Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in the delusionist's LiveJournal:

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Monday, July 6th, 2009
10:39 pm	As The Wheels Turn Being that I turn 30 today, I should probably say something. Over the past few days I've faced the fact that I'm just not that good a person. There are two types of compassion: active and passive. I have always been the passive, never the active. I never seek out a way to bring about good will; I simply am there and, when an opportunity arises e.g. someone says, hey, you want to help out with this?, will not hesitate to pitch in. I am inherently lazy. This entry is not intended to be a downer, because I am a happy guy. But I have my flaws, and I wish to understand them, and I wish to be a better man, or, more specifically, a man that affects others and things in more positive ways. Or something like that. I've given up on all creative outlets. I go days without picking up the guitar, I don't role-play, I don't write (which pretty much went with the roleplay). I've thought about possibly getting back into roleplaying a little bit, but I'm so far removed that I (1) lack the confidence in my writing to think I could find it rewarding and (2) don't think I can shake off the prejudices I carry. Our house has become something that controls us rather than we controlling it. The yard's a wreck and needs serious weeding and landscaping. We need an exterminator to take care of the black widows around the outside of the house. I'd like to lay some stone to extend the patio and maybe even along the side of the house where we keep the trash can and hose, but before I can do that I need a wheelbarrow, and before I can get that I need to organize the shed in order to make room for it, which includes getting rid of the nonfunctional push lawnmower (still need to figure out where to dump it). Ultimately, the yard is no longer a joy, and that's a problem. I would much rather put the work into it myself rather than pay someone to, but I don't know diddly. In lighter news, I splurged on a road bike a few weeks ago, and have gone out riding three times so far (the last two Sundays and last Thursday) with the Bee Team here in Waxhaw. They are a great group of casual riders who won't leave anyone behind, and they ride on the back roads which is all we really have around here. They meet at the elementary school, which is right down the street from our house. I'm glad I found them. The rides kick my ass (the Sunday rides are 23-25 miles long), but I can already tell they're getting me into better shape. I also bought a new home PC through work and was finally able to play through Half-Life 2. The game was awesome, except that it felt like it ended way too soon, like there should have been another couple of chapters there where you delve deeper into the Combine lair and confront one of the main Combine leaders or whatnot. Guess I'll have to play the Episodes now, maybe when Episode Three comes out I'll just get them all at once. Grace is almost 1 and continues to be an untethered dynamo of joy. Her and Beth can duel it out to determine which one is the best thing to ever happen to me. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, January 2nd, 2009
10:43 am	My current personal goal: Eliminate all self-consciousness while maintaining self-awareness. (Comment on this)
Thursday, December 25th, 2008
10:24 pm	While departing from mass this morning and having a discussion with Beth on what each person allows himself to get out of Christmas, I stated something that I've probably understood for several years now but have just never put into words until today: Happiness is something you earn. That said, this is hands-down the best Christmas I've ever had. I can't exactly put my finger on it, but I would guess Gracie being in our lives has a lot to do with it. Everything just kind of worked; the parts that make Christmas great--time spent with family, reflection on the year past and giving thanks, a day of peace--were in full focus, while simpler things like gift-swapping provided color to the cheer (and I got a lots of cool stuff!). I couldn't be more in love with my wife and baby girl. I still feel the magic. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, October 21st, 2008
1:21 pm	( Controversial(?) Survey ) (Comment on this)
Tuesday, October 14th, 2008
2:10 pm	Sweetness Isn't Grace the cutest? (See icon if you don't believe me.) Lately I've discovered the wonders of winter squash. So funky looking, so yummy tasting, so various. They're not just for decor. The one I cooked up last night reminded me more of a sweet potato than a summer squash. I've never really had winter squash before this month (not including pumpkin, which is probably considered a winter squash), unless I ate some in a recipe one time and didn't realize it. Supposedly they get sweeter if you let them sit around for a few weeks to cure. And they'll store for 2-3 months. I plan to stock on them for the winter, as the only fresh vegetables that can be found during that time are at the grocery store, where freshness is always suspect. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, September 25th, 2008
