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Drak

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  1. Drak

    Prose vs Video

    By Drak,

    Words aren't the thing anymore. Everyone I know looks at videos or images all day long. They could care less about words, unless those words caption an amusing image. So ours is a dying art, mainly of interest to the old. Bless the readers, for they are few and declining in number. I was struck by Myr's call for young males to get involved with the site. I wonder how they can be lured away from videos, images, and games. I think that will not happen. Images are more immediate in their effect upon the audience and a much easier medium to convey thoughts and feelings. There are people who will never read The Lord of the Rings, but they saw the movies.
     
    I don't think words are better or worse than video. It's just different. It's a matter of taste. I have my own personal preference, but my friends disagree. I hate videos online, and if a site starts playing one immediately, I bounce. Youtube is something I might visit once a year. Especially with how-to articles, I haven't the time or patience to watch a ten-minute video to obtain information that I could read in five minutes. The rest of the world feel differently. Maybe my reader here prefers reading (notice I did not use the plural form), but dear Reader, you know we are in the minority, and being gay, in a minority of the minority.
     
    Videos seem to bring a soothing social component to many people, making them feel they are not alone anymore but engaged with others. One lonely lady I knew kept the television playing all day long at low volume simply because she liked to hear comforting voices of news anchors and weathermen in the background. That is a very human need. I find the people on television a little bit annoying and don't entirely trust them. I don't want to find myself repeating the things they say or using the same cadences or styles or believing what they believe. When I get lonely, I have my cats, my memories, and my husband.
     
    Today, I think prose still has a purpose. It is the precursor to film. Every video starts out in life as an idea, and prose captures that idea. I don't think anyone has abandoned the use of scripts except producers of reality shows, which may be going out of fashion from what I've heard.
  2. Drak

    On Writing

    By Drak,

    History has overseen increasing democratization in the arts. I know the big shots disapprove of the motley-grotley, but too bad. We live in an era when even a nobody like me can find the time and means to compose whatever possesses my fancy without any regard to remuneration. That is a strange thing, and I don't expect everyone to understand it, but then I don't understand why other people do the things they do. I guess each of us picks a little niche in which we specialize for better or worse. I don't know why I write. I think there is a desire to create something with a permanence that I lack in my trip from existence to annihilation. Most of me will return to the earth, but maybe the remnants of my imagination will persist as, I don't know, electronic charges on a drive somewhere. One thing I have a nerdy faith in is the persistence of data, collected and maintained into perpetuity because people can never be sure whether the data may have some as yet unexploited value, whether for secrets lurking within or aggregate research. One never knows. There will be archeological value if nothing else, increasing every year, and storage is cheap. Many stories can be fit into a terabyte. So the technology is helpful there. And if it doesn't last, then so what? Neither do I.
     
    My stories are my pets, and I like to visit them. They have problems. Some problems are hidden from me. I have difficulty capturing images with precision. The image may be clear in my mind, but knowing how to paint the picture is a different story. I'm a sketch-artist. But I do love my pets. I suppose some of them seem rather bizarre, even if I myself am mundane and ordinary. But why should I plow the same field that everyone else does? That soil is overused, spent, every possibility explored. I prefer to pioneer a different acre of land. The little weird things that have occurred to me over the years that I haven't seen explored in story form, that's what I like to write about. Other writers have covered other topics in an adequate way and I've no desire to compete on their turf. My pets, the flights of fancy and crystals of truth that I have, these are what I like to see preserved, so that I can recapture them whenever I wish without losing any of their details.
     
    When I finish a piece, then begins the laborious process of compressing and clarifying the words. I tend to be verbose at first, but then I go back and mercilessly cull all the unnecessary verbiage. Less often, I add details to the story that I neglected to mention. Sometimes I forget to transcribe some important detail from my vision to the page.
     
