I am badly written; I am a construct of logic warped and twisted around to meet goals that serve not the requirements of the flesh that contains them. I do not pursue the course that would be more profitable to me, I do not take the course that would logically lead towards rewards. Instead I stubbornly take the course to get answers and truths, despite knowing that I’ll cut myself, for there is no sharper knife than the honed truth.
Category: Musings
Rambling thoughts
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Anticipation of alienation
Tomorrow is the last Noir, an event run by friends of mine. An event I’ve helped out with for a year or more at this point. It’ll be music and people, in a concrete bunker. Some aspects of it I’m sure I’ll enjoy, like spending time with friends and the music. On the other hand, it’ll be loud, and I’ll likely have the same feeling of not fitting in that I’ve had for ages now.
Sure, I have a solid understanding of bdsm, kink, fetish, etc, but beyond mentoring, I haven’t engaged in any of it in ages. I have attended things, but not engaged in them. I’ve literally moved furniture more often than I’ve used it.
That’s my contribution to the community, a community that I’m only vestigially a part of at this point.
I’m sure there are reasons that I’ve failed to connect with anyone in recent years, not the least of which being my growing insecurity with toxic masculinity, something that causes me great discomfort and leads to me double thinking my flirting, to the point where it often doesn’t happen.
I have internalized that the majority of people I meet will not be interested in me, for various reasons. Some of those reasons are perhaps a tad shallow, while others are written deeper into the soul; the validity of the reasons are not mine to question. I can merely accept them and avoid making people uncomfortable, by treating them as people, regardless of any possible interest in them, since the odds are good it won’t be mutual.
None of this is really new material. I’ve said it all before. I’m cranky because my skill set goes to waste, because of all the various factors. A few appreciate my skills, mostly from a far. I’m cranky because I see individuals who are less qualified in a variety of ways leveraging other traits into chances that they appear to fail to appreciate. Or more significantly, that they fail to respect.
Alas, sour grapes and further alienation. Further disconnected from a community that I have consistently attempted to be a part of.
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Outings and such, part two.
I got a message this morning from my mother. She’d been able to see the thread that I had previously mentioned. She’s aware that I’m involved in the kink community, so this wasn’t a shock to her. Had the situation been different, that could have been rather stressful. For many people, what I’ve just described is a nightmare scenario, and is one of the reasons people have cited that they aren’t willing to stand up for their beliefs in the community. I had been aware of the possibility, since horror stories of outing as a weapon have existed as long as I’ve been a member of the community.
Based on his writings, he doesn’t feel he has outed me, since I was already out. Well, I have always thought that an individual should get some discretion over how out they are, and if you aren’t sure, you should probably ask them. That generally works better when you have respect for the person that you are arguing with. I don’t know that this applies here.
I had just two days ago said I was no longer going to be sanitizing these posts for any given audience, but I’ve already had demands that I change details of what I’ve written. And)
I’m finding myself choosing my words carefully, since it seems like whatever is said will be taken in a manner other than the manner in which it is written.I suspect that I’m not aware of the emotional flavour that I layer into my writing. I was unaware that my distrust of this individual would be so clear as to taint what I felt was a neutral statement of “at one point, I actively recommend (this event), back when I attended, these were the reasons I recommended it back then. I no longer attend for personal reasons, so I can no longer recommend it, as I lack the required information.”
Apparently, if you have a perceived past bias, people assume you mean more with your words when you say, even when you don’t even care enough anymore to hold an opinion.
I was already burnt out and planning to leave the community. I had promised I’d help with one last party. Now, I’m not even sure I’ll bother with that. I’ve been told people want me to attend, but given the vitriol about me, I’m feeling unwelcome.
I’ve been battling feelings of alienation for a long time now, and I think I’ve reached the end of my ability to cope with that.
I suspect if helping my grandmother to maintain her independence wasn’t an absolute priority, I’d likely be a suicide risk.
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Earthquake bandwagon
So, last night, at around twenty to midnight, there was a brief thump or rumble, as a M4.9 earthquake happened about 23Kms north of Victoria, about 45Kms underground. Relevance of the details? Well, the fact that it was deep underground means it probably wasn’t a prelude to the big one that people have been predicting.
The reactions have been mixed. Some people are posting photos of minimal damage and saying we will rebuild, making light of the possible impact. For some, that’s the easiest way to cope with this fear that we’ve been all generally been ignoring.
Others are looking at what they can do to prep for something. Most of those people will forget about it in a few days, though some will be more long term about it, especially those who had the power outages recently. Will this mean a decent percentage of the population is prepared? Probably not.
What should I be doing? Well, I should make sure I’ve got a better first aid kit, and probably more supplies in the basement and the garage. -
2016 approaches.
Starting the year off with the end of Noir. Probably my last kink event for the foreseeable future.
While I enjoy spending time with some of the people in the community and have the wisdom to might come in handy for some people, I seem to be lacking in some aspects that seem to be required.
