PAST POST: Warrior-Kings - 2015/06/30

Random Musing: the leaders of "less advanced" civilizations were often the best warriors of their tribe. I believe this is a carryover from older instances of humanity where the toughest male had to be able to defend all the females intended to mate. As society perpetuates, the Warrior-king has become less and less of a staple in a tribe. is this progress?

Friend 1: Don't you think the best warriors also have wisdom in addition to battle prowess? Like, they know when to fight, when to negotiate, when to let go....

Maybe I have an idealized archetype in mind - but when I think Warrior-king, I think of that. So, I would not think it progress when he vanishes.

Friend 2: That is no longer true because modern warefare is divorced from an immediate impact on a family or small group. At least in our modern culture.

Friend 2: And in viewing the series on the civil war recently... the generals were not always the bravest or smartest of men. Often they were drunkards, andpompus and fool hardy... and audacious.

Me: Example of that is Ulysses S Grant, he was vlearly the inferior mind fighting Robert E Lee, he just had way more everything.

But this is sort of what i mean, the General now is an arm of the leader, at least in theory... I suppose in the case of the south Jefferson Davis is the only one who could have lead the Confederates better than Lee (he was first at West Point when Lee graduated 2nd). But could Lincoln have won the war as a General instead of the statesman?

Friend 3: I thought the leaders of hunter- gatherer tribes were often elders who may have been the best warriors in the past but in their leadership role were more like strategists & decision makers.

Me: That is also a consideration. Were tribes more or less advanced when they were small enough to avoid other tribes for generations and follow the wisest or when tribes brushed up against one another in war and trade and were lead by the strongest... Or the strongest by proxy...

Friend 4: What about the medicine man/shaman? His warrior skills were often shit, but a good warrior king knew that if you barely managed to survive a battle, he was the most important person on the planet to find, if you hoped to continue living. In many cases, he out ranked the king.

Me: good point. Maybe this is the origin of religion. he could heal and he could attribute it to whatever higher being.

Simulation and the Cyclical Nature of Life

Around this time last year, I posted on FB "I wouldn't be surprised if this was all a simulation, but I *would* be disappointed."

The reason this is significant is because two days ago, I had a thought that I'm not sure if this is a simulation. Or if it is a simulation, it would stand to reason that if a civilization existed that could plan OUR civilization, it would have to be super advanced.

Then I got to thinking, what if this was a creation? The 'Big Bang' was a lie and we had an intelligent designer. Where would that intelligent designer come from? Can an intelligent designer make themselves from nothing? Where does this all start?!?!

Common philosophical bullshit.

Then I came across the simulation post I made last year. I didn't add anything to it. No one commented on it. A few people liked it. It was a kind of nothing comment.

But systems (which a simulation would be on) are cyclical. Years are cyclical... more than that, every four years we have a cyclical reset. Months. Weeks. Days. Hours. Minutes. All cyclical. Robotic, you might say.

Last year, the day before the simulation comment, I asked my friends list to send me their current favorite song. Many did. I never got around to listening to any of them.

This year, I did the same thing on purpose because of last year's post, and I haven't listened to any of them either. The difference is, this year I'm a little less burned out and I hope to get to both lists and maybe make it a yearly tradition that no one clocks except me.

But it's still cyclical, whether intentional or not.

A year ago, I was in America sorting out and messing up the last bits of life I had there. Now I'm in China, still sorting out and trying to un-mess-up the last bits of life I had in Ohio.

I don't know if this is a simulation, but I sometimes feel the cyclical nature of my depression creeping up and into my life. It'll swirl around then flush out pretty regularly. It comes when I feel most boring and then I have to change something to make it go away. But what is there to change. I could shave my face and head, but that's only ever temporary. I don't want to change where I'm living because I like China. Even though there are parts of China I don't like, for the most part, this is a good place.

I don't feel at home here, but I didn't feel at home in America either and America has it's share of problems that four years of Donald Trump exacerbated and I don't know that four years of Joe Biden will fix.

I haven't felt at home anywhere, but I think it has nothing to do with the area, and more with the area of my heart... as cliche and stupid as that sounds.

I'll refer to places as home, but it's in name only. To make things simple. Not even to obscure the truth, just to make people not ask any questions. A friend recently referred to the internet as the only place they could be themselves 100% (or close). I don't even know if I have that on the internet anymore. I don't know if there's any place I can be totally 100%  myself. It isn't even like I'm hiding a secret racism that I can't let anyone know. It's more like, if I started revealing parts of myself, someone would get hurt.

20s-Azriel would say, "fuck it, if they can't handle you, they don't deserve to" but 20s-Azriel doesn't know the kind of shit 30s-Azriel has gotten up to. I'm not even a shred of the principled person I was back then. I feel fake sometimes. Like the mask on my face to keep my germs in is the least I can do to not infect others.