    Some people have liked my stuff before. I know because they told me so or gave a rating somewhere. A little bit of water keeps a cactus thriving year after year, even through drought. I appreciate criticism. Perhaps criticism is worth more than vacuous polite praise. At least with criticism, one receives direction. Some things we writers are too near to see, you know. I don't consider myself hostile to criticism, a common stereotype of writers. I remember many big shot writers who just hated their critics. I'm the opposite. I may agree or disagree, but information is a zero sum. One can use the information or disregard it, depending upon one's evaluation of its quality. I have had people tell me harsh things before. It is a zero sum. Of course one should be sensitive to criticism in the sense of receiving all the information transmitted, but not sensitive in the sense of reacting in an emotional way. The reality is none of this matters. All is vanity. We are dust. Once one accepts that, all is simple.
  3. Drak

    Silence Cnn

    By Drak,

    I am always on the lookout for ways to silence these media web sites that automatically activate my speakers and stream video into my computer without my permission.
     
    To read CNN rather than hear it, Firefox users can install NoScript, then forbid scripts running from turner.com. This simple solution transforms CNN.com into an online newspaper.
  4. Drak

    Necronomicon

    By Drak,

    One afternoon, with nothing better to do, I wandered into Books-a-Million or some such pulp peddler and, after glancing at the mainstream, GLBT, and Christian sections (a lot of guides on the mystical or magical power of prayer, how to pray away the pains of modern living, and why it is OK to spank your child), drifted over to the Occult section, by no means the smallest, either. There I evaluated Tarot decks and other means of divination, guides, spellbooks Wiccan and otherwise, and other little wonders that beguile the gullible. They are at least interesting, written for true believers, and I like to imagine the believers, some of whom I have encountered in my many years on this planet.
     
    I also found the "Necronomicon" by Donald Tyson, not the Donald J. Tyson, deceased, of Tyson Foods, but apparently an experienced occult writer and, one might presume, one of the true believers. Now the Necronomicon is a mythical grimoire invented or perhaps, revealed, by H. P. Lovecraft. Now it is reinvented or perhaps, revealed, by Tyson.
     
    I liked the parts I read and found myself intrigued against my will, but the price of the book was $21, a bit too dear for my stingy old heart that grieves every penny. So I memorized the name of the author and the title.
     
    At home, I found the book on Amazon and ordered a cheap used copy from Amazon for $6. I don't know how sellers make a profit selling books at that rate, with shipping costs what they are, but they do it, so I will buy.
     
    When the Necronomicon arrived, it was in perfect condition, save for one strange thing, it was greasy. I mean the cover, front and back, felt greasy, almost like it had been buttered. I attributed that to either the wax used to laminate the cover or else the former owner's personal habits or hygiene.
     
    I have some problems with the plot. If the gods of humans are thralls, then how can Bast, the cat-god, be of any help? I don't even know why the chapter on Bast is included, other than to nod to the popular Internet obsession with felines. Also, why is Abdul heedless of Mohammed and Allah, never mentioning them once, when he was a devout worshiper in his youth? He should at least have some solitary reflections on the bogeymen of his past. Finally, if the Old Ones can be deterred by a written symbol, then why could they not be deterred from the entire planet by symbols written large on the landscape in stone? That would seem an obvious means to keep them from Earth altogether. And why do the Old Ones covet Earth in the first place? They seem sadistic, loving destruction for destruction's sake, and lacking any goals other than destroying whatever came before. Once the old order is destroyed, what do they propose, if anything? This is left ambiguous.
     
    Logical inconsistencies aside, the Necronimicon by Donald Tyson enthralled me from day one, and I'm reading it again.
  5. Drak

    Three For Isis

    By Drak,

    I read about the three young British women that left the UK, married into ISIS in Syria today and was reminded of a quote from an old friend.
     
    He had taken the old saw, "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink," and transformed it into "You can lead a whore to knowledge, but you can't make her think."
     
    I bet they will be regretting their decision right about now. Wow, just to imagine renouncing the UK for ISIS boggles the mind. It does not compute. But for sure, the U.K. is better off without them. Anyone who thinks ISIS is better is doing the West a favor by joining them and getting the hell out of our society.
  6. Drak

    Certainty

    By Drak,

    The people that never think twice make all the trouble in the world.
     
