Why do people ask questions when they won’t listen to the answer?

I know it’s a general question, but seriously, why would you even attempt to interact with someone if you didn’t care to invest yourself in the interaction?

I know I’m sometimes guilty of seeming to neglect people when they talk to me because I am one of those rare people who really can do two things at once- that is if one thing is physical and the other is mental.

I can listen to someone talk and at the same time think and do some physical act. I can then repeat back to them what they have said to me. And I’ve come to realize that is a rare ability. Most people seem able to only focus on one thing at a time. I can type information at the keyboard, speak to a customer, and listen to a question from a coworker at the same time. I guess I’m a born multi-tasker or at the very least my ability to observe things peripherally is freakish.

But people that are incapable of this feat… why do they ask me questions and then ignore me when I answer. Is it because it was not the answer they were hoping for and if they act dumb enough I will eventually tell them what they wanted to hear? Is it that something has distracted their small attention span and they don’t have the IQ points to focus on me and their distraction? I’d really like to know!

Yeesh, does everyone have ADD but me?

No dreams last night. I was sick, and they sent me home from work. I didn’t even have to ask, they just told me I could go. I have such a great job. No one has told me to go home when I was sick since grade school. Usually I have to ask or prove I’m sick or something.

I was doubly impressed with their compassion considering I was 15 minutes late for work due to the crazy people who have accidents because they don’t know how to drive in the rain. I would have been 10 minutes early if not for the Black Friday/rain drivers who panicked because it’s only ONE MONTH till gift-exchange frenzy.

Yeesh people, you don’t have to wait till the last minute. I was done last month with the exception of some gift certificates I need to pick up. I typically start shopping in January and pick stuff up for people as I find it. It’s just plain stupid to wait, and it puts you into debt since most people don’t save and so everything ends up on credit come December. Better to buy things gradually and stockpile for holidays and birthdays.

Anyway, I tried to stay up when I got home, because well, I was a little afraid to go to sleep. There was only a half a dose of pepto left in the cabinet. But it was alright, and I only woke up once around 2AM to dash to the bathroom. I think it was the pie my mom brought home, and it has since been tossed into the trash. I feel much better this morning, though I still feel all bloaty. Despite the amount of sleep I got, I’m still tired though.  I wish I didn’t have to work today, but I’m not calling in. That would mean other people would have to cover for me and this time of year, I won’t do that to them.

Oh, I took this quiz this morning. What creature of mythology are you?

Also known widely as the Fire Bird, the phoenix is a profound symbol of the life and rebirth. It has a life cycle of 500 to 600 years and after that amount of time, it sets itself on fire and dies in the flames. Then, after three days, it rises again from the ashes. It is a completely benign creature who lives in dew. It is said that the phoenix has a beautiful melodious song which grows ever more mournful as its life comes to an end. It is also a symbol of the sun and immortality.

I dreamed last night that aliens were trying to wipe us out. They sent meteors against us and we diverted them into other planets and the sun, they sent diseases, caused wars and famine…

They had actually tried to invade at one time when I was a little kid. I predicted it, but no one believed me except for a few people. They were trying to get me away from some cousins who were raising me because something had happened to my parents. I wouldn’t go though because I couldn’t find a pet ferret (which had shown up at my bedroom window one day). I locked myself in the bathroom till they agreed to help me find the ferret.

When we went to find it, we discovered my two cousins had also “found” ferrets, but they didn’t look like mine. One was yellow and the other had an X pattern on its back. It was too coincidental that they had also found ferrets so we decided the ferrets were part of some kind of alien plan. We took off in a car and that was the last I saw of my cousins.

Our only chance to protect the world was short jaunts into the future to steal technology. This was my invention and for some reason I was permitted to accompany each mission. You’d think the inventor of such an important tool would be forced to stay behind in case something happened, but I guess the machinery was more likely to break down with the group going forward than the people staying behind.

Of course every time we pulled off our “future-now” missions, the future changed. Sometimes it was alright, but sometimes it was really bad. The last one was one of the worst. It appeared to be idyllic, but there were no animals, just people. You’d think that would mean everyone was vegetarian. We thought so…

We went into a small food store which contained all manner of vegetables. Some of them may have been Asian or South American, but some of them were definitely bio-engineered. There were radishes grown like Brussels sprouts, and some kind of carrot/celery hybrid that was all green. Maybe it was parsnip, but I hate parsnip; I prefer to think it was carrot. heh There were also some things that I’ve seen that I don’t think are edible – like Christmas Cactus buds, etc.

