Category: Personal
The life and times of John Fontana — personal blog posts about things John is dealing with / going through / thinking of / experiencing.
My mobile hosting experience with Project Fi so far
I left Verizon Wireless in a huff this spring. I’d been on the service since 2011 or so on one of their plans for the deaf which knocked down the standard monthly price to just under $60 but charges for any and all calls that your phone makes. Add to it the number of voice mails that I received and what it would cost for a person to review them… It was an annoyance, as was forced-on-me apps by the service. I won’t list a data-cap complaint because I did not tend to use my Samsung Galaxy S III for web browsing or social media / data heavy apps; TXT/SMS, photography and offline apps were more useful for me and using Wi-Fi was a work-around with data anyway.
It was because my Galaxy was aging that I wanted to get out and move forward. I was reminded by my older brother that Google has a mobile entity of its own called Project Fi. I had two friends tell me they used Project Fi and it worked for them – utilizing Wi-Fi for data knocked down prices. The prices were there already seemed low enough: $20 base rate (phone + TXT/SMS) and data at $10 a gigabyte… And money saved from unused data each month. It sounded like a good chance to take… Read More
Silence and song; the musical demo of “Slowly, Her Name Fades Away”
How does a deaf composer get the attention of the music industry? Think about that for a minute, would you? It happens to be a serious question asked by a man who is currently sitting in an unsound situation.
I’m not Ludwig van Beethoven – far from it – but I can say that my toe is in the proverbial water of the music industry at the moment. Okay, actually it’s actually my entire foot up to my ankle or lower shin (that comes by way of me having spent time trying to promote the Pretty Voices over the past year). It goes by way of words and actions, not so much plucking piano keys and writing orchestral symphonies.
See, I wrote a poem back in the fall of 1998 (a long long time ago in a galaxy not-so-far away) that I’ve clung to over the years. It’s a poem I had intended for inclusion in a self-published poetry book… It’s also something I thought could be done in a musical arrangement to make it into a song.
So, when I got frustrated and vastly slowed this past spring, and while I still had thoughts tying said-poem into a musical arrangement, I made an inquiry with the Nashville Song Service if the lyrical-verse really could be done as a song. Indeed, it got the green light. Read More
This Labor Day Weekend, in memory of Jerry Lewis, let’s fight MD
My reaction to the news of comedic legend Jerry Lewis’ passing two weeks ago was to urge friend son Facebook to make a donation to the Muscular Dystrophy Association, the organization Jerry work for with his annual Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon which aired from Sunday night of Labor Day weekend until Monday evening on Labor Day.
It’s short notice and I would imagine more people are having a weekend than on the web reading blog entries from someone like me (“Who the hell is this guy?” ). But I think we, the American public, should act this weekend for Jerry and for those stricken with Muscular Dystrophy.
I posted this on my personal Facebook account, aimed at friends. I post it here:
I’m not playing on this, ladies and gents: Starting tomorrow around 7 or 8 PM EDT (or was it 9? I forget) we may want to make donations to the Muscular Dystrophy Association (and press the idea until Monday night with friends and others we have contact with).
It’s in honor and memory of Jerry Lewis.
The idea of a time-to-do-the-deed is simply there for viral sake. As was already noted, the annual rite that was the MDA telethon’s hours of broadcast was from Sunday night until Monday evening.
It’s in honor of Mr. Lewis, ladies and gentlemen. It is out of sympathy and support of those battling MD. The time is not exactly prime for an effort like this, as the damage and suffering in Houston caused by Hurricane Harvey has already drawn generosity from America and the world…
Just consider the donation. the battle with MD goes on with or without national focus. It’s just going to be a dimmer battle without Lewis at the helm.
The MDA donation page can be found here.
Q and A with Calgary Flames blogger Kent Wilson of FlamesNation
I got Kent Wilson from FlamesNation to participate in the hockey blogger Q and A that I’ve been casually conducting this month. Kent’s one of the strengths of The Nation Network and blogging in general, having his hand in the 2014 “summer of stats”.
What follows is a little insight in how Kent found his way into blogging and his views on the season ahead for the NHL.
Daylight Standard Stupid
This is a simple public service announcement because of a pretty simple flaw I see repeatedly coming from businesses or those who are trying to be pretentious and official in declarations online (via social media or on their own web sites):
Unless you are in Arizona and a few other select locations throughout the United States, you cannot schedule things as happening at Standard Time currently.
It’s ridiculous to have to explain this but the United States of America is currently in Daylight Savings Time (or Daylight Time). That’s what the whole “spring forward” thing is in March. The country doesn’t move back to standard time until Sunday, November 5th at 2 in the morning.
So business posts something like this…
We can’t say no to a ? #waterfront view! Join @TBbloggers & Oystercatchers for a #TampaBayTuesday chat, 8/22 at noon EST. @OCsGHTB #OCsGHTB
— Tampa Bay Bloggers (@TBbloggers) August 21, 2017
…they’re basically saying the event starts at 1 PM EDT because we’re in EDT now. If you want to be pretentious on time and date and don’t understand the time difference, do yourself a favor and just list the time as ET, CT, MT or PT which applies specifically for the zone you’re in.
Really, it’s not rocket science to know the differences or to get around them entirely in listing a time. Don’t look so uneducated.
A hockey blogger Q and A with Lyle Richardson of Spectors Hockey
One of the routine areas that draws fans to the web to find out what they can are rumors. Some are made up, some are hearsay, some are those casually expressed “I’m hearing…” remarks that you see on Twitter from major members of hockey coverage.
The man at the blogging level who made a name for himself and found a firm niche in covering reports on potential player movement in the NHL is Lyle Richardson of Spectors Hockey, who you likely have also seen on such sources as Fox Sports and Bleacher Report among others.
Richadson is another one of the forefathers of the hockey blogosphere, starting around 2003. Want proof? I reposted this article for him during the NHL lockout of 2005, having originally run in November 2003.
While there are a lot of questions still to be had about player movement and eery franchise in the league, the questions are a mix about the man, blogging, and guys named “Joe” and “Jaromir”.
Suffering an unsound situation
A little piece of electronics fell a distance that was just over five feet. 60 inches of travel, making contact with a wooden floor. It wasn’t a heard action. It wasn’t an outright noticed incident either. It had fallen from behind the ear of this author as he sat on the edge of his bed and made preparations for use of the device itself.
And the only action derived from noticing the fall and reclaiming the object has been silence.
I went stone deaf in 1997 after a necessary operation to reduce/remove an acoustic neuroma; an inter-cranial benign tumor from my head. That tumor had already played a part in me losing hearing in both my ears during the previous four years. The surgery, for the sake of having a life, had to happen though. When the operation occurred in December ’97, I was also implanted with what is known as the Auditory Brainstem Implant, a variation of the Cochlear Implant – a device that brings the hearing world to those who are implanted with it and who use an external sound processor to enable it. For a deaf person to adopt this technology is a chore – to learn a new dimension of life. For a late-deaf adult? It’s a miraculous resumption of a realm of living.
I’m living in silence right now and I’m in hell.
