| First-class Twit. |
[21 Mar 2009|03:16pm] |
I'm nervously dipping my toe into Twitter, as 'Tumbleworld'.
Have a look if you can be bothered. As here, I'm probably more likely to round up news &c than mumble on about me :)
Are you there? Let me know!
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| The first steps towards Gibson's vision of cyberspace have finally been taken. |
[17 Dec 2008|11:32am] |
Virtual Philadelphia is a full simulation of the city centre. It's true to life (albeit with graphics that most computers will be able to handle easily), with links through to street businesses, historical and tourist sites, B2B organisations, official data and so on. Some of these are just web pages, but others are actual internal virtual recreations, photos and/or video tours. Other people's avatars are shown, so you can see and interact with other visitors, sales reps and so on. There are even options to show future planned construction in place of current landscape, and to link in the city's own street cameras to give you a real window on the virtual view.
Other communities seem likely to follow suit, particularly if people get behind the idea of providing useful info to go with the more obviously commercial side. Then, when they link up, Gibson's vision will just be pretty much complete. I recommend watching both videos on the link above -- I was particularly amused by the threatening music on the main demo reel!
You can download the app here.
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| Holy shit! |
[08 Dec 2008|12:54pm] |
Invisible UK 'net censorship wall blocking parts of Wikipedia, amongst other sites.
I thought I'd left egregious 'net censorship behind in Dubai... So much for the Emirates being a "religious dictatorship" as opposed to our "democracy". Or should that be Demoncracy?
Given the rate at which Rights Creep is encroaching at the moment, how long will it be before that firewall is censoring the Quran, or gay meetup sites, or dissenting voices...?
And for anyone who is about to post to say that this firewall is a good thing because "In The Name Of God, Think Of The Children(tm)", it is trivial to actually route around a firewall, and anyone who is still downloading sick material is almost certainly already using that sort of anonymisation technology (or else they'd be banged up). So this is not only invasive and dangerous, it's also fucking pointless.
Unless you want to stop ranty bastards like me at some point in the future.
UPDATE: More information about the firewall -- and how it was blocking a social networking developer's site -- is available here: http://nocky100.wordpress.com/2008/12/08/great-firewall-of-britain/. Thanks to ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) bishopjoey
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| So sweeping government powers are safe, are they? |
[28 Nov 2008|04:27pm] |
David Cameron (leader of the Conservatives), yesterday:
"In Britain today, counter-terrorism police are spending their time searching an MP's office, arresting him, holding him for nine hours, all on a day when British citizens are being killed on the other side of the world and all because, as far as I can see, he made public some information that was in the public interest, that the government found uncomfortable. Well, let's hope that our democracy hasn't come to that."
Nick Clegg (leader of the Lib Dems), also yesterday:
"This is something you might expect from a tin-pot dictatorship, not in a modern democracy ... Given the culture of extraordinary secrecy in Whitehall, it is getting harder to hold the government to account, and opposition MPs have a constitutional duty to keep ministers on their toes ... I call on Gordon Brown to rule out any further use of anti-terrorism powers in cases that have nothing to do with terrorism."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/7753763.stm
That's a top politician, folks. We have much less shielding.
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| The only Verdict is Vengeance; a Vendetta, held as a Votive, not in Vain |
[08 Nov 2008|08:54pm] |
I was delighted to watch Barack Obama win the presidency. I even stayed up until about 4am UK time, watching the results roll in. I hope it will make a big difference to American society, help racial integration, weaken barriers across the Western world, and give America's hideous current global reputation a much-needed re-vamp.
Unfortunately, I don't see Obama actually making much difference where most people would say it really counts -- in the nature and structure of society itself. He had a culturally varied upbringing to say the least, which is a strength, and worked for what seem to have been reasonably socially responsible organisations between his degrees in Political Science (Columbia) and Law (Harvard), so if any top politician is ever likely to want to make a change, he's a good candidate.
The bottom line though is that it is money that is in control -- not just in the US, in the great bulk of the world's countries -- and the money lies mainly with the multinational corporations and the super-rich.
That's nothing new, and there's no way Obama would have been able to raise such massive campaign funds if he hadn't been seen as a safe pair of hands.
But even if he wanted to shake things up, his power to do so is limited. In my last post, I rambled on about Fractional Reserve Banking and how it's the banks -- private corporations -- that actually create money from being legally entitled to lend out more than they have. Note what this means: almost all cash comes into existence because it's issued as a loan. Loans need to be repaid. With interest. So every time money is created, greater amounts of debt are created. It's literally impossible to reduce debt.
