of either sex and more males are homosexual than women but more women are bisexual than men.  Men tend to be polar, again, while women are also more of a spectrum.  I am in touch with myself; I know I am on a spectrum.  I am heterosexual, but some men interest me, but they are rare.

There is another spectrum, but it does not enter into gender; it is Sexual-ness. The spectrum is between asexuality and sexual.  It is a spectrum having to do with 'how often' they want sex, and men are typically on the often side but all people tend to be towards the center.

The problem with Gender comes mostly from Men, because they are socialized to be polarized and not on a spectrum.  Men who feel feminine in some way self identified, feel not Male, as being a man is a whole bunch of things, but all in extreme.  A man who is not an extreme example of maleness can be made to felt as female.  And there is nothing wrong with this.  But if you cannot accept being a spectrum, you can stop feeling like a man.  A man can identify as a female and still like women.  The way that many people feel that they can resolve this conflict of Manhood, is to switch their sex.  I think this is fine, but only if they feel they must, and specifically can't accept that they are on a spectrum.  But I would hope that they are at least homosexual or bisexual, because another thing I have learned from MagicEyes, is that nothing ruffles homosexual women like a man that alters his sex and becomes a lesbian.  it feels like they changed their sex to be a lesbian.  But someone like me, a feminine male who likes women strongly, would still be a feminine person who likes women, even if I changed my sex; I would have to be a lesbian.

You see sex and gender is not actually linked; they are seperate aspects of people.  It is just assumed to be linked and for men strongly linked, but just because our culture tells us convincingly that gender and sex are interchangeable does not make it so.

Rick Mercer rocks

It Takes $$$ to Make $$$

The sad truth of the matter is that the American Dream is dead.  The American dream was that anyone who was born there or migrated could stand upon the shores penniless and by the time they died they could be wealthy.  Maybe not the wealthiest individual around, but well enough off to be thought of as wealthy.

Today, that can not ever happen.  If you are penniless in America, you can not afford to get an education.  If you are penniless you can not start a business.  If you are penniless, when you die, you will not be much more.  And unfortunately this holds true for every Western Industrialized country as well.  The sad truth is that if you do not start with a little bit of wealth, you will not die with wealth.  That said if you are born with a lot of wealth you may very well die with none, but it is not likely.  If you have wealth, you will go to the best schools and get the best tutors and very likely never be hungry ever.

And there is a chance that if you have a little bit of wealth, you can make it grow into a lot of wealth.  After all you can not make a fortune in the stock market unless you have a little money to invest.  And most of all, you can have a million ideas that you could make your fortune on, but if you do not have the starting capital you will never realize your dream and you will never make a dime.

So, I know that my dreams will for always be unforfilled, but luckily my dreams do not have me making money, even though they would make money, that is not my drive.  So, since my drive is to see them made real and to see people profitting from them I should share.

One dream is to supply the isolated regions of the world with food so that they do not have to import it.  Importing food is expensive: the food costs a lot more to moved a long distance basic food stuffs can cost many times what they cost where there are lots of people, importing food costs a lot of green house gasses, many places have to fly perishable foods in and flying uses a lot of fuel as does driving hundreds to thousands of kilometers.  It is costly for the health of the people, good food costs a lot but imperishable junkfood costs less and increases health concerns.

So my idea is to set up hydroponic greenhouses in distant locations.  Particular locations would be the Northern portions of Canada.  The test locations would not be as profitable as the ideal locations but because of what is involved it is better to use areas that have more people nearby.  Good locations would be Edmonton Alberta and the area, Northern Ontario like Thunder Bay or Kapuskasing, Central Quebec like Val d'Or or Chibougamou and Labrador.

It would entail building a greenhouse, well insulated for the winters with ready access to power for lights.  All those locations would not have a shortage of power, but the trick is to tap into deep geothermal heat.  The geothermal heat has two purposes, the primary purpose would be to heat the greenhouses in the winter and cool the greenhouses in the summertime, if it is needed.  The second use would be to provide cheaper heat for the community.  The geothermal wells would have to be in the neighbourhood of 1000m deep as the isothermal gradient of the earth is typically 2.5°C per 100m. Twice that depth would be better to reduce the cost of hot water in the community but the largest expense of the operation is boring the wells.

The true locations would be further a field, in more extreme locations like Iqaluit, Yellowknife, Whitehorse, Inuvik, and other locations like northern Alaska, Iceland and other remote locations where food must be expensively transported.  Away from a continuous reliable power source, wind and solar power would have to fill the gap, generation of the light need not been continuous, but wind generation is usually greater at night and in winter.  Additionally wind is generally greater where there are no trees.

Cheaper more reliable food that is less expensive for the people, but can still get a good profit.  Supplying heat in colder climates would also generate profit and lower greenhouse emissions. Growing food would not be a carbon sink, but not transporting the food would and depending on if there are carbon taxes or carbon trading arrangements, this type of enterprise would be a good benefit.

If you are building infrastructure to build a greenhouse and heating it with geothermally heated water it would cost next to nothing to add a fish farm.  Locked off from possible contamination to local waterways, heated water to optimal temperatures, fed with additional food from the greenhouse, the fish can provide a source of cheap protein for locals who do not have a local source.  Ideally a vegetarian Carp species would be best, they prefer warmer temperatures, and are naturally vegetarian and so would suffer less on that diet.  The fish would also fertilize the plants and additional natural fertilizers can be acquired from the community.

The real problem is the start up funds and that is why I will never be rich.  Of course, it might be a crappy idea too.

Burning coal

So I had this thought this morning whilst showering.  I try to make them short because they consume so much energy.  Think about it.  To heat one liter of water 1°C it takes over 4000 Joules of energy, most water starts off at about 5°C and most water in showers is over 45°C, so that is 160,000 Joules per liter and most showers use more than one liter of water, much more really. 

