Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in the accidental gothboy's LiveJournal:

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Saturday, November 21st, 2009
12:55 am	Conservative versus Liberal--a liberal responds. So, a little while back, indianirishpunk was checking her mail while I was visiting, and I saw that her mother has sent her a lovely little owl-pellet of a chain message, a piece of cackling superior attitude supposedly showing the moral superiority of the conservative over the liberal constituencies in this country. I had a few sarcastic responses, and quickly asked for a copy, to make a full answer. As a forewarning, what I am about to say is a knowing exaggeration, if applied to the entire conservative bloc in the United States. However, I do believe it is accurate for the type of conservative who wrote this thing originally... *u are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that you are not authorized to read, print, retain, copy or disseminate this message, any part of it, or any **ubject:* Mr. Gambini, what is an "ubject"? Conservative vs liberal If a conservative doesn't like guns, he doesn`t buy one. If a liberal doesn't like guns, he wants all guns outlawed. If a liberal _does_ like guns, he likes collecting them and/or shooting them, or wants another option in a dangerous situation. If a conservative likes guns, he thinks he's invincible and/or a cowboy. If a conservative is a vegetarian, he doesn`t eat meat. If a liberal is a vegetarian, he wants all meat products banned for everyone. If a conservative is a vegetarian, he doesn't eat meat. If a liberal is a vegetarian, he...doesn't eat meat. If a liberal believes eating meat is actually wrong, he wants to convince everyone to stop of their own accord. If a conservative makes a point of actually not being a vegetarian, he believes that cruelty makes his meat taste better. If a conservative sees a foreign threat, he thinks about how to defeat his enemy. A liberal wonders how to surrender gracefully and still look good. A conservative is afraid, and wants to fight immediately to avoid looking weak. A liberal believes fear and overreaction look weak, and holds fighting as a last resort rather than first. If a conservative is homosexual, he quietly leads his life. If a liberal is homosexual, he demands legislated respect. If a liberal is homosexual, he wants the law and society to respect him as an equal. If a conservative is homosexual, he believes that there is something wrong with him, and tries to hide from the hatred encoded in the law and lurking under the surface of society. If a black man or Hispanic are conservative, they see themselves as independently successful. Their liberal counterparts see themselves as victims in need of government protection. A successful liberal Black or Hispanic man recognises that he succeeded against stacked odds, and wants to make them more equitable for those who come after him. His conservative counterpart wants them to remain the same, and blames those who come after him for "not trying hard enough". If a conservative is down-and-out, he thinks about how to better his situation. A liberal wonders who is going to take care of him. If a liberal is down-and-out, he wonders if his suffering, and that of everyone like him, is necessary. A conservative wonders what "undeserving" person took the better life that was "rightfully" his. Probably a foreigner. If a conservative doesn't like a talk show host, he switches channels. Liberals demand that those they don't like be shut down. If a liberal is offended by a talk show host, he wants the host's inaccuracies, hypocrisies, and cheap emotional appeals to be exposed in an equally public forum. If a conservative is offended by a talk show host, he wants him hounded off the air as "un-American". If a conservative is a non-believer, he doesn't go to church. A liberal non-believer wants any mention of God and religion silenced. (Unless it's a foreign religion, of course!) A liberal, religious or not, believes the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment forbids any government organisation from privileging one religion by either giving it benefits or publically using its prayers, ceremonies, and symbols. A conservative believes that the government should advance his particular belief as much as it can get away with, because the Founding Fathers "obviously" shared it. Any talk about how they were largely Deists like Jefferson, Sunday Christians like Washington, and Quakers like Franklin is, to him, dishonest and treasonous revisionism. If a conservative decides he needs health care, he goes about shopping for it, or may choose a job that provides it. A liberal demands that the rest of us pay for his. The conservative and the liberal alike must shop for health