I shouldn't watch childrens television.

My almost three year old son loves his cartoons.  Sometimes I can get behind it.  Sometimes I wonder what the hell he's watching, and if I was the same way when I was his age.  Part of the problem is that I tend to apply logical thinking and look for deeper meanings in some of the things I see, more as a fun intellectual activity for me.  

My man Smiles McFeety has a couple of favorite shows. A Disney Peter Pan spinoff, Jake and the Never Land Pirates (which I, for some reason, can mostly put aside my ridiculous thinking and get behind), Adventures of Chuck, Bo on the Go! more recently, amid a smattering of other kid friendly Netflix available fare.  But how kid friendly these shows really are is a question in my mind, that is up for debate.

Aside from the obvious misrepresentation of colonial era piracy, Jake is full of colorful characters, is surprisingly well written for a kids show, and does offer a surprising amount of continuity.  This is one I'm afraid to Google any information about it just because I don't want it ruined for me, the internet being what it is and all.  The music is exceptionally well done, and it's not uncommon for me to sing along with my kid when watching the show.  Even the villain characters are likeable.  Captain Hook is still a jerk, but he's a likeable jerk most of the time.  A lot of this comes from a stellar cast of surprisingly famous people.  David Arquette, Sharon Osborn, Tori Spelling, Josh Duhamel, Jerry O'Connel, and even Adam West pop in from time to time to voice characters.

Watch out for this guy though.  No one, ever, should trust Cubby.

And then it starts to get weird.  Sinister, even.

The Adventures of Chuck and Friends is a kid friendly post apocalyptic tale of a group of kids who have to deal with their leader being a total dick all the time, and casually reinforcing outdated stereotypes.  I wish I was making this up.

Anthropomorphic cars and trucks live in a near utopian society where the only conflict ever seen is when the lead character, Chuck, does something to upset his surprisingly loyal friends, who still hang out with him despite the fact hes always a grade A jackass.  We get that the show is named after him, and he's the central character, but every single conflict, difference, or disagreement from this show stems from the main character bullying his friends into doing what he wants.

Wait, what?  Post apocalyptic?  Follow me for a sec.  A couple episodes in, we meet an elderly school bus.  This school bus isn't large enough to let the child we see in, but is perfect sized for human children.  As we've never seen a single human, adult or otherwise on this show, and none of the child-vehicles show any evidence of going to school, we can draw a couple of conclusions.  At some point, cars and trucks became sentient after the fall of humanity, but still seem to cling to human tropes.  Did a couple of people upload their consciousnesses into smart cars and evolve a society from there?  Did AI evolve to resemble human thinking and thought, 'Hey man, cars are cool!'?

Those two idea are (very thinly, mostly in my head) supported by our own modern day stereotypes.  The cars and trucks seen on the show are analogous to certain preconceived traits/personality types.  The pickup truck speaks in a southern accent and idioms and has cattle horns, as if they couldn't figure out a way to make a cowboy hat work.  The street racer car is of Japanese decent and likes shiny, flashy things.  The garbage truck is seen as constantly smelly and unintelligent.  There's a band tour bus that shows up one episode that speaks in your expected surfer/stoner tones.  No band, just the roadie.  The guy with the German name only speaks in harsh, unintelligible honks and is always angry.  I wish I was making this all up.

Yep, I totally can ruin everything.

Bo on the Go! is one of my dudes more recent interests.  It's the story of a warlock (who insist his charges call him 'The Wizard'.  I know what you're up to, warlock!)  who keeps a young preteen succubus named Bo (who doesn't know what she really is) locked in a castle with only a young dragon.  The show is supposed to promote healthy activities and developing motor skills like getting up, moving around, running, and jumping, but after about 5 minutes or so of this, Bo runs out of energy.  She needs the kids watching to get up and move around, so she can steal their energy ("When you move with me, you give me energy!"), so they can complete whatever menial task The Wizard sets up for them that episode.

