"Roswell" and 4-star Generals

So I started watching "Roswell" again. One of my favorite shows from when I was in high school. It's not the greatest collection of film ever produced, but there's something I really enjoy about this show. A wonderful collection of love, action, intrigue and heartache that I experienced through my HS years reflected by a group of people much better-looking than me, and half of them are quasi aliens with cool powers. Maybe it just happened to be "the right show at the right time," but I connected with this in a way I normally don't.
Revisiting this series really helped to put some problems I'd been having to bed, kind of a variation on the quotes "everything i ever needed to know I learned from Star Trek" or "every question I ever have has been answered in shoujo manga."
As I wrote about over the weekend, I still feel very little desire to put forth a kind facade to placate people I come in contact with, but watching more episodes has tamed the beast somewhat. We'll see what happens when I refinish the series. Halfway done.



Meanwhile, back at the ranch...
AETC Commander, 4-Star General Lorenz will be visiting Altus AFB at the beginning of next week, so the whole base is in overdrive cleaning and prepping for his arrival. As usual, I assume we at the RAPCON, the ones making sure he gets to the base safely in his little, fragile jet will most likely be left out of the visit. I mean, come on, who wants to come all the way out on the airfield to visit a group of exhausted, under-manned airmen working in a windowless building? It's like a whole 5 minute drive to get them too! Whatever. We'll primp, we'll preen, and he'll walk around for 10 of the 23 hours he'll be on the base talking to the Primetime Flights (the ones who are most accessible and generally do the least actual work). They'll get General's coins and EPR-boosting letters of appreciation, and we'll get a curt "thanks for the service" over the frequency as he leaves.

I'm going to bed.

Death of Feeling

Ever undergo a fundamental paradigm shift?

I took a nap this afternoon, and when I awoke, I no longer had any desire to pretend to be a nice person. I'm not a fundamentally good person, and it is as if I no longer have any urge to pretend otherwise, to function as I have since memory exists.

Three-day Weekend

So, dear reader, I know I'm a terrible person for breaking my promise and not writing at least SOMETHING every day for you. And I cannot blame it on busyness, work or emotion. I simply forgot to write, and for that, I apologize.

I've been thinking about furthering my permanent canvas, expanding the inkwork etched in my skin. As you may or may not know, I have Frank Herbert's "Litany Against Fear" in Japanese on the sinister side of my back, and the Garou glyphs for my race, tribe and aspect on my dextrous shoulder.
I've been thinking about what to balance out my back and shoulder with, mainly working on my back. After sketching up, mapping out and discarding MANY ideas, I think I've decided on at least the basic idea for my back. I want a traditional Yozi, crouching as if to strike, wielding a blade in left hand and a staff in the right, a staff connected to the tattered banner inscribed with the Litany.
I have no artwork, no sketch even. Just an idea and a mental layout. I looks fantastic in my mind's eye; dynamic, meaningful and intense. I know I don't have the skills to draw this myself, so it will probably be quite some time before the work actually gets done.

I. Move. Jets.

Gustav, Hannah and now Ike...
With all the hurricanes battering the East and Central coasts, we've once again been mobilized. Most squadrons on our base are on an accelerated 24-hour schedule, supporting aid and evacuation efforts across the nation. What this means personally is that I'm now working 10 hours a day controlling non-stop jets into and out of the base. 10 hours may not seem like a lot, but the mental toll is incredibly fatiguing.
For those of you who know little or none about air traffic control, imagine a game of 3D chess, board 50 miles in diameter with 9 levels stretching up almost 10k feet. Now place the pieces on the board: an intermingling of 9 to 25 steel pieces, ranging between 5.5 and almost 300 tons each, each constantly moving, each capable of speeds ranging from 115 to 460 miles per hour, and each carrying up to 10 souls on board. Add in rules governing the minimum distance between each piece, pieces that won't obey commands promptly or at all, other players playing other games adjacent to you on all sides, and the fact that sometimes all the games trade pieces with each other. Finally, you're not allowed to look at the game board. Instead, you're shown a representation of the game board, and the location of the pieces is displayed once every 3 seconds for 3/4 of a second. If you're really lucky, the display breaks and you don't get any representation, and have to use your memory and notes scribbled on a 1"x6" piece of paper to remember where everyone is. It can get quite complex quite easily.
But back to the issue at hand. Not only is our daily shift increased, but instead of two crews alternating day and night shifts weekly, we've been shifted to 3 crews on 3 overlapping shifts, shifts that rotate every two days. So my week goes like this: Mon-Tue, 0700-1700; Wed-Thu, 1500-0100; Fri-Sat, 2300-0900; Sun-Mon, On Call. That's right kids, my week is 8 days long, and on the two days I have off, I'm not actually off, I have to stay awake, sober, and able to get to work in 30 minutes or less.
"What's the payoff?" You ask. "Couldn't you keep yourself financially secure in a less demanding job civilian side?" Yes. Yes I could. But the added bonus, better than some extra cash or more time to drink or sleep is this: I'm saving America. Sure I'm not deployed overseas, fighting a controversial war on Terror. I'm not pulling the trigger of an M16 out the window of a Humvee speeding though RPG-infested streets. I'm not calling in an airstrike or flying air cover over a combat zone. But what's less publicized is the daily missions both within and without the states, C17's laden to bursting with medical supplies and non-perishable food and clean, bottled water flying to African famine zones, C17's and C130's and their crews flying 24, 36, 48-hour missions shuttling the residents of Galveston, Houston, Baton Rouge and New Orleans to safe havens away from the fury of Mother Earth. How do you think those pilots get to where they're going safely with their precious cargoes? I move them. Daily, I keep up to 20 planes at a time, their pilots, crew and passengers safe as they journey to their destinations.