Aspects of bdsm are still something that I think will probably need in my relationships in the long term, but I suspect it’ll be something of a slower developmental nature. Though currently my thought is that at some point I became a type of person who doesn’t interest others, perhaps in part because they subconsciously they feel rejected by how insular I’ve become.
In the meantime, I can be found on steam, and local gaming events.
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Removal of toxins.
Orphaned by choice. Today, I’ve added the majority of my family to the block list on my phone. If they want to contact me, they can reach me through email.
The obvious exception is Gram.
I’ve done this because my interactions with my family have been a negative experience for me for nearly as long as I can remember. There have been benefits, mostly financial, but there have also been detriments mostly to my emotional state and mental health.
They’re in the final stages of moving to Squamish, swapping their living arrangements around. Prior to this, my sister was living as a tenant in my parent’s house, and maintaining it for them while they snowbirded. Now, the house will be hers, and they will be her tenants, when they’re back in Canada.
This arrangement creates a nice buffer. Gram is local, every one else is at least one bridge away.
You may recall I had been looking into heading to Toronto for a while. I had some concerns about not being local for Gram, and this has magnified those concerns.
There is plenty more of this on my mind, but it’ll take me a while to express it.
I feel like if I vent, it’ll be seen as whining & whinging. That by expressing my emotions, I’m somehow being immature about things, despite the fact that the ability to process emotions constructively is sign of maturity.
My parents tend to tell me to grow up, but they have a very odd definition of what being grown up means, I think.
I don’t really understand their values, when I reflect on them. At some point in my development, I rebelled, probably for the usual reasons, and that somehow changed things. Somehow, the post rebellion reconciliation never really solidified. There were attempts at it over the years, which were partially successful, but it was never sustained long enough to develop a permanence. It would get disrupted and pulled apart. Like a shattered bone, never being given enough time to fuse properly, or an object d’art being impatiently restored, with not enough time for the adhesive to harden.
The biggest reason for this is perspective and values. They are so far apart that communication is difficult. What is seen by one side as a minor imposition is a herculean task by the other side, at times. In other instances, both sides will see something as a favour to the other, and then be annoyed at the lack of gratitude.
This lack of common framework, is the source of many of the communication issues.
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The DKIS Problem
The DKIS Problem a shorthand term for pair of competency related issues known as the Dunning-Kruger Effect and Impostor Syndrome. In simplest terms, a lack of perspective means that people will misjudge their abilities, with less introspective individuals judging themselves superior, while same time, more introspective individuals will judge that the tasks were simple. This leads to doubt that they have any additional competence, feeling that they are in fact impostors for any credit that they are given for their skills.
Mainly this comes from the fact that the better you get at something, the more you understand all the nuances required to do the job properly and all the little things that can go wrong. These are things that a person not experienced in the task would overlook and potentially underestimate. Instead of understanding the task, they’d relate it to a task that they do with ease, and in the process they would not only draw false parallels, but they’d have also likely forgotten the time spent developing those skills to the point where they became effortless.
I suspect that there is also a variant of this for physical appearance, where people will judge themselves, at their average, based on the appearance of others at their best, especially in this post Photoshop era. Thus people who would be of better than average attractiveness consider themselves to be of below average.
In any case, I was wondering what the implications of this were for the various communities that I’m involved in, and some examples of it are glaringly obvious. There’s a particular GM who comes to mind, who is at best average in his ability to tell a compelling story, most of his plots are remixes of other stories, without much in the way of unique takes. But as this individual is not overly introspective, he won’t realize the limitations of his creations.
On the other hand, another GM I can think of, underestimates himself, despite being one of the best GMs that I’ve ever sat down with. He is annoyed by the fact that he needs to refer to the audio logs to recover details from a side plot that occurred during one of the previous 6+ hour sessions, usually a week or two prior.
In the BDSM community, the same pattern is likely there. I can think of a variety of individuals who consider themselves to be competent or skilled at things, only to have the general consensus being that they inflate their competence. Though in those situations, it is mostly attributed to ego, rather than a flawed thought process.
Conversely, there are some who are extremely skilled at a certain task, but through practice it has become rote for them, and thus they don’t feel that it is worthy of the praise that they receive for it.
The balancing act between confidence in something and crushing doubt, made more difficult by the inability accurately judge the difficulty of a task, coupled with the inability to discern the biases of external arbiters; it is daunting. And many would question the value in having that structure in your head in the first place. Why convert the idea into a mental construct, rather than just trusting your gut?
Without some external points of reference, you can’t have accurate perspective, and I think that’s dangerous. Too many knocks on the head from misjudging the height of things to think otherwise.