We seem to export much of ours to social groups (and countries) who can't fight back.
Also note that inflation is the measure by which the value of a given unit of money decreases. Most people have their money in bank current accounts, which pay little or no interest. Cash under the mattress gets a guaranteed zero interest rate, obviously. To get significant interest from a bank -- about inflation -- you have to have a lot of money to invest. So, in other words, inflation is a tax on small savings, that large savings are exempt from, or even more simply, it's banks taxing the poor and on behalf of the wealthy.
But it gets worse still.
As Obama's campaign has shown, bigger budget makes a huge difference in who is in power. Once an administration is in place, money can -- and does -- have huge sway on what becomes law. Through choosing who to fund or not fund, which debts to call in and which to let slide, banks can exert a high degree of control over scientific research, business development, social structure, and most other aspects of modern life.
And the banks, ultimately, are controlled by that same 1% of people who own 40% of all the global wealth. (That's linked above, under 'super-rich')
So if you want to know why things are fucked up and unfair, why the people who actually do all the work and grow all the food are all poor and debt-ridden, and why it's not going to change, it's depressingly simple:
The super-rich control the banks.
The banks control the flow of money.
Money controls society.
Society controls the populace.
... therefore, the super-rich control the populace.
And that's the way it's been for at least the last six thousand years.
Despite all our progress, and our illusions of freedom, we're still all peasants, enslaved in a hideous financial serfdom by our infinitely greedy imperial masters. Our politicians -- like our preachers and our media -- are there to distract us.
If Obama tried to change that, for example by making banking a government function, he'd almost certainly be shot.
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| Lies, Damn Lies and Banking |
[06 Oct 2008|09:15pm] |
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The Last Tango |
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Before anything else, let me just voice my opinion that Sarah Palin is a stupid, terrifying bitch. I mean, quite apart from anything else, she has a witchfinder she's been blessed by, and has cheerfully announced that there should be no tolerance for witches. If she was talking about Jews, and hanging around with a Jewfinder, she'd have been pilloried.
Anyhow. Enough of that political malarkey.
I am now beginning the process of settling into my new flat in London's Maida Vala. It has a great (14th floor) view, and is so far proving pleasant and servicable, if a bit Life on Mars / Sapphire and Steel in general feel. My arthritis isn't too bad at the moment, so I'm around if anyone in the London area fancies a pint. Phone number and address available on request :)
Now to the impersonal stuff. For most of us, there's been a missing factor in the Financial Crisis jigsaw. Yeah, the situation is horrible, but why are all the governments so flat-out terrified, and describing things in such apocalyptic terms? The answer lies in a ubiquitous financial practice known as Fractional Reserve Banking, one of the major underpinnings of economic growth.
Put simply, the consequence of Fractional Reserve Banking is that when you deposit your cash with a bank, it gets lent out again -- not once, but time and time again, as many as 30 or 40 times in some cases.
This is clearly counter-intuitive. If I give you an apple, you cannot then pass that apple on, almost intact, to 40 different people, because once you've given it away the first time, it's gone. Banking, however, doesn't work on common sense rules. It assumes that loans will always make money -- which seems a rather risky assumption to base an economy on -- and therefore that making a loan is always a good move.
The fairly obvious consequence is that as much as 97% or 98% of all the money in the world simply does not exist, and cannot be backed up by currency, no matter how much the governments like to pretend otherwise. Any attempts to print more cash to cover the shortfall would lead to inflation that meant the currency was worth less. Print more, and it becomes more worthless. Inflation in action. Either way, 98% worthless is 98% worthless.
Fractional Reserve Banking works fine whilst the system is expanding, and everyone is playing nice. When the economy wobbles a bit, and a few financial institutions have trouble making payments, we get a bit of a recession, things contract a bit, and then normal service resumes.
Unfortunately, this is not a wobble. The current panic in the financial sector results partly from the 'Shadow Banking' system -- made up of utterly fictitious economic deals, even compared to Fractional Reserves. The Shadow economy, which never had any basis in real assets, is a web of trades some ten times bigger than the real economy, and sub-prime mortgages were wound up in that. When they turned nasty, the whole Shadow Banking system was shown to be flawed. That kickstarted the panic, and all the banks realised that with just a tiny fraction of the world's wealth being real, any debt could go very bad indeed. So they stopped lending freely to each other, which meant debts were hard to meet, which meant the premise behind Fractional Reserve Banking became false.
