athlete A person possessing the natural or acquired traits, such as strength, agility, and endurance, that are necessary for sports.

He is sixteen years old, today. Dimpled, and bright eyes full of devilment is how he looks in his baby pictures.

A natural born athlete. At three years old, he could bat a baseball onto the roof of a two story house (which he did consistently). Had an excellent arm, too. Could also run like the wind, and climb anything. He once told me that when he ran is when he felt truly happy.

He could whistle while still an infant - would lay in his crib, and whistle to entertain himself before he could roll over. It was fantastic.

One of my favorite memories is one Halloween, he was dressed like a ninja, except his mask was a black hood with a glow in the dark snake face on it. Grisly looking thing. His older brother went as a clown (Awesome costume, if I do say so myself. Of course, I made it, but I worked hard on it, and it was detailed). I took them to the village to go trick or treating. Being a village, there isn't much in the way of street lighting, and it didn't take long for the little panther to figure out he couldn't be seen in the shadows. He soon tired of stopping short in the deep shadows, thus making me run into him (I have night-blindness; all of my family takes advantage) and scaring the mess out of little kids. That is when inspiration struck him. Now, this happened when 'In Living Color' was still on television. Remember Damon Wayans as Homie the Clown? Yeah. The little mischief maker took off one of his socks, and filled it with candy. He then spent the next hour ambushing his older brother. He would leap out of the darkness yelling 'Homie don't play that!', whack clown/brother with the treat filled sock, and disappearing into the night leaving nothing but echoes of laughter. I was so exasperated! But I also admired his cleverness and agility.

Once, when he was asked what name he wanted to go by, he said 'Cowboy.' I have not seen him since January 1, 2000, but I think of him every day. Happy Birthday, Cowboy. I love you.

activism The use of direct action, such as a demonstration or strike, in opposition to or support of a cause.

I am participating in the Virtual March on Washington today. It is sponsored by Win Without War, a coalition of 32 national organizations that have joined together to advocate alternatives to war in Iraq. Also at that site, True Majority is sponsoring free faxes to register your protest about the impending war.

To get into whether war is ever necessary is a subject too involved to fit comfortably into this forum, because it is a subject for discussion and debate. My personal approach is to consider the issues, then ask 'Would I die for this cause? Would I send my child to war for this cause?'. If I would not do it myself, how can I ask another to do so? Unfortunately, it feels like the persons in charge of making the decisions are willing to consider it beyond that: 'Ok, well, what about the neighbor's kid? How about that punk kid down the street who plays his music too loud, and ran over the azealeas last summer? Or, hey, what about kids who can't afford to go to college? We could give them money to go to school if the make it back alive...it's not like we are forcing them, they voluntarily signed up.'

Ok, yeah, they did. But I bet a majority of them would be marching in the protests instead, if they had had the money to get into college.

Peeved To be annoyed or vexed.

Remarkably, it doesn't last long. It's that whole simple pleasures thing.

1. Needed to go to pharmacy to pick up pictures. Car got stuck in the snowbank at end of driveway (boo). Played around trying to get it out (yay). Open rear end (allows one tire to spin & take all power from other wheel) ensures that I won't get it out until a thaw (boo). Same open rear end lets car do amazing powerbraking and endless donuts in gravel parking lots the other 3 seasons (yay). Decided to walk to pick up my pics; snow is knee deep (boo). Pharmacy was having a really good sale (yay). My pics didn't turn out (boo). Bought another disposable camera to try again (yay).

2. Was looking for an old journal I have stored. Found some old negatives I was looking for the other day (yay). Didn't find journal (boo). Found my copy of 'The Universe in a Nutshell' (yay). Bank called and said a VISA databank had been hacked, and I need to get a new card (boo). Learned how to do an HTML link (yay). Whiffed the first one (boo). Did brilliantly on the next three (yay). Yahoo kept crashing (boo). Finally got it to work (yay).

