Plans for the Day

Wow. I really haven't been writing much lately. Blame it on the recent storm of comments I've been leaving in other people's journals; blame it on the weather; blame it on the phase of the moon (waxing, so I've been busy)... blame it on Darkside spending more time talking with me when he's usually in the computer lab looking up pictures and downloads... blame it on Darkside's insanely fast internet connection at home and the giant screen Darkside's dad decided was necessary...

Last night I fiddled about with pushpins, wires, and tape, and ended up making 3/4 of the lights on my ceiling star work properly, and added a few more strings of lights here and there to make it look better and brighter.

Adam may be coming over here to visit sometime after lunch. (Earlier, he's going to go see his grandparents, so when he gets done with that, he'll convince his mom to drop him off at school...) We're going to hang out and have him poke at my computer to see if he can't see what's wrong, and then when Nephew goes down for a nap, Aunt Azz will too... after he's conked out asleep.

Comics.

For my amusement, let's see where I want to go today.

Fanboy Otaku Gamer's Club first, as always.
Boy Meets Boy
Tonja Steele
Sinfest
Exploitation Now
Red Meat, one of the weirdest, sickest, fully pyrogenic-approved, comics out there...
Sluggy Freelance
User Friendly
Penny Arcade

Hmm. What else? Eh, I don't know. Better than a newspaper, that's for sure. Darkside yowls at me whenever I look at Tonja Steele at school, because there's often semigratuitous nudity, and he doesn't feel that this is appropriate for a school computer lab, but Neighbor, who's in charge of the computer lab, doesn't seem to mind, because it's tasteful...

Let your darker side give in...

Finally, after far too long, I broke out the Phantom of the Opera. I've got the two disc set, pretty much the whole thing, the one that comes with the little book that's got every line of dialogue in it.

Some evil scoundrel has damaged my poor CD, and the main theme, the second track on the first CD, skips horribly. I am irritated beyond measure.

But oh, the beauty of the rest of the music...

I want to hear Darkside singing these songs to me... with me.... he can't sing on key worth a damn, but I love his voice. I'm sure he'd love these songs. He has an unfortunate weakness for sappy love songs. (I discovered this when driving with him months and months ago. Azz thought it was disgusting. Mona thought it was adorable. Joanie got the giggles. Shanna declined to comment. We all sang along with him.)

Sunshine Patriots

I don't wear a flag.

I don't think I'd be very happy living in any other country. I like the country I grew up in too much to do that. I like the way I think I can make a difference by voting or yammering at the people in office, I like the way I could try and run for office if I wanted to do something, I like the way we actually have a legal system that can be changed and fought and hammered on. I don't like the way that sometimes innocent people get caught in the crossfire between the law and those outside of the law, and I don't like the way that sometimes some laws are ass-dumb, but I like the way that I don't get shot out of hand for saying "Hey, this needs changing."

The health care system sucks. My country could stand to rise up on that issue -- hell, I'd give up 5% more of my income to never have to worry about finding a doctor that takes my insurance provider again, if I could just go in to the nearest pharmacy and give them my social security number and they'd give me the medicine that the doctor in the strip mall a hundred yards down the block prescribed for my occasional flare-ups of Swimmer's Ear.

I like this country, and I like living in it. I think we could stand to have a touch more in the separation of church and state -- churches should make their own laws to govern their own people, and not try to impose the restrictions on everyone else -- if I make a religious boo-boo, my coven leader will take me aside and tell me what I screwed up and this is why I will be doing or not doing this -- and I will either bitch and whine and moan or submit gracefully -- but I do not expect the rest of the country to have the specific laws that I must follow forced upon them. There's a problem with majority consent in some cases, when the minority doesn't end up voting, or when the majority has more money and better lawyers.

But I digress.

I like this country. I could say that I love it, even. It's the country I was born in, and it's most likely the country I'll end up living in for the vast majority of my life. I believe that the people should be ruled by the people, for the people; I believe in freedom of speech, in damn near all the things the Framers of the Constitution believed in.

I don't wear a flag on my sleeve because that's not my way. Just because a disaster has occurred in my country, that's no reason for me to change the way I feel, or the way I act and dress.

Yes, I talk to people more. Yes, I tell them that I love them more. I am friendlier on the telephone at work, usually making the day of people I talk to just that little bit much brighter. (If someone calls, and it's Joan from Research International, say, "Is that you, Azure Lunatic? I'm ...... from Livejournal." Even if you don't want to do the survey, I'll still be happy to hear from you...)

I don't wear a flag on my sleeve because I try to be a symbol myself for freedom. I'm not a billboard. I wear all black -- the night, mourning, a blank slate -- and I dare anyone else to tell me that I'm not a "real" American because I don't spout the buzzwords of the moment.

I don't wear a flag because I don't feel that it's necessary. I don't wear red white and blue because I don't usually wear it. I will wear red white and blue nail polish -- I will wear a tiny beaded flag pin -- but I prefer to speak with my actions, not the logo stenciled across my forehead. No matter in Whose name, the deeds are the same. And it is those deeds, and the way you feel in your heart, that truly matters in the end.

Fuck, do I ever hate that little bug in Netscrape.

There's this little "feature" in Netscape that has the program crash when you select the entire contents of a large text entry box and then delete it with the backspace key -- or, it seems, the spacebar.

Crash. Boom. Your journal entry is not deleted.

Deconditioning

Things I need to remove the trauma from in my mind:

Paintball
Computer games (especially Diablo II)
Tori Amos

My Adult ADD Likelihood Scores

1. Past History Score : 11 of 20 (10)
2. Attention/Distractability Score : 14 of 40 (25)
3. Restlessness Score : 11 of 16 (9)
4. Impulsivity Score : 8 of 36 (22)
5. Organization Score : 18 of 24 (12)
6. Getting Started/Finishing Score : 9 of 16 (9)
7. Negative Feelings Score : 10 of 24 (12)
8. Your Relational Difficulties Score : 8 of 40 (25)
9. Short Fuse Score : 2 of 8 (5)
10. Stimulation Seeking Score : 1 of 8 (5)
11. Tendency to get stuck Score : 4 of 8 (5)
12. Tendency to switch things around Score : 3 of 8 (5)
13. Motor Coordination Score : 1 of 12 (7)
14. Duress Score : 6 of 24 (12)
15. Sleep/Wake Difficulty Score : 2 of 8 (5)
16. Low Energy Score : 4 of 8 (5)
17. Hypersenitivity Score : 2 of 8 (5)

http://www.psychologynet.org/symadd.html

On one hand, I'm distractible as all hell and not organized at all, but on the other hand, I don't have some of the other problems.


...and to reinforce the general idea that I might have ADD, I offer up this tidbit: Intending to post something to lj_art, I set my client to post there.... and promptly forgot what I was doing and posted something else, namely... this. Oy.