Rodney

So it seems like there really is an app for everything on the droid. Even an app for posting 2 my live journal account. Seems pretty good so far, but will it be enough for me toost regularly again? We will have to Wait and see. Also, swype is a cool idwa but I am not sure how effective it is for people with fat fingers. Peace!



Posted via LjBeetle

Grown ass men doing online high school drama. Grow the fuck up.

I'm saving this for posterity, as I think that it's the first time I've put into words a change in me that has been slowly working it's way out for a while now.  Context:  I defriended a lot of people over on FB that I either had no more use for, never should have friended in the first place, or simply brought up bad memories and associations when I saw their names.  Mike Whited (now mike heath) fits the last catagory.  Here's the message I just sent him.

So, apparently, not adding you to my friends list has been bugging me.  Which is to say, I'm up at 2 in the morning typing you this instead of being asleep.  I don't want you to think that I am just being a douchebag and not adding you.  I have a reason why, and of all the people who I have deleted and not added back, you seem to be the only one who it bugs me to not add you.  Thus, my explaination of my reasonings why.  Wow...long introduction ftw. 

I've come to a realization at some point over the past four months.  And it's simply this:  I'm not angry anymore.  When you knew me, when you and your circles of friends were part of my life and vice versa, I was a very self-centered, boorish, stereotypical, and in many other ways not a good person.  At the heart of all of it, and I didn't even realize how much of my personality came from my anger until I lost it, was that I was angry. Pretty much all the time.  At everyone.  For everything.  I was able to enjoy some people, I was able to have a good time on occasion, but you, having lived with me and thus having a first hand insight into what I was like and about then, probably already put this together.  I was self-destructive, I was self-loathing, and since I could only like the persona that I put on, I went on the assumption that everyone else was a miserable F-head just like me, which meant I could think they were crap just like I was.  That's how my anger manifested.  In general assholishness that sometimes built to overlarge bursts of destructive energies, physical, emotional, social, you name it, I tried to bust it up. 

Anyway, I'm kinda getting far abroad of why I'm sending you this message.  I've noticed that, as I read through other peoples pages, that some people just have associations with parts of my life that make me not happy.  As an example, the entire group of "techno-geeks", which is how I classified pretty much your entire group of friends that I hung out with for a while, has the non-happy associations for me.  Some of it, obviously, is Melanie.  Some of it has to do with, I think, how I felt everyone of you saw me as the "tagalong", and for the life of me I can't think of a better term.  Again, leading to anger, which I don't have my bottomless pit of anymore.  Not something I want as a part of my life right now.

I see that you are married, and from that chillaxed photo of yours, you look to be having a grand time at life right now.  That's great.  (And that's not sarcastic, I really am happy you found someone who gives you enough peace/love/happiness to marry).  I've found a couple of people up here who have shown that they are down for Rodney regardless.  I've found a love and a wife that I never honestly thought I would have found.  (Incidentially, did I ever tell you about Julie Cook nee Ledgerwood's fear for me?  It's haunted me ever since she told me about it.  She thought/dreamed that I would end up settling for just a pretty hand to hold, marry, have 2.5 kids, divorce, and be your normal trailer park wreck.  That haunted me for years, until I found Wendy.)  I always knew that I was better with a girlfriend, that I sucked taken singular, but it's taken me this long to start to realize the why behind the what there. 

Again. Tangents.  I think you're a fundamentally good person, and you're one of the four or five genuinely GOOD people that I've ever had the grace to get to know for a little while.  For me, though, seeing you in cyberonia only serves to dig up memories that I would prefer to let lie in Rock Hill. 

I think that last paragraph jogged why this one was bothering me.  By my moral senses, you have to treat people as they are.  You're a good person, who normally tried to do the right thing when I knew you.  Telling you the why's behind my decision to not friend you is the right thing to do.  So...yeah. 

tl;dr.  You're good peeps, but you got bad associations, including with the Me I was then. 


