Everything2 New Writeups

Men of Blood (poetry)

2013-05-23T12:53:15Z

Today we saw the men of blood,
On our streets,
Vacant faced murderers,
Blood on hands and feet,
Pity, shock, disbelief - anger for some,
Worry, more than anything, of more of this to come.

May 23, 2013 (log)

2013-05-23T05:33:50Z

Yesterday I accepted an offer of representation from a literary agent for my nonfiction book.

This is pretty sweet for me, because it's a bit of a niche title on asexuality and I wasn't sure I'd be able to find representation. But I'm qualified as a spokesperson if anyone is; I've done all kinds of media, public speaking, been in a damn movie even, and I've been interviewed in magazines and podcasts, and have been fielding questions and comments and regular abuse by trolls for something like a dozen years. The author's credentials matter for nonfiction a lot more than they do for fiction. (The literary agent who represents my fiction did not care that I had not published any fiction. My fantasy trilogy is on submission as we speak.)

I'm tickled that this agent thought my book proposal was good as is and only needs minor changes,…

Action Man (thing)

2013-05-23T03:57:56Z

In our age, the road to holiness necessarily passes through the world of action.
-Dag Hammarskjold

Mister Chu, flying through Atlanta
remembers the last time he was there.

It was many years ago, but even then a complex airport
filled that evening with thousands of people.

Ants without a common purpose
beyond the transportation of themselves by others.

In a bathroom designated for the use of men only
Mister Chu had splashed water onto his tired face

washed his hands as one is supposed to.
Behin…

Port Orford Heads State Park (place)

2013-05-23T02:33:17Z

Port Orford Heads State Park is a state park in the Oregon parks system located a mile or so outside of Port Orford, Oregon. As the name suggests, it is located on headlands, a rocky peninsula that juts out into the Pacific Ocean.

The Oregon Coast is beautiful, and the rocky, mountainous Southern Oregon Coast is doubly so. Being on a high, rocky peninsula with a 270 degree view of the Pacific Ocean is one great reason to visit Port Orford Heads. The fact that this is one of the west most points in the lower 48 states is another good reason to visit. But the Oregon Coast is full of dramatic and beautiful scenery, and there is a State Park every five or ten miles.

What is of note about Port Orford Heads is that it used to be a Coast Guard base, and the base has been preserved and turned into a museum. The base was active from 1934 to 1970, during much of which time Highway 101 hadn't been completed in its modern form and Port Orford was very isolated. The Coast Guard…

Proprietary CD-ROM interface (thing)

2013-05-23T01:06:32Z

It was the early 90s. Bill Clinton was in office. Eight megabytes of RAM was considered a lot. Most geeks who weren't in college didn't know what the Internet was yet, and likely spent most of their online time dialing into local BBS systems.

CD-ROM drives were starting to become affordable.

So you went out to CompUSA and bought yourself a brand new shiny CD-ROM drive. Upon opening it up you notice there is also an ISA card in the box with it. Yep, it uses a proprietary interface. Long before ATAPI CD-ROM drives came along, you had these beasts which required a special card just to use them. At one point sound card manufacturers realized they could put these interfaces on their cards as an added-value feature.

The Creative Labs Sound Blaster Pro supported Panasonic CD-ROM drives. The Gravis Ultrasound MAX supported Panasonic, Sony and Mitsumi drives, and was one of the largest sound cards ever made as a result.

Eventually the ATAPI CD-ROM…

fishing at night (personal)

2013-05-22T21:41:39Z

Earlier today, as I walked down a hallway filled with business suits and serious faces I paused for a moment, only a moment, in embarrassment.

I could not remember a word.

This isn't uncommon, and normally I continue on without a thought, knowing that at some point I will remember it and all will be well, but this time it gave me pause because of the nature of the word.

It was a fishing word.

I no longer fish, but from the time I was a small child until after college I often spent my days and nights wading up various creeks, or camping on a riverbank, or even trailing a line behind a boat. But as life changed and I drifted further and further from my rural roots I unconsciously fished less and less, until one day I realized I had not touched my fishing pole in years. The line on it had dry rotted and the last jig I used seemed permanently secured to one of the eyeholes.

The word I had forgotten this morning, between meetings and presentations, described…

Operation Popeye (event)

2013-05-22T14:35:24Z

I was glancing through the news this morning and came across an article that caught my eye. It was in regards to the recent tornado that ripped through Oklahoma killing at least 24 people, 9 of them children. Besides the toll taken in human life, the area is devastated with homes, schools, hospitals and businesses virtually wiped off the map.

Leave it to nut job and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones to speculate that the government might have used a âweather weaponâ to create the carnage that just occurred. He went on and stated that itâs pretty much a given the government âcan create and steer groups of tornadoesâ if it felt like it.

