A Statement of Purpose

Well, I've done what I can to remove any evidence that anyone besides myself might see this site. I suppose I might as well explain myself.

Originally I started this blog with the intent of seeing how many people would find it and follow it (or comment on it) if I never told anyone about it. 

But, as I continued to consider possibilities, I became more and more enamored with the idea of writing a blog that refused wholly to use the advantages of the internet, like feedback. Indeed, I am somewhat tempted to take out any way to actually locate and read this blog, but that would defeat the beauty. If no one can read it I may as well be writing on a word processor. But, as it is it is a thing of far more exquisite form.

You see, it's one thing if people can't read it, and another if they don't.

So, here I am, mumbling into the void, completely oblivious to if anyone is listening. Access is easy enough, but between my own lack of things to say, the lack of advertisement, and the multitude of equally obscure blogs, I am hidden from all sight.

And even if someone does see, I intend never to know.

Let the mysterious possibility that someone reads this live on, even as I remain convinced these thoughts fall into the black abysses of cyberspace, wasted forever.

Goodbyes

I've already said goodbyes to this place once. And here I am about to leave it forever, again. Can't say there's a whole lot here I'll miss. I'm too used to leaving. Too used to living in the present, and in other worlds.

Which is why many of todays great big goodbyes from people I barely know (and can scarcely understand thanks to a half surmounted language barrier) feel like one great big guilt trip.

I should feel so much worse about leaving these people.

Or maybe not.

Great, now I feel guilty about that too.

Another country lost in the past. Another group of people who will cease to have meaning to me outside of memories and idle moments.

Life goes on.

I hate that phrase so very, very much. Mostly because it's true. When something big happens it should matter, it should leave a mark, a permanent wound. But, instead, we heal. We move on as though it didn't matter.

Life goes on.

Life marches ceaselessly onwards, trampling over the fallen bodies surrounding it, leaving them by the wayside as it surges ceaselessly forward till it succumbs to the same fate.

Given, this sentiment is often more about death than goodbyes, but still.

Life goes on.

Meaning goes off.

Back to Madness

It was a dark and stormy night.

She checked off the first line of the list. She moved her hands to make sure and touch each other item on the list, just to be sure, before checking them off. Chopped meats, her homegrown yeast, her special seasoning, pineapple, mustard seeds and (after a quick juggling through the overflowing cabinet) sugar. The last item on the list was, however, more difficult to locate. A long hectic rummage through the kitchen later she began rummaging in the living room, followed by a aggravating search through the dining room, a torrid exploration of the bathrooms, a rapid comb over the stairs, and an adequately climatic battle with the clutter in the attic.

By the time she stumbled down the stairs wit her arm full of iron, she had to check out the window just to make sure the storm hadn't gone by, like it had last time.

She was quite happy to see the black storm-heads crackling and booming overhead.

She checked off the last item on her list, quickly rinsed off the iron thin iron rod she'd brought down from the attic, and began to skewer the meat and pineapples upon it. A careful application of the other ingredients, the thick grainy, slimy yeast last to hold everything together in great gloppy globs. A quick rinse of her hands and then the long black thick rubber gloves were pulled up to the elbow with dramatic snaps with the full force of their elasticity. She grimaced at the sting, but it faded quickly.

Then she was outside in a flash of fright white sheet lightning. 

The rest of the contraption from the attic took a few minutes to set up. A wide tripod base of a steel alloy of her own design, using quite a lot of iron with copper wires throughout for maximum conductivity, so that, once she attached the food laden rod, the heat would be directed just right. She placed the rod in and cranked the handy turn wheel until the top of the rod was up higher than the nearby trees. She stepped back and began to cackle maniacally. She wasn't particularly good at it, and soon let it fall into a few embarrassed chuckles and then a crimson cheeked silence.

She watched the raised rod avidly, a hungry look in her eyes and a hungrier growl in her stomach. A growl that made the thunder seem tame.

"Shut up, stomach," she muttered.

A half hour later she was wishing she had put on a raincoat, or at least another layer. She was soaked to the bone and absolutely chilled. Just a few more minutes though, she thought. Just a few more.