So we decided the best this future had to offer were these altered plants. We could take a samlping of them back and then return to see about their tech. The place was pretty crowded and people were looking at us oddly. One of the ladies accosted me and told me she just loved my marinade recipe. I smiled and nodded and kept on shopping.

As we walked through the store, I became more and more uneasy. When we got to the back of the store, there were these huge machines that looked like tanning beds, though shut tight. Just as we reached them, an announcer came over the speaker to say that the daily special was now available at the back of the store.

So a store employee came by and twisted the dial and there were people in the beds -cooked to jerky, BBQed, etc. It was horrible and we resolved to get out of there as quickly as possible, but as we tried to leave, the manager stopped us asking if we would not be purchasing the daily special.

We tried to hide our disgust, but he must have noticed. he said, “Come now, you can’t tell me you’ve never engaged in cannibalism.” Apparently I was some kind of master chef in their timeline, ewww.

I and the mission leader managed to break away, but they grabbed some of our other people and stuck them in empty beds. We went tearing around the store as people requested cuts of meat from the already cooked bodies. We got back around to the beds and turned the dials of the beds where our teammates were and got them out, only a little reddened. Then we hit the return button and went back to our own time.

This is the kind of dream where I wake up and just say…

Oooooooooookaaaaaaaaaaaaaay???

When I think about Thanksgiving, I wonder about the things I have to be thankful for. It’s quite a lot actually. I mean, I have a place to live, food to eat, plenty of books to feed my addiction.

Surely I have a lot more to be thankful for this year as I am no longer employed by the bank. I am no longer being killed by inches, no more grays have sprouted to take their places beside their sisters, and the grays they were popping up like the cold fingers of death have all disappeared. I’d challenge you to go through my hair and find even one now. (And no I didn’t pull them or dye it! lol)

I no longer sigh when I come home from work or when I’m ready to leave for work, and while it does bother me a little to be called in because someone else called off, it doesn’t irk me to go or stay later, despite the pain in my feet and a smaller paycheck. I love my job at the book store. I have not been so happy in a long time.

But I think of all the bad things too. Not for myself, but for other people. What do people have to be grateful for? There’s still the ”war” in the Middle East which all told is merely one dumb a$$ Texan’s bid for more oil (no offense to all the other Texans or at least to any who did NOT vote for the head dumb a$$ of our country).

I feel bad for all the American children who didn’t have a Thanksgiving, and all the children in other countries who, while not celebrating our secular holiday, still deserve enough food to eat on a daily basis. I hope they have a roof over their head and that they grow up healthy, happy, and wise.

I hope every bully in every school wakes up tomorrow with a change of heart and every child being bullied finds it within themselves to turn their noses up at the ignorant ba$tards and go on to bigger and better things. I was one of those abused children. I survived. To spite them.

And I feel bad for the Native Americans. Because Thanksgiving is built on a lie. The first settlers came here and nearly starved to death. If not for the Native Americans that helped them out, we might not be here. Then we turned around and nearly wiped them out. Way to be thankful. Go us. Woo…

                                                     picture hoisted from The Devil’s Panties because it is so incredibly appropriate. Read the comic. Read it!

I really must refrain from leaving messages on other people’s blogs when half awake, but if Fmusfit isn’t upset, I suppose I can forgive myself.

For those just tuning in, I take it upon myself to be the commentator to the entertaining and philosophical discussion between Fmusfit and AutumnAsh84. If you have not yet done so (and like philosophic discussions) I suggest you check out their boards for some jabs at Plato, some mention of Neitzsche (mostly my fault), a little Aristotle, and much humorous intercourse of ideas.

……..

As this is my newsblog for my webcomic and newsletter as well as my dream blog and general rant blog (Gee, how many uses can I have for one blog??), I thought it might be a good idea to actually post news of my webcomic and newsletter once in a while.

For those who do not know, I write/edit a weekly Pagan newsletter called the Ancient Whispers Newsletter. That’s right. I’m one of those Heathens. heh It’s published online every Wednesday so the new one was just posted today. Currently there are about two years worth of newsletters in the archives. This will unfortunately change as I am quickly approaching the max in storage. I’m going to have to start deleting, probably in January, so if you want to see the old newsletters before they’re gone… now would be a good time.

