I updated this weblog with a picture. It would have been more except xanga doesn’t think Photoshop’s capable of making JPEG files for some reason.

Ok, so the general consensus is that resentment should be avoided, in the sense that if someone resents something about you, you should avoid them.

But I have a different opinion. I think that even the most vehement, irrational resentment or hatred or disdain holds at least some tiny seed of truth. There are plenty of valid reasons a person could find me worthy of their resentment; that they choose to go down that path means that perhaps they’re not worth the effort untangling the mess, but that’s beside the point.

Maybe I’m naive to think that something truthful and good can come out of something irrational.

Anyway. On other topics, I’ve written more REALbasic plugins, and they’ll be unleashed on the world very soon. I’m trying to figure out a fee structure, because while writing these things is pure fun for me, I know for a fact that there are people out there who’ll pay for them.

I’d though of having a subscription system, where you’d pay for all updates for a certain amount of time, say six months or a year.

I’d also though of just getting an Amazon honor system account where people could just give me some money if they felt like it. I read about one shareware author who says not to give an upper limit on how much people should give you; he says users will surprise you with what they think the software’s worth.

Any shareware authors out there in Xangaland who can offer an opinion?

Today’s blog is about resentment. I’m resented by someone who can’t admit it to themselves that they resent me.

I have to admit, it’s hard to see it in oneself. It’s something we’re taught not to acknowledge… Nice people don’t harbor resentments, and we want to be nice, don’t we?

Anyway, resentment does at least two things that I can see:

1) Denies the humanity of the other, by reducing them to the thing which is resented. As in, “What a freakin’ loser.” This phrase takes all the humanity and beauty and complexity away from the subject, and assigns a single label – ‘Loser.’ In the mind of whoever’s doing the resenting, there’s no other person besides the role assigned, and thus no room for solution. And that’s number two…

2) Leaves little room for unexpected outcomes. Which is to say that a person who is resentful wants something specific from that other person.

So the trick, I think, is to find out what the resentful person wants, and then somehow give it (or something like it) to them in a way that doesn’t deny one’s own humanity.

I wish it were that simple.

Ok, so I’m so thoroughly exhausted. I’m a dead horse; don’t beat me. I’m a flipped circuit breaker. I’m four flat tires.

I rented a car in Oakland and drove it to Seattle. Only I was really stupid and took a ‘scenic’ route that didn’t really add that much scenery. I was going to go to a primitive hot spring I know about, but it was packed with people. And while I’m OK with being nekkid in front of strangers (at least, given the context), I just wanted to have my fantasy of being alone in the hot pool.

Last night was spent in a rest area in the back seat of a Chevy Cavalier, which isn’t as bad as it sounds.

Suffice it to say that I’m glad to finally be home, and to be experiencing that strange sense of revisiting one’s life without the benefit of routine. It’s what happens when you get back to your room and it’s still as messy as when you left, only the reasons for all the different piles seem forgotten and unknowable.

Isis, princess tabby feline owner of the house, was the only one here to greet me, but she’s a dozen times more excited about seeing me than she’s ever been on previous returns. She’s on my lap now. Aww.

I’m really really tired right now.

I went to Macworld, and I find myself wondering why I thought it was a good idea to go in the first place. Initially, I had convinced myself that I’d schmooze a bit, but as anyone who’s ever met me knows: I Suck At Schmoozing.

For those of you who might not know, Macworld is a big huge event that happens twice a year, once in San Fransisco, and once in New York or Boston. It’s a whole trade show devoted to Macintosh.

It fills two giant meeting halls, both the size of a football field, plus a huge number of meeting rooms for classes and lectures and stuff.

This was my third one. The first time I went because I thought I was going to drum up some work. The second time was an excuse to go and visit my friends in the bay area. This time it was a precipitory date for the end of my stay in Texas.

The big news at this Macworld was Apple’s release of the new iMac, which is pretty nifty if you like shaving mirrors. Seriously, though, it’s pretty cool, although it reminds me of props from the ‘Space 1999′ TV show. I’ve always maintained that we live in the Science Fiction Age, and that kitsch has its place, but these two notions should never meet and manifest in the world as consumer electronics.

The exhibit halls are crammed with a zillion companies trying to get your attention. They have elaborate booths, pounding music, some guy giving a demo of the software over a PA, BRIGHT RED CARPETING, a general sense that if you stop meandering about you’ll die, like a shark that stops moving through the water. In short: Overstimulation. I didn’t see anything interesting except the v.4 of REALbasic, and I already knew about that.

So I wandered over to the Metreon, AKA ‘The House That Sony Built.’ It’s a confusing shopping mall built by Sony. The architecture is interesting, but the layout is designed to confuse. It’s very difficult to find your way out, or to even find a way to get from one floor to the next. It’s designed to keep you confused so you’ll buy things. Marketing architecture.

I ate some noodles at a place there. Oh, and there’s one more thing to know about the Metreon: There is always, and I mean ALWAYS some techno music playing. It never stops. I payed attention all through my meal, a full 45 minutes at least. Somewhere, there’s an unthinking, unceasing machine that makes the music you hear in the Metreon. Like someone left the drum machine playing on infinite loop. It’s exasperating, but I bet very few people actually notice.

Metreon: For Masochists.

I’m in Oakland, California, at the moment.

Being here and wandering around with M- reminds me what I hate about the Bay Area: Density. There’s no escape. You know that oft-cited science experiment where they put a dozen primates in the space normally occupied by one, and then the primates suffered ill health and psychosis? You know that one? Well, that’s the Bay Area. Humans will endure that kind of stuff just so they can live near a pretty view of a city across some water.