insurance or get it as a job benefit. The liberal, however, recognises the bad faith inherent in for-profit insurance, that the less it actually provides for policyholders' needs, the more it succeeds, and wants a better system that puts those needs first. If a conservative slips and falls in a store, he gets up, laughs and is embarrassed. If a liberal slips and falls, he grabs his neck, moans like he's in labor and then sues. Most of both will do the first. Either may sue if they legitimately believe it is the store's fault, or, I must admit, they see likely money in it. However, the conservative is more likely to believe that greed is an acceptable motivation. If a conservative reads this, he'll forward it so his friends can have a good laugh. A liberal will delete it because he's "offended". A conservative will read this and cackle over his supposed moral superiority. This liberal was offended at the misrepresentation, and took the time to think it over and write a response. And he would be immensely gratified if this too was passed on. Current Mood: amused Current Music: Muse - I Belong To You (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, November 2nd, 2009
10:42 pm	Essay-let: To Infinity... Recently, I have seen a spate of commentary critical of plans for further manned space exploration, particularly to Mars or otherwise past Earth orbit. Some cite the recent and continuing economic exigencies, and I do agree that this is a time for other priorities. Others go a great deal further, and contrast the cost and danger of human spaceflight against the successful science that has been done by purely mechanical missions, drawing the conclusion that a human presence in space, or at least beyond low Earth orbit, is needless and wasteful. One even satirically proposed, in Swiftian fashion, that any Mars mission be one way only, that if it were so important to go ourselves, someone surely wouldn't mind not coming back. In the absence of strong artificial intelligence, I highly doubt the uselessness of the human capacity for repair and improvisation, and am even more sceptical of the idea that these are just as useful on the far end of a radio link. However, this is not my main contention. I contend that, in addition to its scientific value, space exploration is one of our highest cultural achievements. Every civilisation that has the resources undertakes grand projects to express what it considers important, at least symbolically by all and for all. Often, this is no more than its own pride and greater glory, but other examples transcend this, instead marking some aspect of that culture's character and aspirations. In the past, these have usually been in the spiritual realm, resulting in monuments to one sort of religious faith or another. Though our faiths are still important, this is not what defines us. The modern West has one particularly remarkable characteristic, though. This is an unprecedented, if still too limited, willingness to do new things, be it changing our ways or going new places. I do not claim that it is the only thing that defines us--however, when not exploited to reinforce the too-common patterns of greed and conquest, it is among the noblest of our traits. But for beneath the sea, a destination subject to many of the same hopes and criticisms as our outward sailing, there is almost nowhere left to go on this planet that would be truly new, and fewer places yet where that exploring impulse was, when we first went, untainted by the lust for others' land and treasure. So, the only way to go is up, and our truest equivalent of the grand temples and cathedrals of old is that flag on the moon. It would be tragic if we never surpass it. Current Mood: contemplative Current Music: Kristoph Klover - Witnesses' Waltz (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, July 3rd, 2009
2:33 am	Invulnerability Syndrome ( First of what will hopefully be weekly essays under the link ) Current Mood: contemplative Current Music: none for once (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, January 21st, 2009
9:01 pm	Late as usual. Well, here are my thoughts on yesterday. First off, I missed seeing the inauguration live--I was at work. Maybe that's part of why it seems vaguely unreal, the bright new leader seeing off the last eight years' half-tyrant halfwit with the patient decorum usually reserved for shooing out a tiresome old relative. Somehow it's hard to believe we really won. Now, I don't think Barack Obama is perfect, but I can support him with less reservation than anyone I've seen in high office (not just the presidency) in my lifetime. I've seen comments that he's too ambitious, that he's trying to take on too much at once, but it's a time for sweeping change--for all intents, we've had a revolution. As surely as