A hockey blogger Q and A with Laura Astorian of St. Louis Game Time
Continuing the Q & A series that was unveiled Wednesday, another of hockey bloggings assetss chimes in on life in covering not one but two teams in her blogging career. Laura Astorian, who has been a void of both the St. Louis Blues and the Atlanta Thrashers. It’s one thing to cover multiple teams in one town, but to stand up and show love by way over coverage for two teams in the same sport at one time is a hell of an accomplishment.
Laura currently runs St. Louis Game Time on SB Nation (which is also a game-day publication for Blues games; that is done by Brad Lee). She’s a great follow on Twitter too for take on the sport, the entertainment industry and what not.
What does Laura think about the NHL’s plan to forgo the 2018 winter Olympics? What tips does she have for those who want to get into blogging? Read below.
East Lake High School Class of 1997 Photo
I believe it was exactly 20 years ago today that I graduated from East Lake High School at a ceremony at Ruth Eckerd Hall in Clearwater, Florida. It’ll be this weekend that a few dozen of the 600+ members of the graduating class get back together for a little shindig. I won’t be participating because I’m waylaid with physical disability to the point I’d just be a fly on the wall, sitting in the corner and feeling awkward.
It’d be like I was back in school!
At any rate, I make this post because I want to make public (in a means beyond a scope of constraint) something a few of my classmates have already seen online by way of me on Facebook , but it’s condensed (because… Facebook): Our stolid class picture.
I’m pretty sure I still have both versions of the class picture, but they are tucked in such a position in my closet it’s hard to get a hold of them. And the scanning / image merge function that I have to use to get the pictures scanned is a pain to do (it was tough with this one — and that process was a few years ago):
Click on the image to get a better view at imgur, or click this link to go to the page. And you can click the image there to get an even more close-up view of the image.
At Loss to Moore
(Written with remorse and in memoriam. Rest in peace, Sir Roger Moore)
At Loss to Moore
More today is sad to see
Somber sorrows and infamy
Less renown is our grief
Nostalgic remorse from years gone by
More today is gone tomorrow
To the halls of memory and accolades
Spied upon from days gone by
Revelled in with amounts of majesty
Less be more, the status quo
What comes after is without
Blessings from the might that was the more
Shall broaden the reach of what will be
I never heard it but I knew the unknown
You ever come across something totally foreign to you and yet you distinguish it? You know of things even if you have never physically interacted with them? I’m not talking about watching commercials for amusement parks or other famous locales and then going to them. I mean something more personal and yet something more physically removed than having seen or heard whispers about an item and then having it thrust on you by chance. Read More
An earworm from 80’s children’s television
Earworms are common in life. They happen – a song pops up at random or a snippet of something musical that you’ve heard, be it a professional song, a TV theme, a commercial, or something else. It happens.
I’ve been haunted in the past by a piano riff to a song I didn’t know the name to that I had heard off the radio as a child. A friend helped me find out what pop song it was. I now listen to the tune on a semi-regular basis.
I’ve got another song in my head and there are issues that likely make it impossible for me to ever hear it again; another volley from childhood in the 1980s. This time, though, I saw the song performed on television and I know the refrain from it… It’s just most every other factor is forgotten and web searches turn up nothing.
It was on Nickelodeon, I’m pretty certain of that. It wasn’t Pinwheel, or Out of Control (to even suggest that one is comical, which goes well with Out of Control’s comedic motifs), and it sure as shit wasn’t something from You Can’t Do That on Television. I just don’t remember the show besides being acting and musical – and I don’t mean skit musical but performing on-stage for children in an audience.
And while memory is dim on any other details, the acoustic song’s refrain isn’t forgotten:
Swimming in the pool and lying in the sun,
Swimming in the pool and lying in the sun
In fact, it comes off like a coda to end the song from my memory. It didn’t go on for 4 or 5 minutes but it was repeated over and over again until the last line: Swimming in the pool… And lying in the sun!
I can’t remember other verses, but the song was about summer time. I can remember the tempo. Everything else is a wash – who was performing it (guys), what show, all the lyrics. I’ve tried looking the song up quoting the refrain but results were minimal on Google and seeing some were linked to adult related content, I don’t think the wording is right on my part or the song is actually listed lyrically online.
It’s not like songs off Nick escape me entirely. I can’t forget Hocus Pocus from Today’s Special. The theme to Pinwheel is still in my head. Heck, maybe I have the wrong station where I heard this thing? It could have been CBS but the only live-action, children’s TV show that I remember watching was the Patchwork Family (I don’t know if that was a New York only broadcast, by the way; it was a Saturday morning show).
Back to the song in question, it’s catchy to the point you’d expect someone to cover it. Then again, it’s a kid’s song. It’s not going to get covered as so much remembered. In this case, it is indeed remembered – just without solid facts of who, what, where and when.
An old story about an old man, may I introduce “Ignorant Bliss”
I’ve got a couple of short stories that were originally intended as submissions to print media in attempts of becoming a published author. Yet finding that print media and not playing the waiting game / not suffering repeated rejections kept me from actually doing it. Instead of anything happening to these stories, they sat in a folder on my computer. And while I’ve been exposed to the folder every time I’ve saved writing files over the years, I haven’t looked at or touched the stories in more than a decade.
Four days ago, while eating dinner, a very random line from a very random scene of one of those stories jumped into my mind. You bitch, those were your mother’s! I didn’t remember the stry by name, but I remembered the story. I spent the evening trying to locate the file and lo and behold, I did.
It’s a 5,000 word piece that is named Ignorant Bliss and you can find it in the Writing section on the site. As a guy known for blogging and somewhat for poetry/lyrical verse, putting a short fiction piece out there that’s emotional and eccentric may be surprising to some. It remains to be seen if it’s a good read or not.
The Beatles video, “You’re Going to Lose That Girl”, missing in action no more
It’s arguable to write that the greatest song the Beatles ever recorded and didn’t release as a single was “You’re Going to Lose That Girl”, which was released in 1965 on the album “Help!”. It’s a standard Lennon/McCartney scribed ode that has ties to “She Loves You” as if it were a sequel. I write that point here but I don’t link because trying to find the source I read has been fruitless (this line will be deleted if I do find the link). There are only two words on record for any member of the Fab Four speaking about the song: John Lennon told Playboy in 1980, “That’s me.” You can find more in-depth coverage of the song here. There are touches on other facts about Lennon / McCartney and history that may pique your interest.
I was introduced to the Fab Four in 1985 when my father won a VHS tape of “Help!” from 101 WCBS FM in New York. I was skittish and disinterested at first in watching as the tape opened up with the black-and-white trailer to “A Hard Day’s Night”, the film the Beatles made in 1964. Black-and-white film and disjointed snippets of Beatle songs from the movie just didn’t win me over (and what would you expect? I was 5 or 6 years old at the time). I fidgeted, I tried getting up, but my father put his hands on my shoulders and sat me down.
