I'm moving to Seattle, by the way. My going away party is Saturday, April 22 at 5 PM. Ask me if you want directions.
I've changed my mind. It's not my membership on this site that needs to change. No, I've just been down. My life was muddied and indirect, but now everything is sharp, and clear.
I'm out of this town.
I'm out of this town.
So many people going gray. I suspect that I, too, may someday follow in their footsteps. But then, I look at Desdemonia's newest set, and I think to myself: "Self, can you really give this up?"
It is a hard question. It vexes me.
It is a hard question. It vexes me.
I realized this morning that all the signs - drinking too much, eating too little, loss of appetites, inconsistent sleep - are signs that ash is beginning to rain down, again. So I'm going to go to the doctor, and also to see Joan, who I haven't seen in several months. I got extremely hammered three times last week, which is way too much, and one night I drove home in a state of inebriation where I put myself and everyone on the road in danger. I generally don't swerve, but my reaction time is way too slow, and if I find myself in an unexpected situation ....
Well, let's just say that I've put a moratorium on my drinking. I'm smarter than this.
Life has been so much about work. I thought I'd never put this much of my life into a job, but when people ask me for stories, I often draw a blank.
Partly, that's because some of the stories I've acquired aren't fit for public consumption. I went to a huge party up in Vancouver, BC, for New Year's Eve. It was called Sin City. Excellent goth music. Hot Canadian women walking around in high heels and very little else, or dancing.
The downside is that someone slipped a friend of mine a drink laced with LSD. Very uncool.
My mind sometimes feels like it's stuffed with cotton. But I'm alive, and things are getting better.
Well, let's just say that I've put a moratorium on my drinking. I'm smarter than this.
Life has been so much about work. I thought I'd never put this much of my life into a job, but when people ask me for stories, I often draw a blank.
Partly, that's because some of the stories I've acquired aren't fit for public consumption. I went to a huge party up in Vancouver, BC, for New Year's Eve. It was called Sin City. Excellent goth music. Hot Canadian women walking around in high heels and very little else, or dancing.
The downside is that someone slipped a friend of mine a drink laced with LSD. Very uncool.
My mind sometimes feels like it's stuffed with cotton. But I'm alive, and things are getting better.
All right all right all right. So the last post was TMI. I'll try to keep it short and meaningless.
Someone asked me some questions about myself. You may or may not care.
Name: Jerry (when I worked at Intel, some people referred to my Chevy Lumina as the Jerry-Rig)
Nicknames: Origen, Molonel or Musty (short for Colonel Mustard, which was my handle in Counterstrike). Back in highschool, for a short time, I was known by several senior girls as Jer Bear.
Birthday: I'm not entirely comfortable giving out too much personal info on the Internet. I was born in 1972. I always register with online search engines as my birthday as January 1, 1970. It tells them I've over 21, which is really all they need to know anyway.
Hair color: What's left of my hair is dark brown. There are some spots of white, and pepper grey in my beard when I grow it out.
Eye color: Dark brown.
Where do you live: Portland, Or-EEEE-gone
Where do you want to live: Someplace wild and free. When I finish with graduate school, I may return here, because I love living between the ocean and the mountains. Other possibilities include Idaho, Alaska, Montana and northwest Washington.
Hobbies: Creative writing, reading of all kinds, fiddling with computers and networks, RPGs (mainly D&D 3e/3r, d20 Modern)
Occupation: I've been a newspaper journalist, a freelance writer/photographer, a webmaster, a PC tech, a network engineer, a security tech, a chimney sweep, a mail room clerk (twice), and a QA Technician at Intel for two tours of duty, the most recent of which ended this last February.
Any piercings/tattoos: Only one tattoo (neotribal design on my left shoulder). Three piercings: one in each ear, and one in my tongue (plain steel barbell). I've been working on a chest piece that I want to do while I'm in Oregon, but I can't find any artwork that satisfies me.
(Most) favorite sport: Mountain biking.
(Least) favorite sport: Softball. Don't ask. Running is a close second.
(Most) favorite sport to watch: Full contact karate, professional fighting of any kind (not boxing, but sumo and ultimate fighting is fun).
Relationship status: Divorced.
How do YOU eat an Oreo?: I twist the halves apart, pop the side without the filling in my mouth, and dip the other half halfway in milk. I prefer Doublestuffs.