The point of this ‘blog is that earlier today I went with M- to Point Reyes National Seashore. It’s a very remote place. It puts the ‘lone’ back in ‘alone.’ The ‘tude’ back in ‘solitude.’

We drove across the Richmond bridge, waved at Charles Manson in San Quentin (look at a map), and proceeded down the Sir Francis Drake Highway to its terminus at the ocean. It’s the road that bisects Marin county. It goes through some of the most expensive bedroom communities in the region, through some lovely verdant valleys, through relatively old-growth redwoods (the area was heavily logged up until the 50s), along the San Andreas fault line for a short while, along the western side of an inlet called Inverness, and all the way across more windswept moors to…

The Edge Of The World

It was foggy and the lighthouse was closed, but we went to the craggy point where it stands. We couldn’t see the ocean 400 feet down below, but we could hear it. The tide was coming in, and surges pushed against the rocks. We took a tiny hike. I took pictures, which will make their way here soon. M- stood on the topmost rock he could find and, well, it’s like this.

There’s a thing in the world. I don’t really know what it is or how it works, though I’m aware of many people who claim to know just that. I’d rather claim ignorance, even though I’ve been observing it for a while. This thing isn’t really a thing, but that’s the easiest way to talk about it, so we call it a thing.

It’s a thing that ‘lives’ in places where elements meet. Water, wind and earth, in this case. It flows out of the briney deep, which is where all life comes from. It’s pushed up the cliffs, sure as the high pressure zone on the windward side of a hill. If you’ve ever seen a hawk hovering above a hill, you know what I’m talking about. Only it’s not wind, it’s something.. else.

M- used it to make the fog dissipate a little bit. He’s one of those people who can do stuff like that. I pulled a bunch of it in, too, because I can do that. Ahhhhh.

We saw the rocks below, the ocean pulsing over it, the foam, through the break in the fog. We even saw a little bit of the sunset.

Driving home through the fog listening to Billie Holiday and techno music. Cross back over the Richmond bridge. Get back to the house and realize how exhausted we are. How completely cut off from whatever it is that flows up out of the ocean.

We were shakti-deprived.

Sigh. Now I’m again entertaining the notion of living in the less expensive part of Marin county. Will I ever learn?

Weird

I have a cat, sort of. He lives with my parents because, when I moved to the west coast, the first place I moved in to wouldn’t allow me to bring him. So he’s been in Texas his whole life.

He’s huge and black and semi-feral, meaning he spent some of his misspent formative years without human companionship, meaning he can be a real asshole of a cat. It’s more like living with a tiger than a housecat. In all fairness, though, he mellowed out after the vet rendered him unable to breed, and in the last few years he’s become positively civilized. He’s still got an attitude, though.

He used to like to bite my mom’s ankles. He almost got tossed out of the house as a result, but finally there was some form of parity between them and now he doesn’t challenge her much anymore. He never really challenged my dad. I’m not sure why. He used to challenge me all the time, though, in a big way. I still have the scars. For one thing, I think it was hard for him to understand that people lay down on couches for vastly different reasons than cats. For cats it seems to be some kind of social heirarchy thing to be in the best spot, while for humans it’s just about sitting around and watching TV.

But there’s one thing about Weird that always makes me happy, and it’s when we go for walks. He loves to walk around with me in the middle of the night. It must look terribly odd to anyone who’s paying attention to such things: A man walking around at 3am with a huge black cat following him.

When we go on these excursions, Weird becomes Ninja Cat! His mission: Venture into enemy territory and rub scent on as many flat areas of cement as possible, while not venturing too far from Alpha Cat One (me).

I’m just walking down the street, but for him… He zips ahead of me about 23 feet, waits for me to pass, all the while glancing around furtively, as if The Enemy could attack at any second. Sometimes he’ll rub his back on the ground. After I’ve passed, and gone a suitable distance, he leapfrogs me again. When he’s running up from behind me, his tail’s down, but as soon as he passes me, it sticks straight up in the air. If he were a person, he’d be a Marine, and if he were a Marine, he’d be saying, “I got point now.”

Tonight we went for one of these walks. I promised him earlier today that we’d do it, and he held me to it. He’s one of those cats that knows what you’re saying, and will pester you to keep your word. Really. It’s scary sometimes.

We went off to the school yard near my parents’ house (the one you may remember from the Hover stories). The school’s added on a few buildings, so it’s no longer possible to walk around it, which used to be our usual path. So we just went to the back and then came back out the same way. But in the back there’s this tree, and every dog and cat in the whole universe must mark this tree because Weird spent a full ten minutes examining it. He even followed a few trails away from it, looking off wistfully when he got to the end of the scent. Tracker cat!

I’d like to bring him back to Seattle with me, but definately not this trip. Maybe in the summer. I dread four days in a car with Weird in a cage, though.

Not my favorite Xanga site ever, but thafaceless has the coolest picture. Particularly when you notice that the first blog entry is titled ‘This Isn’t A Fucking Burden, It’s Called Romance’

If I’d have known I’d be this jazzed by the response to my plugin release, I’d have done it before I left on the trip (which I’m still on, by the way). I haven’t slept, and this is based on the three people who requested to be on my updates distribution list within six hours, the first almost immediately after I made the announcement (not the Xanga one; the official one).

I know there’ll be insomniac hell to pay throughout today, but I’m glad for the shot in the arm.

Geek Alert!

I’ve just released some REALbasic plugins. If any of you happy hapless readers out there are into REALbasic, you might be interested in them.

‘Where, o where are they?’ you ask.

‘Here,’ I answer.

Note also that if you want to get on my product announcement distribution list, you can fill out this form.