The Man Code

Being a man is not as complex as many make it out to be.While there are some subtleties we are, as a rule, pretty simple. We generally like certain things (boobs, fast things, explosions) and dislike others (ballet, cleaning gutters).

We also have certain responsibilities. One of those is cutting up wood. If there is a dead or fallen tree nearby, it is our duty to cut it up. It is, dare I say, a biological imperative. This is spelled out in The Great Book, also know as the Man Book or Man Code.

So when a tree blew over a few weeks back, I knew what I had to do. Cut that fucker up. For when you cut up a tree, you get firewood. Firewood is for fires, another thing men are compelled to make (Under Man Rule #5). I went out to the barn and took out my beat up Homelite 240 chainsaw and with a few pulls, it fired right up. I hacked up the tree into several large pieces before I got tired, or distracted or something. I left the job about half done (Man Rule #18).

Today I went out intent to finish the job. So of course the chain saw would not start. I pulled till I was blue in the face. Then I twiddled with the few knobs I could (Man Rule #25) Nothing. A reasonable person might be expected to try to find out why it wouldn't start. I am a (semi) reasonable person. A quick google offered no real help. CHAINSAW NO GO could have any cause. There are hundreds of possibilities. I looked at 2 (Guy Rule # 35) and walked away.

 Once again, a reasonable person might consider taking it to a repair guy. But Guy Rule #13 states that you better break out the tools first. Even if you have no fracking clue what you are doing you are obliged to use at least 4 tools (#37). It doesn't really matter what you do with them, only that you used them in the shop.  I downloaded the owners manual off the web. Cleaned the air filter. Checked the fuel filter. Adjusted Hi and Lo screws. Fresh fuel. Cleaned spark plug.

  Now I smell like gas and oil. It is a good smell. A manly smell.

 With everything adjusted and topped off I yank the pull cord. She fires up like a kitten. And by fires up I mean it somehow managed to NOT work even MORE, which makes no sense unless you are a guy holding a lump of metal with a string on it that yesterday was  a chainsaw.

  AT this point I have to give up. It isn't broken. I know this. But it doesn't matter. It's off to the shop. Do you know what they will do there? "Clean and adjust". Oh and charge me $60. Do you know what they will actually do to it? Tap it with a fucking magic wand is what. A magic wand that costs $60. I suspect there aren't actually any tools in the back room of my local repair shop. Only an array of wands.  They have wands that range from $40 to $120.  I'm sure my auto mechanic also has a magic wand but he only has the one that costs me $300 every time he waves it.

It doesn't matter. I have fulfilled my obligations to the Code. Now if you will excuse me I must try to get the smell of gas and oil off me as I'm getting dizzy.

Between a rock and an icky place.

It's possible that I may be vending at Dragon Con this year. The key work is possible. Dragon Con is a big con, with a lot of competition for dealer space. This year they have moved to a new space, which gave me a chance to get in.  I'm excited at the chance and happily submitted my application. An event the size of Dragon Con can generate sales equal to the entire season of a small Ren Fair.

 So I was surprised to hear about a boycott that has been proposed by author Nancy Collins. She is upset that DragonCon is still associated with is co-creator Ed Kramer. Ed, it turns out has been arrested several times for possible child molestation. The first instance was in 2000 and most recently last week. Here is a long article, but it gives out a lot of information about the cases. Reading it is like watching a train wreck  You want to look away, but you're pulled back in. You wonder how this thing has gone on for so long. But its no mystery. Powerful and expensive lawyers were involved, health issues, lots of money, endless legal challenges and even claims of antisemitism.

Conventions were a source of great joy for me growing up. And in my adulthood they are partly how I make my living. But I still enjoy them. Except now I question how much. This is beyond the petty bickering and politics involved in the running of a con, this has gone waaay into a dark dark place.

Flashback time: It's 2000 and a group of friends and I go to Dragon Con for the first time. It's huge. We have a blast. There are all kinds of great tales told about that trip that have amused friends for years. In the course of the con, I actually meet Ed Kramer. It was in the semi-exclusive "Concierge Suite". He was a large man with an wild, unkempt beard stuffing his face with shrimp. I will be honest and say that he did not give off a particularly creepy vibe. Or at least, no more creepy than many of the people one meets at cons. Somehow Ed had heard of our performing group "The Magnificent Sloan Gypsies".  We chatted briefly and he discussed the possibility of bringing us to the Con to perform. A paying gig! Hallelujah!