So here is my thought, I have just used millions of joules of energy to heat water to have a shower and the water has just gone down the drain.  What if the water went somewhere else, like in the winter it went into the floor and radiated the heat into the house.  After or instead of it went into pipes beneath the sidewalk and the driveway and the heat was used to melt the snow and ice.  To prevent freezing of the pipes it could store the hot water in a bath and have the pipes enter the bath filled with an antifreeze liquid.

My point is we use energy to heat water for one purpose and then throw it away.  We might as well have power plants burning coal producing just smoke and hot air.

What if the hot water was used to pre-warm the water to be heated for the shower or the dishes or the wash.  Sounds sensible, eh!

GMOphobia phallacy

Lately people have been jumping up and down on GMOs, Genetically Modified Organisms.  Most people do not know what they are and the ones that are sure they know what they are, are wrong.  A few cases of GMOs have had some serious side effects like the modified corn plant that is immune to a common herbicide, so the farmer could grow the corn and use the herbicide at the same time to control the weeds.  Sounded good until some weeds became immune to the herbicide as well.  The weeds now compete with the corn and the herbicide does not work on them.

Another study released this summer proudly showed pictures of rats raised on GMO corn that were riddled with tumors and cancer seeming to prove that the GMO corn was dangerous to our health, but there was a problem.  The researchers did not tell the whole story.  They did not tell the public that they used rats that are used in Cancer research.  The rats were modified to be very susceptible to cancer so scientists could test cancer treatments.  The unethical researchers also did not tell the public that the control rats fed on normal corn had more cancer than the rats fed on the GMO corn.  The corn in question was modified so that they had a toxin that was lethal to insects.  The theory of the flawed research was that the toxin would be toxic to mammals too, but the toxin is inert in mammals but there is a similar toxin that is toxic to mammals, but not present in the corn.

Other famous GMO was the grain that had grasshopper DNA to allow it to be more frost resistant.  I imagine that people thought the wheat would taste like grasshopper, or that the plants would have wiggling insect legs.  The modification just allowed the plant to produce a protein that allowed the plant to survive a light frost and extend the growing season for the crop.  

The other thing is that humans have a very long history of genetic modification of our plants and animals.  The original corn had a cob smaller than your finger and grows only in Mexico, the native peoples took that plant and selected plants that had bigger cobs and over thousands of years we got the corn crop that we have today, wheat, apples, oranges, cows, carrots which were originally not orange, have all been modified over the years.  Granted the modification took years to become set, but they were all modified.

Canada has a history of modifying crops.  Our northern climate is bad for many crops, late and early frosts limit the growing season.  Wheat was modified to open the western prairies to immigration in the early part of the twentieth century.  The researchers combined the three best choices together to produce the first wheat for the northern prairies.  It has three times the DNA of a normal wheat plant, but it helped open the west for people and later modifications allowed wheat to grow and feed the world.

That we have been given the ability to do a thousand years of breeding in a few years by opening the genome and placing the desired genes directly into plant genome makes people fear them, but it is not inherently bad.

Direct genetic modification of our foods could do great things for us.  When I grew up I used to eat peanut butter sandwiches, but because a small portion of the children in society are allergic to peanuts, peanut butter has been banned.  However, if the offending protein is removed from the peanut and the other places it exists, children all over will be allowed to eat more peanut butter sandwiches in schools.  All food allergies can be done away with.

Alternatively, nutrient poor foods could be modified to increase the nutrition of the foods.  GMOs could bring about the end of hunger and malnutrition.  Plants could be modified to need less water, drought resistant plants.  They could be modified in a hundred different ways to do a hundred different things that could help people live and survive.

People who are against GMOs need to think about what they are really afraid of and take a long look at what the GMO does before they are against just because it exists.  People against GMOs would be against meat produced in a vat that no animal had to die for.

Food Banks

So the price of food is going up, and this is a good thing for a few reasons.  One, it tells people that Climate Change is real and has a real effect on your lives.  Two, people should pay more for their food, because higher quality food is better for you, but unfortunately quality is not increasing.  Higher prices means, hopefully higher wages for farmers.  Higher prices also will mean more people will be looking into growing their own food, also good for your diet.

The problem is, that e quality of the food is not increasing.  Also, higher prices means more people will not be able to afford food and more people will be going to food banks.  Food banks for anyone who does not know, is a place where you can go to get free food, when you can't afford to eat.  When I was young, they did not exist.  About twenty years ago, someone saw a need and created the first one, as a temporary measure.  Now as statistics say, four hundred thousand people go to Food Banks in Ontario every month.  Higher prices mean this will increase. A lot, and generosity is not keeping pace.

I have a solution.  In Smallville, there are three grocery stores, and they are not affiliated with each other.  In Big Smoke, grocery stores are often affiliated with each other in chains, two but usually three links: high end, low end and discount.  The perishable food starts in the high end and moves done the links as the food gets closer to the expiry dates.  In the last link, the food goes into the dumpster.  Most dumpster food is not bad but looks bad and unpleasant.  Some of the food has in fact expired.  But expired food does not necessarily mean it is spoiled.

So here is my idea, it would work in small towns and big cities.  Take the ugly food and the expired food, but not spoiled food, get them before they enter the dumpster and make meals out of them and freeze them or preserve them and donate them to food banks.  If there are no volunteers to supply the workforce to do this then the prepared food can be sold at cost and provide low wage employment.

Problems: the grocery stores are insured for their losses, so the insurance companies need to be contacted to do this.  Walmart, buys food on consignment and does not pay for food that does not sell, so the original food provider needs to be contacted and their insurance provider.  So there is a lot of legal and insurance lines that need to be investigated.

Of course, making food banks an institution of the past would occlude the need of this plan and would not that be a great thing?

The Current

I have been listening to podcasts of a radio show these past few week.  The Radio Show of choice this last few days has been The Current, which is on the CBC.  It is a more in depth look at the events in to world and the country.  It is very well researched and the people they speak to on the issues are well versed and balanced, facts and gender.  Which is to say they have a mandate to interview female experts for the questions of the day, if they exist and balanced in facts, but not to the point of stupidity.  

