Do You Hear What I Hear?

Last night, I didn't fall asleep until after 6 AM. So I guess, technically, I didn't fall asleep until this morning. The reason I couldn't fall asleep? Tinnitus. For the last few years, I've fallen asleep with the TV on. It (mostly) drowns out the high-pitched whistle that is my constant companion. Last night, though, I couldn't tune it out. If you're curious, set your volume to its normal level and click here and go over to the 12 kHz column on the right, and then down to -33 dB. That's the sound I hear. All the time. All. The. Time. Some have theorized that Vincent Van Gogh had tinnitus, which is why he cut off his ear. If he had it, he wouldn't just cut off one.

My father and my brother are going to use the link above and find out under what sound range their tinnitus falls. ("Tinnitus Falls", coming soon to NBC.)

For all you damn kids out there, with your iPods and your hula hoops, here's some free advice: turn the damn things down. My 12 kHz hell is courtesy of loud music as a youth. Stuff I don't even listen to any longer. Bear that in mind, and get the hell off of my lawn!

Desert Vue

Thanks to Trée we've been drooling over the possibilities contained within a nifty little program called Vue. Now, we know the magic that is Vue 5 Infinite. Holy. Cow. Leaves Bryce 5 in the dust, that's for sure!

So... thanks for feeding our addiction, Trée! Deb and I will be spending the next few days/weeks going "Oh cool! Look what this can do!" (Good thing we each have a computer!)

That Sinking Feeling

Mystickal's "Valentine's Day Contest"

Stephanie at Mystical Incense & More has another writing contest up. The theme for this one is love, and for those of you who think I'm too heartless, I give you the following:

The Mother and Father of Life took the body of a baby and fed it Kindness, Knowledge, Love, Hope, Sensitivity, Creativity, Caring, and Strength. They showed their creation to all of the gods, and said that it outshone all the gods had done.

The gods, enraged, took the child and fed it Hate, Rage, Anger, Fear, Forgetfulness, Illness, Intolerance, and Pain. Then they hid the child's Kindness, Hope, Caring, and Love deep within his heart.

The Mother and Father of Life took back the child and raised it with all their skills into a man; a man who let Anger and Fear hide all else in him so that he existed, but he did not Live.

On a journey far from home, the man met a woman who defied the gods and used her own heart to unlock his and reveal what was hidden within it.

When his heart opened, the world grew brighter. Their unlocked hearts burned with a light that was greater than the power of any man or god:

Love.

Home

We're back! Gators are nice to visit, but give me my coyotes and rattlesnakes! (And single-digit humidity.) No problems whatsoever with the trip, though I'd still like to ask any airline moguls who may be reading this to seriously consider a separate airline for families traveling with children. Non-breeders and adults would pay extra to fly if they knew that they wouldn't be stuck in a tin can for 5 hours with a screaming 2 year old and her precocious brother while mommy tries to reason with them. (Yeah, reason with a 2 year old. Perhaps a lengthy discussion about Camus would keep her quiet? Or some light reading from the Upanishads?) Hell, let them fly in the luggage compartment. If pets have to go there, so do kids under 12. Unless they're heavily sedated. Nothing peels the skin off my head more than the sound of a screeching kid. I guess that noise is supposed to awaken some sort of parental response in people at some primal level. Leap to the aid of the younglings or whatever. Makes me want to put them in the plane's sidecar. (Shh... don't tell them there isn't one.) I sure as hell don't want to save them from whatever is making them make that noise. Nothing like a really loud sound to draw the predators in close to the bite-sized kidnugget.

One odd thing... in checking the logs for the site, I discovered that I had a visitor from NASA. This particular person did an MSN search for "squeaking chest", and found my site. I don't really want to know why someone from NASA is searching for that, and it hurts my head to think of the possibilities.

Wish I Had One Of These

We've been in Florida since February began. I've learned that I can still slip back into "East Coast" mode when the situation warrants. Case in point: we were just finishing with the nice car rental lady, when a 50-something woman in a neck brace came up behind us. Not waiting in line behind us, as the line was well behind us. The woman wanted to be next, dammit, and wasn't going to wait to be called. (Strike one in my book.) We finished, and were gathering our luggage to head for the car. Neck brace woman walked up to the counter, without being called or even motioned to by the woman who was still putting away our paperwork. (Strike two.) Neck brace woman stopped moving her bulk between us and the only available exit to our rental car. (Strike three. Here comes the venom.) Rudeness makes me angry. When I get angry, I get Tourettes. The following words came out of my mouth: "Yeah, why don't you stand there? If you don't get the f*ck out of my way, you're going to need more than a neck brace."

Neck brace woman backed up.

I was taught to be nice and polite. I'll hold open doors, say "please" and "thank you", respect my elders, all that kind of good stuff. I will not tolerate rude, unthinking behavior. I've seen too much of it, and my tolerance for it is over. If you don't think twice about being an idiot, I won't think twice about knocking you down and rolling my luggage over your face. I'll probably laugh, too. A lot.

