Red Curtains and Falling off the Internet

So... instead of waiting for something profound to come to me in perfectly formatted and amazing blogworthy awesomeness, I have decided to just write about random stuff which is what I seem to do best. Right, so on the title... My dear readers (all 3-5 of you) probably already know as I have alluded to previously that I have had my working hours switched to what normal mortals term anything from 'pretty odd' to 'downright ungodly'. This has afforded me some unique opportunities, not all of which I have taken advantage of. But I have learned a thing that I am posting on here because I am quite pleased with myself about it, even though it wasn't my own idea and was in fact suggested to me by someone else but hey, it worked and it's awesome so I'm blogging about it. I'm talking about red curtains. I had a brief look around, not at all comprehensive, looking for when and where red curtains were first used by people who had to work odd hours and sleep during the day but I struck out. Svenska reliably informs me that this is a done thing in Scandawhovia, although she also is striking out on the historicity of it. Anyway. When you're on a ship the lighting in berthing (except for during clampdown/inspection) is red instead of white because there's always a day sleeper or two (trying to catch forty winks despite said clampdown noise, inspection noise, flight quarters/man overboard/general quarters being called). Your eyes don't process red light and white light in the same way. So at a tip from a saltier sailor than myself, I invested 20 dollars into red sheets that completely and utterly clash with the rest of my decor (which tends to be refrigerator white, haze grey and navy blue- and the saddest thing about that is that it's _voluntary_). These delightfully clashing red sheets screen my windows and permit me to sleep during the day without the aid of an eyemask/my pillow/pulling the sheets over my head and boiling. It's amazing. I cannot recommend it highly enough. I put them up with a quantity of packing tape which I figured would annoy my landlady less than nails although I've decided in the interests of keeping it up I will have to alternate packing tape and a few carefully placed tacks. So yes. That was not at all profound. The second half of my post title is not the same as the first. I am not referring to myself when I mention falling off the internet although I have done that in the recent past... I'm referring to a writer whose work I thoroughly enjoyed years ago when I followed every update s/he (it's the internet- I'm pretty sure it's a 'she' but not certain) made with bated breath. This author had read something I'd written and liked it, and then went on to write a long, incredibly awesome play and credited me with partial inspiration for it. I was amazed. And then I got too busy for many things that once held my attention on the internet and even though their project wasn't finished, I stopped checking for updates. About a year ago, I remembered this project and I had to check again. I did and I found that nothing had been updated, _and_ I found the link to the author's blog and started reading. I don't really know what to say. Their blog was a compelling, incredibly painful read. As I read it I felt as though I was reading something that I myself could have written had my life taken a different turn in my teens. I felt I had so much in common with this person who had a deep love for Tolkien's Silmarillion, and then that there was this enormous gulf between us where I'd chosen to keep the faith I'd been raised in _despite_ my parents, and this person had suffered incredibly and not been able to keep his/her faith. Not only had they not been able to keep it, they were going around attacking it for good measure. It was such a strange read. Anyway. Today I checked again for updates, no luck. Worse, the site that had originally hosted the project was not in good repair/recently updated. I found a mirror and was able to get some of the project and I'll be checking back until I can get everything that was up. And I thought about how you don't know what happens when people stop posting where you're used to seeing them. Sure they might be somewhere else, or using a different screen name or something. They might be just fine but no longer have the same interests. But not knowing and silence on the line can be a bit worrying. Why should I worry about this total stranger? I've read their writing, and that's more than I've done with the majority of people I work with or see eery day. It's a little different somehow than a total stranger. Even if the ideas I have about this person are completely wrong, I feel like I should pray for them and I hope they're all right (now would be a good time to point out that the artificial invention of single pronouns for persons of unknown gender is irritating to me yet I do wish that like some languages we had a nongendered way of referring to one person.. it would be handy in rare situations like this because saying 'they' and 'them' when I really mean just one person rather than more than one is driving me nuts). I know, I know how many people in Real Life who I'm praying for already, or should be praying for and haven't thought of it yet, and I'm going to add one more person to the list? Well. Yeah. And, dear readers, I would like to ask you to pray for this person too. We might never know who they are or what if anything happened with them, but that's life. That's something I'm working on, trying to realize that the small things count, and that it's all right if we don't know how or why that works in this lifetime.