Which brings us, neatly, to here. What happens next is anyone's guess.
The mainstream media aren't mentioning the implications of Fractional Reserve Banking, which is a bloody good thing. Only a few dozen people read this blog at best, and most of you are quite sophisticated, intelligent people, and not prone to counter-productive panic. The majority of the population are quite uncomplicated folk, and if they all understood, on the same day, that in reality their dollar was effectively only 2 cents, the result would be unimaginably cataclysmic.
There's a great explanation of the whole thing at the Sunday Herald, here. The Bullion Vault also has a very informative piece on the issue, but do bear in mind they have an interest in people putting their savings in gold. A chest of gold coins is no bloody use when you're starving and freezing cold.
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| Call the police, there's a madman around. |
[02 Sep 2008|02:46pm] |
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"I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" -- U2 |
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It turns out that I have beaten the low odds and inherited my father's Psoriatic Arthritis. It's been lurking, unidentified, for about three years -- I thought I'd injured my knee and, separately, developed a touch of RSI. I figured out the truth last year, in Dubai, but it was being mild, and an anti-inflammatory took care of it.
In the last six months -- while I've been in Australia, basically -- it's really turned aggressive.
I now have it in over 30 joints, mostly affecting my feet, ankles, knees, neck, shoulders, elbows, wrists and hands. They're painful and weak, and it sucks. The disease is degenerative, so it nibbles away at affected areas, generally making them permanently worse and worse. Some sufferers end up as cripples in perpetual agony, although they're not the majority fortunately. The whole thing also tends to be pretty damn tiring much of the time. The effect ebbs and flows from day to day, and I'd guess that I generally range from being 30% - 70% able-bodied, if you see what I mean.
To give you an idea, I am usually -- but not always easily -- able to stand up out of a chair that isn't too low, climb a flight of stairs, open a bottle of diet coke, play a video game for an hour or two, hold a book for a few hours, sit in a car for two hours, or walk for several hundred yards. All of these things hurt, though. The jury is still out about typing, so I'm being a bit cautious with it.
On tougher days, I have to plan the day fairly carefully in advance -- I have a certain amount of resilience and energy each day, and every action takes some of that. The more pain, exertion or self-neglect involved, the more it saps me. If I push myself too much, I'm totally screwed the next day. I expect to be in very bad shape after my flight back from Brisbane.
There are treatments available, which range from toxic to extremely toxic, and vary in cost from not very cheap to insanely expensive. Still, risky side-effects are better than no quality of life at all. Some of the most expensive meds can even stop the disease destroying my joints any further, which is a very very good thing indeed.
I don't have the sort of money involved in fighting this, so I'm heading back to London in a week's time to get onto the slow and creaky NHS healthcare treadmill. That's where the disease-specific experts are, and where the bulk of my friends are. I'm scared, to be totally honest -- about the future of the disease progression and its treatments, and about what sort of life I can expect. I'm not sure I'll be fit enough to persuade an employer to take me on, so I expect to be stuck on benefits for a while. Partial disablement isn't much of a turn on in a prospective partner, either *wry grin*.
It could be a lot worse of course, and I'm very grateful that it isn't. But for now at least, my international wanderings are coming to an end.
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| Warren |
[14 Feb 2008|09:08am] |
(I'm currently wrestling mighty deadlines back and forth across the Tokyo skyline, like Godzilla fighting Gigan. I suspect I'm Gigan :( When I do have a moment to hang around online, it's mostly at *sigh* Facebook, which I can connect to easily. Tim Dedopulos, if you want to add me there -- let me know who you are here, though :) Oh, and thanks to nuala for the cross-over inspiration *grin*)
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| Ups and Downs and Stuff |
[22 Jul 2007|02:30pm] |
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Dark Mutterings
Gran beaten and jailed for dry lawn.
Convicted murderers appeal on basis of document not being stapled properly.
Philippines terror law drawing nervous criticism.
Frankenscience
At last, we have a true bionic hand. "Luke, I am your father."
It's just the end of the world again. A listing of many, many doomsdates through history.
Twin towers almost certainly not brought down with explosives.
Why it doesn't matter if the Earth's pole flips.
Help science and join the team sorting galaxies.
Oddworld
Interactive TV to blame for social ills according to Dubai police chief.
APC driver goes on luddite rampage. Damn those Pesky Mobile Phones!
Police break down door because of stinky feet.
Techlunacy
You want your emails to look like surf babes so you can play Sims with your inbox, right?
Microsoft hopes to scan your hard drive so it can beam adverts at you.
