I am often amazed at people who tell me how lucky I am to have the mother that I do. In my sheltered, almost idyllic life, I naively believe that everyone has a more or less normal family, which presumably includes a happy mother (because there’s some things us guys just can’t swing as a nine-month do-it-yourself project, trust me on this one). I suppose it’s more telling about me that I remain surprised by revelations of missing or inadequate maternal elements among people I know.
Still, one cannot deny the fact that everyone does have a mother, mostly for the reason I lay out above. And when it comes down to it, regardless of the past, there is always love between a mother and child. Usually it runs both directions (it goes without saying that this is the case for me), but not always. I think, in the situations where that love is not reciprocated, the one party loves twice as hard to make up for the absent path. At least, that’s the way I think it should be.
With regards to my own mom, whom I have often mentioned here, it’s always been very hard for me to adequately say what I feel about her. I say it so often that, on the times when it’s really supposed to mean something, I find that “I love you” just doesn’t really cut it anymore. When unconditional, unbreaking, and unending love is the baseline, how exactly do you express a profound and sincere gratitude for the very act of birthing you?
Yes, I know the answer usually involves flowers. But I’m kind of broke here. The card I sent has flowers on it. I think. That counts, right? Imaginary flowers?
Come to think of it, that’s about the right answer. Think back, way back. If you were still in school nearing the middle of May (which is to say, if you went to school in New York at least) when you were very small, it’s likely that you did a project that meant folding origami flowers for Mother’s Day. I can still actually see them; glittering, gilded red-and-gold paper folded to a delicate pattern, with a green pipe cleaner sticking through the center. Every crease back then was the expression of love that it seems I can’t verbalize today. When the flower was brought home, it always said something to Mom, regardless of who your mom was; what it said can’t be put into words here, even if I busted out the big dictionary this morning. It was an expression of the deep, eternal love that a child has for his or her mother that is too pure and too perfect to be fettered by language.
I hope that, on this Mother’s Day, everyone can stop to take a few moments to send your mother some imaginary flowers. There’s no folding involved, and don’t feel obligated to rush the craft store for green pipe-cleaners. All that you need to do is simply call her and express that love that exists within you. Yeah, it might be hard; not everyone is good at origami (come to think of it, my paper flowers always seemed to end up looking like ninja stars). In the end, however, it’s not the actual expression that matters as much as the fact that that love exists; that the emotion has compelled you to take whatever steps you have in order to let her know you love her. Ultimately, chocolates get eaten, flowers wilt, and origami-and-pipe-cleaner art gets tossed. An imaginary flower lasts until the end of time.
Oh, and mothers, a quick little tip. If, at some point in your parenting career, your child just happens to, I don’t know, almost sell his little sister to another family for a Transformer, go easy on him. It was probably an Optimus Prime, and at the time it may have sounded like a really good idea.
So, yeah. Probably not going to clear Diamond this weekend– today’s GASP, and it would be tacky to play the game while all those wonderful board games are there. It’s not going to stop me from bringing the DS, just like I always do, but I likely won’t play it. The primary reason, however, is because Victory Road is too damn tempting.
Since it’s the traditional “final dungeon”, VicRoad is loaded with tons of trainers and high-level critters. Critters which, being such high-levels, are worth a hell of a lot of XP. And naturally I’m set to one-shot them. I’ve promised myself, of course, that I won’t go over Level 50 on my main team before I start fighting trainers inside the dungeon; furthermore, as it turns out I can only take 5 of my main team through the road anyway, as I need the sixth spot for my HM drone Onix. The sixth (likely either my Staraptor or Luxray– which reminds me, I still need to mop up the trainers on the route below VicRoad, and I’m sure Luxray will hit 55 during that massacre) will either sit in the PC or in the day care during the trip. Right now, I have two Level 50s; the remainder are 45 and 46s, but they’re tough ones (Rapidash is going to have trouble as most of the baddies in VicRoad aren’t weak against Fire, and Lopunny’s at a serious disadvantage as a Normal type against the Rock and Steel types there too; I don’t expect too much trouble raising Empoleon or Gastrodon to the required 50).
Yes, I know only three people actually care about this. If you wish to complain, please feel free to not do so. (Oh, and Rick, yes I know I’m horribly weak against Grass types. I’m kind of counting on the Elite 4 not noticing this.) Catch you folks tomorrow.
So, CSI. First off, I want to say that I think this may really be the end of the Lady Heather character; she’s wrapped up pretty well by the end of last night, and by showing her ex-husband, there’s probably some kind of reconciliation. I think mostly it was the producers wanting to just say, “All right, look, we’re done with her, she was a notable guest character but that’s it, now enough already, haven’t you been paying attention? Grissom’s boinking Sara now”. It was pretty well done, but mostly Heather was out-of-character. Grissom even said so– “she’s strong, and tough as nails”, so why couldn’t she get over the events of her last appearance (”Pirates of the Third Reich”– look it up, I’m not spoiling it here)? Her motivations were pretty unclear here, even if it did wind up being a happy ending.
Finally, and this is slightly less interesting, but CSI finishes up before NCIS this year, thanks to the “Hand Me a Trophy Awards” (aka the CMAs). The Miniature Killer gets revealed next week, so I’ll be glued to the set once again. Actually, this may be one of the first CSI DVD sets I look forward to biuying, just because the last couple of episodes have been really, really good. The lab rats episode, the boxer, and then the aliens episode have been prime exemplars of the strong writing and powerful rapport that the series is known for.