Many people think balanced means that you need give equal time for both sides of a controversy. This is not true and could be potentially dangerous.  As an example Climate Change.  Ninety-nine percent of scientists believe it is happening, one percent do not, but people listening to "balanced" reporting believe it is closer to fifty fifty, because every scientist interviewed has another interviewed from the other side.  Balanced reporting of climate change means interviewing one hundred scientists of whom only one disagrees from the rest.  

The quantity and quality of interviews is also great, the show lasts for ninety minutes five days a week with usually about six stories a day and two to three people interviewed per story. 

I do have one problem with it; a lot of the stories are tough to listen to.  But almost every story is thought provoking and informative.  This is what good radio should do, teach you something and knock you out of complacency.  

The thing is if everyone knows about the bad shit that is happening in the world and if people voice that it is bad and our Governments know that we do not want that stuff happening, perhaps they will enact measures to stop them from happening again.

An example.  In the nineteen nineties in Rwanda, the ruling tribe attacked and slaughtered the majority tribe, murdering nearly a million people in a week.  The UN observers were shocked and surprised and did not know what to do, I say this because I want to give them the benefit of the doubt.  And the entire world was shocked and everyone vowed that they would never let it happen again.

Forward to 2009 in Sri Lanka, government forces in the last days of a 26 year war against the Tamil Tigers refuses to allow a cease-fire to allow civilians to flee the area and presses the attack.  The UN workers and observers in the area are pulled out for their safety and when they return, the war is over.  But there were allegations that captured rebels were executed and depending on the reports up to 240,000 civilians were also killed.  All civilians who surrendered were interred into camps and tortured to find out if they were rebels.  Many who were released felt persecuted and fled the country as refugees.  Many of these people did get refugee status in this country, but some did not, those deported were reinterred and tortured again, but my country is still sending them back.  You see the refugees got here a year ago, but the report of the genocide was not released by the UN until last month and then it was not publicized.  

I did not here about this on the news, but on The Current an interview with one of the UN observers and his observations and guilt.

Makes you think and it is not comforting.  It makes me think about the horrible things happening in Syria and that we are doing nothing to stop it.

Please Peace, Please

One of the great things about being a Canadian is that we are allowed to criticize our government, rather currently we are allowed to criticize our government.  I am not sure how long we will have that right.  Today my government against the United Nations motion to recognize Palestine.  I disagree.

The history of the Jews is long and colourful, starting from a split from the Mesopotamian culture long ago to the creation of one of the longest enduring religions and culture of the world.  

Modern History had the Jews under constant persecution by all the worlds nations: all of Europe's nations, Canada and the United States.  There was a boat load of Jews fleeing persecution from Pre-War Nazi Germany, they went to England, they went to Canada, they went to America and no-one would let them land.  Only one country welcomed those Jews, Germany; it had a plan of where to put them.  There were rumours of what was happening in Germany during the war, but nothing solid.  When the invasion came, the world was shocked with what they found and every nation realized that they were wrong. 

There was a plan to create a homeland for the Jews, so that they could govern their own fate, their ancestral home was selected, they had lost it nearly two thousand years before when the Roman empire removed them to quell their rebellions.  But there were people living their already, the Palestinians.  The Palestinians had no relation to the ancient people of Palestine, whom the Jews removed to create Israel twenty-five hundred years previously, but it looked like history was repeating itself.  

Choosing a new homeland for a displaced people in a world full of people was the last act of the colonial Europeans in the area. And millions of persecuted Jews moved over a short time to the new Israel.   But the people who lived there did not want them there.  Jerusalem was the third most holy city of Islam, it was the Second most holy city of Christianity and it was the only holy city of the Jews, a holy Mosque was on the same site of the holy temple of the Jews.  And that part of Jerusalem was not part of the original land grant to the Jews. 

The trouble is, at this point, is that my view of the situation has been coloured by personal experiences, but I did some quick research to amend that.  Israel took in Jews from every mid-eastern country and their property was confiscated and then they attacked, three wars in twenty years and they survived.  And they gained territory.  They beat off their aggressors.  And then they attacked and they got a second nation to sign a treaty with them.  Jordan was the first in the first years of the wars and the second was Egypt.  Then the Middle-East backed off, because the worst state secret was let out of Israel, they had The Bomb.  

The problem is that they, as a nation, are cocky and they feel that it is alright to inflict on others what had been inflicted on them.  And that is the problem, because as any child knows, two wrongs do not make a right.

You see, I worked in a school in Big Smoke, it was in a Jewish section of the city.  It was a wealthy part of the town, which was bad, because the other kids grew up believing that all Jews are rich, like the stereotype.  One of the things that some organizations do is they fund young Jewish children to go to the Holy Land, via the concentration camps.  I strongly believe that knowing your history is a very important thing, but the glorification of that history, to give their children the feeling of justification for doing bad things is, well it makes them as bad as the people that did the bad things to them.

When the Nazis did the most repugnant and detestable things to the Jews, the Roma, Gays and everyone else that they did them to them to, they sold a chance to the Jews.  They were the bastard sons and daughters of Europe, peria of the continent, but the horrors of the concentration camps, broke the racism that had been fostered and encouraged for centuries.  But the treatment of the Palestinians by Israel, is, too much.  

No, before anyone starts to think my opinions are one sided, or that I hate the Jews, let me be clear: I think all three sides are wrong and if I could wipe all sides off the Earth, I would.  

The Palestinians have been in refugee camps for sixty years, none of the local Arab states, have offered resettlement, even though they kicked out all the Jews into Israel and took their property.  If they had offered the displaced people a home, this impasse would have been lesser.  If the Palestinians, with the other nations had not turned to terrorism to get their way, the impasse would have been lesser.  If the two sides had come together with peace on their minds, there would have been peace.

If the third side did not exist…. The third side.  If the third side did not exist, which wants the entire Mid-East to implode.  Now I sound like a conspiracist, with a wild theory, probably involving the New World Order, but no, I am not going to do that.  But I did spy on a conversation between two Facebook friends, who are no longer friends.  The Religious Right is very interested in the Middle East, that is the location that is mentioned as one of the signs of the Apocalypse and they, the chosen ones, want it to come about sooner.  Believe me, every time there there is new war in the region, they have to change their underwear.

