Twitter this.

Just got yelled at as Carlos went out the door, because I apparently was keeping him too long. He wants me to *twitter* with him and I've agreed but only from the perspective it would keep him and I more connected to each other throughout the day, but I don't actually agree with that concept. I think it separates us more than it connects us.

Yesterday I was thinking about how nobody asks anyone how their day was, anymore. When I was growing up, in the eighties and nineties, my [admittedly wildly dysfunctional] family would generally discuss their days with each other, around the dinner table. "How was your day?" or "What did you do today?" we would ask. Sometimes the stories were great to hear. A sense of anticipation hung in the air at times, because the stories had been allowed some time to simmer and stew, their flavors had mellowed and combined, and the resulting dinner table story was all the better for it.

I don't even own a dinner table. My one-time dinner table is now in the second bedroom, which we call the art or project room. It is where we work on various projects, and a table is a handy thing to have in there.

I live in a typical small two bedroom apartment, and the dining area and living room are one big space. The dining area is where we have our two gaming PC's. The living room end of the space is where we have a couch, chair, and two bookshelves.

Our main bedroom is, naturally, the bedroom. No tv anywhere in the house, but we do watch netflix and hulu on the PC's a lot. And we always eat at our desks. I wonder how many people are living this way? Probably not a lot, but I bet a lot more than I would imagine. Of course we'll never know, because anyone who really lives like I do doesn't respond to surveys very often.

Okay, so in my house, we couldn't really sit around the dinner table having dinner and ask about each other's day. But of course, we never ask. Not because we don't care, but because we pretty much already know. We chat online while he's at work, and I look for work. We talk on the phone a couple times a day. We look forward to spending time together smoking pot, playing video games, and watching cool shit.

But I wonder, sometimes, what it would be like to turn my PC off for 48 hours at a time. Say, noon on Tuesday through noon on Wednesday. What would it be like to actually LOOK at Carlos instead of just listen to him 99% of my life. Hell, even when we're having sex, it's usually at night, in the dark. What would it be like to not know what his day was like, and to ask, that evening, over dinner? Perhaps even while eating without watching something.

My parents seemed to look foward to each other coming home when I was young, mostly because unless someone got interrupted at their desk at work, there was little opportunity for immediate communication then. Without cell phones or email, regular interruptions for an employee at work taking too many personal calls at their desk usually meant punishment - up to and including termination. The idea twenty years ago was that when you were at work, you worked, and worked on work, and only on work, and that was that. For most of the day, anyway. You got your breaks, and most managers would look the other way if there was an occasional conversation that didn't last more than 90 seconds or so. But outside that, communication was meant to be about business only.

Seems rather totalitarian now, but it's really not long ago. I am 32, and started working 16 years ago. Yes, that's half my life, but for crying in the rain I hope I have at least two, if not three more 16-year-chunks ahead of me. But given my lifestyle, it's probably closer to two.

So it wasn't that long ago. And now it's practically unheard of, no pun intended. And I think that while this evolution allows us to communicate more quickly, I think the intimacy and quality of our communication and interaction is drastically reduced. I think of it sort of fractally... where the smaller the measurement, the greater the distance produced. I think this follows. The tighter, shorter, and faster our communication becomes, especially when those evolutions are catalyzed by the introduction of a layer of technology as our conscious focus (as opposed to the human beings using that technology), the greater the distance between us.

I mean to say that if we were two primitives who spoke totally different languages standing on opposite sides of the grand canyon, looking through a glass to see each other standing on the other side looking back, having our first consciousness of the other - ever - we would be several orders of magnitude closer to each other than two people on opposite ends of the crosstown bus sending each other twitters about what so and so was wearing such and such event last night.

I love technology and I always have. I love buttons, and I love pushing them. I love getting the results, analyzing them, and punching more buttons. I love machines, especially electronics, and I love playing with them. I love tinkering with them, taking them apart, and putting them back together. I love using things in ways they were not intended to make something I think is way cooler and better than the sum of its parts.

