I went to see X3 yesterday (details and gripes below). And between the time I reached the front doors and the time the movie started, I saw some scarey things.

"Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties" Yes... they're making another Garfield movie. And doing a ripoff of a classic novel.

"The Omen" Umm.... Why?? Does The Omen really need to be remade?

"Click" I find this one to be *really* funny. You see... I read this short story. On asstr.org. It was a porno story. Someone took a bad porn story and turned it into a family movie starring Adam Sandler.

As for X3....

I liked it. It's always fun to watch a movie that a friend has played a major role in creating.

I had 3 major gripes with the movie, however (no spoilers).

1. Telegraphing: Way too many of the "exciting moments" were "telegraphed" in advance. I saw them coming. Anyone who paid attention could have seen them coming. Several of the scenes were *so* setup that the plot had to go out of its way to get to the "exciting moment".
2. One-liners: There were too many glib one-liners. It was like watching "The Last Boyscout" or any one of the Terminator movies. They were out of place, out of character, and they ruined the mood and flow of the story.
3. The "Bridge Scene": Completely and utterly uncalled-for. Within the context of the movie it was just wrong. It was an excuse to do a "really cool special effect" and that's all. It interfered with the story, in my opinion.

However, all in all, it's a good movie. I think a better director could have gotten a lot more out of it, but considering that it broke box-office records (a fair indication that there may be another X-Men movie in the future), I'll won't get too picky.

Two minor, but significant things happened in the last 24 hours.

1. I bought a cane (see the picture). This past week, my knees hurt so bad I could barely walk.
2. The rheumatologist called, and I've got an appointment. ... in 6 weeks.

I don't know how much I'll be using the cane (it's really hard to use with my left hand), but it's there if I need it. Just a simple, bent-wood cane. If it helps me walk on the bad days, it's worth it. Besides... it's good for beating up the hooligans and catching the pretty young girls around the neck and pulling them closer.

As for the doctor.... Mostly I just want to know what's wrong. If it's a choice of loading up with drugs or dealing with the pain, I'll just deal with the pain. But I want to know why I'm in pain, and what's happening in my body.

So... (potential) arthritis, a cane, my beard going gray.... Oh yeah. The "old man" joke is becoming more of a reality every day.

Honesty is one of those contradictory concepts. Everybody says that they value honesty, but when that honesty is directed at them in anything less than a flattering manner, they lash out.

Honesty is one of the areas in which I pride myself. There are a lot of instances where I choose not to speak my piece. But when I do, I am honest. Even if that honesty isn't pretty.

I believe in the concept of "brutal honesty"; it's something I learned from Carol-Jo way back in high school, and it's stuck with me. I feel that the closer you are to someone, the more brutally honest you can be. You may tell a stranger "yes, that's a very lovely outfit", but you'd tell a friend "That outfit is absolutely attrocious. It makes you look like a cheap, fat hooker."

Why? Because that friend is important to you, and you're concerned about how she'll appear to the public eye. You give her the information she needs to correct what you perceive to be a problem. That helps her to become a better person, and allows her to avoid looking like a fool in front of the general public.

"Brutal honesty", however, is a bit of a balancing act. Go too far one way and it's nothing more than emotional abuse. Go too far the other way and it gets watered down and loses any power it may have.

Being honest isn't about being nice. It isn't about avoiding hurting someone's feelings. It's about telling the truth, as you see it, and not allowing politeness or social expectations to get in the way.

When a stranger says "I don't like what you're doing", you pull out our rationale and inform him of why you're right.

When a friend says "I don't like what you're doing", you debate the topic and listen to his side of the argument.

When a close friend says "I don't like what you're doing", you stop and listen to what's being said.

Everyone wants to hear compliments. But compliments are cheap. The value of a friendship lies in how it deals with times when things aren't the best. If you can't listen to the criticisms of a friend and understand where they're coming from, then you aren't considering them to be a friend.

I expect my hashest criticisms to come from my closest friends. I trust in them to see the things I can't. I trust in them to look out for my best interests--even if it runs contrary to what I see. When my best friend tells me I'm being stupid or self-destructive, I stop and listen to her.

She's earned that right. I not only accept it from her, I expect it. If I did any less, then we wouldn't be friends.

Friendship isn't about pats on the back and words of praise. Sycophants are easy to come by. Friendship is about honesty. It's about saying "yes" when "yes" is the honest answer. But more importantly, it's about saying "no" when "no" is the honest answer. It doesn't matter if it hurts. It doesn't matter if it's not what you want to hear. A friend will tell you the truth.

... And if you can't handle hearing that truth.... then you don't deserve to have friends.

Honesty isn't pretty.
Honesty isn't kind.
Honesty isn't polite.

Honesty is truth.

Honesty from a friend is a guide down your true Path.

Each person must decide for themselves which is more important: Honesty or accolades.

And in the end, each person must accept the consequences of that decision.

Ask yourself: Do I want friends? Or do I want fans?

