Argh!

Awake at four in the morning Sunday.

Awake at four in the morning Monday.

Awake at three in the morning last night.

I think fucking exhausted is the correct way to describe how I feel at the moment.

A little political philosophy today

All the forums I hang out at seem to have at least one thread on the nature of good and evil. So I'll post a bunch of aphorisms I keep close to my heart on this subject.

__________


What you resist, you become. - Old Taoist saying.

__________

Beware when you battle monsters,
lest you become a monster.
And as you gaze into the abyss,
the abyss gazes also,
into you.

Friedrich Nietzsche.

__________

To be angered by evil is to partake of it, stupid. - Matthewson's 23rd Edict, from The Book of Universal Truths and Other Humorous Anecdotes.

That is all. Carry on.

Sigh

Decided to start raining and hard. There goes this afternoon's yard work. It's hard to get caught up.

So I'll write.

I've got three works I'm wandering between. A BDSM story entitled Bound In Roses, a romance I'm calling Sheena From Tallahassee and a menage romance with the tentative title of Among The Stacks.

That should keep me busy.

A new review

For my latest e-book, Gillian's Place

WitchGiggles at An Alternative Read just loved it. She had wonderful things to say about my work.

That really made my day. *grin*

When forums go bad

I spend a lot of time on the internet. And I've a few places I like to hang. Forums of one type or another.

One, that I've been at for years, seems to be rotting from the inside. The atmosphere is rapidly becoming venomous.

I'm not sure why. A lot of it, I think, is because is because of the U.S. election. We like to discuss politics there and, well, some people are really not nice about it. A semantic analysis of some of the posters comments would be, "McCain rules! Obama drools! Liberals must die! Die! DIE! DIE!"

There are a few people on the left side of the spectrum who are almost as bad. Their contempt for differences of opinion is high.

That contempt seems to be permeating every other thread as well. Because of it we've had two major blowups in the last month which has strained things horribly. Today one of the long time members, a person I really liked, has left forever. Deleted their account and they're gone. Sigh.

I hate when people let themselves fall prey to emotions like anger and hatred. It accomplishes so little and does so much damage.

Myself, I think every forum should have moderators. Like bouncers in a bar they can keep things from getting out of hand and ban those people who aren't willing to play nice. Some might argue that this is an interference of freedom of speech, but I don't see where this freedom allows a person to be a nasty asshole.

My $0.02.

Hooray for me!

I really do seem to have shaken off the blues.

I got nearly 1,300 words of writing done today. Yay!

I'm quite pleased with myself.

Much better

I'm doing a lot better since my last post.

It was my dad's birthday yesterday. So I ended up at my sister's place for the party.

I had a great time. Got to meet a couple of members of my family who I hadn't seen for several years. Did the things all the members of my family love to do; talk, eat and drink.

It was fun watching the antics of my niece and nephews as well.

So I did good despite the fact that I got no sleep at all Friday night.

It turned out my brother and his family were staying overnight so at the point where I had been up for forty hours I said 'Good night' to every one and crashed. Slept for nine hours and woke feeling well rested.

I got a quiet hour to myself before others started to rise. Then coffee, talking, a big brunch and then finally home.

I'm feeling much better than I did at 2 AM on Friday night. :)

So…

Two in the morning and I'm wide awake. I wish I could sleep but I can't.

The main reason I'm up is grief. I've lost a number of things this year.

I've lost a close friendship. I'm not sure why, but we've drifted apart. It hurts. I want to accept it and move on, but I can't.

I've lost a lot of confidence in myself. The main reason is because of a trip I took earlier this year. I took a similar trip in 2007. And I had a wonderful time. I went back this year hoping it would happen again.

Nope. It was high school all over again. I got to spend most of the time watching everyone else have a good time. There were a couple of incidents that ripped great bleeding holes in my self esteem. One involving the friend I mentioned. I thought it was a good thing. They thought otherwise and I didn't realize it until later.

That did wonders for my self worth.

And my latest e-book was the coup de grace. It was a year overdue. I got edits in only bits and pieces. The whole thing reminded me of the last time I worked, when the work I did had nothing whatsoever to do with the success of the project. I hate being used and that's how I felt, used.

So one of the things I feel best about, my ability to write, has been damaged. I now no longer belief whether I'm good at something matters.

Crap. I hate how this world works.

A sign…

Of how small and quiet my life is.

Our landlord delivered a new lawnmower today, a working lawnmower. And I'm ecstatic.

It's my job to look after the outside and the piece of crap I had to use made it near impossible. It took forever too.

Now the lawns done, nicely, and I still had enough energy left over to do the trimming as well.

I like how uncomplicated my life is. And how little it takes to make me happy.

Just to make sure…

I post today here's an update on my life.

I finished the second chapter of my first novel last night. Tentatively titled Among The Stacks it's a menage romance featuring a librarian, a writer and a professor of English Literature. Just to show that being intellectual doesn't mean you can't have fun.

