Shady Clearing

Well, Halloween is upon us. Perhaps you refer to it as All Hallows Eve, or even Samhain, but in the end, it’s just a name. Some folklore describes Halloween as the single day of the year when the world of the living and the world of the dead become so closely arranged that the dead are able to manifest themselves among the living freely. To others, it is merely a day of revelry where children (and some adults!) masquerade from place to place, collecting treats and falling prey to the occasional trick.

Whatever your view of the holiday, I’m sure that the most will be made of it for those who are able. The biggest thing to remember is to always play it safe. I know, I know, you hear it from every angle each year, but it’s the truth. Even if you live in a small town where everyone knows everyone else, there is always a risk of a seemingly innocent neighbor doing something malicious to the “goodies” that he or she gives out. For any kids that may somehow come upon this article, remember this especially. If you’re going to be out after dark, wear something reflective so drivers can see you. If you receive anything that isn’t wrapped, don’t eat or use it! It can be a clue to something sinister afoot. Ask your parents to check your other treats for any signs of tampering. Even though something being wrong with your stuff isn’t necessarily common doesn’t mean that it could never happen, and you can take that to the bank.

As for me this holiday, I’ll be “celebrating” it in my way. This will likely include food, fun and folly with friends, and on a more serious side, some rituals that are fitting for the Sabbot. In the end, I’m sure it will be seen by those involved as something to remember for some time.

In other news, AeonRO just got a big update. It includes a client update from the standard Sakray client to X-Ray, allowing us much greater flexibility in custom client-side additions, as well as 18 new hairstyles for both male and female characters, bringing the total number of styles to a comfortable 41. As a prank for the holiday and our own amusement, the staff and I also did a little job class renaming, which the players -still- haven’t all noticed. And some of the names are just FUNNY. For example, the Gypsy class is now going by the moniker of “Pantsmistress”, while the Archmagus prestige class is currently known as “Magic 8 Ball.” You might think of that as being silly and not very useful, but then it was never intended to be useful…just amusing.

And now, I shall include a quote that, though new to me, has been a part of my thinking for a very long time.

We all wear masks, and the time comes when we cannot remove them without removing some of our own skin.
- Andre Berthiaume

Fitting too is this quote for the holiday.  Though on Halloween many of us will wear a mask to hide our identity from others, we often very rarely think about the masks we wear each and every day.  Some of us are so used to wearing them that we even forget that we do.  I am not innocent of wearing masks either, though I like to think that I remove them more often than some.  To wear a mask in this context is to put on a face.  It may not hide your identity like those novelties we buy at the store, but in fact it does much worse, in that it hides how you -feel-.  Every person has his or her own concerns, worries and problems that run through our minds each day, but do we let everyone know it, or show that something is bothering us?  Of course not!  As we go out into public everyday, we put on our respective masks that allow us to show only as much emotion as we want others to see.  A person may smile at you, but there’s really no way of knowing whether they’re actually happy or just being polite.  In contrast, when something really terrible happens, we may put on a mask of anger, causing us to lash out at those around us, while in reality we’re hurting with sorrow or regret on the inside.  The reason we wear these masks is because we’re afraid that showing how we really feel will make us appear vulnerable, stupid, or weak.  We don’t want people to think we can’t handle whatever hardships we’re facing, to think that we aren’t smart enough to figure out a problem, or know that we’re having a hard time which may make it easy for them to take advantage of us.

This is mostly a means of self-preservation, but it becomes a problem when we become so dependent on our masks that we forget we’re even wearing them, or worse - how to take them off.  At that point, the line between who we seem to be and who we really are becomes increasingly muddled, to the point of being entirely indiscernible.   It is then that we risk having our lives thrown into turmoil when something so drastic happens that it rips the masks from our faces, taking some of our flesh with it because it had become so adhered.  When that happens, we’ve almost actually lost a part of our real selves, that we have to work very hard to get back.

I suppose the moral of this would be that while wearing a mask is a very normal and common thing, never forget to take it off sometimes and truly just be yourself.  If you can’t trust anyone enough to do that, then are you really even at terms with yourself, or have you forgotten who you really are?

That’s all for tonight.  Ta~

I just got back a few hours ago from 4 days in Wisconsin!  It was a blast, even if I do say so myself.  I ended up bringing the accent back with me, too.  At any rate, let’s get started on recapping this trip.

THURSDAY/FRIDAY

We (Teresa, her daughter and I) left Thursday night around  11:30pm.  I  was the driver for the trip, so that was a hilarious 10 hours.  I figured that Teresa or at least her daughter would sleep sometime during the trip, but of course not.  Made the trip up there go by quite quickly, seeing as how of 10 hours driving, I only spent about 30 minutes of it not laughing.  We arrived in Alma Center, Wisconsin at around 10 am Friday morning.  I know that’s more than 10 hours, but you have to consider that we stopped once at a rest area and twice at gas stations to fill up.

At that point I had met Becky and Melissa.  Melissa is Teresa’s sister, and the reason we went up there in the first place.  Shortly thereafter, Chuck (or Chucky, or Sucky) came in, and thus another new face was made known to me.  Chuck was the other half of the reason for being there, as he was to be the groom to the bride that Melissa was to be.  After the meetings took place, we hung around for a while, just chatting and what not.  Becky showed up shortly, and the three ladies went out to find shoes to wear for the wedding, leaving Zabrina and I to our own devices for finding things to do.