Almost another hour passed, and then, a great blinding column of magnificent white energy tore up from the ground, through the metal contraption and up into the sky, where it colided with its downward double. Less than a fraction of a moment later and it was gone.

She thought the smile would split her face in half.

She rushed over to the contraption, pulled out the rod, and dashed inside.

This time her laugh was real, a gleeful guffaw that bubbled up from her stomach and poured out in a rumbling growl. 

Once inside, and free of the rain, she held aloft the rod to examine the results of this latest effort. 

And her smile vanished.

It was... pink...

That was weird. The yeast should have turned more of a reddish color.

Tentatively she brought the rod down and nibbled a tiny piece of the strange pink mass.

She staggered backwards, her knees suddenly weak. Her vision blurred and her cheeks flushed. She could feel her heart pounding in her throat, her stomach gurgling in her abdomen, and her taste-buds performing an unparalleled work of opera without a single flaw.

Time of consumption of the whole kabob took about six seconds.

Success had never tasted so good.

Lunar Blood

In my recent constructions of fantasy worlds I keep running into the same questions concerning how to handle subject matter that is taboo in my own culture, or that I do not find particularly tasteful, but has been of major importance in different cultures throughout history. While this often raises relatively simple questions concerning sexuality and nudity. While these pose all sorts of interesting possibilities in and of themselves, I am currently grapplin with possible cultural ramifications and treatments of menstration, which, to me, is a far more delicate matter.
Partly, this is because, as a male who has never taken hormones, I have scarcely an inkling of what menstration is actually.
Partly, this is tied heavily into maturation and coming of age. Indeed, it is treated as such in a great many very different terrestrial cultures and I doubt many cultures would simply dismiss it. Even today the notion that it is something not to be talked about is often a shaming of the female body, and of adulthood. Fitting for a culture that so excessively and irrationally idealizes, and idolizes, childhood.
Another important, but often over looked, factor is that the bleeding that accomponies menstration is something that distinguishes humans from most animals (a few apes bleed similarly, and dogs bleed while in heat, which occurs alt the same time). The significance of this would not be lost on a suitably animistic society, or any rural group of people living in close contact with animals.
Then there is this whole concept of filth that accomponies it. The Old Testament, which is generally obsessed with what is pure and what isn't, seems to hold the rags used to collect the blood among the most filthy of objects, and often a reference to rags will mean exactly that. To an extend this makes sense, especially in any time or locale before antibacteria and, well, soap.
On the other hand the association with blood might lead to all kinds of strange rituals, including offering it as a symbolic sacrifice, using it in magic rituals, or even drinking it to gain power, or perhaps to bond the woman to the man drinking it. Disgusting, perhaps, but it's an intriguing prospect, especially since it implies that the marriage disolves when the woman hits menopause, and is no longer of use. In fact, might be said to dissolve as long as she is pregnent, effectively seperating the man from fatherhood.
And one must also consider the vast plethora of other superstitions, both magical and mundane, that might accompony menstration. Here and today, for instance, there is a fairly persistent consensus, even among many women, that menstration significantly alters mood and sometimes personality, usually for the worst, and a woman's temperment will often be excused by her "condition." Interestingly, psychology studies have shown us that this is not the case and that mood in fact changes little, but people tend to draw their own conclusions from personal experience, and possibly even change how they act to fit the idea of how they're expected to (and get mad if any of this is pointed out to them, because, you know, the scientific method is a load of crap).
At any rate, here are some of the basic possibilities (there is some overlap in them and many are not mutually exclusive but could be combined together in more intricate systems):

1) Taboo.
Everything about the subject is supressed. Taken to the extreme this means no one tells the young girl anything other than "Don't you ever say things like that again, do you hear?" leaving her in a state of constant fear and confusion over what's going on. Although, to be fair, she probably hands her daughter a rag, too, so nobody will see it. More realistically the Mother is at least likely to talk to her daughter about it, and even if she doesn't young girls are going to pick up on it and talk amongst themselves anyways. Young boys are likely to be left further out of the loop, getting either the muddled male version of the explanation from their fathers, or just told to avoid women at certain times (given that in rural areas menstration tends to synch up for the whole village, it was traditional in many cultures for women to go off together to a special building or isolated hut large enough for the period of their periods, and for younger girls to bring them food and supplies).

