here you have it

aries

"you are an angel. beware of those who collect feathers."

"i'm good at fleeing the scene of a crime"

i had a dream the other night. as dreams tend to be, it was sort of like changing the channels. short scenes that don't make much sense together.

in the last episode, and the one that i remember most clearly, you spoke to me. it's been so long since i've actually heard your voice, but my dream world made me sure it was you. i don't remember all of your words, but you told me, "when you eat, i am your vitamins. when the sun shines, i am your warmth... your nourishment... your vitamins..."

but

as you spoke, my vision was like an extreme close up and slow pan over and through a diorama of small plastic figures. all bows and arrows and firearms and the like.

tiny hands, holding tiny weapons.

(this photo is mine, so if you just googled it, please note my creative commons license. thanks.)

"if we were our denials, i'd be joining you"

wow. for the first time in the history of this blog, i haven't posted in so long that my main page is blank. how long has it been this way? where AM i? is anyone still out there?

i guess, for some reason or another, blogging keeps getting pushed down on my list of things to do. not because it's hard, but because it's actually pretty time consuming. i love writing, but i feel like it's not worth sharing if it wasn't given the proper time and effort. hell, i'd totally fancy being a writer... some kind of science/medical/technical writer who works from home with a view of the lake, a fireplace, the most trusted internet connection ever, and at least 3 professional journals in the mail every day... if i wouldn't feel like i was being so completely useless. also, there are a lot of writers out there and most of them suck. i probably suck too, but i'm not attempting to make a living this way.

that said, what AM i trying to make a living doing? school life is wearing on me pretty hard these days. maybe it's different when you're in grad school and you actually have something to focus on? i feel more unfocused right now than i have in a long time. i am questioning all of my motives and decisions and not coming up with anything better or worse. am i being broken by the system? am i eventually going to lose my curiosity and passion and end up joining some kind of rat race where nobody cares what they're doing so long as they get that piece of cheese at the end of the pay period?

or am i just realizing that one person doesn't save the world?

on the other hand,

maybe curiosity didn't kill the cat after all; complacency did.

**

damn, i'm in a funk lately.

short and incomplete

i'm feeling strange lately. actually, since i stopped taking those effing beta blockers (for back story, see here and here, in that order) i just feel. in general.

turns out, i just may be able to deal with the palpitations if i limit my consumption of stimulants and eat right and exercise. who fucking knew? i've been skimming through my posts since late 2006 when this whole heart thing started, and noticed a pretty obvious change in my writing: the old greenambition testament was full of silliness and fun, but then the palpitations were sent from the universe as a physical manifestation of some major changes in my life, and then the new greenambition testament started to be full of wallowy crap. again, i blame the beta blockers. in passing, someone told me once that beta blockers can actually cause depression. check. which is a little maddening to me because it means that, had i gone back to my doctor, i may have been put on an anti-depressant, which would have been a pharmaceutical to counteract the side effects caused by another pharmaceutical. do you see where this is going?

and anti-depressants tend to cause sexual dysfunction. oh, hell no. way to cause more depression, anti-depressants.

anyway, someone said to me once, "you deserve to be loved," and at the time, i totally didn't believe them. i wrote the words on a piece of note paper shaped like a fisted hand with the middle finger solely extended, and stuck it to my refrigerator, where i would see it every day. that was over a year ago.

i am just now beginning to believe it.

there are gray hairs in my mohawk

dude, that ain't right.

you know what else ain't right? not blogging since NOVEMBER 1ST! for fuck sake, what the hell have i been doing?! making a list, that's what:

1. for letting my blog get cob-webby, i am now accumulating spam comments on some of my older posts. grr.

2. nothing destroys the want to write like having to write charters for committees for the hockey league, of which i am now an executive director. i love me some gay hockey, but damn, creating structure for a league that was created without any long-term preparations is fucking hard. especially when there are already almost 90 members and 3 games every week. also, i'm not a leader, and i don't know what a charter is, let alone how to write one. here goes nothing... no, really.

3. dating...

4. school...

5. beta blockers. seriously, fuck pharmaceuticals. from here on out i'm just going to live with the fact that my heart beats weirdly fast sometimes and that i should therefore avoid caffeine and other stimulants. beta blockers are good for keeping the heart rate normal, but made me dumb and sleepy and generally grossly slow. it's kindof effed up when one needs to have a constant supply of coffee in hand to counteract the beta blockers to make it through a school day.

... at least i think salt and pepper hair is totally hot.

confused about carbon trading and the climate security act?

me too.

seems like a good thing that american "leaders" have recognized that there is a problem, however disgusting it is that they are looking for "urgent" solutions (as if global warming is a new problem).

check out this debate on democracynow.org.

i don't want to taint your listening pleasure before you listen to it, so if you want to listen to it without my opinion, stop reading, listen, and come back. i'll wait. ok, go.

.
.

(i'm going to get a ton of google hits for publishing the words "ok, go.")

.
.

i hope you've listened to the clip, here's what i have to say:
i had no idea what to think before i listened, but what made a huge impression on me was that woman who debated for the legislation at hand sounded like she was reading from an advertisment and also made several analogies that didn't make any sense, and used comletely vague "facts." the woman who debated against the legislation seemed not only literate, but stated specific events and laws, and came off sounding way more credible. it's amazing how delivery in a debate like that can sway a person who is on the fence about an issue.

it should also be said, so that i don't come off as a complete nit-wit, is that, as it turns out, i happen to agree more with the literate woman than the trained monkey woman. i believe that it's a waste of our time and taxpayer money to pass legislation with such obvious loopholes. i also believe that corporations should be held accountable in every way for the contamination that they produce and should be heavily regulated and fined for not playing by the rules, not be given tools by which to bully smaller countries and businesses. permission or not, rich or poor, they're screwing us all just the same. after all, we're ALL living under the same roof.

also, it's got me thinking about how completely disturbing it is that these things have become normalized commodities:
land
clean water (sold back to us by the very corporations who pollute it in the first place)
health care
information
peoples' lives
and now, air.

if you haven't read aldous huxley's "brave new world," do so now. having just realized that it was written in 1932 creeps me out even more.

all work and no play = ADD

things in my life lately seem to be falling together and simultaneously falling apart. it's been a year now since i've been back to school full time, and i've got to say, working one's way through college is fucking hard. this is my 4th semester in a row, and while i'm totally pleased with having spent the summer taking calculus, i'm afraid my attention span needed the break. i want to spend at least 48 hours alone in my apartment with popcorn and movies and no other obligations. i want to fall asleep on a friend's couch and wake up with no pressing deadlines other than brunch at lazy jane's.

don't get me wrong, i care about school, and this is totally where i want to be. i am currently working through the effed up university of wisconsin paper-pushing system by which i will eventually have declared an official major, which is exciting because it gives me some direction when registering for classes. hopefully, sometime this decade, i will graduate with a bs in nutritional science. and maybe a minor in kinesiology.

hockey is back into full swing again...

...

... which i would write more about because i love hockey like nothing i've ever loved before, and i would love to see you (yes, you) at a game some day, but my heart's just not in it right now.

i've got homework to do.