    People who doubt themselves, who are never completely sure about anything, these folk have gained a deeper understanding of reality.
     
    "For in this world of veils, we see as through a glass darkly."
  7. Drak

    A Kubuntu Kerfuffle

    By Drak,

    I read with interest today about the brouhaha between Kubuntu's lead developer and some factions in the Ubuntu community.
     
    Now, most people don't know what Ubuntu is, let alone Kubuntu, and even fewer know who Jonathan Riddell is, but in a nutshell, some sort of "council" of self-appointed volunteers wants to be rid of Riddell for rather vague reasons that point to either a personality conflict or a conflict of interests or maybe both. A lot of issues boil down to money and power, and maybe this is another one of them. On the other hand, it's entirely possible people just rub each other the wrong way, although they must be spending a lot of time writing emails for that to happen, since they don't actually see one another from what I understand. It's just a cyber-community. Oh, the drama.
     
    I am interested only to the extent that I have installed and used Kubuntu as well as other flavors of Ubuntu for a couple of years. I have never installed Ubuntu. Ubuntu's desktop, Unity, had the same concept as Windows 8, wanting the same look and feel for every device from a phone to a desktop computer. Thus the name, Unity. Well, guess what, Ubuntu, desktops are here to stay and will be around long after Unity and Windows 8 are footnotes in history. Phones are nifty toys, but human beings like big screens that fit our field of vision, a big keyboard that fit our hands, big sound that pleases our ears, and a big mouse that fits our hand. That ain't gonna change no matter how many I-phones fly off the shelves. Desktops now, desktops tomorrow, desktops forever, and those betting against the desktop are just dead wrong.
     
    I use Linux Mint Xfce or Xubuntu on my Linux boxes simply because it gives me the desktop options I need, uses the minimum in system resources, and just freaking works all the time. I don't need an experimental OS to test my nerves. Work out the bugs first, then release an OS, but don't ask me to beta something.
     
    Now on to Kubuntu. Kubuntu is ambitious, because the KDE desktop is ambitious, aiming to be beautiful and flexible and give the user everything but the kitchen sink. I have felt Kubuntu has not been ready for prime time, with the glitchy Muon software manager the worst thing of all, but maybe the ultimate cause was the rapid pace of releases to keep time with Ubuntu releases. The strange decision to pursue development of Muon seemed to consume a lot of development resources. Kubuntu only had one main dev for a long time, and that's a huge problem when releases are generated faster than once a year. Microsoft has thousands of devs and takes years off between releases, spending most of that time apologizing for Windows 8.
     
    Ultimately, if this fracas results in the final divorce of Kubuntu from Ubuntu, well, then... good. Release according to when the product is ready, not to the beat of Ubuntu's drum. In the end, there needs to be more dev, less drama. Instead of sending nastygrams back and forth, the principals need to get back to coding. One of the problems with Linux is everybody wants to reinvent the wheel. Merge with Linux Mint, join with other devs, make new friends, whatever it takes to cooperate and work together in a logical fashion. This game of being a nomad developer alone in the wilderness is for the birds. Just solve all the problems and release something out that really works all the time.
  8. Drak

    Why Gays Win

    By Drak,

    Why do we see gay rights ascendant in our modern world? Through hard work. Because gays work hard and support the society in which they live. Because gays are not only okay, but positively good and do good works.
     
    When people are unencumbered of prejudice, in the final analysis, when str8 is teamed with gay in the trenches, and by the Goddess they are in modern America, it becomes crystal clear that the Queers carry just as much weight as the straights. Be proud!
     
