Just a little lonely

I'm okay.
I'm just a little lonely.
He said with something approaching a smile on his face,
And something approaching bitterness in his voice.

Is it so taxing?
Are you so needy?
Is it so much to wish for?

When alone, I find company is something I can do without,
But it is hard to close your eyes after a day lived in silence,
Without admitting that while
A companion may not be something you need,
It is something you want,
Which is to say you might not always get it.

And I wonder on how to weigh this,
And I dismiss my ponderings as irrelevant,
But I must admit, that there is a part of me that is less than well,
When I am even a little lonely.

DOOOOM!!!

DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Even in defeat, one can reap the dividends of peace

Let me now not speak for current times but for the future,
And for the past,
But not for the present,
For that would be reckless,
Careless
And I have sworn off such ways

If you do not understand me
That's not unusual
We are humans are we not?
At least on the inside
At least for now

Even if we speak in the same language
Do we really use the same words
Each sentence, each body movement, each thought
Is enveloped in connotations, denotations, emotions and assumptions
Till the common syntax is an obscurer of the truth rather than an aide

And that is without getting to the intangibles

And what is life without the intangibles

And what is life without that most misunderstood intangible
We bear to each other
And we do not understand the other
Nor their understanding of us
But what is life without that dream of understanding

And so we try to impose a bridge upon this chaos
We try to force an understanding to bring down the truth
Of that feeling we have for another
That feeling that it is so essential that we give without misunderstanding
That feeling that we so desperately want to understand in the others' eyes

And so it comes to war
We misunderstanding
Take advantage of the fog of our mutual fiction of communication
To bring down what we wish were the feelings that are being misunderstood
That we might be able to understand
But without agreement
And how can their be agreement
And in such conflict

Yet to understand is not always to triumph
Your conception may not be conveyable
It might not even exist
Even in your mind
And if what you wanted to understand
Is worth understanding
Then can it be worth understanding even if it is only the others' definition
That remains

And so it comes to failure
To defeat
Both dismal and deep
But we emerge a little closer
Not understanding still
But a little closer

And in that we advance the longer triumph
Far down the road

What are you waiting for really

There's a term in geo-politics called "linkage", the idea that between two negotiating parties with a large number of issues between them, one can bargin on issue A by utilizing issue B, and problems in issue B can be addressed via issue A. This was particularly popular during the Cold War.

Yeah, "linkage" usually doesn't work out too well.

Because, inherently you take a gamble that the other side views these issues as linked the way you do + ranks them with similar importance + views them as similarly mutable. Essentially you're expanding your negotiating from a bunch of small issues to one giant one, and the thing is, when behind the whole negotiations is a fundamental difference, then you're just screwing yourself because that one big issue can't be resolved without one side losing entirely. However, split the issues into small chunks, break them down one by one, and sometimes you can cut down the whole slew of dangerous issues between two sides into a still-existing but non-deadly array of problems.

Sometimes, with some problems, you just got to admit, I don't know how to solve this, and I can't let that screw up everything.

I could go on more on the historical implications of that (especially in terms of Kissinger), but I'd like to instead reframe it in a personal way of viewing.

(HAH! you thought I was going to zig but I zagged! Watch out or I just might zog!)

I have a tendency for obsessions, on matters of joy but also on matters of pain. When I face an insurmountable problem, I like to tackle it on all angles to see if there's some possible, tiny chink. But that obsession can become, well an obsession. And sometimes problems are truly insurmountable, or at least, insurmountable for you. And at that point you need to defuse the linkage.

That is to say, when you put that much focus on a single problem, it easy to be swept away by it, enveloped by it, and all else is put on hold, moreover all else is seen through the lens of this issue, and when it's irresolvable everything is tainted by it and...

And then you need to de-link things. Separate this one problem from all your others, seal it off in a certain part of your mind, and live your life in the rest.

For the world will try to keep you down, but you got to always, always just keep on keeping on.

Anywho, sleep does call me, so take it to your head, take it to your heart and remember Rand rocks. Goodnight Folks!

And God Bless.

Prithee, have thee heard of the Prism

I'm always caught in a bit of a dilemma upon my less serious posts, because I am Rand the Great and Glorious and thus deserve the treatment as such. But on the other hand, even the great and glorious can afford more scattered thoughts upon once and a while.

So then let me make a recommendation far removed from topics more normally dwelled upon. Often I have found myself with more than one account at a social networking site or the like and have been forced to choose which one to be logged in as at a certain time. The choice would infuriate me, and burn me to my soul. Sure I could use multiple browsers, but I like Firefox, and then I need to surf over to the site again. Seconds wasted, seconds!

However, now I find myself taking advantage of Firefox's Prism project. This project at its core, isolates a single webpage in a browser instance. At its most basic use, this is only slightly more useful than a bookmark. But there are some intriguing possibilities here. Firstly, you can put the links to the prism-ed site more places than a bookmarks menu, and more relevant to the previous paragraph, you can utilize the prism-ed site independently of other prism instances and of Firefox. Thus, you can be logged into TWO! instances of say Gmail or MySpace accounts at once TWO! TWO!

And while there are some cases where one is better than two, this is not one of them.

So Prism on Prism! Prism on!

Because the Rand Show is Comikier than yo'mama

It is, it is indeed:

Moreover, just as The Rand Show blog is making a comeback as is, soon mind you, the comic:

The Rand Show Issue #1
The Rand Show Issue #2
The Rand Show Issue #3
The Rand Show Issue #4

Sooner or later everyone fails

Not a bright sentiment to start with. I can't say though that I'm feeling bright. But not too bad. Overall, just a little low, and a little disappointed on myself and things...

For example, my re-emergence into the world of blogging which fizzled quite immensely last month. Generally, lately, it seems that whenever I have a good spell, some crap storm breaks loose, I patch that up, and then I look back and see the rest of my life has been abandoned. And lately, it just seems like a matter of sooner or later...

(By the way, quoting above line from Scrubs, Episode: His Story, Wooo! Scrubs)

In the end, screw that!

Screw those depressing, self-pitying, waah-waah-waah feelings! Now I'm going to deny those feelings exist, nor am I going to penalize myself for them, but rather I say bah-humbug to depression and move on, or at least aspire to, for that dear friends, is false bravado.

But it is still distressing how often, especially within this last year or so, and most especially within the last few weeks or so, I have made determinations to change my life but then had those determinations fall apart. There is the temptation to declare hopelessness, but then again, if parts of my plans and strategies have fallen apart, parts have succeeded, and in some ways I am better off that I was say a year ago...

But all weighed, I dunno...

In the end it doesn't matter. One of the constants of life, is that things fail, always there are plans that happen to be a bit too grand. Yet there is some satisfaction in being the man who tries. After all, accomplishments crumble to dust, memories are forgotten, and we are all but dust in the wind, but if there is something beautiful to make of our lives, then the core of that beauty is the life itself, well lived, devoted to love, or if you will indulge a Christian, in the seeking, the finding, and the being found in Christ Jesus.