Archive for the 'Life' Category
Tattoo #67
Tattoo by Fish, Doc Dog’s Las Vegas Tattoo, Ybor City
So, here we are, tattoo sixty-seven, I currently have no more after this one. Don’t worry, sixty-eight is totally coming in the next few days. Still, right now, sixty-seven is the newest.
It’s a bee! Why a bee? Why NOT a bee…?
There’s one just like it floating around somewhere else.
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Tattoo #66
Tattoo by Colt, Doc Dog’s Las Vegas Tattoo, Ybor City
So, this is another Aimee Mann tattoo, lyrics from her song, Long Shot, which is off of one of her earlier records, I’m With Stupid.
To me, the song’s about this relationship that just goes bad over and over and over again. The one person keeps trying to end it for lots of reasons, solid reasons. Right? Yes, sure. Not really, though. All those reasons that seemed so solid just end up being, “please love me more.” Love isn’t rational, it’s just something you feel, and want, no matter the reasons for or against it.
Anyway, the tattoo felt appropriate.
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Tattoo #65
Tattoo by Colt, Doc Dog’s Las Vegas Tattoo, Ybor City
So, this tattoo is from a PJ Harvey song, The Soldier, off of a record she created with John Parish, A Man a Woman Walked By.
I really like The Soldier because she takes the incoherent, yet vivid nature of a nightmare, and makes it coherent. Few writers can do this well, I’m talking song writers, fiction writers, any sort of writer. Dreams, and especially nightmares, are just not easy to put to words. You want to keep it wispy, surreal, vivid, yet something readable and compelling.
The song is about a soldier who has seen horrible things, done horrible things, is damaged, completely fucked up by these experiences, and at the end of everything just wants to go home. That’s how the last year felt, the last few years felt, leading up to this tattoo. I just want to take all my damage, everything I’ve made so external, I want to take it all and go home,
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Changing tropes
Here’s my problem with the “Technology Made Me a Real Boy!” trope.
The trope should be, “People often treated me like a lamp, people who never took the time to try to communicate with me. I was seen as furniture, but I’m not, I just had all these thoughts, feelings, that had no easy way out of my head. Now that I have X device, people can see the me in my head, who I really am. Thank you for giving me a better way to communicate, a way to show what’s always been behind my eyes.”
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To answer a reader
So, a reader recently wanted to know…
By the way, why do you have those things on your head? are you alright???
Yes, they really used three question marks. Well, given the urgency of the question, and since I figure other people have the same question, I’m going to answer here.
No, I’m not dying. Those “things” on my head are sensors that are attached to my NeuroSwitch. The NeuroSwitch gives access to SwitchXS, the software that gives access to Mac OS X and everything else. Basically, the sensors on my forehead read the electrical impulses caused by wiggling my eyebrows, passing the signal on to the NeuroSwitch. The NeuroSwitch wirelessly talks to my computer, which talks to SwitchXS. So, I wiggle my eyebrows, a little on-screen keyboard (SwitchXS) pops up on my computer, and from that keyboard I type, move the mouse, launch apps, play World of Warcraft, drive robots, whatever.
NeuroSwitch is by far the most advanced switch around, it helps where every other switch fails. SwitchXS is the most advanced switch access software around, it allows access to the world’s most advanced operating system, Mac OS X. Together, they really do help make disability a non-issue.
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Favorited by @aimeemann!
So, unless you’re reading this blog for the very first time, right now, you probably know that I am a fan of Aimee Mann. In my head, she’s right up there with Kurt Cobain, and Elliott Smith. She’s definitely the best living singer/song-writer around. I like her writing enough to have it etched into my skin several times over. Every song on every record is good, I definitely can’t say that about ANY of her contemporaries.
I’ve been to two Aimee Mann concerts, one in Tampa, one in Boston, mid-blizzard. In Tampa, she got off her tour bus to take pictures with us and chat awhile, she was astonishingly kind. Yes, I’m a fan.
Thus, when she favorited TWO of my tweets…
Favorited by @aimeemann!
Favorited by @aimeemann, again!
…I was probably happier than Twitter should make a fellow.
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Thoughts and prayers
I just want to say that my thoughts and prayers are with the families affected by the evil act perpetrated in Connecticut.
How many COMPLETELY SENSELESS tragedies does our country have to watch on tv before we seriously re-think our OBVIOUSLY BROKEN gun laws?
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WordPress 3.5
So, we’re now running WordPress 3.5… yay! This upgrade was a little eventful, not eventful like the time I upgraded from a psyche ward, but more technically eventful. The part of WordPress where I actually type my posts disappeared, which is definitely not okay. After some detective work, I learned that I had to dig into my wp-config.php file and add a single, very arcane-looking, line of code…
define('CONCATENATE_SCRIPTS', false);
I have no solid idea WHY it worked, but it did, and the blog continues…
