the big one

Things San Francisco might not want used as advertising.

"'San Francisco is much more pretty than a lady with a beard.'"



I have been puzzled, intrigued, questioning of, concerned by, the amount and kind, of what I believe to be completely personal/confidential, information people post about themselves and others in their blogs. A friend told me the other night that she only posts what she would might tell someone after sharing a drink with them. I feel this is a a perfectly acceptable guideline and there are many people out there who might do well to try and come up with some kind of guideline for themselves. That's my opinion at least. I mean really, do people really think that what they are posting is: that anonymous that they will never be found out, or is it that they want to be found out, or is the blog the new diary, or



My blogs have usually been about things I find interesting, stupid, or just bizarre that those few readers of mine out there might not have come across in their own webbrowsing.



I don't browse anymore, I am a targetted consumer, I know what I am looking for and I go the places I have already learned might have it. I don't monkey around much with the web anymore. It takes too much time. Actually the targetted stuff I do takes too much time.



The internet is the greatest tool mankind has ever invented. it has the tremendous power to unify and divide, clarify and obfuscate, build and destroy, enlighten and confuse, distract and direct all simultaneously. i have more email accounts that I can remember, some for spam filtering, some because they are free, some because i thought the address was cool, some just cuz. I find myself relying on it waaaaaaay too much. I don't use the phone book anymore, google or superpages or yellowbook. The phone book is a badly referenced and strangely organised device. Useful at one time, still useful today



one of my biggest intrigues was the amount of information floating freely in the air. tv, radio of all flavors, now cellular and internet. there is just so much information these days. some of it, unlike this post, are actually informative, instructional and istrumental, others like this post are just a waste of creation. Does this mean that the post should not be created? does it mean that these words should never find existence? should I not have written them and wasted valuable disk space wherever someone might read this? should I have not spent my time wondering, contemplating, writing, re-writing, hashing it out, thinking about it, avoiding work with it? No. just that what i have to say seems to be important at the time i am writing it and if, later, i feel that it is still important for the world to know about, i will press publish and there it will be. and then google will get a copy of it. for a least a couple of years. at somepoint i will download the whole blog and keep it for myself. what a waste.





there are more important things inlife than blogging, or the internet so why do i spend so much of my time on the computer on the internet, blogging, chatting, surfing, thinking about upgrading my computer, upgrading the accessories for my computer, why why, why.

why does anyone? why have i taken the time that this has taken to write this? because i am waiting for the work computer to do something.



i have always been a private person, there is much about myself, my life, my thoughts, feelings etc. that i have only ever revealed to some people. there are things i don't tell people because it's not, in my mind any of their business, or not something i want a person close to me to know not for reasons that i can exactly describe, it's not because i am worried about what they might think or do, just that that information is not "necessary" to be known by anyone.

i periodically go through these phases in my life where i feel like i am lost, adrift, drowning, not in doubt, or in pity, not depressed but "free" from a connection with the world. i am either in the middle of one of these periods or i am just starting a new one. it feels a little bit like standing blindfolded on the edge of a cliff. you can feel the emptiness in front of you but you have no idea what that emptiness contains. because in the physical world nothing is ever truly empty. there is no true void. there is no "nothing". I once coined the phrase ""In the absence of everything, nothing becomes something.'" and Hence Nothing is Something and when you have Nothing you still have something.



What it is, i think, is that I have again lost the passion for what I do, if I ever truly had it. and maybe that's what the adrift is all about, not being adrift but having cast away or been cast away from my passion for a thing. i have a lot of passions and i'll list them in another blog. i may also list a number of things that I had the ideas for many years ago but not the talent or energy or persistence to make anything of them. i have many of the sketches, plans, thoughts for these things stacked in piles of papers in boxes. my life is still in boxes. my life needs to be lived and not boxed or listed on sheets of paper.



passion != desire

passion != drive or ambition

passion != a talent for the object of the passion

passion =



i may even make a list of things I want.



i just let a guaranteed job slip through my fingers, because i was conflicted and i should not have been. because i need to be doing somethign. something that mkaes money because my kids want things, my wife wants things, i want things and these things all need money. do i/we need these things. i don't know. probably not. but i cant' ask my wife and family to give up things they want because I don't wnat them anymore and/or because I don't feel we need things anymore. can i? life, love, and family are all about sacrifice. the tricky parts comes with who, what, when, how much, how often, and why.



i should really rename the blog to stream of unconciousness. but i am sure someone has already claimed that.

i want to write. i have a passion for it but i suck at it. i have written reams of poetry, most of it illeligible, even by me, because i have crappy handwriting besides that fact that most of it is in pencil and sitting in a box.

my ideal job would be to get paid to think things up. i am very creative and i have a talent for making odd combinations of things that should work together without the knowledge on how to get those things together. i think some of my ideas are brillant, does anyone else. i don't know. it doesn't matter to me that much if they do or don't, but if you want to be paid for something someone somewhere has to think that it's brillant enough to get paid for and i don't know if any of them really are.



wow SPEW, mental tsunami of spew.



some people think i am brillant, i am surrounded by brillant people, i like really smart people and on occassion some people think i am really smart. i have even fooled people into think they know i am really smart. i don't think that i am as smart as i should be.



i have no regrets about anything. sure there are things i might have done differently if i ever had the chance but i have no regrets. i make no excuses for the things i say or do. obviously, unless i was being sarcastic (which, apparently, is hard for some people to perceive) which i used to be all the time (which may explain why it was so hard for some people to determine if i was being sarcastic) so much so that it was my natural state (friends in college changed it to being jaded and bitter, almost sounds like a drink: jaded and bitter) i meant what i said or did. i can't make excuses for it. i can only try and see the reason why i did or felt or said something and either explain that to you or change my future actions. i am solely responsible for everything i do and say, have done, have said, will do or say. others might influence me in many ways, but I am the only one who will ever be able to make me do or say something. for that I will always take full responsibility and never make excuses. i have in the past made excuses, true, false or reasonsed but i made a decision many years ago to do 2 things. never make excuses and never have any regrets.



i can explain to you how i see my brain working. it's a spiral. everything just keeps turning around and around and around. it was much more "visible" the few time i got stoned.



i have a natural talent with children, apparently more so with other peoples children than my own. this may be because i am trying to shape my children and not other peoples.





Muir Woods - if you haven't ever been and you happen to be in San Francisco you should really make plans to stop and see it. take a half dozen hours or so. it's worth it.