The Gremlin's Wings

I have been quiet lately. Considering I had nothing more intelligible to write other than, “OH DEAR GOD DO MY FEET HURT!” a hundred times, I think I did you all a favor in restraining myself. Nor did I do an April Fools joke, mostly because there’s been more humorous ones out on the Internet – I was actually pretty sad at how Google’s joke went this year. Really, just renaming your company to Topeka? In response to this silliness?

So what have I been up to?

Recently I got myself a part-time job. It is nothing major, except for the fact that it is different work than I am physically used to and I am slowly getting my body readjusted to a regular work schedule. It is at a department store called Zellers, which is less than a block away from me. For the unedumacated American population that may be reading this little blurb, Zellers is a subsidiary of the Hudson’s Bay Company, basically the oldest corporation in Canada and one that predates America by… what is it, a century? Anyway, I am a night shift stock boy.

It is an adjustment for me. My previous employment experience involved me sitting on a phone and yelling at people; moving things for five hours a night is quite a different sort of tired at the end of the day. My mind is active, but my body feels so sore by the end. I think I discovered muscles I never knew I had doing this work, and I may have lost a few pounds in a week just from the change of activity.

Now to get used to the blisters caused by the uncomfortable steel-toed boots! YAY!

I started last Thursday (March 25th). So far, I have learned a lot about stock, setting up displays and the unnecessary amount of packaging luggage comes in before it gets put out on display.

But the really funny thing: even away from a help desk atmosphere, people are just… people.

It does not matter where you are. You still see some policies you do not agree with, some you agree with, people who enforce them to the letter, people who do not even know what the word “policy” means, people who are universally liked, people who are universally hated, the crazys, the lazys, the overachievers… I am always amazed, every time I switch jobs, at how even in different fields there are still things that show we are not too different from each other.

I only wish that world politics could take that perspective. We would all be a lot better off.

Originally, I had a post about half-done, about my views on world government and the world currency situation. However, while I was researching everything I could about this, something came up that caused me to not put up that one post, and it is a religious reason – apparently, uniting the world in one government will cause the Apocalypse or Armageddon (not the movie) according to prophecy. Once I thought about it for a bit, that actually made sense as to why the United Nations is set up to be this incompetent power in the world, and why the League of Nations failed in the first place.

My understanding of why humanity is so messed up got better just from that revelation.

Anyway… moving on.

Lately, I have been a complete insomniac. My life right now consists of:

• Get up from bed
• Apply for work
• Eat
• Apply for more work
• Play a game to try to entertain myself
• Hope someone calls
• Sleep
• Repeat

I do not know if you know this or not, but I have been unemployed since June of 2009. When I was let go from a very familiar multinational company, I was devastated. In fact, I think I might still be. Lately, especially over the past few days, I have had extreme bouts of insomnia and today I have a numbness that I can not entirely explain. Panic attacks, maybe, or the fear of panic attacks.

My unemployment runs out soon. Am I panicking? Yes.

Am I depressed? Meh, probably.

I do not think I am going to whine about it incessantly here, though. Instead, I am going to dance with myself. If I had a chance, I’d ask the world to dance, ’til then I’ll be dancing with myself. I mean, what good is that? I am not a little whiny emo punk or anything. I think, though, instead of writing about my angst and despair, because all that will do is get you to feel sorry for me and I really do not want it…

...because this is not me.

I think I will just share some other things with you instead.

The decade ended over two weeks ago. Ten years ago, I was in my junior year of high school (11th grade), and I was starting my life down the path that would lead me to where I am today. Yeah, I did one little choice that changed me from who I was to who I am today, and it has affected every facet of my life from then on: I started to date a woman that lasted a six year stretch and ended up with two children and the place I am today. I do not regret any choice, nor do I wish it to all go away, and I would do it all over again, if given the option.

The weird thing is that everything did come full circle – I started the 21st century without a job, without too much direction in life, and addicted to the computer. Details are the only thing that has changed from then until now. I would argue that I look very similar in between then and now, except I can actually grow facial hair and lost a lot of the boyish stuff in my facial features. Oh, and I gained about forty pounds. Can not forget that one.

Am I in the place that I wanted to be? No. Life turns in odd and unexpected ways for everyone, and I am no exception to this whatsoever.