Now Israel, is in a tough position as Iran draws near to the completion of their Atomic Bomb program.  When this happens, what will come of them and us.  Will they be able to forge peace.  I hope so.  I hope there will be peace.

But back to my original statement.  The Israeli government has consistently been ignoring the Palestinians and building concentration camp like walls around them.  One way to signal their government that they are on the wrong track and need to rethink their policies, to get back to the peace negotiation table, is to recognize the Palestinians in the United Nations.  So I disagree with my government's vote against Palestine, I disagree a lot more with my government than I agree with it, but who wouldn't; they are not far from being Fascists.

Real Steel a Reel Steal

I have been a bit tardy posting.  I have been writing, but I have not been finishing.  Today I watched TV.  I have been house sitting for a friend and they have the horrid creation.  I don't normally watch, mostly because I know myself, and I would get obsessive compulsive again with TV.  When I got it out of my system through years of working nights followed by working evenings, I discovered that it no longer had a hook in me: the shows were predictable, they were stupid, excessively violent, based on a premise that I was not invested in, because I had not been watching it and it meant I could read more.  

But then I watched a movie called Real Steel.  Would never have watched it in the theaters.  I would have said that it was a kids movie, or that it was excessively violent (funny that there is such a pairing).  It was robot boxing and that is like cool, I mean the most violent sport.  But the story was not about boxing with robots, it was about cheering for the underdog and a father realizing that his son, whom he has never showed an interest in, was the most important person in his life, if he would only let himself realize that.  Best movie that I have seen in a little while.  In many ways better than 007.  It was because I love rooting for the little guy and Hollywood knows how to play its audiences. I was sucked in with the robots.  Boxing Robots!!

Commercials have changed a lot since I stopped watching, they are mostly animated, they did not used to be this way, and when I mean animated; I actually mean that computer alteration in almost every ad.  I am such a goof for not watching.  Wait, I am not going to miss TV when this is done, I REALLY dislike the length of the commercials, and they way they are trying to talk to me.  I guess all the years of listening to skeptical podcast have had an affect on my Bullshit detectors.

Lonely feminist atheist

Sometimes I think if I were not a passive feminist, I could just reach out and grab what I wanted.  I am an asshole and a jerk sometimes, it might be the very nature of being male, but I just reached out and embraced that asshole and jerk side of my personality and stopped thinking about what the women in my life wanted first, I might be happier.  

Instead I feel like shit all the time, because I am always pining for women who treat me like a friend when I could be that friend AND so much more.  And all it would take is for me to reach out and grasp what they want but are unsure about.  Or perhaps don't know what they want, but when they got it would want more.  58% of college men would force women to have sex.  How many college men would force a kiss on a woman?  Probably a much higher number, like 7 in 8.  I wish that I were one of those men, because it hurts so much sometimes and just this year someone told me that they wanted to kiss me on a first date, and if we had, how would things have been different?  And once this year I read someone's mind and knew that I could kiss her if I wanted to for hours and hours and maybe that would have been something other than what I have now, which is nothing.

But the problem is, I AM a feminist and I believe that if something is taken and not freely given, it is wrong.  So I will remain a lonely moral person.

Take that Christian Moralists!  Score one more for the Atheists!

Seventh texted me tonight.  She hurts me by just existing sometimes, they all do.  Why do they all live in my heart?  Why can't I just move on.  Every woman that I have loved, came close to loving, lives in me forever and will never give me peace.  And I can never tell them that they are my ruin, because they are.  Ruin and salvation all in one.

How I love her despite the time that has past.

Killer Words

Sometimes the words are out of you and you went to a place that you did not mean to travel and what you meant to talk about has left you with more questions and with a feeling that you are about to lie to people and so you have to stop…

My work place is busy during some parts of the year and incredibly slow at others.  Right now it is just slow, bordering on incredibly slow, so I have time to listen to podcasts that I would like to listen to when I am busy.  The nature of my work is very hands on, but leans heavily to customer service in the spring and summer and not at other times, so no listening to podcasts when people are around, that said, I have time now.

One of the podcasts I listen to is Ideas, a CBC radio show and so it is free.  It was the first of seven radio documentaries on the Myth of Secularism.  They were talking about the idea of religion from the European context and the idea of religion in the Indian and Eastern context and I realized, a minor epiphany, that the word "Religion" killed people.  Religions kill people all the time, but this was not that, but the word killed them.

Context:  religion means something very specific to me as a person born in the West, but it means something completely different to someone from the East, particularly before European Conquest.  I can use the word religion because it is a word everyone who uses English understands.  English quantifies things and limits them; that is what English does.  Tolkien spoke to use from Treebeard's wooden lips, "Hill, such a short word to describe something that has been around since the start of creation and be there till the end of time.". Okay, he did not say that, but he did in a way.  Native American languages would describe the hill and put cultural context to it, but we English speakers condense it all into four letters and one syllable, hill.  We do this to Religion too.

If one took a census, the podcast said, and asked how many people in Japan follow what religion and compared it to the number of people in Japan, we would find the number of Shinto, Buddhist and other religions would total to be more than the population, millions more.  In Japan one can follow more than one religion at the same time.  This was the way of all peoples in the East, perhaps of all peoples everywhere at one time, but it changed in Europe at least.

When the British conquered India, they found a people that worshipped a plethora of gods and goddesses with a vast variety of stories, that changed from village to village, valley to valley, place to place.  The belief's had a core that stayed the same, all the names changed, and the importance of the deities altered position in the stories depending where you were, but they were all similar, sort of.  To this the stiff upper lipped British categorized them as Hindu and with that quick precise word froze and stratified a free flowing idea into solid fact.  According to the podcast, Hindu was a new word, or a word that was given a new use.  It is said that each god of that faith has an infinite number of names and then they go on to list them, all 108 of them.  I am not sure if by saying that there are 108 means that they are infinite, but I would think that it means that there are 108 names plus the other ones that are local.