It's been quite a day. I'm going to bed, and read a little Stephen Hawking before sleep (yay). Peace.

Hedonism Pursuit of or devotion to pleasure, especially to the pleasures of the senses. in Philosophy: The ethical doctrine holding that only what is pleasant or has pleasant consequences is intrinsically good.

In weeding through my notes, I came across this: 'Look up' Aristippus - Greek philosopher who founded the Cyrenaic school of philosophy based on the concept of hedonism.

Hedonism broken down to its most basic definition of 'pursuit of sensual pleasure' gets misinterpreted to purely sexual connotations. Sex can be a part of it, but does not have to be. "The Cyrenaics admit that there are both bodily pleasures (e.g., sexual gratification) and mental pleasures (e.g., delight at the prosperity of one's country), and they maintain, against the Epicureans, that not all mental pleasures are based upon bodily pleasures."

The paradox of hedonism states that in the pursuit of happiness itself, one is miserable; but, in pursuit of something transcendent to the self one achieves happiness. Happiness is not equivalent to pleasure. If happiness is confused with pleasure, then the paradox of hedonism arises. Aristotle observed How, then, is it that no one is continuously pleased? Is it that we grow weary? Certainly all human things are incapable of continuous activity. Therefore pleasure also is not continuous; for it accompanies activity.

Daydreaming, the grasping of a new concept, or a well turned word, can all bring me pleasure; without activity. I think the key is to keep your life simple. Few liabilities, few needs, few desires, all allow one to focus more on the actual moment. A child's smile, or a hummingbird poised in flight may be easily missed while caught up in the race of today's world. If you shed the false gods, you will find truth.

FYI: I knocked it down to 16 post-its.

Post-It A trademark for a slip of notepaper with an adhesive edge. a/k/a My obsessive sin against nature.

I currently have 47 notes affixed to my monitor, tower, and the window next to me. They look like a mass of tiny yellow butterflies!

I appropriated a 10 pack of the small sticky note pads around Christmas. I have less than half remaining. I must begin weaning myself because I will not purchase them (do not have space in this post to go into the full reasons why; 'Cliff's Notes' version is I am a hypocrite). It will force me to be more organized. I would have to actually DO things, rather than make a note to do it later. Guess I better get started.

(For realism watch 'Chicken Run' here - I did.)

homeland One's native land.

Homeland Security. I think what rankles me the most about that particular word choice is its inherent exclusivity; its isolationism. This is the United States of America; we are a blend. Everybody came from somewhere else, somewhere back.

(Well, except maybe for American Indians - but we've been working for hundreds of years to push them off of their homeland; to bring them up would just invite a word like hypocrisy. Come on, though, this is different. Men, women, and children are being indiscriminately massacred by others who do not agree with our beliefs, or way of life. Uhh... erm, hmm...)

We are (or should be) American not by common heritage or lineage, but simply by being banded together as a community of communities. Getting to know your neighbors, and looking out for one another is the way to live; not by duct taping yourself into a house-sized coffin.

rapture The state of being transported by a lofty emotion; ecstasy. An expression of ecstatic feeling.

Umm, yeah, about that...

By nature, I am a dreamer. I am content to spend my days flitting about like a butterfly, fluttering to wherever my whimsy takes me. The world is a garden of delights.

Profound, abstract, artistic minds; I am fortunate to know a few; they are my playground. I like to visit them often, and let my senses drink deeply of all they have to offer.

I am entranced by the natural world; by the textures, smells, colors, sounds...I feel an enveloping love when I am cradled in Nature's arms. That fleeting glimpse you got of a girl scampering through the glen, talking to tree frogs? That was me.

My personal philosophy is that one does not know how long life is, or whether you get another go around; this may be all there is, I want to savor every moment.

By now, you probably are picturing someone who moves through life as though in a constant state of euphoria. Well, put that way...yeah. Isn't life grand?

slacker To be careless or remiss in doing a duty.

