Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Sheer's LiveJournal:

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Thursday, November 19th, 2009
6:32 am	New track.. Originally published at Never been one to let the carrier drop. You can comment here or there. So, as some of you may have read in previous journal entries, my old music recording computer died. Dan Spisak thoughtfully sold me a somewhat-used-but-new-to-me MBP, which I’ve loaded with the latest and greatest Digital Performer. Here’s my first ever track recorded with this new setup.. this isn’t really intended to be brilliant, just to test out various things to make sure they all work (i.e. ADAT interfaces, Analog interfaces, MIDI interfaces, clock sync, etc). They appear to. But, if you like my dark/atmospheric new-ageish stuff, this is a classic example. I think I probably ripped bits of the theme from many other things I’ve written, though.. it definately was a off-the-cuff, one-pass-per-track sort of thing. HelloWorld. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, November 18th, 2009
3:43 am	Skating movies Originally published at Never been one to let the carrier drop. You can comment here or there. So, I’ve been watching skating movies (as well as youtube videos on playing derby, etc) - so far we’ve got Roll Bounce, Whip It, The cutting edge, Blades of glory.. wondering what I’m missing. I’m sure there’s some classic older movies that show some fancy footwork.. comment if you know of any good ones. I continue to fight my fear of lifting my feet while skating backwards.. leaving the ground no longer bothers me, and reversing no longer bothers me. I also wish I was good enough to practice outside.. but at the moment, becoming one with the ground is something I’m entirely too good at. I also need to measure my wheels, because I need new wheels and I’m thinking I might as well get new bearings at the same time. My front wheels look like they’re wanting to skate on a banked track, with me skating level. As I practice going up on just my front wheels for tricks, I’m thinking I’m going to want more wheel surface to go up on. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, November 10th, 2009
4:53 pm	R.I.P. ;-( Originally published at Never been one to let the carrier drop. You can comment here or there. Well, my music recording computer finally died. It’s a old G4 powerbook that’s been going steadily downhill for several years. I have a replacement for it, but it’s intel and I don’t have any of the software I need for it yet. However, tonight I’m going to stop by Guitar Center and buy a copy of Digital Performer. (Comment on this)
7:22 am	All skate, slowly and carefully in the regular skating direction Originally published at Never been one to let the carrier drop. You can comment here or there. So, as many of you know, I’ve been spending increasing amounts of time at the fountain valley skating center - in fact, I’ve gotten a monthly pass to the place. You have to plan to hit more than two sessions a week for the monthly pass to make sense.. the really insane thing is, now that I have it, I basically spend every night there that they’re open. Some of the skaters there are downright amazing - and for some reason - probably because they chase me - I feel the need to chase them. This has been leading to me very quickly developing my skating skills.. I can now do things that I could only have dreamed of in my Skate City days. Part of my rapid growth is that I’m over my fear of falling. I *expect* to fall occasionally. I’m just hoping that it doesn’t happen while I’m chasing a roller derby queen at speeds that might make a cop raise his eyebrows on a residential street…  (You think I’m kidding. Actually, I have no idea how fast we’re going. But we lap the rink several times a minute.. faster than they ever would have let us go at Skate City USA, by a factor of three or more) No one screams worship goats.. (I don’t really miss it) and no one plays tag (now *that* I do miss). People do go for full-contact skating.. I’m getting used to having people slam into my back - actually it feels kind of good - but no one has picked me up yet. Yes, they pick each other up. While on skates. Without, thus far, doing face plants. These people are either crazy, insanely good, or both. I did some facebook research, and I came up with a conclusion. In general, people who roller skate or blade, love it. Everywhere around the U.S. there are Facebook pages devoted to various rinks, and people generally seem to be having a good time everywhere. It doesn’t seem to be limited to any age group - the FVSC adult night has guys who must be in their seventies - the only requirement seems to be a willingness to roll to the beat. So, I’m not, at all, alone. And, come on, can’t you all hear it.. ‘We’re going to turn this into a all skate, slowly and carefully in the regular skating direction’. Yah. Slowly