Since my better half insisted on starting a separate blog for our stories and related content with the pregnancy, I won’t bore anyone with double posting of the articles written on www.parentphobia.com over to here. Though I will post updates here on any new articles I have written there.
I am currently in the middle of writing a series of articles about my experiences of the first weeks of pregnancy. There are currently two articles up. Check them out if you feel froggy.
God I miss SWG. It is funny how something that wasn’t based at all in the real world could have such a profound effect on me. It brought me happiness, comradery ; in a very twisted way there was a sense of belonging. There has only been one other place in my life that made me feel good about being the weird fool that I am.
I lived in this small town that was very pretentious. On the surface it looked the very picturesque meaning of quaint. An outsider standing in the middle of the downtown area could easily believe that this was a place that could feel like home. Every one was part of your extended family. A place of peace and acceptance. A place that made you feel like you had a big fluffy blanket wrapped around while you were sipping hot cocoa on a cold stormy late Autumn evening. Of course that was what they wanted outsiders to think. It was a tourist trap. But as soon as the tourists went home from their little mini vacation a completely different atmosphere appeared. And the true town’s personality emerged. The people were not so well adjusted, nor excepting. I always saw the town as a form of Broadway stage during tourist season. When the lights went down and everybody went home - the makeup and costumes came off.
Then late at night the circus freaks emerged. Mostly during their beloved Halloween season. October was their time to show their true form and come out and play. The city officials and those who ran the town hated them. Hated their existence. They thought it was a blight on their perfect little town. This little group of circus freaks were twistedly talented volunteers of the local haunted school house. And I was one of them. A proud member in fact. I cherished my part in smearing the towns perfect little exterior. All of us at the haunted house did, I think. The town wanted to hide it’s imperfections. Shoving them in the basements under lock and key. October was the only time we could escape and show our deformed faces and non compliant revolutions. It was mostly innocent of course. We never really did any visual damage. We were hooligans but we were not criminals. This was my first true realization of home. My first place of refuge. Empowering, we were all royalty there. Not the vagabonds the town branded us as. Plus there still is nothing like scaring the pants off a guy twice my size.
I then lost it. You can’t stay in one place forever though. You must move forward on your path wherever it may take you.
I didn’t find another home until a few years later. And oddly enough it took its form as a MMORPG. It’s insane but in a lot of ways it filled the gap in my life that the haunted house made when I departed from it. Once again I was able to be a more projected version of the things I wanted to be and liked in myself. I put on the skin of a Twi’lek and played my grandest role yet. That of a little blue Tyrenanian Twi named Xie ‘lanthia. In actuality I found it terribly easier to be comfortable with being me under the guise of lighthearted silliness of a cantina than those of your everyday “real life” scenarios. With SWG I found true social happiness.
The truth be, I am a bit of a social reject. A self proclaimed hermit. Even my husband scorns my antisocial tendencies at times. He has dubbed me socially challenged and he is most definitely correct in his view of me. In some ways it is something that is beyond my control but mostly I find contentment and even a bit of honor at being a mob of one. It fits me. I do love socializing with people once you get through the BS but unfortunately I found that a large majority of people are entirely made up of BS. I actually should rephrase that. I hate people. I love persons. The easiest way to get rid of me is to play at one of the mindless drones. It does it every time.
By now as you can guess, SWG is gone for me also. The truth being the game changed way to much and that caused a different type of people to become attracted to the game. Sadly, it also chased away the type of “persons” that helped make me fall in love with SWG, so eventually I left also. WoW, EQII, and all the other MMOs fall tragically short of the splendid social sandbox that was once SWG. So, in a moment of weakness I very seriously think about renewing my subscription to SWG, even though I know full and well that the fix I am longing for I will never get again there.
Five years ago it was annoying. In today’s world it is down right unacceptable!
I am talking about a few Utilities Service companies refusal to transition into 21st century technology amenities. Simple things like being able to pay your bill, check your account online; pay by phone with check or credit card; and the worst one… excepting credit/debit cards as a form of payment. Yes there are still a few utility companies who do not have these services available. Can you believe it. In this day and age it seems almost unimaginable.
It does get worse though. Most of the time we as customers do not have the luxury of shopping around for a better price and service from these companies (e.g. garbage disposal service, phone, gas or whatnot) because there is no competition. There is only one company that will handle said utility service in the area you live. We are stuck with what they give us and we are expected to be happy about it. Cause if we are not and we happen to speak out against these atrocities, they will most certainly make sure to inconvenience you to almost the point of harassment. Ever wonder why when they tell you they’ll be at your house between 12pm and 5pm sometimes you come home, on time mind you, only to find a note on your door timestamped at 11:45am - sorry we missed you, please call this number to schedule. They’re teaching you a lesson that’s why. They are smug about it too because they know they are not going to lose your business. If you want electricity or water you’re stuck with them and boy do they know what power they have over you. They seem to enjoy rubbing it in your face every chance they can get.
I’m going to buy a plot of land out in the middle of nowhere. Built my house with my own bare hands. I am going to make it completely self sufficient too. I won’t need to rely on these bastards any longer. Ah, what a dream!
To quote from the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitch hiker can have. Partly it has great practical
value - you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindboggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you - daft as a bush, but very, very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.
More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitch hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have “lost”. What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.
This year I actually remembered. Yay! Usually I am a few months to late. Which kind of sucks because this is one of the few ‘holidays’ I really get into and look forward to. It is such an amazing way of celebrating Douglas Adams’ life and his wonderful creations. It’s astounding that something as beautifully silly as “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” has touched so many people. It makes me bubble over with happiness just thinking about it. Well almost. I am not quite the bubbling personality type. It is something that I can only dream of that I would one day I would get such an awesome tribute to my life as this.
The full version of this story was first found in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: The Original Radio Scripts and reprised in The Salmon of Doubt, but the short version is as follows: Adams had gone on holiday in Greece, but every time he had decided to go to the beach with his fellows, he discovered that his towel would disappear, and could be found only after hours of searching.
After the holiday had ended, he decided that anyone who really had their life in order would always know the location of such a useful item, hence the fictional aphorism “A hoopy frood always knows where his towel is”. He had no idea that this towel joke, which first appeared in the seventh radio episode, and subsequently in the first book, would catch on so thoroughly.
He assumed, after learning that so many people liked and understood the joke, that he was not the only one with such an experience. After his death, Towel Day was established on May 25 as a tribute (two weeks after the date of his death).
Happy Towel Day Everyone! And remember, don’t forget your towel!! ;-P
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