Battles with Caffeine

All last night I was plagued with a splitting headache.  It wasn't pleasant, but still I got more sleep than the two previous nights combined. 

I figure that the headache was withdrawal.  Over the past few weeks I've discovered that caffeine is good for getting writing done and I've had a lot of writing to do lately.  I needed the extra juice to keep me focused.  My medic job makes it so that I've been waking up at 0500 for the past three weeks (sometimes earlier) and like a stubborn idiot I refuse to let little things like sleep get in the way of my social life.  So I've been going to sleep at 11pm or later usually functioning on 5 hours of sleep a night. 

I'm not an addictive personality… I hate the idea of being enslaved by anything (yes people even my job), I smoke cigars but not at work.  And I only smoke cubans or the sort that don't have a load of nice addictive poisons added.  It's an indulgiance for me, not an addiction.  I don't drink heavily but I do enjoy my beer, but rarely exceed drinking one or two a day.  I love my mochas and I find tea pleasant and the stimulation helps my work, but it's not a fix. 

So yesterday without even thinking about it I consumed no caffeine.  The morning bev was green tea, not black (I hear things about anti-oxidants and stuff) and I just never got around to any coffee.  By 6pm I was a dead man walking and by 8 I bowed out of the IM conversations with my friends to catch an early night as my headache was developing.  Sleep was fitful, my body simply wasn't geared for the potential 9 hours I was granting it and I was up 3 times throughout the night each time the headache pounding in my temples. 

This morning the 5 o'clock stomp was painful and I resolved to take some tylenol once I got to site.  But it seems the green tea I consumed once again this morning has conquered my withdrawal and I am feeling fine and alert, no painkillers needed, which I'm pleased about.  I'm not a big fan of taking painkillers and would rather see the issue that caused the pain resolved.  Gotta take care of your self you know… 

 

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What if…

Once upon a time there was a boy whom everyone believed would one-day become a Catholic Priest.  But this boy could not reconcile with Catholic beliefs and he asked too many questions.  The boy began to believe that most religions have an "our way is the right way" mentality.  But he saw that mankind had a yearning to define the metaphysical and told stories in order to do so, these stories became myths and legends and have metaphysical significance.  The boy believes now that these stories are all equally significant, but only because they touch different people differently. 

The boy wrote this:

Since before the time of recorded history man has contemplated the soul and it's release after death.  The concept of the soul is universal, for people are unable to believe that they simply exist for no reason other than to eat, sleep, shit and fuck until they die.  People all over want to believe that their existence is for some higher reason, and that their animated bodies of flesh are fuelled by something more ethereal then the beefsteak they ate some hours ago.  They believed that their soul went somewhere after death, and developed rituals around that belief.

If the soul is real but ethereal to us, then there are beings to whom our souls our real to them but our solid states ethereal.  These beings are the gods.  Our souls shape them and through time we created powerful gods.  Our myths, legends and prayers shaped them, and when freely offered the gods could take our souls into them empowering them.  They in-turn could transfer that love, that divine energy from us back to us in the form of gifts empowering the mortals they felt worthy.  There are examples of this in our legends.  Achilles, Heracles, Romulus…. these and many more are powerful stories about what the gods in their prime could grant to us in order to spread the myths.  And with the spread of myths, more supplication and thus more power would come to the gods.

As time past we came to rely upon the gods and their gifts, we sacrificed people and animals to them, some willing, some less-so. I personally believe that they sacrificed the virgins, because they didn't want to lose the one's who put out, but that's just me.  But in many ways the gods and their fickle and passionate natures were holding humanity back.  Man could not succeed at anything without the god's approval, crops would die without the proper sacrifices, buildings would not be sound unless an alter was in them.  And if one deity was at odds with another then one could sabotage the boons of another.  This lead to the need to appease many gods, which became magnified because gods were often localized to a particular city or society.  

Would-be conquerers or expansionists had quite the time of it, if they wanted to rule over a particular area, they had to appease the deities of perhaps 10 different tribes, all with multiple gods all of whom did not care for change.  So mystical disruption happened often.  The would be expansionists needed to deal with these rambunctious deities, but their options were limited.  One cannot cut and kill an ethereal being, and killing it's worshippers simply empowered it with the martyred souls which the god would use to empower those who would battle the conquerer. 

The solution was not to kill through violence, but through starvation.  People had to be convinced not to worship their gods, but no one would believe that gods did not exist, for there was plenty of proof they did, however if they were offered the chance to pray to a more powerful god, a god of everything that promised them something they all desired, the freedom of the soul in bliss after death, that would convert them.