 Not long after returning from the con word came through the grapevine about Kramer's arrest. Awesome. That year another convention director had contacted us, only to die rather suddenly before any kind of contract had been signed. Two well connected people had said we were great and wanted to hire us only for one of them to die and the other to be arrested as a child molester.

  That year Rossana and I started working Renaissance Festivals in earnest and it became almost impossible to attend Dragon Con. Other than being told how awesome a show it was by fellow dealers, I knew nothing of the con, or the fact that Ed Kramer was still part owner of the show.

  And so we come to today. A link leads me off to an article calling for the very people who are a big draw for the con to boycott the show.  Artists, writers, media guests. That link led to the much longer article detailing what had been happening over the past 13 years since last I saw Ed Kramer.  And that led to a strange conflict within me. I don't like child molesters or indeed people who do awful things to other people. I certainly don't want to help support one in any way.

  I like to bombastically declare that I am a Godless Capitalist. But the truth is that I have tried to never let my love of money overcome my personal beliefs in right and wrong. Ed Kramer is all kinds of wrong. So it would seem a pretty clear choice to pull out of this show and throw whatever weight I can into this boycott, right? But it is not that simple. Maybe for some it is. But as I pass 45 years on this Earth I have come to accept that some things aren't cut and dry.

  It is evident that Dragon Con and its owners are not willingly supporting Kramer. They have twice tried to buy him out and eventually stopped paying him (until Kramer sued). They are not secretly hoping he gets away with these crimes. I see no claims that anyone else involved with the Con helped him commit these crimes. For the past 13 years he has been personae non grata. Is it possible some of my dealer fee MAY eventually go to pay for Kramers layers. I suspect it is. But my money, indeed everybody's money goes to people and organizations that use money in ways we likely disapprove of.  When I paid my taxes under Bush some of my money went to pay for Black sites used to torture people. My money has gone to Blackwater, to corrupt cops and politicians. It  now pays for drones and bombs and bullets that have kill innocent people. This is an very unpleasant fact. But I'm not going to stop paying my taxes, even though a small amount of it funds things that are just wrong. I will not condemn my entire country for the actions of some of its citizens. The same applies to Dragon Con. You would be hard pressed to find ANY institution, club or organization that doesn't have some fucked up people belonging to it (or even co-founding it).

 So I'm going to work the show (if I get selected). Others will chose not to attend and I respect the hell out of their decision. But here is how it could play out.  If enough people bring pressure to bear the co-owners will again try to buy out Kramer. Kramer will demand a huge amount, Dragon Con will offer much less. The process will drag on, piling up massive legal expenses. Those expenses, in combination with falling attendance from a boycott and bad press could very well kill the show. Congratulation, you will have gotten your wish. Kramer will no longer get any money. Neither will anyone else.  While the Con itself doesn't have a large staff I guesstimate that between 200-300 people (dealers mostly) will loose a huge chunk of their livelihood.

Mission Accomplished.

  I don't have to do this show, but I still want to. I had to turn it over in my mind a while. I don't like to think of myself as a bad person or someone who actively support bad people. But from where I stand DragonCon  is in an unenviable position not of their making. If information comes out showing they somehow actively facilitated Kramer's crimes (other than paying him, which they were legally obliged to do) I may change my mind.

 Now I'm going to look at some pictures of goddamn bunnies. I have spent too much time analysing my own morals today.

The men by the road

When you get to Indianapolis for GenCon you are sent to a "marshaling yard". Since the docks can't fit everyone at once, you are sent to a warehouse district nearby to wait your turn. Its a gravel lot with a porta-john and not much else. When there's room at the docks, they call you and you can drive over.

As I left the lot to make my way to the convention center  I was worried about all manner of things. Were we on a good spot? Did I have enough stock? Did I forget something? Would our new minion work out? All of this stuff buzzes around. You can't help it. As I pulled out of the lot I took a side street that ran between a warehouse and a small river, and there, carved out of the weeds and brush, was a small tent city.

It hadn't been there before. But there it was. There were signs it had been there some time. Months maybe. The tents were well worn. So were the men in them. A mixture of white and black, young and old. Living in Wellington I haven't seem homeless people in quite a while. It was a shock I suppose.

There are panhandlers on the streets of Indy. A dozen or so around the convention center. I haven't given any money to them the last two years. I wondered as I drove past the tent city, why that was. I generally don't think that homeless people are lazy or unworthy of help or charity. I guess I just assumed the ones by the convention center were the pros. I've read about some panhandlers who make thousands per year. Then there are the slackers. The disheveled youth sitting near coffee shops with their dogs endlessly smoking and hanging out. There's no way to know if they are truly homeless or just apathetic.

