Things That I Love

This is a blog post that I wrote for another site.  I am copying it here.  I know I have been writing us much in the last 6 months or so, but I just have not been writing something that I feel okay about posting.  I will be back though as I have a couple of things in the works.  Thanks to everyone.

Things That I Love:
Interacting with people on a personal level.
I love being useful and trusted to help someone when they need support.

Playing games. Most of all, I love the nights with friends playing games like Risk or Monopoly. I love it when you plant seeds and try to talk people into or out of trades or plays because they may affect you later in the game but acting like they are not important. I love the personalities between the players and knowing when to play the game and when to play the player.

Women. Yeah, I am a guy. I love beautiful women in dresses on a warm summer day. That feeling when you hold the one you love and run your hands on and around their curves. Curves are the best. =) I will stop here before getting rated-R.

The Beatles. I am one of the hugest Beatles fans that you will find. I have a theory that so far has held true for a lot of people that if you claim to dislike the Beatles, it just means that you have not found YOUR song yet. Their styles are so varying and diverse, lyrics are top notch, and their entire story is one of interest. When I hear "Revolution" or "Day in the Life" on the radio, I have to turn it up all of the way because to me they are proof that they were the greatest musicians in the world. I love that slight ghostly sound to John Lennon's voice when he starts the song with "I read the news today, oh boy..." Sends chills up my spine.

StarCraft and the TL Community! Since joining I have found the site, the people, the players, the tournaments, and the community as a source of strength and that which is fun in the world. I love when we were watching MLG and the stream kept going on. People on the treads just kept joking about the eagle stream and posting the pic of the cat jumping the shark over the river and all that. I was practically rolling on the floor laughing at each reload.

Playing my acoustic guitar and singing. I love just sitting alone outside of a coffee shop and playing old folk covers by Phil Ochs. He had so much to say and he said it with humor and humanist sensitivity, but is all but forgotten by a lot of people today. I love singing and playing songs by Bright Eyes or The Mountain Goats and opening people's eyes to those two wonderful songwriters.

Comics and graphic novels. Cartooning is the closest medium to film making which I originally wanted to do when I was younger. I remember when I first read "Blankets" by Craig Thompson I wept at parts because I knew his life very well and he understood those confusing feelings of growing up in a world where it is hard to reconcile being a nice guy and being a man in today's society. Same goes for "Too Cool to be Forgotten" by Alex Robinson. When I see someone's soul poured out on paper I am constantly amazed.

I love that feeling of checking one's email and seeing something a response from a friend that you miss. This also applies to snail mail, facebook, and other forms of contact. Finding or hearing from old friends is one of the best feelings in the world. There was a great old blues song which said "I love old friends because they remember me when I was a young man." That always hit home with me.

Awkwardness. This is strange, but I love meeting someone and trying to gauge how to approach them or talk with them. Learning about someone, that stage of intimacy known as "Infatuation", and playing the game where you want something, they want something else or even the same thing, and trying to navigate that world of awkward communication.

Childlike Wonder. I love getting to see the world through the eyes of my son, who is 2 right now. He is open, nice, and unprejudiced to new things. I like to get on my knees to the ground and look at bugs close up with him, watch his excitement when he finds a worm or a rollie pollie and laughs. It makes me feel like I am doing someone good for at least one person in the world.

Reading books. My wife and I own quite a few book shelves and they are all stuffed to the gills with book, periodicals, and artwork. I love when someone is having some issues and I can pull a book off of the shelf for them to read, they do, they understand it, and it helped them in some small way. Short stories are such a good medium as well as ultra-short fiction, hint fiction. The six word story which legend says was Hemingway:
For Sale: Baby shoes, never worn.
Wonderful stuff. The shorter the writing, the more the imagination has to fill in.

Sitting out side on a warm evening and watching stars. There is not much more to say about that. Perfect for contemplation.

British humor. Come on. Hilarious. Whether is be Monty Python, Black Adder, of reading Hitchhiker's Guide where the meaning to life is 42, it cracks me up every time.

I think that I need to stop there for now. Maybe I will make a part 2 later. What are things that you love and why?

