Changes as I age

Since I've been living on my own, I've never had a nice kitchen until now. Since getting the nice kitchen, I find that I'm spending a few hours in it every day, either cleaning or making stuff for me or W or the dogs. Now I'm wondering: Am I spending more time in there because it's nice and open, or was it because I was starting to spend more time in the kitchen that we got a nice and open one. The result is still the same though: I am turning into a person my youthful self would've scoffed at.

Best Couple

Quick! When asked about best couples in films, who do you think of? Bogart & Bacall? Tracy & Hepburn? Rhett & Scarlett? (Am I showing my age damnit?) Okay more modern: the couples in Crazy Stupid Love?

I remember sitting in an Eagle Rock movie theatre with Alex, my writing partner. We were in L.A. and for some reason had time to kill before we came back up here. And we both wanted to see Fargo badly.

What struck me about the movie was the tenderness and gentleness between Frances McDormand and the actor who played her husband. The acceptance. At first, the husband seemed slow, plodding and irritating to me. Then by the end of the movie, I liked him. More than that, I liked them.

To me, that's what makes a lasting relationship - tenderness. If that's present in the relationship and is the foundation of it, then most troubles/rough spots get to have a gentle blanket over them so the jagged edges don't hurt as much. And there will always be jagged edges. That's the other thing to remember.

I'm not much of a tender person. But I am learning. It's far easier for me to give tenderness then to receive it. Bratworse has been trying to teach me to receive and it's a hard lesson for someone with as many jagged edges as I have. Part of it is fear that she'll dash herself onto the cliffrocks of my personality. Part of it is fear that tenderness will wash away the rocks of my armor and expose the tender spots below.

More and more, I see us turning into a tender couple, out to support and nurture each other. And that's a good thing.

R = 0, T = 1

I've been completely immersed in my own little world for a good while now. Making connections with shared realities has been somewhat of a stinging slap. I'm only starting to experience it as that perfectly placed bite on my ass... I am not yet able to handle large doses. I find myself having to come up for air more frequently. 

The interrupted moments of pollution are starting to leave their mark. Another scar of some other thought that defaced my fantasy. If only I could let myself be. As though there are two of me, the brilliant child, who's company is desired and who's paintings we proudly hang with flawless lighting. The other child, who just doesn't seem to measure up, and left miserably alone, finds solace in the attention their disruption creates. Eventually they'll heal. Time hasn't taken leave for me yet.

I surround myself by entertainers, and what a delightful one have I just created. He exemplifies nearly all the things I'm currently trying to achieve. I find myself studying him as we dream of flirtatiously trying to enact our planned method of manipulation, and write the story of what happens next. It's fun! I think about coming around more. Just to re-experience the brush that painted laughter, as he simulated pleasure while eating my candy. He's one of the few that keeps my hesitation locked up. Our shared reality is not that foreboding, maybe we were meant to meet at this juncture.

My journey to find peace within myself has granted me a teacher. I think mutually even, another perfect symbiotic relationship? I've been struggling with circular reasoning, and am still blocked by unfinished theories. For some reason everything fits to adjust what happened after that, and it's making my rationale a little woozy.

Distraction is dancing with me. Distraction's been dancing with me. I'm in an energetic performance, trying some how to stand still. Focus was my date, I wonder what happened to her... Why does Distraction's dance last so long?

I'm nervous about walking into yet another world. Composed of shared realities with people I don't even know, but we claim love because there's blood. Every time I go, I want to return immediately and yet, each visit grows. I can't pinpoint the culprit of my anxiety, and somehow replace it with reason... How foreign am I?

->I wrote this in June of last year (2008)

Random Word Compilations

It's the land of a thousand eyes. Each one with it's own dream. Like the interrogation's bright light, they apply the pressure of sight. They have their secret code. The one they dangle just out of my understanding. Playing true to my curiosity, they tantalize me with what could be. I'm their puppet with no strings. Not merely a blind bird that never sings. 

Not for one, for there are two. The tights are torn. Lacie strands straining to get away. Knights run by too quickly. Their hold never firm. Leaves them slipping.