I thought I might take a closer look at the faces on the streets after we finished for the day. But every place to eat is jam packed in the city and we drove back to our motel a few miles away. It was the same story the next day, and the next. By the fourth day I was so tired from working. We finished the day and started teardown. They turn off the AC so it gets hot pretty quick. We pull apart our booths and pack away our stock.  Eventually I have to head off to the marshaling yard to wait my turn at the docks. It's a long wait. I check my email, make a lost of shit that has to get done by the end of the week. After an hour I get the green light to go.

As I pull out of the lot I pass the tent city again. It's filling up. I had somehow managed to avoid the homeless outside the convention hall, but that didn't mean they had disappeared. They never disappear. They just get forgotten.

If I had one, I'd send it back...

With the Boy Scouts of America deciding to double down on their decision to exclude gays from scouting there has been a notable backlash, culminating with some Eagle Scouts returning their badges, which is a pretty big thing for them, considering how hard it is go earn that award.

I never made Eagle Scout, far from it. I never wanted to be a Scout at all, let alone an Eagle Scout. Yet somehow as a young man I found myself drafted into the Boy Scouts. That's right, drafted.

When I was in Jr. High my grades were not what one would call "stellar". I was having a hard time for a number of reasons. My parents decided to send to to another school to get help, rather than see me fail a grade. When I arrived, my class was getting ready to head off on a camping trip. We would be canoeing 50 miles down the Mohican river.

This would be a challenge for any young person who wasn't much of an outdoors type. Now lets add in a group of emotionally, developmentally and behaviorally maladjusted kids. Some of these kids had serious problems. And yet we were expected to, as a group,  plan, purchase supplies, pack, unpack, canoe, make camp and cook for a 1 week trip. Needless to say, the trip did not go particularly smoothly. 2 kids smuggled along booze, one brought a gun. Several canoes flipped and got swamped. There were a few fights.

When it was done, I was told we had earned a '50 miler award'.

"From who?"  I asked.

"From the Boy Scouts" our teacher replied.

"I never joined the Boy Scouts."

"You did when you joined this school." he answered.''

And there it was. I had somehow joined the Scouts.

We did the trip again later, as well as camped in a log cabin in February. On another camping trip half the kids got ill from bad food or water. One time while building a bridge a saw popped out of the groove and cut my thumb wide open, necessitating stitches.  I never saw that 50 miler badge, or any other badge. We had no uniforms, not even a beret. The school had no money for that and some of the kids came from poor neighborhoods.

But a weird thing happened amongst all the misery. We worked as a team. Make no mistake, we didn't want to, but we had to. We learned, we overcame challenges. We dealt with other, even if we disliked - even hated each other sometimes.

Unlike the men giving back their medals, I do not claim that Scouting made me the successful man I am today. But it did teach me a lot. And I believe it can have a positive affect on young peoples lives. At a time when 'playing' now consists of sitting in front on a computer for hours on end we need to get kids outside and physically active. In this age where so much interaction is carried on through "social media" we need kids to learn how to get along face-to-face in groups. Positive adult roll models always seem in short supply. We cannot protect our children by insulating them from the world and pretending people with different skin color, religious beliefs or sexuality don't exist. The rest of society is moving past this kind of bigotry. Young people already know gay people and see no reason they should be excluded from enjoying the same rights everyone else does. Our own military no longer discriminates against openly gay members.

Yes, the BSA is a private group and they are allowed to have whatever policies they want. But with attendance down 20% since 1999 I would think they would be interested in doing everything they can to get people involved with scouting. There are signs that change may yet come. I hope it does. If not the BSA will likely go the way of the Dodo. It will exclude itself out of existence.  Which would be a damn shame.

Maybe if enough people, especially Scouts past and present, let the BSA know their feelings on the matter we will see some change. So consider my few badges and awards returned (even though I never got them) until such time as the BSA welcomes everyone into scouting.

Truth is cooler than fiction

A few months ago I read about a letter a former slave supposedly sent his former master in the South. Is was amazing but didn't seem quite right. It was almost too good to be true. But after a lot of research it appears to be true.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2174410/Pictured-The-freed-slave-moving-letter-old-master-asked-work-farm.html?ICO=most_read_module

"And just like that, he was gone..."

Tomorrow begins a new adventure to:

Africa, the Dark Continent.