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The thing about Tesla
So, someone on my facebook feed posted something about Telsa recently, specifically about the likelihood of the claims of his technology being “snake oil”, and exaggerated over the years. Obviously part of the reason for this is the PR engine that changed the story, both for the positive and the negative, because of the conflict between Telsa and Edison. Add in the whole Pulp culture mad science and the Eco friendly rhetoric, and you end up with quite a tangled history.
Supposedly, Telsa was celibate, and possibly even asexual. I wonder if it is possible that he existed in a state of what they refer to as Kenjataimu, the state of post-orgasmic clarity. The mental freedom that comes from not being driven by sex is an interesting one. For a while at least, one has the ability to be far more objective than would otherwise be the case. But it fades away with relative swiftness, often faster than the related refractory period. This makes this state of being, hard, if not impossible to maintain.
If someone were to exist in that state, especially if it was one that was created not out of trauma, then their ability to create could potentially be as great as the various fictional accounts of Tesla’s brilliance.
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Writing Session X4Z5P6
Garth and I are sitting here, having a beer, watching Youtube and doing some writing. We just watched the Suicide Squad trailer, and I was reminded of a previous script that I’d intended to put together ages back.
So, the final lines in the trailer, are Joker saying, “I’m not going to kill you, I just want to hurt you.” And while that’s a cute idea, it doesn’t really suit me.
I had an old script idea about the serial killer collective, brought together by social media and blackmail, dragged into a contest, where they split into teams, film their kills and then screen them for the other members, before releasing them unto the internet as darknet torrents. It’s not a bad idea, and I should do some work on it again some day.
Anyways, the Joker line reminded me of something with a Shadowrun flavour, someone who “didn’t plan to kill you, didn’t really want to hurt you, but needed to upgrade you.” He had criteria for his victims, and he upgraded them, installing his own attempts at cybernetics into them.
And part way through the story, he’ll find someone else who believes in upgrading people, who will join him, and give him access to new ways to upgrade people.
(Garth Spencer):
Something like this has occurred to me, although the story idea hasn’t quite gelled. Start with the philosophical issue: we are not, yet, entirely adapted to being “intelligent” beings. I put the word in quotes because whether we are really a thinking, rational species has yet to be proven; in fact it’s a lot easier to prove we are irrational, and fundamentally a believing, even superstitious species.Considering the challenges we face to survival, someone who decided to play god with humans might well decide to upgrade us. Mentally. Biologically. Or, at least, with cyborg implants, for proof of concepts.
Item: thinking ahead. Have you ever suspected that engineers and industrial investors suffer from an extraordinary level of suboptimal planning? Even, an extraordinary aversion to thinking through the consequences of half-assed industrial processes? And now we have a universal level of toxins and industrial effluents in seawater and water supplies, and marine garbage patches the size of Australia. Plural. (Isn’t anybody going to capitalize on this? Where’s the IPO?)
Item: social perception. You know and I know and your maiden aunt’s little doggie knows that there are pretty inconsistent and irrational inputs to everyone’s education, especially the unconscious education about how to read people or succeed in business or battle the international threat represented by the underground worldwide Cult of Kali, and its famous fronts the NRA, and ISIS, and the Conservative Party of Canada. (I say nothing about the U.S. Republican Party, nothing at all!)
Item: Why are almost all the elected representatives or candidates for elective office THAT WE HEAR ABOUT unqualified for running a Sunday school class? Because they’re almost all fronts for the Belgian conspiracy to achieve worldwide domination? (Today, Europe; tomorrow … ?)
Item: If I’m so smart, why ain’t I rich and famous and basking in the love of fair women, plural?
Answer: because I haven’t sat down and written everything I can. That answers everything.
(/Garth Spencer)
And that’s the commentary from Murderhobo.Club’s first guest writer.
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I’ve lost an touchstone.
I was less than 20 when I moved out of my parent’s place. Before that I’d moved from the upper floor, where everyone lived, down in the basement, probably when I was still in elementary. So I’ve been moving away from my parents for probably about two-thirds of my life now.
Still, I’ve used that address as my home address for the majority of my life. It would have been 3rd grade when we moved into that house. And now it has been sold. That link to my past, will cease to be.
I’m not sure how I feel about that. In recent years, I’ve always been fairly uncomfortable when I’ve been over there. Partially because of the renovations that had taken place, and partially because of the somewhat strained relationship I’ve had with my family.
Since I link this to my facebook, my grandmother will likely read it, and she’d rather I not go into too much detail about my relationship with my family. She sees that as airing dirty laundry.
On one hand, I can see her point; on the other hand, this is my place for catharsis. This is a place where I can put my thoughts into order and perhaps untangle some of the knots that formed inside my mind.
Without saying too much, I can say that the relationship is perceived differently by all parties involved, there is very little agreement regarding common structure. This is somewhat magnified by the fact that the personalities involved are all fairly strong.
As a stew, it doesn’t work, too much conflict in the flavors. Perhaps it works better if spread out more, and mixed with something to cleanse the palate. I suppose that’s where my brother-in-law comes in.