Who would you absolutely HATE being locked into a small space with?: A salesman who is trying to sell me something. I include in this broad category telemarketers (rabid hatred), Hari Krishnas, Fundamentalist Christians, Calvinists, and Amway salesmen. I will shoot the next person who tries to explain the 5 points of Calvinism to me.
Who wouldn't you mind getting locked into a small space with? Oh, my, how my imagination rambles with that question. Any of the cute little Portland co-eds with tattoos and piercings will do. It doesn't have to be someone famous.
Do you like to dance?: Dancing is better than sex. And I like sex. A lot. I prefer the clubs where you can dance and nobody watches you, usually Goth, to the meat-markets filled with China Dolls and preteens with fake IDs.
Day or Night: Night. I dance for myself, and because I enjoy it. Night and less lights means less people watching.
Pets?: One peach-faced lovebird named Perseus. He is absolutely adorable. He takes showers with me. I sometimes keep the phone by me, and switch it to intercom mode so I can "talk" to him.
Favorite color: Dark _____. I wear less black than I used to, but I prefer dark colors.
Favorite cartoon characters: Powder Puff Girls (particularly Mojo Jojo), Samurai Jack, Dextor's Labratory.
Favorite type of shoes: Clogs or sandals.
Favorite music: Movie soundtracks. I enjoy music that makes me think of stories.
Favorite food: Potatoes of any kind. It's a weakness. Carbs, mostly. The Atkins diet was hell for me.
Favorite movies: The Star Wars trilogy, which is oddly enough the core of my deep, never-ending hatred of George Lucas, make he burn in 1,000 hells. By "trilogy" I mean the only 3 movies he actually made, and not the sorry excuse for cartoons which came later.
Favorite Movie I can actually watch: Le Pacte des Loups.
Favorite places to shop: Powell's City of Books.
Favorite words: New words that I haven't heard before and that send me rifling through a dictionary. I'm reading a novel by Sarah Waters right now that's sent me scrambling more times than any book in recent memory.
Favorite flower: Rose. Yeah, I know it's romantic. Shut up.
Favorite ice cream: Breyer's Mint Chocolate Chip, or Vanilla Fudge Twirl. Anything with real Oreos is a close second. Peanut butter chocolate with real peanut butter is probably tied for second.
Favorite TV shows: I don't own a television. However, there has been a lot of very creative work done by HBO and Showtime which comes out on DVD, and I watch it on my computer: The Sopranos, Sex in the City, Queer as Folk, 24. I forget who does 24, but you get the idea. I prefer taking the season in one big chunk, without commercials. One of the reasons I don't own a television is my deep and profound loathing for advertising. When you can watch a 1-hour show in less than 40 minutes, that's pathetic.
Favorite beverage: Beer, Guiness on nitro tap. With friends I trust and a DD to take me home, I'll drink whatever is at the party. When I go to a new restaurant, I like to get a sampler platter of the local microbrews. I recently had the WORST microbrew I've ever tasted in my entire life. It was called Hot Tamale, and it was mixed with tobasco sauce. A friend bet me I wouldn't drink the whole taster glass, which wasn't more than 3 inches tall. He offered to pay for dinner if I drank it, so I did. I regretted my decision.
Other questions:
Favorite game designer: Monte Cook
Favorite dictionary: Samuel Johnson's. Yes, I actually have a copy of it.
Majors in college: Double major in philosophy and English, with enough hours for a minor in theater. I am one of the few people to make it through an undergraduate degree at Wheaton College without a single actual course in theology. I have graduate hours in Journalism from Wheaton College Graduate School, and from Portland State University in Creative Writing, Medieval Literature and African-American literature (particularly the Harlem Renaissance).
Books on my must-read (or reread) life reading list: All the plays of Shakespeare, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, Dante's Divine Comedy (I have a couple of different translations I want to read), John Milton's Paradise Lost, and the King James Bible (straight through, no stops: Leviticus always defeats me in any translation).
Books I've already read more than once, and will certainly read again: Chaim Potok's The Book of Lights, My Name is Asher Lev, and The Gift of Asher Lev; Jeanette Winterson's Art Objects; the Psalms; Kathleen Norris's Dakota: A Spiritual Geography; C.S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia; J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings Trilogy (The Fellowship of the Rings, The Two Towers, The Return of the King); J.R.R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion; Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age; Bruce Sterling's Holy Fire, Islands in the Net, Heavy Weather and the short story Taklamakan from from A Good Old Fashioned Future; Gershom Scholem's Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism; Conversations with John Gardner (ed. Allan Chavkin);
Writers I know I'll like but haven't gotten around to reading more: Diane Ackerman, Gary Snyder, Allen Ginsberg, Karen Armstrong.
