8:28pm: Happy Holidays, Yo!

1:27am: "... OR I SHALL TAUNT YOU A SECOND TIME!"

see more Gifs

5:26pm: The 11th year of Our Marraige.
Today is my wedding anniversary. But it is not one year older, nor ever any older, for each second I am wed to this union, married to be with her, to the thought that my days will end with her by my side in the distant years of our lives. It is renewed by each thought of her touch, her gentle face gracing my best hours of the each day, and that our family will only be blessed by this divine covenenant, that the stars themselves may look down at the theme of our joining, and seek such a peace. My thanks to Fortune itself, and eternally to her, my loving and beloved wife.

5:09pm: Keltonin @ Annathalia's Keep
The door caved in with a cloud of dust, and Keltonin rolled as splinters and rusted nails rained down on him. A dozen young female creatures, initiates of the unholy arts, surrounded him in the chamber, circling around their blue flames candlestands, baring their odd fish teeth, gaping at the adventurer with vicious, glazed over eyes that sparked an odd purple reflection from within. The prince noticed high above him the red vined, and blue petalled flowers pulsing in a silver glow to each surge of the monstrous women, who in turns took a step, flexed their taloned fingertips and retreated with a hiss.

Keltonin's blade Eiglif, blessed and cursed by the arts of his mother's homeland, came loose in the scabbard and stuck to it's master's palm, and through this touch the warrior felt the hunger for death and justice. The sweat on his skin, all across his skin and under his plate armor and chainmail, was like the air under a thundering sky, and his foes understood the storm he brought with him.

His eyes narrowed, his toes dug in, his breath quickened, his muscles paced to outrun and eat his way to the heart of a stag, and he grinned.

This was going to be a slaughter the likes any butcher would applause, with an skill and frolic any minstrel's wife could laugh and dance to. If Keltonin was going to live, or die, he was going to enjoy this next battle with a vim and vigor he shall never forget.

And his arm swung up, as his legs pounded the earth behind him, and he was in a flash beside his first victim, only to pull down and turn around, ripping her spell-mangled body in two. Eiglif sang while the silver casting vines above shot out waves of unearthly light, and Keltonin kicked off the wall to launch into two other women, both with claws outstretched to gain some portion of his flesh to corrupt by their touch. He collided with the first, and crushed her skull with his battle crown of iron, though faintly missing her teeth, equally as potent as her hands.

He knew these beasts from the warnings his grandmother gave him but a month ago, when she demonstrated them in her defense against a rogue defactor, knowing he would die in the process, yet willing to make the gesture more worthwhile than living in a land under her influence, ruled as he was being a subject to her son, Enkeltin, Keltonin's father. These things, as bodygaurds, sucked his blood and soul, until he was a weakened plaything, near mindless and inarticulate, but alive, and enslaved to their whim and will, as if a cadaverous puppet.

No brave man should live to such and end, he vowed then and there. Keltonin dispatched the ghostly corpse later that night as it roamed the fields he tended in life but only that morning.

And now these creatures would do the same to him, to bar his reaching the ancient witch his grandmother had become.

Upon his fifth challenger he was aware that they had closed in on him, and would crowd any movement he could make with their remaining numbers, to catch him as they engaged them, as much as to defend themselves. In response, after reducing the one before him by an arm and a head with one hefty upward thrust, he grabbed her grimey tunic and tossed her spinning remains against the tall candlestands, tipping it over and spilling the blue flamed candles, fire and wax and all, down upon her headless flesh. What encorcelled reactions commanded the blood from her body to catch the blue fire, which turned to green, he did not know nor care to know, but he found leverage in their renewed assault.

His eyesight worsened as he managed a leap around the flames, before breaking the stand that held up another candlestand with a swing from Eiglif, whose song seemed unappreciative in having been used so bluntly. As another of their fallen sisterhood flared up from the ground in bright green, Keltonin stood menacingly before them from his corner, gated on either side by a fount of verdant flame, his brow broken with sweat, his breath keeping a rapid pace, and his grin unwavered.