2) No big deal.
I see this as the least likely. Blood (I know it's not just blood, but I suspect the distinction won't be made by your average illiterate farmer) running down your leg and all over your clothes that is also a sure sign of hitting puberty and reaching fertility is very, very, very unlikely to be overlooked without any sort of cultural ramifications. Cultures tend to believe sleep and dreams are important, and they aren't half as symbollically loaded.
That, and this brings us back to not mentioning it since it is irrelevant to the characters in the story, which means we might as well stick to (1).

3) Celebration.
Happens in Japan to this day. The first period is a significant event in a young woman's life, the crossing of the threshold between girl and woman. As a result the first period is a cause for celebration. I can easily imagine rural communities where (again) all the women's menstral cycles are synchronized that there might well be a minor monthly celebration, similar to how some cultures would have rituals for phases of the moon. The logical extreme, of course, is to have massive kingdom wide celeberations whenever the Queen is bleeding.
Interestingly, this poses odd ramifications for pregnancy and menopause. If menstration is a source of joy, celebration and pride rather than shame its stopping could well be a source of shame. Likely this precludes the idea of wise, powerful or magically gifted old crones in favor of those who still bleed. The issue of pregnancy ismore complicated, because the coming of a child will likely result in great joy and at least a familiar, if not communal, celebration, but the nine months in between are likely to make the mother to be uncomfortable and out of place at best.
Exactly what these celebrations would entail is also up for grabs. Menstral blood might be clearly displayed, and bloodied clothing worn with pride. It might go a step further and get into the offering or consumption of menstral blood in rituals. Perhaps young women and crones past menopause would consume the blood to gain or regain life force (whether taken symbolically or literally to actually do that. Seems strange and disgusting, but consider that, in many ways, menstral blood is analogous to ejaculations as a sign of strength, fertility, and life force, and some tribes have been known to have prepubescent boys perform oral sex on the adult males to gain the tribe's life force, usually starting and ending with puberty, it doesn't seem so far fetched, and would actually be a legitimate way of strengthening community bonds... if somewhat unhygenic by most modern cultural standards).
Another oddball ramification of this would be that women who bleed more might get more respect, and who knows how many young girls or old women or pregnate women, or even unpregnant women of the correct age who want to display a greater life force, would cut themselves down there just to show some blood. From a social standpoint the blood might also become considered attractive to the point where men would perfer sex while their partners were menstrating, making child birth awkward again. It might also be considered a blessing of sorts to be caused to bleed during sex, which would promote all kinds of unhealthy behavior, I'm sure (not to mention a potential for pedarasty, with men sleeping with girls so that they bleed, which is considered a sign of the girl's strong life force rather than a horrible act against her, significantly shifting how society treats these relationships).

4) Bonding
As noted the consumption of menstral fluids and the synchronization of the cycles could lead to a greater sense of community, or individual connectedness. In a marriage couples in a culture might be expected to take in each others' vital fluids, the man's semen and the woman's menstral blood. Or perhaps the blood is fed to an animal to bind it closer to the woman (a bad idea, I'm sure, but plenty of traditions are).
And, in a culture that keeps women largely seperated from one another, particularly in a more urban, or dispersed (rather than communal) rural area, the syncrhonization of women's cycles could be seen as a very powerful bond (by virtue of time spent together alone). Of course, societies might try to keep them apart to prevent just such an occurance for superstitions concerning it (perhaps fearing an overabundance of excess life force being released at the same time causing problems).

5) Sacrifice
Whether private or public menstral blood seems like a rather obvious and cheap sacrifice that might be offered to a god, or gods. A particularly interesting version, in my mind, is to have an animistic culture that actually leaves menstral blood on an alter in a wild area, as an offering to the predators there. I love the irony that this would inspire the very agressive behavior the offerings were meant to appease.
Again, a whole village being synchronized means significant offerings even if it might seem like little for one.

