glowboy84

I will be 45... So that means I will be wearing a barrel. Or maybe I'll live in a nudist colony. Or maybe the clothes that I will be wearing will be part of something similar to a hologram that I can program from either mental thought to the nanobots traveling through my bloodstream. Or via implants in my forearm that allow me to change cut, color, and style of what I'm wearing. Beyond the hologram maybe it could also have a forcefield that would be able to control the rate of heat exchange from my skin. I.e. In the middle of a hot summer day you'd be able to create that layered look but be able to at the same time feel cool and breezy. Just think if it starts raining, BOOM! the field stops water from reaching your skin.

Just imagine the possibilities. Anyway these aren't really my thoughts as much as they are the thoughts of sci-fi writers who I've read and of course the knowledge I've sponged up over the years about stuff and things.

-Ryan

Consider going here: http://fc64.deviantart.com/fs22/f/2008/002/0/1/World_War_Two__Simple_Version_by_AngusMcLeod.jpg

Do the reading thing. Bask in the awesomeness. The awesomeness hurts like radiation!!!

Favourite scene has got to be the one with teeny tiny little Finland holding off gigantic Russia with it's little stick arms.

To my cat:

Schrodinger, what did your mom name you when you were born and what does it mean?

My gorgeous Aussie friend Meggy Bee asked me what I meant when I referenced the pink triangle. So I am replying in journal. World War II while the German Nazis were definitely focused heavily on the Jewish people. May they rest in peace. They were also very anti-homosexuality. They forced the Hebrews to wear the symbol of their faith: The star of David. They forced gay men to wear a pink triangle. These people were mercilessly rounded up and sent to concentration camps where they would be cruelly experimented on and/or killed just like the Jewish people were. The pink triangle is worn in remembrance of them. Since then it has become a wide spread symbol of pride.

What does it mean to you? How do you use it or how has it been used on you? Any special feelings or thoughts?

I read the definition in the dictionary like many of us have and was confused that someone would be calling me a 'bundle of sticks'. Why was that offensive? How did this name even become something offensive? Was it because the brits smoke 'fags'? Like smoking is a double entendre.

Then I found out the history behind the word. It does have very negative connotation/history. It might have a more ancient history but the most recent historical usage was in times of the Witch trials in colonial times. Gay men and women were used as 'fags' i.e. tinder to burn the witches on trial. There were just so many of us that they burned us in piles.

Though there is no reason why we can't be positive about the word. Much like the pink triangle that we transformed into a symbol of power. It's all tied into how we take the word and use it. Historical meanings aren't the end all be all of meaning. We live in dynamic societies.


-Rye

So a few weeks ago I went to Vancouver pride up in British Columbia. Beautiful country which of course looks a lot like my home state. Washington. Which reminds me of a separate story where a Vancouver citizen called me where I work and we started talking about weather. She totally denied that she was anywhere near me and that our weather was totally different. it almost sounded as if she would be offended if America and canada would have the same weather systems. :). Any way we compared notes and our weather was exactly the same for the last week... Unbearably hot one day and rain the next. Strange amounts of lightning strikes... All the same. The funny thing to me was that Vancouver is really close to the border crossing and yet this woman was so surefire about protecting her culture's... weather. Okay so back to the main story which also happens to be about pride. But of a slightly more rainbow kind. So I'm coming back from Vancouver and the wait time is atrocious. We are at the border for 3-4 hours. I was traveling with my friend, Chris, and he started getting a little shaky from hunger. He's been on a new diet so he can't eat many of the tasty foods that we all have access to. Any way so I get out of the car and walk passed the miles of cars with people waiting to have their passports looked over and/or to be strip searched and glared at by the angry angry border guards. I am a man on a mission. A mission for meat. My destination: The duty free shop. On my way this woman in the passenger seat of her minivan starts calling out to me. "Yoo hoo. Yoo hoo," She calls out over the idling engines and exhaust hisses. I'm intrigued slightly. So I walk over and she starts searching around at the floor of her car. Her 3 kids and husband are staring at me. After shuffling around on the floor she produces 3 empty water bottles. "We thought since you recycle..." With this statement she gazes at my chest. My face of course gets its classic expression: The what the heck are you talking about one. And at that point she reads the shirt. You see, Ryan got really excited about visiting another country for pride... So I was decked out in Pride wear. I even had a Rainbow flag jutting out of my bag. My shirt had a huge Reduce, Reuse, Recycle sign across it. Which of course explains the thought processes of this woman BUTTTtttt right above the sign it says 'I recycle boys.' The look of the woman as she started connecting all the dots of her teeny tiny mistake were hilarious. Though in truth I got the shirt because I like to recycle and because I like boys. Not necessarily because I recycle boys. Nay if I had a choice I would have one boy and similar to reducing (since I am using less boys) I would be Reusing him again and again and again. And again.

Actually if I could change the shirt it would say: I will REDUCE you to a quivering mound of skin and bone, I will REUSE what ever is left over as many times as I see fit, and finally I will RECYCLE you through to where you began. Just so we can try again tomorrow.

Or it would say something like that.

By the way. I not only found meat at the duty free shop but I negotiated the shopkeeper to give all the meat that she had to me for 4 dollars. I took the bottles with me to Seattle and recycled them at home.

-Rye

P.s. And again.

My online name has been Dimglow for as long as I can remember and that is where the story comes from. I used to be really into Anne McCaffrey's Pern series and Dimglow was used as a term for someone when they did something foolish or stupid. I.e. you called them a dimglow like here in modern times when we would call someone a dimbulb (no I have never called anyone a dimbulb. I mean sure I'm a dork but I never stooped that low.) I was just pointing out to myself that part of the first step in the path of wisdom is to truly understand how little you actually are starting out with. Anyway I decided a year or two ago that self denigration is bad for the soul so I decided to drop names like Dimglow. So I chose my name based off of the person who collects the dim glows and trades them out for fresh glows. Glows, by the way, were a light source for the cave dwelling Pernese. They had to stay underground because otherwise they would be killed by their nemesis: Thread. The glows were phosperescent as you would assume a glowing rock would be.

The first name I chose on livejournal was Don Coyote but Mika, my room mate, told me that everyone would think I was a furry if I chose it. I chose that name because it was similar to Don Quixote which is the story made famous by a gentleman who fights windmills that he thinks are giants. The main character was foolish, honourable and very romantic. He had some traits that I could do well to emulate. Also because Coyote is a very cool god in the southwestern Native American mythos. Trickster gods are awesome.