But I do not love the increased sense of isolation I have felt in the world, as these things have grown. I do not love being alone or lonely, and I do not love fearing that one day I will look up and discover, much to my surprise, that I didn't realize Carlos looked like that.

All I'm saying is that if I really want to be hyper-connected, perhaps the connection I should be making is one that can't be made with a machine.

Fluttering

My heart is fluttering and I'm wishing I could dead head to the conclusion of this thing with my former employer. I could cry.

An humble request.

Okay. Here, precisely, is one thing I want the new Obama Administration to do for me:

Anyone who wishes to vote on, petition, lobby, or debate about immigration, naturalization, citizenship, or who is allowed to be "in" and who is "out" MUST SUCCESSFULLY COMPLETE an oral examination of up to 100 questions. Successful completion means 60 out of the 100 questions. The questions can be found at http://www.uscis.gov/files/nativedocuments/100q.pdf.

This is the list of 100 questions that every person must answer who wishes to become a US citizen. Although they will only be asked up to ten in the exam, and must correctly answer six, if you wish to dominate others, you must be expected to perform at a level above what you suggest theirs must be before you will consider them an equal human being.

Although I am not demanding that you get 70 or 80 percent correct, I want to see that there TRULY is AT LEAST 60 percent correct answers in your head before you start spouting your ignorant, racist, CRACKER ASS BULLSHIT. So, up to 100 questions must be asked, and the applicant for human domination must successfully perform in the exam.

If you can, fine. Take your ugly stars and stripes and go sit in the corner and wave. Your kind is on its way out. You can't keep everyone ignorant forever, even if you, yourself, choose to be an utter fucking fool.

Oh, also, my sister is a fucking ignorant CRACKER.

Noisy Asshole Neighbors

It's 2:15 am and I'm awakened, once again, by my noisy asshole neighbors, this time, coming home drunk.

When the landlord expressed her "disappointment" that I would not sit down to discuss the "olive branch" being offered by my neighbors who, she said, wanted to tell us how sincerely sorry they were that they had been disruptive to us, I explained that the only "olive branch" I needed was for our neighbors to adhere to what we had previously agreed would be our "extended quiet hours."

Building quiet hours are from 11p to 6a. Since we go to bed at 9pm every day (even on New Years Eve) and get up at 5, it's really helpful for us to not be disrupted and awakened every night an hour or two after we go to bed. (Our neighbors have made it a habit to also do wonderful things like laundry at 2am.) They also sleep until 9am, and asked that we keep our quiet time going until 9am to help them. Seemed like a good, mutually beneficial and respectful plan.

So after we made this agreement, the very next week our sleep was disrupted on four separate nights. Each time, with an excuse the landlord felt was adequate to explain four separate nights of exceptions to the rule.

After the last time, when I got up on Monday morning at 5, like I do, and then at 6:01 began playing "Woke Up This Morning," the theme song for "The Sopranos" (full version, which is really, really good) at high volume, remarkably, my landlord, who has the luxury of living below ME, sent me an email expressing her "disappointment" that I had acted so childishly.

She said she had had a conversation with the assholes, and that they wanted to sit down for this excuses-for-bad-behavior-disguised-as-an-apology thing, to tell us just how sorry they were. They also asserted that their washing machine is off balance *every single time* they do a load, which is not true, or they've only done about ten loads of laundry since July.

So I said that the only olive branch necessary was to play nice, and we would, too. Why, goddamnit, is this so fucking hard for people sometimes? And why am I always left holding the asshole-bag when *I* respond to assholes in an explosive, assholeish way? Normally, I'm a very peace loving fellow. When I am repeatedly disrespected, I get angry. When I get angry in the middle of the night, when I should be sleeping, I get very angry, and don't mind saying so to whoever is responsible.

Well, I went upstairs, to discuss the olive branch, and to ask these really sorry fucks just how their present behavior coincides with the olive branch they are said to be extending. From behind the closed door, you can hear every single word being said in any kitchen in our building. It's awful.