The kids are supposed to set up a 'Bo Zone' where they can move around unhindered and perform movements and jumps and arcane hand motions to summon Wizard and transfer energy to Bo.  This sounds like a kid friendly, eldritch, potentially demonic summoning circle to me.  Obviously the terms warlock, succubus, and most of the arcane elements I've posited here are never mentioned, but seriously, read between the lines.  It's plain as day to anyone with a passing interest in the supernatural side of crytozoology.

The stuff of Nightmares in its nascent form.

On Kindles and E-Books

As an avid reader, getting my first Kindle as a gift was the best thing that ever happened to me.  While there are still some books that I must own as physical copies (anything by Neal Stephenson, Blizzard related stuff, Chuck Palahniuk, and things that will complete already started collections that I feel I must finish), I really do like the fact that there are a seemingly endless amount of books for free to dirt cheap to pick up on the Amazon store.  From a lot of the classics that I used to have but went missing to stuff that I just plain missed are up for free.  While familiar with his works for a long time, I'll admit that until earlier this year, I've never read any of H.P. Lovecraft.  I was able to fix this

On the other side of fame, there are a ton of undiscovered genre writers that are waiting to be read, and often will have their first book or two up for free, hoping that you'll like it enough to pick up the follow ups for a few bucks here and there.  I've read probably close to 300 or so of these indie published e-books in the last two years, and a good chunk of them were follow ups to fantasy or sci-fi novels that I felt were easily worth a couple of dollars.  Libraries around also offer free e-books with a library card now too.  This is only a good thing.  Guys like Alex Ziebart (pulpy fantasy), Mark Tufo (smart ass pulpy horror), Matt Rossi (amazingly detailed, well thought out speculative history), Christian Cantrell (wrote a series of short, tight, fast paced current to futuristic 'where we go as humans' sort of sci-fi), and so many more are fantastic writers and really need more exposure.  Maybe I'll do a couple of posts reviewing Kindle books.

Random Thoughts

So I'm terrible at updating. That's a thing, it happens.  Life got in the way huge.  Moved a few states away, took a new job, getting married in less than a month, got another baby on the way.  These things happen.  On to random, totally non-sequitur thoughts!

First up:  I saw a school bus pulled over by the cops on my way home from work today. I wonder what happened? Were the police looking for a missing kid? Did the cop see some jackass pass the stopped school bus while it was dropping off kids and get a statement from the bus driver? Was it really a mobile meth lab? The potential possibilities are endless!

 Second:  A true story that always makes me die a little on the inside.  Once I was outside expo at a restaurant. This is the guy who sits in the window and takes the food as it comes out and trays it up for the servers to run out to the tables. My printer ran out of paper, so instead of just writing the tables numbers on post it notes or something, I decided I hated the waitstaff and wrote basic middle school math equations that came out to have the table numbers as answers. This confused and angered some of them at first. So I simplified it to basic elementary school math. It still didn't help.

Random thought the third:  I'm sort of excited to see how my son reacts to Star Wars when he gets a little older.  I remember watching the Original Trilogy when I was just a little older than he is now over and over and over and over and oh my God I just realized I did the same thing every little girl has done with Frozen since it came out on DVD except with something way cooler on a bootlegged VHS tape.  Episode 7 is just a few months away!

Untitled Diary - Prologue

Every day when I open my eyes, part of me wishes I didn't. I suppose that's par for the course. Ever since the world ended, things have been a little depressing. Sometimes, I wonder how exactly I've managed to not go crazy yet. Of course, I'm talking to myself right now, trying to find the right words, so maybe I already have and just sort of accepted it a long time ago. I mean, hell, I haven't seen another person in... weeks? Months? I'm not even entirely sure when it is now.

I've got a handful of batteries left and I found one of those voice recorders you used to always see those asshole personal assistants on TV using. Maybe if I talk this out, I can get a hold of some paper later and put it onto something tangible.

Tangible.

Kind of an odd concept these days. The only thing anyone really has to call their own are just nightmares, psychological disorders, and in my case, a wicked cool scar or three. If you're lucky, and I am, a couple of guns and maybe some water. Damn, now I'm thirsty. Where's the off switch for this thing? Oh, there it is.