"I thought of you." said the monkey to the shoe as she rubbed a banana between her toes. Saying nothing, the shoe just stared. Oblivious or ignorant of what the monkey just reveled. Lost in fantasies of the great rocky mountain outdoors, littered with the sugary sweets of its favorite candies. The ones that are so good they're guarded by armies of bears. Having been ignored the Monkey juts its banana covered toe into the shoe's ear, "hey, did you hear my confession?" The shoe indeed had not. It was busy flirting with the bears trying to get a taste of that candy. It certainly had, however, felt the moist stringy gooeyness of the monkey's wiggling toe. Which having entered the dimension of touch, brought the shoe rushing back and away from the bear that was licking her ear. Quickly reactivating that part of the brain that had some inkling as to what was going on, the shoe covered, "The bananas not lasting that long?" At this the monkey laughed and began suckling her toe.

Wondering After All

What are Savants?

They're people who can do ingenious things. They're creativity knows no bounds. They are more then proficient in either art, music, mathematics, or memory. Tests have been run to compare the brain function of a Savant to an average person. The results showed that in the Savant the areas in our brain, that are associated with our creativity, were extremely active. In the average person's, the areas associated with creativity were only slightly active. The theory is that there is a switch in our brains that controls the thing that filters our creativity. Most people are born with this filter on. Savants, have the filter off and thus, are able to use or have access to their creativity or ingenious. 

Evolution theorizes that we survive based off of adaptation. Our ability to adapt is relative to our ability to survive.

If we believe in evolution, how might it explain Savants? Savants are clearly the most ingenious of us. If there are less and less Savants, then we are not evolving in that direction. In fact, we are evolving in the opposite direction. Why would we evolve away from Savant-hood? Are we just a simulation that was given this parameter to keep us in check? How does turning off or ingenuity aid in survival? Is it a result of becoming "civilized?" What does evolving toward stupidity say about what we're doing?

I can see evidence of how we're evolving away from it. We use drugs and technology to compensate for our deficiencies. Plus educated people don't procreate so readily. I really wonder what it means for us... 

What is Pangaea, really?

One large land mass, surrounded by a vast ocean, that through plate tectonics/ continental drift, was separated into the continents we know today.

The expanding sphere makes me curious. What if the Earth is more similar to this sphere? It started out small, covered completely in land mass. As the planet expands the land would be pulled apart, also creating the continents. If that is what is going on with this planet, the theories of relativity and force need to be reworked. If the Earth is expanding, is it all just a simulation?

I think I've heard something about an expanding universe, maybe it's the same concept?

Free Will, just a delusion 'cause we're a simulation?

I don't think we have free will to an extent. I mean, I'm not saying that there's such a thing as fate either. But honestly, I wouldn't act out of character for Bratworse, so does that mean I don't possess free will? Bratworse acts like this, thefore I'm going to act in this way.

Maybe it's connected to that transmitter theory? That we don't die, just the tuner that was tuned into our frequency ran dry. I was tuned into Maria Katsyannis in a former life and was 'forced' to act according to what Maria would do. Now I'm Bratworse, and still searching for my free will.

Poem - Embarrassing

"Love moves me like a tornado.

Devastating my world without warning.

And there's never a thing I can do.

I'm head over heels, as the debris begins settling.

Love is so Embarrassing!!!

I'm this awkward and uncomfortable thing."

posted this May 06, 2008... 

(cream o' wheat's  birthday)

Entertaining Guests

A door has been opened, a house that has been there for a long time, but closed has offered to open its door. The neighborhood has awakened. First on the scene is excitement, she's young, naive, she sees pleasure in everything. Hardly thinking past what she can see. I'm overjoyed to be in her company, blinded by the same rose tint of her glasses. We picnic together in the beautiful paintings of excitement's reverie. She's adorable and cute, but young and I long for company, that doesn't blind me with their view. 

Second to arrive, motivation. She's as alluring as ever. The soft words that emit from the sensual line of her body, coax me to dance. Drawing myself from the picnic, I relish the feel of her hand in mine, as she brings me to my feet. She guides my hand around her waist and pulls me so close my breathing syncs with her's, having confused signals. I swoon internally, cherishing our closeness as we begin to dance. I'll succumb to her. I want her. She knows it. She has a tight grip on my hand and she's not planning on letting go easily.

With a party like ours we're bound to attract attention. Our greasy friend paranoia. I keep him around, because a masochistic part of me enjoys his perspective. He puts a spin on things in ways that put me on edge, and make me feel alive with 'what if'. He makes life tense and interesting. 

