what secret costs?

...Thinking at lunch ...

What, precisely, does it take out of Darkside to always appear, almost, his cheerful shining happy self to me in the mornings?

Darkside has two major points of stress: school and work. He's a withdrawn intellectual in class, sourly sarcastic, sleeping through class if the teacher gets dull. Classmates describe him as aloof and arrogant. At work ... at work his cooking utensils are guarded by someone he describes as "the grouch from hell" ... him, in other words. At home, he's watching anime, evading golf, doing homework, too damn tired for anything, on the computer, chilling with his parents, or asleep.

Where does this leave the time and energy for the sensitive, sweet Darkside I know?

Glass masks. It helps that I know him well enough to tell Pissed Off from Busy Working. It helps that I wore that selfsame half-mouth smile, just the twitch at the corner, the one little gesture for only a moment, to indicate what on other people would be a full smile lasting seven seconds or more. It helps that I was raised on Spock and Data's economy of facial gestures, so I can read the way his body speaks to mine.

He's let me watch him program, let me stand behind him while he kicks ass at video games, dragged me over to look at something nifty on his screen. He gave me anime for Yule. He talks on the phone with me when I call, if he's not doing something that takes priority. He can talk on the phone with me while chatting online with his best guy-friend. His best guy-friend thinks I'm nuts, unstable, insane, potentially dangerous. Darkside rather likes me that way.

It's not just my reading him. It's that I'm able to read him, that he lets me read him, that he's actually happy under there when he's reading me his RPG manuals. He's let me in so close...

We'll talk more about writing and so forth on Monday, perhaps, or Tuesday. He needs to, right now... and so do I.

(no subject)

Adam ended up wandering out with M. last night. Before he left, he warned me that perhaps between them things might wind up sexual. Turns out it didn't happen that way, but I do appreciate the warning. Communication is a good thing.

And, just for giggles...

What Sex Toy Are You?

You are the most popular of all sex toys. Women just can't get enough of you. When the man is away or unable to perform, you are always there to bring comfort. You know what a girl wants, what a girl needs!

You are a...
G Spot Dildo

Heh. Cute.

I'll gradually increase my personal knowledge of html before I have to take that dratted class, so I'll be ahead of the game.

OK, I think I'm a junkie.

I may actually start learning enough to do websites for pay, one of these days. But doesn't every little kiddie know enough HTML to get in trouble?

---

I should probably get myself a book one of these days, one of the recommended texts for my html class, Web Development or whatever it's calling itself these days. That would do me nicely. Read my C++ happily, read my HTML, read my other languages, have fun. Networking. What plugs into what is a bit of an obsession of mine. Peripherals. Got to study those.

---

I want a clue.

http://www.htmlhelp.com/reference/wilbur/

My new best friend. ...After Darkside, that is...

Sex and Headache

Wandered around online looking for duplicates of old favorite toys. Failed, but found some interesting possible substitutes. Cleared browser history. Wandered into bedroom. Bade good-afternoon to Adam, complained about my headache, and pounced him.

Yick@soggylatex.

He's taking a shower now; Marx is off seeking lunch; I should vacuum.

Votania loves it, so I couldn't resist...

Take the What Johnny the Homicidal Maniac character are you? quiz!

Hmm, you are interesting. You're a brilliant artist and love Terry Gillam movies, but you have trouble facing fears and coping at times.

I'm not sure what the last fear I had trouble facing was. Fear of paperwork, maybe. I hate paperwork with a passion. This is a Bad Thing, because it leads to non-doing of homework, and rushpanicmadness when taxes come due.

Jiggy

I'm learning strategy, in playing Bejeweled. Silly, yes, to update about this, but I find that attempting to set up weird and complex moves leads to lots of points gathered.

Generally.

fumes

So Marx accidentally spilled rubber cement on the carpet. They went off and got some Goof-Off for the spot, and it's fumy as hell. We have doors and windows open and fans on.

Alcohol in the systems of the adults (and Nephew kept in his room with door closed to avoid bad stinky) makes things around here a lot odder.

Vodka, straight, burns the tongue.

The Goddess Brew

This is some stuff I learned how to make long, long ago. We were online looking for drink mixes, you see... and I remembered my best non-alcoholic drink: The Goddess Brew.

This is not brew, for the Goddess: this is Brew, and she is a goddess. You drink her physical manifestation and take into yourself the attributes of CAFFIENE!!!

I'm making this stuff tonight. It was what got me through high school I still have some left over from last year, stuck in the fridge in a plastic waterbottle.

I need to start making this stuff again. This is cool. I'm already hyper.

I hate TV.

Those days when I'm bitchy I wind up learning a lot more about myself than I knew before.

For example, I don't want kids because after constant exposure to kids, even kids I like a lot, I can't really stand being around them when they're irritable ... or being irritating. I take after my father in a lot of good ways and a lot of bad ways, and a shortness around little kid games is one of the bad ways, when the games are noisy. Talking to self or toys I can deal with. Mimicking TV or movie voices and sound effects, over and over and over again, the same thing, again and again and again... drives me nuts.

That's the first thing.

The second thing, I was brought up to believe that TV was a Bad Thing, on a level with incautious use of controlled drug substances. The other denizens of the apartment have noticed that when the TV is on, if it's not something I'm watching, I either get irritable, turn it off, ask that it be turned off, or leave the room. I tend to leave the room a lot. TV goes on, I leave. TV turns off, I pop back out. I haven't really seen a reason for changing my opinions on the TV. Votania thinks the TV is a good thing, overall. I see TV as a dangerous thing that is easy to abuse with a few good applications.

In other words, except for B5, Star Trek (some), some news, some music videos, some coverage of sporting events of interest such as the olympics, a few shows, and educational programming, I think the TV is a waste of time that could be spent doing more constructive things.

I was horrified to hear Nephew parroting an AOL commercial. It's my firm belief that most television advertisement is aimed at blind repetition of easily recognized slogans, to get the name and jingle stuck in the brain the delicious way the Brave New World people were programmed. No understanding of the meaning, just the empty icon of pretty picture and words that are supposed to make the life better. Somehow.

Then, I was raised in a very unworldly way, in what Votania equates to a nunnery, a monastary, nearly divorced of caring what the pop culture in general cares for. When I say "pop culture", I mean anything that wasn't aired, found interesting by, or deemed worthy of Old School NPR, National Public Radio. That's back in the 1980-1997 range, folks. Youth is degenerate.

Did this warp my thinking? Of course it did. So's everybody's thinking.

Temple Recipes (backdated): alcoholic version of The Goddess Brew.

in shot-sized mixing:
1 tablespoon Irish Cream
1/2 teaspoon coffee liqueur
1 teaspoon chocolate liqueur