Overthinking Things

My time on the streets had set my expectations low. I walked in with a howling stomach, expecting long lines, endless forms, clueless automatonic clerks, and promises. Lots of promises, but only that.

I walked out 20 minutes later with an ID (with my chosen name, but my real birthdate), a phone, a credit account, a (second) .50 caliber handgun, a //sword//, and an //antigrav skateboard//, and the signed contract for my first assignment.

There was no waiting. There weren't even any of those rope dividers. There was no one else there, aside from the staff. You'd think they were so bored out of their gourds that they'd be happy to see SOMEONE walk in their door, but it was like I interrupted sex, or something. Rude and sarcastic I can handle, however.

The machine at the counter at the Bliss Burger emitted the harmonic double-beep instead of the buzzer when they swiped my card. It worked! Normally, this ritual is accompanied with a certain amount of suspense, as you never know if the card you've stolen even has enough credit on it to pay for what you ordered. It's a crap shoot. I know GIS is well-heeled (they POLICE the market, for fuck's sake), but old habits are hard to break.

Over a double dose of 100% genuine beef substitute with petrochemical-based cheese emulation dabbed with aspartame and mayo packets (wow! REAL MAYO?), I thought about cashing in my new gear in trade for something I actually needed. Okay, so maybe I'd trade in the 9mm I'd stolen and keep the Desert Eagle - but the Katana wasn't as good as my retractable taser-blade implant. Then I remembered I didn't have access to my barter network anymore, which meant I'd have to take the funds on my new account. I don't know how closely they watch new accounts, but I'm sure credits from a pawn shop two hours after hire would not ingratiate myself with my new employer.

Recovery didn't take as long as I would have liked. It's not often you find a bed to sleep in within a secured, heated facility, even if it did mean I was drugged up and wearing a backless gown the whole time. But hey, them's the breaks. I had a slew of new toys. Weapons, targeting computers, power reservoirs both mundane and arcane. Now THIS was something I could work with.

Unfortunately, my punk buddies were too good for me after that. They didn't believe I won an array of expensive cybernetic implants out of a cereal box. Normally I wouldn't blame them - but I told them I live something of a charmed life. Good luck and good hunches have always followed me around, all the way to the mutant tackberry thicket I'd been sleeping in, when the rain hadn't turned the soil bank to mud, and the sun hadn't made its blooms smell like dead rats.

These were the guys that always amazed me at how they survived without ID. I learned how to barter with them for weed, or safe spots to sleep, or for food, for those first few months. I thought of trying to use what arcane skills I had to transform yard clippings or bushes into food I could barter, but, ultimately, the stuff didn't really taste right, and people caught on to what I was doing. Ruffage isn't really nourishing, even if it looks like a hot dog. I'd probably do better if I could just sell them to the public on a cart, but there was no way to get a credit card terminal without ID.

I'd learned a lot from them over the last few months, but I think I probably tried to fool them one too many times with my Art-crafted hot dogs. Reputations spread like rumors among barterpunks. Before too long, I couldn't even trade them REAL hot dogs after I knocked over a food cart. It was like being beat up by one of mom's old boyfriends all over again. How am I supposed to do the right thing if nobody rewards you for doing it?

They started shutting me out of their networks, all of a sudden. I'd been blacklisted, I guess. You want to know how did they do it? They were networked, that's how. Their grapevines bore all the ripe fruit, and I kept finding them already picked. The guys I used to call my friends all shook their heads and apologized, and sympathized, but still said no.

The last barterpunk friend I had said this: "Well, listen, man, if you really need something to eat, you can always swallow your pride. GIS is always hiring." And months of anti-establishment propaganda went down the drain. I couldn't believe he said that. I walked around the city in disbelief, right up until I realized that feeling of being kicked in the gut by my last friend in the city was actually my stomach growling.

It turns out pride tastes like corn syrup and textured vegetable protein.

"Look in specially marked packages of Dr. Wunderbot's Dextro-crunch to win valuable credit and prizes!"

The box was telling me this - out loud, on the shelf, at the store I was casing out. I had been agonizing over which easily-pocketable snack cracker had the lowest cholesterol content.

This isn't that unusual in most stores, by itself. You'd be amazed at what package manufacturers can do these days with just the stuff food //comes in// (and I use the term 'food' here loosely). They come with animated boxes that play little day-glo cycling movies and tiny, tinny speakers that play musical marketing jingles non-stop. The only way to shut them up is to pass them over the scanners at the checkout. The fancy products even know when they're next to more of the same product on the shelf, and combine forces to turn entire shelves into giant video screens dedicated to brainwash people into taking them home with them, like an endless showcase of Hollywood showtunes flogging boxes of anemic, fluffy, sugar-coated MSG.

