*cricketbox*

1. WP Theme for my business.
2. Arabic.
3. Software design for code I can’t write

1.  WP Theme for my business.

I own a business that is set to spring forth like a manic Amy Winehouse on PCP.  It’s been set to do this for about two years.  This, year three, is my put up or shut up 12 months.  I’m converting the entire site to run off of Wordpress for ease of maintenance and general not having to do it myself.

2.  Arabic.

I’m learning Arabic.  It is the most frustrating, beautiful language I’ve yet encountered.  I can barely say anything except “Welcome,” and the nouns for man,, woman, boy, girl.  It is fascinating because the language uses the entire mouth from the upper throat, through the palette and forward to the lips and tongue.  Very fucking cool.

3.  Software design for code I can’t write.

I’m a bad programmer.  There I said it.  I have no deep-seeded desire to understand code, nor to write it.  I do, however, have a head full of ideas and enough understanding of said code and coding to be dangerous.  I have the rough design for an extremely useful and possibly evil piece of software that I have no clue how to code.  But I believe that the design is sound, and that it is entirely doable.

Let’s put it like this:  Jason recently told me “Dude, that’s really cool, and I hope you fail.”  Yeah, it is that good.  Good enough to break the interwebs forever.  Kaminsky be damned!

I should really be working out too, but since when is that news?  Exactly.

Ugh, back to CSS and XHTML.

So it looks as though I will (finally) be graduating in the Spring.  After ten plus years of perpetual-studenthood it barely feels like an accomplishment.  I have enough schooling under my belt at this point to have been a doctor or an attorney, or just about anything my heart could’ve desired.  But I’m not.  No, I’ve eschewed all that for what at one point seemed like an alternate road, but in the end it certainly seems like the proverbial Primrose Path.

It looks like I’m destined for Law School (something that is at least another two years away) at what is, for now, a “Tier One” school.  We’ll see if she’s still up there by the time arrives around for me to enroll.

I’m at a pivotal point in my life and I’m confused as to what I should do.  I’ve been kicking around the idea of continuing my education in Poli-Sci, but I’m not sure.  My other option is to possibly pursue a degree in Intelligence Operations from American Military University.  I don’t know.  AMU is pretty fucking pricey, it’ll set me back about thirty grand for a BA, maybe less with my credits transferring.

So, I’m kinda stuck, and have no idea what to do.  Poli-Sci is interesting to me, but Intel Ops would be fucking great.  How it relates to Law School is tenuous, but it certainly would be more interesting.

Face it, Intel is just about the coolest of the cool-guy jobs.  I just don’t really know if my past would get in the way.

I suppose I have a few months to decide, but it weighs on me constantly.

Oh, and I decided to get back to telling my stories online, so you’ll notice there’s a gigantic new button up top.  I feel the name is appropriate, though the stories are generally highly inappropriate.

My stats reveal that I probably have a fatwa on me in several countries.

Good times. 

Oh, and I stared learning Arabic today.  This is the first time that I can remember looking at what are purported to be “words” and not being able to make ANY sense out of them.  So frustratingly awesome it boggles the mind.

I was in and out of the snow last night taking care of the neighborhood plants, much to the chagrin of Dani, but hey, I didn’t see any other Boy Scouts around, and those plants weren’t going to de-snow themselves.

The level of crazy is running epically high around here, and I’m back to not sleeping at appropriate times.

To help beat back my stress level I’m back on my workout routine:

60 sec. 25lb Loaded Kettlebell Squats

60 sec. rest

60 sec. 25lb Turkish Getups

60 sec. rest

60 sec. 25lb Kettlebell Swings

It will progress from there, but it is important to not feel like I’m dying upon completion of what is seemingly a teeny-tiny workout.  So once this doesn’t kill me, I’ll decrease the rest time (first to 30sec. then to 0) and eventually move on.  For now, I’d just like to not walk around like Mr. Magoo all day, every day.  But I will say that even though I’ve been off the wagon for about six weeks my weight has stayed at a remarkably stable 185.5#.

Yeah the skinny white-boy you knew and loved doesn’t exist anymore.  He turned into a fucking slob who didn’t realize that “every man is an island unto himself” was NOT meant to be taken literally.

