'TIL DEATH DO US PART...

     Someone I am trying to get to know had this to say recently when someone close to her died: "I am convinced that when someone you are close to dies, a part of that person then becomes a part of you."

     It makes me think she and I have fundamentally different ways of looking at the world. Another example before commenting on the original point was when she said she loved performing on stage because it was only in front of so many people that she felt she could finally be herself.
     I responded that I had felt oppositely; that one could only truly be themselves when alone. The very existence of another person causes you necessarily to react to that person and that reaction causes you to filter your thoughts and actions. The more people you are around, the more generic (in a sense) you become (and thus, less like yourself).
     She found my explanation rational even if she herself did not subscribe to the notion. It makes me feel she would respond similarly to my thoughts on the death of a person close to you.

     I wrote long ago about the death of someone I had barely known and how acutely I had felt it simply because her presence in my life was so limited. I had never written about how the death of someone I knew on far greater levels affects me and my perceptions of that kind of death.

     So no, I don't feel that when someone you are close to dies that they become a part of you. I feel instead like a part of me is lost...like my soul (my sense of self, my memories/experiences, etc.) has had a piece of itself forcibly removed leaving behind this sucking void, however tiny, which can never be refilled because there will never again be a piece exactly like the one taken to fill in what has been lost. Sure (to stick with the analogy), it could be covered either entirely or partially obstructed, but never completely. There will always be some kind of gap...some kind of hissing sound. Perhaps we die, if not felled by sickness or injury, when simply too much of ourselves has been lost and we surrender to despair.

     You might say I have a Tolkien-esque view of the human soul or perhaps a variation on that idea. For me, so long as a person is alive, their soul - their essence of being if you will - is an abstraction. It permeates all those things around them and all the lives they touch while alive. I guess you could say life is not so much defined by its presence, but by its absence. Life is nebulous. It is temporary. It is a chaos. It is a possibility.
     But death...death is far from abstract. It is concrete. It is a returning to the lifelessness whence you came. Existence is ultimately a loan and a loan which will be repaid.

     It is through death that the flow of existence is suddenly crystallized. Now that this individual has left this world, it puts an end to how they might have further influenced it. In some cases, like with painters, it's easy to see the crystallization. Their souls are crystallized in the paintings they have left behind and should a painting of theirs be lost, what remains of their existence is diminished and can never be replaced. For others, the objects remaining can be comparatively simple or even non-sequitur like.
    
     A person lives on in our memories until we too pass on, further taking from this world what little of them still remains.

     At least, that's how I see things...

The crystallization of a soul, fixing itself in those people and things which it had touched and created...or the shattering of the Shikon Jewel by Kagome in episode 2 of Inuyasha, I'm not sure which ;-)

WHO KNEW CONSOLIDATION TOOK SO LONG?

     I've been dismantling an old blog account of mine for the past two days now and reposting most of the old entries here since I can assign false posting dates to them. I thought this would be an afternoon but then I remembered this journal was from my early internetting when I used real names and actually wanted to be found so I've been forced to reread them and scrub identifying information and remove pictures and links that could lead to identification of both me and the people in my life whom I'm talking about.

      Long, difficult work. This Blogspot started in August 2010 so any entry prior to that month is from That Other Journal. Do you want a taste of my shitty past? Then click on the tag "That Other Journal" and read away to your heart's content...or not (as will more likely be the case).

      I'll have to finish my task another time. I'm getting close to the end though. If I stick to it, maybe by the end of the week. We'll see...or not (as will more likely be the case).

DESPERATELY SEEKING INTERNET ATTENTION

     I really can't believe that this hasn't been done before but a cursory image search revealed nothing. I keep seeing the various paper towel and toilet paper rackets issuing products with labels like "6 Super Rolls = 11 Regular Rolls!" or "6 Big Rolls = 8 Regular Rolls" and other variations on that kind of torturous math.

     In the Star Trek: TNG episode, "Chain of Command (part 2)", Captain Picard is tortured by a Cardassian named Gul Madred. One of the key points of the interrogator's attempts to break Picard was to ask him how many lights were there behind him shining on Picard.

Indeed.

     And yes, there were four lights. But every time Picard admitted this, he would be made to experience terrible pain. The interrogator insisted that there were in fact five lights in his efforts to break the captain. By the end, Picard was not only ready to admit that he saw five lights but that he believed he actually could see five lights. Instead, another guard came in and told Gul Madred that Picard had to leave. Picard, now knowing he had been rescued, screams at Madred, "THERE. ARE. FOUR. LIGHTS!!!" in a shining moment of awesome for the audience.

