2PhatGeeks.com

Excuse me, have you seen the rainbow trout I keep on my butt?

I seem to have misplaced seven pounds.

The internet tells me that I have lost the equivalent of a decent sized puppy, a brand new baby, or a modest sized rainbow trout fish.

I blame the wii fit for this.

But it can keep it, I really don’t want them back.

Chocolate is the best; anyone who likes vanilla is dumb.

“I like using XP.”
“Well, I like Vista, and anyone who likes XP is an inbred cross eyed pterodactyl.”

“World of Warcraft is alright for some, it just wasn’t for me.”
“FRAK U. WORLD OF WARCRAFT IS THE AWESOMEST SAUCE ON THE FACE OF THE PLANET AND U SUCK FOR NOT LIKING IT N UR MOM SUCKS N UR FACE SUCKS.”

“Age of Conan is pretty awesome.”
“I’ve had nothing but problems with the game since I started. Therefore, the game is awful and you’re stupid for liking it.”

“I like Dooce.”
“Omg, Dooce does things in a manner I don’t agree with so that makes her the DEVIL.”

Can you spot the pattern in all of these pretend conversations that are almost-but-not-quite like a few I’ve read online lately?

In almost every conversation that boils down to people expressing their opinions on what they do or do not like, those who have opposing sides belittle and shoot down the other person simply because…well—their viewpoint differs.

Vista users mock those still using XP, Gamers from other MMORPG’s mock those who play WoW (look, I know there’s a stereo type stuck to WoW players but some of them are sane, really. I know a few of them!) and people are generally being arsehats to one another over the smallest things. When it comes to someone liking something that you do not, I beg a question of you:

So long as it isn’t illegal, harming anyone, mentally scarring or life threatening—what does it really matter?

If I am enjoying my chocolate cup cake with sprinkles on top and you notice me eating my delicious sugary treat and happen to be a crusader for vanilla; why stop everything you are doing to get worked up over it? Why stoop to insults, name calling and other behavior that is no doubt unhealthy for your blood pressure? Why can’t you eat your cupcake and let me eat mine? Isn’t there something far more constructive we can all be doing with all this pent up disagreement-energy we have floating around?

If you absolutely must make your point, or share that you disagree with something, people are more apt to listen to you if you come at them calmly, keeping in mind that not everyone likes what you like. If your opening argument is rife with belittling commentary,  as well as name calling, you’re probably not going to get the sort of response you were hoping for and possibly risk being named a troll. Seriously take five minutes and do your best to think of things from their side. How would you react to things if you were their shoes?

I don’t get the trend lately for mocking someone for liking something we don’t like or for being different. Isn’t that what we’re supposed to be celebrating as part of humanity; diversity and the joy of being different?

If not, then I guess I still have my chocolate. This is of course, a thousand times better than vanilla and makes me a million times better than anyone who likes vanilla, because anyone who does is obviously dumb.

The World on my Back.

When I was younger I thought I felt the world.

I don’t mean so much the earth beneath my feet or the wind on my face or the sun in the sky; but I felt emotions, I held great empathy with people. I loved deeply, was moved easily, and was hurt just as deeply.

Remembering childhood moods or even teenage outlooks now, looking back from here? It seems almost like we were insane doesn’t it? How easily we could just fly with the smallest compliment then turn around and crash so very hard at the smallest negative quip. Our egos and emotions were fragile beginning little-things in our chests as children and teenagers; we hadn’t learned how to grow a shell around our hearts.

I’m nearing thirty and the closer I creep toward the supposed big three-oh the more I have been reflecting on how I was, how I wanted to be, and how I turned out.

There’s such an amazing divide between all of it and I am a little amazed at how entirely different I turned out to be, how different I am.

I’ve built my shell firmly around my heart and emotions. Instead of harboring heart break for longer periods of time, harsh words spark small little fires of anger and then in just a few days, fade. Instead of keeping things which make me maudlin or angry close to me, I have learned to push them away and keep them on the outside of my shell. I am still terribly empathetic; I cry during the sad parts in movies, I cry when other people are moved to tears and I cry when being moved with the plight of others.

