Early birthday present from the world

[02:43 PM] Seppo: Huh. The remake of King’s Quest III is out.
[02:43 PM] Seppo: www.infamous-adventures.com – looks like their server’s crushed, though.
[02:43 PM] eingybear: :O
[02:43 PM] Seppo: It’s available for download, free of charge.
[02:43 PM] eingybear: no!!! i need it!!!!!!!
[02:43 PM] eingybear: YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
[02:43 PM] eingybear: :O:O:O:O:O:O
[02:43 PM] eingybear: ack, the server must come back up!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

Rolling with a posse

In direct contrast to my post from last week, last night, I felt the distinct longing for a posse to roll with. *cough*

Seppo and I folded laundry while watching clips from the SickStep dvd *cough* that I picked up a few weeks ago. There are some really awesome dance battles *cough* [I must be coming down with something, what with all the coughing] along with footage of the members of SickStep just hanging out and goofing off.

When I was in high school, I had three distinct groups of friends: my lunch time friends who consisted of people from same classes/neighborhood/old grade school, my orchestra nerds friends (I wasn’t in the orchestra, but everyone else was), and my church youth group friends. Each group had a different dynamic, but was 100% comfortable and fun to hang out with. I got something truly valuable from each group.

In some way, I feel like I’m lacking that now. Being a working adult doesn’t really give you a posse to work with. I have great, close friends, and other people who are becoming closer friends but they are not a coherent posse that can gel together.

Anyway, Seppo and I watched the clips and felt the longing for a bunch of people with similar interests to hang out with on a regular basis. One of the best parts of being this age is that our friends are so diverse and interested in so many different things, but that also means that they may not have much in common with each other. I’m sure Seppo misses the feeling of closeness that his swim team had, much as I miss my small groups of friends that really connected on multiple levels.

We often feel that when we want to have an event, we have to decide if it’s going to be a “college friends” event, a “coworkers event”, a “old friends event”, or something else entirely, but it’s hard to mix the groups, not because people don’t get along, but because the dynamic is so off when the groups are together.

On optimism

I was AIMing with one of my closest friends when something we were talking about triggered a memory of how my mom dealt with my many scrapes and bruises and bumps when I was a toddler.

If I fell and scraped myself up or banged my head on a table corner or anything, if it didn’t immediately look serious, in the interim between the shock and the torrent of tears, my mom would start laughing and try to get me to laugh with her, pointing out how surprising and funny it (the falling, bumping, etc.) was, sometimes tickling me, until I was laughing along with her. Within a matter of seconds, the pain will have had faded away and I won’t have had felt panicked and scared and would go away on my merry way to get into more scrapes. If I hurt myself in a somewhat serious manner, my mom would say firmly but gently (but not in any sort of panicked way) that it was alright and treat the injury with efficiency. I never hurt myself in a majorly seriously way, so I don’t know what she’d do, but when my sister broke her arm, she stayed calm and got things done, so I’m sure she would have handled it the same way.

I don’t know how strong the link is, but generally (NOT always, as demonstrated by my poor mood this morning over a bunch of little things) I take the small bumps in the road without panic or stress. Little unimportant irritations are usually easy to laugh off (although I find myself getting crankier of late; just practicing to be a crotchety old lady, I suppose). I feel like I generally reserve real stress for things that are truly important to me: things that pertain to family & friends & my relationship with them.

Anyway, I wonder if there is a real tangible link between how my mother dealt with my injuries and how I view the small bumps & bruises of life. Would I be a different person if my mother freaked out over the smallest falls and let me cry myself into a panic over them? Dog training has taught me that this kind of reaction can make the difference between a well-adjusted dog and a dog that can freak out over the smallest things and cower in fear at life in general. Surely, we are not too different.

Your backyard

This is the third drive to/from work in a row that I’ve heard a news report where communities are “solving” problems by pushing them out to different neighborhoods.

Some things really get my goat [*baaaaa*] and this is one of them. Last week, I heard two unrelated news accounts of Bay Area neighborhoods dealing with both gang activity and sex offenders by forcing them out. An interviewed cop spoke about how they are making things difficult for the gang members, so they are leaving the neighborhood. A neighborhood watch person/random activist was talking about how her community was fining registered sex offenders $1200 per DAY until they moved out of the neighborhood. This morning, I heard a report about how one of the Bay Area cities was “cracking down” on homelessness by upping the fines for, well, being homeless so that they will know that they are not welcome in the city.

I try generally not to be too rude or too pissed off on my blog. BUT THE F*CK?!! It doesn’t solve the problem to send gangsters/sex offenders/homeless to other neighborhoods. It’s not that I necessarily fault people for thinking, “Well, I can’t solve the problem globally, but I can try to make a difference in this one little area,” but the solution is not to make someone ELSE’s neighborhood worse. It is one thing if the person reporting on the gang was saying that if gang-related activities are severely pursued and prosecuted, the gangs won’t be able to recruit and grow and will over time lower their own activities; it is quite another to boast proudly that they are “going elsewhere”.

It is one thing to keep sex offenders registered and keep people aware [sidebar: I recall a discussion on TGF that informed me that even one-time public urinators can be classified as a sex offender; I’m more interested in keeping tabs on rapists and pedophiles and find it appalling that something that trivial can be classified in the same manner] but it is another to enforce a fine for someone who is a free member of society who in fact is complying with the law by registering. A police officer on that report specifically pointed out that she was worried that this would result in more freed sex offenders “going dark” rather than result in helping keep neighborhoods safe. And of course, it pushes those sex offenders to neighborhoods who don’t have such policies, rather than address the problem of how to safely integrate potentially repeat offenders back into society when the penal system frees them.

And the homeless! Arg! Apparently, the plan is to give them bigger fines and “crack down” on the homeless, not necessarily on criminal behavior certain ones of them may engage in, but in their very existence. Excuse me, Homeless Joe & Jane, I know you have no money and home, can you go be homeless elsewhere? No, you don’t have anywhere to go and no money to get there? Here is a giant fine! Pay that or go to jail!

It’s so obvious that this doesn’t help solve the problem of homelessness. People have been arguing about various different methods to solve the homeless issue, and many of them have merit (teach to work, treat substance abuse problems, treat mental disorders, etc.) but fining people that don’t have money? WTF??!!

I *don’t* want problems in my backyard. But if I have trash in my backyard, I can’t just shovel them over the fence and be done with it. And I can’t do this with societal/criminal problems either. Grow the hell up, people, and take some real responsibility. Don’t pat yourselves on the back for shovelling the trash out of your backyard.