spiraling fate

My luck is really sh*tty.  It seems like every time I'm transitioning into a new life stage, I always do so during a recession.

Looks like my grad school plans will have to be put on hold for the relocation.  Grad school is too important to me to half-ass it.  I'm not smart enough to work and go to school.  And no bank'll hook me up with a mortgage without steady employment.

So, I'll be a decade behind my rivals, whose kids will be starting kindergarden by the time I'm even close to considering having my first.

F*ck this shit.  The Myth of the American Dream has been dead to me from the get-go.  And f*ck everyone that's had better luck than me.  Go ahead and gloat motherf*ckers, you come in first place.  Congratu-f*cking-lations, you win.  Now f*ck off while I make my own life.

softie

I came to a realization while driving a couple of days ago (yes, driving is my meditation, like a Sufi darwish, but using an auto and the freeway). In my advancing state of decrepitude, I am doing that oldf*ck thing where I have too much time on my hands to think about stupid crap.

I am not really a misanthropist, or I'd be way off the grid by now. I guess I'm more of a jaded cynic... I actually care about people too much, like the biggest extended family ever. So when they act stupid or are less than I believe they have the potential to be, it burns me, which is why I'm so angry at them all the time. I don't try to force people to act right, though; they have to choose to do that on their own or it means nothing.

good old fashioned

Haven't posted in a long time, but a lot of things are going on, most of which I'm not happy about. But then again, very little in this life pleases me... and people in general are dumbasses. There are a handful of things that make me happy though, and I hold those close to my heart.

I could waste time and energy raging in public about everything under the sun, but that wouldn't be productive.

adventure in the cold northern reaches

World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King was released in the early morning of 13 November. I have spent nearly every day since then immersed in the fictional continent of Northrend. As my travels and experiences in the real world are limited at the moment, I must content myself with adventure in that artificial world. I have enjoyed meeting the new races in Northrend and surveying the culture designed for them by the creative team at Blizzard. I've also appreciated the geography that the world team built for the different zones of Northrend, from the dizzying heights of the Storm Peaks to the visually striking Crystalsong region.

After having spent so much time in there, I can definitely say that the illusion of fantastic adventure is tenuous. As with most computer-generated worlds, the spectre of statistics and metrics constantly looms over the entire experience. This expansion did a better job of allowing me to experience a cohesive, tied-together storyline and worry less about damage-meters, minute statistical improvements and numerical superiority. In the end, though, online RPG-gaming boils down to math, inventory management and user-interfaces. Getting to end game content means ensuring that you have X materials, to create Y pieces of gear with +Z frost resistance so that you can mitigate aura damage and increase your focused DPS on the target. In addition, one needs to ensure that Ventrilo is functional and not causing port conflicts, and that one's connection is robust enough not to disconnect during a boss battle. Not very fantastic or epic, is it? Still, it's what needs to be done to down bosses and get loot... a giant online applied statistics problem combined with hand-eye coordination exercises.

Frankly, I'm starting to look forward to the release of the Final Fantasy 13 game suite. Somehow that game series has consistently allowed me to experience and immerse myself in the storyline and forget, for long periods of time, statistics and math. I guess I'd rather spend my offtime feeling epic than calculating epic.

hope lives, but the fight has only begun

Once again, I allow myself a rare moment of unqualified hope.  I served in the military both voluntarily and involuntarily for a a time, but few moments validated my sacrifice more than tonight:  seeing that large numbers of my fellow citizens finally stirred from their lethargy to exercise their right to vote for the first time.  In exercising this right, the majority of them also elected Barack Obama to the land's highest office.

I could say more, but for now it is enough.

ahh the smell of ash and fire

After Monday's financial meltdown, there's a lot of doom-and-gloom, solemn predictions and earnest cries of repentance from those losing their grip on their precious upper middle-class status (real or illusory).

I think it's a lot of baloney, all of it: the publicized remorse over our energy habits, our credit habits, our greed and our materialism. I've known way too many monied, over-entitled, over-privileged princes and princesses coming from managerial-class families. It's that morning-after hangover from a long weekend of binge drinking, the walk of shame after a night of ill-advised casual sex. Once the "next weekend" comes around - meaning that the money frees up, gas becomes cheap and corporations begin to stabilize - Americans will be right back at it again with their wasteful energy use, pursuit of status symbols over practicality, and overblown sense of entitlement.