For posterity purposes.  Also, maybe I might be able to jumpstart the diary again?  I think i might need it.  :)

Get off my dick, dick's too short a word for my dick,
get off my antidisestablishmenttarianism, bitch!

http://www.racialicious.com/2009/11/24/memo-to-tim-kring-you-are-who-you-work-with/
PoC's - Persons of Color.  (And I'll ignore the inherent racism of this term, as I think that it symbolizes most/all of my issues with this point of view.)

First off, read the post.  The rest of this will probably come off as angry white boy without any sort of backing if you don't.  Or don't.  And enjoy evil angry white boy ranting.  As you like.

First off, let's get to a definition of what you would like to have happen to finally reach "equality".  Is it even attainable?  Or is it something that you'll claim you will never attain due to nebullious claims of "Institutional racism" and "white privilege"?  Somehow, I'm thinking that it's the latter.  Let's take your obvious hatred of Heroes as an example, since it is what you originally wrote about.

You've got a pretty little chart showing POC's versus white people as regulars on the show.  So, first question.  If the only referent you're looking at is the amount of melanin residing in someone's skin, then why should I take you seriously?  Your claim is that you're not watching it due to racist themes and sexist themes, but you're specifically concerned with skin color.  That's all.  That's about as stupid a premise as In Living Color was only good because it featured black comedians.  In other words, and to ensure that there are no misinterpretations of what I'm saying here.  Your premise states that the quality of the show is directly related to the amount of non-white people cast on the show. 

Let's talk about demographics for a bit.  According to the US Census (and I'm coming from American angle.  Because I reside in the USA.)  75.1% of people in the USA are white.  Let's check that pretty little chart of yours.  OMG!  3 PoC's, 9 white people...is that...representation of the demographics of America?  Where is Heroes set?  America?  Wow!!!  Imagine that!  You're upset because a show reflects what actually is rather than your stupid idea of what should be.  Again, makes it hard for me to take you seriously when you're not dealing in reality.

Let's talk about your dismissal of someone else's perception that being a white male is a disadvantage.  First off, let's do like he asked and look up diversity programs for TV writers.

http://www.wga.org/content/default.aspx?id=1042
http://www.republicaupdate.com/2009/10/entertainment-industry-diversity-programs-and-fellowships.html

Wow.  Took me like 15 seconds to find those.  Programs specifically designed and intended to promote the chances of anyone EXCEPT white males.  Female?  Gotcha.  Black?  Gotcha.  Hindu?  Gotcha.  White?  Well....do you fit one of the *other* catagories?  

I'm not saying that racism doesn't exist.  I'm not even saying that programs to provide shots for people to succeed shouldn't be around.  I'm saying that if you're specifically looking for it, you're going to find it.  No matter what the situation, you're going to find what you're looking for if you're convinced that it's there.

To my eyes, the issue is less the amount of melanin that someone has, and more the amount of money that a person has access to.  Your claim to racism looks like an issue of bank accounts to me.  Besides, if your white privilege really existed, then wouldn't I have a cushy job making six figures while I "managed" a low-paid, high output team of PoC's?  (You think I'm taking an intentionally provoking position to show you how idiotic your position is?  You might be on to something.)   

I guess my penultimate question would be:  why does your skin color matter so much to you?  I'm white. But that's not how I think about myself.  A father, a husband, somewhat intelligent, a skeptic, an asshole, fat.  That's identifying characteristics to me.  The fact that I'm white doesn't come into play for me.  Not in my head, not in how I treat other people.  

Back to my original kernel of a question.  What would make you happy?  What would make you say "ding dong the racist witch is dead"?  An exact reversal so that white people are in the position PoC's are in now?  A society where your skin color doesn't matter?  A society where your skin color is the most important thing to you?  What's your endgame?  Your goal?  Can you even state it?  Or have you, to borrow a phrase from one HELL of a poet, "fell in love with the struggle"?

If I were to expand this, I would look at the psychology of people liking similar things and how that plays into the ratings of shows.  I would also look at content of tv shows and how low of a common denominator a show has to go to for ratings.  But that's another post.