I also publish Poesy Comics. This is updated twice weekly, on Tuesday with my Lovecraftian horror comic Arkana and on Thursday with Free Range Poetry. Arkana occurs post-fall of civilization and features many squamous Cthonian horrors as well as a few new ones. Free Range Poetry features my illustrated poems -mostly haikus, scifaikus, and cinquains. I do write longer works, but they’re hard to fit into one picture. heh

Once a month, I illustrate another person’s poem as the prize to a cinquain contest run by CinquainPoets, a poetry group I belong to at yahoogroups. Last month’s winner, Ann K Scwader, will be posted tomorrow on Thanksgiving. Ann K. Schwader’s latest chapbook of horror & dark SF poems, Architectures of Night, was published in 2003 by Dark Regions Press. She is the author of Strange Stars and Alien Shadows which can now be preordered from Lindisfarne Press. If you enjoy writing cinquains at all, you might want to join the CinquainPoets group.

Arg, was this one big advertisement or what? lol

If I don’t post tomorrow, everyone have a nice Thanksgiving.

The other night a customer came into the bookstore, and as she was checking out, she commented that when you eat chocolate it releases the same chemicals in your body as are released when you receive a hug from your mother. I assume she said this because we sell some chocolates by the register. heh

It made me think though… I’m allergic to chocolate -does that mean I could be allergic to affection? Or am I allergic to chocolate because I was deprived of affection as a child, a state which continues now as an adult.

I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve been hugged since I was a child. I wasn’t abused, but I maintain that I was very much neglected.

My parents divorced when I was three. My mother remarried when I was seven despite my warnings against it (who listens to a seven-year-old anyway even if she is pretty psychic). This was basically to keep my baby brother from being a Ba$tard. Yeesh, you’d think she’d have learned her lesson the first time.

Both my mother and step-father worked, and the raising of myself, my sister, and our little brother was left to my great grandmother. I reminded her of my father and so she hated me. It’s ironic that my sister looks just like him, but she was still a baby at the time of their divorce. My sister and brother received all of her affection. When I wasn’t being ignored, she made up lies about me to get me in trouble. She once told my mother I kicked her after she scraped her shin on the sofa.

And people wondered why I hated my grammy and hid in the closet or went to the library when left alone in the house with her. There was also the fact that everyone in the house would leave without telling me, and when they returned from the carnival or whatever, they’d say that I was always sick, so they just didn’t ask me along believing I’d say no anyway. Well, maybe, but I had allergies for goodness sake! I probably had a headache for five years straight before we even found out what was making me sick.

I think I stopped trying to give or receive affection when I was about fourteen, and I tried to comfort my mother; she was crying because my ex-stepdad had screwed up our lives royally, taken off for who-knows-where, and we were losing the house. To make a long story short, she pushed me away and that was that.

I haven’t really tried to give or receive affection since or made an effort to go out and “meet people.” I’m almost thirty, and I’ve never been kissed or been on a date. It’s not like I’m at all unattractive, and really, if I wanted to lose my virginity, all I’d probably have to do is walk into a bar and say, “Yo, virgin, right here” and watch the ensuing barfight. (Or maybe I just have a low opinion of male self-control heh).

But I wonder… being allergic to chocolate… if I ever did find someone to love me, would their affection make me sick? I already don’t take gratitude well, which could be considered the most minor shows of affection. When people thank me for something (and being a very considerate person, I get thanked quite a bit) I say sure or anytime, etc. I never say you’re welcome (not that I avoid it), and I try to get out of there ASAP. Is it modesty, bashfullness? I don’t know. It just makes me uncomfortable. How much worse would it be though if someone confessed their love for me?

I suspect it will never happen, and I can content myself with intellectual relationships. But it bothers me. It’s obvious in this instance that this level of non-conformity to society’s norms goes beyond my average level of rabid mysanthropy. Do I crave affection (and chocolate) because I was first exposed to them and then denied them as I grew older? Is it then just a simple matter of “chemical dependency?” Or is it something else?

Well, another strange dream for me, though certainly not a real nightmare.

I was at a bizarre. It’s a place I’ve dreamed of before actually. It’s outdoors and some of the stalls are very close with tables piled high with wares for sale. Other parts are wide open with lots of room to walk through. Both junk and treasures, fine cloth and foods, whatever you want really, can be found there. The place is more or less permanent too -wooden stalls with cloth “doors.”

Perhaps I’ve read too much de Lint, but I wonder if others have dreamed of this place. It’s so real. You can feel and smell and see everything.