    Any gay that is OUT feels the weight of the responsibility to REPRESENT not only their humble self but the millions declared and undeclared--or at least I do--and I woujld not be a poor ambassador--and you should not be either--so REPRESENT! and in this way and only this way we will overcome! If you cannot count twenty straights you have befriended, then what are you doing with your life?
  9. Drak

    Trust, Not Lust

    By Drak,

    Lonely people need to get a grip. I'm looking at you, gay men. Also single women. Looking for love is okay, but trusting strangers on the Internet is not. Let me tell you the first rule about strangers. Everything they say is a lie until verified by ten different pieces of evidence, at which point it can advance from lie to simple exaggeration. Never do human beings utter truth. Truth is elusive, not something that can be spoken.
     
    If you are browsing matchmaker-for-gullible-people.com, and the web site shows you a beautiful person, age 18, Christian, romantic, loving, and eager for a first experience, wanting to get it on with someone older, then that's a fantasy. What that means is that a 50 year-old felon wants to come over to your house, beat you unconscious, and steal everything you have. How does that sound? That's reality.
     
    Or maybe a cybercriminal from Russia wants to steal every last dollar from your online bank account. Hey, he needs surgery for his sick grandma. Have a heart, give him your bank password. Give him your email password. Help him out just this one time. Come on, be a pal.
     
    I have seen such scenarios unfold with otherwise intelligent folks getting victimized by the most transparent criminal schemes. Don't fall victim! Think with your big head, not your little head. Always evaluate people and situations with ice-cold objectivity. Insist upon perceiving reality as it is, not as how you would prefer it to be. Reject delusion! Only then will you be able to remain master of your money and your heart. Stay strong and stay cool, and reserve your love for those that prove worthy of trust, not beautiful strangers that fit into your fantasies of lust. Trust, not lust, is the way of friendship.
  10. Drak

    Boston Bomber 2

    By Drak,

    I was touched that the Boston Bomber told a nun no one should suffer like his victims did. Really. I thought to myself, well, here's two eyeballs, two kidneys, two lungs, a heart and a liver to harvest to repair the victims, who can get bumped up the waiting list for a transplant. No need for pain medication, as resources are limited, and our sick and dying have so much need of pain relievers. Restraints are all that is required for Mr. Bomber, restraints and liberal use of a taser.
     
    Our great hard-working industrious people deserve 100% free medical care and can be assisted by the donations of such as the Boston Bomber, whose name and identity is of no relevance, as he will not be remembered. When I began this post, I could not remember how to spell his foreign name, but then I thought, what does it matter? He is faceless. Nameless. Formless. Go back to the Void from whence you came--Scum.
     
    The nun may shed tears praying over the world's pain. I suggest she spend her time helping worthier souls, for there are many in this world who suffer, many sweet loving souls who never shed innocent blood in all their days, nay, nor caused harm to another. THEY I hold in honor and regard. THEY merit our labor and our words. Not some fiend of fair face and foul spirit.
  11. Drak

    About Obama

    By Drak,

    I live in region where there is little love for Obama.
     
    Some people tune in to a ton of FOX News or something to that effect, and their opinions are shaped by different information than the information I absorb from such sources as "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart," MS-NBC, the Washington Post, the Huffington Post, NORML, the BBC, the New York Times, and a liberal education in English literature and upbringing as the son of two college professors.
     
    Today I drank beer with a kind, gentle, generous man who told me Obama was a f***-up and wasn't a Christian. At the same time, the man celebrates my marriage to my husband and supports the rights of gays to marry and clearly has no problem with gays at all. What am I to say? I am a liberal Democrat, but I said nothing, and accepted the check that was written to my name for technical support rendered, like the wise man I reckon and hope I am.
     
    Each man is entitled to his own opinion, and I have no reason to preach to the unconverted, least of all customers of mine that pay me good coin and treat me well and respect me as a human being. The world would be a better place if we all adopted a "live-and-let-live" attitude. More flies go for honey than vinegar.
     
    My dear, dead friend, who I wrote about here, the dear woman, was a Republican and also believed as that man did, that Obama was wrong, but that gays were okay.
     