and carefully. I’ll keep that in mind while I’m getting up to the average cruising speed of the FVSC adult night. I guess ’slowly’ is relative. But we’re very careful - honest, officer.. I’m kind of determined to go further, to be able to freestyle. I can already do a lot of basic freestyle moves, but I want to be able to do the insane, roll-bounce-esque ones. So, I’m going to try to get back on a morning schedule, because the rink has morning sessions that are much, much emptier.. a good place to try things that are likely to involve a lot of falling down. Anyway, I need to go put my MP3 player on the charger so it will be ready for the 10 AM session. And I already know it will feel sooo good. Yes, my legs hurt. Every day. Reminds me of when I was learning how to bowl. But.. although I do enjoy bowling, I don’t think it ever got me anywhere near this high. I’m.. happy. A lot of the time. I don’t get so many hours in at work, but .. skating costs $55 a month for a pass. That’s it. (Comment on this)
Thursday, October 29th, 2009
7:04 pm	Judgemental.. Originally published at Never been one to let the carrier drop. You can comment here or there. I feel like I’m too judgemental.. about political subjects, about religion, about a whole host of things that seem almost like they’re set up to absorb infinite amounts of emotional energy without any real progress being made. I don’t really think that I’m wrong about these things, exactly, but I also don’t really think that it matters that much if I’m right or wrong. I’m kind of tired of the concepts of right and wrong - and good and evil - any way - they seem like they’re oversimplifying everything by trying to squish rainbows down into single bit binary values. I want to be better. I get the sense that I’m sick - that perhaps it’s a sickness that much of my kind shares, in fact -  and I want to be well. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
7:00 pm	p.s. Originally published at Never been one to let the carrier drop. You can comment here or there. One of my counterarguments to the athiests [not that I deny your right and indeed responsibility to believe whatever you think is right, but just that I like to play with ideas] is that it seems really insane to think that we’re the largest and most powerful organized systems out there. It seems like we’d already be dead from nuclear war or something if this were true. But, perhaps I just suffer from a want for there to be something beyond me, because the idea that a bunch of people like me are running the universe is a little scary. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, October 28th, 2009
2:17 am	Of dieties and beliefs Originally published at Never been one to let the carrier drop. You can comment here or there. So, this is sort of a continuation of yesterday’s post. The question I’m going to address in this post is probably one of the oldest ones in religion. If I have internally a sense of what I feel to be right and wrong with respect to God - and it disagrees with what the world’s majority religion says is right or wrong - should I think a: I’m wrong b: They’re wrong c: Something is jamming my communications, hence I can’t hear them and/or they can’t hear me d: Absolute right and wrong have no place in religious discussion [unless one wants a holy war or three], there is only relative right and wrong for each individual Now, if you believe the Christians, this actually matters. It’s apparently not enough to just set the ‘I accepted Jesus’ flag high once and ignore it.. there are apparently some other things you have to do in order to qualify for not being tormented forever, although they’re a little unspecific as to what. But.. it seems *extremely* counterintuitive that the Christians could be right. Let me explain. If I was created - as opposed to evolved, or always existing, or any of the other amusing possibilities for how I got to be here in this place and time - my creator presumably designed me to be, more or less, what I am. Which means that if I have a sense of instinct that says a religion is wrong, it probably is - that’s probably built in, as a sort of informational immune system, to keep me away from the occasional person who might otherwise use religion to control or abuse me. The alternative is to think.. if you’re taking the Christian view of things.. that my creator created me with a set of beliefs and instincts that would lead me to being tormented eternally. Set me up to lose. If you take *That* view, then God is evil and we are all fucked. Oh, dear, there go my judgy jackels again. No, this is a little worrisome. If I take the majority rule view of religion, ignoring my own inner voice, I’m killing myself in favor of something that, to be honest, doesn’t look that great. If I stick with my own instincts, ignoring the religious texts that feel wrong, it seems like it’s possible I will find the right