As they bound together all at once, some leaping over the sides of his improvised walls only to catch light though unburning, and the others marching up the middle, he held his breath, his heart, his inspired power, all in one, and granted it unleashed. In one blurring motion, like the spiral of a wind that moves boulders and unroots tree trunks, he spun, Eiglif roared a menacing tone, and like liquid light met each fiend in kind, but with a true dedication, and an unnatural capacity.

In short time, what to mankind is a blink, he meditated upon their demise with ceremony and ritual, each stroke with a final earnest, and each motion a pure testament to his ability to dispence justice upon the wicked. By the time the first of seven's assault ended with her wrecked body hitting the floor, his hand gripped the hilt that held the steel in the skull of the last, stopped in mid step.

The outstretched fingers of both her hands were touching his face. He wondered about that, if their spell would work on him, if their final command ended his conquest, or if he was stopped because he wanted to stop, as they were finished and all dead.

From behind her stuck head he looked at the vines hanging from the ceiling. Their pulse had stopped as well, their silver glow swirling oddly in places, and from the voids sparks of gold danced off, falling to, and through, the floor. Where it touched the bottom, he did not know, but sensed another layer beneath the mud and stone, as if he were standing on glass or a clear frozen lake, and something down in the cold dark water below was... singing, a lost song unknown to the world he knew today, but perhaps did once, long ago.

The palms of the misanthropic fish-monger's mistress fell off his ruddy cheeks, her pupils wide when the purple tint within them died and rolled back, and her skull opened up through her pate, dropping her limp body, to join the others in a heap in a stream of
green fire he did not feel, nor smell, but could only clearly see.

The song whipsering in his distant memory ended as the final glows from the red-vined flowers above faded. And the door that was unseemed behind him became apparent with a loud clank as the lock within it turned.

Having turned about, he gripped the handle, pulling the iron ring back against the frame, and decimated the hinges with a powerful kick.

12:59am: Concerning the American socialist market structure: Regulation vs Choice vs Opportunity
I haven't really wavered since we were facing a world wide communist threat, that we are essentially a socialist society already. I accept this, and acknowledge it has truth has it's merits, but it also has it's risks. To say that too much government, too much regulation, ungoverned regulation so to speak, or rampant abuse of regulatory powers cannot happen is simply, to put it in terms you will understand and may appreciate, very, very stupid.

There is a yin yang paradigm here, that to exist and prosper, one side must give way to the other. Even gangs and barbarian empires had their system of economic structures that required a heavy hand to intervene and arrange order out of chaos.

If looked at in this light, rampant marketting cannot prosper without it's own checks and balances to protect the consumer population.

One point where this will have a flaw, however, is in international trade. For example, the Chinese exploit world consumers with products tainted with toxic heavy metals. This isn't necessarily done by the Chinese, but by anonymous Chinese marketers who found a means to bypass safety regulations both in the various domestic ports and from Chinese national exporters. This ineviably made the Chinese look bad, but the government there had a crackdown, some exporters and trade officials were jailed and one committed suicide I think. Still, the temptation to pedal poisonous goods was too great for manufactuers who thought they coud get away with it while they were confident in their SAFETY through anonymity. Other distributors will commit similar offenses from a proposed vantage of safety, whether it be from an observed low risk of litigation liability of breach of contract, trust, what have you, this will be the source of the miscreant and criminal activity in sales and distribution, and has been and will continue to be, without a reasonable sense of authority and punitive reaction.

On the other hand, too much regulation will constrain and inhibit market activity by venture capilatists or front end business owners, especially the good kind that isn't trained to bend the rules to succeed in a competitive environment.