So he will be replaced with a newer, improved model who may actually fit into clothes from H&M, or at least not fit into them for a better reason than looking like a Polish Sausage.

I actually slept last night.  For the first time in what seems like weeks I didn’t have any horrible dreams, and woke up in a fantastic mood.

Which lasted for about a full two minutes.

I went to check on my mom who’s been sick, and was promptly informed that she won’t have insurance through my father’s office any longer because “he’s over 65.”  Which on it’s face sounds suspicious, though with insurance who the fuck knows anymore.

So now I’m back to freaking the fuck out and just wanting to go back to sleep.

Awesome, just so truly awesome.  I can’t wait to see what utter bullshit tonight brings.

I’m a pretty wound up dude.  Despite my best efforts to put forth a glassine exterior, most days I spend in some stage of panic.

This has been the case for as long as I remember, dating back to my early childhood.  It has been a patter that has been nearly impossible for me to break; believe me I’ve tried.

So, lately, I’ve been harangued in my sleep by memories that feel like subconscious vomit.  All my fears, horrible memories and worst moments haunting me from the time my head hits pillow until my feet hit floor (if I’m lucky, some days it lasts until I can find something suitably distracting).

This pattern follows an external stressor with alarming regularity.  Lately, it has been my father.

Truth be told, until very recently I didn’t actually have a father, not really anyway.  I, like so many of my generation was saddled with a “dead-beat dad.”  A couple of years ago I was formally adopted by my step-father who’d been my Dad for most of my life.

And it felt good, really good.  Growing up, post divorce, I never felt like I had a family.  My family were the people I was lucky enough to have convinced to befriend me.

So now, as an alleged adult, the thing that I want most to do is make my family, and by family I mean father, proud of me.  And I don’t know how to do that.

I don’t even know if it is possible, let alone where to begin.  To say I’m a less than perfect son is an enormous understatement, but I don’t actually believe that I’ve done anything especially terrible.  Yet whenever there is a sign of trouble within my family I feel on me a kind of crushing weight that is neigh impossible to escape.  I’m guessing that this would be the eventual outcome of my parents divorce some 27 years after the fact?

All I know is that after a lifetime of not feeling as though I had a family, the thought of now losing that family scares me to death.

Thank God the fucking election is in ten days.

Also, as a bonus, here’s Ashley Todd’s perp walk.  Way to pull out the ‘ol Generic Black Dude/Black Guy Comin’ Fer Yer White Wimminz card, Ash!

Friday night, evening, actually, but that doesn’t really matter.  I’m sick to my stomach, literally.  Who’da thunk that eating a pile of pasta coated in broken gorgonzola-alfredo sauce and bits of desiccated veggies would do that to a person?  Not me.

I keep going in circles with this site.  There’s a part of me who desperately wants to have some kind of credibility; say important things, and have people pay attention.  That part of me is clearly delusional, but I really can’t help it.  Another part of me desperately wants to relive the past, when I could count on hundreds of hits a day, when I had a small army of people writing, reading and commenting on the regular, but alas, those days are gone too.  Again, delusional.  Again, I can’t help it.  I’m a sentimental guy with a memory that, despite the near-pathological abuse I’ve doled out with the intent of dulling, remains unceasingly, unforgivingly sharp.

Mind you those hits may have started showing up for me, but they sure as shit didn’t end there.  Someplace in the middle, Josh found his voice, and hit his stride, which was really fucking great to see happen in real-time.  It was even better because at the time he was my hetero-lifemate and because of that, I had a front-row seat to the birth of a pretty fantastic writer.  In the mix was also a rag-tag bunch of people on the fringe who would chime in from time to time, including the girl who is responsible for typing the filthiest thing I’ve ever seen on my screen.

No, I’m not going to repeat it here.  It was really that fucking filthy.  And it happened while I was at work.

Fucking memory.

The point that I’m trying to make?  I’m going to dig in my heels, engage my brain, and attempt to get back to what I started this dump for so long ago.

At some point I’ll probably have to leave the house. . .

Fuck.

At least I’ll always have my delusions.  And Internet porn.  But mostly my delusions.