Then “Help!” started, with actor Leo McKern reciting cult tidings in what amounted to an execution ceremony. Though it was a dark setting, the color blazed (in comparison to that “A Hard Day’s Night” trailer and my interest ticked up. One thing led to another in the film and McKern’s character of Clang bellowed to his cult sect that surrounded him, “Where is the ring?! Search her! What has she done with the ring?!” The cult cried repeatedly “The ring?!” in response and then… then…
Then you see the fabled ring, a large red gemstone on a standard gold band. It just so happens to be on the hand of drummer Ringo Starr as a performance of the song “Help!” gets underway (in black-and-white… which meant nothing to me at this point) and truly the movie began as the Beatles performed “Help!”.
There were seven songs performed in the movie, with “You’re Going to Lose That Girl” being my favorite. Heck, viewing the film a second time, I remember my brothers and I rewinding the video to replay the song and sing along with it. We were won over. That’s not to say “Help!” didn’t win us over, or “Ticket to Ride”, “You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away”, “I Need You” (George Harrison’s first composed song), “The Night Before, or “Another Girl”. It’s just the memory of this song in particular.
Director Richard Lester played with lighting but did a simple in-studio scene with John, Paul, George and Ringo. The hues and colors vary and smoke plays into scenes (hey, smoking was hip back then Ringo is doing it in some scenes of the song). I’d put this song, as a video; well ahead of the majority of music videos that also play the studio scene. And seeing it’s been 52 years since the damn thing was recorded, that should tell the music video director sect out there to raise their game.
You can’t find the song on YouTube though, and the simple Google search (which now produces extensive info results for most songs) only shows you amateurs playing.
Is there a business contrast playing out between Apple Corps LTD (the Beatles company) and Google? I don’t know. What I do know is that I started this write up fixated on not being able to find the videos from “Help!” on YouTube. Only a fraction of the movie performance of “You’re going to Lose That Girl” can be found.
A re-worded my web search just a tad (with quotation marks: “You’re Going to Lose That Girl” video, Help!) and lo and behold I found what has been missing via Vimeo.
“You’re Going To Lose That Girl” from Merritt Mullen on Vimeo.
Will it remain on the site? Dunno, though it’s 4 year lifespan tells me that it’s going to stay. You can find a low quality version of “Ticket to Ride” on there, as well as “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away” (standard quality). The other songs are missing / have mixed in content.
A scandal for sure, but I’m tired of the “-gate”
There’s another scandal – a long living one at that – taking placing Washington D.C. at the moment. While ties between Russia and the Donald J. Trump campaign/presidency are bubbling to the surface (with the what, why and how never to be clear if the mess continues as-is), the albatross that has this writer tapping out a blog entry isn’t focusing squarely on the scandal itself as so much the nickname that’s been commonly used so far.
Russiagate.
On a creativity level, this gets an F-minus, but it’s a long-running lack of originality and lack of creativity/intellect that’s tied –gate to a multitude of scandals through various administrations since the Watergate. The name Watergate itself is a hotel in the Washington D.C. area. A unique name tied to a unique scandal that ultimately cost President Richard Nixon his job.
Russiagate, though? It comes down to a bare-bones scandal name cop-out. There’s too much the public and press are only just learning (and probably a boatload more to come) so that may be a cause for a challenge in the nickname department. At the same time, the language difference and the participants in this affair are reason enough a –gate co-op is just blindly labeling the scandal.
Speaking of which, “скандал” is the Russian spelling for skandal. Not exactly a word for an absolutely unique nickname, now is it? Relatively the same pronunciation of “scandal” too. The thing is, it’s mixing in something Russian with American elements in a name that creates a more original and fitting nickname for the situation.
Now, if the Trump campaign was signing off on Russia’s hacking during the 2016 presidential campaign (an action that would favor Trump in the end), that’s cheating, no? “Cheat” in Russian (“обманывать”) is pronounced obmanyvat’. That one word alone seems more fitting than the -.gate co-opt. It’s also a lot less difficult to pronounce than the translation of treason (“государственная измен”
, pronounced gosudarstvennaya izmena).
In the end, I just wish the media could find something more unique to tie to a political scandal than doing the –gate co-opt. That co-opt, though, sure as shit doesn’t make it “fake news”, they’re just busier doing journalism and trying to uncover the truth (which isn’t an “alternate fact”). The general populous knows –gate is attached to a scandal.
Lyrical hopes and poetic dreams for the immediate future
I’ve been going through older poems that don’t appear on the site, I’ve been going through a collection of my works over the decades . Things I wrote as poetry sure sound like songs (or at least look like them, and I can imagine melody to go along with them). I’m no musician though, no composer, or I’d try to put together a full song and get things on the market (not me as a performer, me as a composer).
I will admit right now that I do have a poetry/lyrical verse manuscript and am hoping to have a self-published book out in 2017. That’s still in the process of being honed out though. There are aspects I haven’t even explored yet with that, and those I have asked to review my work (as editor types) have yet to get back to me with any input.
All of that said, here’s an example of that lyrical-verse/poetry that I had a habit of doing in the past. It’s something that is not going to be included in the book as it stands, but that could change. I’d appreciate feedback on this too. It has been on the web before, when my personal home page was on Tripod ages and ages ago. Different title then.:
The road to recovery becomes the highway to…where?
I’m choked up upon reflection this afternoon. I just had physical therapy formally end. Therapy that was assigned to me after the shit hit the fan in December 2016. It’s also exactly one week after I met the surgeon who saved my life on Dec. 6th, my opportunity to express my gratitude to the exact man who is a direct and true hero for my life.
Delusions had me thinking I really was dead in the immediate aftermath of emergency brain surgery. Logic, reality and time have made me wonder just how the hell I survived. Knowing my condition, the infamous genetic disorder NF2, and my medical neglect in recent years (lack of MRIs and communication with my doctors), it just mounted things against me.
Unfortunately, I have other things against me now that logic and reality sway before me in a mocking sense all the time. Lack of social interaction, lack of romance, lack of work, little productivity, empty dreaming of achievement…
Last time I dealt with these morale haphazards was the winter of 2003-04. John J. Fonts Esq., the formal version of my cutesy nickname, was once again recovering from necessary surgery. This time, the catastrophe looming without surgery or with a screw-up during the cut-cut was paralysis. That was defeated, say thank you and praise the maker. What got me away from that maize of morale post-op was web design, sports and being a pioneer of the NHL blogosphere with the birth of the Tampa Bay Lightning blog Boltsmag.com. Boltsmag has turned into Raw Charge on SB Nation; you can find my old posts through the archives. It may not be an easy feat though. The site’s birthday is February 13th. Next week.
That was then though, this is now. And even then, the site did not financially show accomplishment to me (meaning ads, which I hate, did not pay me back or something). It did give me something to focus on in my unique voice as a writer, but it (and Raw Charge) were not much of a rewarding time investment.
Creativity and writing may still be where I go from here; I’ve been working on a potential book of poetry. It would be stuff I’ve written for the past 20+ years. I’ve also toyed around with lyrical verse and trying to get music made to turn it into song. I don’t know how to have a legit career as a lyricist but that would be an adventure worth taking for this man of rhyme and reason.
I’ve survived, yet I’m lost. I’m happy to be here but I’m in a foul spot of ugh, hold the pickle. What comes next may be nothing, it may be grand, and it may be a fulfilling whisper that makes me feel accomplished. Whatever the answer is, it is still in the process of becoming.