falling walls and jangling Czech keys, as though Thompson's wave returned to crest the seawall that turned it back before, we've pulled off that trickiest of things, a peaceful revolution. Of course, the prior regime gave us all the breakdown and suffering we'd need anyway. Someone else has had the last word on that...well, not quite the last, but we'll have to wait until Chimpy passes to have another "He Was A Crook". Now it's time to rebuild, to make our institutions work for us rather than enslave us, and for once we've elected someone with the intelligence, the willpower, the force of personality, the sheer goddamn arete to do it, along with enough people who will support him. But "Yes we can" doesn't end at election day. It's all of us who have to work on this country's self-improvement--we can't get complacent, and we can't fall to fear. Not fear of change, and not fear of all the various bastards and the power we let them take over so many years. It's time to take it back. To blatantly steal from Mike Rutherford, my generation, and all those still alive, can put it right, so let's not fuck it up. Selah. Current Mood: determined Current Music: Electric Six - Slice Of You (Comment on this)
Saturday, January 3rd, 2009
2:41 am	New Year reflections. Yes, two days late. I've been sick. Been another one of those years, hasn't it? My grandmother's passing, one job in the house. Still, on a personal level, mixed at worst. The drama level has declined noticeably, I've got a nice place, I have a job, and so on. I'm looking forward to Inauguration Day more than anything else right now...it's long past time for the current crop of SOBs to be gone. And I can't help but hope, and honestly expect, that it will throw some confidence into buyers and lenders alike. It's gotten brutal out there. And, yes, it shows up at work. The customers are scouring for bargains like their life depends on pinching the last penny in half, and we're getting pinched ourselves, with corporate coming down on the stores like a million-pound shithammer, demanding ever-closer compliance with their inane and random strategems, and more effort all round, as if our fatigue was a valuable commodity. And, of course, the two remaining managers, the one smart and sympathetic one having gone North, pass the pressure right on down under some kind of impression that shame, fear, and irrational obedience are the magical keys to success. I just hope things are better in 2009. Current Mood: tired Current Music: Nightwish - For the Heart I Once Had (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008
10:13 pm	Something missing. My grandmother died a short time earlier this evening. I don't have an eloquent tribute, just the bare statement. I'm a strangely calm kind of sad, and I think I can work tomorrow. Current Mood: bereaved Current Music: None, for once. (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, November 7th, 2008
10:11 pm	Yeefuck. I feel like a spoiled, soft little dipshit. Lately, I've been getting a lot of hours at work--possibly too many--and, to start with, I'm amazed that I can do it. The only time I've worked much more than twenty hours a week before was for two weeks, and a clerical job. The bigger frustration, though, is that with all this time on my feet, I'm too tired to do _anything_. I've had to beg off gaming, a party, a pagan meet... Again, aren't people supposed to be able to cope better? I suspect that I'm being too hard on myself, as I jumped from fifteen hours one week (all together, and with no break before the next) to thirty-eight the next, with only one full day off. But it's still frustrating. I either need more energy, or fewer hours. I've had some thoughts on the election, all good, but other people on my list have said them, right down to the teariness at Obama's speech. The only one I haven't seen here on LJ already is one I've seen in at least one editorial--that this isn't just the end of the Bush era, or even the time defined by the Reagan revolution, but of the age Nixon brought in. This is the victory McGovern should have had in '72. Current Mood: frustrated Current Music: J A Seazer--Rinbu-Revolution Movie Version (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, March 6th, 2008
12:18 am	The wheel turns both ways... Or rather, one side is rising as the other is falling. Although the job offer I mentioned earlier was voided from above, I now have two promising ones...one interview in the morning, and another that wants me to come back to fill out a background check form, and just _feels_ like the manager wants to hire me. At the same time, Mahree has decided she doesn't want to live with Jason at all, and it's clear that, somehow, we are splitting and reshuffling. I'm not sure what's happening...but as mercenary as I've gotten being broke so often lately, I just hope it leaves me with a lower rent. Current Mood: confused Current Music: Green Day - Jesus of Suburbia (Comment on this)