6) Freedom
A culture might well consider a menstrating woman as useless, as sex at this time will beget no offspring. As such the reigns might be loosened and society might actually not care what she does or who she does it with, so long as she doesn't somehow jeapordize her life or her potential for future offspring.
Yeah, this is highly unlikely, though I can imagine a culture that has no problem using the same premise to explain why women have less freedom while menstrating, being open to rape with little consequence delivered upon the rapist, and perhaps even "rented out" by their husbands while no chance of bearing a child is on the table.
This might even extend on to pregnant women, though a culture coming to that conclusion seems unlikely.

7) Magic
In a fantasy world this might literally be the case, but even if it isn't thingslike menstral fluid, being both blood and a sign of fertility, are a great starting point for magic, or at least what people will believe is magic.

Hmm... that's all for now. I'm sure I'll come up with more though.

Powered Enforcement

There raises, as I flesh out the world of the Others, an ongoing debate within my cranium concerning how the governments of a world largely similar to ours but with the addition of super powered individuals would handle the situation.
1) As best they can.
This seems the most likely course of actions, best displayed in the 4400 from what I've seen. Basically the government uses existing organizations, or creates new ones, to deal with the enforcement of laws on powered individuals same as everyone else. They would no doubt also try and recruit powered individuals to such programs.
But, this rather neatly rules out vigillanttes, and therefore the whole super hero premise I'm aiming for.

2) Crack down.
Another fairly realistic event, though much harsher and moving towards a facist streak. Basically governments would try to locate and detain everyone who has powers and lock them away. This would likly be justified as a move for the greater good and a chance to study various powers so that type (1) could be set up sometime in the future. Alternately powered individuals could just be killed to eliminate any threat.
This would never work for the Others, as it is to serious for the more light hearted overtones. I could imagine this mitght happen in some places in the world early on, but since the Defenders established a presence and powered groups started lobying it has all but ceased. It's also not particularly likely since, while they will be present, I'm trying to not have to many "born with powers" and more "gained powers through weird (often accidental) science" which makes it harder to treat them as a homogenus group that can be easily discriminated against.

3) Collapse
The governments couldn't handle it and the world has slipped into chaos thanks to the overused and undercontroled powers of a few very powerful individuals in the right places. Could have been a full on Apocalyptic war, or just a failure of the government to keep its citizens safe and enforce the law, which stopped all trust in them to the point where loyalty faltered and people stopped listening to the law.
I haven't really given this much thought. I suppose it could easily be a backstory to the Others' world, and the Defenders could actually be the only global political body left, specifically created to bring order back to the world. Again, though, I feel this is too dark, and the necessity of numbers in the Defenders running the world directly would negate the reasoning for the Others to be a seperate organization.

4) Submission
Similar to collapse, but here the powered individuals take over Earth as a ruling class, probably led to it by some over achieving super villain.
Absolutely not, if anyone in the Other's world could pull off full on conquest it would be Dr. Medea, but she has chosen instead to stand in the way of any would be conquerers. These are superheroes, and the defense against these evils is rather the point.

5) Regulation
Similar to type (1) except more slack control. To help it's case, and likely as a response to good works done illegally, the government slackens its laws concerning vigillanteism to enough of a degree that super teams can exist, but the governmetn will be willing to interfere should they overstep their rights.
This is probably what is going to happen for the Others. They are likely to take advantage of this rule in ways it was never expected, but even so I'm not seeing much of a way to get past the child endangerment issues, but I'll burn that bridge when I build it. On the plus side, this gives good reason to have a "no killing" built into the group (unlawful execution or other punishment without trial would well be overstepping the bounds) and sets up an interesting dynamic where governments want vigillantes because they are cheaper than police (free!), a localized symbol of human capacity for good and, perhaps most importantly, lowers reliance on the globe spanning Defenders, whose current position is less vigillante and more global peacekeeper. The Defenders would naturally be the least regulated group, technically being a sovereign power subject to its own laws, but still active in fighting down supervillains world wide. Also raises the interesting question over how none powered vigillantes will be handled.