Plenty of Fish and the Upgrade scam
When I was on Plenty of Fish in 2016, I “Upgraded” my account. That upgrade was just affording me a little more access to the site with profiles and this-and-that.
Between the lack of responses to social attempts and other judgments against POF, I cancelled my account in early fall. Done and over with. I move on.
Except in the payment area. POF has charged me – twice – since cancellation to continue the “Upgrade” subscription (despite the fact I no longer have an account with them).Every 3 months I will be charged $38.75.
I emailed POF’s highlighted Customer Service email address (cs@plentyoffish.com) and lo-and-behold these two key areas of the email:
If you are an upgraded user, or have question about one of your payments, please send us a new email from the email address registered to your Upgraded POF account.
…
Replies to this email will be automatically deleted.
So, in essence, a customer service line that vows to ignore you? Pleasant, no?
Calling POF or your pay line (be it your bank, PayPal, or credit card company) may or may not get this resolved. In my case, I’m hearing impaired – while I can hear, I’m horrible with the phone.
Update 1: I contacted support again from another email address, this time I got no auto-response so someone may actually respond. The fact they weren’t clear about how my email wasn’t registered with their DB (when contacting from my original address) is an eye-rolling frustration-.
Update 2: Never a word back from POF after two emails sent over the past week. Great Customer Service, eh?
Update 3 [final update]: It’s 2:30 PM on Friday, Feb. 17 and I just received a refund notification and a payment suspension via PayPal.com. No direct response from POF. While this brings back th emoney taken by POF and stops the auto-rebill, it’s still a degree of cold social on their part. Never the less, mission accomplished.
Reviewing lyrics and Living on the Edge
As a young teen, I was pretty fixated on Aerosmith’s 1993 album release “Get a Grip” and the hits that came from it. It was such a mix of Hard Rock and Pop, along with a mix of Steven Tyler’s attitude (which was most shown off during video performances – but that’s acting in part; lyrically it showed up in songs like “Flesh” or “Crying”.
The song that won me over was track #5 on the album, “Livin’ on the Edge”
Musical Demo: Picture Perfect (aka Picture Perfect Love Affair)
In the late 1990’s I was a poet and lyricist first and foremost. You can find some of the poetry I wrote and have written over the years on the site (click the writing tab above and move down to the poetry selection). That’s not the point though. One poem I wrote, just a lyrical mash-up inspired a bit by Green Day, was “Picture Perfect Love Affair”, a crazy guy in love with a girl in a photo. In fact, that story sort of mocks me at the time, as girls from High School still mattered, and I only had their photos to look at.
Years later, I forget when exactly, I had a little edit of the poem. “Edit” being the addition of a chorus to use between stanzas:
It’s a picture
Picture perfect
Picture perfect love affair
It’s a real simple build up and filler but it does the job that is expetec of it – it moves you forward and transitions you.
The summer of 2016 had me meet (online and off) Nick from the Pretty Voices. At one point or another I ran lyrical verse past him in a conversation and lo and behold, Nick delivered a demo of my work.
As it stands right now, I don’t think the Pretty Voices are going to record this thing, but it IS nice to have something I wrote put to music.
Regarding surgery and the menace that is NF2
There’s another aspect to talk about regarding life and where things for me stand at three weeks after I had an emergency brain operation which I talked about last week. What I focused on squarely during that write-up was post-op and the world I was involved in as I tried to grasp reality again. Just for the sake of throwing out the key words: Delusions, mental lapses, reincarnation.
Yeah, but what about before all that, what about pre-op?
While I have no recollection of Tuesday, December 6th and the events that led to surgery, I can remember life leading up to this incident just fine. And in the days before December 6th, it did come up where I thought of grander concepts and my medical condition in general. And I didn’t want anything to do with a process of medicine.
Let’s take a step back here and start with my condition: A rare neurological disorder called Neurofibromatosis Type 2. I’m deaf by way of it. I’ve had a few operations to remove tumors in my back and head. I know all the fun and games of the hospital (…which further makes me pissed off at the “ICU” I dealt with earlier in December, which was nothing of the sort, but I digress). At 37 years old, the concept of NF2 treatment is what pre-op was about. My thoughts leading to Tuesday, December 6th were a shrug and a rude hand gesture or two toward NF2. While the menace was and is part of my life, I wanted to live my life firstly and forget about the medical condition. I wanted to be and not get lost in MRIs or neurological clinic visits and such. It’s those aspects that dominated thoughts of pre-op: The fact I was overdue to have a scan or see a neurologist just for shits and giggles.
Being is what life is about; most of us toil through what our world offers. That’s what I wanted; not to get distracted by what could happen if I don’t, but to foil away against what was happening with life. NF2 can go fuck itself, and if it was going to kill me then oh well, too bad, so sad.
Yeah, and then we move to today and where I am at the moment and I’m ready for war. Like I said in the write-up the other day, I was dead post-op. Knowing that (or experiencing that) riles me up inside. I had to experience this shit and you’re still a genetic menace in my body? Fuck you. Fuck you, dearly [Editor note: f-bombs are fun sometimes and fitting]
I’ll have an MRI in the next six months, I’m sure, and will likely see one neurologist or another just to have a social sphere and good times… All because tomorrow is dictated by what the disease brings to the table. I’ll still foil and toil away at life as it matters, but this genetic condition ain’t playing well with me and I sure as shit don’t want to be nice in return.
Surgery, mental state…. All the fun and games of an emergency operation
Where I am sitting tonight is two-weeks after an emergency brain operation that came out of nowhere. And in reflection, two weeks ago upon regaining a conscious state post-op, I was dead, due to be reincarnated. I didn’t know about surgery, I just knew that I was waiting to be picked up by someone else and move forward into a new life with them as a partner.
I keep reflecting and can just assure you very much I have no recollection of Tuesday, December 6th [author’s note: I got dates wrong for the week this went down; my situation began on Monday, December 5; memory is weak if not nil on that date as well]. One piece of news I found out was that I was ambulanced to Tampa General Hospital, and that memory actually surfaces (but not clearly). Truly, though, things did not clarify at all until I was in a supposed ICU area on Wednesday that was to be the centerpiece for reincarnation. As someone who has had many a surgery in the past and knows Intensive Care Units, this wasn’t one. This felt like the dorm at a college, minus the social interaction. This wasn’t a high-end facility either, it was a waiting area with TV promo video.
Folks, does that seem random? It’s delusional, and that’s where I was for most of that week. It’s how far gone I was. Oh, and Wednesday I found out that I had died in a car accident with my parents. That’s what I remember. I’d find out I had nails in my head and such and didn’t know the extent of my injuries (or what really happened). I just was gone and in a process of becoming again.
I write this random stuff down and it sounds crazy. That’s how far gone I was post-op.
It wasn’t until Saturday, December 10, that I knew I was alive (and the reincarnation thing was a delusion). I had moved to a show-area on the Tampa General Hospital 4th floor and things had taken a more life-defined theme. Things were happening and everything was go-go-go, not the ultra laid-back, no-interaction crap of the days before. I wasn’t lost. At the same time, I still didn’t get what had happened to me. It wouldn’t be until later that weekend where I got told directly by family and friends about what I had gone through.