It's in a comfortable range of regulation that relatively free-markets will bloom and flourish, even in a socialist structure. That the regulatory agencies can become cannibalistic is a threat that the consumer population and the distributors both face, but while the bureacracy smiles upon them they will do business as if it was in their mutual best interests, at least during regular business hours. But once the threat is real and overbearing, a pervading theme of dog-eat-dog competition compels all parties involved to share in the atmosphere of poverty, and late night deals in back alleys with questionable products becomes much more acceptable an option.

Too much in the hands of businessmen, and you don't have what we both want. Too much in the hands of government, and you have to ignore how much will be done to you, as it's being done to you, without regard for your will.

Yes, too much is too much, but when the consumerate is objecting to a shift in one direction or the other, it's time to take notice. You have one perspective, where a population has many, a much broader perspective that is an amalgam of many individual perspectives. (This is why we vote and have elections.)

I've gone a little out of my way to avoid buying a Japanese car. My family in general loathes the concept. In an abstract way, I voted with my dollar, which gives me a means to control the market in little, until at the end of the day my vote is tallied with millions of others. (This really supports the isosolese triangle model, that the population, the government, and the markets all have controlling stakes in each other, by varying degrees dependant on the types of each.)

-=T=-

ps: I once test drove something from Korea, but it was just way too wimpy. I ended up buying the American version of the same car, and it climbed mountains on a daily basis for over 4 years. Once an old lady drove into that one, a Chevy, I bought another one, and a Lincoln. There's the reliability factor, and that I live in Modesto, World Capitol of stolen imports.

1:04pm: The Learned Race.
Have you ever had a conversation with a kid that could only begin to understand higher concepts? It makes you realize, very easily, that you are clumsy at explaining those concepts in their infant form, and that, if you practiced, you would get good at it. And it puts you back in the race, not at the end, somewhere between the aspiring student fueled by ignorantly established hopes, and the retired but vitally empowered master with more transient wisdom forgotten than most people need to retain to live out their lives.

It makes you remember to grow. But, when you want to, you will.

-=T=-

1:03pm: A Mundane Need.
In a society founded seemingly on infinitely available resources, the individuals need to be able to find intellectual satisfaction in being able to turn a wrench. So, if everyone was enhanced to the point of omniscience, with sun-generators keeping their zero-point technology android bodies alive as they spun around the multiverse for the next 10 billion years, who would be left to find a satisfying life shoveling garbage into a furnace day after day?

-=T=-

5:08am: The Five Love Languages

The Five Love Languages

My primary love language is probably
Physical Touch
with a secondary love language being
Quality Time.

Complete set of results

Physical Touch:		11
Quality Time:		9
Words of Affirmation:		5
Acts of Service:		4
Receiving Gifts:		1

Information

Unhappiness in relationships, according to Dr. Gary Chapman, is often due to the fact that we speak different love languages. Sometimes we don't understand our partner's requirements, or even our own. We all have a "love tank" that needs to be filled in order for us to express love to others, but there are different means by which our tank can be filled, and there are different ways that we can express love to others.

Take the quiz

6:18pm: War Dream
Read about Operation Moshtarak before getting some sleep. No wonder I had a dream about going into armed combat. I was dropped into combat. My rifle was broken from the start; bent or missing pieces. The foreign elements I could sight that were engaged I couldn't clearly ID as enemy or friendly from the distance, and the international observer was interfering beyond what we wold call sabotage. After battle, I picked up my useless weapon, and about a dozen extra pieces on the ground, and we all went to base for chow, which was next to the farm my mom lived on. During the wait, I went to visit my mom, and a hail storm happened, baseball sized meteors. By the time I noticed what was going on, I was about to go out and call them inside, but they had already taken cover. And then the women came out, just as the hail lightened up enough for them to cross the field between the mess tent and our house and barn. And I woke up... really.

-=T=-

4:57pm: Dedication.

1:11am: GOTSTA GET ME SOMMORE O DAT
I am liking the dip sauce sh!t there.