10:29 pm	It's a Gas We've been staying at Beth's parents last night and tonight (and, probably, at least tomorrow night), because there is no effing gas in this city. Beth filled up the cars just as Hurricane Ike was hitting Texas; I thought that would be plenty of time for the gas gurus to get things up and running again--about two weeks--but, alas, no. It wasn't until I was driving home Tuesday night, running at about an eighth of a tank, planning to fill up the next morning, when I saw a line at one of the small gas stations in downtown Waxhaw, when I thought I might have miscalculated. And, it really didn't dawn on me that it was serious until every gas station I passed on the way to work the next morning had substantial lines. I had enough gas to get to work, but not to get home. So, Beth had enough in the CR-V to get up to Matthews, which is where I work and where her parents live, literally, right down the street, and also where Grace's pediatrician is. (I managed to pass the cold I had last week along to Beth and Grace, so it was comforting to know we could still get Grace to the doctor if we needed.) Beth packed some things, left the cats with some food and water, and here we still are. To get gas today is like a gambler's scavenger hunt. You have to drive around, gas station to gas station, until you find one with gas, which you can determine because it will be the one with long lines spilling out into the streets with cops directing traffic. Even if you wait in line, there's no guarantee the station will still have gas when you get to the pump, and by that point it could be hours. Neither of our cars have the gas to attempt such a fool's expenditure. I rode the in-laws' mountain bike to work today. It was a good 10- or 15-minute, a good workout. It makes me long for how much healthier, more various and versatile our transit system could be if our urban planners would show a little creativity, as well as consideration that a little exercise with your commute is good for your health. But I digress. The scary thing is it could be a lot worse. Beth's family has a number of cars with gas in the tanks. If Beth's parents weren't here, or if they didn't live close enough, I would have had to have taken the risk and went hunting for gas, and probably have gotten stranded somewhere on the side of the road. Beth could be off maternity leave and having issues with getting the gas needed to work. We could be having to miss our vacation at Litchfield Beach, which we were planning to take today through Sunday until issues with time-off at my work forced us to push it back to next weekend. The mayor and the governor say help is on the way, but who the heck knows when and how much. How do you not anticipate something like this? If our only source of gas is a single pipeline, and the suppliers to that pipeline shut down production at the sight of any hurricane in the Gulf, and the Gulf is prone to tropical disturbances come hurricane season.... Hello? And there was nothing in the news anticipating a shortage. Heck, there was no anticipation, period. Does anyone even know this is happening outside of the affected areas? I haven't seen or heard anything in the national media. County courthouses and schools are shutting down because they can't function. Let's get serious here--OK, really serious. It could be a whole lot worse. This is just a scathing blow; everyone should be looking at our situation for what it might look like if a sudden, national or global shortage were to occur. Building a one-dimensional mass-transit system based on one type of vehicle, and one type of fuel, making us dependent to the point that we must rely on foreign imports to maintain not just our way of life but our very well being. I hope the rest of the country is paying attention: It could be a whole lot worse. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, September 1st, 2008
1:50 pm	Unnecessary Footballness Commissioners and whatnot: Get rid of the lame overtime rules in both NFL and college and adopt 5-minute overtime periods like basketball does. If the game ends in a tie, have another coin flip and kickoff to begin the first 5-minute OT with two timeouts each. If the score is still tied at the end of that OT period, have a second 5-minute period, and if it's still tied have a third 5-minute period. And, if the game is still tied, and it's a regular season game, it ends a tie; if it's a playoff, keep going until someone is leading at the end of an OT period. At the end of each 3rd OT period, each team gets two more timeouts to a maximum of three. What's the most exciting part of a close game? The last few minutes, of course. Under this OT system, you'd be recreating that pressure-cooker scenario, without changing the nature of the game. You're not zapping the excitement out of OT by having teams play only for field goals (NFL), and you're not starting an entirely new--and wildly confusing--game (college). Division I or FBS or whatever: Ditch the BCS bull and adopt a playoff, with at least eight teams participating, if not sixteen. Perhaps the pageantry was cute back when there were only a few really good teams, but today there is too much parity and there are too many good teams that deserve a shot at the national championship. I have refrained from getting too interested in college football because I know, come postseason time, that elitism will rule out, as it always does. Do this, and you may even eclipse the NFL, like March Madness eclipses the NBA. Commentators: Please stop trying to be witty. You're calling a damn ball game; what you do is not art. Stop distracting us like some amateur writer. I'm talking to you, Bumburger or whatever your name was who was calling the Clemson-Alabama game, but don't think I've forgotten about you, Joe Buck. Hopefully in the future they'll begin offering commentating choices, e.g. a choice between an unbiased crew, one biased crew for each team, and no crew at all. I'd get the NFL Ticket if that were offered. I enjoy the Panthers preseason crew so much more than any of the Fox regular-season crews. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, August 18th, 2008