With Proper Precautions

So no pics as of yet, I still haven't betaken myself over to Best Buy to acquire the necessary cable but I REALLY have to because this 'entire memory card is full' thing is getting very old. And I have at least one friend who is patiently waiting for photos from over a year ago...
But back to the title of this post. Auntie Seraphic, of Seraphic Singles fame (buy her book, read her book, read her blog, she is awesome), recently posted about her experience of being locked out in the cold and the dark in a foreign country without means of contacting her husband. She brought up some very good points about preparedness and how she was more prepared as a Single than as a Married, or perhaps that her preparedness skills were slipping due to complacency.
I'm thinking about my ideas of preparedness and trying to see if they could use work. You see, I'm feeling very proud of myself due to a recent solo accomplishment. Can I get more cryptic? Yes. Will I? Maybe.
At any rate though, while on the whole I think I did well on this solo jaunt there were a few things that I would of course change if I had unlimited resources etc. For one, if I had any way to avoid it, I wouldn't go alone again. I know now that I _can_ go alone. Bad, terrible, horrible and nasty things will not happen to me simply BECAUSE I'm alone. They might, but my venturing out alone would probably not be the sole factor in it. Well, maybe.
At any rate, I found that by myself- and I mean, completely by myself, out of earshot and eyesight of strangers with an open and empty world around me- I talk to myself. Out loud. I'm pretty sure that's not great. I don't think it's a sign of the 'lock me up now' crazies, but I started to get irritated by my own need for constant audio commentary. It's just that even with signs of civilization around, and not _too_ far away, some part of me needs to be reassured that I'm still connected with the world at large or with some kind of society.
Occasionally, when I wanted to take a picture of a cool place with myself in the picture, I would get depressed because I have realised the misery that is taking a picture of oneself. It really isn't easy. You tend to end up either taking a picture of yourself blinking, or a picture that largely features scenery with half of your face in the picture on an edge.
All in all though, I only had a few really bad moments, the worst of which was once when I got a bit disorientated. I knew where I was when I started off, and I knew where I wanted to go, but somewhere along the way I missed a turn and ended up somewhere unfamiliar and more than a little scary. It was getting dark too, and that was the worst part of it. In daylight, I know the exact same place wouldn't have been nearly as frightening, but at night, on my own, I was really scared. I was especially scared because I had been doing so well. It was like... like riding a bike when you're still a bit wobbily. I'd been doing really well on straight bits and got the hang of corners, but all of a sudden I was pelting down a steep hill (ala Monterey) fraught with intersections with other streets, streetlamps and pedestrians.
Actually if there had been some more people it wouldn't have been so bad. I just had the feeling that I'd fallen off the edge and there was nothing. Finally though I came across some help- and found out that I'd been going pretty much exactly 180 degrees the wrong way. So I had to go back the way I'd come, and that was something I didn't like very much. I was so relieved when I found my landmark again and headed off in the correct direction, watching vigilantly- making sure I wouldn't make a similar mistake again.
So what are the proper precautions I'm talking about? Hmm... Still not really sure myself. I mean, the ones I took were 'blend in in every way possible', 'research' and 'stick to well-travelled areas'. What would I do differently? I honestly don't know. Did I have a wonderful time? Yes. Would I do it again? In a heartbeat. Would I recommend it? Yup. What would I change? I still have to come back to the fact that 'alone' is not my preferred mode, for all that I'm capable of doing it. I've learned some very valuable things about myself and the world at large, but in the future... who knows?

Anonymous Internet and Politics

I was listening to the radio yesterday and the man being interviewed was talking about that horrible crime committed by the insane young man in Arizona. The interviewee laid the blame less at the feet of the man who pulled the trigger, and more at the feet of those who 'used inflammatory language' and 'the anonymous internet hate-machine' saying tings like "I hope the zombie armies aren't about to come out of the woodwork.'
While I agree with him that teen pop culture has an unhealthy taste for zombies, vampires and gang violence, I was worried by his take on the internet- specifically anonymity on the internet.
Regarding the shooting in Arizona. I'm pretty sure the guy who did it was either off
his meds or undiagnosed and not taking meds. That being said I can return to the issue of anonymity.
I am part of a generation that has grown up with personal computers and the internet. It is not news to me. My brother is more technologically adept than I am, but I am still able to do everything I need/want to on the internet and I can make it look relatively easy. The man who was being interviews was from what is being called the 'technology immigrant' generation. He's like the guy who comes over from the mother country and learns just enough English to do simple transactions- buy groceries, find the restroom, say please/thank you.

I'm like someone whose parents came over from the mother country when I was still tiny and said parents were rich enough to get me into a good (non-bilingual) school, and I'm conversant in both languages. I can talk to the old people at my church and we understand each other 90% of the time (they lose me for a bit when they talk about things like canning fruit at home). I can also talk to people my age who've grown up in this country and I can understand them 90% of the time (though they lose me when they start talking about pop culture references from their own childhood).