And so a false god was created, one to usurp the the many deities, so that the powerful could rule over.  It was a one god, and it did not exist like the gods did, it had no name or personality, and instead of granting anything through worship there was only one promise, be-good, obey, be docile and you will go to a happy place at the end of your life.  Small rituals were taught to them in the name of this false god to keep the souls from haunting the earth, and humanity was converted.  Within a thousand years nearly 80% of every person on earth was firmly believing that there was a single god in one way or another.  For some their spiritual beliefs were rooted in the concept of reincarnation, others in an afterlife.  But ultimately the purpose was served.  People were easily commanded, and gods were dead or so it was believed… 

 

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Pirate Day!?! Ohf*** now where do I start…

Pirates?!?

It's International Talk-Like-A-Pirate day and no one gave me advanced warning???  Age of piracy is my passion!!!

So in honor of international talk like a pirate day I will include a glossary or a lexicon or whatever term floats yer boat.

Schooner (sku – ner): A light, fast boat that actually travles faster than it's "hull speed" which means it hydroplanes across the water or as the scottish say: "schoons" which means it's skipping like a stone.  The word is in my title.  Other ships would be the galleon, the carrack, the junk, the fluet, the skiff, the snow, the barque, the brigantine and more… most ship names are based around the configuration of their rigging.

Rigging (rig – gin): Universal term for all the things that go into the sails of a ship.  Including sails, and mast.  If it's above the weatherdeck it's in the rigging.

Guns (gunz you know how to pronounce guns don't you?):  Pural term for the cannons on a ship.  At the time there was no confusion between these guns and smaller pistols and rifles which were referred to as such.  Guns were cannon.

Hold (hold):  A space on the ship most often the bottom or two bottom decks where the ships cargo was held.

 

Islands of the Caribbean
Islands of the Caribbean

Buccaneer (bucca·neer):  Derived from the french word "bocanier" which references to smoking boar meat or bacon as we now know it.  The term Buccaneer referred most specifically to french individuals from Hispanola and the Isle De La Torte (Isle of the Tortise) or Tortuga.

Keel (kEl): The centerline of a ship essentially the backbone of the ship.  It runs from bow to stern.  The term Keel-Hauling referred to when a person was thrown from the bow with a rope around him as the ship sailed overtop and his body was raked from the barnacles along the hull.  The process could take as long as 30 seconds to a minute and as you can imagine resulted in a few deaths or at the very least some nasty wounds drenched in saltwater.

Bow (bOw):  The front of the ship. (The pointy part)

Stern: (st ern):  The back part of the ship.

Port: The left side of the vessel when seen by someone facing the bow.

Starboard:  The right side of the vessel.

Tack (tak): A direction of sail relative to the wind direction.  Port tack would be sailing with the wind at the port side.

Jibe (jib): A method of sailing or tacking usually to sail into the wind.  It involves usually changing ship directions and angling the sails to catch the wind.  The term "cut of your jibe" refers to this meaning the way you carry yourself.  "I don't like the cut of your jibe" would literally mean "I don't like the way you angle your jibe, meaning it could be dangerous or inefficient or just poorly executed.  The modern term carries more social relevance meaning a person's bearing or professionalism.

Privateer: A sailing mercenary for a particular naval power (Britan, France, Spain, the Netherlands).  A captain would recieve a "letter of marque" which was effectively permission to attack ships of another country.  The age of privateering was commonplace during the mid 1500's to mid 1600's.  Primarily it was done by the French and the English, to pillage the spanish treasure fleets coming out of South America.  It's estimated that perhaps only 5% of the spanish treasure ships leaving South America made it to Spain with their cargoes intact.  Had 50 or 75% of them reached Spain, the political geography of today would likely be very different.  Coming to the end of latter half of the 1600's the major powers had their stations more solidly defined in the West Indies, and the Spanish treasure fleets were in decline.  Less letters of the Marque were being signed, and the naval fleets were more prevalent.  At this time, many once-privateers moved from legitimate privateering and continued to plunder ships illegally and became pirates. 

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There’s Always Room For Jello

These pictures were from my girlfriend's birthday party.  I know I know, I'm horrible for not blogging about her birthday… horrible horrible me… but I'm getting to it.  We used 2 bottles of Malibu to make 100 shooters with these great little plastic cups and that Glad Press-n-Seal stuff.  And they worked out damn well.  Sadly Tash had 8 of them before it was even 9pm and then she cut back and didn't drink anymore.  No drunken Tash :-(.  She's such a bad birthday girl.  I swear the only way you get that girl drunk is with Tequila.  Well there's always nextime. 

So anyhow.  We have leftover Jello shooters if you want them, they're very good.

 

Jello Shooters
Jello Shooters

 

No Lemon Flavor
No Lemon Flavor

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Am I stupid? Or does this Feature NOT exist?!

Okay… in the course of my blogging I find stuff that I really like.  And more than that, it's stuff that I want to remember I really liked.  But there's lot of it.  Now Vox has a Favorite Post option… but I can't seem to find a way to reference back to the stuff I favorited.  Is there a way?  Or does Vox just use it's "Favorite This" option as a pat on the back?

