fallen verses

I have FINALLY gotten around to updating the blogroll. Click ‘links’ up above to see the grand results.

If you got missed, excluded or ignored, this post is your chance to make that right! Leave a link in the comments here. If it isn’t porn or insurance kind of spam, I’ll approve it and you might get a click. If your site or blog wows me, I’ll add it to the links.

I don’t often mention it here, but I do play video games, including World of Warcraft. I’m not sure why I remain reticent to mention it, save that I still have a sense of the video games = geek stereotype rapidly vanishing in the 21st century, Old habits, I guess, trying to be cool and fit in with the poetry community. Eh. So, if I am reticent and have some foolish notions of both my "coolness" and the reactions of the people I sometimes communicate with via this medium, why in the world do I mention it now?

This will ramble a bit, but I promise, there is a point. Or, at least, I intend a point, Together we can explore whether I get to it.

Just before I wrote this post, I intended to tweet: "Need motivation. Anyone know where I can buy it?" However, twitter was down at the time so I reached for another outlet for a rare moment of… I can’t really call it creativity. Perhaps an attempt to open doors of communication with the other internet dwellers and further the Conversation. Reshuffle and explore connections. Or not. 

As to the tweet: I have hardly any motivation these days. Visitors to this blog (at least those not looking for a quote from Across the Universe) may have noticed I don’t update frequently, and many of the posts are but snippets, rather than meaningful content. In theory this is a poetry blog. I haven’t written anything this year that wasn’t for class, and since the end of the semester I have not written a line of verse. It isn’t writers block. I just have no desire to write. No motivation.

World of Warcraft is far cry from older video games. It is not just a game, but also a complex web of social interactions. I’m pretty good at the game part, and as with most social interactions, I’m not the among the easiest to handle or get to know. But there comes a point in the game where the two have to co-exist. No further content can be explored without other people and the complex web of personalities that ensue (this ignores the identity issues inherent in the system, but perhaps another time I can go into that).

And on top of the social aspect, there are continuing changes in the rules that require changes in the social aspect that then feed back into the rules. It’s an interrelated relationship that is has continual feedback and adjustments from both sides. One of those changes prompted a blogger going by Rohan to write an article about "Being on The Path." Setting aside, for these purposes, that some of the language is jargon, here’s a snippet:

The key is the concept of "Being On The Path" for endgame content. In nutshell, the number of people who reach the highest point of endgame is less important than the number of people who are working towards–and feel that they one day could achieve–that point.

In World of Warcraft, there are definable goals. Easily definable goals. And Rohan, in his post, was making the point that a change in the rules was going to completely remove a certain set of goals from the realm of possibility for most players. His view, one that I am in agreement with, is that is a bad thing, and is going to have a ripple effect of consequences due to the heavily social nature of the game.

I think most things fall into this kind of view, be it career, hobby, etc. We find goals, perhaps not so easily definable as in video games, and we can work toward them. We can "Be on the Path" toward the thing we value. Particularly as artists the end goal, be it art as career, or as immortality, we know the likelihood of success is minimal. So few people can accomplish their end in these arenas, and yet we continue striving because we believe we can do it. The chance, however small, is there.

I wonder if that is the key to motivation. Working for that chance to succeed.

But all paths have a beginning and an ending and a someway in-between them. Since we are drifting in the realm of concept, the beginning is always where we are, the path and the end moving around the fixed axis of our universe (ourselves). I suppose the question I want to send out to the ether is what do you do when you cannot see an end? What do you do when no goals exist for you that you believe are obtainable? When there is beginning and end and they exist in separate universes and no way to bridge that gap.

Right now either my laptop’s wireless card or my router is totally messed up, thus meaning I can only browse the web and feed reader (and twitter) on my desktop, which is more often used for things like video games. That means I haven’t checked anything on the intertubewebs since I left work yesterday! And that means I’m late to the party started by Dana!

Anyway, I had this big thought about nowish that went something like this: Wouldn’t it be great to be so ballsy self-assured that I could just be 100% honest with people?

Well I sooooo am that ballsy stoopid self-assured.

Tomorrow, a one-day event: Dana’s Be 100% Honest Day.*

Swing by. Ask questions. You are sure to get interesting answers. And don’t you think I am only doing this on the ’nets and such. I am so fuckin’ ballsy ridiculously stoopid self-assured that I will be doing this from waking until I turn in for the night, everywhere and with everyone.

Quite a few other people have joined in on this extravaganza of stoopidity forthrightness

100% honest day participants

• as it happens
• blood and gutstein
• bruce covey
• confessional highway
• daisy-bones
• in palinode’s palace
• mariacristina
• mom trying to write
• my gorgeous somewhere
• my little golden book of phobias
• paper napkin
• poéfrika
• polka dot witch
• pro tempore
• so you think i can
• still standing on her head

So Go On, ask me anything you want**. Since I’m late, I’ll do what the Polka Dot Witch is doing and give you all some extra time. 24 hours. And then some since I’ll be at work tomorrow. 27 hours. Until noon, central time.

*Of course, because I am late, tomorrow is Today.

**Not, though, that I guarantee interesting answers. I do invite everyone to try their best to elicit them.***

***Maybe Dana is on to somethign with these recursive footnotes.****

****Is it still a footnote when it footnotes a note?*****

*****I bet the Chicago Manual of Style could tell me, but it’s at home and I am not.

This post brought to you by a sleep-addled mind.

While I can only speak from personal experience, I find it incredibly difficult to sleep when it is the wrong temperature. Too hot, too cold, even by the smallest margin, and the night is spent tossing and turning (and probably some muttered invective as well). Too hot means you need to turn the AC on to whatever level is appropriate to correct the temperature. Too cold…

Too cold is a whole other story.

While you could turn the heat up that may not be the best course of action. You then have to remember to turn the heat back down. There is also a cost factor for heating which is perhaps unnecessary. Particularly if it is only slightly too cold.

One solution that comes immediately to mind is to share the bed with someone. Then the radiant heat of a second body would raise the temperature the small amount to the more desirable comfort level.

But that isn’t much of a solution, is it? It introduces all sorts of uncontrollable variables into the equation of sleep and temperature!

Most likely, the delicate level of temperature that is most comfortable to you, would not be the same as that desired by the hypothetical bad-sharer. Only the incredibly lucky find someone whose desired temperature level has sufficient overlap. Everyone else will lay there slightly chill and perhaps slide a little closer. Meanwhile the other person is pilling blankets because they’re freezing. Then you’re roasting and the night wears on and then the other person starts kicking off blankets because it really is too hot and then it gets cold and the blankets come back on and the vicious cycle continues.

The only real solution is to dome the entire planet and get rid of temperature fluctuations entirely. Then everyone only has to become accustomed to one temperature.

Okay, that might be a bit out there, left field, etc. More easily accomplished: have a selection of blankets with a range of thermal properties so temperature variance can be accommodated. And sleep alone.

You are now returned to your regularly scheduled silence.