In other news, we went on an airboat ride in the Everglades. That's where I took the picture of the nifty alligator. (Plus some other pics, which Deb will probably put up when we get home.) He was only 6 or 7 feet long. I say "only" because that's what the guide said. I think that's big enough, thank you. We learned that the Everglades are not swamp land, but are in fact a river. The slowest-moving river in the world at a whopping 2 MPW. (Miles Per Week) Pretty nifty.

We'll be back in AZ tomorrow. The FL trip has been fine, but we miss our mountains and 0% humidity.

Finally, today marks the oldest I've ever been at a whopping 36. The downward slide to 40 continues unabated.

Reclaim

Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water...

I'd Like to Thank...

Imagine my surprise when I checked my e-mail and saw a comment from Stephanie at Mystickal Incense & More that I had won their short story contest! There were some really good stories submitted, and I know I'd sure have a hard time making a choice among them. So... thank you Stephanie! And thanks also to Greywulf, Kathrin, Rina, and Kn@ppster for offering such good competition!

Tierazon

Thanks to Trée, we've discovered a new fractal program called Tierazon. Haven't really played with it much since the Mrs. and I have acquired colds. She is already feeling better, while yours truly, Captain No Immunity CMV Negative Boy, is going through box after box of tissues. Ah well.

Mystickal's "Spooky Girl Contest"

Here's my contribution for the contest at Mystickal Incense & More requesting a short story about a picture found on a box. The picture:

She knew she wasn’t supposed to be up in the attic, but here she was. She wasn’t supposed to go down into the basement, either. But the basement was dark and scary, and probably had monsters in it. The attic had secrets. She loved secrets.

She crept quietly through the old furniture and boxes. Dust danced in the air and made her sneeze. She shut her eyes and froze, listening, hoping, waiting… Nothing. She hadn’t been heard. Wiping her nose absently with her hand, she moved on in search of forgotten treasure.

There! That box next to that old bicycle and runner sled. The box that said “TOYS” in great big letters. She scurried over and opened the box, sneezing again at the freshly-disturbed dust but too excited to stop and listen. These weren’t toys! There were big, funny-looking metal cars, a stick with a string on it. Well, there was a stuffed bear in there, but it looked like something had chewed away parts of it. Eww!

She was so disappointed she was ready to go back downstairs, but then she saw something at the bottom of the box. She grimaced as she moved the chewed stuffed bear to pull out what she had seen.

It was a funny little box with a picture on it. It looked like a picture of a person, but it was very dirty. She wiped at it with her sleeve and saw that the picture was of a doll! She opened the box and saw the doll inside. Squeaking with delight she hugged the doll to her chest. It was a funny little doll, and not like any she had seen before. Was it a clown? But such strange clothes! And what a serious face! Holding the doll in her arms, she wiped away more of the dust and dirt from the box. She wanted to know more about this secret toy. Well, look at that! There’s someone else on the box, holding the doll. She looked hard at the picture. It was a boy! A boy dressed in funny clothes. He didn’t look happy, though. He looked sad, like he was lost. Lost without his mommy and daddy. She held the doll close as she kept cleaning the box. She kept looking at the sad little boy and cleaning. She was sad now, and sniffling. Squeezing the doll tightly to her, she wiped at her moist eyes and continued to clean. He looked so sad; she could almost hear him crying. He just wanted to go home with his doll. Go home where he could get hugs and chicken noodle soup and a bedtime story… but he was lost! She closed her eyes and cried. Her tears were streaming down her cheeks as she held the doll and the box close to her. Her tears were on her face, her shirt, the doll, and the box…

Still crying, she opened her eyes. She wasn’t in the attic. The dust, the old bicycle and sled… all gone. She still held the doll, but the box it came in was gone. And her clothes! These weren’t her clothes! She had seen them before, though. Where? Then she knew. She looked up, out into the darkness, and saw the little boy’s face. The little boy from the box had grown huge and was looking down at her with the same sad look. She stared as the face changed, got old, older than Grandma or anyone she had ever seen. She screamed as it turned into a skeleton and then to dust. Dust that covered her without touching her, as it now covered the box. Dust that covered her expression, forever frozen… lost.

Don't Blame the Puppy

I've made a discovery, and I'm going to share it with all of you. We purchased some toilet paper the other day, and I was surprised by two things about the packaging. One by its presence, and one by its absence. The first was this rather disturbing comparative chart describing the difference in roll sizes. It says (and I quote):

"1 single roll
1 double = 2 single
1 triple = 3 single".

Has our society regressed to such a state where people actually need to be told that a double does in fact equate to two singles, and a triple is no less than three singles? I guess it's a good thing that they didn't also put "1 triple = 1 single + 1 double", as toilet paper word problems might just be too much for some people. However, if people are so incredibly dense as to not know that 1+1=2, then they have absolutely no right to be using toilet paper in the first place. If this mathematical milestone has escaped the grasp of so many that the makers of the product felt compelled to explain it in four vibrant colors, how can we know with absolute certainty that the general populace is using toilet paper correctly in the first place?

Which brings me to the second point about the package.

