Maebius Musings

Been busy with sleep, work and seasonal decorating.   More better blog postings soon. ( bad grammer[sic]  intended)

While I recover and re-focus, here’s some holiday song lyrics to put you in the mood.    Not sure if it’s the mood youwant, after trying to say them out loud, but take it for what it’s worth. 

Oer yw’r gwr sy’n methu caru,
Ffa la la la la, la la la la.
Hen fynyddoedd annwyl Cymru,
Ffa la la la la, la la la la.
Iddo ef a’u câr gynhesaf
Ffa la la la la la la,
Gwyia llawen flwyddyn nesaf,
Ffa la la la la, la la la la.

2. I’r helbulus oer yw’r biliau,
Ffa la la la la, la la la la.
Sydd yn dyfod yn y gwyliau,
Ffa la la la la, la la la la.
Gwrando bregeth mewn un pennill,
Ffa la la la la la la.
Byth na waria fwy na’th ennill,
Ffa la la la la, la la la la.

3. Oer yw’r eira ar Eryri,
Ffa la la la la, la la la la.
Er fod gwrthban gwlanen arni,
Ffa la la la la, la la la la.
Oer yw’r bobol na ofalan’,
Ffa la la la la la la.
Gwrdd â’i gilydd ar Nos Galan,
Ffa la la la la, la la la la.

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Because everyone and their brother keeps asking what Maebius is interested in this holiday season,  I offer you the following list.  I’ll just post it here to avoid email spams back and forth. 
I’ll leave it to you all to coordinate any purchases and avoid dual-gifting.  MwaHaHaHa

Nothing – seriously people, there’s not a whole lot of stuff I really NEED right now.   And we are trying to reduce the amount of stuff we have cluttering up the house already.    But if you insist on something beyond a holiday card (which is more than enough), here are some suggestions….

Card game “Set”
http://www.setgame.com/set/index.html

SPORE – PC game   (not the expansion, not the Heroes combat game, just plain old SPORE)
http://www.spore.com/
http://eastore.ea.com/store/ea/en_US/DisplayProductDetailsPage/ThemeID.1252400&productID=91619200?intcmp=eaint47

And Another Thing – (Book 6 in the Hitchhiker’s Trilogy)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_Another_Thing…_%28novel%29
http://www.6of3.com/

Dinner and a movie.   Preferably something awesome like Sushi.   or Tai.

Nothing.

Febreeze Flameless Luminary (green tea citrus, or any scent really as I plan to re-cycle the shades using essential oils or card-stock that Doug and I paint on for customized awesomeness)
http://www.febreze.com/en_US/producttype/febreze_home_collection_luminary.do
http://www.drugstore.com/products/prod.asp?pid=220795&catid=63435&aid=337953&aparam=febreze_home_collection_&CAWELAID=360460440

Nothing.

Gift card for Kohls, or other clothing store, since I’m going to need new jeans by spring time. 
Gift cert for heirloom seeds – choose your favorite company.
This way, my family will enjoy your gift all summer long and for potentially years to come!

Nothing.

Did I mention nothing yet?   *grin*

Happy Holidays!!

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Title says it all.

As a foil to my Mornings suck, musing, here’s a cheery one for you. 

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I am not a morning person.  Morning people confuse and confound me.  Yet I am becoming one in the very near future due to my job.

In general, I have long maintained that my perfect “work shift” is 4pm-midnight, with the option to sleep in until around 10:00am.  If left to my own devices in one of those sleep-study caves, this is generally the time-frame Iwould gravitate to with my schedule.   I feel most productive just around dinner time, and early evening.

The quiet of the evening, with darkness settling in like a comfortable blanket of non-light, helping to focus my attentions and remove distractions of daily life.  That is zen to me.   Lamplight or candlelight with the soft glow of a monitor is comforting.

Yet soon, within a month or so, I will be adjusting to a completely different sleep cycle.   I had a taste of it these past two weeks.   4am-noon.  Blech!

I understand, intellectually, the concept of waking with hte sun bringing a promise to a new day, and all that.  I admit I’ve heard the “whole day before you” inspirations.  But I found I still don’t like it.

Mornings are when everything bustles up, revs into gear, and starts moving.  The birds sing, Life Happens, and folks start their day.    With this new shift, those things mean I’m halfway through and get to go home soon.

If I want to spend any time with my family on this new shift, I try to stay awake until dinner time, to join in on board games, book reading, and such.    I’m finding that this also means I get around 5 hours of good sleep, and taking a short nap from 1-3pm just makes me over-tired and washed out during dinner.

So if this blog starts to ramble a bit or sound slightly incoherent in January, blame early mornings.

I plan to. 

I’ll take the sunsets any day. [pun intended]

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It’s on Fox news, gotta be mainstream news now…

I refer to the debacle of hanging one’s laundry outside of course.

Referenced somewhat recently here: http://everthorn.net/musings/2009/10/i-can-see-your-underwear/?p=677

The subject is now on Fox News, where it will obviously cause mass hysteria and rioting between the believers and those godless heathens who ascribe to the mere notion of outdoor clothes drying.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,575698,00.html

… gee, can you detect a little cynical sarcasm here?