This year's "radically improved" E3 game conference sucked.
Windows Vista is vile. Here's how to make XP last . Better yet, switch to Ubuntu.
Personal Stuff
Prague was wonderful. The week before, I got very pleasantly surprising news that my mother (who died in 2000) had been the owner of a small bunch of shares that none of the rest of us had known about. The company had been taken over, and the shares liquidated; the trustees had been trying to track her down for a while to send her a bit of cash, which would now come to my brother and I instead -- a late last drink on Mum.
So in a bid to shore myself up, I decided to use the cash to do something fun -- hence Prague, and, more to the point, deciding to spend a couple of weeks in a cheap hotel in one of the most beautiful spots in the city, tucked away below Charles Bridge, on Kampa Island. So I spent a couple of weeks shamelessly immersing myself in really beautiful architecture, eating decent food, catching up with friends, and sitting in great cafes and bars working out the shape of a novel I want to write.
It was the most productive time I've had in three years. I got the outline pinned down too, and it's now with a highly respected British fantasy/sci-fi editor and agent who is giving it a structural once-over and evaluating it for commercial potential for a very modest fee.
I made it back to Dubai relatively painlessly. Still sucks to be back here, though!
My brother had a reasonably hopeful time with his son and estranged wife in China, and has pulled back from the brink of being Billy Oblivion a little. It's a good step, and quite a relief.
My first weekend back ended up very odd, one of those utterly Dubai experiences. We went to a friend's house for one of those "neither fish nor fowl" sessions that would probably have been called a soirée in the 70s -- a dozen of us tops, the hosts' kids and an aged gran running around, a buffet of random delicious finger food, yadda yadda yadda.
For reasons entirely obscure to almost all of us, a world-famous retired British boxer was there. Very odd. He seemed sad, to be honest -- like he didn't know who he was supposed to be after all those years being "And now, Ladies and Gentlemen, IN THE RED CORNER..."
A couple of hours into the evening, he whipped out a DVD, and then made all of us -- those who hadn't run away, anyway -- watch an old championship title fight of his during which he got really horribly pasted for most of the match, before whipping out an inspired blow that would turn out to leave his opponent needing chunks of his brain cut out. The guy survived somehow, but remained horribly crippled for life.
He kept rewinding bits to show us particularly nasty blows -- "listen, listen, you can hear where something breaks in his shoulder!", before declaring, emotionally that it was the fight he was proudest of, and then passing around a photo of an expensive vehicle he used to own in its hangar back at his former home.
It was all rather horrific, but he was so obviously totally screwed up by his life that I could only really feel sorry for the poor bastard.
On the plus side, we did get to see a Bill Bailey DVD of stand-up comedy, which was just glorious.
There's a new mini-bombshell too: I've been to have my swollen finger and knee looked at again. This time, the doctor actually took a moment or two to consider the problem, and it looks very likely that I've got psoriatic arthropathy, the degenerative and basically untreatable arthritis variant which crippled my father by the age of 26. Which obviously is very bad news. It's nowhere near as virulent in me as it was in Dad, but the long-term course of the disease remains unpredictable. It's just inconvenient right now, but there's no real way of knowing how bad it will get, or when.
I read the new Potter yesterday, of course :) Enjoyed it thoroughly. There's not many writers who can successfully pull off a good payoff after six and a half books of buildup, but Rowling did it masterfully. Say what you like about the subject matter, but she's extremely skillful.
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| Food For Thought |
[20 Jul 2007|04:52pm] |
Animals are clearly any zoo's most important assets. It seems as if some of the staff at Erfert Zoo in eastern Germany may have been taking this truth a little too literally, however... The town's Mayor, Manfred Ruge, has filed charges against several of the zoo's employees for shooting animals in their care and selling their carcasses for meat.
The grisly trade came to light when a sickened whistleblower noticed that animal numbers were declining, and contacted the authorities. German newspaper Der Zeit quotes the anonymous employee as saying "It was high time that something was done about it."
A spokeswoman for the Mayor's office confirmed that deer were amongst the animals turned into exotic foodstuffs, but gave no further details, saying only that the case was now with German state prosecutors. In addition to deer and other common petting-zoo animals, Erfert Zoo is also home to wild beasts like lions, giraffes and elephants.
The German Animal Protection League has called for reviews of all institutions holding animals in Erfert's state, Thuringia. The League's president, Wolfgang Apel, admits to being "worried that this is only the tip of the iceberg."