Wednesday, February 13th, 2008
11:52 pm	Crow goes down easier seasoned with time. (locked because this is meant to be an end to drama, not a cause of it) Lately I've been doing a lot of apologising, and talking out old business. This isn't really a bad thing at all--I did someone a colossally bad turn several months ago. Under pressure my codependent ass couldn't resist, I cut off communication entirely with her--something I always promised I would never do. I've repented of this, and the upshot is that crystalgee is my friend once again. It'll take a while to fully heal that bond, but it's definitely worth it. In other news, not so good but not nearly as bad as it could be, my roommate Tyler has been voted off the island, so to speak...he has a place to go, and a friend of his is getting him in a week or so. Harsh as it may sound, the main reason was that, alone among us, he's contributed nothing in the way of money to the household, and (though I've been guilty of this too) little in the way of work. Although he's been consistently far more grudging about that work than anyone else. I hope that, after this, things can stabilise for a while... (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Sunday, February 10th, 2008
2:24 am	Updates that are to your journal are updates. ...Christ. A Daravon joke. Does anyone even remember those now? Anyway, life is...better. I have a probable job coming, and while there has been drama in the household, it's done with. Now I just need to remember not to let myself get back into a slump anyway. Even with people around, I can get down the way I used to living alone--especially when I misinterpret "need to be responsible, there are people living with me" as "never dare waste the gas to leave the house." There are just a few things I need to remember. One, I can leave the house. Two, the phone works out as well as in. Three, get up from the computer and look for something that needs cleaning now and then. Current Mood: tired Current Music: The Cruxshadows - Dragonfly (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Tuesday, January 8th, 2008
1:47 am	Well, here I am. (reference intentional) Apparently I lied, when I said I'd post in less than six months. So what's going on? I've moved (address will be in flocked post), this time adding Jason, Ginger, Mahree, and Tyler (all of no account, but if you look on my Myspace, /winoangel4d4, they're there) to the mix. It's a house this time--with me, Kitty, and most of the rest around in that apartment most of the time, you couldn't clean or even fucking move without bumping itno someone or something..."hell of catshit and clutter" describes the result admirably. I am disengaged, and in fact single again. My decision, shared or no fault, depending on one's point of view. Out of money and looking for work so I don't become the house's official load. Really feel the last six months or so has slipped away from me--the feeling's pretty common to me, I often wonder "why am I out of college?" or even "Wasn't the sixteen-bit era just the other day", but...what the fuck, I was sober most of that time. I'm not depressed, usually, but other than making myself useful to the house instead of spending _all_ my time on this goddamn computer, I'm not sure where I'm going. I hope my writer's block will end soon, too...I'm seriously feeling the pressure of being three years away from thirty and having nothing to show... Current Mood: pensive Current Music: Jethro Tull - Too Old to Rock and Roll, Too Young to Die (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, July 7th, 2007
3:18 am	What can this be? An update? :O Yes, I am alive. And engaged again, though I am not announcing it on time...when exactly did we decide? indianirishpunk and I decided sometime around the end of March. The date is set, however, the venue is not in stone yet, though we have a short list. The date most certainly is Halloween of this year, and as such, the general style is costumes. Things have changed alot since my last post back in January. We are currently playing musical residences, and there has been quite a bit of drama. But...things are evening out, I have a very likely job next month, and I am generally happy...and cat-full. Pictures of our furry little fammily to arrive soon, as soon as we get all of the "crap" out of the background. Literally and figuratively speaking. Well, I am afraid I must be going...my dearest Kitty is pulling me away for some...playtime..so to speak. ....Squee! -JChance. P.S. Hope it's not another 6 months before I post again. XD Current Mood: The Kitty made me do it...:D Current Music: Computer Fan....and some _nice_ noises in my ear (15 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, January 20th, 2007