Mixed oriental sweet sauce and oriental hot sauce.

Could almost be a kind of soup by itself.

Or a laxative, depending on your disposition.

-=T=-

12:15pm: NIGH UPON TEN YEARS OF MARRIAGE
Whether in peace through persistence, or by ease of endurance, there is no goal yet unearned, no prize yet unpaid for by exercise in the straining of our great powers, even in patience, and by letting happy expectation guide the coldest heart wherein one ember remains, a wealth like in heaven can be found when two captains of a union finally drift ashore, eyes closed, arms wrapped for mutual protection, under cover of night and sung to by an orchestra of the brilliant stars, that the long ago spoken promises have been made and now ring eternally within our celestial souls, both gentle as a butterfly is to a dove's feather, and yet as vital as God's omnipotence against any transgressor, and yet never enough to meet the stillness, the compelling silence when our desires command our wants to fasten and firm the burgeoning foundations of our comingling to stand the storms of any ill or evil that would damage one morning breath of  of our infinite twilight dawn, a halo to bless our future.

4:20am: Jus' Coz this here Gol'dang Thing I can do is done, see?

1:36am: apathy is for those who deserve to be victims.
apathy is for those who deserve to be victims.

-=T=-

1:52am: Happy birthday Max!
Happy birthday to my son, Max! he's a big 8 today.

-=T=-

8:19pm: GM To Import China-Built Cars To U.S. (AP)
GM To Import China-Built Cars To U.S.

Manufacturing.Net - May 13, 2009

http://www.manufacturing.net/News-GM-May-Export-China-Built-Cars-To-US-051309.aspx

6:22pm: value-added tax (VAT); "chains" we can believe in.‏

The tax cut for 95% of Americans really meant a new tax on 100% of Americans.

LEONARD BURMAN, URBAN INSTITUTE: The value-added tax is a sales tax basically, but it's collected in stages from each producer. So the farmer would pay 10 percent on the value of the goods that he sells to the wholesaler, who would pay 10 percent on the amount that they add. And then the retailer would collect 10 percent on that margin as well.
It adds up to, in that case, a 10 percent sales tax.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,523937,00.html

Half of America Strongly Opposed to
VAT to Pay for Socialized Medicine

From Ryan Ellis on Tuesday, June 2, 2009 3:01 PM http://atr.org/half-america-strongly-opposed-tobr-vat-a3331 Half of Americans are opposed to any sort of sales tax (including a VAT) to pay for government-controlled health insurance, according to Rasmussen.  Only 18 percent support a national sales tax at all, but:

There is more support for the concept if sales tax revenue is used to provide health insurance for all Americans. In that scenario, 40% favor a national sales tax and 49% are opposed.

********* strongly support a national sales tax to provide universal health insurance coverage. ******** are opposed by a three-to-one margin, and those not affiliated with either major party are opposed two-to-one.

Comments

Americans don't want socialized health care! I am scared that if the government gets involved with my care, I may be "rationed" like other countries. Even though the United States does not seem to be going to drastic measures anytime soon, the fact that the issue is up for debate is enough to worry patients, providers, and taxpayers. Free health care will be anything but free.
>> I'll pay my own way, thanks Tuesday, June 2, 2009 4:15 PM

8:30pm: Unhallowed Metropolis (Game)
(reposted from darkvictoria  for you guys)

Hallows Eve Designs is proud to announce it is the future publisher of Unhallowed Metropolis, the gas mask-chic roleplaying game of Neo-Victorian horror. Written by veteran game developer Jason Soles (Privateer Press, Eos Press) and Nicole Vega, the book details a world set two hundred years after the advent of the zombie plague. Inspired by the works of Mary Shelley, Edgar Allen Poe, Robert Louis Stevenson and other Victorian-era visionaries, Unhallowed Metropolis details London as an apocalyptic Neo-Victorian dystopia.

