Kindred Souls

It's the very last day of 2006, THE Wife is at work, I'm at home listening to "This American LIfe", and having just read a comment, something pops into my mind that says "write me". It doesn't attempt to justify itself, it just insists on me doing so. Fine. OK. Chill. I'll write it. If it makes sense by the time I'm through with it, I'll post it. Why not? With the wealth of material my life provides me to post, I'll take ANYTHING right now to justify posting one more time this year.

Ever wonder what it is that makes you bookmark any particular blogger, giving them a chance to impress you enough to keep going back to see what they are writing about? It's not till later, if they return the favor and begin commenting, that you take that into account, so sucking up or making nice comments extolling your virtues isn't an initial consideration. But there IS something you connect with when you first click on that link and meet these people for the very first time. Accuse me of getting weird about it, but I honestly think these people occupy a special class. I'll call it "kindred souls". There's something about them you recognize and are familiar with that grabs you and it's all over; you've been adopted. Or vice versa.

These traits seem to be different for each person you find this connection with. Some of them even irritate the hell out of you for one reason or another, yet, they are perhaps similar to a baby brother or sister whom you find yourself stuck to, hate being around, yet feel protective towards. Some you'd never find yourself associating with voluntarily out there in the real world, yet here in virtual unreality, you couldn't even imagine not knowing them. Others you wish like hell you could somehow meet in the flesh, knowing one hell of a party would erupt, much like anti-matter and matter meeting and creating the ultimate bang, even if it would annihilate both of you. It would be worth it, something like the most satisfying illicit sex you could imagine having. Calm down, guys, I'm not being literal here, so let go of your crotch.......hehe.

Kindred souls. I can't think of any other explanation for it. Perhaps we've known each other in some other time, some other universe, some other life. Or, perhaps it's time to know them for whatever it is we are suppose to glean from knowing them. That's the karmic theory, but hey, it works for me. It might also explain why my wife stays with me, despite everything. I've given you guys glimpses of what "everything" entails, so you know what I mean. I'm one lucky SOB, doncha think?

Damn! I just read back over what I just wrote and I guess my muse really does know what the hell it's talking about. That's why I rarely argue with it. It's much like a wife; argue all you want, it's going to win in the end anyway. Save your breath.

So this is what THE Michael leaves you with on this final day of one very strange year. About the only good thing I saw happen this last year was most of us going to the ballet box to say NO to the status quo. We still have a long way to go. It remains to be seen whether or not we have the strength and resolve to complete the transition from utter lunacy to extreme political makeover. We will never reclaim our place in the hearts and minds of ourselves and the rest of the world until we admit that we really screwed up and are willing to do what we can to earn our way back into the collective good grace. New years is a time for resolutions. Let's hope we make the right ones. If we don't, we can describe 2007 and every year afterwards in two easy words.......GAME OVER.

Happy New Year, Kindred souls.

Out with the old, in with the...........?

This is a rather surreal moment. I'm watching the State Funeral for President Gerald Ford (so far nobody's tripped hauling the casket up the Capital stairs) while listening to "A Prairie Home Companion". The wife has just come home having worked today while still in the grips of a bad cold (with a possible touch of pneumonia). The kids have headed back to their home bases down South and it took me many an hour to clean up the mess. Save me, I think I'm a househusband.

There have been some pretty good suggestions concerning the name of our virtual watering hole, with one in particular already having earned a couple of seconds. I will be posting all the names soon for your consideration, without the names of the authors, at which time I will ask for your vote. No, you may NOT vote for your own suggestion, just to be fair, but if your entry has grabbed that much attention, it won't need it. In case of a tie, I will drag out the wading pool, pour in the lime jello, and let the two contenders have at it, providing of course they both happen to be of the gentle persuasion. If it's two guys...well....the jello gets replaced by something somewhat nastier. A guy and a gal? The gal wins......don't they always?

I'm working on a new blog to represent our new home. I'm making it a team blog so that people can come and go at will, even Tim, who has gotten rather paranoid lately, thinking we are a secret society under the auspices of the New World Order come to rob him of his precious sovereignty. Once he realizes that the door opens both ways, I think he'll relax enough to paint the town with his face. We won't mind.