Does any of this make sense? It shouldn’t. It just shows that John J. Fonts Esq. was in a very odd place the week of December 6, 2016. Where he is now is recovering from surgery. Mentally, I’m spot on and ambling forward as I should, with physical ailments holding me back mightily (a fight to deal with). Two weeks ago? I don’t know how it started, and in general I ambled through crazy until reality reintroduced itself to me and I got back to the land of the living.
A long time hockey blogger steps aside
Perhaps you heard a hockey blogger quit covering the Tampa Bay Lightning for SB Nation. Maybe you heard, maybe you didn’t hear. You are on his blog at the moment, by the way. Maybe if you ask him, he’ll tell you.
Additions for “Relaxing, EASY favorites”?
I have a musical playlist that is 9 hours long. It’s specifically songs that I can relax to and that I enjoy listening to, spanning over 50 years…
And yet, I can use more songs or suggestions to add to the playlist. While every song on this list I like in one way or another, hearing certain songs too often can diminish them or make me want something else. At the same time, there’s got to be more than a few songs I’m outright forgetting from bygone eras of pop music, and I know I’m clueless on more recent songs that are catchy and fit this. Read More
A thought on “…. as hell!”
I can’t exactly say it only just occurred to me but a word-use factoid popped into my brain after playing up a view from a home renovation as “nice as hell” The thought is that the saying has the potential to not be taken as a compliment / positive usage as intended. We’re talking hell here; fire, brimstone, negatives, burn baby, burn! A fitting use of the “as hell” saying is something like “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it any more!”
To use it as part of a compliment? A positive reaction to something impressive? It’s a habit of mine and in society in general… It’s also a contradiction. Think about it, it’s weird as hell and… uh, you get my point.
Creatively writing a fiction anecdote
Reddit has a pretty interesting creative writing subreddit. Someone just proposes a very generalized idea for a piece of creative writing and you’re allowed to do and say what you may in order to flesh out the generalized concept. It’s a practice and a way to both inspire as well as hone one’s writing skills.
An example of things is the below piece of creative writing. The Subreddit entry went on the concept of thus: “You wake up in an unknown place, tied to a seemingly random stranger. You have no clue what is going on, but the stranger does.” Rather ambiguous, no? But it also opens the doors to whatever your imagination kicks up to why things were that way. Here’s what I came up with:
The “interests” failings of Plenty of Fish
Months ago, I went after some online dating sites because of shortcomings of the platform. Years ago, I took shots at Plenty of Fish for shortcomings of some of the participants of the site. Plenty of Fish, for those who don’t know online dating sites, is a bare-bones service that’s just a mite more involved than Craigslist… Well, write ups can be shorter than Craigslist but the point is that it’s a minimalist dating service (now owned by Match.com).
One of what should be a nice guide for the site is an interest listing that’s able to be used with the service by its members. It’s sort of like keywords or topics, but applied to life. Of course this does lead to shortcomings by a segment of the user base on POF who don’t use detailed terms or words to describe what interests them. Others will make the error of using phrases and sentences like it’s a continuing conversation arm… But there is a segment that is just fine with showing thins that truly interest them or entertain them.
This is where Plenty of Fish screws up.
It’s not the aspect of having the tool that makes it fall short, to say the least, it’s how it doesn’t work easily or properly that is the problem. See, just to click on the topic of interest on a profile will give you a very generalized list of users on the site. I don’t mean linked to the interest, I mean you get a generalized list of users in a certain timeframe and nothing more.
Now, hold on there! What about Google searches and finding an actual page that shows users on POF who do use the tag? That’s got to work, right? Indeed, it does!!… and the list is of every gender and age group in the site DB who uses said tag, making it just a bit more difficult to find those who cater to your romantic wants, meaning the proper gender that matches your wants, the proper age range too. Oh and there is the silly little aspect of profiles being ancient in some cases.
Let me give you an example page here: I’m a Tampa Bay Lightning fan. Hell, I’m a known Tampa Bay Lightning blogger. Using the team and the sport as an interest to meet people would be wise, no? S, here you go! Interest page Tampa Bay Lightning gives you thousands of results (marked as “700+”) from the network with all genders using the term. That’s one hell of a tough pile to sort through. Especially because the profiles aren’t just unsorted by gender but also by profile age… A neglected or unused profile created years ago comes up in the search results and can show up in a primary position on search results pages.
But wait! There’s a search field at the very top of that page! Let’s try sorting through ages and genders to get it so a guy like me can find a woman. That’s where the next aspect of futility rises in Plenty of Fish; to use the sort field to search through the interest list brings inconsistent results and gives you general listings of the age group within the distance you sought. You also get hit, again, in that profile results may be ancient results from days gone by… Meaning those who didn’t delete their profile can come up as a search result despite the fact they no longer use the service. Yeah, that’s an aspect that can happen on just about any dating site… The thing is that Plenty of Fish gives you the recent-users option on other searches on the site. Just not within interest searches.
To list interests is just an attempt to show you a bit about the person listed on a dating site. It can spark curiosity or interest, or it can shy you away from a person if they’re keen on things you can’t stand. It’s useful subject matter that should be better utilized on that dating network. It’d just be better if the damn thing could actually produce a quality and detailed search result like it can with other aspects on the site.
When you're better at Tech Support than Apple is
Talk about a tech FAIL on Apple’s part:
I bought an iPod Non 7th generation in April of this year. In some ways I’ve still been adjusting to it and some features I really liked but hadn’t tried out yet. I’ve mostly been using it around the house; I’ve found my other iPod (Nano, 3rd gen) is more effective on workouts than going to the touch-based Nano.
I upgraded the important desktop software tied to iPods and what not, iTunes, on Wednesday afternoon to version 12.4; I’d put off upgrading for a while because of no clear need… But prompts to upgrade came up so routinely that I decided there was no clear reason to not upgrade either.
It would seem the upgrade itself helped give me a reason not to have done so.
The 7th generation Nano doesn’t sync anymore with iTunes saying it can’t identify the device. There’s been no action undertaken on the Nano to cause change/issue, only with iTunes backend. I uninstalled iTunes and found I can’t install older versions any more. I have to use 12.4…and the software won’t/can’t identify the Nano.
This is where tech support jumps in and saves the fray, right? Involvement and instruction to get matters resolved… Yeah, about that…. iTunes/Apple support was a joke. I didn’t contact them having not tried tech support methods that “More Info” on iTunes had prompted, and yet it was that stuff that was fed to me directly all over again. When I told them I’d already tried that stuff, I got instructed to do a … reinstall? Despite the fact it’s prompted by iTunes itself, which I already attempted, which already failed in clearing up the issue. Multiple times at that.
In the end they wanted to send someone (a tech support person) as aid? Or have myself venture to the Apple Store to have one of their people look at the problem in person? It’s not like a device like this can’t be remedied by a user, but the options for doing so themselves were few.
Oh, the 7th Gen Nano still works on its own… I just can’t sync. And my older iPod Nano (3rd Generation) works just fine with syncing. What does that tell you about Apple’s own failure?
