failure weblog

the company i work for is closing at 5pm today and won’t officially reopen until 7am monday. i am designated essential personnel and have agreed to be available throughout the events, assuming i don’t leave to go toward the coast so i can experience a hurricane in its full glory. so i’ll be in or around houston or the gulf coast region the whole time.
i have not made any storm preparations — no extra food, water, plywood, nothing. the only thing i’m planning on doing is making sure the gas tanks on my car and motorcycle are full. plus i have to go do the radio show tonight.

so does anyone else want to go down to the coast with me to properly welcome hurricane rita to Texas? the projected path right now has its eye hitting matagorda bay…pretty much right where indianola used to be. (look up the history of indianola.) c’mon, you know you want to go with me!

ah, the happy-go-lucky fun friday post…
earlier, i said i would put up a copy of the drawing/note i left (i.e., hid) in one of the xmas ornament boxes tamara came by and picked up. here it is:
View image
it might require a bit of explaining. you see, a few years ago i told tamara i’d been thinking about what i would do if i were in a car wreck and was dying…i’d want to make some kind of final statement. but being broken and dying, the only ability i’d have to write would be by using my own blood as ink. so, after thinking about it, i had decided what i’d write is that i loved her. a final note to let her know. she said it was one of the most romantic things anyone had ever said to her. (we sort of had an angelina jolie / billy bob thornton thing going on in some ways.) so that was my inspiration for this image. the text was somewhat spur of the moment, although i’ve thought for months about what kind of final statement(s) i’d like to make to tamara (given that this might as well be the equivalent of one of us dying). sometimes it was angry, sometimes sad, sometimes hopeful…but what’s on that paper is what came out in the end.
so whether or not she appreciates it, or even sees it, it is now on public display for anyone who may stumble across it.

as enjoyable as it is to always put sad, negative, and/or depressing things on here that prove to friends, family, and potential future dates that i’m not nearly mentally stable enough, i’ve decided to buck the trend and post something that i think is really nifty.
it’s the retro phone handset courtesy of thinkgeek.
i really like old phones, and i think it’d be hilarious to walk around using one of these. especially with hands free so the cord is just dangling loose. and you thought the people with the wireless earpieces got looks like they were crazy? of course, back in the day i actually took an old handset and walked around on campus at a&m like i was talking to someone on it… okay, i’m not sure this is helping prove my mental stability. i guess maybe i’ll just go back to the standard material…

remember that time i said i was perusing match.com and ran across a photo in someone’s profile where it looked like tamara was taking their picture in the mirror? well, i’ve gotten a negatory on it being tamara from several people. anyway, i include it here for informational purposes:
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i still think it looks a lot like tamara. or maybe what tamara looks like in my mind. i wonder who this person is?
and now re-use of material from an as-of-yet unsent email:
to be honest, i’m still in a fragile place as far as my life goes. sometimes i feel like i’m moving on, sometimes i feel like my life is going nowhere and i don’t know how i can move on. much of my sense of self was tied to my role of being married, of being and having a companion, and that void is difficult for me to deal with at times. the most important role of my life is gone and i’ve got nothing good to show for it, just memories and things to be sold or thrown away. and the great unknown of a future that may lead me absolutely nowhere. i try to hope for a better future, but sometimes i just get overwhelmed by the loss i’ve experienced, by my failings, by life. i want to move on, but sometimes i’m so fixated on my loss, my failure, i can’t see past it. i hope for a better future. i pray for happiness. i’m just not sure how or where it will come. i’m seeking focus, purpose, meaning, but it seems to be something transient, vaporous, that eludes my grasp even as i think i have taken hold of it, even in that very moment.
it seems like i need to find peace with myself before trying to find solace in others, but at the same time me focusing on myself is most likely not the best way to get past the stuff i am dealing with.

i’m not sure what’s gotten me on this kick the last couple of days, but i’ve been really getting internally annoyed thinking about the prosperity, “name it, claim it”, health and wealth strand of xianity. i keep wanting to grab a white tshirt and write something on it along the lines of “jesus christ did not die on the cross so you could get lots of cash”. i mean, i’m not going to claim that i’ve got a lock on xian theology by any stretch of the imagination, and there are plenty of areas where i think my actions fail to meet the things i think jesus taught (i do try to never be a hypocrite though). but how in the world can people come away from the new testament, from the actions of jesus toward the rich and the religiously pious of his day, with the idea that jesus wanted his followers to be wealthy and get anything they have the faith to ask for? how did that health and wealth thing work out for the apostles and the first century xians? it boggles my mind.
in other news, i bought a number of xian/religious books at a couple of half-price books stores this weekend. i was originally looking for some of the new books that have been coming out the last few years about/by gen-x’ers and the general dislike of organized religion, xianity in postmodernism, that sort of thing. i only found a couple, but i wound up buying a bunch of other stuff from the “religion” section. i’ll list ’em all in the extended entry.
i also bought some dvds this weekend. i think i’m going to make a page of all the dvds i own, which isn’t all that many. at least not compared to a number of my friends, or my collection of cds (which i’ve been collecting since 1990 or so). i’ll put that together some other time. then everyone can see what incredible taste in movies i have. 😉

Continue reading “random religious animosity”

Outcast Genius

69% Nerd, 56% Geek, 60% Dork
For The Record:
A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia.
A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one.
A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social expectations/interactions.
You scored better than half in all three, earning you the title of: Outcast Genius.
Outcast geniuses usually are bright enough to understand what society wants of them, and they just don’t care! They are highly intelligent and passionate about the things they know are *truly* important in the world. Typically, this does not include sports, cars or make-up, but it can on occassion (and if it does then they know more than all of their friends combined in that subject).
Outcast geniuses can be very lonely, due to their being outcast from most normal groups and too smart for the room among many other types of dorks and geeks, but they can also be the types to eventually rule the world, ala Bill Gates, the prototypical Outcast Genius.
Link: The Nerd? Geek? or Dork? Test

you know, it probably isn’t good that i feel like my life is on pause constantly these days. like i’m just sitting around waiting for something to make me change. i guess i’m not much of a self-starter. i think it’d be cool if tamara came to her senses and wanted to try to have a relationship like we should have, but there’s obviously no point in me waiting on that or thinking it might happen. i need to do something that restarts my life. a big piece of my identity was as a husband, and now i’ve got a big hole where a good chunk of my life used to be. what i’d really like to do is be able to resume my role as a husband, and hopefully add a role as a father. although sometimes i think maybe i’m not very good at the former, and wouldn’t be very good at the latter either. i don’t want to be desperate and do something stupid though. but it sure sucks having someone you love, someone you trusted — even if things weren’t always good — decide to give up on you and cheat on you and walk away. i miss that companionship, that intimacy, the joy of shared memories and secrets.

check out this shirt

watching the events unravel in new orleans should really push home to people how close society — no matter how sophisticated, genteel, refined, complex, proud, humane, whatever — is to the edge of complete chaotic disintegration. i think it is important to really comprehend how easy it would be for the world around you — all the things you take for granted and assume will always be there — to come crashing down, and for you to find yourself in a world you don’t recognize. a world where you survive on wits, brute force, negotiating skills, and/or luck.
it took two to three days in new orleans.