6) Exclusion
Like type (2), but an exile based more on the decision of powered individuals, likely taken in as noncombatants by the Defenders. This complicates politics considerably, and makes the governments more desperate to have their own powered backup when the villains show up, thus being forced to compromise and even allow vigillanteism.
This is a nice explination, but I do want a fair number of persons with powers around in peaceful occupations within regular society. I don't like the diea of amassing or exiling them.

Hmmm... that's all I can really think of right now. There will probably be a mix of all of these, spread in different parts of the world, except types (2) and (3) which will appear sparringly at best and exist more for the threat of occuring. I suppose a slow collapse is taking place in the most benevolent sense, but that's another story. Type (6) is also likely to show up mostly as a threat, though I do expect some organizations and groups to quickly become dominated by powered individuals, most particualrly religions who find true miracle workers.
I think type (5) is the one to focus on.

Empty

Yesterday everything was in boxes, but at least it was all still here.

Now it's all gone and the house is empty.

Well, there's still furniture. Actually, the space is kind of nice. Should consider more spartan livings in the future.

At least I moved the desk out so I can actually get internet while sitting at it.

It's amazing how much of what we own we won't even miss.

This is exactly why houses feel haunted, though. There's just something off when everything is dark and quite and you have only the light above you casting spinning shadows above the fan. It just feels like something isn't right. Its as though you're too alone for there not to be someone else there.

I suppose I should talk to the ghost.

I suppose I am.

Mad Genius Professions that are Underused

For some reason it seems almost all mad geniuses end up in the hard sciences, mostly physics with chemistry and biology not far behind.
I would rather like to see:
1) A mad psychiatrist.
Could use conditional psychology to, for all intents and purposes, brainwash people into complete obeidience. Could drive patients mad in a single session. But, that's not thinking big enough. A mad psychologist could revolutionize psychology and reveal a new light on how we think, and how to get us to think, he could make repression work, causing trauma victims to become incapable of recognizing their assailants. He could teach a group of chimpanzees to think like humans, or humans to think like pigeons. With a careful application of delusions he could cure everyone of everything, or at least make them think he had.
The drugs he devises could realign the mind entirely to new purposes and ends, capable of creating abstractions impossible to achieve wtihout their influence. A whole new world could be opened up, or the old one shut down.
And, even if he doesn't have that advanced of a knowledge, psychotic lobotomies are always good.
2) A mad psychologist.
Pretty much the same as the mad psychiatrist, but more limited since she doesn't have access to drugs.
3) A mad sociologist.
Here's a fun one. Find him twenty-six orphans fitting his specifications, build the maze he designed last night, and a few tons of high grade cheese, and he'll have you the world in four years. Three if you wire speakers all over the maze.
This is one to watch out for. Perfectly willing to push just the right buttons to cause a society to collapse, or prosper, or hand itself over to him. Even more dangerous when he obtains a group of subjects to experiment on and engineer in isolation.
4) A mad linguist.
I absolutely adore this one. It's simple, really, create a short, brief, catchy phrase that is easily translatable across languages, but in all languages is impossible to getout of your head once it's wriggled in your ear. The perfect ear worm, and it just keeps repeating itself over and over in an endless loop, slowly changing the person until everything they are is merely a secondary cause of the ear worm. Whether this turns them into mindless zombies, has them comit suicide, become zealot followers of the linguist, or content and happy and carefree for the rest of their lives is up to the linguist in question. Of course, being mad, she'll hardly be perfect. The ear worm might behave erratically in different heads, or even do the opposite of what she desires. And, of course, she likely isn't safe from it either.
5) A mad architect.
Using the correct calculations he can build you a house that is larger inside than outside. No need for fancy vacum tubes and lightning generators, just brick, cement, maybe some wood for the supports, and workers dim or crazy enough to follow his instructions no matter how mind-shatteringly their perception is twisted.
His buildings exist in at least five dimensions along infite axies, so you never know where a door will lead or what a given window will look out on. Two windows next to each other: One shows a scummy parkinglot, the other reveals the barren wasteland of the Moon.
6) A mad economist.
At her worst, she'll buy your country and everything in it for a handful of beans.
More likely, she'll be in the background plotting bizarre and impossible economic strategies that will work, often having to act of a period of several years and often relying on others to listen to her so she can secure the necessary hammer to get things going. Bankruptcies of whole nations are the question of a few years for her.
7) A mad artist.
Okay, to be fair, this one has been toyed with a little, by Lovecraft no less. Still, I'd like to see it done with teh oever the top kind of absurdity that mad scientists get. Works of art that can inspire anyone to any emotion, no matter the extremity. Sculptures that defy dimensions. Performances that, no matter how implausible, no one can see to be fake. Art that creates a new state of mind. Or, maybe something worse...
8) A mad chef.
Yes, it's like a lesser version of a mad chemist, and basically amounts to someone creating incredible drugs from household supplies, but I love the idea of a cake so delicious no one can resist it, or truth-cupcakes, or a fillet minon that gives you vivid halucenations of your most likely future.
No living foods trying to kill people though, that would be silly.