As a last, last attempt on fixing things (and I felt bad for doing it because I thought I’d put my music library at risk), I used an elaboration uninstall remedy that CNET had pitched years ago. I didn’t want to reset play-counts or do a media rebuild… I just wanted a clean installation of an (old) iTunes version. The article elaborates on having to uninstall more than just iTunes as part of the process to restarting. Trying to install an older version of iTunes failed, miserably, as the iTunes library database files had to be deleted too. I wasn’t about to restart my audio library… I gave up on this idea. I uninstalled that older version and re-installed iTunes 12.4. For shame, I’d have to lose this new(ish) Nano.
Yeah, well, I plugged it in for a last sync attempt and everything worked just as fine as it should for how well the device worked on its own.
Some type of software compromise had happened in the Apple core – not just in iTunes but interacting programs. Getting rid of everything resolved this. Repairing the issue, however, wasn’t what tech support thought. Not in elaboration, at least.
Looking for suggestions: Relaxing pop/rock numbers from the 1980s
Over the years, a lot of 1980s classics that I’ve been exposed to and enjoyed have been mocked and marred because of stenotypes of music form the 1980s in general as being too cheesy or being too slow/sleepy/boring. There are people I know who continue to dress down 1980s music and certain artists specifically because of the era and…
And they’re still good songs so shut up.
There are rich pop songs that are slower and perfect for night when trying to relax (if not sleep). I’ve got a playlist for it, but I know I’m lacking a lot of the music from that era that would fit:
- ”All out of Love” – Air Supply
- “Another Day in paradise” – Phil Collins
- “Don’t Dream It’s Over” – Crowded House
- “Drive” – The Cars
- “I’ve Been Waiting For A Girl Like You” — Foreigner
- “One More Night” – Phil Collins
- “Steppin’ Out” – Joe Jackson (which I wrote about recently)
- “Take My Breath Away” – Berlin
The whole reason I blog about this is because I’m looking for other 1980s songs like these – soft rock, pop, mid tempo. I’m aware of other options from some of these artists (Air Supply and Collins specifically) but I’m looking for other artists. Hearing different examples or suggestions wouldn’t be a bad thing.
And yeah, there are songs from other decades that fit the bill quite easily (“Bridge Over Troubled Water” by Simon and Garfunkel; “Tears In Heaven” (unplugged) by Eric Clapton), but right now the quest is to discover from 30 years ago, not rediscover from the 1990s and be introduced to numbers form the 00s/2010s.
A social reaction to an aloof social-media status response
I tend to be a wise ass when I set a status message on Facebook, or I’ll play around with pop culture, or music, or share small, small things in a very unclear way. It part of it is me trying to draw attention and yet also have positive interaction with friends. Talking about private issues in truth and honesty, as a guy, is going to just lead to complaints / mockery from guy friends.
It can also piss you off as hypocrites participate in comments.
Monday morning I dropped on to Facebook and one of the top status messages currently going on my timeline was a female friend telling a personal story tied to….bathroom stall graffiti. My friend is divorced, still trying to move on in life after the divorce (the marriage ended abusively). Between that status, written at sometime around 2 AM, and other thoughts dangling in my mind in recent days, I put up a very personalized status of my own – a little generalized and grandiose but the message was honest:
“Why is it the most mundane and yet immense social destination of life, love, is a journey that fails so completely for me? It’s an adventure with someone that just never materializes into the joint trip.”
A private status just went public, why? Because of the response I got. See, with a status like that you’d think to either be hands off or encouraging. That’s private and personal. What I got was a dense, reactionary reply from someone who had been who I had a very stunted journey with when it comes to love. Someone who was alienated by life, had long interest in me, and who threw it all away. We’ll put it that way. Someone who’s twice married and who slept around before, during, and after marriage:
“Love is elusive. You won’t find it if you are looking for it.”
That’d be a profound remark if the responder did not have ties to my statement, as someone I failed the journey with. And I’d willingly open up a conversation on the point – that I had some great leads when I was least looking for romance – if she wasn’t an example; an example of one, who wasn’t elusive but who dropped the entire idea when it was least convenient.
Love isn’t elusive. It’s too easy for some to find to be considered that way. The fact I hear of marriage and babies from so many friends of both genders I’ve known (some of whom I’ve been attached to) is counter to the notion of elusiveness. Even dating that lasts more than a single or few nights, or lustful romances that come and go… That’s something more than what I’m experiencing.
The only thing elusive is what path I have to take to actually find myself in a mutual romantic involvement without being taken for granted or used for the moment. Someone who wants to take the trip in life with me and someone I want right by my side for the trip.
Hockey blogging and blog aggregation
I used to depend on Hockey Blogs — an RSS aggregation web site — for one-stop coverage of the web log world for the NHL and the sport of hockey. A decade ago, when there weren’t many blogs but some great blog writing, that site was a killer tool to have, especially during the 2004-05 NHL lockout.
Yeah, and then it got killed because of what it was aggregating. I won’t name names but a certain blog that was doing aggregation of its own got its RSS listed on the site and inundated the page with its shared-content, making it hard to find actual writing efforts from notable blogs of the time. Now it’s even worse as a feed of pro-news sites and another, singular, mass-content blog over-dominates the feed.
I still rely on RSS (Sputnik RSS reader) but one thing that my RSS reader can’t do is discover other hockey blogs from indie writers. In days of yore, those indie web loggers lusted to get themselves listed on Hockey Blogs. That doesn’t happen any more.
I don’t know… I once helped run a aggregator aimed specifically at Tampa Bay blogs… Maybe I could start a WordPress powered hockey blog aggregator comparable to Hockeyblogs.org, run independently by someone devoted to the sport? Who knows… It’s tough finding independent blogs these days; SB Nation, Fansided, The Nation Network and Bloguin dominate with individual sites/blogs, while The Hockey Writers, Today’s Slapshot and a few others try to cover things widely under one franchise/site name. It’s that one-site, mass content aspect that ruined Hockey Blogs
The end of the mystery earworm
A few days before Christmas 2015, my friend Liz contacted me through Twitter in an enthusiastic state and asked “is this The Song?” The ambiguity is an appropriate title of a mystery earworm that’s followed me around since childhood. A couple of notes to a song, a piano or synthesizer riff, that I had heard a few times while in the car with my family as we traveled late at night through Queens, New York.
do-do DA-do, da-da Dada….
We were always passing through Flushing Meadows, on our way home in Suffolk County, New York. It was late at night as-was and it was usually me and my father who were the ones still awake in the car. Dad had been working overnight for the United States Postal Service at their sorting facility at LaGuardia Airport at the time. Driving home late at night was no big thing for him. For the rest of the family – my mothers and my two brothers – it was time for sleep. The would be dozing as we were in the beginning stages of a trip to the Great South Bay area of Suffolk County, some 50 miles away
We visited Queens and specifically Jackson Heights on a regular basis; it’s where my parents were from and their parents were still there. Well, at least their mothers and siblings. My mother’s mother was the usual destination of our trips into the city, though we regularly made brief stopovers to my dad’s mother’s place.
I don’t remember the exact streets that were taken to get to the Long Island Expressway and back home, but I do remember passing William A Shea Stadium and the World’s Fair site in flushing. I loved passing those location sites. And it was guaranteed my father would have the radio on and be listening to the music playing on one station or another while we headed east.