    I am not entirely sure I'm a good judge of a politician. I don't keep up with politics simply because I don't have the time. I work just about all the time. I like Obama because he made nice noises about gay marriage, is for health insurance for the poor, is for higher minimum wage, and recognizes global warming is a threat to human existence. I dislike Obama because he was timid about marijuana, timid about gay rights, and his health policy was too complicated. Look, health care is a great idea. But our system pales before Canada's or England's. I think Obama did a good job with the cards he was dealt, a B+ perhaps. I guess I wish he had something akin to magic, something that would make people like that gentle man I spoke with this evening stand up and take notice. Charisma, but also something more, strategic vision, like Napoleon I guess, a killer instinct so rare in our species. Yet Napoleon, he too failed, did he not, with his silly march on Russia? Where is perfection found? Nowhere. Not even in our beloved Spartacus. We are humans, it seems. We stutter. We forget. We dribble. We don't know everything. Well, at least we're a bit evolved from primates.
  12. Drak
    Recently, I was given a questionnaire by a student instructed to interview a homosexual. One of the questions was whether I was religious. I put down that I did not belong to a religion.
     
    Do I believe in God? I have trouble with the semantics. I think we need to determine what is meant by the word before we go any farther. God means different things to different people, just as Lucifer does. Every divinity seems to fluctuate in popularity and reputation just like a soft drink brand. A lot depends on marketing. A similar question might be, "Do I like to drink beverages?" Well, that depends on the beverage, doesn't it? I refuse to drink moonshine, say, or anything unpleasant.
     
    I don't find an intellectual home in any of the major world religions, although Unitarianism seems the most plausible, if only because of its ambiguity. A lot of the things that have been written and said about God seem amusing. Seems like wishful thinking on the part of humans. Delusion, paranoia, attempts to control other people.
     
    I like the idea of things or beings that we do not know. I am not sure who they are or whether it is possible to contact them for any form of communication. If they cannot be contacted, then they are irrelevant, like the gold that exists somewhere in the Earth's core that we just cannot reach no matter what. I feel the most spiritual and believing when under the influence of marijuana. I feel a oneness and connection to the whole creation then. Otherwise I feel grounded to the material world. My God is a reflection of my own experience and is positive, reaffirming and helpful. I like to think of God as a female entity, fertile and creative and full of ideas and wisdom.
  13. Drak

    UGotPosted.com

    By Drak,

    The story of the Bozo that got 18 years for operating UGotPosted.com tickled me. He can now find himself on ugotarrested.com and ugotsentup.com and prison.com. He won't need to pay any web domain fees for the next ten years at least.
     
    For a measly $30k, he traumatized women he had never met before who received his nastygrams demanding $300 to remove their compromising photographs. I think his behavior was more the result of woman-hating than motivated by greed.
     
    If people would just abide by a simple rule, don't be mean and don't be ugly, then the world would be a better place, and people would also lead happier lives.
     
    California crafted a new law specifically to target his web site, but he hit the snooze button on his blaring alarm clock urging him "take down the site, take down the site". Now he wakes up in a courtroom listening to victims tell him what they think of him. Dear Webmaster, instead of me sending you $300, how about you spend the next ten years of your life in prison?
     
    Now's a lousy time to be a woman-hater or a gay-hater, because gays and women are empowered like never before, at least in the West. I reckon in Saudi Arabia, his web site would be co-opted by the state and he would receive a state salary, while the female victims would be sentenced to 1,000 lashes.
  14. Drak

    Ayaan Hirsi

    By Drak,

    Ayaan Hirsi is an amazing author recently interviewed on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. As Emperor of the World, I'd appoint Ayaan Hirsi to take care of affairs of state.
  15. Drak
    Ever wondered what Lady Galadriel said to Sauron as she spanked him back to the East in Peter Jackson's "Battle of the Five Armies"?
     
    You have no power here, servant of Morgoth!
    You are nameless,
    Faceless,
    Formless!
    Go back to the Void from whence you came!
     