I feel the worst for my students because I portray myself squarely in "poet mode" where I can do no wrong, or if I do wrong, I'm doing in as part of a performance. I'm afraid my weakness or cowardice will leak into them even while I'm trying to push them to be better than me. I'm so in awe of my students. They are pushing themselves to learn to speak the hardest Human language ever and they are doing so well even if they think they aren't.

They give me hope and I'm glad to watch them on their way, but that still doesn't make this home. I still don't feel any less than alien.

In the Matrix, Agent Smith said the first Matrix was a paradise, a place where everyone could be happy. He said that Matrix was a disaster. The Human mind couldn't comprehend programming where there were no problems.

Programming...
That's an interesting concept.
I think I've mentioned this before... but I don't believe in an abundance of free will.
I think people don't have control over their actions, but it's not due to "god" controlling them. I think it's programming.
Evolution has dictated we survive by performing a particular set of actions to continue our species.

The four Fs as they are called: Feeding, Fighting, Fleeing and Reproduction (*wink*).

That's what keeps us going. That is our initial programming.
If we break any of those programs we die as a species, some faster than others.
That's where we get our free will. If we go against our programming.
If we decide not reproduce, the species dies out, but it's our own choice (unless someone takes the choice away from us, in that case it's still an exercise of free will, just someone else's free will and you still lose yours).

You exercise free will when you choose not to do the things you are programmed to do. So if you are programmed to eat and you decide not to, you exercise free will. If you are programmed to fight to defend yourself, but you do not, you are exercising free will. If you are programmed to run away when you are in danger and you do not, you are exercising free will.

Even if the exercising of that free will is in order to save someone else, it is putting someone else ahead of yourself and that is against natural law and therefore exercising free will.

This isn't a complete theory and I reserve my right to change my mind.
Also, this blog has become a clusterfuck of ideas. Just like the simulation which we may or may not be in.
I'll stop here.

I start a new schedule when I wake up. I have a goal to finish Novel 5 by the end of the summer.
Wish me luck!

(untitled fighting tournament) ROSTER with comments

Groundskeeper Willie: A wily Scotsman and a true cleaner. He is sick of the daily grind of tending shrubs. He’s come to snip off parts of his opponents.

WeThem: A polytheist monosyllable. A chameleon-deity that can take on the most useful traits from mythology when necessary. An plural, omniverse entity. The Thesis and Antithesis.
          Me: I might want a new name for this one.

Still: A character built around stillness. When not fighting they stay in constant motion. When they go still, their body changes. Not tense. Completely loose. Completely still. Devastating to the uninitiated.
          Me: I think I want a new name for this one.
          Friend 1: Tranquility

The Walker: A monster once bit the Walker, after five days of agonizing pain, the monster died. The Walker beat a sun in a staring contest. The Walker doesn’t cheat death. He wins fair and square. The Walker went to Mars. That’s why there are no signs of life.

GoKal: The last surviving member of an ancient and powerful race. GoKal draws power from ultraviolet radiation. He has the ability to project energy beams, fly, teleport and has nearly impervious skin and strength beyond measure.
          Me: I mixed Superman and Goku for this one.
          Me: I might need a new name for this one.
          Friend 2: Stranger

Mister Neighbor: a mild-mannered gentleman who advocates for peace and neighborliness. A carbon fiber sweater, blade-rimmed fighting slippers. Punches faster than the eye can see.

The Glad Butcher: A meek, emotionally repressed sportsman specializing in American Football, Hockey and Golf. He wields golf clubs, hockey sticks and wears football pads. He can withstand a lot of punishment, but once he gets angry, he becomes nigh unstoppable.
          Me: I might need a new name for this one.
          Friend 3: Sounds a little like Casey Jones.
          Me: Except Casey Jones is in no way timid haha
          Friend 2: DudeBro
          Me: i see DudeBros as more confident than this guy is.
          Me: he's got the Bobby Boucher timid thing until you piss him off, then he goes nuts.
          Friend 2: The Ref

Lurk: a combatant who can fight with energy attacks, however, only when unseen. If the eyes of the opponent can see Lurk, no damage can be dealt. Lurk can blend in with shadows.

Victoria Quietus: wearing a wide and ruffled dress and wide brimmed hat, Victoria is a trained assassin who wields two energy-sickles, able to cut through almost anything, as well as a secret poison tipped hat pin. Vainly, she takes photos of her defeated opponents with a camera she can also use to blind them.

Wu Kang: A staff-wielding monk from the planet Womb with a history of defending his race from invading world of Vulp. A strange creature, Wu Kang can project flaming square clumps of his own fecal matter at opponents. He comes to the tournament to gain help as the Vulpians are trying to upset the balance and breaching Womb’s defenses.

