the Man is no longer a Man
in this day and age
he is a strange Middle-Aged Boy
an Aging Adolescent
hair going grey
with the hours whittled away
on Xbox video games
the Man that is a Man
is of a bygone age
The Real Man in the films of old
Age-ed Anachronism
strong and proud and brave
standing tall to face the day
and keep the wolves at bay
that I am a Man-who-is-not-a-Man
a product of this modern age
has vexed my Heart and Soul
my Arrested Ascension
how can I always play
when a Real Man works all day
but really who's to say?
the Boy is also a Man
in our culture at this stage
in truth both young and old
Advancing Adolescence
we get to play our lives away
yet still have bills to pay
the balance of the middle way
I am a Boy and I am a Man
by internal and external age
work only to play is my road
an Admirable Aspiration
that I get to live My Way
a little boyhood every day
is the great gift of this age
Fuck it
I'll be okay
Showing posts with label geek. Show all posts
Showing posts with label geek. Show all posts
Thursday, September 11, 2014
We Become Merlin, Lord Of The Geeks...
Thursday, February 14, 2013
In Rapture...
A Big Daddy knows only one thing:
Keep Her Safe.
Do what She says,
whatever She says,
and Keep.
HER.
SAFE.
Keep Little Sister Safe.
The whole world
the whole big, violent world
is trying to hurt Her
and the only thing She has
the one and only thing She has
in this whole horrible, fucked-up world
is Me.
The only thing standing between Her
and all the wretched, psychotic lunacy littering the streets
and all the pain and degradation they want to inflict on Her
is ME.
They want Her.
More than anything
They WANT Her.
But they can't have Her.
They can't even get near Her.
Because first,
they'd have to get through ME.
A hulking,
faceless,
impenetrable
wall of NO.
And I won't let them have Her.
I WON'T LET THEM.
She's MINE.
And I will Keep Her Safe.
Like cradling a Snowflake
in an Inferno
I will Keep Her Safe.
Because She's MINE.
She's All I Have.
My Little Sister.
And I am Hers.
All She Has In This World.
Her Big Daddy.
And I will Keep Her Safe.
I will Keep Her Safe.
I will Keep Her Safe.
**inspired by the Bioshock series, and dedicated to my Little Sister, my forever Valentine
Thursday, December 13, 2012
By Jove...
I saw Jupiter for the first time recently.
My old elementary school, that I happen to live just a few blocks away from now, has a pretty famous science center attached to it, called the Earth and Space Science Lab. When I was a kid, they had the only planetarium in the state. Now they've moved to their own building on campus, that feels almost as big as the rest of the school all by itself, and they've added an observatory, among other educational attractions. They have shows at the planetarium on a fairly regular basis, and they're cheap, and I'm into astronomy, and it's only a couple blocks from my house, so I sometimes go to these shows, even though the median age in the room is usually about nine.
I don't know what the fuck I expected - it's an elementary school, for fuck's sake. But, for some reason, I assumed that the shows they put on outside of school hours would attract an older crowd, or at least feature content aimed above a fifth-grade level. And when I went to my first show, and realized I was the only adult there who hadn't brought a child with them, I felt, once again, like a complete fucking weirdo. And the whole time, I felt like all the parents were looking at me sideways, like I was standing outside a windowless white van in a clown costume with one hand full of balloons and the other full of roofies. It was mortifying. But then I thought, fuck them, I'm hear for the Science! Then the show turned out to contain about as much educational science information as an episode of Ancient Aliens, and I was back to feeling like the clown with the van and the collection of baby teeth again. But, still, I continue to go to these things. I think just because I still geek out about being in the planetarium, just like I did when I was in school there. And so I still have fun, even if I don't learn very much; and I try to ignore the parents, and their screaming kids.
Anyways, I enjoy it so much (despite myself) that I decided to volunteer there. They're always advertising that they need volunteers, and it's so nearby, and I could convince myself I was doing a good deed, and it beats washing dishes at the soup kitchen across the street. Plus, I thought it'd be a good way to get to see the shows without having to buy a ticket. (It's not like I'm a cheapskate or anything; tickets are only $5. It's just that their process for purchasing tickets was a bit of a wonky pain-in-the-ass, and I thought it'd be better to do it this way, by doing a good deed, and earning my way into the show, rather than just handing over $5. And also, not for nothing, but now I don't have to feel like Beelzebozo the Hellclown anymore, because I'm not just the creepy guy hanging out by himself with all the families and children - I work there, so it's okay.)
