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If you had to choose a theme song for your middle or high school years, what would it be, and why?

I don't think I would have picked this at the time, but with 20/20 hindsight, it's perfect.

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( Come on! Let's see what you've got... )

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(Regular readers of my journal will remember that I just posted this back at the beginning of April; it's still the right answer.)

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Was there something you were afraid of as a child that just seems silly to you now?

Oh, quite the opposite.

Most of my childhood fears turned out to be entirely reasonable.

I doubt that my younger self would say the same about the anxieties of my adult life.

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I play this track a lot, but I don't think I listen to it enough.

It's from the same album as "Man in the Wilderness", posted here a few months back, and in some ways, it can be seen as the "Get Over It" response to the "I'm So Lost and Emo" of that song.

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( Come on! Let's see what you've got... )

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They played this song on KUFX this morning. Greg Kihn and his sidekick du jour had a brief exchange about the closing guitar riff, and how it seemed too cheerful and happy for a song subtitled "The Angry Young Man".

I listen to Kihn for his Old Rocker stories, not for his profound insights.

To me, that swirling guitar fugue encapsulates all the potential, possibility, truth, beauty, and whatever that surrounds the Angry Young Man. It's all the stuff that we miss—that I miss—when we're wrapped up in being the Man in the Wilderness.

Yeah, The Grand Illusion came out when I was 13. I'm just like anyone else: my High School Soundtrack is the Music of My Life.

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Today, I filled out my census data as the second person living at thoughtsdriftby's residence, and something occurred to me.

Neither quelonzia nor I remember filling out a census form in 2000 -- and in 2000, we were living in CSUMB's student housing. Despite the fact that we lived there for five full years (and the longest I've ever lived in any single place is six years), we were considered transient. In many places, students living on campus aren't considered "local residents", and thus aren't permitted to vote in local elections (though they can vote in national elections); since districting is based on census data, it makes sense that they might leave students out of that, as well.

In 1990, I was in the Coast Guard, and lived on a military base.

In 1980, my family lived in an RV park in a largely-agricultural part of Southern California; the immigration status of most of the other long-term park residents was, shall we say, dubious. My mother can't remember if we filled out a census form that year.

This may be the first census that's actually counted me since I was six years old.

The next time someone bitches about the effort the government has been going through to try and get the homeless and other "traditionally under-represented" segments of the population tallied accurately, I'll have to point out how easily a middle class white kid slipped through the cracks for forty years.

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(This may be the most appropriate use of my barcode icon ever.)

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I hate to say it, but with all the fuss about Google Buzz and having to create a full profile to opt OUT of the damned thing, I'm trying to fight down a wave of Insufferable Smugness about refusing to get a gmail address in the first place, because I Didn't Trust Google With My Private Mail.

I SAW THE FNORDS, MAN.

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It's Old English for "Noble Serpent".

I've been using it since the early '80s, originally assembling it from a "Random Old English Name Generator" table in an early issue of Dragon Magazine. If I recall correctly, "Lind" (serpent) was only on the prefix table, not the suffix, so from a gamer standpoint, I "cheated" -- no idea how well or poorly it may work on a grammatical standpoint.

The original "Athelind" was actually a Champions character, a centuries-old dragon who decided to take up superheroing as a lark.* A decade or so later, when "The Boojum Snark" decided that it would be more comfortable for the rest of alt.fan.dragons to address him by a name rather than a title, he adopted it as his nom de guerre.

And the rest is history.

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* At almost exactly the same time, a comic called The Southern Knights, and that Atlanta-based superhero team included a centuries-old dragon who also decided to take up the crimefighting trade. Needless to say, my fellow players immediately brought it to my attention.

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Argh.

Last week, a flare-up in joint pain heralded another bout of Serial Flu, that one-symptom-at-a-time never-really-sick variation of influenza that hits me now and then. Body aches most of last week; congestion and post-nasal drip over the weekend; digestive upset on Monday, after work. As usual, I never felt bad enough to really consider myself sick, and, aside from a general air of lingering blah, I thought I was pretty much done with it.

This evening, I've got the Extreme Tiredness symptom, along with a slight resurgence of stuffiness, and a mild, general achiness that's not quite the same as the Crippling Arthritic Agony of last week. It's not done with me yet.

I had my flu shot this year (though not my H1N1, yet); in years past, if I had my immunization, "serial flu" would almost never progress to full-on flu.

I doubt I'm contagious; I'm not really in virus-spreading sneeze/sniffle mode. I don't really feel sick, honestly, just run down. rikoshi and tealfox, I'll give you a heads up if I'm not fit to share breathing space with the Saga group on Saturday. I should be good, though.

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There was a stuffed rabbit named Juniper, long gone, who was my favorite stuffed animal.

There were the Colorforms Outer Space Men, also departed, who tapped into every child's "cool monster" center decades before the current wave of "Mon", and who left me with a life-long tendency to empathize with The Alien.