The point of this rather over-extended analogy is that I have grown up with a different expectation of what the internet should be like. My friends and I were pissed as all get out when youtube started taking down videos with copyrighted material in them. We were used to being able to share media like that freely. Whether or not we should be able to is a topic for a different post. More to the point right now is the anonymity. People have many personas online, legitimate, deliberately cultivated personas. For example- you log onto your professional email and your personal email in the morning and you read your emails. After that, you sign in with a different screen name to your blog and write a post. After that, you go on Amazon to do some shopping, with a different screen name. Maybe you belong to a gaming forum or two and you have a screen name for each. That's easily six different screen names. Your professional one will probably be your right name or some clever play on your right name. Your personal one might be more flippant- perhaps referring to some hobby you have. Your blog screen name will probably be significant to you in some other way. While your Amazon screen name might be the same as your professional email address, Amazon studies what you buy and tailors its suggestions to you. It could be said that the website gets an idea of who you are- and that can be pretty amusing when you buy some really unrelated things! The gaming forums are the ones where I think it is most likely that who people think you are will have the least resemblance to who you really are. This, at least when it has happened to me, has been a combination of vagueness on my own part and a tendency of my fellow gamers to make assumptions based on who they are.
Is this wrong? No. My fellow gamers don't need to know my age, gender, profession, state of residence or anything else personal about me. All they need to know is that I like the same kinds of games that they do and that I'll be on at more-or-less this time a few days a week.
And I can't help it if they make assumptions about my age, gender, profession, state of residence or anything else personal about me based on stuff like "I enjoy reading history and historical fiction, I love cold weather and sudoku."

Sorry this post is a bit rambly, but I left to do other things and I can't seem to find the thread of it again... Anyway. Two more things I'll add, then I'll quit for the day.
First, I recently saw a video of an attack on a WoW funeral. No, it wasn't someone's character who had died, it was the player. Her friends decided to hold a memorial service for her online and it was attacked by a bunch of idiots. I know those people who were responsible later said things like "We wouldn't do something like that in real life" but the fact that they would do it _online_ because that makes it okay is not right. I also feel that was a failure on the part of the game designers to not have some kind of safe-zone or weapons/magic-free sanctuary where people could peacefully gather. Conduct online matters, if we don't all want to be labeled as part of the 'zombie army'.

Second, I have a confession to make. Once, years ago, I did use my internet anonymity 'for evil' as it were. Someone I knew had screwed up their own life considerably and was making great strides to screwing up the life of one my acquaintances. I was fed up with this person and I found their live journal. I read it, and I saw exactly how much of a mess their life was. If I'd been older I hope I would have been able to see that this person needed professional help. As it was, I was still so angry with the individual in question, that between what I knew from the lj and what I knew from real life, I had ammunition. So I commented anonymously on their live journal. I said some very hurtful and perfectly true things. I dug my nails into half-healed wounds and I ripped.
I shouldn't have done that. I know that now. I have no excuse.

Don't blame 'the internet hate machine' or 'the zombie army'. Blame people, poor decision making and human nature.

Nota bene: I hate the grammatical corkscrews that keeping someone gender-anonymous has caused but deal with it. For the record, I haven't seen or heard from the person in question for seven years and I hope I never will. I am praying for this person.

Merry-Christmas-and-Happy-Feast-of-St-Steven-the-Protomartyr!