I finally got around to doing some of the updates I had on my to-do list. If you look under the "pages" section, you'll see a bunch of new stuff. I've added my stories and poems to the site (finally) for your reading enjoyment.

This has been a black week.

I have been ignored.
My words to friends have been taken as insults.
I have seen evidence thay my dreams are destroyed.
It has been implied that my words mean nothing, but the same words from another are important.

My body matches my soul.
I hurt, both physically and emotionally, from a sharp, continuous pain.

Reality crushes my hopes, and again I am forced to acknowledge that this is my life.

I have made these choices.
I have accepted these costs.
This is the Path upon which I walk.
This is my life.

This is the price of my sins.

And I will sit in the room which I have made, and listen to the rain upon the shingles. They will become my tears; the thunder my heart; the lightning, the lash upon my flesh.

I will take this upon myself.
I will be the stone which holds me to this place.
I will be the water which forms to the container which is my life.
I will be the wind which pushes the ship forward.
I will be the fire that burns within.

I will be the void.

And nothing will touch me.

I will be the void.

And nothing will know me.

I will be the void.

And I will be all.

"A friend" says it and it makes you "feel good".

I've been saying it for 5 years, and I'm told to my face that I'm a liar and that my motives are highly suspect.

That cuts deep.

George W Bush says that he is a Christian.
He says that God guides his actions as President.

I suggest that he look to the world...
...then look to the words his God spoke:

Matthew 25

31When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory:

32And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats:

33And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.

34Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:

35For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:

36Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.

37Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink?

38When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee?

39Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?

40And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

41Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels:

42For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink:

43I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not.

44Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee?

45Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.

46And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.

I am finally disconnected from cable (both TV and internet). What a fiasco.

I signed up for cable internet 4 years ago when I moved into my last apartment. It was the first time I'd ever had broadband, and I loved it. About a year or so ago, I bought a Buffalo Tech NAS. One of the features (and a big reason I got a NAS instead of just an outboard HD) was FTP server capability. This would let me access my files from anywhere, and let me share documents without having to go through the intermediate step of uploading to a webspace somewhere.

I was never able to get the FTP to work. It would work from inside the LAN, but not from outside. I chalked it up to some failure of understanding on my part, and eventually forgot about it.

When I moved into the house, I moved my cable along with me. For some reason, FTP access to the NAS again became an issue. This time, a friend suggested I check the ports to see if they were blocked. And... it looked like they were. I called Charter Cable and asked. The guy had no clue. I got transfered to a technician. "Oh yeah. We block port 20. That's an ftp port. If we left that open, you could run a server from your home."

Ooooookay. So, I asked if there was a way to UNblock ports. Yep... I could get a "business account". I was transferred to the business account sales person.

Now.... I was paying $100/mo for premium cable, all the movie channels, and 3MB internet service.

A business account starts at $100/mo for just the internet. Plus, I'd need a static IP; that's another $50 to $75. Oh.. did I want the 3MB service? That's another $50. Plus the set-up costs, plus the service call, plus I had to sign a contract.....

Right.

So I called SBC and asked about DSL. I got a wonderful young woman on the phone who was quite knowledgable about anything I asked.

me: "Do you block any ports?"
her: "Block ports? No. Why do you ask?"
me: "My current provider blocks port 20."
her: "Port 20? But... that's FTP. You can't run a server without that port."
me: "Yes. They don't want anyone running a server from their homes."
her: ".... why not?"

SBC is cheaper, just as fast, doesn't block ports, doesn't care if I run a server from home, doesn't require any other services (such as phone).... and isn't available in my area.

Then, a couple weeks ago, my VNC suddenly stopped working. I can use it directly from within my network, but from out-of-network: nothing. I suspect they started blocking ports 5800-5900 (VNC)

Well...This was the final straw. I finally got around to calling Verizon (my local phone & DSL provider), and got signed up. I don't need the phone line, but it's required. Oh well. Geek Niche now has a fax number.

I was supposed to be hooked up and receive my install package on the 25th. It came on the 20th. So, after rewiring my house (egads! what a rat's nest of wires!) I hooked up my new DSL modem, sat through the single most painful software install I've ever seen (5 steps, with animation and descriptive voice-overs to tell me how to plug in my phone line. *headdesk* ). And... I'm off to the races.

I did speed checks, and both up and down came in at about 90% of advertised speed, which is where it should be.

So today, I called to get my cable disconnected... and spent the entire phone call arguing with the guy on the other end. It was the same guy who had no clue about port blocking the first time I called. Even after I told him to stop,to not attempt to sell me anything, and that I had done all my research on the subject, he just kept telling me how much better cable was. I'm a patient man--except when it comes to stupidity. And this guy was starting to press all the right buttons. One more comment from him, and I think I would have gone into "mad teacher" mode. GAH!!

All I have left to do is drop off the cable modem at the local office (which, it turns out, is just around the corner from where I work) and I'll be done with them forever. (I turned off the TV portion a couple weeks ago. My house has no TV, no TV service, and.... I don't care.)