The Revolution Will Not be Blogivised

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I have dreamed a dream...
And now that dream is gone from me.
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Nothing important today, stayed up all night last night fighting and then making up, then slept in most of the day. Watched "The Professional", damn that's such a good movie.
Sleepy time now.
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Kisses of sugar and light

I woke up this morning feeling incredibly refreshed. None of the usual morning grogginess that comes with waking up too early after going to bed too late the night before. No cottonmouth taste in my mouth, reminiscent of the beer and pot roast I ate last night. What I woke up to was pressure. Namely, the pressure of a gorgeous naked woman on top of me, kissing me awake. Not insistently, not excitedly, but slowly and deliberately, tasting of sugar and the morning sunlight. What a wonderful way to greet the day.



And then, like always, it turned to shit. Her anal retentive need to micro-manage every single detail of my day and my refusal to meet those demands brought her rage crashing down on me. "Morning honey!" turned to "You need to listen to me." then further rotted to "If you're not going to stick to my plan, I'm leaving. I might see you later."
We are very different people. I become extroverted and outward when I get angry, attacking the issue that infuriates me head on ("Why do you have to draw up a schedule for every little thing I'm going to do today?"); she draws inward and snipes at my weaknesses, refusing to be forthcoming and instead sidling around with passive-agressive quips and comments ("Well you know you're incapable of following through on a plan unless you've got a list. I'm just trying to help you, you have no right to get mad at me for that.").

Now she's gone, supposedly to the store. But she has my money and the car, so who knows? Honestly, I'm so mad right now I don't give shit. She pushed my buttons to the point where I told her she was welcome to get the fuck out of the house, and to take her time getting back. *Shrugs*

God, I need a drink...

I absolutely hate this place.
This little redneck, podunk town with its poor service hours at EVERY business, thirty payday advance monsters and not a single check cashing place that will take Jill's birthday check. A banking service with no local branches and no way to deposit a check other than mailing or scanning it in digitally. Oh wait, you have to have a checking, savings, credit card AND auto or home insurance through them to access that service.

Digital Demagouges

The cacophony of thought.
Adrift, i move aimlessly through the digital records of scores of untrained minds.
Deafening, the force themselves past the shield of my closed eyelids and into the soft vulnerability of my irises.
Blinding, they are an avalanche of discordant voices, rushing through my ears.
Alternately agreeing to disagree, then debating their accord.
One Million Watching Eyes.
One Billion Listening Ears.
One Trillion Clashing Brains.
Nurturing.
Destroying.
Raping.
Healing.
Teaching.
Ignorant.
Haughty.
Servile.
All, in the end; wasted, wasteful and worthless.

Untitled

Every day i will do one beautiful thing for you.
Every day bring you one beautiful image.
Every day write you one beautiful sentence.
Every day draw you one beautiful picture.
Every day sing you one beautiful note.
Every day take one beautiful action for you.
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Only then will i come even close to repaying your presence.
Only then can i even consider myself in your league.
Only then might i be worthy of the grace you so effortlessly dance through my life with.

Sweet dreams are made of this...

Every night i die.
That fearful, soil-myself-and-run kinda death.
The death of panic.
i can't hardly sleep, worried that my nightly six-and-thirty will become eight-and-thirty and i will resurrect late once again.
my own damnation, trying desperately to save myself from, well, you know.
Now that it comes down to the wire,
Now that i'm about to become homeless and jobless and wifeless,
Now do i ask for help.
Now do i see what i have to do to fix myself.
...Unless it's medical...
Unless i'm deformed and physically unsound to do this job i love.
Then i'm just up the proverbial creek.
i've used up all the goodwill i had coming to me.
No one at work will fill my vanguard,
No one at home to hold me aloft while i struggle to continue the charge.
i don't dream anymore.
(Another lovely red flag of defect)
My "sleep" is interchained streams of low-grade fear and bursts of awakening panic.
i dreamed last night.
Dreamed of living alone.
Of being, truly, alone.
No family wanted me.
No job would have me.
the grime encrusted on the strap of the pack i shouldered so tactile, i believed my memory injury has simply gotten the best of me and i WAS the man i felt.
Sunburned, weathered, leather of skin.
Scraggly chest-length beard and greasy, matted dreadlocks,
Red color almost obscured by countless hours of road grime and windblown dust.
i awake.
Fetally curled, teeth draw blood from the knuckle holding back a despairing howl.
Breath hammers a counterpoint to my racing heartbeat.
i wipe the rivulets of sweat from my face with the sheet,
Rolling over to face the empty half of our bed,
(Wait, what?)
i surrender again to the fear of sleep.

First ever real commission(s)

So, I'm pretty excited because Creations of Fire and Water, my tailoring company, has just gotten it's first real commissions! Both are cloaks, although extremely different styles.

The first is for a long-time gaming friend of mine, and is patterned after a Viking nobleman's cloak. A half circle, it is designed to be pulled from the left side up to the right shoulder and pinned with a pennanular brooch. On each shoulder will hang a silver fox pelt, attached at the head and dangling tail-down along the back.
At this point, the wool for the cloak has been ordered (I got a sample in the mail and it's an absolutely fantastic blue-black), and the pelts arrived today (they're super soft and silky without looking gaudy, the perfect thing for a nobleman who hasn't lost his warrior side). Pictures will go up as the cloak progresses. For now, here's the pelts:


The next one is for my best friend and ex-roomate, a bit more traditional, made out of a more sleek wool, coffee brown on the outside, with a dark amish green cotton lining. This one will be hooded and floor length, with a frog clasp holding it together at the neck.
The fabric for this one is ordered as well, and I'm excited to see how it will turn out!

Finally, my armor is 80-90% done, only waiting on sword and dagger sheaths and possibly some matching greaves. =D Pictures will come once my cloth garb is done :D