Long-winded fantasy writers I haven't gotten around to for one reason or another: Robert Jordan.
Writers I've read too much of, who make me somewhat nauseous: C.S. Lewis, J.I. Packer, A.W. Tozer, Elizabeth Elliot.
Movies which I possess, and will watch again: Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings (both versions of Fellowship, and I will own both versions of Two Towers), The Matrix, Hellraiser, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn, Blade and Blade II, Chocolat, The Terminator, Brotherhood of the Wolf, The English Patient, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. I could go on and on.
States I've lived in: Iowa, North Carolina, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois (outside Chicago), New York, Oregon. I've lived overseas during the summer in England, Ireland, Wales, Israel, Egypt, Greece, Italy, Mexico and Hong Kong. I was a student at most of these locations.
Names of my favorite D&D characters: Jak Gecko, Templar of Hextor; and Boltac Belegost of Clan Mythammer, later known as Teron Obsidious the Earth Hammer, also known as the Herald of Ogremoch, Mystic of the Shattered Stone, and Lord of the Dark City.
Favorite OS: For servers, Linux and Free BSD. For what I know best, Windows 2000. I dislike Windows XP, except on laptops. I have a strong suspicion that if I worked on OSX, I'd fall in love with it, especially with the BSD backend. I just attended a reading by Neal Stephenson for the first novel of his Baroque trilogy, and he said - and I believe he's right - that Apple has truly meshed a beautiful GUI with a solid backend. OSX convinced me that Apple is doing the most creative and innovative work on the desktop. OS's are a whole topic of conversation.
Places I've traveled recently (say, the past two years): Canada, Alaska.
Places I hope to visit soon: Thailand; Juneau, Alaska (I was in Fairbanks and Anchorage last time, and on the coast).
Ambitions: To go back to graduate school, obtain a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Creative Writing, and a Ph.D. either in the same discipline, Composition and Rhetoric, literature, or comparative literature. I also want to publish novels.
Favorite literary critics: Harold Bloom, Frank Kermode, Stanley Fish (don't read too much into this one, though: I'm not from the School of Fish, I simply like his essay style and his irreverence).
Do I smoke?: I smoke an occasional cigar with friends, and I have smoked a pipe many times, although I appear to have lost my favorite pipe during the last move. I stay away from cigarettes, partially because I am a tobacco snob and to me most cigarettes look like a big, uncooked slab of greasy hamburger meat.
Favorite thing to carry in my pocket: 4" x 6" index cards, and a pocket full of Pilot EasyTouch fine ballpoint pens, and mechanical pencils. I love big, chubby erasers when I need to erase something. I also love my Dell Inspiron 1100 laptop, although obviously I can't carry it in my pocket.
Name: Jerry (when I worked at Intel, some people referred to my Chevy Lumina as the Jerry-Rig)
Nicknames: Origen, Molonel or Musty (short for Colonel Mustard, which was my handle in Counterstrike). Back in highschool, for a short time, I was known by several senior girls as Jer Bear.
Birthday: I'm not entirely comfortable giving out too much personal info on the Internet. I was born in 1972. I always register with online search engines as my birthday as January 1, 1970. It tells them I've over 21, which is really all they need to know anyway.
Hair color: What's left of my hair is dark brown. There are some spots of white, and pepper grey in my beard when I grow it out.
Eye color: Dark brown.
Where do you live: Portland, Or-EEEE-gone
Where do you want to live: Someplace wild and free. When I finish with graduate school, I may return here, because I love living between the ocean and the mountains. Other possibilities include Idaho, Alaska, Montana and northwest Washington.
Hobbies: Creative writing, reading of all kinds, fiddling with computers and networks, RPGs (mainly D&D 3e/3r, d20 Modern)
Occupation: I've been a newspaper journalist, a freelance writer/photographer, a webmaster, a PC tech, a network engineer, a security tech, a chimney sweep, a mail room clerk (twice), and a QA Technician at Intel for two tours of duty, the most recent of which ended this last February.
Any piercings/tattoos: Only one tattoo (neotribal design on my left shoulder). Three piercings: one in each ear, and one in my tongue (plain steel barbell). I've been working on a chest piece that I want to do while I'm in Oregon, but I can't find any artwork that satisfies me.