All right, I'm back. What was I talking about? Tangibility. I guess I can be called one of the lucky ones. I've got a couple of things people would consider worth fighting for. The trick these days though, is to travel light, so I don't have a whole lot. A change of clothes, a handful of bullets, a fairly decent light disaster kit. Of course, I'm pretty sure my definition of 'light disaster' is a hell of a lot different than it was before all this started.

OK, wait, I'm getting ahead of myself again. The whole point of this was to get my story out. Maybe someday, someone in society, if there is one by then, will find it and maybe learn a thing or two. So maybe I should go back a little and start from the beginning. Or maybe I should just give up and do what six and a half billion people did a couple of years ago and just drop dead. Some days, I wish I would have back then.

Hell, most days I do.

I almost found a real legit reason to keep going a time or two. Shame those people didn't share my enthusiasm. But I'll get to them later. If I'm gonna tell this, I'm gonna try to tell it right. In the right order, chronologically, so things make sense in case anyone hears this later. Look at me, trying to be considerate for someone or something that may or may not exist at some point in the future that may or may not still be here.

Nah, wait, I'm pretty sure the future will still be around. I'm just being overly dramatic. The question is, will there be anyone or anything left?

Dammit, I'm getting off topic again. All I'm doing is wasting the batteries, and I don't know how long they'll last. That's the problem with 'borrowed' goods. I should just take a few minutes to get my thoughts together and then get on with my story.

Letters To People I May Or May Not Know

Dear Bonnie Tyler; I'm sorry that you sounded awesome 30 years ago, and don't nearly as much nowadays. Not that you're not talented or awesome now, just that, ya know... Everything you've done in the last 4 years (all remakes of the same song, that happens to be my favorite song of yours) kinda has that whole 'sounds like you did 3 packs a day for 40 years' when you sing deal happening. Sorry.

Dear Lady Gaga; Sorry you're not as talented as Madonna was 25 years ago, even if you're trying to sound *just like her*. You're still irritatingly catchy if it makes you feel any better. And 'Bad Romance' has done wonders for my Rock Band 3 achievement whoring with it's incredibly simplistic vocals. This isn't a compliment.

Dear Bestie; Sorry that you keep kicking my ass to write something new for this spot. I've been doing a lot of writing. Just none of it for *here*.

Dear New (being a relative term) Upstairs Neighbors; When I long for the days where the abusive couple were quieter and more predictable than you were, then you're DOING IT WRONG. This is why its 330 AM and I'm blasting rap music in your general direction. Please either send your kids to school or invest in shackles and/or muzzles.

Dear Canada; I feel like my personal space has been kind of invaded, but my willingness to be the bigger person and avoid confrontation is over. I hope you're around on the next karaoke night that I'm sufficiently intoxicated. I kinda need one and the other to happen together so I can convey the awesome idea I had earlier tonight to let you know how I feel. Alternately, you can find a new goddamn bar to hang out at. It's not like there aren't 17 identical ones that are as much of a shit hole as the one I hang out in.

Dear Everyone I Know Who's From Canada Who Isn't The Intended Recipient Of The Last Letter; Ignore that, it wasn't for you. Obviously. All two of you.

Dear Allie; I know you're busy doing important stuff like like going to the motherfucking bank like an adult, but if you updated more often, I'd send you warm psychic fuzzies.

Dear Protomen, LiGHTs, and Gavin DeGraw; RB3 tracks need to happen plox kthx bai. And I wouldn't turn down a tour date in Fredericksburg or Stafford either. <3

Dear Sacco; Your sad clown otter PAX East pic has no sway over me. It is in no way totally amusing and deserves a reference. I'm obviously lying.

Dear End of June Facebook Status; I haven't forgotten about you and the epic cockblocking you promised to share. It'll happen some day. Maybe.

Dear Random Kid; I know it's in your nature to be inquisitive, and I know since you're an American your parents probably didn't teach you any Goddamn manners, but the next time one of you asks why I'm wearing an eye patch, I'm going to tell you with no humor at all in my voice, "There is no Santa Claus, and your parents divorce really *was* your fault."