But now, I don’t feel other things so deeply. I wonder really, if during the creation of this shell that I’ve mistakenly filtered out some of the things I should have let through.

I remember laughing louder, longer and stronger when I was younger. I remember laughing until my stomach hurt, tears came then hiccups following. I remember loving with everything I had in my heart, being in love with the stars as well as the moon, spending nights below a black sky that never ended just to listen to the music of crickets and watch the sparkle of stars.

A friend of mine, youthculture, calls it magic. And not the wriggling fingers sort of magic, but the everyday magic we had when we were children, when everything was endlessly fascinating and the world pretty much laid at our feet.

I wonder then, if, over the years of building my shell to protect my heart from crueler words that I’ve mistakenly blocked away this simple magic.

The question I have for you is: would you tear away your shell if you have one? Or would you tear it down only to rebuild it in a manner to let the right things through?

Think of the children…

I have spent a great amount of my life doing some sort of customer service. I’ve done it in person for retail, tech support and food service. I’ve rendered similar services over the phone for both computer tech support and for a financial institution. I’ve done so both as a front line agent and as a supervisor in both cases. Between all my various customer service jobs I’m guessing I have somewhere around 15 years of customer service experience and management. Based on the greeter who sat us at Chili’s today, I believe the time has come for me to share the three following tid-bits with any currently involved in customer service or thinking of it.

Please, for the love of all that is holy, don’t use a voice that isn’t your own. We can tell. We can always tell. When your fake voice is roughly 5 octaves higher than normal, we can *really* tell. This also means trying to use a fake “Disney”-style voice when you’re 16 or 17. I pray you listen, Chili’s girl: whoever told you that ending every sentence higher than you started was

1. A complete idiot and
2. Likely hadn’t figured on you being so blindingly stupid that you’d let your voice steadily raise in pitch… forever. For all I know you’re still rising in pitch.

Also, using the fake voice really loses its intended effect when as soon as you leave our table you turn to speak to one of your coworkers in a clearly audible and relatively pleasant alto. Your voice is fine. Use it. Don’t try to trick us into being happy because it won’t work with that voice… and not just because our ears bleeding really kills the dining experience. Be pleasant, not hypersonic.

Lastly, the fake smiling: you are required to stop it immediately. You simply cannot break into a face-shattering, teeth-clenched fake smile so painfully obvious the blind can see it the *exact second* you pass a customer and not expect them to notice. You also can not stop it the exact moment they are beside you. This technique isn’t just useless, it’s borderline insane. Firstly, in case you haven’t noticed, most people’s vision is not limited to 2 feet in front of them. Secondly, every person in the restaurant can see this and each one of us thinks you are suffering from a horrible, debilitating head injury.

Please, each of you, the next time you answer the phone at your job or greet-and-seat your table, think of the Chili’s girl and how she would change your dining experience. Please, think of the children… and their ears.

Time for a Change

As I’ve posted here before, I’ve been a conservative for a very very long time. Without going into too much fine detail my primary reasons center around less intrusive government and lower taxes. Basically, I’m the kind of conservative that doesn’t care whether you screw 6 hookers high on shrooms as long as you keep my taxes low and don’t expect me to pay for your health care.

Until recently I have considered the quest to keep government out of our lives more important than other considerations and have sided with the party most likely to do this. Each party or liberal/conservative leaning has it’s drawbacks. Conservatives are just fine as frog’s hair when it comes to proselytizing from the bench as long as fetuses are involved. Liberals would preach from the white house on pretty much every issue except drugs and abortion. I took the lesser of two evils and stayed with the party that at least pretended to be interested in keeping government small and out of my face.

Well, I believe the time has come to re-evaluate how and for whom I vote. Over the past few years I’ve watched more and more press and blogs talking about atheist rights and watched the greater community react. During my observations I’ve noted that the frequency and intensity of the attacks on atheists increasing. Members of our government are simply allowed to tell us we don’t matter… or worse, are dangerous… without fear of reprisal or even a slap on the wrist from the greater community. Our rights can openly be questioned and no one even seems to notice.