And it turns out that my favorite perk of volunteering there, is that I get to go out to the observatory and look through their incredibly powerful telescope.
Jupiter has been plainly visible to the naked eye for a couple of months now. (It's nearly impossible to miss - it's the brightest object in the night sky that isn't the Moon.) And, as is usually the case during these times when it is visible, I've often found myself standing outside, staring up at it. This image of Jupiter as a bright, white point in the night sky is therefore very familiar to me. I often wonder at just how huge that object must be, to be that far away and still be that bright! (Answer: Jupiter is the 2nd most massive object in the solar system, next to the Sun. In fact, if you took every other object in the solar system - every planet, every comet, every asteroid, every Kuiper Belt object - and crushed them all together into one giant ball of stuff, that giant ball would still be less massive than Jupiter! It is literally more massive than the rest of the solar system, combined. That is fucking HUGE.) And I've seen countless pictures of Jupiter before. We all have. The various colored layers of swirling gas, the giant red spot. It's an iconic image.
But this time was different.
I was working in Critter Cove, explaining the weird lives of sea urchins and brittle starfish to six-year-old's, when an intern came in and told me that they had the observatory trained on Jupiter. I almost dropped the urchin I'd been holding. Seeing my reaction, the intern laughed and told me that she'd mind the exhibits while I ran out to have a look. I tried not to knock down any children on my way out of the building, but looking back, I can't guarantee to a certainty that I succeeded in that endeavor.
Shivering in the cold, I leaned into the eyepiece, and saw Jupiter, really saw it, for the first time.
It was as big as a half-dollar. And I could see all of the stripes of layered gas swirling across it. (The red spot was apparently on the far side, out of view.) I could see the four Galilean moons - Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto - lined up in a perfectly straight line to the right of it, on Jupiter's orbital plane. It was a bit blurry, but still, there was no mistaking it: that was clearly Jupiter. And not just an image of Jupiter, but the real thing! Live and in-person! I was seeing it, for real, as it was right then, in real-time! (Or, at least, as it was about forty minutes earlier. As I said, it's really far away, and so it takes the light a while to reach us. Which only made the fact that it was the size of a half-dollar and that I could make out so much detail as to actually see each individual layered stripe just that much more impressive!)
It was like meeting a celebrity in-person; you're so intimately familiar with them as this 2-D image inside the box in your living room, that when you suddenly find yourself face-to-face with them as a living, three-dimensional, flesh-and-blood person, there's this strange disconnect in your brain, and things feel just slightly un-real. And that's how I felt peering through that telescope at the 40-minute-old sight of the greatest planet in our system, the planet that more than any other outside of our own is responsible for our existence. (Without Jupiter's massive gravity-well situated smack-dab in the middle of the solar system, Earth would be constantly bombarded by comets and asteroids, making it a relatively unstable environment, and therefore a very unlikely place for life to have been able to evolve.)
I lifted my head away from the telescope, and looked out the hole in the roof at the bright point of light in the sky that I had always believed was Jupiter. I had believed that because the Astronomers told me that was the case, and I chose to believe them; I had no reason not to. But now, I could see the telescope pointed straight at that point of light. And I looked back through the eyepiece, and I could see it, plain-as-day, in all of its massive, iconic glory, spinning there in outer space. It was real. From that moment on, it was real to me.
Before, I had only believed in Jupiter. But now I knew it.
Because I had seen it with my own eyes.
My old elementary school, that I happen to live just a few blocks away from now, has a pretty famous science center attached to it, called the Earth and Space Science Lab. When I was a kid, they had the only planetarium in the state. Now they've moved to their own building on campus, that feels almost as big as the rest of the school all by itself, and they've added an observatory, among other educational attractions. They have shows at the planetarium on a fairly regular basis, and they're cheap, and I'm into astronomy, and it's only a couple blocks from my house, so I sometimes go to these shows, even though the median age in the room is usually about nine.