I wanna go look back at the stuff I favorited.  And more than that I wanna share it with you.  This is awsome stuff, and I don't want it to be lost, and using the Favorites option in my browser will clutter things… I guess I'll have to start doing that if Vox won't comply.

Any ideas?  Or am I really just oblivious?

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W(here)TF is Toe Knee?

In OJAY, that's where!

Yeah, since my nice Rig moved into that "other" province I've been working up in the mountains again.  Cell service sucks up here (though if you wanna get technical there would have to actually BE some for it to suck…) but BP shelled out big bucks to bring in a Sattelite network including INTERNET!  And everyone knows… you can stick me right up the biggest stinkiest asshole of the world and I won't complain as long as you give me internet. 

As always the mountains are nice, and the driving is actually improving… which was a big shock, but even with nice regular internet access I'm finding I have so little time to devote to Vox or my online Exalted game.  I'll try to explain why. 

About 2 months ago I was contacted by Kristen who introduced me to Mark who wanted me to do a promotional blog for Actionize.  So I started the blog, but Mark wanted to develop some further marketing and advertising ventures… which I attempted to take on.  Now I'm not a marketer, but my best friend Ian is a very good one, so I began discussing things with him and eventually introduced him to Mark.  He started developing a marketing proposal, which has blossomed from a bit of promotional blogging into a full manafesto of why we of Actionize are breaking ground in the way people can do business.  It's pretty exciting, but it's a lot of work I'm effectively writing a book now and when I look at it all I get a bit overwhelmed.  Nobody is getting the memo's that I'm a lazy punk that doesn't deserve this, but some odd part of me really wants to succeed so I find myself devoting less and less time to the small joys of the internet and more to mindmaps of mission statements and defining points of communication over modern networks. 

My brain hurts.  My corporeal job forces me to be up at 4:45am, and my search for a bit of time to chat with my gaming buddies is keeping me up til midnight… I've had 14 days off since the end of June and there's no end in-sight, apparently the Oilfield is slowing down but I'm not seeing it…

So in summary, lazy-ol-me has somehow convinced two sets of employers that I'm a good worker… I feel like the greatest con-man of the blogging world… I think I'm going to have to find someone else to do more work for me.  Any takers?

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5 Grateful Things: No Rhyme or Reason Edition

It's been a while since I've posted for Dee's group, and now that I actually have a bit of time to sit down and write I figured I'd throw one out for ya'll.  I'm going back to my roots here by pointing out all those lucky things that (should) make you green with envy.

UNO!!! I have a girlfriend who works at a sex shop… meaning discounts on SEX TOYS!  (And don't you be thinkin they're just for the women either.)  Now I can buy Japanese bondage cord at 30% off!!! Wooo hooo!

DOS!!!  My best friend is a marketing genius!  And his genius may just land me major money just for bringing him onboard with an online job that I inexplicably got without deserving.

TRES!!!  My lack of education seems to give me more credibility.  I have no idea why, but when I offer my opinions, or my advice or work at something my lack of education shows, but not in a bad way.  It's wierd, I've had a few comments on it lately.

CUATRO!!!  I am sooooooo grateful that blogging is becoming better understood in the oilfield.  I can actually hold conversations about this stuff with people that aren't online.  Woot!

CINCO!!!  Sleep!!! I'm very grateful for the sleep I get these days.  Monday morning I was forced to an early rising of 3:30 am which was not pleasant.  Now I'm getting to sleep in to the sinfully indulgent hour of 5:00am.  You never know how grateful you are for sleep when you're getting 4 to 5 hours a night.   

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Hurt Vol II

Permit me to be a little fanboi for a second here…

OMG HURT IZ T0T11 PLZRE!!! HURT R0XX0RZ I MUST PWN KUZ THEY PWN THE WORLD!!1111!! ALL OTHR BANDS SUXXORZOURFROGASS THEYTELLTHESTORYOFMYWORLD!!!111!!!!! CALL-THEM-EMO-AND-DIE!

*phew*  There, now that's done.

Seriously they're this awesome band that hardly anyone's heard of and their second album is coming out this month!!!

I found a teaser!  Dig it!

 

Hurt - Ten Ton Brick
Hurt – Ten Ton Brick
Hurt

Also, if you likee, check out Rapture which I've posted from before.

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Musings on My Lifestyle

I'm starting to see why writers are OCD.  I've been home 2 days and this is the first actual piece of writing I've managed to start… we'll see how it goes.  The only reason why I'm typing this is because it's Vox, which doesn't always require me to pretype my thoughts in Word or Mindmap first before I post, if this were not the case then I'd still be trying to make room for a spot to put my laptop as I was two minutes ago.

Well so far it's not going well.  I just got a phone call saying to go pick the GF up… nrr… I'll post this right now and then we'll all see if I pick up where I left off.

This is exactly what I'm talking about. 

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