Goothulu: Adorable. Tiny. Monstrous. Goothulu contains multitudes and no lives matter to this elder god in the body of a human infant.

Cleric: The second choice from his planet. The first choice succumbed to an illness and Cleric was chosen as the replacement. “This is my day off,” and “I wasn’t even supposed to be here today” are some of his worries.

Dev Luceraux: A former United States Special Forces operative killed in combat, but resurrected in a secret experimental program, Anti-Corps. His original mission was defeating fascist threats, both foreign and domestic. Now his purpose is unclear, even to him and his friend, the Doctor.

Agafya Zavidnyy: from the cold outer reaches of Siberia, Russia, Agafya is a small woman with immense strength. She won many prize weapon fights with a giant log as a weapon. She was recruited by the KGB and outfitted with a suit of armor capable of a great many functions. The armor comes with a shield made of the hardest and lightest metal on Earth. She’s also been given a genetically enhanced bean which immediately renews her energy if it should ever be depleted.

Glugluch: From a race of hagfish-humanoid creatures, unevolved for the last 300 million years, Glugluch, produces a mucus-like slime that can overwhelm attackers and potentially suffocate them. Glugluch is extremely flexible and quick with an irregular, fearsome, mouth structure.

Matchman: from a species of what resembles humanoid string beans, Matchman’s species can access a pocket dimension where they can store anything, including but not limited to weapons. Matchman was chosen as a defender of the race because of his shock of long blonde hair.
          Me: I might need a different name for this one.

When an Orc Loves a Woman small excerpts

“Is your displeasure something I can help with?” Crag asked. “I can be persuasive.” He smiled a scary grin which shifted Niya from one leg to the other.

“Naw,” the girl said. “It’s just my boyfriend being himself.” She sighed.

“I’m not sure what type of an elf is a ‘hims’ elf, but I’ve never trusted their kind.”

-- When an Orc Loves a Woman, Chapter 15

***

From "When an Orc Loves a Woman" About an hour went by. Niya reached the end of the cornrows for Crag’s hair. She tied off every strand and bound them in small circles of what smelled like the bouncewood tree in Torxania. Nonlethal weapons were made for training from this tree. Hence, it was called bouncewood because it bounced off of the young orcs instead of killing them.

A little later in the same chapter:

A small scuffle could be heard from the door. The smack of a punch and the crash of a chair. Nick burst into the bedroom doorway. His skin resembled Crag’s shade of brown, but his limbs were much smaller and he was a head shorter. His flat top had a notch cut into it, kind of a throwback to an earlier decade that worked on him, at least in Niya’s eyes. She was the one who did his hair.

“What the hell?!” Nick exclaimed his question. He looked Crag up and down and took a step forward, raising his fists. “Who is this mother–”

Crag’s massive hand was wider than Nick’s face. He didn’t strike Nick, rather used his hand to push Nick backwards out the door and into the wall on the other side of the hallway. Crag guided Niya behind him as Nick stood up shakily.

“Who is this guy, with the jacked up grill?” Nick said from the relative safety of outside the bedroom door.

“I am Crag, of the…, Crag Rockshadow, you have been broken up with. I suggest you leave before that bit artistic language turns into your bones.”

DREAM: Mr Li and My Childhood Home - 2020/03/10

Mr Li (driver for the foreign teachers in the college where I work in China) picked me up from somewhere. It was a parking lot. I had luggage. He wasn't driving the school van. It was a four door sedan. I don't remember the color.

I had a red rolling suitcase. As I was loading it, he said something, I don't remember what, but it made me uncomfortable. I am not easily shaken, so whatever he said must have been pretty significant. The weirder part is, Mr Li doesn't speak English (he understands it IRL, so I think he can, he just doesn't). Whatever he says, I am able to understand it.

We pull up to a stop in front of my childhood home. The house is still standing (it was demolished IRL almost 20 years ago). I get out of the car and start berating Mr Li for what he said and "the energy you were expressing towards me made me uncomfortable." I don't think he responded, but I was wigged all the way out.

I take my suitcase and close the trunk. I walk towards the house. He drives off before I get in the house. The door is not the same as I remember. It's on the same part of the house (the left side of the porch as you face it). I get into the door, it is painted green on the inside (this doesn't feel right, but I don't remember the door color from my youth). I am worried that Mr Li is going to come back and harm me, so I close the door behind me, but it is in such bad shape I don't feel secure. I lock it on the handle at the left side of the door (facing it from the inside). The hinges on right side of the door are barely hanging on, so much that I can see outside. I pull the door closer to the jamb and use a deadbolt lock to "secure" it. I prop a white aluminum door, also barely on the hinges, against this door, but I don't feel safe.