It does not matter, but what does is that the Brits began to do censuses and to categorize all the people of India.  India is huge.  I mean it is a big country now but it was even bigger before, it included Pakistan, Bangladesh and Myanmar, it may have included Nepal, Butan and Sri Lanka too.  You begin to see it was really huge and it was diverse, far more diverse than Europe now and more than Britain.  Muslims lived among Hindus, Buddhists and Sikhs; they lived in harmony together.  More specifically, they lived together within the people.  One of the phrases attributed to Gandhi has always bothered me: Hinduism and Atheism are compatible.  How could that be?  The only way I could allow that idea to exist was to leave religion out of the argument.  Hindism could not just be a religion, it could be a philosophy too.  But now I understand it better.  People in India before British rule picked and chose from the faiths around them.  They could pray to Lord Shiva, practice non violence and brotherly love, and fast during Ramadan.  Each faith could offer something to each person.  

What I write is a gross over simplification, but it gets you into the right frame of mind.  If you were from a stratified English upbringing where all Europeans were one of a smattering of Christian faiths, but only one and you were trying to do a census among the mind-boggling complexities of Indian faith, the phrase "Please check one box" seems right, but is at the root of a very horrible chapter in world history.  

When you name something that never had a name with a simple word with little meaning, one meaning, the potential of the something is removed.  When you do this to a person you limit them, where there was no such limitation before.  You are a Hindu, you are a Muslim and you are a Sikh.  

My history of India is severely lacking but dividing a people into monolithic faiths seems like the first step in a story that ended with partition and war and general hostilities.  

I thought this was going to end differently, but I realized that talking about history of a nation so great, in size and diversity as well as deep in time, was dangerous, especially when this new thought of multi religious faith is so new to me, alluring and repellant.  So I will stop.

But imagine a world where faith was not so polarized…

Sex Secrets Vogue Won't Publish

Perhaps it is in my arrogance that I believe that I know the secret to relationships, even though I have never really had one, but maybe it is BECAUSE I have never had one that I know.  That I have always been looking in on relationships, because I have had many "girlfriends" telling me what was happening in their relationships that I know.  I put off a few people by telling them that I know the secret to having daily sex or nearly daily sex, or even more than daily sex.  

The secret is to love them and not yourself.  That is the only trick.  But the problem is that people ceased to understand what love is, true love.  Okay what is true love?  It is the type of love where you wake up and think only of your lover and try to show your love.  You walk around and you think of ways to make your partner happy. 

There is a lot of preparation to get to this stage.  You have to talk and you have to know the person.  You don't have to just know the person you have to be observing them to figure out what they like.  And these likes can fall into three types of interests.

The first interest is the easiest to find out and the hardest to engineer.  These are life goals, what they want to do with their lives and how they want to live their life.  This can be stuff like what their dreams are in life and these drams can change, but generally they are in a theme.  Some examples.  More-Passive-Than-Rain, wanted to be a dula, a person that assists in childbirth.  She was intensely interested in herbs and naturopathy and healing with herbs. She was interested in a close to nature type of living.  And there are ways to make her dreams come true.  On the simplest level, build a garden to grow some of your vegetables save a bit of money doing that too, make a significant portion of it a herb garden and plant flowers around too.  My point is it is doable to get close to some of her goals with little effort.

My mother wanted to give up a career in nursing to become a potter.  My dad bitched and complained a lot because nurses make a lot of money and have a really good pension and he supported her.  She took courses, bought a potter's wheel, a kiln and my dad installed the wiring for that kiln.  He helped her purchase a garage in town to be her shop and when he could he helped her.  She did not stop being a nurse until she could make a go of it.  My mom likes to garden too.  When I was three we moved a house in MiserySauga with a pool in the backyard, raised pool.  I don't remember the pool, I do remember the grass that replaced the pool and the huge flower gardens, with foxgloves taller than me on the edge and I remember my mother working in them.  I remember when we moved again and again that my mother did the landscaping and built her large vegetable garden.  What are you willing to do for the one you love?

MagicEyes was interested in Social work, because she was interested in helping women.  She was interested in reengineering society, by teaching boys (Men) on how to treat women correctly; knowing what the word 'No' actually means and more importantly modifying society so that men would not think of doing shit that would get a "NO"!

If there is a woman in my life, I know what they are interested in because I pay attention.

Second, what does she like?  What is her favourite flower, what candy makes her excited, what does he or she really like.  These are small things that you can incorporate into little gifts.  Gifting is an important part of showing your love for your Love.  They can be classed into three areas as well, material, immaterial and goal orientated.  Material is like artwork or nicknacks or jewelry.  Goal orientated is obvious, little gifts that further their personal goals.  Immaterial gifts are perishable gifts, flowers, plants, cards, food and stuff.  More examples.

MPTR liked elephants, gifts with an elephant motif were special to her.  Elephants are very social creatures and take care of their children.  She liked daisies over roses.  She liked a new addition to her herb garden over something that would die.  I imagine that MagicEyes would have liked it if I had acquired course material for her planned schooling, I know that feminist literature would turn her crank, gift certificate to the Woman's Bookstore on Harbourd Street in Big Smoke.  She liked living plants over cut flowers . . ..  

Gifts are important, but there is a trick to them, they can not be regular.  Regular gifts become boring or at worst expected and when they do not arrive bad.  Ideally they should be planned and acquired on a whim.  That you planned it means that you were thinking of them for a long time to acquire the gift.  Whim means you found something perfect for them and acquired it for them.  Oh and because I have seen people do this, gifts should not be attached to labour, like the new vacuum cleaner, unless you, the gift giver, are using it.

Third, the most important thing is actions, of which all of the above a are merely subsets of action.  Knowing what she or he likes, what they care about, what makes them happy.  Examples.