11:07 pm	Going for the Gold Presently, we are about $171,000 in debt. "In debt" is probably misleading, because about 75% of it is our mortgage, and we have some equity built up in our house, the value of which has gone up slightly; and $5,000 of it is our car loan, which is a 2007 Honda CR-V, so obviously we're not upside-down there, either. The rest is roughly $43,000 in student loans. My two immediate goals are: 1. Have the car paid off by the end of the year. With the exception of one of the student loans, the car loan has the highest interest rate, and we can't write the interest off on our taxes. For the past few months I've been making decent pay thanks to a raise and some healthy overtime, and have been managing to put 1K toward the car each month. If I can keep that up for the rest of the year, I won't have to dip into our "fun-money"/savings account for the coup de grace come January. 2. Get the '00 Corolla to pass inspection this October despite its chronic "check engine" light problem. This will buy us almost a year of not having a car payment once the CR-V is paid off, during which I can make a serious dent in our student loans. This would all be moot if Liz/Beth doesn't get the position she's seeking at her job, in which case she'd need a new or newer-used car for her commute to work (with the position, she'd get a company car). Long-term: If all goes to plan, I could have the one student loan with the bad interest rate knocked out by the end of 2009; and, if--fingers crossed--we can squeeze another year out of the Corolla, we could have just the one student loan with the nicest interest rate and smallest balance left at the end of 2010. I don't know if I would bother paying that one remaining loan off, or start saving that extra cash for more fun things, although I doubt it would take long to knock out the loan at that point. With no student loans or car payments, I would be banking well over one grand a month at this point after mortgage and bills. I don't know if we would begin putting that extra money toward our house or what. Of course, I should probably soon begin investing in retirement or something, but that's another conundrum best left for another day. Let's just get through this year first. (10 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, August 4th, 2008
12:35 pm	Grace is. For those of you who haven't seen Liz/Beth's journal, I'm now a daddy. Pics available at my myspace page. Grace Katharine was born on July 29, 2008 at 11:45 a.m., weighing 7 lb. 7 oz. and measuring 20.5 inches and looking fabulous. It's been an exhausting week, and I hope to gather and write down my thoughts before it's back to work tomorrow, which might mean another entry tonight, if Grace is not too fussy. She's cute when she's cranky, though, like her mommy. (8 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, July 20th, 2008
11:47 pm	The Dark Knight is Gold The Dark Knight is the first movie in years that I've been excited to see. It did not disappoint. ( Spoilers inside. ) Go see it! (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, July 10th, 2008
11:05 pm	Symbols of a Lost Cause Funny how a lot of the gas stations around here don't bother updating their prices on their road signs nowadays. They're either left incomplete or given up on all together. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, July 9th, 2008
12:30 am	On the Vanishing of the Afternoon Shower (I know this is probably out of place as we had a pretty mean late-afternoon storm today in Charlotte, but such storms have become a rarity.) Back in my biology days, I learned a little about rainforests, and why it rains all the time there. What it boils down to is heat and lots of vegetation. For those of you who aren't well learned on plant physiology, plants regulate their temperature much like us homeotherms do; they sweat. If you've ever felt a leaf on the hottest of summer days, you'll have noticed that it's cool to the touch. The water they suck up from the soil travels up through the roots, trunk, branches, and, finally, the leaves. When it starts getting hot, the leaves open their little pores and transpire, i.e. let the water evaporate into the air. Unlike us, they do not overcompensate, so you'll never see a leaf dripping water on a hot, sunny day. (Transpiration actually serves a dual function: leaf-temperature regulation, and also as the mechanism by which water is able to move up the tree, against gravity, at all -- the evaporating water creates a vacuum, pulling water up and carrying nutrients and such along the way.) Rainforests have lots of foilage, which, because it's so