Tuesday, November 30, 2004

Wheel's Return

As a soul enters this world there are certain things that the soul needs to learn in order to move to the next level of awareness (which could or could not be Heaven, although Heaven is the final goal). I believe that souls will keep coming back until they have learned the appropriate lessons. That’s why you have people who seem just “older” than those around them.

Where does that leave evil and bad people? Well, there is a negative force in the world commonly known as evil who is trying to snatch as many souls in progress as possible in order to keep the good side from getting the upper hand.

That being said…I really wish God would quit sending me back to raise people. My parents for example, 33 years of marriage and they’re still bickering and now dad is suing for divorce. My brother is marrying a woman just like my mother. My exhusband didn’t learn a damn thing being married to me, he just filed personal bankruptcy because he still can’t figure out how to balance a checkbook. Thank god my husband seems to be sane.

Don’t even ask me about my son who has decided that the best way to rebel against me is to become an anal retentive, bible beating, closed minded, twit and he’s only 10. The child told my husband that we’d all be happier if I did more work around the house since I’m the woman. His argument was that we weren’t practicing our God given roles (I work and go to school, DH stays home and creates an environment of no chaos for me, bless his heart) so therefore that’s why the car broke down.

I did the best I could raising my parents, if they’re out to frell up their lives there really isn’t much I can do about it. Same with baby brother. As for my son, I’ll open his mind up if it takes a sledgehammer.

I realize that I’ve been here before and that my Creator has a huge amount of faith in my, and that there’s a lesson in all of this somewhere, but really, truly, couldn’t it have waited until after exams?

Fyre

Monday, November 29, 2004

I believe...

That there's no proof that there is no Santa Claus so why not believe in him? I believe in fairies, gnomes, and happily ever after. I think that there are many things in this world we really don't understand fully and we're daft if we think we have it all pinned down with our primative minds.

I know there is anger and hatred and violence and other nasty nasty horrible things, so I'm not some sort of strange, demented, pie in the sky flower child. However, I think that tolerance, love, understanding, and selflessness can over come anything and that the single most amazing thing in this entire cosmos is the human spirit to prevail in horrible conditions.

I believe that happily ever after does exist, can prevail, and that if there are two people in this world who can pull it off in my current environment it's my husband and I. I'll expound more on that as I digest what's going on in my world right now.

Thanks for visiting and reading about my life and I hope that it gives you a window into someone else's head and help you be less likely to be closed minded.

Fyre


Tuesday, November 23, 2004

Religious Opinions part 1

Warning: I would not be what one would call a traditional Christian. You’ve been warned so don’t Bible thump at me and try to save my poor soul, because I can do that all by myself, thank you.

First off my religious background: I was christened evangelical church of God, baptized Methodist, went to a Catholic school where my best friend was Jewish, confirmed Episcopalian, went to a Church of Christ School for a year and graduated from a Presbyterian High School, married Methodist, both times, and was and am in many ways a practicing Wiccan. Oh, my friends in high school were Buddist, Ba’Hai, Muslim, Jewish, Pagan, and Agnostic.

Jesus told us to be as little children in order to enter the Kingdom of God, yes? Have you spent 10 minutes with a 3 year old? Their favorite question is Why. The Creator gave us a brain, capable of amazing things, and we take everything at face value, never ask why, and just assume that what we’re being told is the Truth? Personally, I think the Creator wants us to question, think, and wonder about this incredible world we have.

Do you really believe that God is male? I mean really, the all supreme being actually has a gender? A gender that is NOT the one that He gave the ability to bring life into this world? I mean really, think about that. Enough to bake your noodle, isn’t it?

Jesus came to save us, to experience the human condition, but he died a virgin. At least that’s what the establishment would want you to think. Doesn’t sound very human, now does it?

I’ll leave you with these for now. I have lots more which will appear every so often, so stay tuned.

Fyre

Monday, November 22, 2004

Being a woman in a man’s world.

Being a woman in a man’s world.

This will be a theme you see me return to every so often, probably too often. You see, I’m a college student who has hopes of someday going to a very nice school in Plano, Texas where I’ll be taught how to be a level designer for video games. There’s only one problem…I’m female, I’m 31, and I really really don’t want to have to put up with grown men behaving like adolescents. I’m hoping that the environment I keep hearing about isn’t the real one. I knew I was going to be in the minority, but I never understood just how much until I saw this photo…

http://www.battle.net/war3/images/frys/ss01.jpg

This is the brilliant team at Blizzard who came up with the latest WarCraft title. Notice they’re all male except one female, and she’s a pretty one at that.

http://www.fragdolls.com/index.php

Link to the FPS all girl’s team that recently got a huge amount of press. Not only are they beautiful apparently they really do have game. YAY! Would have liked it if they looked like the rest of the women gamers in the world, but I'll take what I can get.