There's a possibility here for a class action lawsuit, but I'm afraid a few people are going to suffer some (probably hysterical) bodily harm in order to reap the rewards. It's a small price to pay, and it's for the benefit of your fellow humans. See... there are instructions on shampoo, soap, toothpaste; pretty much everything you can find in your bathroom. There are instructions on how to use the product, and warnings as to what not to do with the product. Not so with toilet paper. (At least, not with this brand. If anyone finds toilet paper with instructions, I'd like to know about it.) The only instruction on the package is a warning about the suffocation danger of the plastic bag. Nothing whatsoever about the product contained therein. In the lawsuit-happy land of America, no instructions or warnings pretty much means I can do any damned thing I want with the product and then sue the manufacturer if (when) I get hurt by it. Because they didn't hold my hand and warn me. So I'm going to need some volunteers to figure out how they can hurt themselves with toilet paper. If your story makes it to your local paper, send me a link. Be as creative as you like, but don't send me any pictures.

Inquisitive

If the sky asks you a question, how would you answer? What if you didn't even know what the question was? What happens if you can't answer it? Is it just looking for approval? A "how's this?" kind of thing? Too much blue, not enough orange? Does this need lightning? Or is the sky asking one of those imponderables like "why?" Does the sky even really care what I think? Is it just wondering to itself?

Or is The Riddler up to his old tricks again?

What If...?

What if the canals on Mars were really just the tracks left from an interstellar tumbleweed bouncing along from planet to planet as it rides the solar winds?

My Brain Hurts

I have a headache. ("Headache" = stick a serrated blade into your temple so that the pain makes your eye want to close. Slowly, over the course of an hour, slice the knife around the circumference of your head in either a clockwise or counter-clockwise motion until you get back to the starting point. When you get back to the starting point, repeat.) They are far, far less common now, and for that I am very thankful. It's times like this that I realize that I had this feeling from the time I woke up to the time I drugged myself to sleep, every single day of the week except Saturday. I thought it was something I'd have to live with for the rest of my life. I am amazingly happy that I was wrong about that.

I can't sit and watch TV, because it hurts. Certainly can't lie down. The computer helps take me away from it. A mini out of body experience. Or an out of brain experience. Perhaps out of my mind experience, but it'd be too easy to argue that that's really no different for me.

Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda. Oliver Sutton.

This is a two-part English rant. You've been warned.

As I traverse through them there internets, I see all manner of linguistic skills. If you know me, you know that I tend to respond negatively when I see a lack of English competency in posts. Not toward those for whom English is a second (or even third or fourth!) language, but towards those who should damn well know better. It is because of that ever-expanding demographic I give you the following: "would of", "could of", "should of", and "all the sudden".

Linguistic lassitude. That's the best way I know to describe this phenomenon. Reading is becoming less of a pastime and more of a chore, so people now tend to spell what they hear. Hukt awn fawniks werkt fer mi! The "of" should be "have" in those first three examples, which is shortened with the contraction "'ve". But because people don't know what a contraction is, we are now living in a world where the word "of" has become a verb. As this is becoming more and more common and more and more people replace "have" with "of", then those who are unsure see the usage and believe it is correct. (See also the "apostrophe s denotes plural" phenomenon.)

"All the sudden" is also a result of linguistic lassitude. Oddly enough, it's the result of lassitude upon lassitude. Why? It's what some people hear when others mumble through "all of a sudden". Spell what you hear, and everything is fine!

I think that my wife believes I'm having some sort of episode whenever I read butchered phrases. I twitch, grunt, or just sigh heavily. I'm truly boggled. It takes the smallest amount of effort to check a word or phrase in this magical world of technology, but the things I see online would look like a Christmas decoration stuck on a word processor with all the red and green lines marking the very wrong things contained within. I saw a blog yesterday from an aspiring young writer. She wanted comments on her work. I didn't know where to begin. Her story was, apparently, about someone who was a teenage drunk. I say "apparently" because I couldn't read the whole thing. One of the problems that sticks in my brain: she misspelled the word "rum". How in the hell can you misspell that? (Answer: rhum.)

Here's my freebie to all you aspiring writers out there: would have, could have, should have, suddenly. If you need someone to proofread for you, just let me know. Just keep in mind that I will make you cry.

Out of Phase

I've figured out how to get out of my blue/purple phase. Just make the image in my normal blue/purple mode that seems to just want to come out, and then invert it in Photoshop. Add some color dodging and burning, and you get glowing green alien bugs cavorting at night or deep sea creatures proudly displaying their bioluminescence. Or whatever sort of image that comes to mind to suit your particular fancy. I wouldn't know about that kind of thing, as I haven't had to wear a fancy suit in quite some time.

Ice Melts At Night

I promise that my next picture will have colors other than blue and purple in them. I just like them. Sue me.

Quantum Disco

Happy New Year everyone! May your subatomic particles boogie like it's 1999! Don't get the quantum string confused with the confetti, or as sure as there's an event on the horizon you'll never clean it up.

Post-Holiday Stress Syndrome

Normally, the glare comes from the front of my head as well as the top. Now, however, the glare comes from the back and sides as well. My head is now the equivalent of fine grit sandpaper. I guess it's time to take up woodworking.

Pearls of Wisdom

Title courtesy of my better half.