MPTR did a lot of house work because she has a sub teenage boy and now a baby.  Picking up the clothes off the floor is an action of care for her, it is making her day easier.  Doing the dishes, dusting, cooking dinner, taking the trash out.  Taking her son out building him a tree fort, playing with him.  Picking the apples off the apple tree rather than letting them rot on the ground.  There are hundreds of ways of showing your love.  Showing your love shouts louder than the words.  

Being selfless towards your Love, will ensure many things in your relationship: love returned, if you are interested in sex, lots of it, if you are not maybe she will try to observe you, and try to please you too.

Remember:  listen, observe and act.

Maybe one day I will even be able to put the theory into action.  Maybe I will even get to have a reciprocated love affair.

Seventh Day Adventist Fraud

So I have a friend, don't laugh.  She is a Seventh Day Adventist.  I think she is deluded.  Actually I think that she s something when she was blissedout of her mind on weed and she was hanging out with some people who were smoking too much dope and she thought that the video made a lot of sense.  Because the presenter claimed to be a scientist and found science lacking and had produced a video that talked about how science was wrong and the Bible was right.  The problem with the video was the it was all wrong, and my friend did not have a good grounding in two of the most critical subjects that everyone should learn, at least on a basic level, Science and Critical thinking.  So in her blissedout, smoke clouded mind it seemed to make sense, that evolution was a conspiracy and people called the New World Order was trying to control the world, which is something that if you propose to someone who has all their faculties intact and a basic level of education, will get at most a mild smirk and a good laugh when the presenter turns their back.

But she believes now and I can't change her mind.  And I won't try.  I won't try because I know her and I know her like I know myself.  Because she is like me.  I know that when she looked out in the world when people were not talking to her she was standing on the brink of a hole filled with darkness of the unpenetratable depths, just like I saw when I was a youth, only now I can walk around it and not look down.  Only she can't stop looking and it tells her to jump, but when she is with this farcical religion, she does not hear the voice, so I let her be.  Because I love her with all my heart.

However, she is following a farcical religion.  She believes that the world is going to end in her life time, in the next five to ten years.  And if she believes she will be saved.

Ellen G. White is said to be their profit.  You can look her up on Wikipedia, she is the most reprinted female author on the planet, translated into nearly one hundred languages, she is one of the architects of the Seventh Day Adventist Church.  She had an accident when she was a child, a Brian injury and heard voices; she heard God.  She wrote down what God told her to write.  She reinterpreted the bible and expanded on the stories that were there.  A fable that was just a few lines in the bible became a chapter and a sermon on what it meant.  Preachers and priests could just read what she wrote and they would not have to change a word for their parishioners.  If they chose to.  But you see, the problem is, that she claimed that God gave her these messages and that is the flaw that exposes her fraud.

Seventh Day Adventists claim that the current church is false because the Catholic Church at all Christian churches was a tool of the Devil.  That right from the start, the Church of Rome has been Corrupting the word of God.

So, armed with superior knowledge and the Internet I went into it and asked for information on one book of the Bible not in the Bible: the Book of Thomas.  Discovered Athanasius of Alexandria.  The First Council of Nicaea.  And Biblical canon.  You see the first thing that religion found that it was very important not to teach people to read, because once they can read they can reason.  

The gospel of Thomas was a lost book of the Bible.  Bishop Athanasius, leader of the first Council of Nicaea was one of the people that determined what biblical writings were to be included in the official Canon of the Church, and the rest were to be destroyed.  This is the sort of things that the Seventh Day Adventist would say is an example of  the Roman Church's corruption by the devil.  This is actually a nail.  The Roman Church had every copy destroyed but one copy was spirited into the desert of Egypt, where it was buried and forgotten, but Egypt is very dry and just after the second world war, some one found it.

So my reasoning was, if Ellen G. White was a true profit inspired and directed by God to write about the books of the bible, why did she only write about the Official Canon of the Bible as presented by the hated corrupt Roman Church?  Why did she not, divinely inspired as the Seventh Day Adventist suggested, write these missing books?  The prophecies that the Adventists believe in hinge upon her divine nature.  She is a fraud.  If she was divinely inspired, the Gospel of Thomas would be written up as one of the books the corrupt Church of Rome hid.

If she had written up stories from a book that would not be discovered for one hundred years, she would have proved to all that she talked to God, as it is the sect is based on a popular fictional writer, sort of similar to Scientology.

Robots 2-4, Spirit thief & the Warded Man.

The weird thing about writing for me is that I can't do it if I am reading.  If you read me or if you look at the contents you will see I have not been writing much; I have been reading.  I read the first books of the robot series and the first of the last, it was only after I read that last one that I realized there was another one to come. Isaac Asimov was a good writer for his time, the forties and the Fifties when he wrote his first books, the writing had ideas and the story was secondary, the characters were abrupt and raw like the crime writing of those times.  But after twenty odd years Asimov came back to his character that made his career and wrote another story that took place just after the second and we get to see how Asimov's writing had improved.  Gone was a lot of the wood.  Wood meaning that character was not stiff and blunt like a club, oh he was still a fifties style detective, but he had depth…and sex.  The book was longer too and it was good reading, better than the books that allowed him to write and get his work published by his name alone.  Now I just have to find the next book at my favourite bookstore in Big Smoke, Pheonix-Bakka.

I read a easy to read book too.  To be clear I mean that the language was easy and the flow was gentle and easy but that means that it was well written enough to feel comfortable when I read.  It was called the Spirit Thief, by Rachel Aaron.  There are sequels and I will be looking for them ASAP.  In this world there are two types of mages, the bad mages who dominate spirits and bend their wills according to they suit the mage's desires and there are good mages who make bargains with spirits for aid in exchange for part of the mage's spirit.  And then there is the protagonist who treats spirits as people and talks to them and does things for the spirits and that spirits do things for him because they like him, genuinely.  This is a pantheistic world where there are spirits in everything and the size of the object and the nature of the object lends traits and power to the said spirit.  Some mages want to get fame and power and want people to worship them because of their power.  Others just want to be famous for having the biggest price on their head and kidnap great kings and release them on the condition that they raise the price on their head and nothing more.  Sounds silly eh, but it was a fun read.