answers, or at least stay away from the wrong ones. But it’s a scary leap to take, because I am basically ignoring what you’ve all said to me. Another option is to look at alternate religions. After all, one doesn’t necessarily choose the best religion by democracy, any more than one chooses the best operating system or programming language that way. So, we have several stripes of Buhddism to investigate, including the SGI folks, the Zen folks, and the idea that one should just try and do whatever mental process Siddartha did to begin with. [Honestly, chanting to a piece of paper that describes the shape of a loving universe seems considerably less whack than bowing down before a torture implement.. but  I digress] Friends have suggested various Buhddist temples.. perhaps it’s time I got off my duff and actually showed up at one? Anyway, back to the original problem, which is.. actually, probably one that’s more overarching than just religion. In general, if my gut and the data the world is presenting me disagree, should I go with my gut, or should I go with what the world is presenting me? I don’t have to tell you that this world has a lot of people with really questionable motives running around in it, or that the economic and social systems seem to be built up in such a way as to make it both a hazerdous place and a place where a lot of competition goes on. Um, is my perception. Again, lately I’ve been toying with the idea that the world isn’t really what I think it is at all. The problem is that I know a lot of the things I’m afraid of (the IRS, the franchise tax board, eviction, etc) are real, and not just in my head. Um.. do I know that? I think I know that? I have this vision of me sending a letter to the FTB - “You don’t exist. Go away.”. [Bonus points for anyone who gets the operating system reference] It’s a interesting.. not to mention somewhat upsetting.. possibility to consider that I am my own tormenter, that I always have been. I guess that’s sort of a Buhddist thing, though, isn’t it? If so, the question I have to ask, being a somewhat pragmatic Sheer is, great, how do I stop? Anyway, once more back to the original topic, which is - the data the world is presenting me and my gut instinct disagree on something. Do I go with the data the world is presenting me, or my gut? (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Tuesday, October 27th, 2009
2:19 am	Jackels, Giraffes, and Dieties Originally published at Never been one to let the carrier drop. You can comment here or there. So, last night, on our way to the U2 concert, we were accosted by a couple of Christian trolls. I say they were trolls because Kayti approached them and offered to be converted, and they couldn’t come with any concrete suggestions to her on how to get saved. (They weren’t, in other words, out there trying to save souls. It was actually pretty funny.. they were yelling things like “You’re behaving like your old daddy Lucifer.. he invented music, you know! Rock music leads to sex and drugs!” - to which we all cheered. Yes. We certainly hope so.) Now, I recognize that these two were just trolling for amusement value, but there are really people who believe that a: Some sort of day of judgement is coming and b: We will be judged based - apparently - on how little fun we had. No, really, God made a universe with a lot of entertaining possibilities, but we lose points for every one of them we indulge in, apparently. We’re supposed to be unhappy so we’ll be worthy of being happy in the next lifetime. No, wait a second, where does that end? Next lifetime, we’ll again be competing for how little fun we can have? Who signed me up for this, and how can I get off the list? Now, normally I bash Christianity because I’m pissed off at the Christians - for a long list of reasons detailed elsewhere in this blog that I’m not going to go into here. But I did make a serious attempt recently to figure out how to wrap my head around the religion - and I just don’t think I can. To explain why, I’m going to head over to a topic that Kayti has been studying lately - nonviolent communication, or NVC - I think they have a web site at http://www.cnvc.org/ - now, obviously me and Kayti had some pretty spectular communications issues and it’s really great that she’s studying this, and she’s been sharing some of it with me - and one of the mental models they use to discuss communication methods is Jackel vs. Giraffe. The basic theory is that jackels are very judgemental, very lacking in empathy for the other side of any given discussion, while giraffes, with the biggest hearts of any animal on earth, can hear the needs behind the judgemental (and sometimes, let’s face it, horrible) statements of the jackels and manage to communicate with them anyway. So, how does this connect to religion? Well, it seems to be a popular thesis that humans can’t understand dieties. Not everyone claims