Erfurt is already notorious in Germany for being the site of a particularly savage school shooting in April 2002.
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[19 Jun 2007|05:49pm] |
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Given that I've been off the radar for a week or few, I've got a bit of a catch-up below. Before I get to that though, there's something I really need to talk about.
Teen concentration camps.
The frankly incredible i_of_the_storms, LJ's very own answer to Buckaroo Banzai, posted a couple of items (fairly) recently about the horrors of residential youth programs, including, tragically, news that another one of the people she loved had just been killed in one of these things. You can read Sami's posts here and here. Please, go read her posts and check out the Coalition Against Institutionalized Child Abuse, then do whatever you can to try to stop people sending kids they're supposed to love into these hells for the sin of having a mind and a personality.
Oh, and while I'm on the subject of utter horror, boiling fury and sheer jaw-dropping disbelief, here's Buffy creator Joss Whedon on watching a girl getting stoned to death.
Dark Mutterings
What a shock. Supermarkets are selling you rotting filth.
US considers criminalising attempted copy theft. Thinking about MP3s to be outlawed next.
US seeks Matrix-like plans to block sun.
Young Japanese IT professionals living homeless in cyber-cafes. And you thought the US outsourcing was causing problems.
UPDATE: Hillary Clinton nails her colours firmly to the Mast of Evil, demonstrates full horror of her potential presidency.
Time Sinks
Blaise Aguera y Arcas demonstrates an awe-inspiring tool for stitching loads of photos into a 3-d representation of the space. You can try it yourself at Microsofot Photosynth. It kicks ass.
The awesome mega-zoomable super-detailed photos at the XRez Gigapixel Project also kick ass.
The Wit and Wisdom of Cthulhu. Be thankful He's still sleepy.
On alcoholism and writers.
Shiny Oddness
Madrid train station has it's own jungle.
Philip K. Dick rambling madly about reality.
I know this isn't a sci-fi death weapon , but it does feel like it -- the future of solar power.
Paradoxical footprint found in fossil. May be evidence of time travel, alien visitors, Elder Earth or human credulity.
Scientific experiment shows humans really can see into the future, a little.
Bosnia has pyramid to dwarf Egyptian ones.
Chinese scientists to study anomalous hi-tech fossil pipework
Personal Stuff
It's been a tough few weeks, but I'm still standing. My stress levels are high right now, mainly to do with work, the future, finances and all the same old jazz, so I'm falling into my usual trap of not allowing myself to do things like LJ, email, gaming, and so on; instead, I'm bouncing off the walls throwing ideas around. Not wildly constructive, but there you go. I'm very worried about my brother still -- he's really not in a good way -- but that's not news. He's jaunting around the world at the moment, so tomorrow I'm going to take advantage of that and scurry off to Prague for a couple of weeks. It will be wonderful -- and hopefully restorative -- to soak up some atmosphere in a beautiful, cultural city, and spend time with a bunch of old friends.
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| Disturbing Events |
[22 May 2007|04:54pm] |
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Sorry for the absence -- had some access issues. Back again :)
The Continuity of Operations Plan (COOP) is a long-standing US governmental tool for managing crisis situations. It allows for sweeping power to be centralised into an emergency management agency -- FEMA -- in the event of a catastrophic emergency, to stop red tape from getting in the way of vital response efforts.
It's earliest form was Truman's National Security Act of 1947, and since then the plan has been modified and/or elaborated upon nineteen times.
It was changed again on May 9th, in an executive order titled the National Security and Presidential Security Homeland Directive.
That order removes the COOP emergency powers from FEMA, and gives them in entirety to the President.
This new COOP can be triggered in the event of a catastrophic emergency -- defined specifically as "any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government function". (My italics, and note, I have no idea how recent this definition is).
This scope is open to radical abuse, of course. If a wanna-be dictator felt bloody-minded, this could be triggered by something as minor as a widescale snow-storm or a terrorist attack on Iraq oil pipelines.
If the COOP is put into action, "The President shall lead the activities of the Federal Government for ensuring constitutional government" via "a cooperative effort among the .. branches of the Federal Government ... coordinated by the President, as a matter of comity." The COOP plan allows for the implementation of contingency guidance plans not only covering the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government, but also "state, local, territorial, and tribal governments, and private sector owners and operators of critical infrastructure".
Some of you may remember my concern last year over the British government's quiet moves to pass a bill allowing parliament to be circumvented.
