TechnoGeekery? Yay, technology!

Despite the heavens opening up and God saying, “I hate you, Chassy Cat!”, the latest episode of TechnoGeekery has finally clawed its way out of the jumbled mess that was my iMac hard drive and found its way to the surface.

That’s right, y’all! Despite technical difficulties that may have driven a lesser TechnoGeek even closer to the edge of mind numbingly crazy monkey madness, the technogeekery has prevailed!

TechnoGeekery Show #36:  Buying Domain Names… What’s the Point? (Part II)

See?! Yay, technology!

Now I don’t want to brag or anything, but I think this episode is just chock full of the techno tutorial goodness that is the geeky… okay, I don’t know where that was going, so let’s just say you can learn a whole lot about what to do with a domain name if you get a wild hair and buy one. Mm’kay?

Plus, I threw in the musical stylings of one Alexz Johnson for good measure. Uh, because I LOVE her?

Duh.

Enjoy. And LEARN and stuff.

Lost in the Din

The office is so quiet, so hushed, but a clamor in my head pervades the stillness, not jarring, like the faint creak of a door at the edge of an afternoon nap, but incessant, like the faraway buzzing of a halogen light.

Four years. Four years they’ve gone while I’ve stayed. Four years they’ve played while I’ve worked. Four years they’ve reconnected while I’ve disconnected. Four years.

If I admit I can’t get used to this, will the restlessness subside, or will I lose myself in the din?

Aerosmithsonian

When you’ve been together a while, it’s bound to happen. You know, the whole ending each other’s sentences thing? Accordingly, one shouldn’t be surprised by the following conversation I recently had with the DWM padres who have traveled all the way from Podunky Small Town Arizona to see Numbah One Grandson (Yeah-huh! Okay, Numbah TWO Grandson… happy Kim?! SHEESH.) in his musical theater debut as Charlie Bucket in Roald Dahl’s Willy Wonka Junior Ramma Lamma Bing Bang Extravaganza!

Do you follow?

So we were sitting down, having a nice little chat, when my dad leaned over my mother to ask if it would be difficult to get into DC to visit some places.

I asked, “Where do you want to go?” while mentally conjuring the Metro transit rail map.

“Well, I wanted to go to the Smithsonian…” he began.

Ah. See, there is a common misconception out there in the aether that the Smithsonian is one particular building in DC. This is not, in fact, the case. Let’s see…. you’ve got the more well-known Natural History Museum (check out the Hope Diamond!), the Air and Space Museum (ooooh! IMAX and Planetarium!), the National Portrait Gallery (don’t step too close to some of the exhibits… the sensors are freaking sensitive) and let’s not forget the National Zoo (Giant Pandas! Giant Pandas!). Then, of course, you’ve got your American Indian Museum, African Art Museum, your Postal Museum… and quite few more that I am much too lazy to look up, so there.

It’s evil I know, all show-offy and whatnot, but of course I asked, “Which one?”, and blinked innocently at the confused look on my dad’s face.

To his credit, I think he must have remembered my lecture on the Great Smithsonian Conundrum (yes! I’m a horrible geek! duh!) because he was only fazed for a moment.

“I wanted to see–”

And then it happened. The finishing each other’s sentences thing. (See? I’m focused! HA!)

My mom leaned over and butted in– er, interrupted– I mean, lovingly finished his thought, “Oh! He wants to go see the Aerosmith Museum!”

I blinked again, but this time in confusion. “The Aero…Smith… what?”

There was one of those pauses where it is completely silent except for the almost perceptible sound of cogs whirring and twirling in the collective brains of those assembled. As my dad and I began to snicker, my mom blurted out, “Oh! Air and Space! Air and Space!”

But it was too late. Oh, yes. Much too late.

My dad grinned. “Yeah, hon, I really wanted to hit that rock and roll museum… see all that rock star memorabilia?”

“Oh, sure! I’ll tell you how to get there! Just walk this waaaaaaay! talk this waaaay!”

My mom, adopting her patented I Totally Meant To Say That blasé attitude, was all, “Oh, you knew what I meant!” And just in case that wasn’t enough to save face, she quickly added, “Although an Aerosmith Museum would be pretty cool, come to think of it…”

My dad and I gave her a hard time of it for a few more minutes, after which I assured my father that I would make sure he got to see the Air and Space Museum.

Then I launched into my Smithsonian Conundrum spiel one more time for good measure, naturally.

Aaaaaaand now you know me better. You see? I can’t help how I am. It’s like the magnet my parents had on their refrigerator as I was growing up:

“Insanity is hereditary. I get it from my children.”

Wait… Hey!

More Riding in Cars with 3rd Grade Drama Queens

We now join the post-kiss-and-ride-pickup conversation of a desperate working momma and drama queen daughter, already in progress:

“It was a good day… except, do you know what so-and-so thinks is a good insult, Momma? He says,” here Alli adopted a gruff schoolboy’s tone, “‘Your grandma’s butt!’”

I threw a quick, raised-eyebrow look at her. “Huh,” I said as I signaled and pulled into the jam of after-school traffic. “That’s kind of a stupid thing to say.”

Alli snorted. “I know. Me and Hannah think a good thing to say would be, ‘I’m sorry. We need an interpreter. We don’t speak idiot.’”

Wow. I didn’t even teach her that one! “Nice one,” I said, throwing a quick glance of motherly pride her way.

A proud smile crossed her face, but almost as quickly as it came, it wavered. “Of course then he’d probably hurl a rock at me, or something, huh, Momma?”

I pictured so-and-so in my head for a moment. “There is that possibility,” I finally agreed.

She was quiet for a moment. Then she smiled mischievously. “I’m sorry. I don’t speak idiot!” she said with a giggle.

