Predestination or Coincidence?

There are certain times in a person's life that pose the question: Is this just a coincidence or was it meant to happen? Of course, asking a question like that always leads you down murkier roads. If it was meant to happen, who decided when and where this event would take place? How cognizant is this deciding entity, or is it simply a collection of energy? Are there more than one deciding entities involved, and if so, how do they decide and agree on when, where and to whom universal events are supposed to happen, and what if they can't agree?

Too many questions.

Still. There are those encounters that create a space of doubt in your otherwise skeptical mind. Those encounters that allow the briefest possibility that something more may be out there and involved in your lowly little life to slip into the tangled whorls of your brain and infiltrate a long-defended fortress of logical disbelief.

Then again, logic can't answer all the questions beyond reasonable doubt.

I'm not a morning person. I don't know any morning people. I think those who insist on being cheerful and energetic before noon ought to be shot. Or tortured slowly and excruciatingly.

Yeah. I like that better.

On occasion, however, I find myself awake at God forsaken hours of the day - today for example - when the combination of work schedules and sharing a car force me out of bed and into psuedo-productivity as a means to fill hours and hours of relative boredom. The worst part about these mornings (and there are several "worst parts"; in my opinion the only benefit to being awake at 9 AM is a McDonald's breakfast, and that's not saying much in the defense of mornings) is that there are other people driving.

This is a big problem. I don't know where you live, but here, venturing out in an automobile is equivalent to suicide, or at least a very strong death wish. The number of times I've almost been smeared across the tarmac has surpassed any possibility of accurate representation, and I live in a perpetual state of fear every time I get behind the wheel. You think I'm exaggerating. I can tell by the look on your face. I swear I'm not. At least once a week (sometimes more) there's an accident in front of my apartment complex, adding yet another reason why there are always cops hovering about to add to my inherent paranoia, and there are a million other intersections just like that one all over the city. Okay, maybe now I'm exaggerating about the exact number of intersections, but everything else is true.

In reality, I'm just grumpy because I had to get up early and this computer doesn't have an accessible USB port, and sooner or later I'll have to risk my life among these crazy Florida drivers.All of that aside, I've been thinking quite a bit lately about gender and sexuality and the correlations between the two. It's one of those things that twists around my brain for awhile before forming anything coherent or tangible with a visible and understandable progression to it (which is why I raelly must start composing these in advance when I have the time to revise and edit and ensure they have all the proper information in them). And lack extremely long parenthetical comments, at that. I shall blame being awoken too early today. If only I could remember all the pertinent details of my conversation last night - or, more appropriately, my tipsy monologue delivered to my helpless victim who, I'm pretty sure, didn't particularly care at that very moment about the details of what I was saying. Then again, my tipsy monologue, if I remember correctly, wasn't exactly the most straight forward representation of the ideas I was trying to convey.

Much like this entry, as a matter of fact.

Have a nice weekend.

Join the Queue

Lacking a computer of my own, I spend a majority of my time lurking around libraries in hopes of getting to use one of the five barely-adequate machines they have here. The whole system is computerized. You take your library card to the reservations computer, type it in and it assigns you a computer and a time automatically in one hour increments. However, if the person using that computer before you finishes early, you can sign in early and have extra time. Or, say you signed up for a computer and have an hour and a half wait, and then fifteen minutes after you made your reservation, someone else walks in and gets a computer immediately. This happens quite frequently and people get very upset about it. I can understand the motivation somewhat; I spend a lot of time just sitting in the library watchig the people here and trying to amuse myself so I can use a computer for an hour (today I waited 80 minutes, for example), but I'm not about to get irate and start screaming at library employees because I have to wait. I understand it's not their fault.I understand how the system works, and beyond all that, it's a fucking computer. There are worse things in the world than having to spend an hour waiting in a library. Maybe try reading a book once in awhile...?

Anyway. My point being that because of this system, and the subsequent ticking clock at the top of the screen, my post yesterday wasn't as well-formed as it should have been, and leaving the library and the post behind, I decided that I would never again "improvise" an entry (and yet, here I am, doing it again) because my intention is to be concise, clear and articulate. There are too many things happening in the world that never get spoken about properly. There are too many things that aren't spoken about enough, or by the right people, or that just go completely ignored and unnoticed no matter who says them or how often their said. While this may be a completely futile endeavor, I'm partial to futile endeavors and am determined to stick with this one.

Eventually, I'll probably come back around to the topic of gender and sexuality. It's one of those things you can't really avoid, and I tend to encounter some issue with it every day, but for the moment I just want to say this:

Life is hard. Life is unfair. Deal with it and stop making it worse for everyone else over something stupid.

Gender and Identity

Why is it that we, as a species, feel the need to group and classify ourselves in such rigid litle boxes? Why must we insist that anything outside our realm of understanding could not possibly exist? After all. humanity is so wise and knowing that it has yet to make any major errors. Ever.

The fact remains, though, that in terms of such basic things as gender and sexuality (and religion, basic preferences and just about everything else) we will go to any lenghts to prevent anyone else from deviating from the proscribed line of thought.

And to those who would do that, I ask this:

Why do you care whether that boy wants to paint his nails and wear a dress?
Why do you care if that girl likes having sex with other girls?
Why do you have to know the intimate details of total strangers' private lives?

I mean. Really. You wouldn't ask you heterosexual neighbour what she and her husband do when they have sex. You wouldn't ask your coworker what his penis looked like or how well it worked. Why is it okay to ask transgender/transsexual/bisexual/gay/not normal or straight people these questions? And for those of you asking those questions who also firmly believe that these people are perverts and abominations... what does that make you for wanting to know about it?

The Test of Beginnings.

You should always have a great beginning. No, check that. You should always have an absolutely fucking kick ass mind-blowing beginning. The kind of thing that makes people stop in their tracks and say, "What the hell...?"

Unfortunately, this isn't it. I don't think I'm capable of such lofty ambitions, so we'll have to do without. Or imagine that such a beginning took place while our collective backs were turned. It's possible. Hell, anything is possible if you really think about it. I'm not an artist or a writer or anything creative whatsoever, so don't come here expecting any of that. I am, however, an observer and commentator and, spending most of my life thrust into the sweaty, rank melee of human existence, encounter quite a few things to fulfill both functions. So, now I'm taking it one step further.

The Karmic Spyder takes on the Internet.