Oy Vey!

At least it got me to thinking and wondering if the United States has ever tried to manipulate the weather during war and lo and behold, it seems we have.

âMake mud, not war.â

The year is 1967 and the United States is mired in the Vietnam War. The North…

May 22, 2013 (personal)

2013-05-22T11:08:06Z

(another) Unsent letter:

You know, I finally tried out the restaurant you used to work at the other night. Service was goddamn lousy. I must have sat there at that little white table outside for half an hour and I didn't even get a glass of water. Possibly because it was around 3 in the morning. I eventually decided I had to serve myself, and helped myself to a cigarette.

With words written on the side.
That said,
"Still can't feel it"

I stood up and mused over the menu in the display case next to the gated front door. You know, I don't think it's wise to try to put crab in me, but the Vietnamese pepper shrimp seems like it could really hit the spot for an appetizer. Â Down to the soups. Are you guys too good to make a du jour or something? Oh, there it is, at the very top. You know, it really just means soup of the day? It's taken on such a specific meaning in this country since then.…

Faint of heart (poetry)

2013-05-22T03:37:43Z

Ailene

Hers were opinions subdued,
spoken quietly, lacking conviction.

Faint of bone,
soft of spirit, weak of knee.

Hers were understated passions,
reticent kisses and timid fingers.

Faint of heart,
faith in hardly anything.

Suzanne, on the other hand

Hers were thoughts the whole room knew,
she of leather jackets and brazen heels.

Faint of nothing,
transparent as her blouse.

imagination (idea)

2013-05-22T03:25:19Z

They grow up so fast.

I have been watching the goslings at the Arboretum grow up. I walk my dog there in the morning and evening, and now that itâs a summery spring we also sit and bask in the sun, the glow of the rippling water, and watch the goose kibbutz in action.

I have learned the intersecting territories; where the redwing blackbird nests are, the favorite sunning place of the giant black rat snake, and that of the angry old squirrel who always yells at us to get off his lawn. One day a baby sparrow hopped straight at me as we ambled the path, and opened his beak when I bent down to inspect him to see if he was hurt: feed me! I rubbed his head with one finger, apologetically. Sorry, buddy: just ate my last worm.Â My peaceable little dog watched this transaction with bemusement. The magnolia has…

Pandeism and the world of Doctor Who (essay)

2013-05-22T00:15:26Z

Earlier this year I resolved to node less on Pandeism, except for "one more big one coming"; this is that one.*

The Universe of Doctor Who is an odd one to consider within the context of the theological theory of Pandeism -- after all, Pandeism is logic-based, whereas the Whovian realm is perhaps somewhat more.... whimsical. A bit silly, even, not only in the behavior of its denizens, but in the operations of time and space and physics.

For the uninitiated, the world of Doctor Who centers on the adventures of the Doctor -- a Time Lord from the once-great (and now sadly destroyed) planet Gallifrey. The Doctor inhabits a time-and-space ship of sorts called the TARDIS, which externally looks like a 1960's British police box, but is enormous on the inside, and which enables him to travel to any point in time and space. This he does, fighting a variety of enemies, old recurring…

thoughts while cutting my daughter's hair (poetry)

2013-05-21T20:33:46Z

Oh...she's going to look so beautiful when I'm done.....

Wait a minute......

I don't have a daughter.

What have I done?

May 21, 2013 (log)

2013-05-21T18:00:51Z

A Little Help from my friends -

It's been a while since I've posted here, though I haven't stopped trolling Etouffee's poetry. Catharsis is catharsis after all. I'm only a little ashamed to say that for the most part, I've stopped posting here because I've been trying to get my pieces published in Literary Journals of resoundingly suspicious quality, but that I have been moderately successful. I've gotten over a dozen poems published to various journals, and if all goes well I'll have a chapbook published soon. A chapbook is a weird little medium, it's essentially a half book of poetry. It's mainly used for those who don't have the stones to write an entire book of poetry.

This whole enterprise has been made possible by the good folks at Duotrope Unfortunately, they've started charging five bucks a month, but it's been a really awesome resource for me, since I'm a notoriously lazy submitter. I hated writing cover letters, trying to find back issues to see if they…

thoughts while cutting my daughter's hair (person)

2013-05-21T16:43:27Z

When my oldest daughter was a baby, her hair grew in mohawk fashion. Eventually I snipped the long front part, but there was nothing I could do about the stubborn part on the left side. As she grew, her hair turned curly, and it may seem like an exaggeration to say this happened overnight, but she went to bed with straight her one evening, and when she woke up the next morning, her head was full of street urchin curls. By the time she was two and a half, her hair was a gorgeous mess of tangled blonde snarls. Putting it up was frustrating, her hair is fine so hair things slid out of it, and she liked to pull out the ones that did anchor her hair well.