I suppose she figured the satisfaction would be worth the risk.

That’s my girl.

Leap of Faith… Redux

I recently stumbled across the following post, which I wrote way, waaaay back in May of ‘05. In all honesty, it made my heart hurt a little to re-read it. Who knew I could be introspective and poignant? Sometimes? Okay, I may have even teared up a bit. Just a little! I know, right? Me? BIG BABY. Deal with it. Re-reading the post also inspired in me a wicked craving for a donut. Go figure.

In any event, I thought I would share. Or, rather, re-share. Share again? Whatev. You know what I’m saying.

_______________________________

I have no desire to be enigmatic.

But it is a scary place, my mind. Crowded with jumbled imagery and intricate stories and trivial pop culture references, with nowhere to go. All of the craziness shuffles and scuffles to be forefront in my mind, to be most important. To be first. “Let me out!” it all screams, because it has to go somewhere, right?

Sometimes, when I read a book or I see a movie, I catch the mood of the piece, and I cannot shake it. I am there, and woe unto any who try to break in, to find me. I am in it, and only I can find my way back out. I am not even sure if that makes sense, but it is most definitely the case.

I mean, I know other people can read a book and put it down. Me? I read the fifth Harry Potter book in one night. ONE NIGHT! That freaking book is over 800 pages long! Honestly. It can take me literally hours to stop worrying about the characters in which I have invested my time. I feel their pain, their joy, their despair, their triumphs. If the book is particularly well-done, if the characters are alive, if the mood is fully realized, then it can take me hours to stop feeling the book. To let go of it.

Other people can watch a particularly riveting television show or movie and walk away thinking, “Huh. Good show! What’s for dinner?” Me? I become emotionally invested in the characters. I will obsess about their lives and the “what if’s” for days on end. Weeks, even. Now do not misunderstand. This is not to say I cannot separate the fictional characters from reality. No worries. I absolutely can. What I cannot do, not right away, anyway, is to stop thinking about their stories. Taking them in new directions. I will spend hours weaving new stories for them. Sometimes I even dream new stories. But Leonardo da Vinci said, The eye sees a thing more clearly in dreams than the imagination awake. Dude was a wise Renaissance man, yo?

Which leads me to this: when I write stories? Oh BOY. I am SO living them. And it is so exciting! I get to be someone else! Well, for a little while, anyway. I become Goddess of the Story Universe! Bow to me! Then, inevitably, my characters begin growing and acting out in ways I had not intended, and I just get to go with it, and it is GOOD. Of course, I think this is why I enjoy happy ending so much, formulaic cliche be damned. I need them, or I am lost. Then again, my endings are not always happy. And I absolutely hate that, because I ache for my characters. But I love it, too.

For a long time I thought this craziness had a name. I HAD to give it a name. I was surely bipolar. Manically depressed. Obviously. It was the only explanation for the mood swings, the black days, the deep-rooted dark despair that settled into my mind and would not let go. Right? And what sane, happy person loses herself in television and books? Huh? Normal people with three beautiful kids and TGIM don’t act this way, right? Am I RIGHT?! I hated my career choice, my living situation, my life, and I could not shake the feeling that something was terribly, terribly WRONG with me, because everyone I knew insisted I should be happy, that I should be thankful, that I should just STOP wallowing and get on with living. And I wanted to. I WANTED TO. But I was stuck. So I turned to the happy pills. But the drugs? They did not help. Dispassionateness, for me, was not a cure. It was a bandage.

“You are just like my ex-husband,” my sister said to me. “You can be anything you want to be. Anything but happy.”

Oh, no she DIDN’T.

So I ripped it off that bandage. And I made CHANGES.

I found a job writing and quit my teaching job. I packed up and moved all the way across the United States, not sure when and if TGIM would follow, but sure it was the right thing to do. I began expressing the jumbled imagery, intricate ideas, and trivial pop culture references swirling about in my mind through the magical world of blogging. I made new friends. I discovered the words “job satisfaction” were not mutually exclusive. I pulled myself out of the rut of complacency and fear in which I was trapped and made some personally earth-shattering decisions regarding what I wanted out of life. And, yes, I hurt TGIM and others close to me in the process and, yes, almost lost everything. I know that. I OWN that. But these days? I’m starting to feel as if despite the excruciating pain I caused myself and others, I have gained everything.

TGIM thinks this is The Crazy in me. Sometimes he loves me for it, sometimes… not so much. Me? I am starting to believe The Crazy is simply the artistic temperament in me. And, slowly, oh so slowly, I am learning to embrace it. I am learning how to USE it, to hone it, to bend it to my infinite megalomaniacal will, mwah ha ha ha!…

Sorry.

The other day I stumbled across a quote by Edvard Munch, the artist formerly known as the man who painted The Scream. Okay, he is still known as that, I just like the allusion to Prince. Because Prince ROCKS. Anywhos, Munch wrote of the experience he had which triggered the creation of this masterpiece:

I was out walking with two friends - the sun began to set - suddenly the sky turned blood red - I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the fence - there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city - my friends walked on, and I stood there trembling with anxiety - and I sensed an endless scream passing through nature.

As I read this I realized, hey, sometimes I sense that Endless Scream, too. I hear it! I KNOW it. And, slowly, I am learning to embrace it. I am learning how to USE it. I know, I know. Inscrutable, much? Talk to my family. But, then again, if I did not see the world this way, if I did not feel the world this way, how could I write? And writing? Makes me feel complete. Utterly, dizzyingly complete.

Well, writing, and a big ol’ cinnamon cake donut. Yummmmmm.

Take that, big sister. I CAN be happy.