One thing that I am proud to say is that I am still seeking understanding of the world around me. It might not be as detailed or as involved as people getting into world politics, but I like to generalize. I might dabble one day in world politics, but the next day is more about the behavior of males and females, or the influence of certain factors against individuals, or my own mind. Metaphysics the next day.

What Soylent Green is made of the next day.

Life is what I make of it. I just wish there was not this incessant need to get a job that I have to fuel in order to even live life. I must admit, though, it was incredibly rewarding to work for a living, because it felt like I was contributing something to the world… but only contributing a poorly-written blog post every couple of days I guess will have to do for now.

I think this post has wandered in weird ways. I apologize for that, but this is how my mind thinks lately. It jumps from one subject to another very easily, and I guess that does not really make sense. It is like throwing a playlist on your music player on random with a list that covers multiple genres of music or something… which is something I do anyway. I like listening to The Who, Bif Naked and U2 within a span of ten minutes (and yes, all three of those are on my playlist). My mind threads things together in its own way, and I point out similarities in each of those music styles in my head, and I hum along or tap my feet at all the songs.

Ah well.

I think I am done here.

It may come as some shock to you that I was never a born leader. Wait a second… there are people who may read this whom have worked with me in the past. In that case, then you would not be shocked at all. And neither would my parents, my friends, ex-girlfriends… okay, so it might not be a shock to many. But still!

When I am put in a position of leadership, by whatever freakish circumstance there is, I will admit that I am probably not the best choice for the position. I am moody, sometimes getting really irrational, sometimes confrontational, sometimes just wanting to run away… and the list goes on. There has only ever been one position that I was leading in that I have ever even been remotely good at, and even then I am not too sure of it.

One of the things I have learned in my few years out there is that in order to be a leader, you have to do some things differently than what you used to do. It works a lot like customer service, really: no one wants to know what the sales associate’s attitude is towards certain people; they want a sale. Anything less than this, they do not make the sale. Sales associate does not sell something, they get let go. The funny thing is that the same principle is true of leaders, whether it is business leaders (with the exception of Donald Trump), politicians, or something small, like leadership of a gaming guild or a gaming community.

Is his comb-over the source of his dark power? Or his wallet? ...I think the former.

The Internet is a good example of a place where this is present. Generally, if someone is a friendly and courteous leader, they will have people follow them willingly. Some can see why a position of leadership is a position of power. In the case of the Internet, though, the position is usually granted to you by a few people. I, for example, can say things here and I have the power of writing this down because I know that, somewhere, someone will actually read this. According to some, this is a power. I think it is just that I might have something interesting to say and someone may want to read it. Whether they do or not is up to them. That is the way of the Internet.

However, some people who do have people elevating them to a position of power have to remember what comes with great power. This guy by the name of Peter Parker might have some idea, he got told it by his Uncle Ben who died tragically.

With great power comes great responsibility.

It is true, but really it is any type of power has responsibility for usage of said power. It is the moral thing to do.

Take, for example, the situation with al Qaeda. The leaders of the organization were given power by people who believed them, and then they took that power and twisted it into something destructive. Hitler did it too (and yeah, I just used Godwin’s Law), by shaping it up for the Germans being the master race and leading an attack on sovereign nations just because they could.

If you want less violent examples… let us examine the story of the douche bag Perez Hilton. Actually, let us not do that, because that makes me want to break a standard of decorum I decided upon for this space a while ago: I am not going to swear on here. Let us just say, it is already thoroughly covered and move on.

This is an accurate representation of a douche bag.

My original point was that people do listen to the leader of a group, and of all those above examples, the group does listen to those people. Osama still has followers, the leader of the Third Reich used his power to kill dissenters, and Perez has traffic to his site that I would love to see on mine (well, okay, maybe not the people per se because I do not want Valley Girls all over my comments, but you get my point). All leaders do have people that will listen to the leader, and they give them that power.

The question is… what does a leader do with that power? Do they take it and try to do good things with it? Or do they do evil with it?