The Warded Man.  I read this about a month ago, before the Robot series and it is still in my head.  In a land that was like our is now, with a past that included demons that preyed on the people.  The people defeated the Demons and they then forgot…and some things should not be forgot.  The demons came back and now it is a thousand years later people are fighting back but humanity is losing.  They have wards, symbols that are like magic that protect against the demons but Every time that wards fail, people die.  Every generation is smaller than the generation before and as the generations shrink the knowledge of the past dwindles and morality declines.  This is a story that follows three people raised in different parts of the land each holds a key to the past and a desire to change the tide in the perpetual war that people have stopped fighting and seem to be just waiting to die.  They have the key to inspire and and to lead the rest into a safe future.  Their are many loose ends from this first novel and I am anxious to read the second book, so much so that I might forgo a Terry Pratchett novel to get back to this story…good thing there isn't one though because I am not anxious to see if it is true.  It is by Peter V Brett, small typeset with many pages . . ..  

Tired

So. This week I received messages from the three women that have meant the most the most to me in the past year, MPTR, MagicEyes, and Seventh ( who I have not mentioned because she hurt me the most) just before I had my first date in six months.  Which is just weird.  I never expected to hear from MagicEyes nor Seventh again.  So both stirred up repressed thoughts.  MPTR called while I was driving so I could not answer.  It was all a coincidence that they sought me out just before I was trying to put them be hind me.  Such is chance.  I put them out of my mind for the date, but I now wish one of them was in the slightest bit interested.  Lately I have been feeling like I have been selected against.  Sexual selection has found me wanting and I am a dead end.  I want to die.

I have to live to see the Hobbit.  Hopefully when I do I have another reason to live.  This is Asperger's related Depression, depression caused because I realize that I am not normal.  I look around and I feel empty as I look and see people interacting.  I want to, but I can't, I can't talk, but in to that group; I am separate from them.  Date did not go well, I thought it did but she did not. Which is a bonus because she did not drive and lived an hour away., I cruise the internet, all the people are an hour away or more.

Sandy!

I don't like to use names.  It keeps this blog anonymous and that way I can talk about things with out without making people think I am talking about them or knowing exactly who I am, if you don't know already, but sometimes I want to give a shout out to someone a friend that I love and respect and that means using their name.  And especially since my friend is an author and I hope her great success, but here is the but, we have lost contact, or rather something happened and I don't know what.  I might have done something or maybe she did not want to keep contact.  But you see I fear that it might have been me, because part of my condition, Asperger's  Syndrome, I am super conscious about bothering people.  I want to talk to someone and I want to call them, but since I do not want to disturb them I don't, or I fill myself with vexation trying to figure when is the best time to call them.  I had another friend whom I did not know when to to call them so I called them at the absolute wrong time.

So I stopped calling my friend, Sandy, except on her birthday.  Which may have been the wrong time to call her.  It may have been the wrong time to call her because it was not enough or maybe it was a friendship that was going nowhere, or I was going nowhere or I said something once and I don't know what and I offended her.  You see this is how I think.  

I have not physically seen Sandy in about ten years, but I think about her about once a day.  This is not something special, I think about MagicEyes more than once a day, I think about WaifGirl(I have to think of a better name for her) more than once a day, I think about MPTR more than once a day, I think about Benita and Hyun, Tim and Greg, and about a dozen other people more than once a day, so thinking about Sandy is not something she needs to be concerned about; it is a mental artifact about my version of AS.

I just reviewed my friendship with her, including the first time I met her and when we started being friends, and the party that I last spent time with her.  I miss you Sandy, but I have gotten used to missing you.  

A couple of years ago she relented and added me as a friend on FB, so I can see what she is doing in her life, but I feel that that is as much contact that she wants from me.  I think she got tired of my letter that I would send to her, not taking the hint.  Last Summer I saw a post from her at a location near to where MagicEyes lived.  I knew she cottages near her, but I did not realize that it was but 10 kilometers away; I did not go and check it out, I did not try to accidentally run into her, I did not do any of the demented things I tried in high school. But I am writing this blog entry and I will likely send it to her.

Sandy, Sandra, the light in my eyes dances when I say you name.  I hope you are happy. You can tell me to delete this post if you want.  Happy 27th birthday on Saturday.

Two names on a Cenotaph

I was going to do this for Remembrance Day this year.  I was going to talk about how I was connected to the wars.  But instead I will talk about the cenotaph.  This year I went to the public service in the town.  It was a social occasion people came and greeted each other and they talked and the kids talked and played, but there were not that many kids.  Most people were older than me, but I would say I was the median age. There were a lot of younger people that were never touched by war.  My father was born in the war time years, my mother was on the crest of the baby boom after the war.  Both had parents in the war, my father's father in the infantry I think, maybe in the engineers; it was never talked about.  My mother's father was in the RAF as a recon pilot.  My my mother's mother was nurse in a POW camp in Espinola.  Through them, my parents, I have a connection to the war.  But others do not.  During the moment of silence, there were cars driving past, were the drivers thinking, what is going on over there?  Oh yeah that thing.  We're they born so that they never had to serve?  Were their parents?  Did they ever care?  

The cenotaph has been augmented over the past few years.  Two new stones, large, black and shiny, with all the names of those that made the ultimate sacrifice.  Two stones, one for each World War.  Two lists of names from different times of the town.  

After the movie I was walking through the common grounds, marked by the cenotaph, I saw a group of kids playing near the stones, one a girl found one of the wreaths had fallen from when the clean up crew had removed the chairs.  She picked it up and placed it reverently back where it was supposed to go.  I had been approaching the stone to read the names.  I greeted them and gathered them closer and then I pointed out the names that I knew, men who had died nearly ninety years before they were born.  I pointed to Lt. Percy Jackson, who is buried in Balsam Cemetery, died in 1917.  I pointed out Clarence Taylor, my great-grandfather's brother, who died, i am not sure if I am spreading myth, on the last day of the war in 1918, but that is what I told them, something to crystallize the idea of the war.  They said that it sucked to die on the last day.  It did suck.  It sucked that anyone should die in war, but on the last day or week, that double sucks.  