We ended up going over to her cousin Quinn’s house for a bit.  Quinn was cool.  Apparently  he’s a geek too, although I didn’t have much of a chance to actually talk to him as I didn’t have anything to really say.  After staying there for about an hour, we left and went back to Melissa’s house and finally got some rest around 7pm…

That is, until around 10pm as far as I’m concerned, because it was at that point that Teresa called wondering if I was going to sleep all night or if I wanted to come out for a while.  Of course I chose to go out for a while, although I was going to be driving by myself and she was drunk while trying to give me directions.  As much as that may sound like a disaster waiting to happen, I really didn’t get too lost for driving in an unfamiliar place in the dark.  I ended up in Humbird at first, but quickly figured out what I’d done wrong and found myself in Merrillan shortly thereafter, at the bar that I was looking for.

Once inside, I found Teresa and her friends Donna and Kim at the other end of the bar, and walked over to greet them.  Introductions were had and then I had a few drinks.  Nothing really strong, but they were really tasty.  At that point was where I was first introduced to Dane.  Dane is this large piece of man standing about 6′6″ and with a good amount of meat to back it up.  That is to say, he’s a rather good looking man.  Full beard and all that…just Woof!  Anyway, from there we left and went back to Black River Falls to Donna and Kim’s hotel room for chatting and whatnot, as well as some sleep for the next day.  That was run in itself, and gave us time to get to know each other better.  Fell asleep around 2:30am, and now we can continue to the next day…

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I think another thing that tends to keep me from blogging everyday is that the events of my life are generally the same each day that goes by. That said, it’d be boring even for me to sit down and write that I fussed with things on Aeon for a while, then I went to pick up my mom from work. After that I slept for a while before waking up and going to work for (x) amount of hours. Leaving work, I returned home and sat around doing stuff with Aeon for a while… ad infinitum. On the occasions that I do have something happen throughout the course of the day that I’m writing about, of course I’ll tell about it, but on other days, I’ve decided that a good idea to fill the empty would be to take a quote from those I receive in my email every night and analyze it against my own thoughts. Not only would it make up for having my posts so spaced out, but it just might also give someone some things to think about of their own. Now that that’s over, the quote I’ve selected for tonight goes a little something like this:

“The past is rarely remembered without sorrow, for it has been either better or worse than the present.”

–Leonora Christina

Firstly, I must say that I agree with the statement as a whole.  It is true that more often than not, whenever we think about the past, if the things we’re thinking about are good times we’ve had compared to now, we often state the phrase, “Good times…” in a reminiscent  tone, such that indicates a longing for the return of those times.  Else, if we are thinking of past times of grief and sorrow, we are often filled with the memory of what caused such emotions back then and are driven to feel as we did when the events took place, regardless of whether we have reason to or not.

For example, if I think back on times from when I was still in school, I remember the good times I had with my friends and all the new experiences that came my way.  I smile as I think of it, but at the same time, I long to be able to have times like that again, and am thusly sorrowful at the lack thereof.  On the other hand, I can think back also to times when someone that I loved or was close to had died, and remembering their death awakens the void their absence left within me and again I find myself grieving the loss.

These words not only speak the truth, but also tell of the power that emotion itself has over us.  That merely remembering something that occurred in the past that caused us to feel a strong emotion can bring about the feeling of that emotion once more or a longing to experience the emotion again indicates that without it, we’re nothing more than fleshy robots with buggy programming and the inability to learn or adapt.

Any thoughts?

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Listening to: SirRus - Manifest Destiny
via FoxyTunes

Hrm, so first on the list is Computers Plus. They suck and need to burn in a fire. “Our Genius of Technology” would certainly have the fan you need to replace in your computer, right? Wrong. I wasted an hour of my life driving over there looking for a 70mm CPU fan, and they had every size fan you could possibly need… EXCEPT the one you need. Ugh…it’s just infuriating. So, I have to order the fan from Newegg and wait for it to get here. Granted, the price WITH shipping and handling on that is the same as it would have been just for the fan from Computers Plus, but the inconvenience of having to order it online after trying to not have to is just annoying. Die, Computers Plus, die. You are truly NOT “our genius of technology.”

Secondly, an old, frustrating feud on Aeon has finally found some closure. It’s uplifting, really, and kinda gives you a bit more faith in the human race as a result. This feud had been going on for years, literally, and finally today, it laid down and died. Hallelujah.

Thirdly, Harold has moved to Central City finally. It’s really not much further away than Evansville.

Finally, I’m going on a trip with my friend/co-worker next week. We’ll be going to Wisconsin. I’m excited about it because I’ve never been to Wisconsin and I think it’ll be fun. Doesn’t really matter why we’re going, to me. She’s going because her sister is getting married, and of course I’ll attend, but I don’t know them (I suppose I will after it’s over) and the marriage is just an event associated with the trip in my case.

I think that’s it for today. Toodles!

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Listening to: Red Hot Chili Peppers - Hump De Bump
via FoxyTunes