this, but the majority of people say, God is too big, you are too small, God will not make sense to you. Therefore, it seems likely to me that we see only the parts of God that we believe in - just like I suspect we see only the parts of the world we believe in, at least to a certain extent. There are input filters between our senses and the parts of us that are us, and they filter out anything that is too far out of line with our beliefs - or perhaps the filters are before our memory, and so we can only remember things that match the things we believe - anyway, I’m suspicious that, since the world is full of contridictory religions, and people of all of them are equally convinced that their religion is the one true one, what’s happening is that people are filtering the available data based on their belief-set, and thusly seeing what they expect to see. Dear all adherents to religion everywhere, congradulations, you are bending your own reality. Now, that’s not saying God isn’t real - after all, people all see the Sheer they expect to see too, and I’m pretty sure I exist. But I do think you get the God you believe in, at least somewhat. This doesn’t seem too difficult to figure out.. But, I was talking about jackels and giraffes. I have this need - being the candy-raver kid I am - for God to be a giraffe. I just don’t want to live in a universe where *e’s a jackel - I’d rather not exist. But I hear these people talking - usually right after I’ve made a statement defending gay people - about how God is a “just God” and therefore “MUST punish people” for “committing sins”. Now, if some guys tell me they have this book that disagrees with what my heart says must be true about the divine.. I’m going to ignore the book and go with my heart - and I think I’d be an idiot not to. Anyway, we were talking of the concept of God I get presented including the plans for judgement this creature has. Well, what a jackel this creep must be! In general, judging other people isn’t the best behavior to be indulging in, as most of us figure out sooner or later. Why would God need to be judge and jury - for that matter, why would anyone need punished at all? Earth already has too many ‘consequences’ for my tastes, and I don’t think I’m alone in this. Really what we need is a system to keep us from hurting each other - but there are many who would rather have a system where we can hurt each other, just so they can have the pleasure of punishing us for doing so.  And there I go Jackeling off again and judging them.. but.. read http://mindprod.com/livinglove/methods/nvc.html and consider how the statements in there apply to $DIETY. To get somewhat off my original topic (I’ll come back to it, probably), what Jackel need is welling up in the Christians making these claims for God? A need for the universe to include some sort of punishment for behavior that they see as immoral, or possibly that just squicks them? Why would they need that? There really must be a valid answer to this, and I suspect it’s an issue of control. I haven’t really run my file-permissions universe by too many of these individuals, but I’m guessing they wouldn’t like it very much, because it removes any valid reason or even excuse for a ‘judgement day’. (well, I suppose you could have a time where you decided if the story-lines currently going on in your life were worth continuing..) - these people believe in this, presumably, because they want to! I certainly don’t seem to have any trouble not believing in it - and I’ve been just as convinced of having concious contact with the divine as any of the rest of you.. If I were trying to hear them in Giraffe, what would I hear? Fears about an inability to control the behaviors of others? Fears that if they don’t speak up for the Jackel nature of God, *e might turn out to be a big, tall Giraffe who doesn’t really care who we sleep with? The phrase ‘living in sin’ has always fascinated me - to this apparently huge group of people, there’s something inherently bad and awful about living with a lover unless you make a lifetime commitment to them - but I think the only reason they have for this is ‘this is how we’ve always done it’. Birth control and longer lifespans both change the rules in some fundamental ways, but religion adapts even more slowly than government. Human systems are not exactly light on their feet, and so little of our social systems seem to be optimizing for happiness. Really, I assume there is some basic need in some people to control the behavior or happiness of other people. I just don’t understand why the need is there. Maybe some people only feel complete if they have power over others? Hm. That sounds like I’m judging them too. This nonjudgemental stuff is really hard, especailly when you’re talking about a subject that is fraught with oppertunities for unhappiness and the opposite of nonviolent communication. Well, before the information