But if there ever is a first person to die in a war that sucks too.  I hope, sincerely, that children only know war at the cenotaph and that know one is the first to die in war again.

Coital endevours

Warning sexual content.  The warning is for friends and acquaintances who might stumble here. 

I have probably written about this before, it is just that it has been on my mind more than usual, which given the nature of it means that I have been thinking about it a lot more than usual. 

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is something that people have on their own and it is horrible.  I know a hand washer, washed until he bled.  I know a STD checker, who checks compulsively at odd times in any given day to see if they have spontaneously contracted Herpes.  This is all horrible for them and I do not mean to make marginalize OCD, but you can get treatment for OCD and there are drugs for it and lastly you can be cured of it.  I am Obsessive Compulsive everything, granted not to the degree of OCD, but over a broader range.  When I read, I forget everything, when I game I game for hours, when sex is on my mind…. Well I am getting better, I can work and I can do other things, but it is always in the background.

Because I think about things a lot I tend to have more insight to them, more than people that do them, because they don't think about it.  Sex is this thing that is always there for me in the corners of my eye or right up front with my every thoughts.  It disturbs me, but it would disturb everyone else if they knew exactly when, where and how often.  So here is some insight on sex.

I feel that going up to strangers or friends and acquaintances and asking to have sex with them is vulgar and rude; it is a form of assault, so I would never do that.  Never ever, but I want to and I think about it all the time.  Except when I am in love.  When I am in love I am monogamous in my thoughts and my actions.

I am single though.  Very single, with no prospects in this small town filled with people with small closed minds who get married just out of high school and all think smoking and drinking 'til they fall over is fun.

Lately, I have wanted sex a lot.  I have been turning to the Internet and dating sites to try to find someone, anyone to help me out.  I, when I am not in this state, go to dating sites and I look for relationship people. People that want to share intellectual discourse and people who want to fall in love before having sex.  I want this, because I love being in love and actually being in love is a hard thing to do.  But I want to try.

Currently I am seeking anything, but something immediate.  Which is a little like masterbation.  Sex is masterbation, most people would think this is dumb, but I have spent a lot of time thinking about it and I am not most people.  I have stated previously that I have a love hate relationship with sex, odd for someone who obsesses about it.  I am hypo-sensitive, meaning I feel little or no sensation, during sex.  I am hypersensitive, I feel pain and discomfort, when people tickle my sides.  I know this is a mental aberration, but I can't stop it.

Masterbation is an autosexual feat that everyone is intimately familiar with, it gives people pleasure when there is no one available to help you out.  I can accomplish this easily whenever I am alone and at this time I do this often.  Average for me is about 2-4 times a day, recently it has been more.  But it is just masterbation, getting off; it is empty

Sex is not masterbation, it involves another person so it is social.  It is about personal and group gratification, but because it is with two or more people it is social behavior and it is by definition more intimate and different than masterbation.  There are two ways to go about sex.  First find another person who wants the same and have sex.  The second is pay someone to let you have sex.  Most people think that the later is dirty and bad or just wrong, but sometimes it is the only option.  It is not an option for me, hopefully.  Professionals need to be paid and paid proportionally to there time spent.  For most people this is not an obstacle.  Most people can get to business and be done in fifteen minutes.  I am hypo-sensitive; I need a lot longer.  I need a few hours.  At the end of three hours I still won't be "gratified", but I will be tired and I hopefully won't need to have sex for a while.

Making love is entirely different.  It is social, emotional and physical.  The players are present for each other on all levels and I don't need hours.  There is a real tangible benefit for me to be in love.

Kissing: I don't need to have sex to have intimate contact kissing is enough.  In so many ways kissing is more intimate than sex.

Right now I am looking for intimacy and I am looking in places that I do not consider proper, right now it is a more powerful drive, it may drive me to seek professionals.  If I had more money and if they kiss.

Nothing kills a good mood like writing a few letters to people on a dating website.

Two people I think about

I miss Magic Eyes.  I told her when I first started seeing her that after we stopped that it would be difficult for me to start seeing other people because I form attachments slowly and lose them even slower.  For example, the last time I saw her, I found her to be the most attractive person I knew.  Later she said that she did not want to see me again, ever.  I was okay with that because I knew that I was at fault.  But every time I then went out I was thinking about her.  It has been months and last Sunday I went out to a local festival thing and I spent most of the time thinking about her and wishing that she was there.  But I don't miss her a lot.  I try not to miss her at all.  I started reading again, something I have not been able to do since More Passive Than Rain.  

MPTR still calls me.  She tells me disturbing things and expects me to keep them under my hat.  She told me that her Boyfriend has set up a camera in the woods outside her house with a motion detector that takes pictures when ever movement is detected.  He does this because he does not trust her.  He told her that he does not want her having visitors, nor does he want to her to leave the house.  He set the camera up to monitor who comes and if she leaves too.  He says that he will pack up his kid and leave if he sees her leave the house or someone he does not like, me, come to visit.  She also tells me that he has been commenting on news reports where a man kills his girlfriend or wife, by saying, "I wonder if she cheated on him?"  As if that is a valid reason to kill anyone, as if cheating is a valid reason to do any violence.  I asked her why she puts up with it?  But then, why do I bother; I named her More Passive Than Rain for good reason.   So I told her friend.  I will tell her family members.  I will tell you all.  But I will not go over there; he owns a gun and I think if I show up on the camera he will use it, twice.  

Magic Eyes, I miss you.  I see you reading my blog every once in a while, I stopped using SimCity and tumblr, because I did not see the point anymore.  But I do not want to be part of your life, I just want to miss you, that is it.  What I said about trans women loving lesbians holds water still.  I don't hate you, I never will, I never have. I want the best for you.  

If anyone of you knows MPTR, please go over there and talk some sense into her and knock that camera out of its tree.