The first publication will be Unhallowed Necropolis, a supplement to Unhallowed Metropolis, available in May 2009. Unhallowed Necropolis narrates the secret history of the Paranormal in the grim future of 22nd-century London. It will include complete rules for psychics and spectral entities, new sciences and technologies as well as providing five new character Callings.

Unhallowed Necropolis is a painstakingly researched alternative historical setting designed to provide a rich role-playing experience.

Unhallowed Necropolis is a 260 page, black-​and-​white book that features an elaborate interior design with photographs and illustrations by Melissa Uran, Eliza Gauger, Robert Tritthardt, Aron Dittbrenner, Chris Walton, Angel Ceballos, Marc17, Bloodengel Photography, David Russell, and Colleen Mathis with cover art by the incomparable George Higham.

Hallows Eve Designs has a quarterly release schedule for 2009 that includes new scenarios, settings and backgrounds, Callings and Character options. ”We are excited about our partnership with Hallows Eve Designs and have all faith that they will provide the support necessary to take Unhallowed Metropolis in amazing new directions,” said Jason Soles.

Unhallowed Necropolis and Unhallowed Metropolis will be available in hardback and downloadable PDF from http://www.hallowsevedesigns.com beginning May 2009.

*************************************
thought it might be interesting.

-=T=-

10:07pm: MY BRAIN OVERSHOT THE MARK
Today I had to take another test for upgrading my water distribution certificate, so I did the stuff I do to make sure my brain was ready. But, I left the house with a headache, so I had to go to the store to get some of my preferred migraine stuff from Longs, and they were out. Not only were they out, but the seem to have discontinued the stuff.

Yay.

Anyways, I got the next best, oh so mediocre medicine in line, and proceeded to do my thing.

Five minutes later, I had $25 worth of junk food in the checkout, with 20 minutes to get to the test.

I couldn't cram that much brain food (sugar, caffeine, and electrolytes), on the road to the site, which by luck just happenned to be here in Modesto for once. What I was able to stuff down my face, I later had to concentrate so I wouldn't puke back up during the test. Luckilly, the headache went away, while I ran over the dictionary in the back of the book, from A to T-1/2, before I figured I had only a little time left, say about 5 minutes, to find the site much less get in line for admittance.

Breathing exercises kept the food down, as I burped, waiting for 15 minutes to be shown the seat I'd own for the next 2 hours and 45 minutes.

Yes, I was properly wired, and, after being seated, indulged in arranging the testing materials 3 different ways, one in utter chaos, until the testing proctor finally instructed us all, at extreme length, on how to fuck up our tests and get kicked out, to the point where getting sent to Gitmo seemed and increasing probability.

And then, the test. As stated before I perused the dictionary section, but that left out the purpose of each defined entry. And the purpose was vital. During the last test, for my water treatment 2 certification,  there were about 150 multiple choice questions, and the longer i took on the test, the less I functioned. It's been said before, but at that point, I actually experienced UNLEARNING for the first time in a long while. Not pleasant. And then during the 50 math portion, they threw so many twists on formulae and compounded the equations backwards it wasn't nice to tell me to bring a non-programming calculator to the test, it was pure cruelty at it's most self-entertaining.

This test proved how unfair the last test was.

This time there were only 50 multiple choice, and only 10 math, and those were for the most part single equation, and maybe 5 of them needed some modification for not more than 2 additional variables. I used only 3 equations, though I could have used 4, but one was the same way only backwards. (Not supposed to say specifics about the test. Gitmo, shhh!)

I mastered the math, again, and I'm sure I got far enough into the multiple choice to get the cert upped. And I feel cheated. This test was so freaking easy, I don't know why the other one needed to be like taking such a beating. The contrast was so damn stark, there really isn't any blurred line they warned us not to trip over, when they said "the d2 is a little easier than the t2".

