mconverse

A cloaking robe of elvenkind
Hangs in my wardrobe behind
All the thing that mother said
Were proper for a boy
And I know I could not say why
On this summer evening
Sixteen books of magic spells
Stacked below the cloak of elves
And sixteen books on magic spells
So elegantly bound
And I know I could not say why
On this summer evening
And I know something...something about you
And I know something...something about you

A cloaking robe of elvenkind
Hangs in my wardrobe behind
All the things that mother said
Were proper for a boy

Marcy Playground - A Cloak of Elvenkind


They're playing tonight, live in Austin. I don't think I can make it this time. Oh well.

  J.D. Willson – passed from this life on Friday, October 23 around 6pm.   He is survived by his wife, Casey Willson, his daughters Tammy, Tonya, and Christina and two step-sons, Gurtch and myself.   He was born in 1943.  These are the dry recitation of facts that fail entirely to encapsulate the the elemental phenomenon that was my father.   He was irrepressible, irresistible and incredible.  

  He met my mom in 1980; they were nigh-inseparable from that day on. If you could ask a 10 year old boy to define all the things he wanted in a father, once you got past “Fireman!” or “Astronaut!”  you would almost certainly find he had listed every quality my dad displayed and embodied.   He taught me how to throw a punch, catch a fish with a spear, run a trout/cat line, gut and clean a deer. He taught me how to plant and grow a garden. He taught me to hold my liquor, to shoot pool in dive bars, and how to approach women. Most of all, he made my mother happy. 

  He was full of stories.  He had adventures and things to talk about.  He could hunt, fish, prospect gold, use dynamite safely, shoot accurately, and play pool like a machine.  My dad was really, nothing short of the most powerful figure in my life.

He used to sit with me on the porch, or in the living room and tell me about raising hell as a kid in Michigan, running ‘shine for his uncle, fighting with the football team, and doing farm work.  He told me about getting rejected for military service during Vietnam because of a ruptured ear-drum and you could tell that while he was glad to have avoided going to hell, he was sad not to have served.   Dad was a mix of contradictory feelings.   Some of his stories are not fit for mixed company, and he was happy to explain them to me, even when I was probably too young to really understand.   Some of them made me spontaneously erupt into laughter when the real meanings became clear later.

  The early 1980s were hard on everyone financially.  Mom and Dad both lost their jobs and we moved to a tiny, one-room, unfinished farmhouse in Oklahoma.  Dad and I dug trenches and ran PVC pipe for water to the kitchen, but we still had to haul water in jerry-cans for showers/baths and to flush the toilet.  We fished a lot. I learned a lot about survival from him that year.  He never once got mad at a slightly squeamish kid who didn’t want to stick his fingers in a catfish’s mouth to take the hook out.  He just kept at it until I did the deed. 

Once, in jr. high school, I was in a terrible accident and nearly suffocated.  My skin was blotched and stained from blood boiling to the surface for air. My eyes were solid red from the exploded capillaries.  My hair was tangled and my clothes were torn.  I suspect that if someone had been casting a zombie movie, I would have gotten a lot of camera time.  It really was that bad.   I shambled home via public buses with people shying away from me and staring (and in LA, that takes some doing!). I hurt everywhere.  And I mean everywhere.  Dad was preparing for a trip to the desert outside of Barstow that weekend, and saw me shuffling up the hill, clutching my bag and looking like death warmed over.  My heart was heavy and I felt like hell.  But dad, he knew what I needed to hear.

“Son, I hope the other guy looks worse.”  That lanced my pain and let me laugh and cry and scream all at once.  He took me into the house, got me cleaned up, soaked me in ice water to reduce the swelling and bruising and never once let me feel like I’d failed or been stupid.  Dad took me on the desert trip and didn’t complain once about how I slowed him down, drank too much of our precious water, or that I kicked him in the shins while we slept in the bed of the pickup truck.  That was him, strong, supportive, unstoppable and kind. 

I’m going to miss you dad.  I’m going to miss calling you an ugly old man and having you tell me I’m an ugly kid so we’re even.   I’m going to miss you telling me you’re not too old or too short to kick my ass.   I’m going to miss you sharing a quiet drink and a quick game of pool. 

Thanks for being my dad.  For being a part of my life, and for the thousands of tiny ways that you shaped me into the man I am now.  

Rest in peace.

Just three miles from the rest stop
And my mouth's too dry to rage
The light was shining from the radio
I could barely see her face
But she knew all the words that I never had said
She knew the crumpled-up promise of this
Broken down man

- Matchbox 20 - Rest Stop

Preamble to the Declaration of Independence: 

Words from the Gettysburg Address that are fitting for today's celebrations: 


And that's all I have to say about that. 

Today I lost a friend.

She lost her battle with cancer, a battle that kept her bed-ridden in the ICU for the last six months.  