 There can be no doubt that this is a schmaltzy line, but I don't care.Africa is a dramatic place. This trip represents a big leap for me. I would not dare to say that I have become jaded by travelling. But with age and experience I am a little more comfortable heading off to strange new places. I've come to see how people are usually pretty nice to other people no matter where you go. But Africa is different.  Charming will not keep you from being eaten in Africa.

I suppose that is why this trip will be so different. There won't be a lot of people to interact with at all. The group we are with will be very small. There are no ancient ruins or medieval architecture to explore. It is a place that has remained quite wild and untamed. It is a place of great political upheaval. It is a place where diseases unknown to us here run rampant still, killing tens of thousands. It is a land of crushing poverty and excessive greed as well as unspeakable beauty.

I technically did nothing...

and yet I am very tired. A literal stack of projects meets my gaze everywhere I look. My desk, in the garage, in the shop.

But today I ignored almost all of it. With the onset of an early spring Bag End has begun its annual growth spurt. All manner of vegetation, some friendly, some hostile, have begin to race for the sky. I have been on the mower it seems, every 20 minutes or so trying to keep the verge in check. But that always leaves the rough edges as it were. So yesterday and today was trimming day.

 With weed wacker and loping sheers I wandered the countryside. In my wake are piles of  limbs, weeds and thorn bushes. If there is a comfortable weed wacker I have never seen it. But when its done... ah.. well that makes it worth it.

I should have knuckled under and kept my nose to the grindstone. So much to do. Ren faire coming up. Repacking, organizing, restocking. And yet I feel not one whit of guilt for spending the day outside. I am covered in millions of little gobbets of green gore and scratches but I came by them honestly. I'm tired but I think it the best kind of tired.

Well THAT'S a first...

So there I was, cruising along on Facebook when BAM, suddenly there's a picture of looks like a dead baby. Wow. Pretty goddamn graphic. Along with the image in a short note about how a friend had miscarried a child at about that age and they had mourned. Then there was the obligatory "Please share if you want  to stop abortion".

The image had just been posted and there were no comments. I looked at the name and it wasn't very familiar. I think it was someone I had just friend-ed through mutual acquaintanceship. Suddenly the following image came to mind:

So I cracked my knuckles and fired off a reply. It touched on several subjects such as how making abortion illegal would not stop abortion, only make it more dangerous (and thus risking lives).  I mentioned that many people do not want a child or don't have the resources to raise a child, which might mean that are pretty miserable for most of their lives.  I  also touched on the hypocrisy of wanting to send doctors who perform abortions to jail, while saying that the mother should not (this is a common belief of abortion opponents).

I also discussed how my mother had been involved with public health in the suburbs of Michigan, where abortion (and sex ed) was widely reviled yet these same mothers would bring their own daughters for the procedure.

Because all abortion is wrong, except for their abortion.

I posted my rant and then want off to eat dinner. When I came back I was surprised to see no replies to the post. There was a message from the woman who posted it. She said she removed the post because "facebook should be for happy things".

I sighed. Yes, it was nice that the picture was gone. But she seemed to miss what I was doing. Facebook doesn't have to be only for "happy things". It's a place for all kinds of things. Good and bad. In the past year friends have posted about relationships beginning and ending. Great joy and great sadness. Health scares, injuries, business ups and downs.  It's been a slug fest of vastly differing opinions on many different subjects. And that's what I like.

I wrote back and told her that while I disagreed with her position, she shouldn't be afraid to express it. There's a saying that people should discuss religion or politics at parties. I could not disagree more.  I don't go to as many parties as I used to. So I don't get to engage in debate as much.That's a shame because they can be a blast (just make sure  everyone keeps it civil and you hide the knives) Luckily Facebook is there, in all it's glory. From pictures of kittens to vocal Christians. From  freethinkers to gun lovers. All of it blurted out in one place, like a big noisy party. A party where people keep poking you and asking you for shit to make their farm better).

A long string of crazy

Watching the Republican candidates on tv is getting to be an exercise futility. There are no new ideas, only the same bleating about taxes and regulation. None of the candidates hold my interest at all. Ron Paul, the only one with some sane ideas, is overshadowed by his crazy ideas about getting rid of the EPA and going back to the gold standard. Oy.

The great thing about it is that Americans are starting to see these guys a little more clearer now. And what do we see? Another batch of rich white guys. Seriously, Mitt Romney is worth 200 million. How can a man this rich say he understands the working class, the "average Joe". He comes from money, and he has tons of money. He gives some of his money to charity. I respect that. It's the Mormon church, I respect that less. So he's a rich guy with magic underwear.