So the girlfriend says about my knock at the door "What is that?" I replied "It's your neighbor you've woken up at 2:30 in the morning!" "Oh..." she said. "I'm sorry." She didn't mean it. "So am I!" "Fuck you, bitch," replied one of the actual tenants.

"Fuck you, bitch. Got it." I said, and walked down to the 2nd floor, where I knocked on the landlord's door at least long and loud enough to have woken them up. They didn't answer. Imagine that. I've emailed them, and explained that any complaints going forward about noise from my apartment will receive the same response, and encouraged them to get earplugs.

I suppose that's childish. It's certainly not as polite as say, the Duke of Kent would be in expressing his deep concern over repeated displays of a similar degree of disrespectful behavior, but neither is "Fuck you, bitch" the linguistic equivalent to a call for peaceful, mature, respectful conversation. It doesn't really come off as totally adult.

Amazon, oh Amazon...

I actually don't mind having bought and paid for an Amazon Prime membership. Not much anyway. But an experience I have had today has me rethinking the ethics of certain choices.

So, my partner and I are Seattleites without a car. I do love not owning a car. At one time, I used Flexcar, but it's been bought by someone else, and the rates are very high, and I'm unemployed for three months now, so car rentals are definitely a thing of the past. If I had the money, I'd still use it, though, for sure. It's a great program, even if the new company is bigger and meaner.

Of course, not having a car means we spend a very large part of our days traveling. King County has one of the best (if not the very best) transit system in the country. I know there are some contenders for the top spot out there, but Metro transit, coupled with Sound Transit, Community Transit, and Pierce Transit, means that you can get almost anywhere between Everett, Issaquah, and Tacoma on public transit. That's pretty dog gone impressive. On the other hand, we have to plan for an hour travel time for what would take us twenty minutes to drive at midnight.

Also, carrying a case of sodas, three bags of groceries, and a 35 pound pail of clumping cat litter is absolutely impossible on the bus, so sometimes, several times a month anyway, we get a taxi ride home from somewhere, or have groceries delivered by Safeway or Albertson's for a fee. So when Amazon Fresh started delivering groceries in my neighborhood, from a private warehouse located in Bellevue, I was intrigued. At first I was disappointed to have to buy a 79 dollar Amazon Prime membership to be allowed to take advantage of their services. But the membership DOES have it's advantages outside of being able to use Amazon Fresh.

On top of the free 2-day shipping on all products stocked by Amazon.com, I get 3.99 overnight shipping on each of those same items. With Amazon's good deals from time to time on regularly needed stuff, I figured this was a fine benefit to have available for a year. But the real savings for us is in the Amazon Fresh shipping. Fresh delivers orders for free if they are over 30 bucks. That's a HUGE deal for a family of two. Free shipping is often available from Safeway or Albertson's, but you have to spend anywhere from 75 to 150 dollars to get it, depending on whether they're offering a promotion. I just got a free shipping coupon from safeway in the mail - for an order of 100 dollars or more. That's just an awful lot of food, much of which cannot be fresh or it will go bad before we two use it.

So now we can have fresh fruits and vegetables delivered a few times a week, and as long as we spend at least 30 bucks (which is absolutely no problem these days, let's face it) we don't pay for the shipping. This saves us at least two ten-dollar taxi-rides per month. So you can see how 79 bucks for the Prime membership was still a bargain for us.

But like I said, there's those other benefits, too, right? So yesterday I decided that since Amazon had this really great pie plate available for 5 bucks, and I needed a pie plate today to bake a berry pie, I'd just have them overnight it for 3.99 and for a total of 10 bucks, I get a much nicer pie plate than I could get from the local grocery store where I would spend the same. I could have bussed it to Target, but I figured this was available, and easy, so why not.

Well, today I checked the tracking of my wee little pie plate, and I am concerned about this choice. It got into some sort of transport vehicle in Reno and went to Sparks, Nevada. From there, it flew across the North American continent to freaking Ontario, Canada, where it then took a turn, and flew back across North America to arrive in Seattle this morning, where it has now been put on a truck and is headed my way. Wow. Wow, wow, wow.