There is not a single atheist running for president that I’ve been able to find. Even the “Best-we-can-do-party,” the Libertarians, are nominating the openly religious Barr. Hell the guy even tried to ban witchcraft! And not because it’s silly, but because it’s “satanic” and his imaginary friend doesn’t like that. It has been established that the majority of Americans would rather vote for a gay scientologist than an atheist regardless of what the person’s stances were. How insane is this? And how is it that I don’t get a benefit or some sort of special parking space?

Well, for what it’s worth, I think it’s time for a change. As Atheists we cannot simply keep supporting people that actually believe in mythology just because they agree with something else we like or support. How can you support a man or woman that wants to teach our children Intelligent design just to keep your taxes low? How selfish is it to ignore the fact that a man says he’s going “to do God’s work,” just because we like the healthcare package he’s pushing? How can we hold ourselves out to be better than the militant Islamists when we ignore the fact that most of our country actually believes Jonah was swallowed by a whale and that Noah fit two (or more) of all the animals in the world in a boat? Is getting 72 virgins for blowing yourself up really so crazy an idea in comparison?

So, beginning with this election, I have decided I cannot and will not support any believer of any religion regardless of their stances. The bare minimum a thinking person can ask of their candidate is that they don’t believe in some imagined grand-father or -mother in the sky. As with all such decisions, they are pretty meaningless if only followed through by one individual. However, estimates of the Atheist population of the US are somewhere around 7%-10%, making us a potentially powerful voting bloc, especially in this age of races decided by less than 2%. The more of us that use the power of the vote to encourage more rational leaders rather than the ID crowd the better off we’ll all be.

This November, I’ll be writing in my vote.

Thanks, Mom, for leaving me in that grocery aisle.

I couldn’t think of a tribute that would fully encompass all of how I feel about my mother. I wasn’t able to write something moving about the bond between daughter and parent, every time I started something this week I deleted it.

So instead, I give to you a list of Thank-you’s to a woman far braver than I.

Thank you for leaving me to scream, cry, and flail alone in the grocery store aisle. As I reached out with chubby little hands and demanded you buy me a bag of chips—you put your foot down and said no. The louder I became, the more adamant about your decision you were. As my face turned purple and I started screaming my lungs out after hitting the floor wailing and carrying on—you didn’t give in. You simply told me quietly that when I am done and was ready to act like a decent human being you’d be in the car. You took your grocery cart amidst the gaping onlookers of the store and left me there in the aisle to continue on with my idiocy until my teeny tiny child brain could catch onto things.

You could have caved and bought me those chips just to shut me up, to stop me from making a scene. You didn’t. Thank you for teaching me that acting like Paris Hilton gets you nothing in life. I have not forgotten your lesson.

Thank you for spending the first three years after I was born in a near perpetual sleepless state, washing baby clothes, cleaning up spit-out peas, trying to figure out why I cried for hours on end for no reason and not going insane from it. Thank you for not giving up in those long nights when I wouldn’t be comforted as a baby. I didn’t know it then, but this was part of a lesson in unbending patience and love.

Thank you for not strangling me when I came up with the stupidest ideas on the face of the earth. Like that one time I decided to pull up our neighbors tulips simply because one of the older boys told me it would be an awesome idea. You made me march right over to that lady’s house with my most precious doll in hand and made sure that I handed it over in compensation to her flowers. At the time, I thought that you were tearing my heart out with toothpicks and splattering it on the wall, because that cabbage patch kid doll was the most important thing in my whole world EVAR—but I realized as I grew older that you were trying to teach me that stupid decisions hold consequences. I am trying not to forget this lesson.

Thank you for getting mad at me when I wouldn’t do something I should. Thank you for hounding me about the home work, the science projects, whether or not I was taking notes in class. Thank you for the heart-wrenching disappointment when I failed—reminding me that there was someone behind me in the first place cheering along side me. When I was a teenager I hated this with the passion of a thousand white-hot suns. The constant push to do better, to study, to get good grades; I did not believe I could while you did. I did not think it was worth it while you did your very best to try and tell me it was.