Obviously I am not saying that we will get the next Hitler off of the Internet. We probably already have that at 4chan.org’s boards. What I am saying is that there is different things that a leader can do. Here’s what a good leader does:

• Stays neutral in debates and moderates the discussion
• Lets others vent their frustrations
• Acknowledges that there may be good points within negative feedback directed towards them
• Listens to and publicly respects the opinions of those they do not personally like
• Acting academically in discussions
• Be understanding of others’ emotions and different volatile relationships

Here is what a bad leader would do:

• Slanders someone who does not have power to further their own point
• Does not listen to the advice of others
• Publicly humiliates those directing negative feedback towards them
• Acting emotionally in discussions*
• Ignore the feelings of others

I do recognize that when I have had a chance to do some leadership, I have done the stuff in both the good and the bad columns. I am no saint when it comes to this, and neither is anyone else.

Not an accurate representation of me. I got a haircut and found my shoes.

I only acknowledge that the good leaders also acknowledge the things that would make them bad leaders, and they try to minimize that impact in their role. I guess you can summarize everything I am trying to say as: try to be good. That’s really all I want to get across.

Now, back to my other writing goals, and less blasphemy for me.

*This one can be taken both ways, really. On the one hand, how you feel about a topic does come into play when defining your own moral code, but on the other hand reacting to others’ points with raw emotions is a bad thing. It is a balance that should be reflected in a leader’s everyday life, and one of the defining characteristics of a good leader versus a bad leader. H-uh. I may have to analyze later.

I like Twitter.

I like Facebook.

Hell, I like the concept of social networking sites in general, with the exception of MySpace. They are a great way to keep up with the people in your life that you did not really know and do not really see that much, but you can find out where they are now because once upon a time, you used to be friends, or closer, or for those that move away for work and can not visit as often. Some people use it for nefarious purposes, like the one person whom was on the Gap helpdesk line that would search Facebook for names of women whom he thought sounded attractive on the phone. (Yes, that actually happened. No, I am not kidding. Word of advice: make sure your pictures and profiles are set to Friends Only.)

Facebook is a great tool, and so is Twitter. Twitter is an interesting concept: use 140 characters or less to describe whatever you want. It has powered a lot of movement, a lot of press lately, and most journalists who would bash this little slice of web that I call my own would say that Twitter is killing serious journalism – then again, they also say that about blogging, and yet they mostly still have jobs. Tweets generally contain information from the mundane to the groundbreaking, from the general useless spam to the valued updates, from the misinformation to the accurate verified truth.

I consider myself a casual blogger. I am not serious enough with it to start advertising and pull in money, nor start up any type of big writing project, I just write when it strikes my fancy. I write fiction for myself, fiction with friends as part of a few writing groups I’m a part of, simulation role-playing writing (yeah, those that can call me a nerd can do so now), the odd but occasional short story for here, poems, you name it. One thing I’ve noticed, though, ever since I started using Twitter…

I do not want to write anymore.

Years ago, I used to be able to write a five page short story without batting an eyelash. I used to have Word documents on my computer full of stories that were novels, poems, short stories, creations, drafts… I have also written a few blogs before – this is in fact my fourth attempt at keeping a regular blog: two on Internet forums, one on a separate blogging system that shut down. But try as I might, now that Twitter has got me seeing people like Brent Spiner writing stories through his Twitter page, or Ryan Sohmer’s epic-ness using his words on Twitter… it is becoming harder and harder now.

If I could do something like this for the rest of my life – maybe even be a columnist for a local newspaper or something – I can honestly say I would be happy. But I think I now know why journalists do not like Twitter that much, because I may be experiencing a little bit of it: I am losing that little bit of me, the little kid inside of me whom just has all these words floating around inside his head for some reason in a story that makes sense to him and he wants to share it.

Why carefully research a subject when a mass of people will just post us hearsay anyway?

Why write an eloquent article about something close to the heart when an A-list celebrity writes about the dream they had last night on their Blackberry and has 2.3 million followers? (FYI, the most any one of the people I follow has for followers is the aforementioned Brent Spiner, who has 1.1 million. Next in line is Jeph Jacques, writer/artist of Questionable Content with under 30000 followers.)

Why write an in-depth analysis of the swine flu pandemic with truthful facts when people will just go and listen to whatever tweets are trending at the moment?

I see their frustration, and I do sympathize with it.