But this one was weird. When I passed it, it changed color. The whole screen turned into a great big bulls-eye focused on this box. The sound of the store's muzak, the beeping of the checkout, the rattling of carts, and the persistent patter of the never-ending Word From Our Sponsors actually faded away in relation. The lights went out. It was weird, like living in a dream.

The box //had my name on it//. Not the name my mother had given me, but the one I just chose for myself a few days before. I hadn't even told anyone what it was yet. It's hard to make friends on the street.

But there it was: 'JACK NAO', arranged around a circle, flanked by rainbow-colored psychedelic palette-cycled animated arrows, focused like a spot laser on a glorious altar, idolizing a single rotating fruit loop.

So I walked away with it. I would say I stole it, but it's hard to say that about something with your name already on it. Maybe I was just too stoned to read it, though. These things can be difficult to explain to rent-a-cops; especially the ones that work for supermarkets. Those guys just don't know the meaning of the phrase "simple misunderstanding".

I was dug under a safe bush, only halfway through the box when the little holovid projector that came in it announced that I'd won the grand prize: a deluxe suite of DNA cybernetics.

Plans: the gods' favorite joke.

Jack Wendell - Victoria [Earth, 5th dominion]

My mom was pretty much nobody.

Ever since I can remember, I've had to live on my toes. I've had more dads than I can count. They were nobodies, too. When they weren't feeding her booze or smack, they were riding my ass - or beating it.

It's hard to see bruises when your skin color varies from blue to violet as it is. What's worse, I'd always be accused of faking bruises. It's hard to deny it when you learn to use your skin like a chameleon, crafting symbols and patterns at will.

You see, I'm not nobody. I'm just a regular freak.

Mom hasn't told me much about my father. A name, and some stern, overdramatic warnings. She was more interested in keeping me away from him. She said he was a sorceror of some kind - the kind that was only dangerous and "up to no good".

I developed a knack for the obscure energies of the world, but when I asked about them, she told me they were gateways for demons and evil spirits. I noticed my mom was wrong about a lot of things, though, so I just threw that on the heap. Eventually, though, I started to be able to tell the difference between my mom being wrong about what was about to happen, and //me// being //right// about it.

-

I grew pretty fast. By the time I was ten, I looked more like sixteen. That was the last time she hit me, because it was the first time I hit her. It felt //really//, really good - disturbingly good. I was riding high on that for days. After she came back from the hospital, our relationship was... different. It's been three whole years, and she hasn't laid a hand on me since.

-

She cleaned up, got rehabbed for the smack, and quit dating assholes just to pay the rent. She started going to a church of The One God for support. Somehow, she managed to get me sponsored into a private religious school through the church. This sucked, to say the least.

In public school, everyone's a freak. But this private school was a straight school. It was full of precious honkey elf pansies and trust fund human kids. They don't even do any aptitude testing - you learn what they tell you. Only I couldn't concentrate because I was getting leered at and getting my ass kicked because I was so different. Mom only thought arcanists who weren't church priests were daemonologists; these guys thought I was a DAEMON, for crying out loud. Fuck them. Needless to say, I did not excel.

Meh, who am I fooling. I could ace every assignment they threw at me. It was boring. I just didn't fucking care. I knew what I wanted to learn, but no: that stuff is turns you into TEH SPAWN OF SATAN!!!11!

-

But one day, I got my chance. Some of the other kids (I hesitate to call them 'friends') dared me to break into this batty old sorcerer's house and steal something.

So I did. Somehow, I knew exactly which books to go for: "A Scryer's Primer", a tourist brochure to a vacation resort called Quiddity, and "Untying the Knots: comparative histories of the Shoal". I picked up a little Marquis de Sade for kicks. I knew mom would hate them, and, really, that's all I needed to know.

I was right (again). She found the books while I was out one day, after she spontaneously decided to clean my room. She threw them in the incinerator, of course, along with the porn. Luckily, I had almost finished them anyway. They taught me quite a bit.

-

My report card came last week. I'm failing, mostly, as she predicted (Hey, even a stopped clock is right twice a day). We had a fight over the fact that I hate that school, and the kids at it, and she just rails on, like she does every time, about how I'm wasting her money, and how I'm a useless parasite, and how it breaks her tedious little heart. In a fit of sarcasm, she suggested maybe I should just go find my father, and mooch off of him. Fat chance. Do you know how hard it is to serve a child support garnishment against the wages of a dream lord?