I failed you in this—I didn’t understand you weren’t doing this out of some sick pleasure because OMG LIKE, YOU TOTALLY JUST WANNA LIKE, RUIN MY LIFE!—you were doing it because you loved me and it broke your heart when I did not succeed.

Thank you for telling me outright when my friends sucked. You always knew; either it was mother’s intuition or just plain keen instinct, you always knew when a friend of mine was going to be trouble. You were older, wiser, and you knew what to look for yet every time you told me a friend was no good, I, like the idiot most children are, thought you were some how trying to take away things that made me happy.

This wasn’t true of course, and I was being the usual teenage retard. Inevitably, the friend you’d warn me about would hurt me deeply and leave. I would conveniently forget your advice then and wonder why that person did what they did and how I didn’t see it coming. Thank you for not smacking me upside the head hard enough to leave a dent then, as I would have deserved it. You taught me to listen to people.

Thank you for being my mother. Most of my teen age years were spent lamenting over how awful I thought things were. It is a shame how much time I wasted before my eyes were opened and I realized the best thing I ever had, had always been by my side.

We never truly got along and we don’t always see eye to eye. But I understand now and I will always love you.

Happy Mother’s day.

Sleep: 0, Insomnia: 1

I have my battles with sleep.

I don’t remember specifically when they started. There’s no pin point of light brightly resting on the year of my life in which sleeping at night time became difficulty.

It just…became.

One year I was a good little girl who could not stay up past ten p.m, and the next year I was an adult watching the time and hours tick by me while it seemed like the world slept.

The biggest, most overwhelming feeling I have late at night when trying to rustle through all of the many different cluttered-thoughts inside my skull is how much of a waste of my life sleep essentially is. How many more photos could I snap at night with the right equipment? How many more awful poems could I write? How many more words? How many more people could we reach out to if we have those eight hours back?

I don’t think I’d want to be a Beggar in Spain, however, never sleeping ever again, never dreaming. I think I’d be alright if two or three hours a night were enough to keep me going.

Eve has a really good post about how to get back into sleeping like a human being, as well as tips for sleep–but occasionally, just nothing works anymore.

Have you found your sleeping patterns futzing up as you’ve grown older? What are some of your personal tried and true remedies for insomnia?

I am too Naughty for Social Spark.

As some of you may know and remember, I signed up a while ago to payperpost.com. It’s a chance to line my pocket with some extra change and practice writing whenever a subject or product comes along that I can write about.

Payperpost.com opened a second site, which is in beta, called Social Spark. Social Spark has quite a bit in common with Payperpost given they’re created and backed by the same company. Social Spark, however, carries a lot of features to inspire community that aren’t in Payperpost. So I decided, what the hell, they’re from the same company, right? I like payperpost.com, and I’m liking what I’m seeing so far with Social Spark.

So I go through the same rigmarole more or less for Social Spark as I did their other site, Payperpost. I put in their code, I wait for blog submission–this goes without a hitch. Then I submit 2phatgeeks.com to their Customer Love. I can’t take any opportunities without blog acceptance.

Our blog for Social Spark was rejected.

Apparently, Social Spark’s standards are much higher than Payperposts? Because I use(d) strong language in several of my posts, Social Spark denied 2phatgeeks.

That started a whole lot of head scratching on my end. Are they more concerned about how Social Spark looks than Payperpost? Do they not care at all about what’s seen on one site, while they do the other? Why the difference to begin with?

I can’t really see myself as that much of a rebel, but according to Social Spark, I am.

I would have recommended this site. But if you have the habit of writing anything that’s not sparkles, unicorns and roses all the time there’s a high chance your blog will be rejected. So if you like to write your gut feelings, or curse, or let off steam, or get worked up, or write passionately, or call people names (because you know, nobody ever does this.) you might have to go through your blog and edit every post to fit Social Spark’s taste. If that doesn’t sound like an afternoon of giggles and fun for you, I’d recommend passing Social Spark and seeking other avenues of getting paid for blogging.