I don't know what the fuck I expected - it's an elementary school, for fuck's sake. But, for some reason, I assumed that the shows they put on outside of school hours would attract an older crowd, or at least feature content aimed above a fifth-grade level. And when I went to my first show, and realized I was the only adult there who hadn't brought a child with them, I felt, once again, like a complete fucking weirdo. And the whole time, I felt like all the parents were looking at me sideways, like I was standing outside a windowless white van in a clown costume with one hand full of balloons and the other full of roofies. It was mortifying. But then I thought, fuck them, I'm hear for the Science! Then the show turned out to contain about as much educational science information as an episode of Ancient Aliens, and I was back to feeling like the clown with the van and the collection of baby teeth again. But, still, I continue to go to these things. I think just because I still geek out about being in the planetarium, just like I did when I was in school there. And so I still have fun, even if I don't learn very much; and I try to ignore the parents, and their screaming kids.
Anyways, I enjoy it so much (despite myself) that I decided to volunteer there. They're always advertising that they need volunteers, and it's so nearby, and I could convince myself I was doing a good deed, and it beats washing dishes at the soup kitchen across the street. Plus, I thought it'd be a good way to get to see the shows without having to buy a ticket. (It's not like I'm a cheapskate or anything; tickets are only $5. It's just that their process for purchasing tickets was a bit of a wonky pain-in-the-ass, and I thought it'd be better to do it this way, by doing a good deed, and earning my way into the show, rather than just handing over $5. And also, not for nothing, but now I don't have to feel like Beelzebozo the Hellclown anymore, because I'm not just the creepy guy hanging out by himself with all the families and children - I work there, so it's okay.)
And it turns out that my favorite perk of volunteering there, is that I get to go out to the observatory and look through their incredibly powerful telescope.
Jupiter has been plainly visible to the naked eye for a couple of months now. (It's nearly impossible to miss - it's the brightest object in the night sky that isn't the Moon.) And, as is usually the case during these times when it is visible, I've often found myself standing outside, staring up at it. This image of Jupiter as a bright, white point in the night sky is therefore very familiar to me. I often wonder at just how huge that object must be, to be that far away and still be that bright! (Answer: Jupiter is the 2nd most massive object in the solar system, next to the Sun. In fact, if you took every other object in the solar system - every planet, every comet, every asteroid, every Kuiper Belt object - and crushed them all together into one giant ball of stuff, that giant ball would still be less massive than Jupiter! It is literally more massive than the rest of the solar system, combined. That is fucking HUGE.) And I've seen countless pictures of Jupiter before. We all have. The various colored layers of swirling gas, the giant red spot. It's an iconic image.
But this time was different.
I was working in Critter Cove, explaining the weird lives of sea urchins and brittle starfish to six-year-old's, when an intern came in and told me that they had the observatory trained on Jupiter. I almost dropped the urchin I'd been holding. Seeing my reaction, the intern laughed and told me that she'd mind the exhibits while I ran out to have a look. I tried not to knock down any children on my way out of the building, but looking back, I can't guarantee to a certainty that I succeeded in that endeavor.
Shivering in the cold, I leaned into the eyepiece, and saw Jupiter, really saw it, for the first time.
It was as big as a half-dollar. And I could see all of the stripes of layered gas swirling across it. (The red spot was apparently on the far side, out of view.) I could see the four Galilean moons - Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto - lined up in a perfectly straight line to the right of it, on Jupiter's orbital plane. It was a bit blurry, but still, there was no mistaking it: that was clearly Jupiter. And not just an image of Jupiter, but the real thing! Live and in-person! I was seeing it, for real, as it was right then, in real-time! (Or, at least, as it was about forty minutes earlier. As I said, it's really far away, and so it takes the light a while to reach us. Which only made the fact that it was the size of a half-dollar and that I could make out so much detail as to actually see each individual layered stripe just that much more impressive!)
It was like meeting a celebrity in-person; you're so intimately familiar with them as this 2-D image inside the box in your living room, that when you suddenly find yourself face-to-face with them as a living, three-dimensional, flesh-and-blood person, there's this strange disconnect in your brain, and things feel just slightly un-real. And that's how I felt peering through that telescope at the 40-minute-old sight of the greatest planet in our system, the planet that more than any other outside of our own is responsible for our existence. (Without Jupiter's massive gravity-well situated smack-dab in the middle of the solar system, Earth would be constantly bombarded by comets and asteroids, making it a relatively unstable environment, and therefore a very unlikely place for life to have been able to evolve.)
