Chief_Walks-With-IPod

My life is like an analogy ... wait, that's not right.

Oh yeah, one thing I've been trying to remember is that if the world didn't suck, we'd all float away.

Things have been up and down, except my employment life, which seems to want to stay put in light of monthly expenses. Security and all of that. I'm currently fighting what seems an uphill battle with scholastic financial aide programs and the federal government, but the end result, whether this winter or spring, will be education.. hopefully. Working on finalizing some pieces of writing to hopefully get published online, short stories and the like.

And I completely forgot about the backburner, hope you straight to hell folks didn't become all crispy while I was away?

Nothing personal.

I've actually missed the several page ranting and raving that happens here, think I'll tune in some more, if you'll have me.

Okay ... so ... we ARE talking about Conan as in "Schwarzenegger", right? I just wanto clarify. Because about the only response that got out of me was laughter.

Just for record keeping, I think i should post something here in the drunk thread so I can later refer to the time and date and say "see:?? I's drunk! therefore unaccountable!" Now ... to peruse the rest of the site ...

I think Clive Barker and Niel Gaiman write a lot of my dreams.

Disturbing yet fascinating. Not to mention melodramatic.

Okay ... Avaunt ... What the fuck? I'm not sure if I just read the build up to gay porn or the beginning of the battle of the century.

Occasionally, one must pay

Her looks definitely make the package complete, but it's all about her facial expressions and attitude (which I suppose are admirable because of her looks). She's about the only person I've heard who can successfully cover a David Bowie song and not lose the spirit of the music. Most people take covering David Bowie too seriously, they're missing that "loose screw" that Nina Hagen just naturally had to begin with. She made it her own, you see. You can't do David Bowie justice unless you just take his stuff and put it in your own little psychotic universe.

Of course I haven't heard all David Bowie covers in the world, so there is probably a number of them that are good that I just don't know about.

I love Nina Hagen.

I'm in love with this woman even though now she's, like, fifty-something.

She's like if, in Neil Gaiman's universe, Delirium and Death had a lovechild and she ran off to become an East Berlin rockstar.

(Yes, I exaggerate a bit, but not as much as you might think.)

Yes, actually, Pitguins are major supporters of people like Sean Hannity. Thus my dislike for them.

This poster.

That is definitely an awesome poster. And it's true ...

But from the looks of things Til Schweiger is an even BIGGER "Basterd".

Uh, did you just offer me a job?

The Pitguin is a rare and widely disliked ancestor of the Griffin. Smaller and meaner, their most noted attribute is their ability to speak at an ungodly length about their problems and end every rant with "But, hey, I can't complain."

Being one of the first mythological creatures to become addicted to tobacco products (along with a tribe of fire-elementals that were banished to the North American colonies of Virginia and North and South Carolina; the elemental's addiction, however, was entirely accidental), there are now less Pitguins in the worlds of fantasy than there are Griffins. Some say this is due to their massive unpopularity, but that didn't stop them centuries ago.

During the Medieval and Renaissance periods in Europe, Pitguins were commonly thought to perch on the roofs of cathedrals, disguising themselves as stone gargoyles, and shout obscenities down on passers-by, but it was later discovered that the obscenities were coming from the clergy and that the gargoyles were too busy gossiping about birds and the shit therefrom to have the time to insult the locals.

The clergy, in their own defense, later tried to capture Pitguins and chain them to the cathedral rooftops but Pitguins are notoriously skilled at skipping out on Sunday service.

It's a Pitguin.

And

No sir, I don't like it ...

Well of course being away from loved ones will strengthen a person's romantic desires. That falls under the category of pleasure seeking; person-A loves person-B, agrees that the love they feel is a good and pleasurable thing that results in happiness AND fulfills the psychological side of the instinctual drive to mate.

People seek happiness above most things, and the procreation instinct is one of our strongest, ergo when person-A sees person-B for the first time in over a year, the mind reasserts that the love is a good thing and floods itself with happy-chemicals (part of the learning mechanisms in the brain) and the persons become excited and a state of near bliss is achieved. Sex frequently follows shortly, as it is sex that the instinctual side of this event was trying to achieve in the first place.