? da-da Dada, dad a DA-da…. ?
It happened more than once, I just don’t know how many times; it was too long ago to even try to guess. Driving through Flushing that song would be playing. Memories of the streetlamps from the highway and seeing Shea Stadium and the World’s Fair sites at night were sown with the song and the memory a guys voice tied to the song. I couldn’t recall a lyric; I could recall the piano riff though. Was it a keyboard or a piano? Memory wasn’t clear on that one either, but as time went by it came off more and more like a keyboard. Blame that on time and distance distorting a memory.
The last time I heard that song was by chance after I’d moved with my family from New York to Florida in 1989. It was about 5 years later and coincidentally / fittingly we were visiting the tri-state area because my aunt was to be married in October 1994. We all had flown from St. Pete/Clearwater airport to Newark on the long-since-defunct Southeast Airlines, and had to make the extra long trek from Newark to a location in Nassau County where our hotel was. While it was just mid-afternoon, it was only me and my father awake in the car at the time when that song came on air over the station my father was listening to.
“What is this?? What is this song, dad? It’s been in my head for years, I’ve always wondered….” He answered, but between the events of the wedding-weekend and life in general, what he said didn’t get retained in memory.
A lot of things have taken place in my life since that afternoon, including me becoming deaf and regaining my hearing with thanks to an Auditory Brainstem Implant (it’s a variation of the Cochlear Implant). One thing that didn’t change was memory of that song that riff. It haunted me. I started imitating it and running it by people in person around 2004, seeking out suggestions from those who grew up in the 1980s. Maybe they’d know? I ran it by family first before reaching out more broadly in recent years (by way of social media).
Early in 2015 I compiled a list of Billboard Hot 100 lists from the mid to late 1980s and started to check songs whose titles I didn’t recognize… Maybe that one is it? Oh, by the way? I’m not even supposed to be able to enjoy music as much as I do. That’s supposed to be a shortcoming of having sound by way of the Cochlear implant – you can’t process music right, and can’t enjoy the songs for what they are.
Yeah, well, I’ve got 1250+ songs in my iTunes library, many of them songs I’ve only heard after going deaf, and they sound like they should depending on the era they were recorded in.
Back to the Billboard listings – I stuck it all in an Excel file, and while it reintroduced me to a lot of good music from 1987 through ’84 or ’83, I didn’t find what I was looking for. I didn’t go through everything though – getting impatient and disappointed as well as having the rest of life happening. I still have the spreadsheet tucked away somewhere on the PC and want to go through it again to sample other songs from the list but, well, that’s not necessary any more in the case of THE song.
I forgot how Liz got caught up in this. We were talking through Twitter I guess and out of frustration or because musical chatter had come up – I brought up the song. A little while after our conversation in the summer, I sent an audio recording of me humming the song. Like many had reacted to me over the years, Liz (who’s my age) recognized the riff but had no clue of the song – who it was, what the song title was. She’s a 1980s music fan and has friends who are 80s music fans. The plan was to keep an ear open for it.
Oh, by the way? Soundhound sucks. I’ve used that app a few times on Android phones and at no point has song humming worked to identify a song, let alone this long-standing sought after item. While I see the application as absolutely loved by the masses, it’s just never lived up to its reputation or abilities unless I put a smartphone up to a speaker when a song plays that I need to identify.
At any rate, back to Liz: She was traveling with her husband and a friend through upstate New York less than two weeks ago. A SirusXM station that focused on stuff from the 1980s came on the air. A lot of songs have been suggested to me over the years ago The Song, but all of those suggestions aren’t even of the feeling of 80s pop hits that this thing sounded like. It’s no rocker, it’s no ballad. It was… it was … something… Probably a one-hit wonder too if I’ve never crossed it again. And you can guarantee a one-hit wonder song will make it back on-air through a station that covers a decade…
@Johnny_Fonts Fontana! “Steppin’ Out” by Joe Jackson!!! Is that The Song??
— Elizabeth (@spitesprite) December 19, 2015
I click that link and the tempo alone matches the memory. Then the piano of Joe Jackson’s “Steppin Out” starts coming through strong….
That link Liz posted, that song and hearing it again and knowing who sang it… that was an early Christmas gift and turned out better than the majority of my tangible gifts received this year. To have such a long standing question answered. It brings a level of internal peace and allows a degree of comfort. Such a trivial and persistent question gets solved, and now the earworm can’t haunt me by way of ignorance of who and what.
Inspired by a picture
I’m only posting this on Stonegauge the site because I’ve discovered I placed a bit of my writing here that I don’t have hard copies of on my own computer. This poem was inspired by a photo taken from bed. I’d post the picture but I never know if the site is going public again or not, and the picture is private — not that kind of private! Get your mind out of the gutter!
The Definition of Insanity
A common saying is that the definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing, over and over again, and expect a different result.
My heart is insane, my head is not. My heart hoped (hopes?) that a relationship that has turned long(er) distant will last, and my head knows exactly what was and is in store. In fact, it’s playing out in front of me right now and it hurts — being forgotten about and having my own actions overlooked and treated like less than they’re worth. Seeign someone being exceedingly self absorbed and feeling like I was only a egg-timer until this moment had arrived for her.
I need to let go. My heart is waiting for a sign of dedication from the girl / woman I’ve fallen for, but I know beter. I know better because I’ve been here before. I’ve done all I could, and now I have to wait for the pain to subside so I can move on… Because God knows I don’t get a rebound.
It'd be nice to say something once in a while
THough I am busy on Raw Charge most of the time, Stonegauge is in my thoughts often… And I’ve been on the Admin dashboard for the site several times in recent days… Seeing my last post was nearing 2 years ago, I ghought I should shake off the rust and say “Hi.”
“Hi.”
I’ve found I’ve put some poems in here / on here and don’t have hard copies of them. I’m surprised. I mean, I DO have hard copies of them, but I can’t read thsoe right now. My state of vision is very poor. There’s a lot of things that have haappened in the almost-two years since I last posted. But I’ll try to get
A week later, supporting a friend and dwelling too much
I found myself sobbing last night in bed. Six days after I cut Angie loose, the weight of the moment still hangs heavy on me and my doubts and fears still hold more swy than I’d like to admit.
It was sort of brought along by Bill. God love him, he’s in the first real relationship that I have ever known him to be in. He’s dated at times over the years, but those usually went nowhere. He’s pined for women he has worked with and pegged hopes and dreams on women that he associated with, but he wasn’t in a relationship with any of them… And he fell flat when his hopes, dreams, wishes, and aspirations were defenestrated by said-womens own actions, choices and words.
This time around, Bill went out on a blind date at the urging of his friend Jesse and his wife, Elizabeth (whose friend was the blidn date). And instead of pinning, instead of wishing, instead of empty dreaming, he’s got her now. Hook, line and sinker. They’ve been seeing each other for a month and … Well, Bill is filled with doubts still with thanks to his past.