What’s worse is that Facebook is trying to be like Twitter. This new “put an @ in front of a name and there’ll be a link to their name” thing, I swear, I’ve seen it used in status updates from my friends list… exactly three times. Nice update, Facebook, even being a direct rip-off of Twitter – though, on the flip side, it is probably because they’re trying to win over Twitter users and that is one way of doing it. MySpace even announced a syncing service with Twitter, so you can update status messages from Twitter and vice versa. There’s a long-standing application on Facebook that will do something similar.

The question I have is: Has modern writing devolved into anything that can fit into 140 characters or less? 160?

I would like to think not. I also would like to think that everywhere where this blog gets doled out to, people read it and they have their opinions, and they take something from it and they want to comment about it or how I am wrong and my haircut really hides the Devil horns, they do so. So far, that has proven to be false, so maybe I am wrong. I can admit that.

I really hope, though, that people use status updates on social networking sites responsibly. Facebook, I expect it to be about personal stuff, true, and to a certain extent, I would expect Twitter to as well. Just please do not kill that which I love in the process: the art of the written word.

I would like to eventually get married.

Is this a surprise that I declare this? Probably not, but maybe it is for those that may be uninformed about me. I’m not exactly the most sociable person around, true, but I think that there’s a Mrs. Gremlin out there for me. Some people spend all their lives searching for that special someone, and they may find them. I prefer to look at the positive side that I can find my Mrs. Gremlin, and I still have many years ahead of me, more than what I leave behind. At least, I hope I do. Have I found her already? Yeah.

You know, marriage is a true oddity. It is about the commitment of two people to each other, how they will love each other for all time, etc. Marriage and weddings is a religious ceremony repeated across many faiths; even for the non-religious and the atheists it can be a big production, though. It is one thing that most people across the globe can say that they have in common, that weddings are prevalent in societies. The ceremonies may look different, but the process is almost the same if you look at all of them. The general gist is people joining their lives together. Most of the time, I would assume this is because of another force: love.

I can’t go through a post on marriage without talking about love, and explain a few of my views on this particular subject. Whether you believe love is a wonderful thing that links people together, or a biological reactionary to the human need to procreate, it is essentially present in our lives. It is a passion for something that cannot be easily denied or forgotten, and leaves an incredible impression on our psyche, one that I would dare say would be something that shapes us the most in our lives. We associate most of our relationships through our passion we have for others and ourselves, and the direction we go in life can be heavily influenced by the aforementioned passion we can show for things. To borrow a quote from a Hugh Grant movie:

Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport. General opinion’s starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed, but I don’t see that. It seems to me that love is everywhere. Often, it’s not particularly dignified or newsworthy, but it’s always there – fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, old friends. When the planes hit the Twin Towers, as far as I know, none of the phone calls from the people on board were messages of hate or revenge – they were all messages of love. If you look for it, I’ve got a sneaking suspicion… love actually is all around.

(TANGENT: Love Actually was an impressive movie that openly discussed love in an entertaining fashion. I would recommend it… but if you are a male, grab a woman before renting it. Definite chick flick, but it’s not as obnoxious as others. Also, rent it in the month before Christmas for maximum effect, preferably within a week or two. You’ll see why.)

Note my use of “passion” instead of “love”? Passion, rather than just being a purely physical thing trashy romance novels try to portray, is actually a general term that should be behind love… and hate, really. Nick Scipio said it best: “The opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s indifference.” The same passion you use for love can easily translate to hate, but the lack of passion, the lack of any intense feelings, or indifference, is at the polar opposite of the emotional spectrum. This explains propaganda so well, as the entire point of it is to erase all indifference and set the subject in a passion that is controlled in a way that is favorable to the presenter. Case in point: any political smear ad campaign ever done.

Now that I have gone off and talked about love, the point I was trying to make was that love is part and parcel for a marriage to work. An expression of two people (leaving out polygamists, sorry) to the commitment of lifelong love and partnership is getting married, and who am I to stand in the way of two people expressing that? I ask myself that in this subject, and I cannot really say that I am justified in any way to stand in the way of this, unless I believe that the couple, on a case-by-case basis, does not love each other. Yes, I take that part of wedding ceremonies seriously; you do not?

A few years back, there was a similar debate to this in the United States of America about certain people marrying other certain people. It was against God’s nature, perverse, unholy… you name it, there was an argument against it. What am I referring to? A man of dark skin marrying a woman of white skin… or was it white man, black woman? I know one was frowned upon, even illegal for a long time, within the States. Some places it is still frowned upon and discriminated against, but that is because the people that do are brought up that way and do not know any better. (They are still wrong, though, in my opinion.) Is it illegal anymore? No.