This got me thinking though: If you can’t write what you want on your own personal blog, what’s the point? Why do something you enjoy (aka: blogging) but be forced to write in such a manner or voice that makes it no longer enjoyable?

Would you have gone through every post you’d ever written with strong language (if you have. Some of you don’t, and I don’t know whether to applaud you or be scared.) and edit it for website that may pay you?

When you visit a personal blog, do you except it to be church-lady clean and think it should be?

I am Becoming a Tea Wh*re

This is NOT a sponsored post. I really, really like tea.

Not to be confused with a tea snob, because a tea snob probably knows way more about brewing tea than I ever will. They probably know specific temperatures, the correct alignment of the sun, what time of the day is best for what and how many leaves, precisely, to use.

I however, am just a tea wh*re. I love tea. I will give any tea a chance. I’ll let any kind of tea, regardless of it’s brewing, to pass my lips at least once so that I can say I have tried it and whether or not I like it.

It all started several eons ago when dinosaurs roamed the earth when I was a small girl. My parents and my grandparents drank tea like like thirsting men in the desert enjoy water. Specifically, my Grandmother’s house was filled with Red Rose, or Tetley Tea and my home filled with the same. My father started his morning with a cup of tea, same as my mother. My father liked his tea with very little milk and sugar, while my mothers, as my father jokingly remarked, like “swamp water tea.” A lot of milk and a lot of sweetener.

Off and on through the years living with them, I’d endulge in a cup of tea, but it never truly grew on me. Not until this year.

Now, whether it’s a sign I am growing old and crotchety…crotchetier? –or whether it’s simply a sign of tastes changing as one grows older, I have found myself obsessed, pleased, and calmed by tea. It all started with four tea bags of Genmaicha tea handed to me as freebies from the local organic health store and I haven’t quite been right since.

I’ve had a slew of samples from Adagio teas, some of my favorites are: Cirton Green, Kukicha tea, White Monkey, Chocolate tea, chai tea, Lemon Lavender and Mint tea.

I used to start my days with coffee and drank near a full pot every two days. That’s a lot of coffee and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t the healthiest decision. There’s something terribly soothing about tea, now that I am older I’m able to appreciate it.

Lately I’ve been on a tea prowl. What can I add to my taste-collection that I’m missing out on?

Are you a fellow tea-wh*re? What’s your favorite brand or flavor and where do you love having your cup of tea? I’m always looking for a new flavor to try, so do you have any recommendations for me to try?

I Never Loved my Grandfather.

I never loved my Grandfather in the way I think most grandfathers secretly want their little granddaughters to.

As a small child my earliest memories of him were of a blue-eyed man who laughed under his breath and teased me a lot. I think he loved to hear me yell at him for pulling my hair, or calling me Calista (the way he said it rhymed with Melissa). The louder I yelled, the more the corners of his eyes would crinkle up in the ever growing tight-lipped grin that pruned his face.

My memories of his scent is always mixed; not quite right. There was aftershave, soap, that undeniable old person smell that I cannot describe very well—it wasn’t too unpleasant, more like dust warmed by sunshine with the faintest trace of something else my young mind could not comprehend. I didn’t know what that scent hiding behind his grandfather-smell was. It was something he carried with him for as long as I knew him, but back then I didn’t bother trying to find out what it was.

When I was very young, he’d always get up to leave in the middle of things. He’d say, “I’m going to the barn to make sure there aren’t any bears in there,” and, “I’m going hunting for baby-bunting.” And as a child, I always thought that was exactly what he was doing as he arose and meandered off in uneven patterns outside.

I wasn’t enlightened to the reason behind my grandfather’s wandering ways until I hit the age of thirteen—maybe fourteen. He went out to the barn, or out back in the trees behind the house to hide his drinking from me and the family who already knew what he was doing. I don’t think he truly believed he was hiding it from his wife, my Grandmother nor my mother nor our entire family. In fact, in hind sight, I think our entire town was well aware of what my grandfather was doing and what he was: he was an alcoholic.