age, I guess there wasn’t really any way we *could* be light on our feet in terms of idea structures - and now, we’re still learning how. So I’ll pat that jackel that’s over there in the corner bittering about how awful the world is on his furry little head, and continue about my original thesis. From where I sit, the bible was written at least partially by forces that liked hate, darkness, and evil. Even Jesus doesn’t say ‘Yes, the people who came before me were at least somewhat wrong’ - even though the people who came before him seriously suggested stoning anyone who slept with another person of the same gender.. (for example). This is not a book written by love. I would dearly love to see what the bible *would have* looked like if it *hadn’t* been written by the forces of darkness. I suspect somewhere out there, maybe in some parallel universe or maybe in this one, is a “real” bible - a book of collections of ideas about love, written by people who actually know what it is and have felt it on a regular basis. For my own reasons, I suspect this bible would have more women then men in the list of authors. But.. Paul, for example, is the Enemy with a capitol E. Although I wonder.. if I heard Paul’s mysoginistic Jackel in Giraffe, what would I hear? ‘I’m frightened by women, because I feel they might be smarter than I am.. or because they’re so different.. and so I want them to stay quiet in church’? ‘I need to rig the deck of this religion to support my gender because otherwise I’m afraid we will all be overrun by the women’? I’ve strongly considered the possibility that the book is both Giraffe and Jackel - that in fact it’s my own darkness that makes me unable to see the Bible as it truly is - I see my own darkness reflected in it, instead of the original message. However, if my nervious system is subbing out content from the world around me, there isn’t a lot that I can do about it. (Other than blog about it and see if it gets any reactions) I suspect that I’m a jackel more often than I would like to be. Since Kayti discussed the course materials with me, I’ve been watching my words and thoughts to see how often they contain judgement - or pointless suggestions and advice - when empathy would be a more appropriate response. Anyway, if you are a Christian reading my blog - I know there’s at least a couple of you out there - ask yourself, why would you want God to be a jackel? Or, what need of yours does it fill to claim that you absolutely know what God wants, and that *e wants people to suffer if they (a: sleep with the wrong people or at the worng times b: don’t say one key phrase about accepting this one guy who got killed for trying to bring a message of hope and love c: whichever set of beliefs you happen to have). Are you sure there isn’t a better way to get that need met? I just hope that God’s runtime behavior isn’t decided by what the majority believes about h*. That’s not a hard possibility to believe in.. if we’re each one neuron in a neural net that is God, for example, you’d expect behavior kind of like that. In which case, I should really be trying to convince everybody to have a happier view of the concept - perhaps as insanely happy as possible? (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, October 22nd, 2009
3:56 am	Power switch? Originally published at Never been one to let the carrier drop. You can comment here or there. I’m really pretty sure my brain was supposed to have the ability to scale back its operating frequency a little bit. I haven’t figured out how to do this just yet, but I’m thinking that’s what the Buhddists mean by meditating. Really, this thinking needs to stop. Just for a while, I want to hang out and *not think*. Enjoy the silence, as it were. You listening, oh forces who have undertaken to hack my neural nets for reasons I can only but guess? Can we get a ‘neutral’ setting? I’ve had a few moments of silence recently, but I think I’d like.. I don’t know, a few weeks of it? (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, October 21st, 2009
8:30 pm	Nightmares Originally published at Never been one to let the carrier drop. You can comment here or there. I used to have semi-nightmares every night. Problems that needed solved, things that weren’t working, people who were angry with me. I don’t seem to any more. So, I can’t control my dreams, but at least they’re not awful any more. (Comment on this)
Monday, October 12th, 2009