I’ve known bill since 1999, he’s cautious… And he does not afford himself the chance to just let himself go. He tempers things, and he expects the other shoe to fall. He’s negative because of past experiences. So, with Kelly in love with him – he’s uncomfortable. He’s also not telling everything he’s feeling to me, which is fine and good… But we got into talking about Kelly and how things are going last night… And I found him veering off suddenly, talking about a co-worker who he had been crazy about.
Why? Because he had a bigger build up with her. He hoped. He dreamed. He worked for it. “I still don’t know what happened there,†he said to me last night. A few days earlier, he mentioned that he felt more with this non-relationship than what is going on now with Kelly.
What Bill felt was the thrill of the chase and pinned on the promise if things worked out. In his situation with Kelly, as I already said, he’s got her. There is no need to chase.
And that’s fucking with him something fierce. Not that he’s going to screw things up with Kelly because of it. But it’s feastering in his head.
He actually read Kelly as taking pity on him at one point. At another, he thought she was faking. And, in general, he can’t understand why she’s in love with him. Isn’t that always the case when we fall into a relationship or find ourselves loved in an emotional sense? We don’t understand why the other side would invest themselves in us.
That reminded me of things with Angie, a lot. It was a mutual self-doubt, though. She expressed it directly, I expressed it indirectly and in confidence with other people. But that was almost 2 years ago now.
Back to Bill, that tangent about Jamie (the co-worker he was interested In, in the past) made me go off on a rant a bit regarding her and other girls he had thought he finally clicked with. There are names of other girls included with this… Other women he hoped it’d work out with:
Bill:        I still don’t know what happened with Jamie. I drove by the old office Saturday with kelly. All I could think about was how many times I drove through there with Jamie.
John:    Same thing that went wrong with Meisha is what went wrong with Jamie – nothing on your end. Though it’s hard to accept.
Bill:        I wonder what would have happened had we stayed at the old office. We were inseparable. She got scared after that day she came into my office and opened up to me. She was in tears that day. Immediately after that she started saying she couldn’t afford to go out to lunch or she needed to be on a diet.
John:    See, that’s not you. I mean, whatever happened, happened on Jamie’s own time. And she didn’t share it, and her own psychosises wouldn’t have let her share it with you.
You did everything you could, Bill. Pat yourself on the back, because you did everything in your power. You could say “Well, I could have done this or that” but… Well, you were doing all the right things before that. If Jamie was still scared, then there’s not much more you can do. You could have laid down and done more for her and gotten walked all over while she still sorted herself out. And she’s still sorting herself out, from the little things you tell me from time to time.
It applies to Meisha and Azuree too. Forget the psycho stuff with either of them – you did everything you could. Everything you were capable of.
Job well done, high five.
(And yes, I am telling myself that with Angie in order to move on – and it helps. I did all I could. I didn’t just do all I could, I did a damn fine job with it)
But it’s over.
What Kelly’s getting is proving “their loss” rings true.
Which brings me back to sobbing in bed on Monday night. I’m cursed with self realization, I’m dominated by my own doubts and fears. All I have are fleeting memories of love, being loved, and emotional happiness form the past. M eand Angela wouldn’t have worked out, I don’t think (letting my head speak and not my heart). That’s just going ont eh fact I’m more of a pacifist and she was a warrior. I’m sickly and she’s an athlete. I’m a romantic and she’s a whore.
…But I wanted that failure to happen on my terms, not on fate’s terms. And now I have no path forward and must distance myself from what is in the rearview.
I did all I could. High five. *pat pat pat* Job well done John. Damn fine job, at that. Chin up, chest out, be proud of yourself. It’s a lonely road forward, and you ought to walk it with some fake pomposity to fool the masses who observe you as you limp on down the road.
Bill will be fine. I have no doubt about that. If it works out – it works out. If it doesn’t, it won’t because of a screw up on his part.
As for me? A week later I’m still missing her. The sobs were the realization how far she is, emotionally, from the girl I was with in December 2010.
S-A-T-U-R… Oh, for crying out loud….
My, aren’t we in a pleasant and chipper mood this merry Saturday Night! It’s the middle of June, there’s a tropical system dropping rain upon the Florida peninsula, and I’m being treated like a leper by every and all social contacts that I know.
No one, I mean no one, is talking to me… Sans Keith with a little hockey talk. Sans Gary Shelton — es, columnist Gary Shelton – on Twitter.
I’m haunted by thoughts of who is doing what. And, of course, how little I am on their minds.
Same shit, different Saturday.
Here's looking at Gru, kid
How do I preface this one?
You support someone who is deployed, and they break yoru heart. You go on supporting them because it bothers you to abandon them when you know they’re not enjoying what they’re doing and the entire environment being miserable…
And when they get home, they’re able to get back into their world but they keep you out of it… and yet, keep you in it in an impersonal way.
I can deal with her being involved with someone else. I’ve accepted that. What I can’t deal with is seeing her and reaching out to her in the most casual of personal fashions – asking “How are you” via email – and being ignored… While she publicly displays having time on her hands, including tagging me in images on Facebook after I sent said email.
So, for my own sake, I had to shut the door. This is an unsent email follow up to the aforementioned, ignored email.
Angela –
The lack of reply (to this and that letter-scan that I sent weeks ago on Facebook) gives me the hint. After all that’s been said and done, I’m sorry for latching on and involving myself to the point you’d rather keep a distance. I don’t regret, though.
I’ll be quick to admit I hadn’t exactly reached out socially much since you returned home, and I guess maybe that’s just put off this inevitability. It’s hard for me to try to normalize things between us as friends if all we’ve got are quick remarks on Facebook and an awkwardness when it comes to any personal contact. Life is riddled with too many uninvolved friendships and acquaintances that falling into another one, with you of all people, just doesn’t appeal to me.
You know how to reach me, down more avenues than one, if you ever should need someone to talk to or confide in. And you don’t need to hear this, I’m saying it more for me, but for what it’s worth – I forgave you long ago for things. I tried to say as much in a subtle fashion through email, letters and poems, but subtle in the black-and-white of the float didn’t seem to translate, or at least got no response.
Best wishes and good luck to you, Jaden and Aaron, wherever the journey of life should take you.
John
I keep clinging to people who have one-way relationships with me: their way. And the reason is, for a time, they tried to get themselves involved in my world – and I accepted them with open arms and love.
After this instance, after she traveled more than 15,000 miles and was reached out to with 38 letters (all of which she did not receive) and care packages… After giving her space and time upon arriving home… I just have to let her go. My patience is gone, my big heart keeps trying to make an excuse for her – one that doesn’t exist.
I removed her from my Facebook friends list today. She knows how to contact me in more ways than one, though. But she won’t. She’ll blame herself when she realizes what happened (if she reacts at all)… There’s a chance, then, that she’ll contact me, perhaps lash out at me… But more likely she’ll just stew before digressing and moving on.
And me? I need to move on. Christ, I’ve needed to move on for a year… Fate, it seems, will not afford me the opportunity though.
The weight of their worlds
Lay their hardships unto me
Their doubts, their fears
Their degradations
Lay their weights upon my shoulders,
Threats and harms
Leave them be
Steer them straight, right, and true
Deliver from evil
And to the promise of the now
Yes, lay their hardships unto me
And through my suffering
Spare them all