However.... I still can't get FTP or VNC to work with the new service.

Of all things, a comic book got me thinking about this.

Ultimate Spider-Man.

Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson love each other. Intensely.

Ironically, the last time that happended to me, I was in high school, too.

A couple years ago, I thought I was in love... but I was lying to myself. The last (and only) time I was in love was in high school. And the last time someone loved me... the last time I know it happened was also in high school.

All of the fiction I've been reading lately--novels, comics, fan-fic--has an element of love in it. It makes for good drama. But there's a part of it that gets under my skin. You see... as far as I know, it's been 20 years since anyone has been in love with me. I'm not blind. I know that there has been interest, and infatuation. I'll even concede that there have been one or two women who may love me. But... but they haven't been "in love" with me. It's an important distinction.

This isn't me whining. This isn't me getting all "angsty". This is just me observing my life.

I look at the world around me... I read stories... I listen to people... and I wonder.... Do people actually feel like this? Do people actually have these intense feelings of need? Do they actually feel so... "completed" by someone else?

I have a difficult time understanding it. I find it rather improbable that someone could feel that way about me. This isn't me putting myself down. It's just that... the very concept seems so foreign to me.

And this is what gets me wondering.

I'm not a stranger to love. Nor to passion. There are those whom I love with an intensity that is... it's difficult to describe. But somehow it's different. Or maybe it's me that's different. I don't know how others see "love". I don't understand how women can be so loyal to men who abuse and degrade them. That's not what I understand to be "love". It's not something I want directed towards me. And.... and what I think is love--what I, in my heart, understand to be love--is not something that I can envision being directed at me.

I know that people will read this and interpret it to mean that I think I'm not worthy of love. They will be wrong.

I like myself. I like who I am. I am what I have made of myself, and I am comfortable in the skin I wear. This is who I am, and I could be no other.

It's not me I question. It's the nature of the beast we call "love". What is it? What does it truly mean to us? Is it something I can ever understand? Is it something of which I could ever be the subject?

Does it actually exist?

I am a singularity.

Everyone is a singularity.

Does there truly exist such a force as to bind us together so that we cease to be singular? That we become inseperable from another? Is this a reality? Or are we grasping at the shadows in Plato's cave and deluding ourselves as to our own reality?

Is there really ever "us".... or is it just nothing more than "you and I"?

For the first time in a long time, I sat down and read the regional newspaper.

It was a mistake.

I've avoided reading the newspaper for 2 main reasons: 1) When I read about the acts of our current federal government, I get so angry I can barely see strait. 2) The absolute stupidity of the citizenry-at-large just makes me all the more pissed off.

Today, it was 2 things that really set me off.

1) The NSA is (and has been for 5 years) amassing a "social-networking" database of all calls made in the US.

According to Der Fuhrer President Bush, "We're not mining or trolling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans". Excuse me? Keeping track of whom I call, and how often I call them is my personal life. This isn't just about the 4th Amendment, it's also about the 1st Amendment and the the principle of "freedom of association". It is exactly none of the government's business whom I call, or how often I call them.

Both the Feds and the phone companies (who willingly turned over this information and didn't tell us) insist that "no personally-identifiable information has been given to the NSA" and that "[our] privacy is being protected."

Bullshit.

First of all, my phone number is personally-identifiable information. I'm the only one in the whole country that has this phone number. It's a unique identifying number.

Secondly, if there's supposedly no way of identifying each and every person in that database (a bold-faced lie from word one), then it would be absolutely useless to the NSA. How could it be any other way?

Agent: "Hey! Our software has identified a potential terrorist."
Boss: "Great! Who is it?"
Agent: "Gee, Boss... we have no way of finding that out from the information we have."

Yeah. Right.

I, as a plain old citizen, can go to 411.com, do a reverse-lookup, and tell you the name and address for most phone numbers. I'm going to take a leap here and guess that the NSA has slightly better resources than me and can get that info on the people I can't.

Given a name and address, they can pinpoint exactly who you are, and collect information on you that you didnt' even know existed.

The federal government--by the direct order of George W Bush--is tromping through our personal lives, without warrants, with no consideration for who we might be, with no probable cause or suspicion, and in direct violation of both federal law and the US Constitution.

2) (remember... there were 2 things pissing me off?) A guest column on the opinion page is promoting impeachment. I'm fine with that. However, this person--trying to educate people on the nature of impeachment--makes the following statement:

If the majority of the Senate approves one or more articles of impeachment, the person is impeached, immediatedly removed from office, and may never hold office again.

That's wrong. Absolutely and completely wrong. Does this guy not remember just a few years ago when Bill Clinton was impeached? He wasn't removed from office. He served out his term. Impeachment is simply a process which allows a sitting official to be tried without the protections of office. It's Congress' way of saying "Yep. He broke the law. Let the courts do their work."

PLEASE, People! If you're going to stand on a soapbox and tell people that they need to listen to you, at least have the intelligence to actually know what you're talking about!

I'm going to go read comic books now. They make much more sense than the real world does.