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Well, I am shifting my schedule at work, to one which brings me no real joy, other than that of continued employment.   This is one reason I hadn’t blogged yet this week, and most likely will be a bit light on the ‘daily post’ challenge I made myself earlier in the month, until I get my sleep patterns coordinated again.   4am-noon is a horrible timeframe to be awake, which leaves me two chunks of 4 hours by which to get my regular dream-time accomplished. To whit: before kid gets home from school, and after he is asleep before I go to work, since I want to have some awake-time with him in the afternoons.  Wish me luck!

This somewhat foul-mood-towards-corporate-employment made the most recent XKCD comic (hotlinked below) strike a cynical nerve, and rings all too true for me. Enjoy!

However, in other news, I read this article on TreeHugger blog, about an artist who visited both the ‘dirtiest’ most polluted city in the world, and one of the cleanest/purist.   The observation that stood out to me is how people there lived.  Interesting read -> right here.

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**edit: still  trying to fix formatting. Blog exploded again.  Must be a weekend thing….

I have been reading an interesting book, which I referenced in a prior post, called “Dies the Fire“, which describes a post-apocolyptic world where humanity is struggling to survive after an Event causes technology to fail.

After finishing the first book in the series, I vividly recalled the poem by Robert Frost, pertaining to the end of the world.

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To know that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

Now, the physisist in me always reads this and thinks the poem relates to how the universe will end, either collapsing upon itself in a reverse Big-Bang, or expanding forever into a cold infinity.

Then, I realize that in speaking of desire and hate, perhaps it relates to how the earth itself will end for us.  Either in the cold calamity of a Nuclear Winter, or some unknown firey ending that has to do with passions overwhelming rationality?

Yet, then beyond these things, the Druid in me realizes that the poem itself is slightly flawed.  The world will not really end, not really.

It may be absorbed into the churning inferno of our star, which may in turn collapse within the Universe itself, or we may explode it with a Doomsday Device, but it will not end.  No more than the leaves that fall on the ground each autumn are gone.   They merely transform and rejoin the bio-stream as compost and creature.

A wise man once said, “We are all Star Stuff”, and I agree.  To stardust we will all return, and when the stars fade, we’ll still be Universe-stuff.   We just might not recognize it as ourselves.

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Carl Sagan day was a few days back, and I forgot to post about it since I was busy and on that horrid “night-shift, day-shift, night-shift” schedule again where my brain turns to mush.

Still, I’ll take the time today to muse briefly about it.

Take all your joys and trials, tribulations and terrors. Take everything that is weighing upon you today, and hold it briefly in your mind. Own it, as your life.

Accept some things are within your control. You are a spark of divinity and Love, regardless of who you are. You have Power. Own that.

Then, as you cast out your imagining to embrace all of humanity, the billions of souls each struggling under their own Atlas-ian Globe of Stuff, look again at the picture above.

That Pale Blue Dot in the center? That’s you. That’s me. That’s us. Earth, as seen from the Voyager probe from the outer limits of the solar system. Reduced to a blurry pixel amidst blurry pixels of Space.

I say this not to minimize our own struggles and joys. They are Real, as surely as the dot appears on your screen.

There is something larger out there, something huge and wonderful that would be lessened if that Dot vanished from the screen. Covering the spot in that image makes the entire image a little less interesting.

But the dot exists, and we are all a part of it. Grok that for a moment.

Thou art God/dess.
May you never thirst.

(yes, Maebius’s sleep deprived brain is quoting Heinlein books. Still works as a good musing though *grin*)

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It’s interesting to see the evolution of “wishes” as people age, myself included.
As a kid, toys and toys and games, and probably toys, are generally what gets requested for birthdays and holiday gifts.

I’m not entirely sure if this is an innate prioritization of ‘Play’ or a subtle commercialization role encouraged by society, or both. Probably both.

As an adult, our ‘toys’ tend to get more expensive or time-consuming. Either a fancy new car, or an addition to a home, or other such things. Still, it is pretty frequent that requests for birthday ideas are returned with “I don’t need anything, thanks.”

For myself, this year, I can honestly say I dis not really want anything. Perhaps a bit of free time to finish the book I’m reading (Snow Crash). Perhaps the ability to sleep in on Saturday.

Sure, there are bigger projects and presents I’d enjoy having in my life, but they are at the same time not feasible for others to get, or not really, really necessary. I’m just as content not having some things.

Is this “minimalist” outlook towards gift giving a sign of contentment, a willful step away from over-commercialization, or simply a shift in priorities?

Would becoming even more “poor” financially cause me to start wanting more toys again, as a sign of monetary wealth?

It’s an interesting muse.

Now… I’m off to make a cake, and blow out some candles. I’ll be accepting commentary presents all day.

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I sometimes am astounded that I have been at this blog for about 3 years now, and it all started with a Story of the Birds.

As much time has passed, I still remember.

Our decorations are up, our costumes are completed, and this weekend we prepare for the annual feast of Candy! (I am a robot and the kid’s a vampire, not sure which of 3 ideas the wife is planning)

Beside that celebration of gluttony and glee however, I also prepare for a nice quiet meditation out on our porch, under the silvery light of the moon, thinking about my relatives beyond the Veil.

Have you celebrated their lives lately, even though they are no longer living? Say hello again, this weekend if you get a chance. Reconnect, even if their spiritual beliefs are different from yours. Remember them, if even for this one day.

After all, you’ll be meeting them eventually, and might as well have them remember you too.

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