No one talked about these things where I grew up, however, in a sleepy little farming town of Aylesford, Nova Scotia. It just wasn’t the thing to do. You never talked about the neighbor who beat his wife, or the neighbors kids that did drugs and you certainly never talked about alcoholism.

I can’t say that in the early years I thought anything was wrong with our family life. All that I knew were the things my parents and my grandparents taught me. My world started and ended with them, so whatever they did and said around me or to me was normal for me. I assumed all grand kids’ had a grandfather that smelled a little funny and couldn’t really walk very straight—or who liked to go out to the barn several times a day.

Things changed as I grew up. I realized obviously, what was wrong. I was presented the grandfather’s of other families and noticed a distinct difference. I was growing out of a care free child into a monster of a teen ager. I began to feel cheated with my grandfather. Why wasn’t mine sober? Why wasn’t mine nice? Why couldn’t my grandfather be perfect and happy and smiling?

I was a silly, over hyper child who must have seemed to turn into an awful, hateful teen right before parents and family. Because I, like every teenager, thought I knew everything and I spent most of the latter years with him spewing vitriolic crap. How much I hated him, how awful a person he was, how ashamed I was of him. We’d spend hours yelling back and forth at one another and he’d yell at my Grandmother. I’d yell at him for yelling at her, she’d yell at me for yelling at him, and he’d yell at us both. And he drank and he drank and he drank.

The cycle just kept going until all the memories of the blue-eyed grinning man whose cheeks crinkled when he smiled, faded. All I remembered was the sour-smelling angry little man that loved to use the word cocksucker to describe what dinner tasted like. I began to hoard all of the awful memories of him and forgot any of the good.

He turned into a pale reed of a man I thought I knew.

And now that time has passed and it is too late, I also remember that in spite of it all, all that was wrong with him and I, he really did try.

He used to sing to me old songs that I sometimes half-hear the melody too if I am very still. When I was very, very, very ill as a young teen with a fever so bad that I had to be soaked in ice water, he sat on a chair near me and the nurse rubbing alcohol over me to bring the fever down to watch me as much as he could during the course of the flu.

One time during a particularly enthusiastic charge from the top of the stairs—I tripped instead and fell down all thirteen of them. These were steep steps from a 100 year old house; wide to a child in addition to being almost too steep for adults. I fell from the very top of those stairs to the very bottom, stomach first, knocking the wind out of my lungs. This short little man with sticks for arms flung himself from a laying position on the couch, came to my side, and picked me up to carry me to the couch and lay me upon it before I could recover enough air to wail in panic.

I remember so many things, now.

I remember that I could not love him the way he wanted me to. I was angry that he did not seem to care what he was doing to himself, to his family, to my mother and especially my grandmother. I was angry at myself for being such a horrific grand daughter. I was angry, angry, and angry and did not want to see anything he did as remotely worth caring about.

When he died, I was quite ready to tell the world I did not care, and I did in an old journal that no longer exists. I said I didn’t care and I was glad that he was gone.

This wasn’t true. This was an echo of the sixteen year old spoiled brat within me still angry at a man who couldn’t win over his addiction.

Several years have passed since my grandfather, Cecil Rawding has passed. I’ve had more time and more life shoveled into me to consider the things I have done and haven’t done and I’ve had time to grow up enough to look back on who I was and feel shame.

I wonder, now, if he ever knew that I could not love him the way he wanted me to, but now that I have grown older I can see him for what he was and should be—that I love him for that.

Did he know how he taught me unwittingly to stay away from drinking as I grew older? Did he know I remember the good through the bad? Did he realize these things before he died? Is he somewhere reading this and the corners of his eyes are crinkling up, slow, the way I picture it in my mind a thousand times?

I’ll never know. I was miles away and before he died the drink didn’t leave much humanity left to him. It’s too late, now, to say these things. All I have is the wind to carry a murmur and a wish.

All I have to give back to him is this digital piece of parchment to tell the world the story about a man who tried.

I love you Grampy, I’m sorry.