    Morgoth was the mighty evil tyrant of yesteryear, in his origin the most powerful of the angels of Eru and rather similar in many ways to the Adversary of Christian Apocrypha. To learn of Morgoth, the servants of Morgoth, and the Void, read Tolkien's "The Silmarillion, arguably the greatest of his works.
     
    As a boy, I despised "The Silmarillion," because it is the least accessible work by Tolkien and the least finished, more an outline in truth than a proper story like "The Lord of the Rings." I found it impenetrable and put it down for twenty years, but when I picked it up again, I perceived it was deeper by far and more meaningful, one might even say a fuller and superior realization of the author's religion. For my part, I find the Silmarillion more satisfying than the Bible. It is a wonderful fusion between the Christian faith and the Pagan. Eru is not some proud, vengeful, ridiculous, demented Old Testament deity, but a fully realized Christian God, loving and kind and mystical and beyond comparison, embodying the philosophy of Jesus, but employing the methods and manners of Paganism, magic and wonder and mystery. What Tolkien gave to us is a revelation. I do not bother with the Bible's Revelations, boring prattle penned by politicking patriarchs, more reflections of the power struggles of their age than the divine or the wise. I like Tolkien's take on religion and I think he improved upon what he inherited from his ancestors.
  16. Drak

    Vanuatu

    By Drak,

    Vanuatu had a bad day and a hellacious hangover. I could not even pronounce Vanuatu until a gentleman from that region of the world corrected me. Vanuatu's predicament reminds of New Orleans after hurricane Katrina.
     
    People should be helped out, given money to relocate, temporary housing, food, whatever they need. What I don't like is the idea of rebuilding another offering to Poseidon, who will just wash it all away again. These coastal targets are doomed in our warming climate. Let's be realistic. Are we really going to stop global warming? Unlikely. The political will is not there. So why rebuild? Relocate to higher ground, safer ground, so that future generations won't have to suffer such a fate. Give homeless people options, twenty different locations where they can relocate, areas that have a lot of jobs and not enough people to fill them. There may not be too many of those areas, in today's economy, but they are out there somewhere. Build factories for them, housing, government buildings, whatever is needed. But build safely out of reach of Poseidon's wrath.
  17. Drak

    Ellora's Cave

    By Drak,

    There's an article on vulture.com on the various controversies surrounding Ellora's Cave, an erotica publisher. I remember visiting that site once. I liked it, because the background was dark and easy on the eyes. I may have purchased a story out of curiosity there or at another web site, but I think it was purchased there. Along with the well-endowed stud, the story was also studded with stylistic, logical and grammatical errors, and the explicit sex scenes made me laugh. My curiosity kept me going for twenty or thirty pages, transforming into a morbid curiosity before I gave up. No one at the publisher's had bothered to give the story anything more than a hurried once-over, maybe a Microsoft Word spell-check at best. That must be how some authors churn out hundreds of titles. I did not complain. I got value for my five or ten dollars in a different way, encouragement to write.
  18. Drak

    Russia

    By Drak,

    Russia has had a bad millennium, that's all. Reading that region's history is like walking through an overgrown, unmaintained cemetery--depressing, sad, horrible. Their greatest composer in all of history, Tchaikovsky, abandoned Russia for better lands, but when he returned, they murdered him for being gay. Their rulers include Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, and Nicholas II, the last, murdered czar. None were good for gays. None were nice, smart or even half-way competent. Madness. Bloodlust. The last czar deserved to be executed for his many crimes, but the Russian Orthodox Church sainted him and dubbed him martyr of Christ, merely because they disliked his atheist successors. Imagine being ruled autocratically for a thousand years by an endless succession of bloody-minded fools incapable of reasoning their way out of a paper bag. Now the poor sods have Putin, who hates the gays, hates the West, hates democracy, and thinks nothing matters, not God, not good, not rule of law, nor philosophy. All that matters in Putin's world is pride, ego, this small span of years we call life. He wants to be the king of his little hill until he dies and is terrified lest anyone wrest some small particle of his power away from him. I hate Putin and think he is evil. I hope that he does not commit a great evil in our time.
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