There, now I'm not behind! Hurrah!
So what can I write about that hasn't been written about regarding Christmas? Pretty much nothing. So, in the absence of new subject material, I will go after some older material, after I air one grievance-
The lyrics of 'In Dulci Jubilo' are FAR superior to 'Good Christian Friends Rejoice'. It is NOT 'hard Latin' and it has substance, where 'Good Christian Friends Rejoice' is a fuzzy bit of marshmallow fluff. Only not even that because marshmallow fluff is kind of tasty (while being simultaneously disgusting- think of how much sugar that is!!). I don't think it's a huge stretch to say that lame hymns are a contributing factor to people leaving the church. Why? Because I've found people remember bits of songs far more easily than say, the Eucharistic prayers. I've found myself randomly humming bits of the Divine Liturgy and I've quoted parts of it (sometimes while singing it) to people who ask me about 'my faith and what it means to me'. If you have good solid doctrine in your hymns and not just fluff, people may find it easier to understand aspects of their faith. What a thought, right?
Okay, rant over. Promise.
So Christmas in the vicinity of Ft. SINYF. It's SNOWING! What the heck? Not complaining, just shocked! I thought it wasn't supposed to snow here! The locals seem for the most part to have taken the smart course of action for them which is to stay indoors and cower. This strange precipitation from the sky might be a harbinger of nuclear winter or something. I mean, it's sooo weird... It's like rain but not!
Seriously people? It's not even accumulating. You don't get to complain about snow unless there's two feet of it outside, you are completely snowed in with intermittent power, and your mom decides to make 'colonial herb bread' with the last of the food in the pantry. Then and only then may you complain that said bread tastes like sand and was probably the sole reason for a high mortality rate in the colonies.
Yesterday and Christmas Eve, I had people over for food/games/socializing. The food was good if I do say so myself as the person who bought and prepared almost all of it. The exception was a strange sort of salmon quiche made by one of my guests with the salmon I bought but didn't have time to prepare. The rest of said salmon will probably be my dinner tonight. Yum!
So what else... we played a rather outdated game of Outburst which was still fun, even though we had to remove from play cards like "Famous Baseball Pitchers 1960-1990", and "College Football Team Nicknames". This second was more due to the guests than the age of the game. On the whole, we are not sports fans. That would be far, far too normal. What is normal anyway? Why should I care about sports? I don't know any of the athletes personally. I feel a sort of... not quite patriotism, but I guess a sort of back-yard nationalism... ooh that sound bad too. Um... micronation-sentimentality... No, that won't do either. Regional pride sounds daft. Er...
You know, that feeling about a geographic region that you either currently inhabit or have inhabited or have relatives from, that you feel a sort of fondness for. You'd like to go back and vacation there, maybe even live there, but you can't say truthfully that you're FROM there. Whatever.
Anyway. When did this get to be about sports? Sorry... back to party stuff. I think everyone had a good time. I'm not much for hosting parties. I mean, there was a housewarming party ages ago, and then this. And I forgot so many things that I meant to do or get before it started. Planning a party is complicated. I think it requires more free time and energy than I actually had. But all things considered, it was not bad. I think people enjoyed themselves and that's really the main thing.
All right, now I'll turn to a more serious thing. Today is the feast of St. Stephen the Protomartyr, and according to the New Rite, also the feast of the Holy Family, more on that later.
St. Stephen was the first martyr, hence the title protomartyr. It struck me today that this is pretty interesting. I mean, there were twelve apostles and St. Stephen was 'just' a deacon. You'd think that one of the apostles would be the protomartyr- maybe St. Peter because he had a history of doing rash things (hacking off an ear?) and saying rash things ("I'll never deny you!"). You could just picture St. Peter saying the wrong thing to the wrong person at the right time and getting martyred for it. But it was this other guy, St. Stephen instead. So what do we know about him? Not a whole lot, I don't think. He understood that Jesus was the son of God, he was a deacon, he was tried by the Jewish religious court and sentenced to death for blasphemy ("God forbid that God should have a son..."). St. Paul acted as a coat-stand at his martyrdom, not actually getting his hands dirty in this instance but complicit. Did the memories of that stoning come back to haunt him during his conversion experience? Did St. Paul's temporarily sightless eyes see a young man dying a terrible death for the truth?
Looking a little further ahead on the calendar, we can see the feast of Holy Innocents. I love to think of them as Jesus's honor guard, his _comitatus_ (the Old English sense of the word, nothing to do with Hungarian counties or Bulgarian administrative units).

People want to celebrate the joy of Christmas and Christ's birth, but if you leaf ahead a little, as it were, you can see that it's not going to be all eggnog and presents. It's going to get very, very bad. Innocent people will die for the crimes of existing and telling the truth. But when it's bad, think about Christmas and Christ's birth. He was the only one who was ever born to die, to set us free, to open the gates of Heaven for us. With Him, our suffering and even our deaths will not be in vain.

NB: Yes, I know, some people move St. Stephen's feast to the 27th. I still say it's the 26th, because I think Boxing Day is lame. All right?

Additional NB: Perhaps this should have been several posts instead of one large post? Thoughts?

If you can't say anything nice...

