there are so many little stars out here in cyberspace... and I just want one... but before I indulge my introspective hauntings too far, I shall remind you that blogMad is shining brightly tonight and if you want more people noticing your web site, it's the place to be... you can get in before it opens to the general public with an invite from me, so... want one?...

and in my bits of trivia files (in case I am ever on a game show or playing a trivia game, which I love to play, by the way), it was through mama riano I found out that MC Hammer seems to be getting ready for another comeback and he's blogging about it... yes, the Hammer blogs... and you thought all he did was dance... of course there are plenty of fake celebrity blogs out there and this could be one, but over at blogspot we just might have the real MC blogging for your viewing pleasure... Wiki thinks so... he's never really lit my fire, but I wish him well at whatever he's doing...

and then, browsing over from Mama R or somewhere most likely found through blogMad, I think, a post about drivers slowing down in front of a school when a police car is present and then zipping past when the cop isn't there, seeming to demonstrate that the loss of a few dollars is more important than a kid's life, prompted a few thoughts...

it may be that the risk of losing personal freedom (license and ability to drive) or simply being in a hurry and not wanting the delay of a police stop is the motivation for slowing even more than monetary loss...

most people do not seem to realize how dangerous a car (truck, whatever) is as they take for granted their freedom of personal vehicular travel... also I think most people focus only on themselves, where they are going, and not on the lives and possible interactions with people (like an accident or hitting someone) along the way...

also, most people drive offensively, that is, as some on the other car speeds up and they instinctively speed up too... it's the competition instinct, the selfish me-first instinct so nurtured by our culture for some time now...

and I further think that depersonalization plays a role, it's not someone, a person, but it's the other car or at most the other driver or the pedestrians (not people) we see while driving...

personally, I think every driver who wants the privileges of driving should take a safety course once a year that includes videos of accidents and accident victims... images of the 'lucky ones' who survived, however disabled or deformed, car 'accidents'... and a visual and hands on driving test ought to be given every year as well, or at least after every moving violation ticket and every three years with the tests increasing in accountability and intensity with the number and severity of the tickets...

maybe it would cost a lot of money - so charge more for tickets... it would make more jobs and increase (and maintain) a much more safe-driving consciousness in our culture...

and guns?... well, since I am rambling on about government controls (which I seldom do, after all), everyone who buys one should have to look down the barrel of a loaded gun for at least 60 seconds before they are licensed and yes, licenses should be mandatory for all gun ownership, same as cars... I mean, you don't exempt some vehicles from licensing just because they are used for recreation or fun, right?...

anyway, perhaps the flaming liberal has a conservative vein after all, but I know that if we can not get rid of government, we ought to take as much of the hypocrisy out of it as possible...

wow, I want 2Gb a second too... sounds a bit like Web TV with warp drive... paranoid thoughts ask me how secure it is... but such speed, wow... the addict in me drools... but am I really a dying breed?... I mean browsing far and wide on the web, instead of focusing most of my web time on a few big portals... well, not every article is right about trends, after all...

meanwhile, if you happen to have too much money and don't know what to do with it, here's an item from my if I win the lottery wish list:

oh yeah... I used to love photography... in fact, I saw a 16 Mp digital 35mm camera recently and started salivation, literally... when I find the link it'll be on my if I win the lottery wish list too... really, there are people in this world making millions and giving gifts of a thousand or few thousand dollars away, why not to me?...

I was such a techie once... I had a VCR with digital recording capabilities back in the eighties so I could do everything Tivo and DVR features do today way back then... heck that old VCR is still in storage, as is a whole lot of other top end audio equipment from the eighties... ah, it was such an extravagant pleasure to be rich...

and I was generous too... too generous come the nineties as it turned out... I had more than a thousand different charities that would each get a check each year and I was always attending benefit shows and concerts and donating to causes I supported... I'd hire homeless people in NYC for various projects and pay them a bonus if they returned the following day... and I gave thousands to friends... paid around $8,000 divorce settlement for one so the custody battle over the kids would be over... gave another $6,000 down payment on a house... and Toronto, sheesh, many (many many) more thousands went to the family up there...