How much for that doggy in the window...

Is it waggly or waggedy?

Hell, I've never even heard the song.

At any rate, I had to say goodbye to my dog. I've never been particularly great with dogs to begin with. I'm not the kind to go out of my way to lavish them with attention, but when they come to me I try not to disappoint. 

Always feel guilty that I didn't do more with them.

I'm going to miss her.

Third family dog that I can remember. First was before my cognition. Not good with kids, from the stories. Gave him away. Second was with us for years, across continents. Might still be alive if he hadn't. There's no lhyme disease in Botswana. Third we gave to a friend before leaving the States. He's probably happier there than he ever was in his life. The friend is quite the dog person.

And now, Saddie, given to a Peace Corp volunteer I've never even met.

I'm sure she'll be happy.

I miss her already.

All I can think about is the night we got her from the pet store and I held her trembling in my lap. She was so small back then, so frightened.

How to Unmake Existence

1) Ask an incredibly intelligent and persistent supercomputer to divide by zero.
2) Find a djin in a bottle and wish the following, "I wish you would not grant this wish."
3) Explain to God why He cannot logically exist.
4) Explain how God cannot logically not exist to the Atheist Universe.
5) Do both 3 and 4 at the same time.
6) Split a vacum.
7) Reduce the temperature of a star to -6K.
8) Prove mathematically that 1≠1.
9) Prove mathematically that 1=2.
10) Prove logically that -∞=∞.
11) Reach enlightenment and attain perfectly understanding how the world works.
12) Explain to God that since he is the Creator of all things he is the God of evil as well as good and the only way to stop evil is for Him to cease to exist.
13) Say God's true name three times backwards. Standing on your head may or may not help. Probably should do this around 3:00am.
14) Get the Pope to proclaim that God doesn't exist.
15) Create a wormhole that transports the pre-expansion (aka pre-Big Bang) Universe into the present day.
16) Sacrifice a slut to the god of Atheism.
17) Prove scientifically that there is life after death, but not death after life.
18) Construct a Starbucks that is across the street from every other Starbucks in existence.
19) Read the right passage in the Necronomicon to let Yog Sothoth in.
20) Ask God to make a pancake so big that he couldn't eat it.
21) Interogate God on his real motivations for torturing poor Job.
22) Figure out who kept forbidding the books Lovecraft droned on about, and invite him over for tea.
23) Create a test tube baby using the DNA of William Shattner and Patrick Stuart.
24) Give a Mouse a Cookie.
25) When confronted by yourself from the future, who has come back in time to show you how to build the time machine he used to get there, shoot him in the head. Then, for good measure, study your future body carefully and get a tatoo, scar, missing digit, or otherwise permanent affliction that future you clearly lacks.
26) Travel faster than light. Just to be sure, turn on the headlights and race them.
27) Teach the stars to conduct the Universe as a beaurocracy.
28) Ram an unstoppable force into an immovable object. Also good for cracking nuts.
29) Reverse the polarity of the neutron flow!
30) Defenestrate yourself through a plate glass window, survive, and explain how you learnt to do it by watching movies to someone with a PhD in physics.
31) Kill a cat 10 times.
32) Abolish the monarchy permanently in England and, just to be sure, every other country. Then bring Arthur back to claim his rightful place as King.
33) Multiply i by pi and get an answer that is both real and rational.
34) Discover the last number in pi.
35) Discover the first number in i.
36) Set Pluto on fire.