It is like hunger, when you eat regularly, eating is a casual thing, therefore not too exciting. Enjoyable, though; the brain acknowledges this good behavior and a similar but less potent state of bliss is achieved after a good meal. When things are going relatively well and you don't feel threatened but you haven't eaten in a while, you get hungry and after a decent amount of time you will begin seeking food.

When a person is starving, on the other hand, a meal is sought with great vigor and determination and is consumed with exaggerated enthusiasm, for the brain has been deprived of happy-chemicals and the body has been sending messages of threat relating to this deprivation.

So let's look at threat and procreation: when a person is in their sexual prime the instinctual drive to mate is strongest. It is in the background of human thought as far as everyday analytical activity is concerned, but it is a strong driving force behind the behavior of pubescent and sexually matured individuals and sexual thoughts manifest on a regular basis, a kind of reminder of something you should be aiming to achieve. And why not? There are happy-chemicals in it for ya!

Suddenly you are being separated circumstantially from your loved one, your mate. Your instincts are telling you that this is a thing you have lost that is important, and your emotional attachment to the person is stressed and you begin to grieve. You desire positive contact with that person in order to feel happiness. The loss stays in your mind as a problem to solve when you are able. Suddenly you are dumped into a situation where you are forced to take human life (an interesting and disturbing psychological study on its own), you are under threat of death, and the environment is cluttered with loud noises, danger, and fast-paced mental activity. During combat, a soldier undergoes a very damaging mental sequence; the fight/flight response is activated and forced to maintain itself longer than the body and mind are normally capable of perpetuating said activity and serious mental fatigue sets in, causing depression, apathy, anger, and a number of other detrimental effects. But combat training includes a bit of mental conditioning that allows the brain to become subdued and to feed on apathy while working to maintain survival, allowing the soldier to receive and obey commands without thinking about the consequences of their actions (the killing of people, the threat posed to them while following orders to enter battle, etc.), eventually the soldier becomes detached from themselves, sort of like dissociative identity disorder only less extreme, delegating the "task at hand" to their role in the military and delegating the memory of their loved ones and normalcy to the person they were back at home. A prolonged state of this has actually triggered D.I.D. in a few veterans. Anyway, then comes the great homecoming. The soldier is confronted by his loved one. His brain recognizes this and reactivates the instinct to procreate. What happened to him/her on the battlefield, a result of circumstance and mental conditioning, was a suppression of mental impulse and an emotional denial. These things did not go away, they were simply ignored, which does not mean that the brain was not undergoing the deprivation of want/fulfillment. It had essentially been starved. The joyous feeling of seeing a loved one after such a long period of time is exaggerated by this deprivation and upon returning to a normal environment, a soldier is bombarded by his/her own instincts and the drive to fulfill various desires is tenfold. The usual behavior of a veteran recently returned is to seek courtship aggressively and to indulge is large quantities of good meals in an attempt to bring balance back to a psyche that has existed in a constant state of fight/flight and is only just now moving into the "rest/digest" phase.

It is difficult to find the right websites with information regarding all of this crap, but it's what I've learned from a few years' study of psychological material.

Oh, and I disagree with the Chief. This is a terrible time to take up drinking.

Yeah yeah, I'm always full of bad ideas. I'm secretly one of the Bad Idea Bears! Here, watch this...

I drink a lot anyway, so when something like that happens to me it just means a period of time in which the drinking exceeds normal limits. Normalcy returns as I slowly realize that I'm sinking like a failboat and really I don't give a shit anymore.

Guys, when you see a chopped arm or leg or a corpse or something alike, most of people feel either hungry or horny (until they get used to it). Ask among the medicine students after the first day of practical class. It is natural that contact with death triggers some survival instincts, like eating or reproducing.

Or so I was told.

So it is normal that the poster came to your mind, Hussamuddin. I also like cow meat.

 

That's absolutely correct. The first thing most soldiers with romantic partners or spouses do when they come home from "overseas contingency operations" is fuck. Like bunnies. After a physical fight with neighborhood enemies the only thing on your mind is that you suddenly have a terrible case of the munchies. The human animal can be so repulsively predictable.