Yepper, that's me today. I spent waaaaaay too much time on quizilla.com, and comparing results with my friends. It was great fun!


You're a Non-box.


What box do you get put in?
brought to you by Quizilla

Ahh, I'll get serious tomorrow. Sometimes you just gotta sniff the daisies.

ex A former spouse or lover. Also known as the paperweight.

He was hung with the dubious moniker of Paperweight (a/k/a PW), because his beauty & usefulness were a pretty close match. Ok, yeah, it's kinda mean, but it's also accurate.

This is what he inspired:

I can't bear your crushing weight on me
trying to press me into a mold
to make me be your ideal woman
accepting double standards
hiding my intelligence
made to wait while you make up your mind

It's killing me
you wonder why I don't smile anymore
why I eat/smoke/drink too much
don't cook/cook too much
don't clean/won't sit & watch tv with you
because I have to clean

you want your space
but have to know where I am at all times
I need to breathe

I still love him for what is inside - he actually hugged a tree once, in front of his mom's house. It was an act that spoke pure joy. My friend called him loco; I was charmed. Animals are not afraid of him, he has a soft spot for old people and children. But what I needed, and what he gave, were two different things, and I couldn't find a way to let him understand. It became a relationship of my giving/doing/fixing and him taking/wanting/breaking. It just crushed me. I left to save my life.

family bed: A co-sleeping arrangement in which family members share a bed. Also regionally known as a dogpile.

A 'bed' doesn't have to be a bedstead or matress, per se. It can be anyplace one chooses to go to sleep for the night. A clear spot on the floor can be a bed, a car seat can be a bed, a cardboard box can be a bed.

Everyone should sleep with somebody once in a while. I don't mean it in a sexual way, but in the 'I have somebody to share the watch with, so I can sleep a little deeper' sense. I have slept in that sense with a lot of people, in a lot of places. Sharing hotel rooms (and beds) or in the car/van at a rest stop on road trips, crashing with friends or family members, slumber parties, cuddling with my children to give comfort. I see nothing wrong with it, it is completely natural; but recently it was brought to the forefront of the media and placed under attack. People can do things without sex having to be involved. Get off of it already.

On the other hand, I do find it reprehensible that we may go to war for our present leader's own vendetta. Dissect & analyze the reasons for that, instead of wasting all that time/energy/money for something inconsequential that was just a distraction from the actual horror that we are about to commit.

You can e-mail gnomi at gnomiinfo@yahoo.com

propaganda The propagation of a doctrine or of information reflecting the views and interests of those advocating such a doctrine.

I do not go to church. I no longer watch television. I do not blindly accept anything the government tells me (and I vote). My mind & my heart lead me. They cannot fail me any more than the previous three have, and will lie to me even less.

The stories they tell us as little girls, about Cinderella and Prince Charming, about Snow White; they are all lies. It is just to make us conform. We dream our lives will be all this or that, then try to live with the disillusion. "Make the best of it", we are told. Make do, compromise, sacrifice- it will bring us peace and contentment when we are older. But I look at my mom, and I know it's not true. I see my sisters struggle to try to make the dreams work. As they build up those delicate shells of hopes and aspirations, they get crushed and crunched under the shoes of husbands and boyfriends trying to dominate them. My dreams did not include living with someone who wears ratty sweatpants and plays with his balls while he watches cartoons. There weren't any that even came close to that.

So, I rebel. I refuse to give up. I am alone, sometimes painfully so. But it is better than what was my life. Martyrdom is not for me. I will find my dreams, somewhere.

rappel A descent of a vertical surface, as a cliff or wall, by sliding down a belayed rope through a device that provides friction, typically while facing the surface and performing a series of short backward leaps to control the descent.