Deb and I weren't close; but we were friends.  She was vibrant, powerful, and snarky.   She is survived by a sister, and a beautiful seven-year old daughter. 

I'm torn up, and no words can make the loss feel like anything but a hollow pit in the center of my soul. 

Good bye Deb.  I'm sorry all I have to give you is silence.

With LOLCats.



Apparently, I can't hold a camera steady anymore... /sigh/

more animals

   It's no secret to anyone who looks at my links that I play World of Warcraft.  It fills the largest portion of my free time, and I honestly think it's better than the television or mindless drinking most people I know use to fill those same hours.   I enjoy the game, I've met amazing people, and I have a pretty good time doing it. 

  But last night, something in the game happened which makes me wonder if I've been kidding myself for the longest time.  

  You see, I used to play a priest (irony, MConverse is thy name), which in the game is a healing and support role.  Many of the classes in the game can do healing; Druids, Priests, Paladins, and Shaman.  In their infinite wisdom (read desire to appeal to a very broad section of customers) Blizzard Entertainment made sure that each of the healing classes also had an entirely different role available to them, damage output.  

  I'd played mostly damage output roles until I moved to the Kirin Tor server (one of the game servers named after an important society in the game), where I decided that I'd play a healer role to support friends who were starting over there.   Time went on, and I found myself being the only person in a collection of thirty or more who was willing to do the role.  And I was good at it.  But I was also incredibly frustrated.  I was constantly under social pressure to 'help' people do things they wanted to accomplish, but could only get reciprocal help from a select few.  I hated this pressure so much that when the first expansion for the game was to be released, and a new more interesting, class option opened up for me, I switched even going so far as to essentially start over from scratch.  To this day, I'm reluctant to play a healer role because I dread that same social pressure and frustration.  

  The class I chose was Shaman.  The whole primitive, spirit-world/elemental connection motif appealed to me.  Shaman have a healing role (and a quick search of The Armory will show it's pretty popular) but I was determined to do the melee damage output role.  And I did.  And while I'm not amazing, I'm pretty decent.  I have fun.  

  So along comes last night.  I'm scheduled to go to a raid - a set of encounters that takes 25 players to defeat.  The problem is, we're short of healers.  Critically short.  We could get the ball rolling with a couple more, but there just don't seem to be any available.  And what's more, I have two friends and guildmates who would like to go, but they can't unless we can find healers and still have room left over.  So, I held my nose, and changed out all of my Shaman character's gear, talents, and many interface elements to take on the healer role. 

 You know what?  I was really good.  Fighting with a poor and hurried set up, little to no practice using the skills, spells and gizmos I did a fantastic job.  I did more, with less than I ever did as melee damage output.  It was pretty amazing to me that I could do so well.  I have to work very, very, very hard to be consistently good at the melee role; healing? It's like a gift.  I'm just good at it.  

  Normally, I'd chuck this up to a humorous oddity. It wouldn't make me feel one way or another.  But the social factor here is kicking in.  My guild has two people in it who are healers.  Neither of them is ready for raids, and aren't likely to be for a while yet.  I'm trying to build a guild from the ground up (again, don't ask.  It's like masochism on heroine.) and I feel like there's nothing to offer recruits.  We don't raid - not enough people.  We have some great people, but they're all tanks or damage output.  Sometimes we can't get any activities going as a group because, well - not much you can do without a healer.   And I'm feeling the pressure from a couple of quarters.  People ask if "I wouldn't mind healing just this once," or make comments about being frustrated with the lack of healers.   

  I like to help people (I know, it's probably a failing) and the fact that there's an avenueI could pursue to break the log-jam and help my friends and guild-mates by just switching to healing ... well, it weighs heavily on my mind.  All I have to do is do this thing I'm really good at that I don't enjoy, and so many of my frustrations with building a guild, and doing content in the game that I want to do will just vanish.  I'll be invited to all sorts of groups and raids.  I'll be able to pick up more recruits because I'll be in a role in high-demand.   And I'll hate it just like I did 2 years ago.  

  No, I don't expect this journal entry to be important to anyone, or even read by anyone.  It's a trivial thing, a bit of social pressure in a game-setting that I can just walk away from, or ignore.  But for some reason, I see this as a decision of some weight - because it's the choice between getting what I want on my terms, or getting what I want on someone else's terms.  Between doing what I enjoy and doing what other people need.   Sad, huh?  

  Enough random blathering - at least I set the whole thing down where I could see it.  

Pleased and a little surprised to discover that I never finished reading Angles and Visitations by Neil Gaiman. It's an excellent collection of his work, and a delightful read.  Spend an evening with it.  The book was on my mind because I'd offered to lend it to a friend who had just seen Coraline.