So if the same arguments are being used today for same-sex marriages, did the Bible change?

Did someone find a new scripture?

Did Pope Benedict (whom I always associate with eggs) suddenly come up with a new Bible that specifically says that weddings between people of different skin color is OK, as long as they’re not the same sex?

Actually, that last one has always confused me. WAS there a new bible that specifically forbade two people from expressing their love for each other by getting married? I am not a Christian, true, but I have problems believing that an all-mighty God that is forgiving and loves everyone suddenly hates people that openly admit attraction for the same sex. Did Jesus all of a sudden hate little Billy because he found out he liked looking at Tommy instead of Jill? I just… I do not get it. As far as I know, there is nothing specifically in any part of the Bible that says a marriage is only in between a man and a woman. Marriages had been going on for years before the New Testament was written; it’s only natural the Bible includes at least one marriage ceremony.

(Also, I would like to point out that the Bible as read today has been edited at least once a century. Oh, right, and it’s been translated from Latin. Languages change over 2000 years. Perhaps not Latin, but English does, definitely. Just saying that people reading and translating could have made errors; the Bible may be the word of God, according to Christians, but the Bible was not written in your language first, it was written in Latin or Aramaic. Some impact may be lost in translation, and other via just humans over the years that admittedly sin and seek forgiveness for their sins; nobody is perfect, after all. Whoa, heavy tangent… but I have a strong idea that you may want to question things before trusting them fully.)

The passion I see in fighting marriages in between same-sex partners, I acknowledge. Obviously, there is some passion in this subject, though I do not understand it – how is marriage cheapened by two people whom do not believe in the same thing as you but love each other getting married? – and I do not personally agree.

So everyone out there, can we agree on dropping any modifiers from the word “marriage”? According to common law, marriage has no modifier anywhere else, why should those of the same sex that are marrying be called something different so that “your” term is not cheapened? Ownership of a concept and a word that has been around for thousands of years and predates the Old and New Testaments, practiced around the world just seems to be stupid to me. If a church does not want to perform the marriage, fine. Making others not perform it? Seems like a case of “I’m imposing my morals on others, believe in what I believe in or DIE!” to me. I thought that sentiment was waning, but apparently I was wrong.

Live and let live. You will live longer.

You know, I had this great post lined up to speak about today. I was going to talk about humanity’s stagnation over the past ten years, and how we as a culture (the “Western World”) are headed into the vast abyss of thoughtlessness and uncreative culture. I had something so clearly written in my head… and now it’s missing. I’ll probably return on this subject at a later time, but for now…

Something happened in the meantime that got me thinking on a completely different track. I’m sort of flying by the seat of my pants on this one, but for all that do know me… it’s something that I do quite often, with mixed results – usually good ones, but that may be just tooting my own horn.

Anyway…

A friend of mine approached me recently and told me her dog died. No, not just died… poisoned. Someone fed her dog a wood stain, killed it, then proceeded to taunt her and her family via phone calls – including a twelve year old and a seven year old – that the dog was dead and not coming back, laughing at their reactions, and repeating this process. Yes, they were familiar with the person that did it… but my God.

Humanity is made up of people on all sides of the cruelty spectrum, from the people who wouldn’t harm a fly to the people who would commit genocide without batting an eyelash. We all coexist within a strange little world, where we interact with each other in a way where we can hurt others by doing some of the cruelest acts that can be imagined, if our minds are put to that test. I’m not citing any facts there, this is just my opinion on it, from human observation and just what I have seen. A good way to tell how cruel a person is is to figure out how cruel they are to those that are more vulnerable than they are.

I know, I am not perfect. I get mad, I lash out. It’s just something that I do, and I regret it instantly when I do. But still, it pales in comparison to those that would murder for entertainment value, or to those that would mistreat small animals so that they can feel a sense of power or control. I understand why they do psychologically… but I don’t agree with it.

I’d do more on this subject, but I think it’d better be left for when I am concentrating properly. For now… I’ll just let my outrage at these people stew as I plan a very nasty and vile way of dealing with the people who did this.