People

People are confusing.

On the one hand I feel I can understand a vast array of motivations for people to do almost anything.

On the two hand I find that whenever people start talking to me I cannot figure out why they put so much importance on such small things.

Yes, I have been known to make rather long rants and arguments over trivial things, but in the end I know it to be superfluous and ultimately nothing to subscribe a great deal of importance to.

Other people have serious conversations and I find myself only interested in trying to figure out why they're interested in the first place.

The worst are when they talk about other people. Some people get so entwined in rumors and suppositions and theories about what others are doing without ever questioning what purpose this tangent serves or how harmful, invasive, or just annoying it can be to the subject. Others will just bad mouth people, which always irks me even more because they're working from information too incomplete to actually draw most of their conclusions.

Sure, the sharing of this information makes some sense in the evolution of society, but it always amazes me that people who allege to think for themselves never stop this mindless cycle. Of course, they probably just find it interesting, while I, finding it dull, am the exception.

A strange corollary to this is that I have certain friends, especially one in particular, who keep turning to me for romantic advice. Maybe they just do this to everyone, but I never know whether to laugh or slap some sense into them. I end up listening and giving what advice I can, but I always feel my advice to be less than useless for a few reasons:

1) I have never been attracted to a physically attracted to anyone in my life. I just haven't, and suspect (and, frankly, hope) I never will. This means that when anyone starts talking about that "hot girl/guy" or some such, I just kind of zone out. Well, not really, but that's only because I tend to pay more attention to what people are saying and doing when I don't understand it. If they go on for a bit I'll zone out though, because I really don't want to hear it.

2) I don't grok relationships. I really don't part of this is the asexuality asserting itself, quite a lot of it's the aromanticism kicking in, but mostly I just can't fathom why anyone would think that any kind of relationship could surpass simple friendship, especially one so inexplicably complicated. Well, I can understand family relationships, too, but I generally don't think of that in the same terms.

3) People tend to ask what I think they should do, which puts me in this odd place between what they should do and what I think. Needless to say I usually make a nice, vague exploration of the issue and some half-guessed advice that sounds like a good enough mediation.

4) As I've said, I don't completely twig people, and I tend to twig individuals less, and this particular part of an individual's life not at all.

Of course, I still preface any advice by telling them they should probably ask someone else.

People make the most fascinating puzzles out of the dullest pieces.

Cruelty

There is a distinct disconnect between myself and the world. It seems to become only more and more pronounced as I grow older. I can no longer say with veracity that I understand my past self. I was such a spiteful, angry, obnoxious little brat. I was the kind of kid who got into trouble because I preferred to be alone in the corner than listening to the lesson.

Oh, wait, that part I still understand, even though I've come to better appreciate a chance to learn.

It was more the cruelty and bullying I was capable of inflicting on others. A real problem child.

These days I don't even think ill of others. Ever. It's weird, but I always end up feeling sad when someone speaks bad about another person, especially if that person isn't present.

And yet, despite changing so much and putting all that anger behind me, I still pull a double take when someone refers to me as "man" instead of "boy." Although, to be fair, I've come to prefer gender neutral terms anyways, particularly "kid," goat jokes be damned.

I suppose it's not a particularly good idea to extend the benefit of the doubt too far, but even my pessimistic outlook on the world cannot convince me that persons are bad or stupid. In fact, despite the common depiction of the masses as a crowd of faceless morons I have yet to meet someone who is truly stupid or particularly spiteful. Yes, sometimes people do mean things, and sometimes people do stupid things, but singular actions, or even patterns of behavior, should not be grounds to justify a negative judgment upon the persons actions. Actions can be forgiven and behavior can be rectified. Do not punish or recriminate, but reform.

Justice need not be done if greater good comes from other means. 

So, please, when you feel like calling someone "stupid" or "bitch" or to declare your hatred for them, stop for a moment and ask yourself, "are they really?"

And even if the answer is yes, don't hate them. They still have time to change, and you have no need to make yourself worse hating them.