Okay, so I'll prefix this with the warning that it is out of chronological order. The incident I'm talking about took place on Wednesday, but I still feel the need to blog about it so here goes.
So on Wednesday there was a frocking ceremony. For those unfamiliar with Navy ways, it means people get to wear their shiny new insignia but won't actually get paid for it until the great powers that be in Wherevertheheckistan feel like paying them. (I'm serious- sometimes it takes multiple phonecalls and several months!)
Anyway. It's a big deal, everyone's dressed to the eights, lots of clapping and 'job well done'-saying.
So I got there absurdly early to get a good seat and before the ceremony starts, I start overhearing a conversation behind me. I can't help it, it's just how I'm wired. If you put a cereal box in front of me and say "Don't read this", I'll still read it. It's like a reflex action. Likewise, hearing the conversation of other people if they don't actually make the effort for me to not overhear them... Not proud of this, it's just how my ears work.
~
She: Argh. It's so frustrating to see these people getting advanced! How many of them really know their jobs? They're going to go out to the fleet and get people killed because they think they know what they're doing and they don't have a lick of sense between every five of them! Argh!

He: Mumblemuble>toughjob.butIguessyou'reright.
She: It drives me nuts to see them just handed this! Anywhere else this MEANS something. Here, people get on my case because I'm _just_ a first class! They think I'm a screwup who could have made chief already >rant revealing obvious insecurities goes here<.
~
It was longer and more heart-felt than that, and what I heard on the plus side was that there is a very concerned first class who's worried about the future of the Navy. On the negative side... that wasn't the time or place for such a rant. It's a ceremony about recognizing and advancing these people for their hard work.
Yes, I know, some of them haven't done the job yet. But some of them have. I know some of them will take this 'easy' advancement and abuse the hell out of their shiny new insignia. But some of them won't. I know some of them are lousy sailors. But some of them aren't.
And that first class's comments were an attempt on her part to cheapen what was happening. It was neither the time nor the place for such commentary. If this was such an issue to her, why didn't she write someone who cared? Why did she have to bring her issues to their party?
I should have been up there. Bad luck and a bum calendar kept me from that. I know quite a few people in a similar situation. Some of them are a little bitter about it. I'm not. Honestly, when I get there, I'll be better prepared than I would otherwise have been. But my not being up there didn't mean I had a right to criticise those who were as being inexperienced or lacking in professionalism. The first class's behavior was unsat. Oddly enough, it did nothing to further her 'cred' in my opinion. Prior to her tirade, I saw her as an established professional in our field and someone who I could learn from, even if not in a mentor-protege type situation. I felt that I could just talk to her about what we do in our jobs and that would be fine. Now, knowing her unabashed opinion of some of her juniors, I realise that while she may be an established professional, I wouldn't really want her as a mentor and I'm not sure if I'd want to ask her questions. She'd probably say "Look it up already, slacker!"
Newsflash- if I'm asking a professional question it's because I've already done the research and can't find what I'm looking for.
Argh.
Anyway. We are all human. We all have our failings and our weaknesses and our bad days. But advancement ceremonies/weddings/birthdays/major holidays are times when we have to strive to put our personal feelings aside and think of the other people around us. We have smile and be nice even when we don't feel like it. If she'd said that same rant over dinner in a restaurant to a friend, or even in the parking lot afterwards, it wouldn't have seemed so off.
I don't want to be like that, ever. If I ever do something like that then call me on it, okay?

Being instrumental

in things.
Humans are funny critters, and I'm allowed to say that because I am one. We crave affirmation, acknowledgment and love, and we'll go to great lengths to get these things whether we realize it or not. We want this good stuff from our friends and family, from work or hobbies, and from God. Only one of the aforementioned will always give it to us. We collect stars or certificates that say we're good at things. How often do we think or realize that it's less about us and more about God working through us?
Granted, you probably wouldn't think about this as you're solving some incredibly difficult maths equation, or pulling people from a burning building or whatnot. I wouldn't know since I haven't done either. I think it's normal to not realize at the time that what you're doing that people are acknowledging is something you can do because of the gift from God that is your brains or your brawn or your training or any combination thereof.
The key is this, once you realize it, try to remember to thank God for it. That's much, much easier said than done. We want to take pride in the things we do. A little pride is a dangerous thing, as is false humility. And it sounds weird and forced some times to say "God gets the credit here", like if you just solved the math problem. Burning buildings on the other hand are considered more or less publicly acceptable times to credit God for His help.
I think another important thing that you have to do, that's part of this, is recognize your instrumentality. God picked up a tool from the toolbox and that tool was you. He needed a lugwrench and you were the right one for the job. Should you be proud that you were the right thing in the right place? Thankful maybe but not necessarily proud.
This was your random philosophical thought for the day- brought to you in part by Pope St. Nicholas I, who wrote a very thoughtful Response to the Questions of the Bulgars*!
More on that soonly!




*The people, not the grain. I can't see the grain having many questions...