3:28 pm	Whip It.. Originally published at Never been one to let the carrier drop. You can comment here or there. Okay, so Kayti and I went to see Whip It - it wasn’t hard to convince me to see this movie, since it had pretty much everything.. Drew Berrymore, skating (I loved Roll Bounce), and.. roller derby? I’m not a contact sports kind of person. Generally, ‘no pain, success’ has been more my style than ‘no pain, no gain’.. but .. wow that looks like fun. Yes, I realize it probably hurts a bit..and I would have to regain my quad skate skills, which are very, very dusty.. Sadly, a little Googling reveals that there’s no male roller derby team in SoCal. Ah well. — So, I commented on this on facebook, but seriously, wouldn’t laser tag on roller blades be fun? Especially on a very large flat surface like a warehouse floor, with some cleverly placed obsticles? (And some of Chris Mish’s best EBM going). Who’s got a warehouse we can borrow? Anyone else in? [Oh. Wait. I only have one friend who lives here who skates, and he’s more the dancer type..] Well. Hm. I wonder.. Craigslist…? (Comment on this)
Tuesday, October 6th, 2009
11:50 am	You can’t always get what you want.. Originally published at Never been one to let the carrier drop. You can comment here or there. So, apparently lucid dreaming is not in the cards for me - or not yet, anyway. On the other hand, an old friend has become a living presence in my mind that has been giving my personal demons a serious ass-kicking. Every time I hate something about myself, or kick myself for failing something, I get a reminder to reality-test that against the real world. Every time I get the urge to lie for short-term gain, costing long-term, I get a gentle reminder about where that leads. And every time I’m afraid, I get a reminder that most fears, when faced head-on, turn out to be, as Brenda would say, False Evidence Appearing Real. So, you can’t always get what you want.. but if you try sometimes.. you just might find.. you get what you need. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009
8:45 pm	’slut’ is a compliment.. where does that lead? Originally published at Never been one to let the carrier drop. You can comment here or there. So.. it occured to me recently that in a society that wasn’t sick and insane, ’slut’ would be a compliment.. And, actually, I think amongst some circles, it already is. But.. once you start redefining words that had a negative connotation as being positive, where do you stop? Certainly not with words like ‘whore’. I mean, ‘geek’ has already been reclaimed to be positive - ‘nerd’ I suppose probably is amongst some people although I still have kind of a horror of it. Really, are there any words that are insults, when taken the right way? Is it possible to morph anything insulting that’s been said to me to actually be a compliment? (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, September 20th, 2009
8:06 pm	New track… Originally published at Never been one to let the carrier drop. You can comment here or there. http://www.sheer.us/stuff/LiveAndLoving2009/DarkMind.mp3. (Comment on this)
12:38 pm	Further proof that I am, in fact, an asshole. Originally published at Never been one to let the carrier drop. You can comment here or there. Okay, so I get these assorted conservative email letters - one of the latest ones is about the ACLU fighting a case over prayer in school. Only, it’s obviously NOT a case over prayer in school - prayer is a internal, mental process, and you should be free to chat with your internal subsystems, or your God, or anyone else you like, inside your head, any time you like. This isn’t something anyone can take away - you can’t stop people from thinking. What it’s actually, I’m guessing, a case over is that some nutjob wants a ‘official moment of prayer’ I.E. “pray now” which strikes me as kind of coercive and vile. People don’t need to be told when to think what - and telling them they should think of, or think about, a particular thing at a particular time is a ttempt to control them. Of course, I guess that’s what manditory education is all about anyway - which is why I support voluntary education instead of manditory. [sigh] I should know better than to write about my political views. They’ll only have changed by the time I next read this anyway. (Comment on this)
Saturday, September 19th, 2009
12:51 pm	Why I don’t think ‘polyamorous’ is the right word. Originally published at Never been one to let the carrier drop. You can comment here or there. Taking the literal meaning of ‘polyamoury’, it means loving many people. But all of us - at least, I would hope all of us - love many, many people, whether or not we express it with physical contact. I can’t imagine how dark and disturbing a life would be that only involved loving one other person - anyway, I feel enormously richer loving the many that I do. As a side note, here’s a list of people that I love that are currently in my mind - if you are reading this, and you feel like you should be on this list - you probably are *right*, so call me and remind me! Tavian (aka Ducky) Jessica (aka Luna) Amy (aka Bunny) Sam Vicky (fka Coughdrop, aka TGAW) Carolyn (fka Magic Mist) Harvey Meira (fka Mindy) Natalie (fka Nathaniel) Vinnie (aka Drachen) Gayle (fka Banshee, Kalika) Lara (my silly rabbit) Shepherd (aka Waater, Grei) Owen Carla James (aka