He cuts in, directing the graceful dance to a stumbling dark encumbered alleyway. He likes the dark. Prefers it. He says, it's where imagination lives when we get older. That's why it's so hard to find, we don't have time to go exploring dark alleyways littered with junk we can't see. 

He knows me well. Perhaps better then motivation, either that or he's always 'on.' Preparing myself for his strike, I focus on the feel of motivation's body pressing the cloth of my shirt against the skin of my back as her breasts and stomach mold the curve of my spine. I follow her arms that are around my waist, as she hugs me from behind, and am happy she hasn't run. He looks around nervously before striking deep, assuring he's got my attention,

"What if you're feelings are unrequited?"

-------------------------------------------------

The last few days, Oatmeal has been traversing the lands of my mind. With each passing time, a growing curiosity stimulates old memories, motivating me to act. 

When she leaves my mind, I find myself entertaining wonder. Whom entered by enticing my eye with a glimpse. Her body inaudibly raised questions. Is there something in my life going on that's attracting her? Is she thinking about me, so strongly it's palpable within my own head? Did something happen? What is she doing in my head? Imagination steps in and the subject morphs into possibilities of mind connections on that level. 

Can the electric impulses that are my thought of you, find the station you're tuned into mentally and project myself in your head?

I want to call Oatmeal and bring her out of my fantasy and into my reality. I don't have her number. The people that I thought might, don't have it. One of them, Card Shark, even tried to covertly talk me out of even trying to contact Oatmeal. It's become surreal. And yet, I still want to hear her voice. 

In trying to find Oatmeal's phone number, I stumbled across some of my old journals. Distraction growled hungrily as I read the scripts to memories I had forgotten. 

This was written May 05, 2008...

Poem - What the F' was I thinking?

Like a dream, my imagination builds a place for you.

Once let in, you take ahold and seldom leave.

You become an addiction.

A dopamine, receptors built to perfectly fit you.

I crave you.

Seeking you out, I quake with repressed excitement.

You are the secret thrill that fills in the holes of me.

Connecting with you, I breathe you in and am captivated.

With every moment, you finger a different part of me.

My skin crawls with life, tingling.

You heat the world around me, producing energy to tempt and tease me.

My mind is transfixed.

Coaxed by you.

Breaking the surface, erotic thoughts learn to swim.

The Magician in Me

I was doing well today. Not bound to my own interpretation of that magic trick, "The Spinning Wheel of Death." The one where they've tied a volunteer to a wheel and spin it while the magician, blindfolded, encourages daggers to angrily soar through the air and exact their revenge or lesson upon the volunteer. Except in my "Spinning wheel of Death" I'm the volunteer, the dagger and the blind magician who's never done this trick.

I was maintaining a strong hold against the door of the magician. Who upon tuning in, was made aware of a surge in his fandom, and was currently thrashing against the door. It became something of the "Tell Tale Heart." The door, unintentionally tearing all of my muscles, almost as if the pounding upon it was the sound effect of my muscles exertions. 

Using my short little legs for support, I drew more strength and was able to keep the magician within, while life found the space around me, climbed on top of me increasing the pressure that had been fingering the breaking threads of my strength. It teasingly caressed my ear with its warm tongue, leaving a moist imprint of its alphabet, as it silently pleaded for me... to... 

let go.

It wasn't until the seduction became so overpowering, it was all I could smell, that my knees started to shake, the muscles within reduced to hanging threads, and I succumbed to my curiosity, letting the resistance subside, setting the magician free.

The force of the door opening lunged me off balance and on my back, drizzled in sweat, as if morning had just arrived and sprinkled me with dew and the sweet smell of blissful exertion. But there is no time for rest. With blazing wheels and gaudy fireworks, I'm mesmerized, hypnotized and forced to watch, as the show is revealed to me. 

I meld into it, becoming a puppet on a string, forcefully raising my hand to volunteer. Propelled by my puppet master, I am; all at once, dancing upon the stage.

The magician reveals my part in the trick, and before my puppet master or I can comprehend what was just shown, my senses are informing me that I've been captured with rope dyed red and am being affixed to the wheel.