I should note that I'm a fan of Mr. Gaiman's work. Got a chance to speak with him briefly at a book signing in Austin a few years back.  It was at Book People, and he'd recently discussed in his blog wanting to do a screen play for the novel Wasp.   I'd read the book in 1980 or 1981 and it had a profound impact on my thinking about the uses of force.  Mr. Gaiman decided against a screen play with a terrorist as the hero, for very sound reasons in the modern era, but I was pleased to see he'd been similiarly impacted by the novel.  If there is one celebrity with whom I'd enjoy spending an afternoon listening to music, and talking about inconsequnetial things, well, Neil would be my top pick. 

I spent a lot of insomnial hours last week watching TV shows over the web.   Brodcast networks have come a long way in adopting the web as a delivery vehicle/medium, but they fail in a few key ways. Dating is like a parralell universe in which all the people you've come to know are replaced with evil and ambitious doubles. I'm in my late thirties.  You'd think that by now, I'd have happy memories of relationships and dating.  As it turns out, I wonder why I ever put up with it at all.  Listen up here people, if you're just in the dating scene to jack with people, stay home.  No one wants you here.  If you're in the dating scene to serve entirely selfish ends, stay home.  We don't need you here.   Oh, and if you ask someone to go out with you, don't spend the whole evening talking about your new beau; The person on the other side of the dinner table thought this was a date.   Yeah, so that's enough of that. 

I hope everyone had a pleasant holiday.  

Yoinked from my dear friend GreenSilkChai.


So there you go. 

That is all.

And now, for your elucidation and edification, I bring you the Gentleman Jack-O-Lantern!

He's dapper, charming and well dressed!

Imagine with me, if you will, a small village.  In this village, one man decides to plant a garden.  This garden isn't huge, but it produces an abundance of fresh vegetables and fruit and makes the man very happy.   He enjoys the (literal) fruits of his labors, and shares some with his family, his friends, and sometimes he gives some to others.

Now not everyone in the village has fresh vegetables or fruit, and they see that this man has them.  The other villagers see that in spring and summer he has strawberries, in fall he has squash and beans, and year-round he has potatoes and lettuce and all manner of tasty things to eat.  Those villagers want some produce too, so they say to the headman of the village, 'We want fresh fruit and vegetables, you are our headman, get them for us.'

The headman looks about and notices that the gardener has fresh fruit and vegetables, and so he goes to the gardener and says, 'You have grown a lush garden, and its bounty is great.  You must give one-third portion of all you grow to me, and I will give it to the other villagers to eat.'

'No,' says the gardener, 'I have grown this garden with my own labor. I will not just give its bounty to you.'
'Well, ' says the headman, 'If you do not give one-third of all you grow to me, I shall punish you, putting you in prison, or taking the produce from you with soldiers. If you fight back against the soldiers, we will drive you from the village.'  Having no choice, the gardener gives the headman one-third portion of all he grows.

When trying to distribute the portion he has taken from the gardener, he discovers that there are more villagers than he has produce to feed.  First, he tries to give each villager only a small portion, but even so, there is not enough for everyone. He goes again to the gardener and says, 'There is not enough to feed all the villagers, so now you must give me half of all your produce. If you do not, I will punish you with prison or drive you from the village with soldiers.'   Again, having no choice, the gardener gives more of his produce to the headman.

Still, half of what the gardener grows is not enough to feed the villagers. Again the headman returns again to the gardener, this time demanding that the gardener give any produce that he alone will not eat.  'There is not enough to feed all the villagers, who hunger for fruit and vegetables.  You grow much more than you can eat, so you must give me ninety percent of all your produce. If you do not, I will punish you with prison or drive you from the village with soldiers.'  Again, having no choice, the gardener gives more of his produce to the headman.

In the village, many are dissatisfied with their meager portions of produce, and clamor for more.  They threaten the headman with unrest; they plead with tales of woe; they beg for larger shares.  And the gardener too is unhappy, for now he has a meager share of his crop too, far less than his labor should provide. In his anger, he quits planting and tending his garden. There is now no fruits or vegetables for anyone.

Now this is a simplified parable, but I'm sure if you stretch your imagination a little you will see how this applies to taxes and business.  Those who don't have should not use the bullying power of law and government to take from those have.  In all fairness, we live in a place where anyone with some drive and desire can become a 'have' instead of a 'have not.' 
'Tax the rich, feed the poor, 'till there are no rich no more,' was a popular song lyric from the 1960s by a band called Ten Years After.   The idea sounds nice.  Everyone is equal, everyone is fed, and no one has more than anyone else.  But it is a pipe dream of the most insidious sort.  The well of need is never-ending, there will always be someone who doesn't have something, somewhere and there will be someone who has it.  Encourage these people to trade, things, labor, something.  Don't have the government take it to give to someone else.