Short and Simple...

I was promised the Rapture, yet again, and just like all the times before, it did not come. 

Harold Camping is an ass.  Thank you.

To All of the Cursed Out There:

What are you passionate about?  What can you do that no one else seems to be able to do?  On that note, what do you appreciate and to what extent do you appreciate it?

I am asking because I am one of these people that has a gift.  I call it the "Gift of Appreciation".  That is correct.  I was built with this keen ability to find the beauty in many things, to understand it on a deep level, to connect to the people doing what it is and see where and how this has come to be.

What I am not gifted with though is to ability to emulate.

I can listen to almost any piece of music and hear what is happening.  I can see the notes and chord structure along with the timings, the modulations, and be able to express what is so amazing about this piece of music to almost anyone in a way that they can understand, but can I copy it?  Rarely.  I can play a various chunk of instruments, but none of them on a level of depth and beauty as I can see in others.

I am not much of a sports fan, but I can watch a baseball game avidly.  I can see the difference in the long-term between an 0-1 pitch and a 1-0 pitch along with the ability to give people the run down of what is happening and why it matters for ever step of the way.  I can throw decently enough and hit okay, but could I ever play in the majors or even the minors for that matter?  There is no friggin' way.

I love chess.  It is a game that requires some of the most intense concentration to look into the board and into the opponent and see moves many places ahead.  I can explain the theory behind the placement along with the structure of the opening.  There is almost nothing more amazing than replaying games from Capablanca, Fischer, Morphy, or Kasparov and seeing the simple, subtle moves that make them great.  Can I see those when I play?  Goodness no.

There is the game of StarCraft which I love playing and watching.  It is like chess but in real time with strategy, tactics, information and build orders all taken into account.  I love watching the game.  There is nothing more amazing than watching TLO pull a win out of nowhere or see the simple things that MC or MVP do that make them champions.  I appreciate the greatness of July, NaDa, and SlayersBoxer with the ability to explain why they are great and why they were important to people that could not give a crap and get them to understand, but when I hit that button to play a ladder game, can I do any of it?  Not a chance.

The study of theoretical math is something brilliant to me.  I love playing with the ideas and trying to form pictures of simple numbers and symbols on a page and turning them into art, but could I ever have thought up the brilliance of simplicity in things like Fibonacci, Pythagoras, or Mandelbrot?  Heck no!

My favorite novelists are Kurt Vonnegut and Charles Dickens.  I sure as hell can explain everything they said and show you how there is a secret wonderful thing hidden in the beauty of a well-structured sentence, which builds into a wonderful plot.  I love graphic novels and can tell everyone everything great about Dave Sim, Alex Robinson, or Craig Thompson.  I can read all of these writer's books over and over and never get tired of them.  Can I draw a person or create a sentence with beauty and meaning?  Hardly.

Some of us in the world were born with this innate sense for the depth of things.  Some of us can teach and embolden people with their meanings and virtues.  We can see things in the way that the most passionate and able see them, but only with the granted ability to sense and not do.  We are those people that were given the gift of appreciation.  For years this pissed me off.  I could practice on the drums for months, be decent enough to play in various bands, but never reach the loftiness of the greats like Neil Pert, Danny Carey, or Gene Krupa.  I would try and try and pour my blood, sweat, and tears into these things that I loved but always felt like I was falling short.

For all of those out there that are afflicted with this gift as I am, I want you to know that it is not a bad thing, just a frustrating thing.  Without the appreciators, concert venues would be empty and the only people interested in an MLB game would be the other players watching from the bench.  Appreciators also make great teachers.  Sometimes people will question your credibility as you attempt to teach because you cannot do, but that is garbage.  Sometimes you have a stronger ability to harness the passion and pass it on than the people who do it.  Passion for something is contagious and those who can feel the tears come when watching an amazing film or staring deeply into a painting are necessary to this world. 

So please, if you are like me and if you sometimes feel like you are cursed into always being the bridesmaid but never the bride, learn to accept that position.  Where would a bride be without a great bridesmaid my their side?  Where would Mozart be today without us?

It seems like a curse, but let me promise you, it is not.