Let's Pretend we Don't Exist

I wrote this April 18, 2008:

I dreamt about Oatmeal last night or this morning rather. Once there was a time when she roamed my mind and in such, was always near by. At least once a day she'd tap on my consciousness' door. It was as if my consciousness brought her to me, this morning though, it was consciousness' kiss that disrupted sleep's gift.

In the dream, I was at a party in a house filled by an ocean of people. I was in a room with someone who at first seemed to me to be Quatro, but as our actions progressed she transformed unrecognizably and I'm not sure who she ended up being, maybe herself again. She was professing attraction without opening her mouth. She was pleading for something more, with her eyes. Something inside me, was screaming "no," but was quickly replaced with a sinking feeling brought on by the soft crushing weight of her body as her lips graced mine. I broke free of her grasp and fled the room.

Leaving the warm sun of solitude, I was plunged into the cold pool of the party, swallowed by the waves of people who were in attendance. None of them mattered and they soon disappeared when I found Oatmeal sitting at the table. It wasn't until I was sitting in her lap that I noticed how incredibly there, she was. Like the sun being turned on, if it was connected to a switch, I was aglow with happiness. I just wanted to be close to her and amuse her. Other people in the room where vying for my attention, but she was the only one there to me.

It was pleasant to have been visited by her and spent a few moments in a dream wrapped in her arms.



Yesterday morning Tuki and I got into an argument. It's affect was me arriving two minutes late to class. I smiled some secret wicked smile as I entered the room to find my name written on a board, along with other names, creating a list of 'late students.' If my mood wasn't already set, this certainly changed it. I was humored by the act.

The instructor, none other then Mr. Compositor himself, that failed to enlighten us, last term about a program's automatic compression, must have been grinning wildly inside when I entered the room. He went through a three or five minute lecture on something. Something....

He ended it with, "But it's not very useful, since the projects you all are working on, aren't in groups."

More people trickled in after his lecture. Humpty Dumpty arrived nearly thirty minutes late, and was the fourth person to comment on my absence from the first day, "You missed the first day!" After many people scrambled to get their homework assignment printed out, Mr. Compositor decided it was time to collect it. Alphabetically I'm not the first listed, but I was certainly going to be the first called. So it was... I went up presented the assignment and then turned and left, as he read the lines on the back of his eyelids, "Looking forward to seeing it." I made sure Jack Frost was watching at me, as I walked back to my seat, I provided her with some entertainment, that sent her laughing wildly and me out of the room.

Lunch was weird. I talked Dexter into joining, Doof, Humpty Dumpty, Vomit Bag, Stinky and I, for lunch. There was conversation, but I didn't retain any of it. Like the whole day, I was there, but I wasn't and being there was weird.

Then there was Geometry. I'm going to call the instructor Mini Skirt, that's what she was wearing. I took a little pick me up before the class, and couldn't stop myself from staring at the bottom of her short tight skirt. She had on an off the shoulder stripped shirt and a black ultra mini, mini skirt with black tights. If her ass was a little flatter the skirt may have been able to cover it.

My mind wasn't on her, though my eyes had trouble leaving, and I floated through the class in my own thoughts of other people in other situations, having other lives, probably not thinking of me.

Today, I wonder about Oatmeal.

It's now June 16, 2009.  This was the second entry in my livejournal.  I don't keep a livejournal any more, for a lot of reasons.  One of them is this post.  When I wrote the line about Oatmeal, regarding how "incredibly there" she was, my frame of mind was to be spooky.  I knew it was all just a dream...   

I thought it was all just a dream...  

 

Peaceful as a Hurricane Eye

April Showers. They're certainly present in my life. I have a leather bound journal full of puddles from the storms, past Aprils have wrought. A cleansing of one's life, brought about once a year (at least), that floods the wells that lead to the waters of my mind and wrecks havoc on the bridges and housing I've built.

Am I just a capsule, replicating nature? As time passes a new season begins while another ends. Some running so quickly that their whole existence elapses over the course of one day? Some occurring at least once a month, on their own revolution, like a little personified planet bullying its way to the surface to drive for awhile.

It's easy for me to recognize when another has taken over. I'm outside myself watching, screaming, and writhing in an attempt to make it stop, but the driver doesn't listen to backseat drivers and mockingly increases in acceleration until I'm silenced and blinded by a cage of wind, captured just outside their world.