Dear DC; You know that rule we have that says RL > WoW? That applies to the GL too, sadly. Sorry I been neglecting y'all lately. Also, I know the music stream in Vent is still broken. I'll fix it someday soon. Ish. Maybe.

Dear Local City Police Officer; Thanks for applying logic and saving my ass from the bored Sheriff tonight. You rock.

Sincerely, Ptak

Burnout!

Ever get to a point where you just feel burnt out in every single aspect of your life? Life at home, life at work, life with your friends, family, loved ones? And it's not necessarily anything they've done, just common, run of the mill, 'need a break from it all for a while' burnout?

This is where I am right now.

If it were just one or even two parts of my life, I could deal. Just take a little break from that area, focus on something else, come back in a few days or weeks refreshed and ready to tackle things with a new perspective. But alas, it's not just one or two parts of my life. It's every. Single. One.

And this need of a break is even extending to things that I'm not even actively doing. I've got a pile of unread books sitting around that I've been putting off. Movies, a small handful of games, TV shows, backlogged. I've got half a dozen creative projects that I've been intending to start, false starting, started and shelved... Sometimes, I have the time and just don't want to get into it, and other times, it's all I wanna do but I'm stuck doing anything else. It's maddening, really.

But its the big areas that I'm more concerned with.

Work burnout, however, gets a lot more worrisome. It makes you sloppy, less professional, and more willing to take chances just because you really don't give a fuck. And of course, I work in one of the more upscale, professional types of places in the casual dining hospitality industry, and it's been starting to show that I'm cracking a little under the surface. This is something that I really need to put the brakes on now, before I really screw up and get an unwanted kind of vacation. The kind that involves making a full time job out of finding a full time job.

Home burnout, is probably the least affecting one I have right now. Things around the house are fairly stable and for the most part, relaxed. There have been a few bumps along the way, but for the most part, everything lately has been getting a lot more manageable. Would a change of scenery be nice? Absolutely. Will it kill me to wait a few more months? Not right now.

Social burnout, this can get linked to two separate social circles.

My drinking circle, I've really cut back on the last few weeks, because of all the extra work I've been having to do. Of course, in my line of work, working more makes that end of shift beer sound that much better, but I've been trying to cut back on spending, and drinking out is the first thing to go. This'll change in a few weeks when a night or two out becomes a bit more affordable. It's been kind of nice not getting into a lot of the drama that comes out of these though, so there's another bonus.

My geeking circle, we've been getting burnt out on fast moving deadlines for goals we haven't been able to hit just yet, and everyone involved has been feeling the strain. Some people have already started taking the time off to recover, which puts the rest of us at a disadvantage, because we can't do things without them, which causes us to get more frustrated, which causes more burnout related breaks, which just becomes cyclic. There's other things involved here as well, which I have to take a bit more shit for since I'm in something of a leadership position in some aspects of things. This, likely, will become another post topic later on.

That odd center of the Venn Diagram of my primary social circles, ironically, is totally stress and drama free right now, thankfully.

So what can I do? I'm already planning a vacation early next month, which should help immensely with the work, home, and drinking circles. Said vacation corresponds with some things relating to my geeking circle, which deadlines hit or not, won't matter because 99% of our current projects will get scrapped and we'll be into something totally new. And maybe while I'm on this vacation, I'll figure out exactly how much juggling I really need or want to do, and come back with a few less plates in the air.

After all, everyone prefers 'moderately relaxed, smart assed because it's funny and I don't really mean it' Me more than 'rediculously stressed, extremely angry, purposefully mean so you'll leave me the hell alone' Me. I know I prefer the first one.

My Upstairs Neighbor Was Evicted...

... two months ago. I've been kinda busy, so writing this up took me longer than usual.

An actual conversation my upstairs neighbor and I had one morning as I was leaving the house for work. I knew what had happened, since I was up all damn night listening to the sounds of glass breaking, her screaming half in pain, mostly in rage, him screaming back at her, and the two of them throwing each other into objects of various sizes. Oh, and at the cops for the latter half of the incident.