There was a teddy bear my sisters brought back from camp one year, who was just another stuffed animal in my childhood days. Somehow, though, he survived all the moves and cleanings and purges of belongings, and gained my respect and affection. He lost an eye along the way, and, when I first went off to college, I gave him an eyepatch, turned an old sock into a turtleneck, and dubbed him "Nick Furry, Agent of B.E.A.R.". He's held that name for almost thirty years now, far longer, needless to say, than he was just Oso The Random Teddy Bear.

My favorite. by far, however, had to have been my very first G.I. Joe. He was, originally, one of the Mercury astronaut Joes that Hasbro produced, starting in the year I was born, though I suspect he dates from a couple of years after that. This was Archetypal Joe: 12" tall, no "Kung-Fu Grip", not even the fuzzy, flocked, "life-like hair" of the early '70s.

I had a bunch of G.I. Joes, as did most of my friends as a kid, but this one was always the senior officer. The whole neighborhood respected the obvious air of authority bestowed by painted-on hair. He was the Old Soldier, hailing from the days when G.I. Joe was "America's Movable Fighting Man", and those "Adventure Team" tyros paid him his due, by gum.

His foil-coated space suit is long gone; he's dressed in the green fatigues of a later acquisition. When all the rest of my collection was bestowed onto my younger cousin, I held on to him, making some excuse about "first run" and "valuable collectible", but that was smoke and mirrors. Valuable he may be, though the collector's market has little respect for toys actually well-used and played with.

It's a moot point, though.

You don't sell your best friend.

Somewhere in the depths of quelonzia's garage, both Nick Furry and the Old Soldier slumber comfortably in a box, awaiting the Day of the Great Unpacking, when they shall, once more, be seated upon a shelf, displayed for all the world to see.

And sometimes, maybe, just maybe, when nobody's watching ...

... someone will play with them again, too.

Because that's what toys are for.

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About a month ago, I made a friends-locked post about this; now it's time to turn the cards face up.

quelonzia and I are separating.

On Friday, she'll be flying to the Philippines for business. Immediately thereafter, I will be moving out.

This is not a divorce. We are not "breaking up". We still love each other; gods, do we love each other. We still want to be together.

However, since I graduated from CSUMB in 2003, I have not held a full-time job for more than three months; they've all been short-term contract or temp positions. My current part-time retail position barely lets me pick up my prescriptions and the occasional grocery run.

She needs to know that, if something happens to her, I can actually survive.

I need to know that, too. I wish we didn't have to do this, but, honestly, until I make some drastic change in my situation, I'm just going to keep spinning my wheels.

The separation will continue until I have a permanent, full-time job that lasts more than six months.

Thanks to thoughtsdriftby, I have a place to stay until I can get my shit together.

I will do everything in my power to insure than the duration is as short as I can make it.

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A statement like that might seem to need qualifiers, but really, it doesn't.

I don't know what the hell I'm doing.

About very nearly anything.

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Pessimism is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
So is optimism.

-- distilled from Robert Anton Wilson,
"Ten Good Reasons to Get Out of Bed in the Morning".

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My thinking is broken. I've assimilated unhealthy memes.

Taking control of my life means, first and foremost, taking control of my head.

Re-Reading List:

• Robert Anton Wilson, The Illuminati Papers
  
• S.I. Hayakawa, Language in Thought and Action
  
• R. Buckminster Fuller:
  
  
  • Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth
    
  • Utopia or Oblivion
    
  • Ideas and Integrities
    
  • Critical Path (Have I actually read this, or has it just been sitting on my shelf for years?)
  
  
• Sun Bear, The Path of Power
  
• Alan Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity
  
• Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
  
• Richard Bach:
  
  
  • Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah
    
  • Jonathan Livingston Seagull (Hush. It's my metaprogramming list.)
  
  
  
  

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You know, I've been leaving my current position at the comic-and-game shop off of my resume, on the assumption that it's somehow "too trivial" and "doesn't look good" for a prospective science professional.

On the other claw, it adds two vitally important things to my resume:

• Evidence that I am, in fact, currently employed; and
  
• A position that I've held for more than a year -- the only one I've held for more than a few months, since getting my degree in 2003.*

I think I have far too much ego invested in the wrong places. I've been more concerned with presenting myself as a ⟨jonlovitz⟩Scientist⟨/jonlovitz⟩ than as a worker--and I have no idea if that's for the "benefit" of prospective employers, or to sustain my own precarious illusions.

So what looks better? A resume that says "I work in a comic book shop", or one that says "I haven't worked at all since 2007"?

Or have I already answered my own question?

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*Aside from my time at AppleOne, which I treat as a single job instead of listing each contract/position individually.

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I woke up this morning with a headache, but in a far better, more positive mood than yesterday.

Now I'm afraid to take anything for the headache, in fear that the good mood will go with it.

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Addendum, 10:23AM: Well, I took something for the headache. It hasn't gone away, but the good mood is slipping.

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