     Anyhow, with Charmin, Bounty, Cottonelle, Brawny, etc. all doing this inanity with fewer rolls somehow equalling more rolls (even though the "original" sized rolls no longer seem to be for sale), I had a moment of inspiration for this insipid attempt at a macro that yes, I'm hoping will somehow make the rounds on the internet because I'm desperate for attention and validation from anonymous strangers.

      At least I admit it...

Seriously...Charmin, Cottonelle, Brawny, Bounty, et al. Cut this shit out already...

RATIOS & MINIMUM WAGE...

     In yet another article talking about the high cost of living in states like New Jersey, the comments section blazes with arguments about whether the minimum wage needs to be raised or the educational level of the citizenry with each side ready with its talking points and no hope of a consensus ever being reached.

     I had a thought. Why not let math be our guide?

     It's simple really (and yes I'm aware that simple answers fly in the face of complicated situations like these) and my intent is to use it as a guide post for further debate, not a be-all/end-all solution.

     The article focuses on the cost of living in New Jersey for a family of four (the typical metric) and what that cost would be to barely get by. You'll do better on this amount if you manage to avoid emergency expenses for health and transportation but still, an amount was given. In this case, the answer comes in at almost exactly $80,000 a year for a family of four.
     So if you're going to have the traditional nuclear family with one stay-at-home parent, then a living wage job pays $80,000 a year. But that might be a bit too idealistic in this day and age where everybody is expected to work so it instead could be thought of as two $40,000 a year jobs (one for each parent). Taken from the latter perspective, a living wage job in New Jersey pays $40,000 a year.

     For the record, I make about $28,000 a year so an extra $12,000 would go a long way toward improving my life. I get by because I don't drive, I am very careful with my money, and most importantly, I have neither been sick nor injured enough to require hospitalization since I was 2½. But luck is not a game plan for life.

     Anyways, as for whether or not the minimum wage should be raised to reflect actual living costs in New Jersey (and elsewhere in the country to their respective rates), I think using a simple ratio would prove sufficient to answer the question.

     My question is this: What is the number of jobs in New Jersey which pay a living wage divided by the number of people who need a job which pays a living wage? I don't have the necessary information at hand to answer that question. However...

     If the ratio is less than one, then I think it would strongly suggest the need to raise the minimum wage.

     However, if the ratio is greater than one, then it would strongly suggest the population needs to be better educated. 

THOUGHTS I NORMALLY KEEP IN MY HEAD, part XIX

     The essence of conservativism is the desire to return to a previous state of being. I think we all "suffer" from this longing, do we not? Is there no time in your life that you wish could be again? The internet fans the flames of nostalgia daily and I will admit that I find myself longing at times to return to periods like the 1980s and 1990s...those "simpler" times...those "better" times. But were they? And at what cost?

     The 1980s is simple. I was a child. So saying I wish to return to the '80s is merely a wish to relive my childhood. A life of simple schooling, playing outside, Atari & Nintendo, boredom, Cartoon Express & Nickelodeon, train sets, and general goofing off. The real world was shielded from me by my parents. No real work because it was being done by my parents. Food and snacks were always around. Good times paid for out of ignorance.

     The 1990s were my teenage years. Saying I wish to return to those years is a reflection of my desire to feel infatuation again for the first time; to explore more sophisticated forms of creativity like drawing, computer programming, and making up languages; to hear the music of "my era" as it was being made rather than as the poseur I am now (I do like the music of the 1990s, but I shunned it at the time in favor of the 1970s and 1980s music that my parents listened to...I blame it on a lack of peer pressure and friends); to relive college and get it "right" this time; to take part in the emerging internet as it happened; and again, to live in a time where I didn't have to work and keep house. My "job" was school and my willful ignorance kept me largely unaware of the world around me.

     Purely selfish motives. Now in my approaching middle age I might think these eras were also somehow better, or at least more understandable. I know I could certainly navigate technologically better in the 1990s and even more so in the 1980s. Hell, I would appreciate the 1970s for its understandability as well.

     But I guess what keeps me from fulling embracing conservativism is knowing that a return to those simpler times means also a return to times where groups of people are increasingly marginalized by society and with tacit (if not legislative) approval by said society. Going back means turning up the hatred on homosexuals (it's amazing how even revered '80s movies would casually drop fag(got) into the scripts...it's uncomfortable to watch now), decreasing women's rights (or eliminating them if you go back far enough), restoring blacks to second-class citizenry (at best), and so on. As Louis CK joked, going back in time is only good if you're a white male.