What an awful lot of carbon in the air, and fossil fuels we will never have back. And just so I didn't have to walk six blocks each way to the store and back? I'm not convinced this choice is in line with my personal ethics.

So, at this point, I've made the decision to always get something locally if the amazon savings are not very significant. Because I feel guilty about this, even though the details and specifics of the pollution and expenditure of fossil fuels was outside my immediate control. The reality is that it was my choice to place the order, so it's worth weighing these factors in the future when I make a purchasing decision.

Still, the bottom line at this point will have to remain savings. If I can save a ton of money buying from Amazon and getting free 2 day shipping, I'll still have to take advantage of that, because I'm just not personally in a position to finance solutions to our global problems.

No Topic

I saw Brad Pitt's latest (almost) 3 hour spectacle. Interesting ideas. Could have been a 90 minute movie but Pitt loves a slow, pedantic film.

Haven't heard from my biological father since before the corporate wealthfare holiday. We shall see. A couple of caustic emails later and I finally got a reply from him saying he had been working and such, but not making excuses, and promising to stick around. Huzzah!

There's a fantastic Russian guy who opened a Subway a few blocks from my house. Bless his heart. He's so sweet. The walking dead today. He had a baby (or rather, his wife did) on Xmas eve. Whee!

I've never been catholic but now I wear a cross around my neck.

I am sick again.

Winter Solstice Report

It's fucking cold, unseasonably snowy and icy for Seattle, and I'm glad to say that starting tomorrow, we return to more appropriate temperatures and good old cold fucking rain.

For our annual end-of-year splurge, I requested an ounce of the finest marijuana, and some hashish. I got exactly what I asked for.

I also spoke for two and a half hours to my biological father, two whom I have not spoken for a decade, and even then I didn't know him. He left when I was four, letting my mother's new husband adopt me and abuse me. When I was 18, we had a period of a few years trying to get some kind of reconnect going, but once again, he bailed out, afraid, he said. Full of regret. Unable to choose differently in spite of that.

So I moved to Seattle in 1999 and saw him once before I left, but that was the last I had heard from him. I didn't even hear from him when his mother died. Now he's almost sixty and wants to reconnect, which I've agreed to, and look forward to with hopeful anticipation.

It occurs to me now that the only linguistic structure I've ever applied to him effectively was "biological father" and even this was only an explanation to others - it never explained anything to me. It took until this week before I began making the connections between those words and the material realities they represent. Half of me was once, a single, identifiable sperm living in one of his testicles, which traveled through the shaft of his penis and exited, with more than a few others, swimming excitedly until stumbling headlong into one truly monumental case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, for instance.

Fucking.

Crazy.

So you know, whatever. It is a revelatory light that demonstrates the heart of my belief that biological connections (frequently termed family) are worth nothing, and do not guarantee or even necessarily bear the capacity to afford a person the very things we most seem to need and desire from our Real Families. I say this because when afforded the opportunity to create my own family, I have sought out so many values and traits directly opposite those embodied by my two rather cowardly parents. I haven't got a lot of good words for them right now, and there's no need to add to the pile of whining snot on the internets, so I'll stop there for now.

Courage, honesty, ability, honesty, dependability... honesty. These are the qualities embraced by those in my Real Family. Everything demanded of me as a child before I had the opportunity to choose it, because it was completely void in those responsible for my transmogrification.

::sigh:: I've had to make up for these three for a long time. And it's funny how I feel like this one is now trying to catch up to me. I find that annoying. It makes my back hurt. It makes me want to go to sleep.

I made a most delicious beef stew yesterday. And the best polenta I've ever pulled off. Creamy and delicious. With some fresh baked rolls, it was a meal meant for a snowy day spent indoors.

I have a few projects I'm trying to gain traction with:

The Spice Rubric: Confessions of a Culinary Sinner
An in-home water feature that makes a lot of noise for zero dollars
Storycorps.net - especially with my biological father
Finish reading "120 Days of Sodom" and "Ambivalent Zen"
Make meaningful progress on "Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self"
Clean the bathroom

I am tired, and am going to take a nap with my cats.