(Most) favorite sport: Mountain biking.
(Least) favorite sport: Softball. Don't ask. Running is a close second.
(Most) favorite sport to watch: Full contact karate, professional fighting of any kind (not boxing, but sumo and ultimate fighting is fun).
Relationship status: Divorced.
How do YOU eat an Oreo?: I twist the halves apart, pop the side without the filling in my mouth, and dip the other half halfway in milk. I prefer Doublestuffs.
Who would you absolutely HATE being locked into a small space with?: A salesman who is trying to sell me something. I include in this broad category telemarketers (rabid hatred), Hari Krishnas, Fundamentalist Christians, Calvinists, and Amway salesmen. I will shoot the next person who tries to explain the 5 points of Calvinism to me.
Who wouldn't you mind getting locked into a small space with? Oh, my, how my imagination rambles with that question. Any of the cute little Portland co-eds with tattoos and piercings will do. It doesn't have to be someone famous.
Do you like to dance?: Dancing is better than sex. And I like sex. A lot. I prefer the clubs where you can dance and nobody watches you, usually Goth, to the meat-markets filled with China Dolls and preteens with fake IDs.
Day or Night: Night. I dance for myself, and because I enjoy it. Night and less lights means less people watching.
Pets?: One peach-faced lovebird named Perseus. He is absolutely adorable. He takes showers with me. I sometimes keep the phone by me, and switch it to intercom mode so I can "talk" to him.
Favorite color: Dark _____. I wear less black than I used to, but I prefer dark colors.
Favorite cartoon characters: Powder Puff Girls (particularly Mojo Jojo), Samurai Jack, Dextor's Labratory.
Favorite type of shoes: Clogs or sandals.
Favorite music: Movie soundtracks. I enjoy music that makes me think of stories.
Favorite food: Potatoes of any kind. It's a weakness. Carbs, mostly. The Atkins diet was hell for me.
Favorite movies: The Star Wars trilogy, which is oddly enough the core of my deep, never-ending hatred of George Lucas, make he burn in 1,000 hells. By "trilogy" I mean the only 3 movies he actually made, and not the sorry excuse for cartoons which came later.
Favorite Movie I can actually watch: Le Pacte des Loups.
Favorite places to shop: Powell's City of Books.
Favorite words: New words that I haven't heard before and that send me rifling through a dictionary. I'm reading a novel by Sarah Waters right now that's sent me scrambling more times than any book in recent memory.
Favorite flower: Rose. Yeah, I know it's romantic. Shut up.
Favorite ice cream: Breyer's Mint Chocolate Chip, or Vanilla Fudge Twirl. Anything with real Oreos is a close second. Peanut butter chocolate with real peanut butter is probably tied for second.
Favorite TV shows: I don't own a television. However, there has been a lot of very creative work done by HBO and Showtime which comes out on DVD, and I watch it on my computer: The Sopranos, Sex in the City, Queer as Folk, 24. I forget who does 24, but you get the idea. I prefer taking the season in one big chunk, without commercials. One of the reasons I don't own a television is my deep and profound loathing for advertising. When you can watch a 1-hour show in less than 40 minutes, that's pathetic.
Favorite beverage: Beer, Guiness on nitro tap. With friends I trust and a DD to take me home, I'll drink whatever is at the party. When I go to a new restaurant, I like to get a sampler platter of the local microbrews. I recently had the WORST microbrew I've ever tasted in my entire life. It was called Hot Tamale, and it was mixed with tobasco sauce. A friend bet me I wouldn't drink the whole taster glass, which wasn't more than 3 inches tall. He offered to pay for dinner if I drank it, so I did. I regretted my decision.
Other questions:
Favorite game designer: Monte Cook
Favorite dictionary: Samuel Johnson's. Yes, I actually have a copy of it.
Majors in college: Double major in philosophy and English, with enough hours for a minor in theater. I am one of the few people to make it through an undergraduate degree at Wheaton College without a single actual course in theology. I have graduate hours in Journalism from Wheaton College Graduate School, and from Portland State University in Creative Writing, Medieval Literature and African-American literature (particularly the Harlem Renaissance).
Books on my must-read (or reread) life reading list: All the plays of Shakespeare, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, Dante's Divine Comedy (I have a couple of different translations I want to read), John Milton's Paradise Lost, and the King James Bible (straight through, no stops: Leviticus always defeats me in any translation).