8:38 pm	Life rebooted. Well, I'm back from my retreat/therapy...I learned a hell of a lot, a running start on a life where I'm actually making my own choices and know what I'm doing. I hope I didn't worry anyone too much... Current Mood: tired Current Music: Dresden Dolls - Sing (7 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, December 22nd, 2006
12:36 am	Offline for repairs. Not the computer, me...I've gotten concerned enough with my behaviour that I'm going off to do something about it and get myself sorted out, and I'll be back the night of 20 January. Current Mood: optimistic (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, November 28th, 2006
11:14 pm	Poor Puppy, or help, please! This isn't the usual sort of thing I post anymore, but it's really worth beating the bushes about. So, Collie Rescue of the Carolinas recently got given a puppy who had been hit by a car. And...well, ladyneonsaid it best when she told me... xladyneonx: So the neighbor took it to our vet. xladyneonx: And it was full of fractures, and a cracked pelvis . . . xladyneonx: so Jean decided to have it put down. xladyneonx: A week later the vet called. xladyneonx: He had prepared the table and taken the dog out of the cage three different times. He could not put it down. xladyneonx: This is a vet that has to euthanize animals every day. xladyneonx: And he couldn't do it. xladyneonx: Nugget is like Jamie. He's SO determined to live, and so damned grateful to be alive. xladyneonx: But he has no socket left in one of his hips. xladyneonx: And he runs anyway. xladyneonx: He wiggles. xladyneonx: He's HAPPY, and just to be alive. xladyneonx: And he's going to need a new hip and about a year of therapy, otherwise he'll develope scar tissue in his rear end that will keep him from going to the bathroom. xladyneonx: If it were just the hip, he could have the leg amputated. No guilt trip here, but the little guy does deserve a proper chance. If you feel like donating, there's a link on www.collierescue.net. Nothing is too small. Thanks for taking the time to read this, and for any help you decide to give. Current Mood: concerned (Comment on this)
Thursday, November 16th, 2006
8:22 am	Always running all over... I'm off again, this time to see crystalgee, soundwave106 and friends at Quartercon in NOLA. I'll be back Tuesday. Current Mood: excited (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, October 11th, 2006
10:20 pm	Last-minute for National Coming-Out Day Well, I'm not hugely sure what to say on today, because I'm pretty well out already. That I'm attracted to both sexes, and submissive, is obvious from any discussion that veers onto sex and relationships, or from my con reports. I suppose the one thing that everyone may not know is that I'm poly, in a "vee" relationship. That is, I and someone else are involved with a third person, but not with each other. (romantically, that is. I consider him a weird sort of family.) So, here's to everyone being able to whow love, and talk about it, without fear for the _rest_ of the year... (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, October 6th, 2006
2:30 am	Dragon*Con 2006, Part 3 and final I'm writing this in a state of mild deadline-hysteria; I have to catch a flight to my next destination in the morning, and damned if I'm going to try to hold two cons in my head. And the cat seems to have been reading Transmet as much as I have, or just making an editorial comment on my travelling--she pissed in the suitcase with a working handle, and, while I've cleaned it, it's not dry yet. So the other one it is, and a Young Frankenstein "walk this way" through the airports... ( In contrast, Sunday started a bit slow. ) Current Mood: accomplished Current Music: Machinae Supremacy - Hero (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, October 5th, 2006
8:43 pm	Dragoncon 2006, part 2 Friday found me across the street from the hotel, having some brunch before confronting the intimidating line for registration. It was only along one side of the building so far, not wrapped around the corner and up past the driveway as it would be by Saturday afternoon. The cafe was full of signs for a business convention, something for the home-decorating industry, and the buttoned-down clientele were ( giving me weird looks. ) Current Mood: rushed Current Music: Clare Fader - Left With The Thought of You (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, September 28th, 2006
9:17 pm	Dragon*Con 2006, part 1 I started this at the one-week mark, but then I got sucked into a game...so, before I start forgetting shit, time to ( kick out the jams. ) Current Mood: Gonzo Current Music: Nightingale - Shadowland Serenade (3 Comments |Comment on this)