So, this is Christmas

It's Christmas Eve. around 7pm and it's raining here in Knoxville, Tennessee.
I have had a less than satisfactory mushroom and swiss Hardee's Thickburger and small fry and sip of something they called raspberry tea but wasn't. I order a Medium fry but they jipped me out of it and the sweet tea. They were about to close and they jipped me instead of just being honest.
There is so very little joy in those peoples hearts, I suspect.
The Campbells Tomato Bisque was nice though.
A beautiful woman brought me some perfume and cookies. She's married and just my friend, so you Yentas can go back to Hanukkahing.
It was a lovely and thoughtful thing for her to do.

So this is Christmas, a holiday that I have to admit has long since lost most of its meaning to me. I will not have any family over, there is no family.
well that is not completely true, I have a brother and sister-in-law in Greensboro but they are there and I am here. My father lives in West Virginia with my step mother.
I will spend sometime with my mother and try to be grateful for that.

Once upon a time, in a far away land, Christmas was different with a large seemingly happy extended family who came to our house for Christmas. The four of us, myself, my father, my brother and my mother would share a pleasant idealistic Christmas morning in front of the tree. Those days fade away like mist in the coming day and I find myself looking forward to nothing, having never known love in my own life and having to stand forever on the fringes and watch all the other people find love and family and seemingly wonderful holidays to spend them together.

I no longer ask when will it be my turn.
When will I find and fall in love?
When will I find another family?
When will Christmas hold any special meaning for me again.

There is just nothing.
This year I won't have my dog to sit with.
I will drive home after doing what I do every Christmas Eve for the last 14 years, go to bed, pretend to not be sad or mad, and silently pray that another Christmas Day goes by with no more sadness or madness and that my extended family will be calm, since they are a real mess these days.

There are no gifts. No one to give any to.
Not totally true but than little is. I want to have a certain someone to give things that hold great meaning to and receive the same so that we can say I love you without words but in those gifts as I would imagine.

I am not that bad off.
I have people who care about me.
I have a home and a car and a job and electric power.
because of all this, I do remember the homeless and distraught.
I remember those who have to live with fear.
It makes me grateful, that I can come home alone with no fear other
than the ghosts which whisper up from my past condemning  future.

It's a little bit funny and a little bit mad.
a little bit good and a little bit sad.
I am grateful for all that I get and all that
I have had, but it doesn't change the way things
are much as Christmas and I are not the best
dancing partners so far.

I hope that all of you have it better, and I feel for all of you who have it far worse than me.
I hope that Christmas brings you joy or at very least a reprieve from your troubles.
However this blog finds you, know that I am with you, if you will have me be.

good night.
Godspeed.

and that is life according to Mike 

Cool Stuff

This is the closest thing to a transformer we can get… and you can actually buy this. Sure, it’s not as awesome as a semi-truck at first glance, but that makes the transformation of this humble van that much cooler.

Since the 70’s, VW van has lost its appeal, but this is the VW’s ticket for the future. Just like the original, it tends to people who are free spirited and longing for the great outdoors, but it’s designed for the age of world wide web, iEverything and composite alloys.

See what happens when you push one button on this thing. I can’t believe they  managed to cram all those things inside.

Assassin's Creed Unity Meets Parkour in Real Life

from a awesome group of filmmakers DevinSupertramp

Pentatonix,

this is older but features the abilities and talents very nice.

Here is a more recent showcase of there talent.

cool space stuff, from the European Space Agency.


Just some stuff I saw that i liked and wanted to share, the formatting has problems so I apologize for that but I am going to leave well enough alone then.

Facebook saps creativity and desire to be creative

As crazy as this may sound I am creative, I was born to be an artist or a writer or both but places like facebook while being social and fairly interactive just suck the desire to create anything meaningful out of me. 
Facebook is like alcoholism, I still drink and probably will drink as long as there is a facebook to go to. I do find inspiration there but it's like going to a bar and just having one shot of whiskey before leaving the bar and going back to being creative.
I just get sucked into whatever political nonsense one of my friends is going on about and then all my creativity gets lost and i surrender to World of Warcraft or Xbox and forget that I was ever the artist or writer or both.

Can I quit Facebook?
yes.
Will I quit Facebook?
no.
I need it. I need to master my use of it and make it work for me instead of the other way around.
Also, I am a facebookaholic (I may have made that up) but going cold turkey is not an option as I live in BFE and have little to no social interaction beyond my job.
I need people even in a setting as shallow and meaningless as Facebook. I need to make connections with people.

It's not all bad or all evil, it's just a matter of moderation.
I am going to try facebook at 2 hours a day (max)

I am going to write and be creative for at least 4 hours a day (min).
This is my new resolve and somewhere in all of this find my voice again.

some Advent cool and such stuff.

So here we are at Advent (think Episcopal Christmas -longer than one day - in which us -Episcopalians do weird things like make the world seem better) with acts of giving and receiving and loving instead of stormtrooper shopping and other acts of coldness in this season where we try to remember that a man was once given to this world in order to change it.

Being a Christian should mean more than talking about eternal life and things to do after you are dead. It should be about what you are doing while you are still drawing forth the breath of life and trying to make a better world for all people.
That's what it means to me, it why I chose this belief system and its a good thing if you want to believe that God chose me.

So this is Advent and while some of the world prepares for a single event they call Christmas, for me it is a time to stop and remember that there might just be a greater purpose out there and that might mean that the gift I give be more than some commercially purchased item that I have wrapped in some paper and presented to someone I would rather just spend some time with me more than the 28 LCD LED Monitor I don't really need.

So let's mark this Advent with music, video and song.