Of course, this is all old hat. I've heard it all before. There was nothing for it but to take off and hang out with the punks downtown. They don't have to put up with shit like this. Thank Quiddity dream-freaks like me can still get high. But, this morning, after she'd left for work, my pass-card didn't open the door. That didn't stop me from getting in and out, of course, but I got the message.

Fine, then. The streets are better than this, anyway. I hope I never see that witch again.

Maybe I will go find my dad.

UPDATE: You may note that I am prone to historical revisionism. It is //fiction//, after all. Events here may not even follow the actual events of the game, if I think they make for a better story. It's also first-person, after all. :)

'Investment' is just another word for something left to lose.

I just realized that of all the things I want in a smartphone, only one - call recording - actually has anything to do with a mobile phone.

Mobile Internet is critical, of course, but I already know how to tether to my phone over Bluetooth or USB, and it's cheap (for some strange reason). Why do I care if it's a separate gadget?

There's something to be said for containing the taint of wireless carrier corruption within the cheapest device and service possible. I already have that in the Sony-Ericsson Walkman phone I'm pretty happy with. If I can get everything else I want through it via a tethered IP layer, then that's plenty.

Hm. There may well be an issue with access speed, though. The tether isn't exactly always-on, and takes a minute to connect on demand. Maybe that can be worked around.

Hell, maybe I'll just get a smartphone, and not use it as a phone. Heh.

I just put on two pairs of shorts that have been in the 'too small' pile for years. I need a belt to wear them now. It's kind of startling!

I forgot who told me that waist is a more reliable indicator of fat loss than weight. Take a bow.

I'm hovering reliably at around 215lbs, which means I've lost 25-30lbs already this year. The strange thing to me is that this is coming without any kind of 'New Year's Resolution', just by changing what I eat. I haven't really changed my exercise habits, which, being without a car, already involve walking at least an hour more days than not. And I haven't really needed a whole lot of discipline, because I've just stopped eating crap that my body is suddenly not reacting well to, anyway. This is almost too easy, making me scratch my head.

I do want to see what 200lbs looks like, though.

I've been talking to a friend about Android phones in recent months. He likes his much more than the iPhone. I wouldn't touch the buy Phone with a ten foot pole, of course, because of the gestApple's iron grip on what kinds of apps I can use on the damn thing. But, when it comes right down to it, Android isn't as far away from that control freakery as would make me comfortable with using it.

There's chatter in the press about the 2.2 "Froyo" release of Android, and what makes me cringe is how heavily the carriers - classical enemies of user autonomy - are involved in obstructing and controlling the upgrade process. To think that Fido/Rogers would stand between me and a software upgrade for my device makes me angry and sad.

More important, to me, than what software I can somehow install for myself on a device I own or use, is the ongoing relationship between me and the software vendors. First, i need to feel confident that when a security vulnerability is found, a patch is quickly and responsibly distributed without delay. I need to feel confident that security is genuinely considered from MY standpoint as a user, and is not used merely as a pretext for eliminating genuinely useful functionality in order to preserve some plutocrat's delusion of profitability.

I want Ubuntu, Canonical, and Debian maintaining my software, not Fido/Rogers or AT&T. Given how in bed with the carriers Google is, I don't know if I'd even trust them, but the fact is that they do write the upstream code base.

As I recall, the interest on a thirty year home loan is easily one third of the loan amount, so the actual value of the home itself ends up being only two-thirds of what you could rent for the same period. Furthermore, when comparing the experience of owning and renting a place to live, you have to get home insurance as well - otherwise you're paying emergencies like fires or appliance replacements out of pocket, instead of just renting a new place. That's the equivalent of another ten percent off the loan amount. So to borrow to own a place for thirty years, you're cutting 40% off the value of where you could live, in exchange for owning it after the initial thirty year period. And that all presumes you can even qualify for a loan to begin with.

I might get another 20 years out of the house before I die, for the price of 40% of the loan. That's a better deal, but it's also an awfully risky long-term bet.

Frankly, I don't trust that owning a home after I'm sixty five is going to be worth it. The world is a precarious, chaotic place, that will change a lot in thirty years, to say nothing of how much *I* will change in that period. You don't have to worship Ray Kurzweil to acknowledge that.

Meanwhile, if my landlord doesn't fix a broken water heater, or the place burns down, I just move.

I'm willing to bet I wouldn't blame my younger self for not giving my 65-year-old self a free house; not after what happened to my mom.