Some of you are reading this right now and thinking I'm a heartless, unfeeling bastard of the lowest sort, a fool, or even stupid.  I'm none of those things.  I'm simply a man who believes that what I earn from the sweat of my brow is mine.  I give to charity, I care about others, and I'm not opposed to reasonable taxes for things a society must have in order to exist, prosper and defend itself.  But I'm not in favor of 'spreading the wealth around,' or the idea that my government is allowed to punish me or imprison me for not giving up large portions of what I earn to try to fill that bottomless well. 

I don't know if anyone reading this will agree, disagree, or write me off as a lost cause, but please think about what I've said here, think about it carefully, so that when next you're asked to give up more you might remember the gardener.

It's official - I have Internet access at home again.

I've also sought out and found a new apartment, much closer (like under 3 miles) from work and will be moving by the end of the month.  

I has internet access at home for about 3 hours or so on Saturday night.  It died on me while I was trying to play World of Warcraft.   I'm still internet-less on Monday.  I should have known it wouldn't last since the cable TV signal was MIA, but it got my hopes up. 

We'll see if it's back up when I get home.  

Still living under curfew, so I'm still working an early shift as a result.  I'm working this Saturday to give the guy who's been working my normal shift some time off.  Bless him, he's the new guy and he got stuck with some long hours as a result of Galveston's silly curfew. 

FEMA sent an inspector.  He took a single photo, checked my ID, verified my residency with the apartment management, and told me I did the right thing by filing a claim.  Honestly, in the light of discovering I had a livable place to return to, I'm a little embarrassed by having filed a claim at all.  He had me sign a form claiming I hadn't exaggerated my damage claim (I hadn't) and left me some papers, including a FAQ.  

This is the side of my apartment building. 




A couple more photos are in my Hurricane Ike album.

- Matt

Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home.

I left Austin at 2am on Thursday morning and made the 4-hour drive to Galveston Island to be there when officials opened the causeway.  It was disquieting to drive across it with no streetlights onto a darkened and subdued Galveston Island.  A bustling city of light and activity was reduced to a mass of darkness outside my windshield.

Harborside, the main artery to the area in which I live was pitch black.  Temporary road signs and barricades were at every intersection.  Buildings on both sides of the road showed evidence of fierce winds and surging waters with fences flattened, debris, and crews already working in the dark.  

I drove down this darkened road, seeing glimmers of hope.  Here a building running on generator power, there a crew cleaning up debris, and still another spot folks reporting to work at UTMB.   The hospital is 2 blocks from my home, and it was well lit. Some of that juice was coming from generators, some from the power grid.  

I got to 6th street, and I could clearly see the building for my complex, one of three was lit.  I had power.  I breathed the first of many sighs of relief. 

I parked in the debris-strewn lot, got my flash light, and went up the two flights of stairs to the third floor holding my breath the entire way.  I pressed the key in the lock, and opened the door.

Imagine then, my relief and delight when my apartment looked like it does every day when I return home from work.  The old note of discord was a brand new screen door management had placed in the apartment for me to install when I returned home.  

I had power, I had runing water (though it must be boiled before use).  My computers, my books, my furniture and clothing were all ok.  Nothing was destroyed expect the two weeks worth of food I'd purchased right before the storm.  My computer had even recorded the next-to-final episode of "Burn Notice" from the Thursday before the storm.  It's the little things that strike you, no? 

I was exhausted, so I grabbed a couple of hours of sleep and got up to report for work.

Daylight showed me even more; the island I'd come to call home in the last several months took quite a beating.  My neighbor fears she will lose everything to mold and moisture. She and a relative were throwing away storm-damaged property when I left home.  
I took a short  drive down Seawall.  The piles of debris and damage were extensive.   The Balinese Room (a historically significant night club, Sintra played there!) is gone forever, as is the Hooters, and a interesting curio shop that stood between them.  Washed away, never to be seen again.   The Flagship hotel was still standing, but i could see daylight streaming through the enormous hole in the side of it. 

Having no food, and very little money I needed to find a Point Of Distribution or a Red Cross dirstibution quickly before leaving for work. I was humbled, and nearly tearful when the lovely young woman in the American Red Cross truck handed me a boxed hot meal and a bottle of water.  It struck me then, perhaps like never before just how lucky I was, and how close I'd come to a complete loss.  For anyone who reads this and happens to volunteer at any relief organization, or who makes that sort of work their vocation - Thank you.   The POD had a huge line - longer than I could wait before getting to work, and when I got back to the island before curfew the line was longer than I could wait because of curfew. 

I'm alive, I'm well.  My home was not destroyed. Galveston's curfew (no excuses, arrest +$2000 fine) is still in place, though it has been shifted from 6pm to 6am to 8pm to 6am. 

I'll post a few more times as things change and let people know what is happening.