It gets interesting when people become addicted to the adrenaline rush of conflict and threat of death. They seek conflict amongst their peers or in other public scenarios, and, like most addictions, they develop a tolerance and have to keep upping the ante ... that can go in some very provocative directions.

Have you not read Horror In Supernatural Literature, or whatever the hell it's called?

Can't say as I have.

Well that's why I included the whole "friends" bit, that way the people who are responsible for your drunken puke covered dead weight won't hold it against you.

Wow Kate, you've discovered the cure for PTSD! Naked Lesbians with snakes.

You see, that's what life is all about, so when you're pondering/questioning the meaning of it all as a side effect of being in a situation where you nearly lost it all, just remember that poster.

Christian, sorry to hear about the stupidity that befell your previously budding romance. It always sucks when people break things, and it sucks even more that one of the things people tend to break the most is relationships. And having to travel to do it is basically like pouring lemon extract on a popped blister. Gives you all that extra time to boil in anger while on the road.

Do ya like drinking? Now is a good time...

Do ya have friends? Now is a good time to get together with friends and drink and flame about what pisses you off the most.

Are any of you familiar with Arthur Machen's work? This looks interesting:

The Great God Pan and other stories

...but it could just be the marketing. Any recommendations?

I'm going to have to check that out. I'm a major fan of Lovecraft, read a lot of his work during my terrible experience as an acid-head, street kid teenager, if this was inspirational to Lovecraft, maybe I'll even learn a little about myself.

They are good books, enjoyable and interesting, and I heartily endorse your saying Pope gets the whole "Small World Afloat" thing perfect, and how Jack on shore is all to lee. Of course I have a "But" now. They really stand in the shade of the Patrick O'Brien books, imho. Certainly a far deeper and better writer than Pope, the difference between a lively body and a lively mind IN a lively body. If I was trying to interest an intelligent person in Naval Fiction, I would go with O'Brien, if I was trying to interest a typical modern youngish person, definitely Pope or even Cornwall.

 

Which is your very favourite nautical author, Chief?.

That would be Patrick O'Brien, can't deny the master... the shipsmaster, that is. I've been enjoying Pope lately because of the gusto and rogue-ish attitude.

Wow, those are some elite emoticons! How the hell did you get those? That? Whatever.

It is an elite, though. An author friend of mine only started getting somewhere in the world of successful authorship when he started meeting some fairly substantial names. It's interesting how status and success have to happen simultaneously, and yet they only improve when one is stronger than the other. It is most definitely like climbing a ladder.

Just started reading a book by Dudley Pope. Ramage. Nautical fiction, taking place within the British Royal Navy during the Napoleonic era. One of the things I like about it (and many of the nautical fiction works I've read) is that it takes a break from societal dilemmas and squabbles and dives into a world that completely seizes the minds and souls of those involved to the point where nothing else exists. Sailing is an obsession. Sure the French were being gits, sure Great Britain was trapped in a great imperial cluster fuck and had successfully raped and pillaged two thirds of the globe, but for the commanding officers of a navy frigate, spending months or years at sea, the ship is their world, the crew their people, and the sea an endless universe of possibility and danger. It is an obsession. Being on land and talking politics is an alien concept and difficult to focus on for the seafarers, and enemy ship is not so much an enemy representing an opposition as it is a challenge, a worthy and equal entity, the commanders and sailors on board comrades at heart but under a different flag. They have their orders, they must report to the admiralty, but that's not what it's about to them, seafaring is an obsession. The ocean is in your veins and the wind is your breath. Battle is an orgy of rage and personal power, smoke and steel.

There's something about the life of sailing that Dudley Pope gets, while reading you really feel like you're one of the mates on board under the leadership of Capt. Ramage (I wish that was my name) and that the ship is a living entity who's best interests are aligned with yours. Sure there are corrupt shipsmasters, sure the Royal Navy was notoriously brutal with their discipline, but for a lucky percentage of navy crewmen, there were officers who's passion was a life at sea, and who's interests were a well looked after ship and crew.

I think I missed my calling in life ...

Anyway, good book.