I was in the bathroom with her, various hair care products, a comb, and a brush when it finally got to be too much. I was sick of trying to comb out the matted knots of hair, she would cry every day when we had to fix her hair, and it was suddenly no longer worth it even though I really enjoyed seeing her with her hair done.…

Star Trek Into Darkness (review)

2013-05-21T15:57:52Z

J.J. Abrams got the chance to reboot the original Star Trek back in 2009, bringing to it a youthful cast, an action movie sensibility, and lots of lens flare. The film didn't sit well with all fans, but many people embraced Abrams' flashy vision. Nothing succeeds in Hollywood like success, and the new crew of the Starship Enterprise returned in 2013 with Star Trek Into Darkness.

I like the acting. I like the visuals. And Iâd like it if Abrams and company could come up with an original idea. Onward, then, into darkness.

James T. Kirk (Chris Pine), at the helm of the Enterprise, violates the prime directive in order to save Mr. Spock's (Zachary Quinto) life. Certainly, we have consistency of character here. William Shatner's Kirk violated the prime directive so many times I always assumed that reels of missing scenes existed in which he calls up and says, "execute Starfleet General Order #9838," after which someone takes the ship copy of…

thoughts while cutting my daughter's hair (personal)

2013-05-21T12:54:10Z

Back when Anna was, oh I dunno, somewhere between the age of three and five and was staying with me over a typical weekend I had one duty and one duty only. She was getting ready to go to âsomethingâ (I forget if it was a party or a school event but it really doesnât matter) and I was supposed to get her a haircut. Nothing drastic mind you, just a trim of her bangs which were getting pretty long and hanging down over her eyes.

Me, being the dutiful and ever loving father decided against taking her to a professional and would handle the job myself. After all, how hard could it be to lope off a quarter or half an inch in a straight line? Besides my feeling of accomplishment and self satisfaction at a job well done, I figured Iâd also save a few bucks in the process.

So I hunted down a pair of scissors, sat her down in a chair and then a revelation came to me. It would be much easier to cut the bangs if they were wet. Thatâs how Iâd seen it done before. So, with the…

May 21, 2013 (log)

2013-05-21T08:36:09Z

3 days before my birthday, and I got the most wonderful gift I could ever have wished for. I received the news that my book Cradle Songs: An Anthology of Poems on Motherhood has been chosen by the International Book Awards - Honouring Excellence in Independent and Mainstream Publishing. They are sponsored by US Book News. Cradle Songs won the Best Poetry Anthology Award.

The other good news is that we opened our store on May 1st. it has always been my dream to own an antique store. I was going to call it The Little Shop of Hoarders, but we decided on Hecho en Echo instead, since we are making many of the items in the store. My specialty is coiled cloth baskets made from recycled clothing and Native American inspired jewelry. Check us out on Face…

IN THE GRIM FUTURE OF HELLO KITTY, THERE IS ONLY WAR. (fiction)

2013-05-21T03:13:18Z

Premonitory Folk Songs of the Apocalypse
A little less than 38 millennia before the summer of the Badtz-Maru offensive and the Second Battle of Stalingrad, human beings had numbered in the billions. Out of these billions were a tiny handful of postmodern tribalists who mistrusted the mechanical and the chemical. This small and decentralized cohort instructed their largely indifferent peers by mournful intonations and dirges on the environment and geopolitics, the evils of vehicular transport, and the perils of modern life. Through their exhortatory effusions on the subjects of locally grown and organic produce, miraculous but profoundly ugly sandals handcrafted by peace-loving gnomes in the Black Forest, and soy products, they sought to bring their âGreenâ aesthetics to greater prominence. This was a doomed effort, which they all basically knew in their hearts. They clenched their jaws in anger and ground their teeth against the gristle of the truth.
…

May 21, 2013 (log)

2013-05-21T03:04:45Z

What do I do for geeky fun? Sometimes I make up fake memoirs.

The rule for fake biographies is that they have to a) make sense, b)use as much period detail as possible and c) be someone who, tantalizingly, might have been, but....Let me show you what I mean.

It's not often pointed out, but classic Rock & Roll was not much of an equal opportunity employer. As much as people like to point out Grace Slick, and the various J's :Janis, Joni, Judy, Carole, and Laura, the truly epic women of classic rock were not players, nor even songwriters, but wives and muses: Marianne Faithfull, Yoko Ono, Anita Pallenburg, Bebe Buell and Patti Boyd. (This is not to denigrate Women in Rock, per se, but that pre-punk, actual artists were (mostly) overlooked in favor of window dressing.)

Looking over their skill sets, however, they don't look to have done very much other than being muses.