I've also decided not to hold it against anybody who might have been born and bred in the great State of Texas. Just so long as they don't invade any of our neighbors behind our backs, they are more than welcome to join.

It got cold for a couple of nights, then got warm again today. Don, your cold fronts are really wimping out this year. Something tells me that global warming is taking the wind out of your arctic sails. If this keeps up, it's going to get dicey down here. If I were you, I would declare war on the U.S. for pumping out gases of mass destruction. You would have a coalition of equally concerned nations more than happy to join you. By the time we've wiped the carpet with your pathetic "armed" forces, I think maybe we'd get the message and change things around here. The only way to make a bully alter his behavior is to stand up to him, even if you get a black eye for your troubles.

I'm beginning to learn the hard way that the only reason the fates allow me to garner some extra pay thru overtime and working holidays is because I'm gonna have to blow it all on some financial emergency. They car is making ominous sounds in the area of the transmission. At the rate things are going we'll probably be homeless within a few years. Thank Bob I still have my two man back-packing tent. Hopefully my wife will dump my ass for someone who knows how to provide better before that happens. I love her that much.

Ok, that's it from the desk of Pendragon Hold tonight. I hope your 2007 treats you better than 2006 did.

Breaking Ground

It has been rather gratifying to see the response to my idea of creating a comfortable little fire for all of us to gather round. The comments have ranged from enthusiastic to ornery, which reflects the nature of our distinct personalities. As of yet not everyone has responded, or did not offer a name as of yet, but it IS the holidays and some people really have had better things to do, so I am allowing time for the idea to gel and for the rest of our humanity to get on board if they are going to. We have participants from all over the globe, but it sure would be nice to have a German, a Swede (preferably one in a fur-lined bikini) and maybe a Texan (well, I don't know about Texans, cause, well, they are from TEXAS, of all places).

Some of us have yet to post a photo of themselves, so please realize that you have not been excluded from citizenship in (name of place here), I just didn't have a pic to add to the slideshow. Which brings up an idea. I COULD start a blog site using that slideshow of everybody involved, with everybody added as team members so they can post at will. Everybody except Tim, of course, since Tim declared that he is his own country and demands taxes. We will negotiate in good faith, however, and hope that we can convince him to give up his weapons of mass destruction, let his people vote and wear boxers rather than briefs if they want. But no taxes. When he sees the great slurpy recipes a free and diverse community can post, I think he'll give in and join. We certainly could use his photoshop skills!

I had to take the wife to the doc today, her having gotten a bad cold, had to call in sick to work, and is coughing up her lungs. Doc thinks she might have a touch of pneumonia and prescribed antibiotics and a good cough medicine. I think she'll live. Well, I HOPE she lives.......she makes me a killer sandwich for lunch every day I work. I would really miss that.

I'm wearing an old pair of spectacles since I discovered that my glasses had no warranty because I didn't PAY for one. Sheesh! Was a time they made things to last at least awhile. Well, come January, I have access to my medical spending account and can get another pair, but till then, I am craning my neck back to see this monitor as I type. One must suffer for their art.........

I want to thank everybody for their positive response to the community idea. I am open to every suggestion you may have as to how we can construct our town square. But taxes? Read my lips..... That one is DOA.

Blessed be!

A Place All Our Own

I don't know why this never occurred to me, or anyone else, for that matter, before. OK, every "community" of any note on this planet has a name, something you can call it so that everyone else, least of all the inhabitants, know what you're talking about in reference to that specific location, place, or even state of mind. OUR little, tight knit, diverse and eclectic community deserves no less! So, being the first one to notice this apparently less-than-obvious little conundrum, I, THE Michael, hereby do declare the incorporation of a new town, village, hamlet, spot on the map, insane asylum, special level of hell, or anything else you wish to call it, and while I'm at it, call to order it's citizens to nominate, second, and hopefully, elect a proper title for our new virtual community. Look, gang, we are here, we exist, we matter, we "know" each other, we wave to each other in passing, we share "secrets", cry on each other's shoulders, drink to much, and say things we regret as soon as we hit the "publish" button, so, you tell me, is this not an entity of note? If you prick us, do we not bleed? Have we not waxed poetic and been brutally commented upon by people who love us regardless? I rest my case!