I'll try to get some more yard work done. With only a set of clippers and the fact that nothing's been done for months means the best I can do is make a large dent in it. If it doesn't rain, again.

I'll be doing promo over at Brenda Williamson's Romance Party group on Yahoo today. It's the third anniversary of her loop and is throwing a big to-do to celebrate.

One of my publishers, Aspen Mountain Press, is having a publisher's day at the Literary Nymphs Yahoo group so I'll be posting there as well.

Now if the guy using the floor sander on the first floor would just finish up so I could have some quiet.

A thought…

Generated by that horrible kerfuffle now taking place in Georgia.

When you do battle, even if you are winning, if you continue a long time it will dull your forces and blunt your edge; if you besiege a citadel, your strength will be exhausted. If you keep your armies out in the field a long time, your supplies will be insufficient.

When your forces are dulled, your edge is blunted, your strength is exhausted, and your supplies are gone, then others will take advantage of your debility and rise up. Then even if you have wise advisors you cannot make things turn out well in the end.

Therefore I have heard of military operations that were clumsy and swift, but I have never seen one that lasted a long time. It is never beneficial to a nation to have a military operation continue for a long time.

Therefore, those who are not thoroughly aware of the disadvantages of the use of arms cannot be thoroughly aware of the advantages of the use of arms.

Sun Tzu - The Art Of War, Chapter 2: Doing Battle

My opinion is that the West, especially the U.S., have been caught by just the circumstances Sun Tzu spoke of here. By wasting time and energy is a place unrelated to their true strategic interests, i.e. Iraq, they have exhausted themselves and made it very difficult to act in crises. Even one's as minor as this.

So sad. A general 2,400 years ago laid out all the basic principals of warfare. And we still do not use them.

My $0.02. Carry on.

A little political philosophy today

And I'm going to talk about what I regard as one of the most successful rebrandings in modern history. That of libertarianism.

Now, from what I've seen, libertarians mostly seem to be against any form of social power. They especially hate governments, which they frequently conflate as 'socialism'. They're not fond of corporations or any other sort of group dynamic. "I do what I want, when I want and no one can say otherwise" seems to be the thrust of libertarians.

So, to me, they sound a lot like anarchists.

But, let's face it, anarchism has a bad rep. An anarchist isn't thought well of by most people. Organizations really don't like anarchists as anarchy is a danger to their power.

So, libertarianism was born.

By separating themselves from anarchy, the libertarians lost that negative cachet attached to anarchy.

Most importantly by using the word liberty in their label the libertarians automatically place any dissent from their views firmly on the side of evil. To oppose them is to oppose the very concept of liberty, freedom.

I don't care much for their philosophy whether it's called anarchy or libertarianism. Either promises a vicious world where only the nastiest sort of people can thrive, or even survive.

But the rebranding was a brilliant move.

My $0.02. Carry on.

I'm hoping…

To have the energy to make today a busy day.

Want to make a big dent in the yard work.

Must go to hardware store. I've found that CFLs and dimmer switches don't like one another so rather than saving money I'm spending more when the CFLs burn out even faster than incandescents.

While I'm there I think I'll pick up the paint stick I was talking about. And some rope and safety shears. ;)

Wish me luck.

Insomnia sucks

Sigh. I've been up since 3:30. And got to bed late.

A low pressure front moved in and those make me jumpy.

Plus I was at a BDSM workshop last night. The host taught those who attended rope work. Plus he showed off his equipment. I got a lot of interesting for things that are available at your local hardware store. For example a plastic paint stick (about a buck) makes a very nice slapper. *evil grin*

He also had an electric fly swatter that gave a nice, stinging jolt. Five bucks, tops.

I think I'll be making a trip to a hardware store today.

Hmmm.

I wonder why it is that every day around four o'clock my internet connection slows down, sometimes a lot.

I've got DSL, which means my data from a phone line. But my ISP in not the phone company.

Are these two facts related or is my incipient paranoia acting up again? ;)

Once again…

I have to clean up after a roommate.

One of my roommates was evicted last week. I heard him grumbling about it. He had no idea why.

Perhaps the endless stream of crack heads, petty thugs and street people coming in had something to do with it?

Anyway, he loved to cook. But hated cleaning up after himself.

So I'm off to clean the kitchen.

Damn it!

I'm going to take a big step

I've been writing and researching BDSM for a couple of years now. Thanks to all this I've discovered I'm very dominant.

I wasn't always happy with that. Like the narrator in my story Discovery I was afraid that allowing that facet of me to the surface would make me like the people I grew up hating; bullies, irresponsible authority figures and that sort of person. And there's still a bit of that 'BDSM is sick' idea still inside me.

But I'm even less happy at hiding the person I really am. And when I'm writing BDSM I really enjoy it.

So, next month I'm going to a play party. I'm hoping to let out my dominant side with people who can support me as I start down this new path.

I bought some equipment a few months ago; a blindfold, a flogger and some really serious nipple clamps. Before I go to the party I'm getting a proper crop and some good cuffs. I need a back T-shirt as well.

This should be interesting.