Heh. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

You often hear on the news about how some tragedy with a kid involved is blamed on a television show, or popular music. Then people want to censor the media. Well, I'm here to tell you educational TV can be just as bad. My brother Pookie and I once saw a show on PBS about rockclimbing. What really intrigued us was how they came back down - they rappelled. So off we went to find rope. A ladder was still conveniently leaning up against the back of the house from when my dad used it a few weeks before to install a CB radio tower on the roof of our house (our neighbors loved us). Once on the roof, said CB tower was determined to be what I would belay the rope around, and ease out slack as my brother needed it. Pookie tied the rope around himself under his arms, and sat on the edge of the roof, working up the nerve to launch himself over the edge while I assured him that I had a good grip, everything would be fine. (Sounds like famous last words, doesn't it?)

My bro eased off the edge of the roof, and as soon as his weight hit the line, I got rope burn on both my hands and promptly let go. His free fall took him past the livingroom picture window. Pookie landed in a patch of lilies of the valley, just narrowly missing an overgrown boxwood. My mother was inside eating tea & toast while watching her afternoon soaps. She immediately came out onto the porch, and with hands on hips, yelled 'Get out of my flower bed', then turned and went back in the house.

I didn't realize until several years later, that I just might have saved my brother's life. While I was telling the story to my dad (I was grown, had my own apartment, and could run faster than him, I figured it wouldn't get any better than that) it hit me that Pookie's first kick into the house would have landed squarely in the middle of that picture window. Somewhere in the universe, somebody loves us.

Oh yeah - and supervise your children instead of relying on censors; that is their best protection.

frog (v.) To ball the fist in such a manner as to leave the knuckle of the middle finger protruding, thus concentrating the force of the punch into a smaller area.

Ergonomically efficient way to eliciting pain response. Demonstrates most eloquently what 'packs a punch' really means. Hurts like hell.

I realize that this is starting to sound like a dysfunctional family; it is a strange family, but it functions very well. We do more than hit hard (followed by an 'ow', then a guilty giggle or a return blow dealt by the offended party); we also work hard, play hard, hug hard, laugh hard - usually at ourselves. It is a good system.

facetious: Given to good humored wit; merry; sportive; jocular; bantering

A thick skin and a quick wit is a vital necessity to survive in my family. Nothing is sacred; everything is game.

My family is...ooh...ahh...lessee, umm...eccentric. Actually, 'whackadoo' is used more often, but I was trying to be PC. One of our common traits is that we love to play games. Any game. All the time. Word games, mathmatical puzzles, twenty questions, anything. It is a compulsion for all of us. Water basketball has only one rule: You may not drown your own teammates*. That was amended from 'You cannot drown your own teammates', because of the obvious arguable wording flaw. Jury is still out on the asterisk (*unless carried by a majority vote of fellow teammates, or in the case of only 1 other player left on the team, a majority vote by the opposing team). We also play LOTS of car games. One Christmas, we played eye-spy all the way across Kansas - almost everything was either white (anything outside the car), or maroon (interior of car), but we played anyway. There was a narrowly avoided beating of the spy over one round that lasted for nearly an hour (we also never give up) over something that was blue. It took forever to guess 'the driver's right eye', with the driver being the spy (Hey, I could see it in the rearview mirror, ok?). We have called a small truce over 'slug bug' since the new Beetles came out. It wears thin when you've been frogged in the arm so many times, you can no longer move it. But they do still count in the animal game (Name as many animals as you can see- anything that lets you name an animal counts; yeah, frogging counts too.). One of my favorites is one of the simplest. Be the first person to spot christmas lights lit up, and sound forth with shouts of 'christmas lights, christmas lights'. With a carload of kids, it is rollicking good fun (and drowns out my dad). You gotta love the holiday road trips. I gotta love this family - they are just too much fun not to. See ya in the pool (and bring a life jacket)!

meme: (pron. 'meem') A contagious idea that replicates by infecting human minds.
Examples of memes include melodies, slogans, fashion statements and phrases.

An idea or information pattern is not a meme until it causes someone to repeat it to someone else.

