inherently different

I’m on a pace of creating and deploying one new blog design per month! I figure since I can’t seem to motivate myself to blog more than a few times per month, maybe a new design per month will help. I’m posting most of these designs on my web development website for download.

I was curious about how the digital part of Level 26: Dark Origins might work out. So far so good.

I’m in the mood for a movie, unfortunately there aren’t any zombie apocalypse movies currently in the local cineplex. I’ve heard a lot of good things about The Lovely Bones and thought I’d give that a whirl…

Finally got around to creating a favicon for this site… For anyone who has been following my blog since 1999 when I first started this here thing, the monkey should be familiar… Ahhh… the monkey diaries… could be time to break that out again.

I’m a sucker for movies that get made from comic books. Heck, I even like Electra and Daredevil… Here is another one I’m pretty sure I’ll enjoy. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m pretty sure that over the course of human history, there have been a great many large scale tragedies. Natural disasters have wiped out millions all over the world.

Many of those tragedies though have probably been ignored by the world at large.  Mostly because shit like that happens all the time. Sad? Yes. A reason to extend a lot of false compassion? Oh hell no.

Don’t get me wrong. The Earth Quake in Haiti was a tragedy. But long before the Earthquake, Haiti was a shit hole. One in which the people were living lives of quiet desperation. Where was the outpouring of compassion then? Why does it take a natural disaster to motivate people into action?

Call me jaded, but I think that anyone who donates to Haiti is doing so out of guilt than out of any real sense of compassion. Sure, donating to charity helps people rid themselves of guilt, but ultimately the action is meaningless because the act is less about helping others than about helping themselves.

I have been a Charger fan for a long time. Longer in fact than I care to admit. It is weekends like this that form the most mind numbingly painful memories in my 43 years. Just once I want to be able to see my home town team win the big one… alas, it will not be this year… yet again.

At some point I am going to have to come to a decision about whether or not I should part ways with my favorite team. For many of you, at least those who have never had a lifelong (or nearly so) love affair with a sports team, the idea of “breaking up” with a team might seem a bit odd or even using the analogy at all might seem odd.

Either way though, like a slutty girlfriend that is both hot and indiscriminate about her dalliances, at some point you just have to say, “You’ve broken my heart for the last time!”

Perhaps you’ll never date another again (in case you’re lost in the analogy, I mean root for another team ever again)… or perhaps you’ll rebound with the first one that comes along (root for the first team that wins consistently… which would mean I could be like any New England Patriot fan). Or perhaps you’ll switch “sides” all together and begin following professional badmitton (do I really need to explain that one?).

All I know is that for roughly 40 years of my life, I’ve been consistently kicked in the crotch by the San Diego Chargers and I’m one torn pair of panties away from ending this relationship for good… or at least until I get a promise that it will never happen again.

I’ll admit that I am not the most compassionate person around. I’ll even admit that I’m actually very callous in terms of how I view tragedy. The indian ocean tsunami didn’t really faze me, and I’ll be perfectly honest when I say that what happened in Haiti, while sad, doesn’t drive me to change my belief that the world is dangerous and bad things happen to good people and we just have to accept that.

The thing is, as callous as I am, I wouldn’t think to blame an entire country for the tragedies that might befall them. Especially when that tragedy is caused by a natural disaster. Why isn’t Pat Robertson in a home for the demented? Or why aren’t his handlers doing a better job keeping that senile old & bitter man from making ridiculous comments to the media?

I am back in San Diego (North County to be exact, in Poway) for the first time in at least a decade and it has changed enough that figuring out where everything is can be confusing at times.

Still a wonderful place, but it is also weird in so much as the people seem to be, at least to me, stuck in the late 80s. I don’t think I’ve seen this much day-glo since I graduated from high school. People also seem older, even perfect strangers seemed to be older than they were when I lived here.

I’m enjoying the winter here as it has always been one of my favorite places to be when it’s cold. The smell of oak burning in fireplaces brings back a flood of memories.

And to those people who viewed my last post as uncharacteristic, I am still the same, mildly caustic, overly rational person… I just thought wishing for peace was infinitely better than wishing for bloodshed.