Well, this is many times worse. One, it allows for the President to take complete control of all branches of the country in a self-defined emergency and do whatever the hell he or she wants, for as long as the state of emergency is deemed to be ongoing. And two, it has already been put into place -- with almost no journalistic publicity.
Now, obviously, not all power has to be used, let alone abused -- but that's a lot of temptation to put in front of someone, let alone any politician, even one of the best. The COOP powers have stayed out of Presidential hands for sixty years, and with good reason. The fact that the person who declares the emergency is now the person who benefits from the power it gives is, frankly, hideous.
Make no mistakes. This is even worse than Hitler's passing of the Enabling Act in 1933, with the sole mitigating factor that its powers are not yet active. The only possible check is the power of the military. I have no idea what the current crop of generals and admirals are like. If they're loyalists of the current political regime... well... that would be a bleak situation indeed.
Remember, I'm not trying to convince anyone that Bush (or Cheney, the power follows normal Presidential lines of transmission) is about to turn the USA into a fascist dictatorship. I'm just trying to show you that doing so is now as simple as waiting for the next big storm -- which frankly is something that any sane person should be worried by.
Thanks to the wonderful xenthar for bringing this to my attention.
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| Barbelith |
[03 May 2007|04:33pm] |
Oo. Looks like Barbelith is off the restricted list here.
That's a pleasant surprise.
Anyone in a position to stand me an invite?
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| Time for a round up! |
[02 May 2007|02:43pm] |
First though, I have a little question for you -- something I've been wondering about casually on and off for a while. A friend suggested I actually ask, so, well, I'm asking. All answers much appreciated :)
Poll #977224 What's in a name?
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: AllWhen you first saw my username, OldMotherChaos, did you associate it with anything?
Outrages
Kid arrested when fiction essay 'disturbs' teacher. Worrying for horror writers...
Evil, evil Sony serve journos warm goat entrails in debauched bloodbath. Um, kinda.
IP carrier cuts off leading Open Government activism site. Just because you're paranoid...
Naomi Wolf on America's slide into fascist superstate. But is she scared or gleeful?
Canadian conference worries about surveillance rise. Orwell Week continues.
Oddnesses
Jesus appears on dog's arse. No, really.
The A-Team break into toughest place yet in search of lost comrade. The afterlife.
Satan to destroy continental US with illegal immigrants. I still feel nukes work better.
Food For Thought
Reality does not exist. It's official.
'Ooo, that 'Gattaca' movie had some good ideas' ponders NASA.
Months after Skynet launch, US Army looks to Terminator vans. Hail Our Robot Masters!
Reading Matter
Thanks to very cool and amazingly perceptive tacithydra for a heads-up on A Softer World, an extremely moving and often incredibly dark web photo 'strip'. You should so go check it out. It really is powerful stuff.
Personal Stuff
*shrug*. It's been a fairly tough week or so, but I'm still here. Stressing myself to the point of insomnia about my current lack of productivity and what it implies for the future. Whee.
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| Polite Notice |
[29 Apr 2007|12:29pm] |
Mr. Tim Dedopulos would like it to be known that henceforth, his birthday shall be held annually on May 23rd.
In thanks to Saint Jude for favors granted. A.W.
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| Wounded Doves |
[27 Apr 2007|05:12pm] |
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I didn't make it out of childhood entirely whole.
Don't get me wrong, I had it pretty easy compared to a lot of people. I may talk about my early days on a friends-only post some time, but anyway, it doesn't really matter. By the time I clawed my way out to adulthood, I was already a chunk broken. I'm not hunting for sympathy -- I know who I am, I've got a fairly shrewd idea why, and it doesn't bother me especially.
But something an LJ friend said today got me thinking.
Looking at it objectively, the vast majority of my good friends and former lovers are not really "well-adjusted" either, whatever that actually means. I certainly don't see it as an especially negative thing, except for the suffering it causes the individual. But the people I care about are, for the most part, outsiders, misfits, mutants, geeks and all sorts of other marginal types. Yes, there are most definitely plenty of exceptions, and if you count yourself my friend and are taking any offence at this sweeping generalization, you're almost certainly one of those exceptions *smile*.
Chances are though, that some of you reading this can identify with what I'm saying. So I have a question, and I really would love your answer, anonymously or not:
Why do so many of the cool, interesting people have such bad things in their histories? Are the blissfully unbroken actually a bit dull for having escaped that kind of pain?
I'm trying not to pre-judge the issue. I'm certainly not some kind of 'survivor' snob. I'm genuinely curious. Is it a coincidence? Is it just me? Or is there something actually going on here? What do you think?
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