Centauri, Deadman) Andy Becky other Becky (Stargazer) Lisa (with the car ;-)) Lisa (ex-sister?) Cal Mei Brenda Phoebe (obviously ;-)) Michael Jay David D. (who I haven’t heard from in so long that I don’t have any guess how I would find him) Holly Rayna April Nicka (aka OMCN) Chris K. (a.k.a. JL a.k.a Curious) Shelly Brett How Kate Lenny Jane Lisa (of Jane descent) Andy (who runs marathons) Cindy (who leads choirs) Vicky (of FBRS) Raymond (also of FBRS) Jorge (my little bro!) Jennifer (my literal sister) Kayti (tho it hurts a bit) — I’m sure it’s not a complete list, but you see the point. We’re all polyamorous - I’m *certain* that everyone on that list loves many people (though far from certain that everyone on that list loves me). I actually at this point suspect there’s a solution to the polysexual problem that the hippies overlooked - which is to meet those you would have as lovers in dreams. This keeps a virtualization layer between them, thusly solving nicely all the jealousy problems. Once I thought that it would just be me fooling myself if I did this - now I am suspecting that we are connected in more ways than the obvious here and now and that it would literally be the other people. Now to master lucid dreaming.. I’m creating a dream journal - which will be locked, so you all don’t get to have the fun of watching my initial, probably failed or awkward attempts at it. I’ve bought a multichannel alarm clock and determined when my REM cycles are (I asked my higher power. He nailed it in one try. Go figure.) to interrupt them. I think I know what I’m doing - and if I don’t I’m still a lot less likely to hurt myself with this than with some of the funny chemicals I’ve tried over my life. I’m not - at all - just doing this for the sex, either. Among other things, I’ve always wanted to be able to fly - without any machine. For that matter, the idea of jamming with Jimmy Buffet, chatting with Spider Robinson, dancing with Madonna, and finally being able to say *anything* to *anyone* without fear of being ground into a little pulp.. let’s just say it has remarkable appeal. Wish me luck. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, September 16th, 2009
10:33 pm	Blast from the past.. Originally published at Never been one to let the carrier drop. You can comment here or there. For those of you who remember me in the early 90s, for a while I was with a girl named Vinnie (aka Drachen, or Black Drachen) and I wrote her this song. These are not the original lyrics.. but they seemed to fit now better. This is sort of a experiment for me - to see if I can get over my fear of posting music with lyrics. We’ll see how it goes - because I’ve got a lot of things to say to a lot of people, and this might be a somewhat theraputic way to say them. http://www.sheer.us/stuff/EyeOfTheStorm2-sox.mp3 (Comment on this)
Monday, September 14th, 2009
8:47 pm	Survivor, The Search Is Over Originally published at Never been one to let the carrier drop. You can comment here or there. How can I convince youWhat you see is realWho am I to blame youFor doubting what you feelI was always reachingYou were just a girl I knewI took for granted the friend I have in youI was living for a dreamLoving for a momentTaking on the worldThat was just my styleNow I look into your eyesI can see foreverThe search is overYou were with me all the whileCan we last forever?Will we fall apart?The times it’s so confusingThe questions of the heartYou followed me through changesand patiently you’d waituntil I came to my senses throughsome miricle of fateI was living for a dreamloving for a momenttaking on the worldthat was just my styleNow I look into your eyesI can see foreverThe search is overYou were with me all the whileNow the miles stretch out behind me loves that I have lostFrom the hearts lie victems of a dayThen good luck it finally struck like lightning from the blueEvery highway’s leading me back to youNow at last I hold youNow all is said and doneThe search has come full circleOur destinies are oneSo you ever loved meShow me that you give a damnWe’ll know for certainThe man I really am(chorus) (Comment on this)
8:47 pm	Argh.. Originally published at Never been one to let the carrier drop. You can comment here or there. Reading back over my journal from this vantage point is just.. upsetting. It’s all so sad and wrong.. I don’t know whether to delete it, or leave it.. I’m inclined to leave it.. but I may never read past a few weeks ago, because it *HURTS*.For anyone else who was following it, I’m sorry. I really didn’t know. (Comment on this)
10:26 am	Good morning.. Originally published at Never been one to let the carrier drop. You can comment here or there. So, another day in the life of Sheer. I’m getting better at getting along with myself. The cats are here, being cute. I’m trying to unload old unix workstations & other excess computer gear, and get some work done. (Comment on this)