Find the door to this world and you'll see illusions, cross the bridge over that rushing river to another house where there are snow capped mountains and everything looks a little off, but almost real, it fails in comparison and isn't much to look at. There are many little houses, little worlds and within each little world, a little me resides, quietly waiting for their turn to drive.

With this April's shower a few houses were built, other worlds created. My life in one world is a faery tale, where I'm the jealous, angry, bitter witch, making demands upon the one who cast love's spell upon me and I her. I keep her locked up in a cage of misery perpetuated by varying doses of inadequacy. When she screams for it to stop, I laugh in her face and demand a recounting of what she's done for me lately.
Why do I marinate in anger and irritations, that are spiced by my own tired and loneliness?

That house has been slightly razed. Another house built on top, but it is still under construction and difficult to define with a language that is not mine.

It is peaceful here. There is love and happiness littering the saturated grass in the form of little crystals, reflecting the brilliancy of the color spectrum. I lie in the dew, imagining a world for two, with a white knuckled grasp upon my dreams. It is doubt that teasingly runs by and paints my knuckles white. For even though I try to show my love this world, I can not see through her eyes, nor have I figured out how to give her mine.

Breathing Easier

Sooooo close now. Papers are signed and guess what the cosmic joke is? Our final resting place for our new loan is at Citimortgage again.

Bah! But oh well, after this, life should get back to some sense of normalcy from us. So glad I don't have to worry about the company I work for being taken over, or being laid off, or having my house worth more than my loan.

Reason Why I Support Unions

I've never been in a union (worker's union that is) but my sister has been part of the L.A. Teacher's Union since the 80s. One day, my dad and I were at the dinner table when my sister walked up. I asked her if she was about to go on strike (this was YEARS ago, at least eight) and she nodded yes. On a sudden whim, I turned to my father and asked him what he thought about unions.

My father was very curt if he spoke in English. Part of it is that his English just wasn't good. Part of it was just his nature. He didn't waste words if he had to - a good explanation for why we didn't really communicate. I talked too much and I could never get enough out of him so why bother. I do wonder if he ever thought about how everything about him and I were about missed opportunities.

Anyway, this marked one of the rare times I asked my father his opinion. Since this more concerned Ka, my sis (Ka is my nickname for her) I had no qualms about asking him his opinion. Usually if my dad shared his thoughts, it seemed (to me) to signify disapproval.

This exchange certainly proved no different. He signified his disapproval by grunting. (Oh Jeeze! I'm grunting like him now!) Both my sister and I turned to him in surprise. Since this was my sister, we had both expected him to be proud of her. (My sister was always my dad's princess but I shared his love of gadgetry plus I felt so guilty over my mom's overt preference of me I never minded her place with him.)

Dad just shrugged at us and said, "I'm management."

By the way, I loved how succinct my dad always were. With those two words, he explained where his stance was, why his stance was his stance, and why he never spoke about her being in the union and about to go on strike. My sister was about to explain to him where her position when she too realized just how vast his gesture of silence was. She just nodded at him and the subject of unions was never again brought up in his presence.

All this doesn't explain why I support unions but just gives a bit of family background.

The reason I support unions boils down to this: one day, I may be in a position to need a union and you know something? I want them to fight for me.

Almost forgot: the relevancy of this post? FedEx has just threatened to NOT buy US planes because of the possible passage of laws that make organizing easier.

They basically like being the behemoth to the sole worker.

CitiMortgage

Remember that at the beginning of March, I asked Citimortgage aka Shittimortgage to correct what THEY had sent in to the credit bureaus? Okay, to refresh your memory, 2-1/2 years ago, we got into a dispute with Shittimortgage. We had thought we made all our payments that year but due to changing banks and whatnot, we had actually missed a payment.

We got into a dispute with them, then realized our mistake, made the payments and lo and behold, we are NOT IN DEFAULT with them.

So along comes this blurb on our credit reports that we got into a dispute. Well, I asked Citibank ... ahem Shittibank to take the dispute off the records and they said, okay, all you have to do is write us. So I did.

And what did I get in the mail today, 20 days after I had written them?

A letter DATED March 2, 2009 that was MAILED OUT on the 23rd that informed me, sorry, Shittimortgage won't remove the dispute but if I wanted to, I could contact the credit bureaus.