A…

L'eve future (thing)

2013-05-21T02:54:13Z

1886 novel by French decadent, opium addict, and early science fiction writer Comte Jean Marie Mathias Philippe Auguste Villiers de 'Isle-Adam, aka Villiers. Son of a failed treasure-hunter, growing up in the genteel poverty of the post-revolutionary aristocracy, besotted with Symbolism, drugs, Baudelaire, and Edgar Allen Poe - Villiers looked around at the modern world and saw a glorious dystopian future.

L'eve future is an edisonade, a popular genre in the late 19th century in which the protagonist of the story was always Thomas Alva Edison. In Villiers' novel, Edison creates a perfect electric woman - an android named Hadaly - for a friend whose fiancee's fallibility has driven him to despair. Given the almost occult significance of electricity for late 19th-c. romantics, Edison was the logical choice for the engineer-hero in this Pygmalionesque tale of perfect passion.…

You couldn't fool your mother on the foolingest day of your life even if you had an electrified fooling machine! (personal)

2013-05-21T00:32:13Z

I feel bad, reading the title of this and thinking to myself, I did.

It was a lie, a big lie. No one should lie about such a thing, especially to their own mother. I was sixteen when I finally decided I could be the better person and 'fess up.

I had just come out of a one year relationship, also, my first and my mother couldn't understand why it had all come to an end and why I'd continuously asked that she did not ask.

What had happened, was that seven months earlier, I cheated, and not just once. I had confessed to my best friend and no one else. Then my girlfriend received an e-mail detailing what I had done. I wonder who... I hit that big red button in my mind that screams: DENY!

I denied it to everyone, I stood face to face with my mother and told her it was all lies, when really, I was all lies and my mother believed me and did everything to help me through this tough ordeal of people lying about me and trying to ruin my…

The Architect Erects his Time-Proof Temple from the Inside (poetry)

2013-05-21T00:04:53Z

I'll meet you again in our healthier tyme
even if it only exists in the past.
Let's be held by knowledge, hands held open
to snatch time's dice from the air as they're cast.
And I could dream myself a carpenter and an auctioneer
constructing doors and walls and windows of my time
presented as one event. Then turn and woo it away
to you who would abandon your island to fight for mine.
Lying together in constructed tangles on Sunday morning
conducting one small idea of…

Aromantic (idea)

2013-05-20T21:52:47Z

Aromantic is a term used to define one's romantic orientation (sometimes referred to as a person's affectional orientation), used for those who do not feel an urge to engage in romantic relationships. It is sometimes abbreviated aro.

Aromantic is, for the most part, a modifier used by the asexual community. Being asexual does not necessarily mean that you do not desire romance, but it does mean that terms like gay, lesbian, and especially bisexual may not quite fit. So instead you may hear the terms homoromantic asexual, heteroromantic asexual, biromantic asexual, and panromantic asexual. And, of course, you might also come across people who identify as an aromantic asexual.

The term is not always limited to the asexual community. There are also those who identify as, for example, an aromantic bisexual. And you may have noticed that there is a over-hyped stereotype in Western culture of the 'aromantic hetrosexual male' (although that term is never…

Heteroromantic (idea)

2013-05-20T21:50:25Z

Heteroromantic simply means that one feels romantically attracted to members of the opposite sex. This is not necesarily to say members of the 'opposite' gender, as many people who identify as heteroromantic do not consider themselves part of the binary gender paradigm.

Generally, this term is used specifically to refer to people who identify as asexual. (Generally, if you are not asexual, your romantic orientation will match your sexual orientation, making such distinctions redundant). Because the majority of the human race is raised to see heteroromanticism as the default setting, it is often assumed that asexuals are heteroromantic (or perhaps aromantic, to mirror their asexualiy). However, there are certainly those who identify as homoromantic, biromantic, or panromantic.

A heteroromantic asexual will, generally, desire more or less the same romantic activities as a cisgendered person, but will not desire sex.…

I remember Kristine (person)

2013-05-20T19:39:25Z

I sat behind her in Grade 9 chemistry class. She had thin brown hair that came to her shoulders, straight teeth, brown eyes and faint freckles across her face. She had a quiet demeanor but came alive with she laughed. She volunteered at the animal shelter andÂ I thought she was great. Being the shy fourteen year old girl that I was, and not knowing many other people in school, I desperately wanted the two of us to be friends. And for a while, we were.

Until she went quiet.

I don't trust people easily. I'm sure that at one point I must have, but I can't remember what that feels like. When someone invites me to a party, I wonder why. What does she want from me? What is she asking me for? Is this some sort of joke?

Many years have passed since then.Â High School is over.Â I've gone through university and entered the workforce.Â I wasn't friends with Kristine for very long. It's strange thatÂ I would think about her now.Â She swims in and out of my consciousness.Â Call me…