effing hot, pump a lot of water vapor into the air. That vapor goes up in the air, cools, and falls back down as rain. The water, for the most part, stays localized: It rains, is absorbed by the soil, gets sucked up into the trees and passed back out. Theory: There is, or was, a similar process happening in our deciduous forests during the summer. Trees in their full, green garb, trying to stay cool, adding humidity to the air only to have it fall back down on them later in the day in the form of a thunderstorm. Now, as we have cleared large portions of forest away for roads, buildings, and lawns that resemble more the Great Plains than our native biome, the rain we get is no longer being recycled back into the air, but instead, with no roots to vacuum it up, falls deep down into the groundwater or gets sent down the river. So, what can you do to help if you live east of Appalachia and have been suffering dryer than normal weather over the past few years? You can start by making your yard wooded, and doing so with native trees (they know what's up). Honor thy nature, for it sacrificed a part of itself so that you could have a nice place to live. (Comment on this)
Sunday, June 15th, 2008
9:54 pm	Daddy-to-be Musing It's funny: As we get closer to the due date, and now that we know the sex and already have the name, and now that we have the nursery ready (for the most part), it's as if she's already here, but has been away on a trip or some leave of absense, and we're just waiting for her to come home. Don't hurry, Grace. Still lots to be done. (Comment on this)
Sunday, June 1st, 2008
11:03 pm	The Premonition Game There was a period in my youth, in my pre-preadolescent years, when my mother was working a good paying job and would bring me home a toy about once a week. It was regular enough that I remember peeking out my window to see if, when she arrived home from work, she was carrying one in with her. And yet, I could never anticipate a night when she would have one -- whenever I got giddy with the thought that maybe tonight there would be a new toy, it wouldn't be there. She would always catch me on days when I wasn't thinking about it. What I concluded was that, if I ever anticipated something to happen, it wouldn't happen. This became a guiding principal in my life. It made it difficult to dream and get excited about things; however, I turned this otherwise debilitating curse into a superhero power: I could prevent bad things from happening by anticipating them. And so, many of my thoughts dipped to things not so pleasant. Of course, this all may just be a symptom of a mild obsessive-compulsive disorder, which I'm convinced I have. I'll catch myself trying not to step on a lines in the floor or concrete, and then forcefully step on one to squelch any possibility that the condition has gotten too far. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, May 28th, 2008
11:15 pm	On the Problem with Numbers The earth is finite. As the global population grows, so does the strain our livelihood places on the planet -- there is only so much it can produce. The possibility of food shortages gave us a scare in the mid-twentieth century before we were blessed (I say with tongue firmly planted in cheek) with genetically modified food. Even so, despite all the undeveloped land still on the earth, and the 70-plus percent of its surface under water, we already encounter times where drinkable water runs low-to-scarce and the sky-rocketing costs for rice. (Hey, let's drop the pipe dreams of colonizing other planets or creating underwater communities. Sustaining anything like that on a significant scale would drain earth's resources much quicker than anything we do now.) At some point we're going to have to come to terms with the fact the world can support only so many people, lest it affect our quality of life. Ask yourself how much we would be harming the environment if there were only three billion of us instead of six. In light of this, such terrible events as typhoons, tsunamis, earthquakes, famines, plagues, wars, and even genocides make sense: If we can't strike a balance directly by bringing modesty to our copulatory habits, then balance will manifest itself in other ways. I admit this is borderline nihilism, but it does raise some interesting questions. E.g.: Do we have souls, and if so, does that mean there are more souls on earth then there were centuries ago? Is there a bottomless well we just keep popping souls out of; or is there one giant, finite soul that must be divided among us, and with each increase in the population we must sacrifice a tiny bit of our own share? E.g.: If the population is rising in Africa and is projected to continue on that trend, is there a real tragedy there? If it educates itself on AIDS, won't that just intensify the patterns of famine and civil wars? Religions and governments may come and go, but natural resources and real estate, in their measurable amounts, will always be there to fight over. It's just a matter of figuring out our tipping point. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, May 27th, 2008
