A Rain of Frogs

I would like to thank both Paul and Art for saying the things I am having so much trouble articulating today. Dig deep, misused reader, and find the truth therein.

Hello darkness, my old friend
I’ve come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence

In restless dreams I walked alone
Narrow streets of cobblestone
‘Neath the halo of a street lamp
I turned my collar to the cold and damp
When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence

And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more
People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening
People writing songs that voices never share
And no one dared
Disturb the sound of silence

“Fools”, said I, “You do not know
Silence like a cancer grows
Hear my words that I might teach you
Take my arms that I might reach you”
But my words, like silent raindrops fell
And echoed
In the wells of silence

And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made
And the sign flashed out its warning
In the words that it was forming
And the sign said, “The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls”
And whispered in the sounds of silence

I can see through you and your strife
For the first time I can see the trappings
that have held me down all my dark short life
I can see the light beyond the wall

The wall that’s always been the end
of my world and end of my thought
and the end of the joy dreams send
and the spike on which my soul is caught.

Now I’ll cast off all the emotional chains
that everyone pulls to hold me down
and I won’t spare any of you the pain
you reaped or heartache that you’ve sown.

Let me make this spectacularly clear. A Rain of Frogs is NOT a design blog. It never has been, and it never will be. If you want to discuss design, head on over to this site, set up an account, and start a discussion about it. Yes, the site is ugly, but I also know for a fact that a far better version is on its way.

Now on to bigger and better things.

Lately I’ve been experiencing a level of stress I’m not used to. It’s not that high-pressure sort of stress that makes your heart race and your muscles ache from the adrenaline overdose. It’s the other kind. The kind that keeps you up at night even if you’re not an insomniac.

Lately people have been telling me how I should feel (or how I shouldn’t feel), and that’s been seriously pissing me off.

I coach baseball, rookie level (seven and eight year olds). When we lose a game, people tell me to relax, because it’s just about fun, right? Of course it’s all about fun. but losing sucks, and damn it, I’l allowed to feel bad about that for a few minutes.

Or something happens with my kids. Lately they’ve really been getting under my skin. It’s because it’s almost summertime and it’s difficult for them to focus on anything. I totally get that. Hell, I have trouble sitting in the office when its summery and warm outside. But christ in a sidecar, do I need every person I know telling me that it’s all normal and that I should just ignore it?

Yeah, maybe I should, but maybe I can decide how to feel all by myself too. It appears that I’m not allowed to feel bad about anything, that I’m not allowed to be mad, or sad, or frustrated, or anything without being told I’m feeling the wrong way.

Screw that. Sometimes I just want to feel crappy, and I think it’s my right to feel that way. Maybe if everyone would just let me feel bad for ten minutes without telling me that I’m wrong to feel that way, I’d be able to get it out of my system and move on to being the happy, cheery person everyone around me seems to require me to be.

Maybe all those people telling me how I should feel should get their own heads out of their asses and take a look at their own feelings before telling me how to feel.

An Historical Downpour is a new featurette of Rain. It won’t be common, but once in a while I will feature something I wrote on a different blog under a penname. I hope you enjoy.

Originally posted as “Licking the toilet” at 10:06AM on April 16, 2004.

Why do people feel the need to swear in online public forums? It’s not like it makes them seem “cool” like when we were all nine, and using the F-word was as exciting as stealing a cigarette from a parent or uncle and choking ourselves to death with it while huddled down by the parks and rec. shed.

Lots of us are adults now, and many of us know full well that this sort of language has a time and a place. We don’t swear when Mr. Jenkins the VP of operations visits from head office. And a lot of us still respect our parents enough not to swear in front of them.

Don’t misunderstand me, in person I swear a lot. I’ve been told I have a heck of a mouth on me, and there’s not a marine out there I can’t keep up with when it comes to creative cussing. I know. I’ve been drinking with my cousin and his buddies, and they ARE marines. But it only happens in situations where it is appropriate.

To me, public online forums are not places for profanity. These are places frequented by children. While it may be true that these children already know the words (mine certainly do), its also likely that their parents won’t approve of a place that allows free use of profane language.

There’s an old adage that applies here:

“If you have to swear to get your point across, you probably don’t have a point.”

Yesterday the minority Canadian government survived a non-confidence vote by the slimmest of all possible margins, one single vote cast by the Speaker of the House, a vote which traditionally supports the status quo.

With a vote tally of 153 to 152 supporting the government, the opposition, still licking its wounds and trying desperately to maintain a fingernail grip on the moral high ground, is claiming that the government (and I quote) “was hardly an hearty endorsement of the majority of parliamentarians.”

This is completely true. What the opposition is completely failing to note is that it wasn’t exactly a hearty endorsement of the oppositions attempt to oust the government and install their own pointy-headed brand of corruption. The opposition must realize it has no clear mandate to bring the government down.

What they don’t get is that Canadians think all politicians are corrupt. The difference between the Liberals and the Conservatives is that the Conservatives are going to strip us of gay marriage, and put abortion back on the national agenda in addition to being corrupt!

The Conservative party failed, and it was a significant failure. Support for the obviously corrupt Liberal party has actually risen, primarily in the Greater Toronto Area and the rest of Ontario, which accounts for a large portion of the electorate. By claiming the moral high ground, the Conservatives appealed to the Canadian sense of fairness and morality, instead of showing us exactly what was in it for us.

The Liberals were a lot smarter. They appealed to our wallets.