     As much as the future can frighten me and as much as I feel the pace of technological and sociological change is increasing faster than I can keep up with it, going back to an earlier era is basically just me (or anyone wishing to do so) being all-too-willing to sacrifice whole groups of people because I fear, what? Obsolescence? Irrelevance? My impending death?

     I guess at best I could become a retired liberal. One day I will simply end my active fighting for progress and instead just passively let it happen because they won't be my generation's battles anymore. I may not be happy about the changes the future will bring, but that doesn't mean I have to oppose them. I figure if you're going to be conservative, be so not in the temporal sense of "the past was better" but that of "let's proceed with caution" or "let's build a consensus before committing to this idea". At least that's how I intend to do it. I'll restrict my "past was better" thinking for fantasy only because condemning whole groups of people and ways of life simply for my comfort seems...just wrong.

BAD LUCK OR FILTH?

     I had an unpleasant surprise this evening. I went into my kitchen to make some microwave soup since I didn't feel like cooking. I didn't turn on the light, instead using the ambient light from my living room to guide me. When I placed the package on the counter, I thought I had seen something move around a small frying pan left on the countertop by the sink. I looked to where it had gone/blown to...and it moved again. Sure enough it was alive...and fast. Turns out it was a German cockroach. I killed it and went into my usual paranoia upon making such unfortunate discoveries.

     I've always found cockroaches offensive and not because I think they're icky but because they imply filth. Their presence is like judgement upon you.

     I immediately did the dishes, cleared the table, swept the floor, and searched the cabinets for any evidence of leavings or for a chance spying of roaches themselves. I found nothing. It made me wonder if the roach had been merely an anomaly rather than a vanguard for a much larger, heretofore unknown, infestation. I suppose it could happen. Hell, it happened before in my previous apartment when a giant winged cockroach found itself trapped in our bathtub after it came in through the bathroom window. We never had another roach after that one. It could be the same now. It's what I want to keep telling myself anyway.

     The damned thing could've hitched a ride on something I was carrying or been hiding under the door and scurried in when I had opened it briefly to come inside. I don't think I've got a bug problem because the out-of-the-way spiders I have a detente with in my living room never catch anything. It actually makes me feel bad for the spiders that their lives must necessarily end in starvation (or murder if they get a bit too bold with their choice of web placement) but then, that's nothing I intend to help them out with either.


     Then I also think that an apartment complex is only as clean as its dirtiest dwelling and as it may be, my apartment may actually be quite unworthy of infestation, but not necessarily unworthy of spillover from an apartment which is.

      Either way, I'm buying sticky traps and hoping nothing ends up on them but dust.

ADDENDUM: After more than a week I think it may be safe to declare my cockroach encounter a random one resulting either from a doorway dash or a window entry. All I've caught in all my glue traps was this little beetle:

It's small enough to fit through the holes in a screen

ADDENDUM II:  It turns out they were not mini roaches but rather phorid flies. This particular species frequents garbage and prefers running, flying only when necessary. After watching one I caught, its fly-like behavior was immediately obvious but when they catch you off-guard, their scurrying and coloration can, in my opinion at least, cause them to be confused for tiny roaches. What distinguishes them behaviorially is that they will scurry and stop whereas roaches don't stop running until they've found a dark place.
     The lesson here is to empty your garbage more often. I don't generate much trash at all so these flies actually had time to go through their larval stage and pupate. Lucky me!

They're about the size of fruit flies (but much faster) and their wings are not immediately obvious from a distance

Once it died I could get a clear picture. They have a noticeable hump when standing.

THOUGHTS ON THE ZIMMERMAN TRIAL...

     I'm just gonna state first off that I did not follow George Zimmerman trial at all. My awareness of it has been strictly limited to what could be gleaned from the front pages of newspapers and internet headlines. What struck me upon learning the verdict was how people reacted to it.

     I've noticed people treat these major trials like sporting events. They've picked their team and they root for it right to the end. If their side wins, justice was served. If their side loses, then an injustice has occurred. Of course when there's an acquittal there's no rematch so it can make people on the "losing team" a bit upset.

     The other thing I've noticed is that people pick their sides right at the start. The person on trial was judged guilty or innocent before the opening gavel and like I said above, this opinion - once formed - never changes. I first saw it with the O.J. Simpson trial. And what's more, I don't remember a single person I've ever spoken to who first thought that O.J. was guilty and then later changed his opinion based on the evidence (or vice-versa). This was also true with the Casey Anthony trial and more recently with the Jodi Arias trial.

      Knowing that makes me glad that the rule of law is what matters and not mob rule.

      As for the race-relations issue that has come to a head since the verdict, I dunno. I'm definitely not in a position to discuss that...not at all.