So in light of this all, I’m going to take my seriously pudgy butt out for a walk and hope that maybe between now and the time I head to grad school next year I’m atleast presentable.

Here’s the question…should I have to? I mean I want to because I am in abysmal health. But that never bothered me. Seeing a line of 20+ designers however has me wanting to buy an abroller. I’m very married and didn’t find any of them attractive, they aren’t my snookums after all. I think the Gnomeinmybrain has been messing with things again, because I’m at a loss here.

What do you think?

Fyre

Friday, November 19, 2004

Women...

I am a woman, I even see myself as a girl sometimes. Really, I am. Under the pudgy figure, make-up-less face, untweezed eyebrows (alright so I just don’t like pain), sometimes shaved legs, I am a female with all the female needs, urges, wants and desires. For example:

I need to take a bubble bath atleast twice a week.
I have an urge to eat chocolate every single day.
I want to have the time to spend hours on my appearance. However, God has not seen fit to make a 29 hour day.
I have the desire to own a matching pair of shoes for every outfit.

What I also have is a gnomeinmyhead who occassionally speaks sense to me. She doesn’t win on the bubble bath argument given that I tend to read my textbooks in the bathtub (and I secretly think she likes them herself). The great chocolate debate goes either way on any given day. The rest of the items and many unlisted ones she tends to win on like…no, Fyre, don’t need 22 pairs of black shoes you won’t wear because they’re uncomfortable and as for doing my waist length hair every day, putting on makeup, doing my nails, and tweezing my eyebrows ( I do tweeze my chin and that’s enough thank you very much, even the gnomeinmyhead agrees on that one) there just isn’t enough time in the day, besides there is a creature I live with known as my son that I want to keep in touch with, my husband likes to see me, oh and that little thing called college that takes alot of my time, not to mention socks to knit, games to play, stitches to cross, and all those other fun things I'd rather be doing.

Where I work we’re all rather down to earth, except for the GreekGod next door who thinks he’s god’s gift to women. He offered to trade my computer services for him to laser my facial hair off, and somehow he thought this was a sensible thing to say to me (Gnome scream: NOT). So the GreekGod has hired two plastic blondes to be aestheticians who are going to do facials, waxes (OUCH!) and other things in his office 5 days a week. He needed something and I took it over to him. Last night I got about 4 hours of sleep due to a cat who got into the garbage can and ate something that didn’t agree with him and spent the night retching…in our bedroom of course. And I’m a fulltime student, granted gnomeinmyhead tried to talk me out of it, but I didn’t listen, while I work full time in the looney bin, you can imagine what I looked like. Those two women looked at me with this demented gleem in their eyes as their fingers clenched and unclenched in glee at the sight of my bushy eyebrows, slightly frizzy hair, and chipped finger nails (I did it opening up the box to the new router we just had shipped in). Luckily, the gnomeinmyhead turned her attention away from the WoW open beta she was playing and slapped my brain back into functioning and I headed for the hills albeit with my perverbial tail between my legs.

Now, what I don’t understand was the overwhelming urge I had to run to the bathroom, braid my hair, dig out my make up and go out and buy a new pair of black shoes that will clack on the floor as happily as theirs do. Luckily the gnomeinmyhead executed the “Get Coffee” routine and I turned my attention happily to the steaming cup of French vanilla (I told you I was a girl) Senseo coffee that was soon in my hands.

I’m happily married, my husband says I’m beautiful, my son even at 10 still likes to be seen out in public with me, people don’t lose their lunch when they see me, and I have a giggle that is infectious, I’m intelligent if my 3.885 GPA in my junior year of college is any indication, and I’m even told I have a sexy phone voice. I know all this, the gnomeinmyhead tells me these things often, why then do I still feel inadequate to those two plastic blondes a meer 15 feet from here? And their clientele who are going to come in my front door in a quest to beat back the signs of aging, gravity, and too many cigarettes while looking down upon those of us who don't even bother to fight back the inevitiable. The gnomeinmyhead and I are going to have to discuss this overwhelming urge I currently have to tweeze my eyebrows and nair my legs tonight instead of spending time writing the rough drafts of the two papers I have due tomorrow.