And naturally “one of the CSIs will be the last victim”. Smart money is on one of the lab rats (please, please, PLEASE let it be Hodges) but there’s also good odds on Sara or Nick (mostly due to the whole contract dustup from the beginning of last year, but I don’t know how much stock I’d put in those rumors anyway).
Bottom line: I liked Lady Heather. If the actress hadn’t been Inara, I bet we would have seen much more of her. Heck, even though she was Inara we should have had more Lady Heather scenes just because, the fact that Firefly got cancelled prematurely notwithstanding.
The approach to the Diamond Elite Four continues apace. My current team is in the 36-41 range, and I imagine I’ll be boosting that to 40-43 by the time I hit Dialga tonight. I just nabbed the seventh badge, and the dex is at 112/150. I also found some store credit I wasn’t using and picked up a used copy of FireRed this morning; that’s currently ordered as third on the list of Pokemon games to go through (after completing Pearl and Emerald). I did notice that combat runs much quicker in the GBA generation; I can’t fathom why but there is a noticeable zippiness to the tempo of battle.
Beyond that, not much, folks. Hopefully I’ll have soemthing more fascinating to report tomorrow, but don’t count on it.
Just thinking about travelling, folks. I don’t have much to say right now except that I really, really hate the thought of having to move again, even if it’s just down the road a ways. Moreover, I just want to find some job that I can stay at for a significant amount of time without being locked in. Argh, frustration.
Related to GASP and ditches and the encountering of one on the way to the other, I was invited (after yesterday’s post) to an online meetup of the Netjak folks for the explicit purpose of the trading of monsters of pocket. I have my priorities, of course.
….
……..but I did give SERIOUS thought to bringing the DS to the game day, before realizing that there’s probably not internet access there.
And now the net connection functions once more, along with the TV. Which is good, because if I had to miss the season endings for NCIS or CSI, there would be hell to pay. I have my priorities. (Yeah, yeah, I could buy them after the fact on iTunes, but really, I’m already paying to see them, and I should expect to be able to see them. Rrrgh, capitalism.)
Waiting to hear back from a couple other places, and gradually slowing down. One major problem was resolved this morning, and one major hope I had was dashed this afternoon. It evens out. I hope (read: not expect) to have Pokemon Diamond completed by the end of the week, with ‘complete’ meaning ‘defeated the Elite Four’. After that, I can set it aside for a while to go back to Super Robot Wars… maybe. I might go on a WoW binge and try to rush my way back across the Barrens. Either way, the end of the week is GASP, and I’m looking forward to it again.
So, yeah. My cable is fixed, and now my net connection is flaky. Beautiful. Repairman is coming tomorrow.
I saw not only Spiderman 3 yesterday, but also Hot Fuzz. It was one of those weird coincidences where two films I wanted to see were showing at the rinky-dink theater near me, and were arranged in such a way that I could get the cheap pricing for both. Ultimately it was a well-spent afternoon; Hot Fuzz was heavy on action but needed more dialogue and writing, while Spidey was trying too hard with the writing and needed to have a better fight with Venom. Though the Bruce Campbell bit was brilliant this time.
Some amount of pressure was releived from me over the weekend. I’m still in no good position here, but things are gradually calming down. As always, more information as it comes along.
My cable seems to be fixed; at least, that’s what I and the repair man both think. If I still can’t get my snarky pathologist on on Tuesday, then there’s gonna be some problems.
Anyway, since I have this whole new TV thing, I’ve been seeing commercials for some spider movie. Dunno if you’ve heard of it. I figure it’s worth a look, so I’m off to that today. Obviously this means that I’ll have remarks on it for tomorrow.
It’s not really that I want to make a political statement out of my silence– though, to be completely honest, I suppose I have a right to– but I just plain don’t have much to say right now. That may actually be for the best, to be completely honest.
The Pokemon progress is going relatively well; I just literally hit the fifth badge this afternoon, and my ‘dex is at 88 of 150, but that is going to rise relatively quickly as I hit the beach and its complement of water critters. I’m still enjoying it, and part of me has the brilliant idea of setting up a regular ‘meeting time’ for the Netjak folks. Then I remember that the last time I tried to set up a major gaming event online, it kind of fell flat.
…yeah, this whole climate-of-fear thing is starting to annoy me. I was going to say that my last attempt “bombed hard” but that might get me some funny looks. Especially at the airport.
There’s really nothing to the title. Song’s just been stuck in my head. I kind of want to track down the original version. Oh, and I’ve taken to sitting on my back patio-type-area and either playing games and/or listening to podcasts whilst typing.
Oh, incidentally, apparently the YouTube links are not being read properly by the LiveJournal feed. I’d recommend that most Bailout entries get viewed on my site. Also, yes, two consecutive days of Bailout is a bit unprecedented, but there’s a lot going through my mind and not a lot I can talk openly about just yet. Rest assured I’m not making hasty or ill-advised decisions, but for the most part things are… yeah.
If I get some time, I’ll try to fix the RSS generator so that my tags are added to the feed. Right now, it’s back to Netjak work for me.