Well, I celebrated afterwards. I bought a battery for the chevy blazer, got some fiber supplements, and forced myself to shop, for 3 hours, at FYE, a store like the local Rasputin's. It's so damn hard, when there so much stuff I'd like to waste some money on, and so little stuff that I'd actually love to own and meditate to. I looked for Faith No More's first album, didn't find it. Found Marilyn Manson's "greatest hits", but couldn't justify spending $20 on music that would just piss me off. There was Enya's Watermark, and that was just a 180 of where I wanted to take my mind.

I settled for soundtracks. "Hackers" and "Queen of the Damned", and picked up "Fiddler on the Roof" the movie. And I don't know why I haven't bought the QOTD soundtrack before, because I knew it was badass, but I've listened to it twice, and it was so freaking good, I had to walk away.

It was that fucking good.

(or am I that dull?)

(yeah, maybe.)

peace,

-=T=-
 

1:31pm: POINTLESS POST
The headache goes away when I take the medicine.

-=T=-

6:21pm: I FOUND THIS VERY FUNNY


Actually, I laugh everytime I see it.

-=T=-

11:11am: AFTERBURN THRUSTS OF SUPERHUMANITY

Dealing with the wake of a holiday, a Monday/Tuesday 1-2 combo punch, has made me loopy, since I've had to go at 200mph this morning, and now that I'm semi-caught up, I can't seem to slow down to catch my breath.

Reminds me of yesterday. I was still sick this weekend, from something closer to death than I've had in a long time, and maybe a little worse. So, I tried to pace myself, but I just couldn't, and it ended up a weekend of herky jerky hin and thither, which included:

yard work and fixing the holes dug by the dog;

driving the nieces and nephews alot;

driving to the coulterville house to repair the shower and faucet;

packing and unloading 7 bins of books and then other things (filled up the car);

(and I got to take about 300 pictures, edit some, and load them onto my webshots, from Stockton, Modesto, );

And I wonder where I get the energy. Consciously, I know, but subconsciously, I ask if it comes from where it used to come from, if somehow I've gained some measure of it back, like I had when I moved out there, before I used it and burned it up, painfully. I know this strength now comes from taking migraine medicine, which removes the encumberances that drags me down, and to a fault, enhances my capacity for the day. I took it once each day this weekend, as the headache from last week persisted. And, I've looked forward to the day when the medicine, a simple off the shelf Long's label variety, is no longer effective, just so I know I'm working on my own power. As of now, it feels like a crutch with one drawback, it wires me up so evenly, I usually stay up into the night, bored and unable to sleep, which isn't good because I already have a hard time sleeping.

This weekend, however, has been fruitful in that I have gotten much done, and I even got much rest done, too.

This is a lot to be grateful for. Minor details of how and why merely inhabit the effect, populate the result with aspects of abstract artifice that have little combined relation to the end. They do not coalesce into a storyline, or divine some chaos in the wind. This portends nothing. Rather, I am content with what has transpired, and longlingly intend to continue this progression, as much as I am able.

And, lately, I find myself more and more able. This weekend was a pleasant surprise.

-=T=-

11:00am: OLD FAVORITE SPOT ON CATHOLIC SCHOOL PLAYGROUND
OLD FAVORITE SPOT ON CATHOLIC SCHOOL PLAYGROUND

4:51am: New Bunch o' Pix
Mostly taken Sunday.




Enjoy!

-=T=-

11:18am: ON ELIOT SPITZER
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliot_Spitzer

He was on a warpath to clean up Wallstreet, and I was all for him. In the manner that Bush sent federal prosecutors after Enron and Worldcom, and afterwards attacked crooked accounting like Arthur Anderson that sheltered those companies, (all in the wake of the 9-11 charities investigations), I had high hopes for Spitzer. In fact, I still do.

The wife has real problems with this guy, because he hired a hooker. Whatever. Even if I look at it that Spitzer as crooked, what more can you ask for than the crooks to take down worse crooks, and the world is better, cleaner for it?

-=T=-