I have just recently learned this word. But the concept I have understood since grade school.
My little brother (I have two - both younger, but Pookie can not be called 'little' in any sense of the word, so he is my 'big' brother; Weasel is the youngest and shorter, so by default he gets called 'little'.) and I (yeah, this is still one sentence) play a game where we pick a word or phrase, and try to see how far we can get it into general use. If it gets used in a movie or on tv, that is the big score. Weasel's current pick is 'classic'. It is to be used as an exclamation when someone does something predictably stupid, peferably with a sarcastic tone. I want to get the president to use 'weasel tactics'. It would be used it in the context of 'Machiavellian', but with a little higher profile - taunting & flirting with disaster while pulling the strings. 'Weasel', because that is how little bro operates. It is lots of fun to watch. Wish me luck. I have a resounding 'HA!' riding on this.

Sabbatical
Relating or appropriate to the Sabbath as the day of rest.
- also see 'copout'

Have I reverted to my lackadaisical ways after only two days?
No, I think not. I am simply exploring leisure.
I did fritter away my day watching movies, surfing, and on IM all while fretting that I was somehow inadequate; but I think I will survive it (heh, more on that to come). I made some more decisions about dispensation of my belongings; to my surprise, I was especially harsh with my books. I have decided to add an mp3 player to my list of necessities for my trip. I listen to music every day. My life has a soundtrack, and I think I would feel lost without it. I have developed little 'rituals' I use when I grow weary, or feel sad. Music is a big part of those rituals. For example, a while back I had a harsh break up with a lover, so my brother took me on a road trip. He does things like that - finds me foundering, buoys me up, and sets my little boat on a new course. After spending the day perusing some of the finer auto junkyards in the tri-state area, I was still in a funk, so he whipped out plan B. Apparently plan B consisted solely of rapidly cruising all the radio stations at a high volume to try to provoke some kind of response out of me. Then I heard it. That unmistakable piano riff intro. And I knew. Gloria Gaynor was about to strike again. Now, just for a little background, my bro is 6' 3", and 265 lbs. of hammer daddy muscle (with a beer gut). But in spite of that (or maybe because), he has no qualms about belting out a disco song to rival any diva. I tried to resist. I really did. But one glance at my 10 year old nephew sitting in wild-eyed horror in the back seat, kicked me over the edge. I joined in at the beat intro, and by the second chorus, I was singing from all the way down in my toes - I was going to survive. God, I love my brother. And now, I proudly listen to disco while grinning ear to ear, and feeling invincible. Who cares what others think? Yup, gotta take the tunes with me.

Wanderlust A very strong or irresistible impulse to travel.

It has been hitting me hard lately. I catch myself spending more and more time staring out the window at a landscape of brown, white, & gray, and just focusing on the robin's egg sky. There is a journey in my near future, I am certain, but I do not know the full reason. It is not cabin fever, because I could get out and go places now, but I choose not to. I am evaluating all my possessions, mentally placing them in a 'store' or 'give away' pile.
I am hatching this idea in my head about spending the summer doing a bike tour of the U.S. It's HUGE, and I have been here all my life, but I have seen less than a quarter of it. My brother will most assuredly try to stop me. He will say it is not safe, where will you stay, how will you survive? I am preparing the answers to those questions before I give him a chance to ask them. I want to do it. I want to see more of it. I want to see the museums, and actually stand in places rather than read about them - meet the people, hear the different dialects, try the different foods. I want to ride across a desert. I want to stand on a mountain. I want to see the Pacific ocean. I know I will. Soon. I will be ready.

what is the purpose of this site?
it is about:
independence
life
self learning
freedom
challenging stereotypes
spiritual quest

gnostic: Of, relating to, or possessing intellectual or spiritual knowledge.
gnomic: Marked by aphorisms; aphoristic: gnomic verse; a gnomic style.
aphoristic: In the form of short, unconnected sentences; as, an aphoristic style.

Welcome to my journey.