It is a legitimate goal to want to have enough money to weather life's shocks. Goodness knows that those lucky few who have serious money wisely allocated are barely affected by the financial crash: the ones who actually have significant savings safely deposited, and who live a comfortable lifestyle below their means.

Those are the people I admire: emotionally stable, disciplined people who realize that they can and should be happy at being among the "poorest" six-figure households in their tax bracket. The ones that know they're lucky they don't have to worry about buying groceries, resupplying sundries, or paying their (few) bills.

Sadly, the upper middle-class households I admire are few in comparison to the larger majority that give "upper-middle class" a bad name: the ones that teach their children such values as:

• "I am a better, more worthy person because my family has money. If yours does, then so are you."
• "If I dress exclusively in designer labels, I am a good person. If you also do this, then you must be, too."
• "If I have a lot of expensive stuff, that makes me a good person. If you have a lot of expensive stuff, you are too."

(And yes, I have met these people, and they are now adults in the workforce gunning for management positions... one day they'll be the gatekeepers determining the success of your children based on flash over substance.)

onward london

I was fortunate enough to catch the entirety of the 29th Olympiad's Closing Ceremony this evening (tape-delayed of course); it was appropriate enough, although the Opening Ceremony was so epic that not even the Chinese could outdo their own initial performance. Although, for me at least, the appearance of a sultry Leona Lewis seriously challenged all the closing fireworks in Beijing.

The unemphasized portion of the closing ceremony that I most dwelt on was how all of the participants were feeling at the conclusion of this global event. Gold or not, I envied them their experience at the Games. When the question was put to her by the network, first-time Olympian Shawn Johnson struggled to capture her thoughts on the whole affair; although she gave it a good effort, I felt that there was just too much for her to communicate in a single sound byte.

Who knows how many millions of interesting Olympic Village stories - whether begun, continued or ended - would never be known? Adventure, camaraderie, disappointment, romantic entanglement, despair, redemption, resolution... By now I know that the reality of the athletes' experience was perhaps more mundane than I tend to fantasize. Still, within that singularity in which so many life-threads converge in one place, I like to hope that friendships were formed and kindnesses were exchanged that one day might be paid forward and multiplied many times over to make the world a little better than it otherwise might have been.

Governments and nations are glacial constructs which cause destruction and grief when they collide, ostensibly for some greater good. I want to believe that the good, positive energy generated in the interactions between people can help to overcome the cold machinations of policy and ideology.

Now that the dream of the Olympics is over, I am once again faced with the unpleasant reality of my own country, with its two-glacier political system. With the national conventions coming up in the next two weeks, the fight to be the figurehead of this country will be unleashed. And although I have gotten over the fact that I will be choosing the lesser sum of evils, I remain cynical and pessimistic about the near future. On the other hand, perhaps that is the way it is meant to be. Peace and prosperity are illusions that can only be purchased with the suffering and poverty of others... the Earth is a closed system, after all. Every generation is meant to fight for something, even if it's against itself. As with real conflict, only a few of us really lead the fight. The rest of us play our small supporting roles in duels, skirmishes and small group actions.

beijing string

The late night broadcasts are grueling; were it not for my prior experience with staying up in the middle of the night, I'd be hurting much worse.

I was able to catch a break on Saturday, and witnessed Michael Phelps' 8th win from a downtown bar. The post-swimming hangover included figuring out the schedule for all the other events this week. I'm liking the new BMX event, and will definitely enjoy re-watching diving, the gymnastics gala, and the beach volleyball finals! Might be about time to invest in a new recording device. TiVo is ever-tantalizing, but I'd rather not have to go through the agony of deleting favorite programming. Still, with three-channels going at once, maybe TiVo is the only feasible option with a single device (I'm not a baller... can't afford three devices).

I'm still pondering how I can land a job that requires travel through Asia...

Grad school entrance exams are an ever present burden. I just hope I'm not rolling rocks like Sisyphus. Luckily prep books are cheap, and I've budgeted for two attempts at the test. Oddly enough, the math seems less difficult than the writing, which is to say the math is ugly and the writing is worse. The test does not reflect reality in any way... it's more about how quickly and how thoroughly you can learn a new subject: passing the test.

Wishing luck to the Beach Volleyball Teams tonight, who are playing in rain that refuses to abate. More coffee and test-Math for me.