I don't think about that life much these days...

but it would appear that my subconscious thinks about it enough to keep me quite existential and relatively poor... I still found two week's salary for Minnie a couple of weeks ago... it still feels great to be able to give and help people... but I feel the restrictions on my life much more now even when I give a few bucks... it's not as much fun when I know I'll have to give up doing anything and eating pasta and rice for a couple of weeks, but at least I love being on the web and rambling on and that's sort of free when I don't count monthly bills in the daily expenses...

not having money to burn took some getting used to... not having binge shopping money took some getting used to... not having pocket money took some getting used to... but I'm mostly used to it and living monk-like is not so bad as long as I can ramble on out here on the web... that is, not so bad when the lonelies aren't raining hard...

and I've always got Rasputin and Precious, especially Precious, and Minnie and her new ward to keep me company (even though it usually costs me money since they've got none of their own at the moment) and distract me from my woe-is-me when will I be loved blues... come to think of it, I haven't listened to Linda Ronstadt in a long long time... but I am still willin...

did I already upload this (I refer to the paragraphs that follow... I found them in my scribble files and am not sure if I already made an entry out of them and if I did, well, ooops, but either way they seem to fit right in with the flow here at the moment)...

sometimes I wonder why I continue... all I've ever wanted was one person to live for who lived for me and all the love I give, the help and caring I share, everything I do for others feels very good, but I keep hearing a voice inside say that the primary reason for my being here is to share the fairy tale romance...

dumb voice, huh?...

the fact is that I could be satisfied living in a bubble with one, living anywhere doing anything... all other desires, all other aspects of my life would happily take a back seat and rest if I could spent my time sharing space with the one who reaches me at my core, the one who fits, the one who is my match...

I am the hopelessly hopeful romantic...

and as long as that person is not around, I ramble on from this to that, from ethereal to visceral, from silliness to seriousness, from oblivious to social awareness... exploring everything rather randomly... sometimes just scratching the surface (and perhaps remaining superficial) and sometimes digging deep into a free fall of emotional exploration... hoping someone might be interested in sharing a thought or few...

so I found myself uploading my weekend entries in one swoop yesterday morning (which I can only guess would be last week) and my own odd Sunday morning sermon was rather socio-political this time... I laugh at the seriousness of life most of the time, but that does not mean I do not take life seriously...

ultimately, no matter how deeply I involve myself in any concept or activity, from my perspective I just flit and flutter about like a clumsy butterfly more than most anything else these days because there's nobody here on the ground waiting for me when I come down (not to mention nobody flitting and fluttering around with me... shall we lament?... some other time then) hoping that this leap might be my last...

now that sounds familiar...

what I was doing in real time for at least a few hours yesterday was download music from the audiography community and while my hard drive slowly approaches too full to function and my listening pleasure is delayed until I have a computer that can work well with audio/video files and programs without crashing, I still feel the thrill (however vicariously and displaced in time) of the music just knowing it's going on my hard drive... one day very soon I must move the files to a CD so the computer can breath a bit deeper again and so that I can listen...

it's a semi-random download of songs because I just download everything (without adjusting file names or identifying the person who uploaded it, which leaves a lot to be desired for me because I like identifying a song and thanking people, but the music comes in and I will get to listen again (and wake up to feel again) one of these days...

do you hear the Moody Blues too?...

the first thing I want to do when I get a better computer is put all the random files I've accumulated from other people's computers and the internet and sort through them and organize them and rename them (and maybe even identify them if I can... oh the time that might take and oh the fun that would be even if no one shares it with me but oh the extreme dream fun that sharing that would be) and return to the music the way I knew it throughout this life...

and start mixing again...

and sleeps...

if you blink around this diary (or less metaphorically, simply do not visit for a few days because it appears silent or you've been busy) you may miss entries as I tend to catch up on days I miss in one fell swoop... so many of us miss so much in life, I just though I'd like you know what you might miss here if you don't check the archives... but have no fear, I shall not weep more tears for those who sleep for years even as I became one I still was having fun as if I didn't know but you know I knew (even if you acted as though you didn't know I knew you knew I knew), so sing another lullaby or few...