Let’s hope the gnome wins.

Thursday, November 18, 2004

The Evils of Video Games

note to readers: This is NOT going to be a 3 page long diatribe on the evils of all digital media nor on video games specifically. I am not going to spew ill thought out evangelical nonsense, I am probably not even going spew virtual spittle as I scream at you about the evils of all things scientific. I love video games, video games brought me my DH, video games are going to be putting the food on the table soon (God willing and the creek don’t rise) and they’re a way for my entire extended family to beat the virtual snot out of one another instead of doing so verbally in real life, which in my book is always a good thing. What this is going to be is a short rant about the tunnel vision that is so prevalent in this world. Here endeth your public service announcement

Parents tell me all the time that they don’t understand their children. Case in point. Man brings his angst ridden adolescent son in for counseling. I look at the kid who’s bangs are dragging his nose, he’s dressed in all black and he has this look of long suffering on his face. His crisp blue eyes meet mine and a fog lifts. Despite my frumpy build, my age (31) and my appearance of generic woman hood I like to call my “mask of everywoman” that I wear so often in order to not scare the natives, he recognizes a kindred spirit. Maybe it was the shared knowledge that I not only understood the caption on his t-shirt but that I found it amusing as well. The caption on his black t-shirt printed in white letters was: There are 10 types of people in the world: Those who understand binary, and those who don't... but in that moment an understanding was born. For those of you who are baffled at this moment: 10 is the denotation in binary for the number 2 .

The child is totally lost in this rural backwater place with a father who knows his son is smarter than he is and doesn’t even bother to get to know his child. I say to the boy, “Have you tried out the new WoW (World of WarCraft) open beta? It’s a great game, I highly suggest it.” He answers, “No, I got Half-Life 2 last night.” OK, FPSs (First Person Shooters) aren’t my cup of tea but I know they have their place. I nod and he leaves the office leaving me with his father who proceeds to lay into me in that whispered voice that everyone for 3 miles can hear about how he doesn’t let his son play games with Witch Craft in them. The gnome in my head has just thrown the halt switch in my brain workings at that one. Even she is looking at this guy a bit confuzzled. After a 9 hour day of dealing with this sort of bizarre thinking I snap a little and say “Sir, how is it better to run around a rather real looking environment carrying enough ammunition and fire power to take out an entire battalion which you use to blow up anything that moves, creature and human alike, in such realism that the military uses such things to desensitize their recruits to the reality of war….than to say throw a large blue fire ball at a bright yellow spider in a world so far from reality it belongs in a fantasy novel, not to mention the hands throwing that large ball of flame-age are those of a Night Elf. I haven’t seen any Night Elves running around your local park, don’t seen Night Elves blowing up women and children in far away lands. The flaming blue ball of doom ISN’T REAL and you can’t even buy one at your local pawn shop unlike the high powered rifles. How is this more better?!

His response…

Wait for it…put down your drink and swallow first….

His response was…”Witch Craft is evil”.

By this time the gnome in my head is banging her head against her desk while the Everywoman mask remains firmly in place despite my incredible urge to just sit there staring at this man slack jawed. I of course have a misguided hope that by talking to this man parent to parent might help save the budding geek in the waiting room so I try. “Sir, I really don’t understand what the problem is. Of course I have also read Harry Potter, Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Madeliene L’Engle, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and most Fairy Tales.”

He stops me, eyes alight with that crazied look that only a person alight with the fire of Christian unquestioning zeal can have and says….

Swallow first…

It’s EVERYWHERE isn’t it?!

Gnomeinsidemyhead has gone for coffee by now, having given up on trying to get my brain to process this. She left me with one thought…

Who exactly needs the counseling in that family?

I’ll have to say I agree with her 100%.

I have returned ...

I've spent almost a year trying to decide what it is I want to say. Don't expect anything profound. I believe that people write blogs because they want the world to know what they have to say, it's sorta egotistical if you think about it. I've spent most of the past year thinking "Why would anyone want to read something I've written!?". Doesn't matter to me if you read what I write (however, I have to admit I do get a nice warm fuzzy feeling when I know someone has read what I post here), what does matter to me is that I write. Writing is important. Getting my feelings out in words is important. I'm choosing this medium in hopes that I might find others who think the same thing, and in my egotistical way, I also believe that maybe just maybe something I say makes someone think, and maybe their minds will open just a tiny bit.

So with that, I'd like to make official notice to cyber space...I'm back. For now.

Fyreraven