I was wandering around the stalls and this ganster/mafia guy was following me around. He was kind of cute in a bad-boy way. I think he wanted to pick my pocket or something. I was very hungry, so I stopped at a food place, but they were packing up for the night and weren’t making any more sandwichs. So I bought a pre-wrapped soggy tuna sub. When I tried to eat it though, it fell apart. I started to cry because I didn’t have any more money left to buy something else.

The Mafia guy laughed at me, and I said, “Oh, you think that’s funny do you? I’ve seen you around, and I don’t like you!” and I shoved what was left in my hands in his face before shoving it down his shirt. Now that was funny!  

Then of course, I took off. I guess he was some kind of big-wig because he sent this big guy lumbering after me for making everyone laugh at him, and he chased me all the way to a cliff. I didn’t give it much thought as I jumped into the river, and as the hitman (or whatever he was) stood on the bridge, I floated back down the river past the bizarre like I was drowned. Then I turned into a mermaid and swam back up underwater and he was none the wiser.

It’s not the first time I’ve gotten in trouble at the Dream-bizarre. One time there were a group of fae visiting and being very rude to one of the people minding a stall, so I told them off. Big mistake because then they got angry at me and were chasing me around the bizarre. Luckily the merchants and stall-keepers appreciated my coming to their defense and hid me in some kind of shed which transported me elsewhere via a wind.

I have the coolest dreams. hehe

This post was inspired by a post on AutumnAsh84‘s blog. My 2 cents was more like 25 cents, so I decided to post it here instead. You can read his post here. My “reply” is below.

People do say honesty is the best policy, but in this day and age, honesty is more likely to get you ostracized. People’s skins are too thin of late. We’ve grown so far away from enlightened discussion of ideas and even satire, that any poetically dissident statement becomes a personal attack on one’s ethics and beliefs -precisely because the words have been thought out.

We have evolved from self-expressive creatures who learn about ourselves by interaction with others to a mind-blind species who find the path to self-enlightenment through thirty second tv commercials. We don’t know who we are; we’re told who we are. And those few who can still think for themselves and discover who they are for themselves are deemed not properly socialized. Obviously, any thinkers in today’s world have not learned how to conform to society’s expected level of mediocrity.

I think it all started when they made Socrates drink the hemlock. That’s when the world turned against thinkers. Thinkers corrupt the young with free thought after all. We can’t have young folk thinking for themselves. Who would fight the wars? Who would blindly follow the religious “right”? Why, if people started thinking instead of following, religious differences, wars, corrupt politics… Why, the hallmarks of civilization would crumble in a matter of decades!

Anarchy!!

So remember kids, thinking is ba-aa-aah-d.

Well, I finally finished the Quizilla quiz I was working on, so if anyone would like to try it out go here

:::::::::::> Who’s your Deity? <:::::::::::

And let me know what you thought of it. Please.

So I was at work the other night and I was trying to help these two kids and their poor granma find a book. I say poor granma because the oldest child, maybe eight years old, was an absolute monster. I wanted to backhand the vicous little demon myself, and I do not advocate physical violence for any reason. But seriously, this kid needed to be euthanized for everyone’s peace of mind before the hormones hit in a few years and the $hit really hits the fan.

For the entire half hour they were there, the little creature was calling her granmother cheap, being insulting to her, and generally being a pain in the a$$. I don’t know what her mother’s like, but it was obvious granma was at her wits end.

So anyway, they were in the magic section of the store. The eight year old, fed on Harry Potter, fancied herself a witch. I was surprised the granma was so tolerant as to even agree to buy something like that. Most older folk would be scandalized, buying the books the kid chose. And if she were Pagan herself, I doubt she’d have been buying the books the little demon was picking out. I’m sure she would have put the little demoness in her place. Honestly, I can see why the Christians say Harry Potter is Satanic with dumba$$e$ like this kid soaking it up. And I’m a fan of Potter.

The monster couldn’t find a book that she’d seen on Amazon, and I went over to try to help. Honestly I didn’t want her to find the book and actually, I didn’t find it although the computer said we had two. I would have liked to have taken the little commercial spellbooks from her as well. If I had my way… well, quite a few books in that section would be sent back to their publishers and quite a few different ones would find their way to the shelves. Unfortunately, the bubble-gum witchery sells, and big bookstores always cater to the lowest common denominator.

I pretty much gave up and walked away when the brat burst out with “Well Muggles don’t understand magic anyway!” in a snotty little screech.

Oh, I was so tempted to tell her I was a witch… so… sooooooooo tempted. Watch her little jaw drop open. The little fangs distend.

But, well you know, you have to be careful around the muggles and the Potter-groupies.