Me: "Jesus, you look like you got mauled by a bear. What the hell happened to you?"
Her: "...I fell down some stairs."
Me: "...Were the stairs wielding like, a bat with razors in it?"
Her: "Something like that."
Me: "We'll, remind me not to piss of the stairs next time they ask me if I'm sure I don't want to pop upstairs for a quality tattoo job in your bathroom. A tactful decline would be the way to go, yeah?"

This was the point she turned red and walked downstairs to the laundry room. I never spoke to her again after that.

This isn't going to be an easy topic to write about. It probably won't be my usual snarky, smart assed, sorta darkly funny kinda thing. I kinda feel like I need to get it out, but at the same time, it's not really something I can make jokes about.

So a few months ago I moved into a new apartment. It's actually a pretty nice place, and for the most part, it's been pretty quiet. There was really only one kinda speed bump there. We had some upstairs neighbors who liked to fight.

Pretty much nightly, the woman in the upstairs apartment would get the shit kicked out of her. Her boyfriend, a stay at home unemployed guy, would get on her case and eventually start throwing punches, dishes, her, whatever was handy. It got pretty loud and noisy. Couple of times, I called the cops. My roommate called the cops. Neighbors called the cops. They'd come out, he'd be gone or hiding somewhere in the apartment. All the cops saw was just a beat up woman and her kids. After a while, it stopped being domestic violence calls, and just noise complaints, because there wasn't really a second 'domestic partner' that they could catch.

Second month in, it literally became a nightly thing, but a strange thing started happening. The woman started screaming at the cops, threatening to fight with them, calling lawsuits, police harassment, illegal searches, the whole nine. Couple of times she was the one taken away, and the kids were taken wherever kids go in these situations. Within a few days, though, the couple and the kids would always end up back at home, going at it just as viciously at 3 in the morning when the woman came home from work. They kept breaking up, breaking things, and breaking each other (resulting in more than one cast, hospital visit for stitches, splints, and black eyes).

Eventually, I just stopped calling the cops. The system obviously wasn't working for these two. So I just started complaining to the apartment manager about the noise. I wasn't the only one. The woman and her kids ended up getting evicted two weeks after she finally threw him out for good. Like, tossed all his shit onto the side of the street and changed the locks kind of for good. Like, he disappeared and no one who lived in the building here heard or saw him after that night for good. Hell, he didn't even pick up his crap, the groundskeeper just threw it all away.

Flash forward a few weeks, I'm at the office paying my rent, talking to the apartment manager about the whole thing. Turns out, for as much damage as the woman took from her ex, she gave back better than she got. By a very large factor. Part of the reason he couldn't find a job was because he was usually too injured to actually go look for one. Just not too injured to, ya know, smack his girlfriend around. That and he was kind of lazy, and keeping his job search narrowly confined to one tattoo parlor that fired him a few months before (for missing work, for being in lockup, for beating his girlfriend).

So, after about the 8th or 9th call to the cops that resulted in pretty much nothing happening, why continue to bother? These two were obviously made for each other. Sure, sucks for the kids, but how many times should I have kept trying to help people that were clearly beyond saving and willing to take their loved ones down with them?

So, am I an asshole for just being happy that I can finally sleep at night without all that noise? Not that I actually sleep at night, but ya know, someday I might want to. Maybe. Aw, who am I kidding? Everyone knows that sleeping is for when that bright burning eye hurting thing is up in the sky.

I wonder what my new neighbors will be like. Gotta be better than the last ones.

Calling yourself out

So, most of my drinking friends don't know exactly how geeky I am. I don't really hide it, it just never comes up. So when I get asked, 'Do you have any dice?' and my initial reaction is to reply with, 'How many sided?', then yeah, cat's out of the bag.

Inspiration is a Cruel Mistress.

I know I'm going to regret this later on. I should have been in bed hours ago, but I suddenly got the urge to sit down and do some writing. At this point, I might as well just stay up till after work. Why does she crack the whip on me at the worst possible times?

Anyone see that ball I dropped?

Get your minds out of the gutter.

I have a good reason though. Work finally leveled out and ramped up and brought a whole new level of topics to cover, which, ironically enough, I just had to sign a paper saying that I couldn't. I'll have to find a way to twist it around, although no one really knows which restaurant concept I do work at unless they, ya know, actually know me. And I hope they're smart enough not to say anything about it in the comments. I actually like my job.

