Terrible, terrible things

Jesus, it's chilly.

Okay, I'm back from the hospital. Just a hairline fracture. I'm lucky.

I'm going to open the window. Wish me luck.

Jesus, it's hot.

I had a lot of self-esteem problems when I was younger. I had no trouble meeting girls, but actually becoming anything other than "a really nice guy and good friend" was pretty much impossible. I had serious rejection issues, you see. It would take me about five years to gather enough courage to actually ask someone out and, of course, by that time we'd become friends. And you know how that goes.

One of the positives to all this, though, is that only the most patient and kind women could stand my fumbling attempts at "not pushing too fast." So my dating experience was generally with either kind and patient women, which was great, or with a few take-charge-and-take-what-I-want-ride-'em-cowgirl!! women who pursued me. This was also great.

Then someone invented the modem and my life was changed forever. I could practice being myself online, just like teenage boys practice flexing their muscles in front of a mirror. What the hell? Nobody could see my face, and if they didn't like me they could go to hell. As it turned out, some folks actually did like the online me. Since my online persona isn't a persona at all but, rather, the real me, I gained a lot of self-esteem via the modem and stopped tripping over my tongue in real life, too.

This led to meeting and marrying someone who is neither patient nor kind. (No! I'm kidding! I can't afford to give away a house, honey, it's just a joke!)

It also led to me speaking my mind more and more often. This means my friends know who they are. All the rest I've told to go to hell for various reasons. Life's too short to spend it dancing around with people you don't really like.

But, and this is the best, it led to me posting this, with somewhat surprising results.

So here's a big shout out to those of you who've added to the happy pan as per request. One submission was enough to balance my anger at an earlier computer problem. Another submission helped to erase the memory of losing a cat a year ago.

I smiled. I'll be smiling this time next month, too. Happy, happy, happy, happy, happy...

;-)

Is the name "Galoot" at the top of this page clickable? If it is, you have javascript enabled and can use it to send me mail. (But don't. Odds are I'll just delete it unless you're: a) offering me money or sex, and b) not Nigerian or arsidubu.) If it isn't clickable then, well, you can't e-mail me. Get over it.

   Q: Why the hell do you use javascript on your page, you dumb galoot?

   A: Because I don't want spam. You can read it and you can click it, but address-harvesting spambots get discrete little bits of my address ("pixelarts" and "@" and "sh" and "aw.ca") all mixed up on several different lines.

   Q: I've already got my address munged and it looks like "mailto...". Why's your way better, huh?

   A: I don't know that it is better. In some ways it's worse, because if you don't have javascript enabled you can't click on "Galoot" to reach me.

But I do know that it's a simple matter of telling a spambot to take every "a" and change it to "a" and every "b" and change it to "b" and so on.

It's not so simple to tell a bot to pull tiny bits of the page out and reassemble them to make a valid e-mail address.

Here's the javascript I use to display my cut-up address to bots while letting your browser (and you) see the real deal.

  <SCRIPT TYPE="text/javascript">

  <!-- 

  spooisoopsbackwards='aw.ca'

  spooisoopsbackwards=('sh' + spooisoopsbackwards)

  spooisoopsbackwards=('pixelarts' + '@' + spooisoopsbackwards)

  document.write('<A href="mailto:' + spooisoopsbackwards + '">' + 'Galoot' + '</a>')

  //-->

  </script><NOSCRIPT>Galoot</NOSCRIPT>

Anything you put between the <NOSCRIPT> tags is readable by people who have javascript disabled. It's also readable by bots, of course.

   Q: Christ, man! You're a bloody genius!

   A: Why, yes. Yes I am. But in this particular case I just stole the idea from here. My own genius lies in creative mockery, not javascript.

If you have other ideas for making a clickable mailto: link that spambots can't scan, let me know.

Small town living has its pluses. So does living on an island.

Vancouver Island is has an area of 12,408 square miles and about 600,000 people. That's 48 people/sq. mile, or a bit lower than the population density of Iowa. And whereas Iowans have corn as high as an elephant's eye, us Islanders have trees as tall as... as... a really big tall thing (Rodgers and Hammerstein, eat your heart out). This doesn't make Vancouver Islanders better, of course. That'd be silly. It just makes Iowans worse.

