So, me not posting anything for a long time isn't AT ALL unusual, although I have a rather better than usual excuse for this particular six months of absolutely nothing on this blog. And I was going to write this awesome post because I just got inspired standing in line at Panera but unfortunately I didn't manage to pack MacAlister's powercord... go me... I packed _sunscreen_ and not the power cord. But seriously if it's the only thing I forget this weekend, I'm doing pretty darn outstanding!

So right, inspiration in line at Panera. A post elsewhere entitled 'Can't Even Go to the Park' by a homeschooling mom talking about PDA in the park has been ticking over in the back of my brain. I was trying to think of where I was on the spectrum. I don't have kids yet so obviously my POV on PDA levels is quite different. And the PDA I couldn't help but see in line at Panera was obviously het. It still made me throw up in my mouth a little, which, right before a good meal is seriously suboptimal.

It wasn't gropey making-out or anything terribly obnoxious but it still provoked a reaction from me. It was hand holding, body holding, hand kissing, shoulder-kissing(??) and it made me think about what was and what wasn't acceptable PDA in public. Prior to this evening I had thought that I was pretty much okay with everything up to kissing in public. A peck on the cheek, okay. And these were just pecks but there were a LOT of them. And before I get any accusations of being some kind of voyuer I will repeat, I really couldn't help but see them. I did eventually stare at the sign over their head and roll my eyes theatrically. I did manage to stop myself from sighing audibly but it was a near run thing.

I realise acceptable PDA levels are different in different cultures, but sometimes I think it's just incredibly insensitive of couples to be so wrapped up in themselves and expressing their LURVE for each other at all times and in all places. I'm starting to think I've been in uniform for too long- if you SHOULDN'T do it in uniform you probably SHOULDN'T do it in public at all....

And on that, note that I said 'shouldn't' not 'can't' because I realise there are dumb people out there who 'do' anyway... and at least in my tiny corner of the world they can get masted for it.

Am I an evil grumpy single? Yup. Don't inflict your coupleness on the world, couples of the world!

(Sidenote: Would I be happy in an Islamic theocracy that prohibits PDA on pain of pain? Hell no. Because I believe that being able to choose to do the right thing is far superior to being FORCED to do the right thing...)
(Additional sidenote- link to the homeschooling mom's post will be provided at a later date and time when I have a powercord...)
Dedicated to: The couple in front of me in line at Panera that I will quite likely never, ever see again.
Coming soon! Catholic-bashing conversation overheard at Panera! Praying for infidels instead of overturning their soup bowls on their heads! (Why is it that the correct thing and the thing that would be entertaining are rarely the same?)

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?

About February...

I blame it for being a short month containing way too many interesting things and way too little internet. But what's done is done and what hasn't been updated, hasn't been updated. Argh. Oh well.
What does the future hold? Massive uncertainty. I already thought I'd be somewhere else right now, if that makes any sense. But the advice 'Semper Gumbi' is very good and I'm trying to just keep that in mind as I feel like I'm swimming in an interminable sea of paperwork and 'training'.
But enough about me.
Pictures, for your entertainment, will follow at some point in the probably distant but not impossibly distant future. I need to find a cord for my camera. When I manage that, things will be different. I'm also considering buying a crappy little netbook type thing so I can keep doing the whole wordprocessing thing whilest in unusual and unpleasant places so that hopefully even if I have to backdate all entries, I will at least be able to give a once monthly update of life, the universe and everything else according to me.

Dear Myself,

You still haven't learned that you are to 'Never Again Volunteer Yourself'?! I know the offer was couched in terms of a 'safe, fun, learning experience' but are you out of your mind? You have tests next week! You're not feeling so great! You have a roommate moving in this weekend! Your room is a disaster area! Besides which, your stuff isn't ready and you'll probably spend all weekend in a haze of confusion, only to come back in time for PT bright and early. What are you thinking?
...
I see.
....
Argh. Fine. Whatever. But I told you here first that it wasn't a brilliant idea.
.....

Sincerely,
Me, Myself and I.

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.

Resa-whatnow?

No. I'm not going to do it and you can't make me.
No resolutions will be posted on this blog. I won't say that there is no point in resolutions because they tend to fall apart after the first month (if it even takes that long). Resolutions work for some people and not for others. And some resolutions don't work for anyone. Anything incredibly drastic or life-altering is pretty unlikely to end up fulfilled at the end of a year. Anything vague enough can be wiggled out of. And honestly, when you don't even know if you're going to wake up in the morning, it seems a bit presumptuous to go around making resolutions.

Okay. Those are my thoughts on resolutions. I realise I'm probably in the minority on all of that. But whatever.

I hereby resolve one thing though- before I go on any transatlantic jaunts, I will make damn sure my room is clean. I am coming back to a clean, orderly, well-put-together room. This will happen if it kills me getting there and sometimes it feels like it just might.

In other news, I saw Tron tonight. It wasn't spectacular. It was very flashy and I believe that was 95% of the point.... so much for the other 5%. I wish someone would pay me to write a movie script...

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?