Books I've already read more than once, and will certainly read again: Chaim Potok's The Book of Lights, My Name is Asher Lev, and The Gift of Asher Lev; Jeanette Winterson's Art Objects; the Psalms; Kathleen Norris's Dakota: A Spiritual Geography; C.S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia; J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings Trilogy (The Fellowship of the Rings, The Two Towers, The Return of the King); J.R.R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion; Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age; Bruce Sterling's Holy Fire, Islands in the Net, Heavy Weather and the short story Taklamakan from from A Good Old Fashioned Future; Gershom Scholem's Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism; Conversations with John Gardner (ed. Allan Chavkin);
Writers I know I'll like but haven't gotten around to reading more: Diane Ackerman, Gary Snyder, Allen Ginsberg, Karen Armstrong.
Long-winded fantasy writers I haven't gotten around to for one reason or another: Robert Jordan.
Writers I've read too much of, who make me somewhat nauseous: C.S. Lewis, J.I. Packer, A.W. Tozer, Elizabeth Elliot.
Movies which I possess, and will watch again: Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings (both versions of Fellowship, and I will own both versions of Two Towers), The Matrix, Hellraiser, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn, Blade and Blade II, Chocolat, The Terminator, Brotherhood of the Wolf, The English Patient, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. I could go on and on.
States I've lived in: Iowa, North Carolina, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois (outside Chicago), New York, Oregon. I've lived overseas during the summer in England, Ireland, Wales, Israel, Egypt, Greece, Italy, Mexico and Hong Kong. I was a student at most of these locations.
Names of my favorite D&D characters: Jak Gecko, Templar of Hextor; and Boltac Belegost of Clan Mythammer, later known as Teron Obsidious the Earth Hammer, also known as the Herald of Ogremoch, Mystic of the Shattered Stone, and Lord of the Dark City.
Favorite OS: For servers, Linux and Free BSD. For what I know best, Windows 2000. I dislike Windows XP, except on laptops. I have a strong suspicion that if I worked on OSX, I'd fall in love with it, especially with the BSD backend. I just attended a reading by Neal Stephenson for the first novel of his Baroque trilogy, and he said - and I believe he's right - that Apple has truly meshed a beautiful GUI with a solid backend. OSX convinced me that Apple is doing the most creative and innovative work on the desktop. OS's are a whole topic of conversation.
Places I've traveled recently (say, the past two years): Canada, Alaska.
Places I hope to visit soon: Thailand; Juneau, Alaska (I was in Fairbanks and Anchorage last time, and on the coast).
Ambitions: To go back to graduate school, obtain a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Creative Writing, and a Ph.D. either in the same discipline, Composition and Rhetoric, literature, or comparative literature. I also want to publish novels.
Favorite literary critics: Harold Bloom, Frank Kermode, Stanley Fish (don't read too much into this one, though: I'm not from the School of Fish, I simply like his essay style and his irreverence).
Do I smoke?: I smoke an occasional cigar with friends, and I have smoked a pipe many times, although I appear to have lost my favorite pipe during the last move. I stay away from cigarettes, partially because I am a tobacco snob and to me most cigarettes look like a big, uncooked slab of greasy hamburger meat.
Favorite thing to carry in my pocket: 4" x 6" index cards, and a pocket full of Pilot EasyTouch fine ballpoint pens, and mechanical pencils. I love big, chubby erasers when I need to erase something. I also love my Dell Inspiron 1100 laptop, although obviously I can't carry it in my pocket.
One of the reasons I originally joined SG - well, if the truth be told, it was the majority of the reason - was to see tattoos and piercings. I encountered a link to here from BMEzine.com, where I frequently browse the tattoo galleries.
I'm starting to think about my next tattoo. I'm a little nervous, because my ceremonial half-shirt turned out much better than I expected. It's about as close to a perfect piece as I could have asked for.
Now, the problem is, I want to find something that not only does NOT clash with it, but complements it.
Therein lies the rub.
Who are the most extensively tattooed SGs that you feel made their tattoos fit together?
My first choices are Twwly and Voltaire.
I'm starting to think about my next tattoo. I'm a little nervous, because my ceremonial half-shirt turned out much better than I expected. It's about as close to a perfect piece as I could have asked for.
Now, the problem is, I want to find something that not only does NOT clash with it, but complements it.
Therein lies the rub.
Who are the most extensively tattooed SGs that you feel made their tattoos fit together?
My first choices are Twwly and Voltaire.