I also moved. Got a pretty nice new apartment with a pretty awesome roommate. One of my neighbors sucks, and that's definitely going to be a topic that gets touched upon soonish (though hopefully not as heavily handed as the 'topic in question' gets 'touched' several nights a week). And now I feel dirty for even trying to make a domestic violence metaphor.

I've also been doing less geeking and more drinking lately too, during the transition period. It doesn't help that there's a decent hangout bar between where I work and where I have to park for work. But now that things have settled down some, that particular habit will correct itself.

Onto the writing front. I've gotten all my scattered notes together and half transcribed, and misplaced several of my written backups. I do have a few of them saved to backup discs. The catch there, though, is they're on 3.5s... And I haven't actually owned a computer with a 3.5 drive since... 2003? It's pretty moot anyways, since I've been gutting 90% of everything I had previously written and been redoing it almost from scratch. So that's coming along as well as can be expected. I did, however, decide to not post a few sample chapters, and just start the story from the beginning. I think it'll help me have it all flow better, and less chance I'll screw up the continuity of things. More on that later.

Lastly, I do wanna touch on a bit of actual geekery. E3 just came and went, and the one thing I was pretty hyped about was announced a few weeks prior. MAHVEL, BABY! Everything I've seen about MvC3 over the last few weeks has me so hype for this. I really can't express it enough. The new trailer looks fantastic, the match vids from E3, the released third of the lineup, and the speculation of who will realistically make the cut in the final build... I really haven't been this excited about a new game release in a very long time. Ten years to be exact. And it was for MvC2. I don't even get this hype for MMO expansions (though I am totally ready for Cataclysm).

So it looks like I've got a handful of topics to hammer out over the next few days. Hopefully I won't drop the ball again. I actually want to talk about this stuff. If it happens, I won't be apologetic for not keeping up with what at the end of the day is a hobby, but I'll make an effort.

Employment and Writing...

So I've started a new job, opening up a restaurant. So far, it's been pretty good. Once the labor pars get established and our target clientele figures out who they are and that we're actually open, then things will get a little more smoothed out and we'll actually start making money. Nature of the beasts, I suppose. It does, however, cut back on a lot of my free time that I've been lately working on my writing.

Speaking of writing, a few weeks ago one morning, I was sitting in on a speech trying not to fall asleep when I started jotting things down on the back of the program. I ended up with 3 pages worth of connectivity notes for a story I started writing almost 12 years and 300 pages ago, linking it to a few other false start projects I've got laying around. This got me actually pretty excited about what I think will eventually end up being a 4 part story. What at first only was to be a nod and a wink (a bartender with a couple of scars on her hand, who showed up in two separate stories, in a very eerie bit of clairvoyance. I initially wrote her about 3 years before I started bartending, and certainly before I got a few scars of my own in the exact same place on my hand), ended up making me relook at a lot of the similarities and start to draw a few natural connections in other places.

So I think what I'm going to do is post up the first chapter, of two or three of the four different book ideas here and see which ones get the most love. I think they're all stories worth telling, and I kinda love each of them and the ideas they bring to the table, I just can't decide which one to take and really run with first, not that I want to get serious about it. So come Monday, I'll let y'all help me. =P

Writing!

So I've been writing up a storm at the strangest times. This isn't a bad thing by any means. It's usually when I'm in a situation where I don't have access to my lappy or my desktop and have to try to jot down broad stroke notes on whatevers available. Work, social gatherings that I'd much rather not spend my time on, places where it'd be a bad thing if I whipped out Obsidian and started hammering away on the keys. It wouldn't be so bad if I didn't have atrocious handwriting and could decipher half of what I've written. =P

On the upside, though, there's been some forward movement on several of my long abandoned and thoroughly planned and fleshed out stories I've been working on for the last... 12 years? Jesus, I feel really old now.

Turns out, they're all connected. Even the throwaway ones that I was just jotting around on as a writing exercise. Not all of them, mind, but 4 of the 5 big ideas I've had all seem to fit together thematically and in a way that makes sense. Now lets see if I can take these pieces and run with them.