11:06 pm	On the Rigidity of the Mind Funny how all my journal entries have to have a single theme. Perhaps it's a present need of mine, a reflection of a growing sense that I need to become more organized in my life. Or, perhaps I want to exercise my writing chops, and manifest a unique experience in each entry. Perhaps someday I'll get back to the balls-out stream-of-consciousness entries of yesterlore. Perhaps. Now, to tonight's installment: Through my recent observations of the human species, I've come to the conclusion that there is an age in which our minds become set, like drying concrete. The age varies from person to person, but I believe it to occur sometime during one's 20s, and generally correlates with when the person finishes school, ending all academic and intensive, proactive learning, settling into a job, and so on. They have their opinions, and their trademark phrases, which they share with frequency. The most severe examples I amiably refer to as androids; they are the best at doing what they do, and being who they are, and nothing else. This is not a bad thing. It's your personality, after all. In order to maintain a trust with others, they must feel like they know you. If you're constantly changing your mind, who are you? For me, who desires self-improvement and growth, it's a battle, a line in the sand that, if I dare cross, insists I come to terms with the person I am and will forever be. I am not immune. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Saturday, May 17th, 2008
4:57 pm	On Gay Marriage Bans Can someone help me understand the true impetus behind this movement for constitutional amendments banning gay marriage? I don't get it, but I'm trying to. Do they not want gay couples to get the same legal rights and tax breaks as heterosexual couples? Is that it, is it a legal thing? That doesn't seem right, because only one word can describe that scenario: discrimination. Although, honestly, I wouldn't put it past some people. The only other explanation is that ban proponents don't see anything besides a man-and-woman pairing fitting into their conception of what a "marriage" is. The definition of a word, especially an abstract word like "marriage", is, after all, in the ear of the beholder. I'd be very curious to see an in-depth news bite on what various ban propenents think of civil unions, and the idea of allowing gay couples the same type of legal bond afforded heterosexual couples without calling it "marriage". That way they can avoid telling their kids that those two guys or those two women are "married." "Like you and Daddy?" "Yes, like me and Daddy." Even still, no matter how you slice it, it's discrimination, kin to sexism, racism, you name it. ("Banning gay marriage": Strip away all the connotations of sexual orientation from that phrase, and you have something horribly ironic, the kind of thing only religious posers are capable of.) How do you argue that it's not discrimination? What are you thinking? (19 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, May 11th, 2008
9:22 pm	IFL The account I've been using to host IFL will be expiring on May 26; the service provider will delete all files after that time when they cancel the account. It was a good experiment and exercise in creativity, but at this point I no longer get any sense of reward from it, and those who do want to see it back haven't shown me the chutzpah that I feel I need to see in order to make any effort on my end. I never intended it to be "a mutt from hell that I can't live without" (to steal a line from Wheatus of "Teenage Dirtbag" fame circa 2000), i.e. I never wanted it to be something I had to run year in and year out until one of us died. I know there are those who want to see IFL continue on, and I'm sorry to have to disappoint. I'm not sure what to do with the files. If IFL starts back up again, it won't be me running it, so I don't see a point in my saving the files or what I would do with them if I did. (In case you haven't figured it out by now, I know shit about computers.) At this point I gladly relinquish all rights to the game. With the exception of the artwork (which I don't consider wholly mine and thus don't feel comfortable saying "it's all yours"), the files and database are free domain. Contact me and maybe we can figure something out. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, April 19th, 2008
8:57 pm	Digression on Lawns, and Why I Love Trees I'm a big fan of wooded lots. For years now, I haven't gotten lawns. I didn't get why people can be so proud of a lush green yard of grass, and I think I finally understand why. I grew up in Virginia, live in North Carolina. Imagine, if you will, what these states looked like before Whitey showed up four hundred years ago to settle: Glorious, deciduous forest. When any land is developed around these parts--before a house is built--the first thing we do is knock down trees. I'm a believer in not fucking with nature any more than one has to to survive and live a satisfying life. If we have to wipe out an entire forest in order to build whatever a species like us has to build, then we should do what we can to rebuild that forest or whatever part of nature we destroyed back up around whatever it is we built. Nature demands respect just as we demand respect, for the two are not separable. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, April 10th, 2008
11:51 pm	Living with the Mek Tribe is one of the coolest shows I've seen in a while. I'd ellaborate more, but I'm freakin' beat. (2 Comments |Comment on this)