Shaw temporarily switches off my ENTIRE Internet connection anytime I run my backup process to the server. I've throttled it down to 10kb/sec, but no help. It comes back a few minutes later, but then lather rinse, repeat. I can set my watch by it - if I had one. Obviously, they're asking for money. Twice the bandwidth is another $10 a month, so I might.

My old DSL ISP, Uniserve, doesn't offer the dry pair deal they used to, and I wonder if Telus offers the speed of cable. Opinions?

Oh, great. Facehook has a brand new API, obsoleting the one I wrote StreamFeed for. I'm glad I learned about this before I got too deep into writing a new write layer on top of StreamFeed. *sigh* I really hope they don't change their API as often as they change their privacy policy.

Don't get me wrong - I like the new API. it's cleaner, slicker, and far better documented. It implements OAuth, a standard authentication protocol, instead of the proprietary Facebook Connect.

http://developers.facebook.com/docs/api

I sat up in bed this morning and smiled as I realized: I can see my house from here!

* Smoke the cat loves me like a dog.

* I am mulling over names for my new home.

* It's tough to sleep next to a woman. Not that I object, on occasion. And no, nothing much happened in any of these cases.

* I used to say I liked to give out shoulder & back rubs because, one day, I'll get as good as I give. It took a few months, but I got it.

* I am the center of my own universe. I've never been anyone else, and I probably never will be. It's not exactly solipsism; I do believe that everything and everyone around me exists. I also believe that I can serve myself well by serving others. I'm designed that way, like most of the species. But as I end, so ends the universe.

* I suspect that some radical changes in my self may be warranted, wanted, and welcome. I don't know where this suspicion comes from yet, or whether it will last. They seem to be strictly to be health and image-based things, but I'm not under any illusions that they're more than they are. Carrying through on some of them will doubtless require some deeper attitude adjustments.

Man, at this rate, I can't wait to be old.

I had a dream that I was a //grandfather//.

It felt very different from being a father. I saw the cycle complete with my own eyes. It was moving.

If you take the idea seriously that the end of your life is the end of the universe, then you can only have faith that other people survive after you pass away.

There is an afterlife. It's lived by your children. And their children.

-

I asked myself: what if you couldn't vote until you had children? or grandchildren? Then I asked myself: would I want my grand/parents to have more representation than I do? Parents might be a little bit more concerned about their children's future - but they're also far more politically conservative, two features that don't make sense together.

Expectations are premeditated resentments.
--aviatrix

Supposedly, Isaac Newton was inspired to describe his theory of gravity after seeing an apple fall from a tree.

Now, ask yourself: Do //you// have that kind of time?

Over the last few months, I've been thinking about my family, and their religion.

Rationalists often couch the value of reason in its utility. Reason is the way you get the most understood, and, by extension, accomplished.

But I don't think this utility is universal. Beliefs held in lieu of - and especially despite - rational evidence are there because a person is motivated to hang onto them. Where rationality fails to support one's dogma, there has to be some utility to be gained from it, otherwise it wouldn't survive.

Modern Western culture values dissent and diversity. We do not require that people think in accordance with the law - only that they act in accordance with it. Minds are still private things. We tolerate and welcome dispute and debate. Believing something that someone else does not is no crime, and we strive to cultivate peace, rather than agreement.

In the past, I have found it difficult to like and even love my family because I am offended by the things they believe, and the consequences that follow, how they choose to live. It's hard to accept their faith when I can both see the harm done to the world we know by all those who share their faith, and imagine the good done in the world we might have if they didn't. I have been trying to find a way around this, to reconcile with it.

And I wonder if I, too, might also find some utility in believing things that probably aren't true.

It doesn't surprise me to report I about ran this weekend on about 6-8 hours of sleep total.

My head's bleary. I've spent the evening traveling home alone, trying to put perspective on the events and desires and outcomes and events of the last couple of days.

I'm changing. I'm more satisfied with being supportive and of use than I am with being attended or understood. I'm satisfied that my inner world will just stay mine. I don't feel the need to share it as much as I once did, but I also need not fear doing so as much as I once did, either. When the moment interrupts, I am content to let it flow over and past me, and go where it will.

All memory is cache.

My smile is unconditional. I'm not sure what I really get from all this socializing, but I know that it's welcomed by those I do it with. That seems to be enough for me.

Some time, I might get lucky, and really get exactly what I want from someone else. But that's luck. I'm not going to try to beat the house.

I follow my heart, because without it... I'd bleed to death.