I turn to look at the inside of the house. I don't remember much, except that it looks the same as I remember from being a kid. The difference is, it is bare, almost nothing is left in the house. There is a tan vibe through the house, I don't remember if tan was a prevailing color, but it felt familiar. The wall to my left as I am looking in is flimsy particle board with a gray, faux wood pattern. The gray, upright piano may have still been there.

I turn to my right and see a wooden community center table covered with junk. The house has a huge (HUGE) bay window. More than half of the front of the living room. This window couldn't open IRL. There are two, smaller windows one on each side and they would slide up 6 inches or so to open (I don't remember if they were there IRL). All three windows were open and I couldn't close them. There was no screen to keep bugs out.

Somehow I see that it is 80 degrees inside and I am reminded of another time I was here (in a dream where the heater was running constantly to counter the open windows) where my brother and oldest sister were living in this house and it was in similar disrepair. Neither of them are here now.

On the community center table in front of the window is a mass amount of garbage. There is a long piece of cardboard that looks like it is supposed to fit under the open window and I try to wedge it there. If the heater is running, I should make sure I am not wasting energy. After this, I look again at the table and notice how much mold and crap (figuratively) is on the tables. Toys, papers. Garbage. Three pizza boxes with left over slices covered in mold.

PAST POST: Influx of Friends

*NOTE* This post was made in conjunction with two other posts about absorbing my two additional Facebook accounts into my personal Azriel Johnson account. The other two posts didn't have much worth commemorating, but this one had a little.*

POST: By the end of this influx, I should have about 1,000 friends. Not sure how I feel about that.

Friend 1: I am maxed out at 340 and I don’t know how I feel about that.
          Me: This is a first world scary feeling because all of my "normie" friends are going to see the kind of "effed up" stuff I post on the regular.
          Friend 1: I either don’t have those friends or don’t care what people see me say. 95% of people on here have no real intimate connection to me or have any influence in my life, thus what they think of my words is irrelevant. Lol
          Me: that's fair. the people i have here (and intend to add) are interesting to me, whether they have influence over my life is to be determined.
          Friend 1: Azriel Johnson I see. I don’t know why people request me. I’m nothing to worry about.
          Me: I like you. even if I don't talk to you all the time. :)
          Friend 1: thanks. That’s kind. I am pretty much a just a person who creates art and poetry, but has little desire to be in the public eye or leave my home for any reason.
          Me: that's also fair. you have to take care of yourself, if being in public doesn't serve your best interests, it's best to stay hidden.
          Friend 1: Yea it doesn’t help me on the notoriety front as an artist or poet but it is more comfortable.

Friend 2: THat's almost half what my girlfriend has.

Confederate Dinosaurs - 2020/06/11

I'll admit...

When I was a little kid, I thought the south should have won.
But I based it on absolutely NO political or human rights knowledge.
I just thought "rebels are cool" (I was 8-10ish).
I liked my little books about Robert E. Lee and how he was painted as a hero, etc.

But then I lost interest in the Civil War
(like previous favorite subjects before it, such dinosaurs).

When I got back to it, I didn't much like these Rebels...
They were defending the idea of owning another human being!

I feel like people who support the Confederacy are still enamored
with the idea of being a "rebel" and the love of "freedom,"
but what they fail to understand is, the Confederacy wasn't about freedom.
It was about the exact opposite. And just like dinosaurs,
this idea that it was anything more than a cover and propaganda
so the rich could stay richer on the backs of black slaves needs to go extinct.
The Confederacy sucks.
And if you support the Confederacy YOU suck.

PAST POST: Mean streets of Canton - 2013/11/13

Canton: Beware, there are morons on the streets tonight. I was nearly run off the road by some clown in a tan/white four door sedan. I didn't catch the plates. :( It happened RIGHT BEHIND A COP. The cop STOPPED at 6th and Market at a GREEN LIGHT! I had to swerve to the right to avoid getting creamed (if I had braked it would have been disastrous). The car (the one I was driving) hit the curb and about 19th and Market the tire started to give out so we had to turn off to change it.

So be careful one and all and I love you.

Related post by Friend 1:
I changed a tire and peed on a building tonight. What up, bitches!!!

Friend 1's Friend: Lmmffao!!!!

Me: We were on the way to get her to her ride to the meeting ironically.

Friend 2: lmao

Friend 1: (Name), get a better grade.

Friend 3: At a loss...

Friend 4: You rock....you tire changing, building pisser! lol

Friend 5: (Friend 3), we appear to be having your luck tonight. Hope your evening is going well!

Friend 6: at the same time?

Friend 4: (Friend 1), your post made me remember something from my past that I hadn't thought of in a LONG time. lol. Read my status.

Friend 3: You don't want all of my luck... 2 flat tires at once. But I'm relieved none of you are injured!