Newt? Good god that man is repugnant. He is the ugly American. He is loud and unashamed of anything he says (or does). Hey, people get divorced. Ok. Sometimes more than once. But the stories about his behavior during these divorces? Remember McCain? He was a charmer too. Comes back from Nam to a wife who is no longer pretty and its off to the rodeo to find a new trophy wife.

These guys just give me the creeps.

I don;t think Obama is perfect. There are many things he has done that go against the grain of a progressive. Guantanamo still open? The NDAA? Cracking down on medical marijuana? But he's also make a lot of good moves.

With no real third party I believe I'll be voting to Obama again. Now all  have to do is survive the camaign season and the elections.  That should be fun.

An awkward moment...

Here's a short read. It details Mitt Romney sitting down at a restaurant after noticing a mans Vietnam Vet hat. It should have been a quick photo and press the flesh op. What transpires is a wonderfully refreshing moment of honesty showing how Romney, like the rest of the Republican candidates, will never consider letting gays have equal rights.

Why? Because ," I think at the time the Constitution was written it was pretty clear that marriage is between a man and a woman"


That's it.

To Mitt and other's of his ilk, anything that wasn't okay at the time of the writing of the Constitution is just WRONG. Period. I'd like to you think about that position for a moment. Can we see the flaw in that argument?

Here are some things that were just peachy at the time of the writing of the Constitution:

• Slavery 
• Women not having the right to vote 
• Blacks and whites being able to marry 
• Blacks being able to vote 
• Women serving in the military 

And remember all that "States rights" bullshit they keep spouting? That baaaaad bad federal gub'mint? Well they were okay with states settling gay rights up until they thought they could get the brass ring of the White House. Now? Federal Law must be used to stop Teh Ghays.

The constitution isn't a perfect document. That's why we've had amendments to it. We, as a country, have grown and changed. We will never go back to that non-existant Reagan wet-dream past where Coke was a nickel and those uppity minorities could be beaten or ignored.

Take a look, you knuckle dragging neanderthals. This battle is not going to go your way. So why are you spending SO MUCH time, money and effort dragging this out and making everyone's lives miserable?

Coolest. Toy. EVAR>

http://www.wimp.com/coolesttoy/

There's a huge fucking difference...

Scott Olson the young former Marine who was shot in the head with a teargas grenade is doing better. He has a fractured skull and brain swelling. He may need surgery. He can communicate only with a notepad right now, but will likely live.

It's looking more and more like the was not an accident. The flash grenade that was thrown into the group that was trying to help him certainly wasn't. In looking at footage of the march it appears to me that the protesters were peaceable. This didn't have to happen. It was the police who ratcheted up the pressure, who escalated the situation.

In looking over various blogs I noticed that several right wing outlets are saying that Olsen created a website called ihatethemarinecorps.com. They point to the OWS and liberals and shout "your 'War Hero' hated the Marines!" and by extension, he hated his country. The hate is thick over there. While the site no longer exists I could easily believe that Scott might have created this site. At first, it might appear that Scott is being turned into a political pawn by the left and OWS in the same way that Pat Tilman was used to sell the War on Terror.

But there are some huge fucking differences here. I haven't read anything from ANYONE in OWS calling him a hero, only that he served two tours in Iraq and was part a group called Veterans for Peace. People are outraged that a young man who attended a peaceful rally, exercising his constitutional rights was assaulted by the police of his own country. People are upset by the irony and injustice of this. Pat Tilman, on the other hand, was killed by friendly fire. The incident was officially covered up, and then the White House and Pentagon prostituted his memory with flag drenched ceremonies and called his death a noble sacrifice for God and country, which is amazing considering he was killed by his fellow soldiers and was an atheist.

 It's possible that Scott truly hated the Marine Corps and the War by the time he left the service. And you know what? That is his goddamn right. That doesn't make him a traitor or a bad person. His experiences with a war that didn't have to happen and the military machine used to fight it left him angry. This somehow makes his service and sacrifice unworthy in the eyes of his critics. To them, he is scum. John Kerry got the same treatment. It didn't matter that he actually went and fought in the war. He disagreed with America's foreign policy. He saw that Vietnam was a waste of young American lives and protested against it.That somehow made him a coward. To these people it is impossible to love your country but still hate the things it does.

Winter is coming, and with the cold and snow the protesters may go away, but the anger with the way things are run certainly won't. I wish that our leaders would pull their heads out of their collected asses and try to work together. But I'm not holding my breath.

Not bad, just not great.