I dearly miss those golden slumbers...

maybe the oddest thing about sleepwalking through life is perhaps the misnomer for there surely seems to be no rest in such sleep...

but seriously to you, dear readers, thank you for being out there...

and most gentle loving hugs to you who keep coming back (and I sense you there without a word)... most seriously of all, please realize that my begging for attention and acknowledgement and love is not as desperate as I make it out to be (dang, I'm telling secrets again... can't seem to keep my psyche veiled in mystery for long, can I?), so you should not worry over me - and you are so very welcome to just come by and read and so very appreciated when you do...

you bless me with your presence... and you honor me when you add me to your favorites... I shall thank you properly any day now with a link here in an entry as I am working on bringing all of you linkers into an entry...

so for the moment at least, pay no attention to the ego behind the curtain as you visit behind the candoor... your caring is what matters most... and I do hear the silence, not only for it's sorrow or boredom or rushed moments, but for all it's beautiful love... I hope this is the reason you return, believing I care about you...

you are welcome in my world in any way you wish to come... sitting quietly on the sofa, dancing naked in the yard, napping on the patio, hiding out in the bedroom, munching at the table, sitting next to me chattering away, any way you come, you are most welcome...

those of you who say nothing are valued for you do not return to read yourself commenting, you do not come here to shine, you simply return to find out what I think, how I feel, and who I am... or maybe to just be distracted from your day/night for a while... you ask for nothing but to read and I want you to know you are appreciated for being here...

and those of you who find words to leave, well, thanks for proving I exist and accepting that I am here in these words, even when I am disguised by teasing or irreverent self-mockery, I am here... it is good to know what is on your mind...

sometimes I don't feel up to reaching out and when I do, there's seldom time for meaningful conversation even if someone wanted to share one (or more than one, even)... everyone seems so far away (thank you Carole King)... and it's been years since I wanted to start up any sort of email or instant message conversation (which is part of the reason I don't have a new computer that can handle IM programs {not to mention games} because I know how easily I become addicted to games and how easy it is to forget about offline life when there's online conversations to share and that sort of life would just leave me even lonelier offline...

some beautiful people along the way understood that... I wonder if any are reading... Al, Ro, yeah, Alro, and Gypsy, you especially... and the folk from alt.support.loneliness back in the nineties... yup, I was a newsbee (now there's a personal site I seldom send you to)... see, if you really want to know me I am out here... in bits and pieces scattered over millions of miles of fiber optic cables and over a decade of internet interactions...

I did take ICQ (thousands of people on my list) and email groups and chats very seriously for a while, but after a brief chat room (The Asylum� at Yahoo) and ICQ (they called me... childinside) addiction in the late nineties, I returned to remain in limbo (yes, since Toronto, in case anybody up there or anywhere wondered)...

I am reluctantly exploring more real time online sharing again, with the barest tip of my toes in the water... I do not want to get comfortable with it replacing offline sharing... it's enough I spend so much time exercising my mind here in my rambles without somehow setting my offline schedule around online meetings...

there are not a lot of locals cyber chatting around here it seems... or at least I haven't found the right place and all of my past effortswere hitting mostly dry wells... and while I still don't want to believe it, I have this thought (fear, perhaps), a nagging voice that whispers that too much online chatting is reserved for those who, for whatever reason, are missing a necessary ingredient in their psyche and physical self to actually comfortably take the net meeting into the offline world and it is offline that I want to meet more people and offline that I want to live the most meaningful sharings in this life... it is offline I want to be most comfortable with friends...

I don't want a date or sex, I want a true friend...

someone with whom there are no secrets (not that I have many anyway, but the unconditional trust thing, you know?)... someone to walk with, to laugh with, to talk with... ah, anyone hearing Bye Bye Birdie yet?...

from the aging reminiscing of La Cage Aux Folles to the live-now immediacy of Rent to the fun and romanticism of every Disney film and show (with some Phantom, Les Mis, - and Princess Bride self-sacrificing devotion to ideals - and humor thrown in), from the challenge of climbing every mountain 'til you find your dream to the corny conclusions of Tom Hanks - Meg Ryan romantic comedies, I dream the impossible dream... that the fairy tale can come true it can happen to you... and me too...

so with every entry, every word, I keep wishing on a star...

. o O ( NOTES ARE THE NEW HAPPY PILL ) O o .
(just let me know you were here)