So what if the physical bodies of our citizens happen to be laying around in vastly far-flung locations, some exotic, most not so; we all get rained on, snowed on, or otherwise bothered by some sort of weather we wish would just go away. We are all equally exposed to the evils of climate change in one way or another. We all breathe the same air polluted by the surging economies of the not-so-third world as well as the big bad polluter herself, the U. S. of A. We have all been dragged, some of us kicking and screaming, into the global economy, and probably have a Walmart located nearby to remind us of it. All of us understand English, even if some of us have to suck it up and communicate with it fighting nausea the whole time. Most of us live in something resembling a democracy, even if it doesn't quite live up to the real definition of it. And all of us take a crap sooner or later.

All of us came here voluntarily, even though it might have been a very bad decision overall. All of us remain here voluntarily, despite the effect it has had on our world view. All of us have heard the viewpoints and biographies of people who don't look like us and have come back for more regardless, which might imply most of us are masochists, but perhaps that's an apt description of those willing to walk on hot coals for the chance to get to the other side of a truly bothersome divide, that divide being ignorance, intolerance, and miscommunication. And all of us have discovered that regardless of our race, creed, or color, we are all one species, a species having very little going for it, but one capable of miracles nonetheless.

These are the kinds of people living in our virtual community, and I think that they have earned the distinction of being able to lay claim to an identify, no less than the good people of Cincinnati, Bombay, Bumfuck, Lexington, Paris, Ho Chi Min City, or Sidney. We have every right to proudly proclaim our citizenship of a new shining city on the hill, one anchored firmly in electrons zipping around in silicon, no more impermanent than Los Angeles or San Francisco, sitting so precariously on their geologic fault lines. So what if we don't need streets named after trees or dead presidents, good sewers, decent cable service, or a library? We leave all that mess to the "real" world. Here in OUR virtual community, we exist in a world that caters to OUR needs, such as comradeship, communication, understanding, humor, sorrow, hope, anger and all matters of angst, dirty thoughts, even dirtier thoughts, a good joke or two, validation, and tolerance. We have never agreed on everything and would think it weird if we did, but here in OUR little town, not one of us have felt the overwhelming need to pull out a digital AK-47 and force our singular viewpoints on the collective, like they do in that "other" world, the one that can't seem to just get along. Here, the voices of hatred, unwarranted sarcasm, and outright stupidity finds it's way into a magical trash can where it belongs. Some of my fondest friends in this place have said some things I wish they hadn't, but I have always preferred to hear such things from a friend and suck it up than hearing it from someone convinced of a sense of superiority to the rest of us. I have taken my own lumps, and I wouldn't trade one of them for all the ass-kissing in the world.

So, read this and weep, citizens of our wonderful little community, for you have been challenged; to assume responsibility for who and what we are - recipients of the greatest gift since the Guttenburg press. I now call upon all of you to come here to this temporary town hall, suggest a name for our fine gathering spot, and risk the derision of any or all of us on the off-chance that YOUR idea trumps all others and identifies us to ourselves and the rest of the virtual world. This will take awhile. There will be jokes, contemplation, poetry and idiocy displayed on this blog for awhile, which will be no different than any other concept which has graced the pages of this humble device. Big deal. We can handle it. So steel yourselves and let loose, let slip the hoary hounds of suggestion, and let's see what moniker consensus can craft amongst us. We deserve no less.

However, I must remind you that I will not seek any office. If elected despite this declaration, I will not serve. And if I find myself negotiating treaties with foreign blogs, I swear to Bob you'll wish you'd railroaded Tim into such a thankless job instead.

Blessed be!

Post Yule, Something or another Eve........

Being the blasphemous pagan that I am, I am working a three day stint including Christmas day to nail down some lucrative overtime and bonus pay, so I don't have much time for posting. It's been an interesting Yule to say the least, and maybe I'll attempt to apprise the comedy later.

My glasses broke on me, at work, leaving me practically blind, but the wife and a twin came to rescue me and return me home. Timothy Leary would have envied the light show I was treated to in the passenger seat on the way home. If you are extremely nearsighted like me, take a ride through the streets at night in the passenger seat without your glasses, your better half driving, of course, and you'll know what I mean.

Have a happy whatever you're having! And may whatever God or Gods you acknowledge have mercy on your party-hearty soul!