I just finished the video Game Dead Island. It wasn't bad but it certainly didn't live up to all the hype. Some of the highlights were (of course) offing zombies in a variety of ways. From axes and machetes to driving over them with an armored car (he he). The environments looked very nice. Large and open. Lots of details. You could wander around for days I suppose.

 But the drawbacks kept me from really enjoying the game. The inventory system was pretty rough. And selecting weapons was an exercise if frustration. In almost every other game I can use the scroll wheel to select another weapon, or use the number keys. Not so here. Of course, there are a LOT of different weapons. And they can be modified with stuff you find around the island. Except that I found waaaaay too much of some stuff and not enough of what i needed to make many mods.  Also, weapons  decay pretty fast with use and you have to constantly repair them. Even something as simple as an axe becomes useless after taking out a dozen undead. Really?

Lots of the elements in the game were also in use in FarCry 2 which I played a while back. But where FarCry 2 was awesome and very immersive, Dead Island constantly took you out of the game. To select upgrades, to look at the map, to check quests. And for a brand new game the faces weren't very expressive. Maybe half of the characters looked any good. The voice acting wasn't bad though.

The game is unique because you can drop in and out of cooperative play. With more people, you have more firepower, and more zombies. But upon completing quests there's usually a bit of story line material. Sadly, anyone in the group can push a button and skip this. That's annoying. You don't need to hear this exposition, but again, it helps the feel of the game. As with many games, there were several escourt missions where you have to get another character from point A to point B alive. This is where some of the roughest edges showed up. At one point, facing a large group of zombies I threw a Molotov cocktail to make my life easier. My escourtee then runs right into the group and sets themselves on fire. Wow. Also, while early side quests could be taken or ignored, when you get near the finale you are on a pretty narrow rail with few choices.

I think with another few months of testing and polishing this game could have been better. It has a fun concept. It's solid. Just not quite soup yet.

The turn of the tide...

Damn you facebook! I find it very difficult to post here when it's so easy to fire off a quick link of pithy note. If they allowed longer posts I might abandon blogging entirely, as so many other have done. Google plus allows long posts, but it doesn't feel quite right. Something is off and I can't put my finger on it.

Anyway...

I'm thinking of going to New York to join the Occupy Wall Street protests. It seems to be gaining momentum, not slowing. Of course, Winter is approaching. I can't see this lasting long after the first snowfall. And what exactly are the demands of this movement? They are many I'll grant you. Even if some kind of miracle occurred and Wall Street could somehow capitulate to this movement, what would we ask of them? And yet I still feel a need to be a part of this. I want the multinationals, the global banks and our elected leaders to know that I am right pissed. I don't want to take their money by force. I do not want them destroyed. I want the government to stop letting banks continue to create and profit from convoluted and risky financial instruments. I want banks to be responsible lenders. I want strong oversite of these weasels. I'd like the wealthiest 1% of Americans and the multinationals to pay a little more in taxes. I'd like our government to stop attacking labor unions.

That's it.
I don't want to overthrow capitalism. I don't want to eat the rich. I don't want to destroy banks.I do not want to become part of an angry mod. I'd just like to see some goddamn common sense at the higher levels of business and government. Looking at that sentence I can see that this could be a long wait. I suppose that's why I want to go. I want to help push things along. I want to stir the pot.  I want to make people think. I want to rattle some cages.

On the other hand, I do NOT want to get maced or beaten with a baton or arrested. Is this movement worth the risk of those things?

A hell of a balancing act.

Right now I am really struggling to keep my brain from assploding. This season has been a pretty good one, but things can change pretty quick. Right now, I am facing a critical lack of shit to sell. I ordered stuff. I ordered a LOT of stuff. Stuff I PAID for. Stuff that was supposed to get to me in a timely manner. But that shit isn't happening.

 So I wait. In the mean time I loose a minion who I was counting on. Another minion seems to have forgotten that she committed to working for me and seems to be wandering off like a toddler with ADD. Seriously, what the fuck? I call an old worker who says she can help. Great. I need to know what dates are a problem. A goddamn WEEK passes. We live in the fucking information age. How hard is it to look up your schedule?

My blood pressure starts to skyrocket. Then I see that friends of mine was in an accident coming back from Dragon Con. They are ok. This is good. It easily could have gone very bad. I go outside and start mowing the lawn. The air is cool, not the 90-something of the past week. I clear my head. There are more important things. I calm down. I'm still pissed. I'm still backed up with shit to do. But I will force myself to chill out a little and try to keep some perspective.