I can believe things that are true and I can believe things that aren’t true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they’re true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and Marilyn Monroe and the Beatles and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen–I believe that people are perfectible, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones who look like wrinkledy lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women.  I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone’s ass.  I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline of good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state.  I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative.  I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we’ll all be wiped out by the common cold like the Martians in War of The Worlds.  I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind’s destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it’s aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there’s a cat in a box somewhere who’s alive and dead at the same time (although if they don’t ever open the box to feed it it’ll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself.  I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn’t even know that I’m alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck.  I believe that anyone who says that sex is overrated just hasn’t done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what’s going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies too. I believe in a woman’s right to choose, a baby’s right to live, that while all human life is sacred there’s nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system.  I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you’re alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.

• Communication: If you and your partner can not or will not communicate you are doomed from the start. It’s hard enough to deal with a lack of communication in a face to face relationship but it will destroy a long distance one. Do not keep things bottled up. Don’t assume your partner just knows what you want or what you are thinking. We live in a world where technology makes communication easier. Don’t discount email, txt, Skype, etc. They are all ways to talk to the one you love.
• Honesty and trust: You must be able to trust your partner and they you. That means no lies, no misdirection. The truth, no matter how hard to say or painful to hear, is better than a lie, which will come out and will hurt worse in the end.
• Never go to bed mad: Fights, while they suck, can and will happen. Resolve them. Do not let the anger and frustration brew. The last thing your love should hear from your lips before going to bed is that you love them.
• Say “I love you”: If you can mean it (and if not why the hell call it a “relationship”) tell the other person that you love them. There are times when the distance seems like too much but a simple heartfelt “I love you” over the phone or txt from your partner can make it seem doable.
• Pictures: Not being able to see the person you love is painful. Emailing or MMSing pictures to each other can take some of that sting away. I know that no matter how crappy my day has been a picture of my beautiful lady’s smiling face makes it better.
• Do “normal” things together, no matter how weird it seems: Go shopping together on Amazon.com, or both of you get take out and have dinner together on the phone. I know it seems really silly but these little things can be great.
• Don’t discount the old fashion: This may seem odd seeing as how I said to use technology to it’s fullest earlier but every once and a while send the one you love a real, honest to goodness love lever. I know that when ever I’ve gotten one from my darling it has always been a wonderful treat.
• Little gifts can mean a lot: Of course you’re going to send Christmas and birthday gifts if you can’t manage to be together on those days but a random Tuesday is a good time to send a gift too. It doesn’t have to be anything expensive, just a little something that shows you care and are thinking of them.
• A good relationship has three parts: Romance, friendship, and sexual desire. Find ways to keep them in balance and neglect none of them.
• Get together as much as possible: This seems like a no brainer but I’ll list it anyway as it is important. Find a way to get together as much as humanly possible. I manage to get out to my love for a few days every couple of months and, while it’s never enough, it stops us from going mad.

These tips are far from everything needed to keep a relationship going but they’re some important ones.

The problem is my life is pretty boring. I work, talk to my darling, and sleep. Thanks to my work schedule I don’t even have time to go out and play with my camera. In addition, writing doesn’t come naturally or easy for me. Even if I have something to say it takes me so long to beat it into something readable that I no longer care about it.

That being said I still miss it. Even though practically no one reads this (and I don’t blame them) it was nice to have a place to just post my thoughts. I have twitter and facebook but neither lend themselves to posting more than a sound bite. I’m not going to promise that I’m going to post more but I’m going to try, even if they’re short posts or barely coherent ramblings. At least it’s an outlet. One thing that will help is I found a pretty good WordPress client for my new phone (the phone will get its own post eventually) so I can compose a post no matter where I am.

The beginning of this year was my normal boring work-sleep-work cycle with occasional nice breaks of hanging out with some friends from work. That all changed three weeks ago when I finally got the guts to admit my feelings towards a special someone. Admit them to her and myself.

She was the unexpected. I wasn’t looking for love. In fact I had given up on it. She has pulled me out of my funk and shown me that life is beautiful and just existing is no way to go through life.

Melissa, thank you. Thank you for showing me that. Thank you for enlightening my life. And, most of all, thank you for loving me.

Death in our culture is always a solemn affair where everyone dresses in stuffy clothes and speaks in hushed tones. The family pays way too much money for embalming, a casket, funeral parlor, hearse, and all the other trappings “needed” to give honor to the dead.

Me, I don’t want all that.

My wishes are simple. When I’m gone I want my body given back to the earth as simply as possible. Stick my unpreserved shell in a hole without casket and plant a tree over me. Preferably an ash but an oak or native maple would do. As for a ceremony, something simple at the grave site if you must (No Judeo-Christian clergy please) then a party. Yes, I said a party. I want singing, dancing, and laughing. I want those that I loved in life to enjoy themselves. Of course they’ll be sadness but I won’t be in any pain and I’ll have a chance to see what happens next. So try to be happy. Have a drink, have fun, and remember that that last thing I’d want is for y’all to mope on my account.

Thankfully Christian has licensed Juhu under the MIT license and released the source code so I was able to recompile it as a universal binary. If you’re running an Intel Mac then just use the official version. If you’re on a PPC mac you can either wait for Christian to get a chance to fix the official version or download my build here. I changed absolutely nothing other than the build options. Please don’t ask me to fix anything as I’m not a programmer, just a bored geek who can fumble his way around xcode. Also, if there are bugs in this build please don’t bug Christian about them because this isn’t his offical build.

Update: Christian has released 0.9.9 which fixes the PPC bug as well as a Growl bug.

This week I have three days of off-site training. It’s nice to be off my feet even if it was boring and the commute on Mon and Tues was a bit of a bitch.

I had wanted to start posting more but my life has gotten even more boring than usual so I haven’t had anything to report. I haven’t even been shooting, though I’m planning on going out this afternoon to see if I can find anything.

The first thing I need to do is save up for a new (to me) car. I love Lilith but she’s not super reliable and it would cost far too much to get her back into tip-top shape.

I start work full time on Monday. It’s swing-shift retail but the pay’s pretty good and the people seem nice.