FUCK YOU SHITIBANK! FUCK YOU SHITTIMORTGAGE.

Thanks for delaying my loan two weeks! Thanks for making me PAY MORE INTEREST to these firms that I have high interest rates from. GODS I didn't think anyone could make me hate more than insurance companies but the banks are SURE competing for this hatred!

BAH!

Playing Games with Strangers on Facebook

Some of you know that I've gotten heavily into Facebook recently.

I'm connecting with old friends, some from my childhood, some from my early career jobs and well basically from all walks of life. (When I start to think about all my friends who DON'T Facebook, it really starts astounding me just how many people I've connected with in the course of my life.)

However, what I've come to realize it, I'm enjoying playing with strangers rather than my friends/acquaintances. Friends complain when you send them invitation to new games. Strangers who signed up on forums to get their friendships up, don't mind the invites. They're the ones who WANT to try out new games and find the next fun thing on Facebook.

And so, my friends list consist of 400+ strangers, with about 150 friends/acquaintances. And out of those 400+ strangers, I get regular invitations from about 30 of them. They recognize that I have the power to block those applications if I don't want the notices anymore and so they invite, send with wild abandon.

And I am ever so grateful to them. From them, I'm finding out what the hottest latest games on Facebook is.

Above is SuperPoke! Pets. It's about the ONLY game I'm really playing with my friends. You go visit their pets and if you do, you both get rewarded. With this game, if they are your friend, you get to see their pet without any effort on your part (I think that's why I'm actually playing with friends.)

Other games, you actually have to invite them to join your mob/squad/zoo connection etc. Hence the motivation to play with strangers who have stated outright (by caring enough to write on a forum) that they want and like to play these types of games.

Update on the Loan

The appraisal we had gotten was missing some information so my broker gets in touch with the guy who did the appraisal. Turns out the poor man had a stroke and of course couldn't fill out the missing parts.

So NOW, we have to get a different appraiser, have them come to the house and inspect it and now, with prices falling so much between Jan. and now, I wonder if the places nearby are still selling for as much as it had been in Jan. (Shit, I'm getting stressed thinking about it.)

The loan is now pushed back to next week and well Tahoe's now out.

Our broker keeps saying, just borrow from your savings so you can afford Tahoe. You can pay it back later but doesn't he realize this is EXACTLY the attitude that got the U.S. economy in trouble. We will not borrow from our savings to pay for a vacation now.

Bah! I hope all bankers/loan officers/assholes get papercuts on their tongues and eat jalapenos afterwards.

An Exercise in Frustration for Getting a New Loan

Around December 16th or 17th, I talked to a mortgage broker about refinancing. Told him our situation: I have a condo, very little left in the mortgage, my wife has student loans about to be due and I have a ton of equity in the house. Adding it all up, the broker was ecstatic. This was a gimme. Our mortgage is about less than 1/7th of what our place is worth (I bought in 1993 and never refinanced), our school loans added the debt up to about just over half of the equity and I make about 1/4th of what our loan amount was going to be.

Should've been a cakewalk, right?

Well, now it's March 18th, exactly three months later and do we have the loan? No. Are we throwing good money into the ether by paying interest rates on loans we're planning on paying off with the new house loan? Yes.

Here's what happened with the first guy. Yes, I'm on my second broker and that was part of the problem but in a Karmic kind of way, we were blessed when we changed brokers.

In Jan. the first lender calls me up to say that we're locked in at a 5.5% interest rate. "Huh?" I asked, knowing that rates were about the 4.75 to 5% range. He convinces me that this is the absolute lowest we can go (This entire time, I distrusted what he was saying) then tells me what I need to do. I go ahead and do what is needed and then waited. And waited. And waited.

Two weeks after I was supposed to have gotten the loan docs, I called him up and asked what was going on. He replied that the association was slow in getting the paperwork to us. I asked why didn't he call me and enlisted my help since he knew the student loans were coming due and that I didn't want to pay interest on those loans. He just hemmed and hawed.

Two days later, he calls me up and says "Umm, trouble. Because your condo has a 29% tenant occupancy, this lender won't give you the loan. However! I can get you another loan."

I gave him until noon the next day to tell me there was a solution. He called me at 12:02 and tells me that there wasn't a solution, BUT he's working on it. I fired his ass and called up my senators to complain about the arbitrariness of assigning 25% tenant occupancy as a condition for giving out loans to OBVIOUSLY qualified individuals.