I lifted my head away from the telescope, and looked out the hole in the roof at the bright point of light in the sky that I had always believed was Jupiter. I had believed that because the Astronomers told me that was the case, and I chose to believe them; I had no reason not to. But now, I could see the telescope pointed straight at that point of light. And I looked back through the eyepiece, and I could see it, plain-as-day, in all of its massive, iconic glory, spinning there in outer space. It was real. From that moment on, it was real to me.
Before, I had only believed in Jupiter. But now I knew it.
Because I had seen it with my own eyes.
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
The First Rule of Smart Club...
Serious drama at the SMART meeting last night. And, of course, I can't talk about it at all. But I felt like mentioning it anyways, just to annoy my tiny audience. (Sorry, guys.) What I can say, is that there was a new guy there (which made my sharing about the AGM interesting, let me tell you - it was hard enough to talk about that in front of the people I've gotten to know there over the past few months - it was seriously nerve-wracking to try and talk about it in front of a total stranger), and after the meeting he came up to me and started gossiping at me about the moderator. And so now I'm all, fuck, why did you tell me that?? I don't want to be in the middle of this shit.
I started writing up my AGM post, but I just now realized that I can't actually post a lot of what I've written, as it contains descriptions of things that went on there that I am oath-bound to keep secret. So, once I finish writing it all up (whenever the fuck that will be), I'm going to have to go back and edit the fuck out of it to make it safe for posting.
In other news, I have recently become obsessed with old-school, turn-based RPG video games, like the ones I used to play when I was a kid. They are just so goddamned satisfying! Enter dungeon. Kill monsters. Collect XP and Gold. Level-up and buy better equipment. Repeat.
Yes! Yes, I will repeat!!
I downloaded an emulator for one I played the fuck out of on my old Mac II when I was about 14, and installed it on my laptop - Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord - fuck yeah! And I've been playing a demo of the latest version of the Wizardry franchise for PS3 (Labyrinth of Lost Souls), and have been enjoying that waaay more than is warranted by its anime-themed foolishness. Whenever I've got a few minutes to kill, I whip out my phone and play some Gurk, a classic 8-bit RPG. And I've been proper geeked lately over Penny Arcade's 16-bit On The Rain Slick Precipice Of Darkness, Episode 3. Not only is it really fun to play, and totally satisfying to my 14 year-old inner gamer, but it's also funny as all hell. I honestly get sad if I don't get a chance to play it in a given day.
Ok, that's all the meaningless bullshit I have time to spew forth for today. Thanks for giving enough of a shit to read it.
I started writing up my AGM post, but I just now realized that I can't actually post a lot of what I've written, as it contains descriptions of things that went on there that I am oath-bound to keep secret. So, once I finish writing it all up (whenever the fuck that will be), I'm going to have to go back and edit the fuck out of it to make it safe for posting.
In other news, I have recently become obsessed with old-school, turn-based RPG video games, like the ones I used to play when I was a kid. They are just so goddamned satisfying! Enter dungeon. Kill monsters. Collect XP and Gold. Level-up and buy better equipment. Repeat.
Yes! Yes, I will repeat!!
I downloaded an emulator for one I played the fuck out of on my old Mac II when I was about 14, and installed it on my laptop - Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord - fuck yeah! And I've been playing a demo of the latest version of the Wizardry franchise for PS3 (Labyrinth of Lost Souls), and have been enjoying that waaay more than is warranted by its anime-themed foolishness. Whenever I've got a few minutes to kill, I whip out my phone and play some Gurk, a classic 8-bit RPG. And I've been proper geeked lately over Penny Arcade's 16-bit On The Rain Slick Precipice Of Darkness, Episode 3. Not only is it really fun to play, and totally satisfying to my 14 year-old inner gamer, but it's also funny as all hell. I honestly get sad if I don't get a chance to play it in a given day.
Ok, that's all the meaningless bullshit I have time to spew forth for today. Thanks for giving enough of a shit to read it.
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