BRB FOODGASM!

Last night in vent, Ian, Stephen, and I invented what we call a foodgasm (think thin mints, frozen, then deep fried, coated in sugar, slathered in honey, stuffed inside of a Klondike bar, stuffed inside of fried ice cream, wrapped in bacon, with a glass of milk).


It's the bacon that really sells it, imo. I don't even like thin mints.

So I Wanted to Talk About Writers Block.

And I sat down to write something up about writers/artist block the other day.

Yeah, that's all I had.

Fuck it.

(Seriously though, I got something cookin'. I'll have it up in a day or two.)

Cloverleafing Social Circles and You.

As I was driving to work today, I got to thinking about how people tend to attract specific types. I'm not necessarily talking about in a relationship-y kind of dating way. Just gravitating towards certain kinds of people. Like me, I find myself usually hanging out with other geeks, or other bartenders, for instance. It's pretty rare that these types of people overlap outside of actually sitting at a bar. It makes me kind of feel like a walking Venn diagram that contains like, one other person that I know. We develop circles of friends based on our interests, and we tend to keep them separate. Friends I know through previous parts of my life (bartending in the Carolinas or in Colorado, people I went to high school with, art buddies I talk to through PJ or SRK.com, people in my WoW guild, what have you) tend to stay in pretty small, self contained circles.

I used to date a girl who juggled several of these types of circles. She wasn't particularly extroverted, but when she did meet a new friend, she usually adopted that particular circle and kept it separate from the rest of her friends. On the odd occasion that there was a situation where the two worlds would collide, she would always comment that, "My circle of friends is cloverleafing! I don't know how to deal!"

Often times this leads to sometimes humorous and other times disastrous social interactions. I had a friend from Virginia staying with me for a few days when I was living in COS. We were invited to a party with some of my Colorado bartending friends. Most bartenders I know tend to be partiers, and are used to looking the other way if not actively partaking in certain... urban pharmaceuticals. It's just part of the casual restaurant and bartender culture. Doesn't mean everyone does it, hell, I don't, but I learned a long time ago to look past it. It's going to come up at some point with that kind of crowd though. Just the way it is.

My out of town friend? Totally not part of that particular circle. I didn't have any kind of a sheltered upbringing like she did. Needless to say, she really wasn't prepared for that kind of a party and spend most of the night extremely uncomfortable, but I will giver her credit for sticking it out and making an effort. It was just a kind of lifestyle that she couldn't (and still can't) wrap her head around. Partying, drinking to excess, things like that were taboo to her. As we were driving back home, she commented to me, "I never would have pegged you as they type of person to condone some of the things I saw in there. It's boggling to me how quickly you can switch between perfectly normal and safe to fitting in with that type of element."

Is it that unusual to compartmentalize our social interactions? Maybe it's just the different types of people we know, but I know that there are just some of my friends that I can't mix. I, for instance, know I wouldn't take some of my heavily religious friends out with some of the people I worked with in the past. Not just because of the theological differences of opinions, either. Hell, I go out of my way to avoid those kinds of conversations enough in my day to day.

Not that this is exclusive across the board. I'm sure I could pretty easily overlap some people of some circles together and they'd get along just fine. It's just that I can count those on one hand. For every time I've had it work out well, there's two more where it hasn't, and I'm slamming back shots just to make it through dinner.

So you want to be a blogger...

Someone earlier today suggested I start a blog to help me kind of kick start my old writing habits. In theory, I thought this was a good idea. Not only would it give me a chance to get used to writing on a regular basis, but it would also give me an outlet to spout off on whatever I wanted to talk about, regardless if my friends were interested or not.

Sometimes, popping into Vent and ranting about some topics just isn't cool, ya know.

So here it is. The thoughts and opinions of a geeky bartender on whatever I feel like spouting about. Expect to see me rant about news, current events, art, geek related topics, WoW, and whatever the hell else I feel like. While I'm generally a nice guy, I'm also a cynical, smartass bastard with a dark sense of humor. You've been warned.