A...B....C...D...E....shut the F up.

There's plenty of times in my life that I've considered whether or not I'm a good person. And I believe that, in the final analysis, I am indeed a good person. Does this mean that the balance is very tipped one way or another? I'm a biased witness, so I can't be sure that my observations are right, but I think that it's pretty heavy in one direction.

Does that mean that I'm a good friend? I'm fairly certain that the answer to that one is a resounding no. In the honest light of day, I can't say that I'm a great friend. Not even a good one. I'm not very good at making friends. I'm pretty good at getting along with people. Hail fellow, well met type stuff. But I don't do whatever it is that friends do to ensure strong and tight friendship bonds. And you know what's prompting this blog? Facebook. I'm roaming through what people want to make public of their personal lives, and I'm seeing a lot of people who are still hanging out together that were hanging out in high school or college. I was, at one point, proud of the fact that every year in college, I would cycle through one group of friends and change them out to another circle, keeping the couple who I felt were worth the time and trouble. But with age and experience comes at least a little bit of wisdom, and I've discovered that it wasn't just me cycling through, it was also them cycling me out of the way because I wasn't worth the time or trouble.

Take Slinker, for instance. He's found friendships that have lasted him for going on 10 years now. I was in that same room, playing 2nd edition, jumping from taverns onto fleeing caravan wagons. So, why is it that now, 10 years later, they're all still hanging out and being good friends, while I've not spoken to them for literally years? The answer can't lie with them. They're just one test group.

Take the technogeeks, for another instance. Granted, a lot of this group has to do with Melanie, but still. They're all still getting together, hanging out and supporting each other. And I'm nowhere in the picture.

Although, from the cesspool that the techno's turned into for me personally, I did manage to keep Hannah despite my best efforts to sabotage myself. Pride and all that. Maybe it's got something to do with how I communicate or if I communicate honestly?

We'll go all the way back to CHS. I didn't have many friends that I would hang out with in the school. I had the band geeks and I talked to them, but it wasn't like a hangout. I think that, multiple times, Will and Brian tried to get me into their group, but I was either too socially naive or just too dumb to recognize it for what it was. And the friends that I did have? Guess how many of them I've spoken to in the intervening 12 years. You guessed it. NONE.

So, what is it about me that makes me unable to form lasting emotional bonds? That's not a question that I can answer. Is there a central conflict in my psyche that I don't know about? I know that I don't respond to many things like most people do, which has the effect of making me not read signals correctly, or not even understanding that signals are being sent. I know that I'm arrogant, and that tends to put people off from me. But I don't think that's the root cause. Is it simple closeness? Is the biggest reason I'm not hanging out with, say, David and Bobbi on the regular that they're far far away? I don't think so. Because even through distances of hundreds of miles, the fingers can still do the walking. But I've not spoken regularly with them for a very long time.

So, maybe it comes down to how much I'm willing to put out for my friends? Make the first move, keep connections up and going? Hell, I don't know. If I knew, I'd fix it and this wouldn't be an issue. But it is. Don't get me wrong, faithful reader, I'm not knocking the life that I have going on right now. Happily married with one child and one stepson and my wifey is the perfect match for me. (Even as she holds her 360 controller in her hands and talks to herself about what's next on the quest...) My life is good. But I can't help but wonder why there's a gaping hole where my connections from the past portions of my life should be. Maybe someone who reads this can give me piercing insights into the why of me.

And hey, maybe David will read it!! WOOHOO!

What did you do out there?  What did you decide?  You said you needed time....

Sometimes the line I walk turns out to be straight...other times it tends to deviate.

And yes...my icon doth rock.  :)

I'd probably pick God Blessed the Broken Road when I'm in my normal mood, Eye of the Tiger when I'm in my fuckshitup mood, Full of Grace when I'm in a depressing mood, and Eminem's Hit 'em Up remix when I'm in my Zila mood.

God Blessed the Broken Road sums up the best, though.  :)