Anyway, living on a relatively sparsely populated island is swell. The ocean is always close, the wildlife is abundant, the air is sweet and the fishing is great. The problem, however, is that it's... well, it's an island. If the ferry workers strike, nobody goes anywhere. If the one main highway is blocked because of an accident, nobody gets their mail. And if the highway is blocked and a windstorm knocks down a power line, well, we sit in the dark.

And that's what happened today. The power in our town got knocked out for a few hours. I know, I know. Big whooping deal. Well, let me tell you, it was a big deal here. I didn't have access to my computer! I was at a total loss. I've forgotten how to read text that doesn't shine in my face, so digging out a book was out of the question. I've gotten into the habit of IMing the kids downstairs, so I don't really remember how to speak out loud. And the sun scares me, so going outside for more than a few minutes wasn't an option.

I can't believe I'm going to confess this (but it's a blog and that's what people do in blogs. They confess. It's very Catholic.) but I spent the last several hours "standing" at the sink, washing dishes by hand. I also put laundry on a line to dry!

I know!

Having no access to a television or a stereo or a computer to play MP3s, I found myself making mouth-noises while I worked. The sound startled me so much I almost dropped a plate on the floor. It was a familiar sound, so I stopped what I was doing and tried to remember. That sound... that eerie sound. I was making a sound with my mouth. I just couldn't remember what it was called. I was very frustrated, because normally I'd just type "mouth sound" or "lip noise" into Google and have the answer in three seconds flat.

I remembered hearing that sound as a kid. So I sat down (exhausted from moving heavy coffee mugs from the soapy water to the not soapy water - "rinsing") and tried to recall the word. After a few minutes it came to me. I was whistling! HOLY MOTHER OF GOD, I was whistling! Just like they used to do in the old days. And I liked it!

Well, there's no real point in continuing the story. The power finally came back on and I stopped what I was doing and slowly walked, zombie-like, to the TV and the radio and the other TV and the computer, turning everything back on. While I waited for Windows to load I went around the house and turned on all the lights. Banish the silence! Banish the darkness! Banish the backwards pygmy entertainment of "whistling."

The power's back on and I'm normal and happy again. But I'd better close this entry and IM one of the kids to bring me a towel. I think there's drool running down my chin, and I can't check because I'm typing.

I think one of the neat things about free blogging at BlogSpot is the nifty Googleads at the top of the page. You can get a sense of what a person is all about just by a quick glance at the banner up there.

For instance, I am a very complicated and tortured soul. I'm a deep thinker, and a lot of people probably have trouble keeping up with me. In order to understand the complexity of my words you must be both educated and wise. It's true. As I write this, at the top of the page is an ad which reads "BlogMatrix Jäger: Simplify blog reading. The faster news and blog reader."

Yes. My musings are too much for you little people. They need simplifying so you can understand me.

I'm sorry. I'll try to talk dumber.

The world is a set of scales.

In one pan is all the madness, idiocy, sorrow, illness, cruelty, death and suffering of the entire six-plus billion of us. I call this the ugly pan.

In the other is all the joy, love, laughter, sanity, respect, warmth and trust each of us brings to each others' lives. I call this the happy pan.

Odds are, you'll never be rich and you'll never be famous. It's fairly unlikely that you'll have a charitable foundation named after you. You'll probably never be remembered for some GREAT DEED that changed the world. You're probably not a Ghandi or a Mother Theresa. You're just an average mensch.

But you don't need to do great deeds in order to make the world a more pleasant place to live. Every smile you share, every bit of laughter you cause, every time you wave back at the kid in the car beside you, every time you actually listen to someone who has a problem, even if you don't have advice to give, every smile you bring to someone else's face, every dime you see on the street and *leave* there for some child to see and grab, is another pebble in the happy pan.

Keep adding little bits to the happy pan of life, because it really is too short to spend it wallowing in self-pity or yelling at the kids. Before you know it you'll be out of time. If you leave the world a bit better than it was when you came into it, you will have made your mark.

Start right now. Mail me a picture of your tits. I'll smile, and you will have made the world a little bit happier.

First post!