HELO is other people

Perhaps I have this site figured out. I should write a single paragraph when the mood takes me, but no more, never any politics - though, you can say what you will about Hillary, I'm pretty sure that she would not have started a war with Canada - and no more arguing with online phantoms either, the straw men and women of the apocalypse. I will leave the egregiously categorical assumptions of 3rd rate or wave feminism to their own. Why battle like for like. I'll just make observations about the world that can I see, far from the computer and television screens. The internet seemed like such a promising thing only twenty years ago. Now it merely resembles the television, except that everybody has their own network suited to their shared preferences and sensibilities, and the advertisements are interactive rather than requiring any specific consumer action. Soon enough the government will pass a law that will allow advertisers to pull money from your bank account if they can detect that your eyes lingered on their ad long enough. It will be a form of consensual purchasing. Why not charge people for looking at things? It just makes good American sense. Museums do it, every sport does it, television does it, the internet does it, why not advertisers? Let's tear down the pay walls and institute pay retina-scanners. You'll have to go to court to argue that your gaze was inadvertent or accidental. You'll need to prove that your eyes sometimes look at thing unintentionally. Oh, I just said no more of that. Did I? Perhaps my cynical view of the world is not a response to anything specific. How is one to possibly know in these matters? We live within the miasmic whirlpool of response. Our minds are made that way. I should charge people to provide them with "a peaceful internet experience, with home installation included." I'll just swing by and unplug their router for them and collect the cash. Persistent stimuli is why I never question that anybody drinks or drugs themselves stupid. I only question how some people don't. I would have started a new paragraph by now, under what might be called normal circumstances, where I can write to my heart's content, or until my mind sickens me witless. We are, each of us, lone floating internets of sorts, walking globes of interconnected networks struggling to agree on a communication protocol with which to share something, anything. Each, an ACK to every HELO. EOD. 

.

Confidences

(CS)

The world is filled with cliches and love. It all gets to be so much. I wish to crawl inside of myself, if only to avoid the poorly framed sentiment of others. Sometimes I do. There are still some who would try to make me feel guilty for lying in bed all day, watching old films, napping as needed, rewinding the narrative to where I drifted off, only to drift off again, enjoying the leisureliness of time that the childless might call boredom in their many endless hours of luxury.

. 

Happy 6.5

Today is the boy's birthday, sort of. It's the day of his birthday party. We agreed to give him a summer celebration this year because his birthday is on January 7th. The joyful trappings of being the only child of an only child. His mom, I mean. She is one of many only children in my life - one of my close friends, my mother, my son. I have often thought of myself as an only child, mostly because I thought family was something to be escaped, and at times it was, and I did. 

I have not always held the healthiest of opinions concerning some things. 

Anyway, too late to worry about most of that now. We must make a trip to the store for last-minute needs. Yesterday there was an afternoon visit to Costco. I have been feeling ill for a few days, even took a day and a half off from work this week, a rarity for me. Today I must spend energy wisely and throughout the day. It will be the first day above 90 degrees this year. I'm not quite sure which camera to bring.

The party is already a hit. We scheduled it to coincide with his graduating of Kindergarten and invited his many young friends, so the RSVPs have been simply rolling in. He's a popular and gregarious kid. My mother, the only child, used to say that I was that way also when I was young. Something changed. 

Something changed. 

.