My new broker then gets me a 4.5% rate. This confirmed to me that first broker was full of shit.

Everything is chugging along decently when, due to a DISPUTE I STARTED 2-1/2 years ago, which OBVIOUSLY had been settled because the property didn't go into foreclosure and we are current with our payments, my credit reports get flagged and the loan stopped dead in its tracks. I call up my mortgage company, get them to rescind that little blurb in the credit reports and then find out that two of the three credit agencies DIDN'T remove the dispute notice.

So two credit agencies (Experian and Transunion) are holding my loan hostage due to the fact that they can't update credit reports in a timely manner.

My broker just called me up a day ago to say that the account manager at the lending co. has figured out how to bypass this little hurdle.

It turns out that Fannie Mae's underwriting program cares about these little items but Freddie Mac's underwriting program doesn't. (We're talking SOFTWARE programs here). And apparently even though HUMANS can see the dispute as something to be disregarded (for it makes no difference), software cannot be bypassed by humans. However, there was a debt to income ration that Freddie Mac cared about.

Someone had entered in the student loans as debts that still will be incurred AFTER we get the loan, so that made my debt skyhigh. It's now fixed and supposedly, I'm to get loan docs tomorrow or Friday.

You know, I'm not going to hold my breath. I should've just declared myself a bank holding company. Bah! Oh and if this loan doesn't come in, there goes our vacation in Tahoe next weekend.

Explaining the Previous Post

I'm trying out a new story and it involves creating a whole new mythos. I've thrown together a few ideas and will be trying it out here so look for posts under The Myths. The first is a quick parable about how the Godda (that world's version of a God/Goddess) of Nothing, Something & Other creates a chicken out of nothing.

This will be the spark that ignites the other stories or in another metaphor, sets things in motion. I'm letting my muse run through me and I'm just letting her have fun. Bratworse is helping and creating with me, but I think the words will be mine. The ideas will be both, but the magic in delivery... that which I find so delicious. I get that. :)

Enjoy and let me know what you think. I'll be putting more up.

Oh, until I figure out how to put a sound file up, these will be quicktime audios without any picture. You guys don't need to see me blush.

Tang & Bubbles

For about half a year, we've had a hard time getting a castle drawbridge bubbler to work in our tank properly when it finally tilted the right way. Now the drawbridge stays down, trapping the bubbles until the bubbles get big enough to lift the drawbridge, releasing the bubbles.

About a week ago, Lone Wolf came over and was checking out the tank when she exclaimed, "Is the Tang swimming through the bubbles?" I made a non-committal grunt when Bratworse replied, "Yes, it's been playing with the bubbles lately."

Curious, both Lone Wolf and I leaned in for a closer look.

"It's biting at the bubbles!" One of us cried out.

Not only that, but the tang was carrying bubbles in its mouth and releasing them a bit aways. When did the blue tang start exhibiting strange behavior? I thought and my thoughts were echoed by Bratworse: "Think the blue tang is playing or is it showing signs of being in a tank for too long?"

So, what do you think? Is the Blue Tang playing with the bubbles? Trying to kill the bubbles? Or just having a bubble fetish?

Putting on Old Skins

This past weekend, I visited WonderCon - it had been my first time since 1999? 2000? Maybe as late as 2001?

The old skin was probably ill-fitting for the most part, but on the other hand, the joy with which greetings were exchanged seemed to indicate that no one seemed to notice. Perhaps politeness on their part but perhaps my hasty apologies about working for "the man" let them know the depths with which I let go of my old profession.

For the past 8 years, the only creativity afforded me at my job was cut and paste jobs in which some measure of pleasure could be derived but for the most part, were bereft of any spark of creativity. My outlet was here, and even so, cheated my creative side simply by measure of these posts are more stream of consciousness more than anything else.

Due to the ill-fitting nature of my old skin, and due to the comfort it offered, the Cholotto family has instituted a new rule. If one of us feels like being creative, the other must follow suit and be creative as well. We are now extending it to visitors as well.

Let see if modifying the old skins will one, make them more fitting, secondly, more profitable, and thirdly, more pleasurable than this thing that I currently call a job.

Photo from this article on "Artic History - Land Use"