Azarnes returns to Har

Azarnes returns to Har

Azarnes

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Stolen from Johnny

[Dec. 7th, 2006|12:02 pm]

You are The Devil

Materiality. Material Force. Material temptation; sometimes obsession

The Devil is often a great card for business success; hard work and ambition.

Perhaps the most misunderstood of all the major arcana, the Devil is not really "Satan" at all, but Pan the half-goat nature god and/or Dionysius. These are gods of pleasure and abandon, of wild behavior and unbridled desires. This is a card about ambitions; it is also synonymous with temptation and addiction. On the flip side, however, the card can be a warning to someone who is too restrained, someone who never allows themselves to get passionate or messy or wild - or ambitious. This, too, is a form of enslavement. As a person, the Devil can stand for a man of money or erotic power, aggressive, controlling, or just persuasive. This is not to say a bad man, but certainly a powerful man who is hard to resist. The important thing is to remember that any chain is freely worn. In most cases, you are enslaved only because you allow it.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

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Uh, yeah.	[May. 24th, 2006\|08:18 pm]
what decade does your personality live in? quiz brought to you by lady interference, ltd
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Stolen from Johnny

[May. 4th, 2006|01:29 pm]

Hello

My gender is

active, admirer, bent, boi, bull dyke, butch, butchdyke, drag king, dyke, epicene, faggot, female-bodied, gender outlaw, male, sir, transmasculine

What's yours?

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This is brianspeak's fault	[Apr. 24th, 2006\|01:31 pm]
But it is fun, so participate. It begins: "INTERVIEW 1. Leave me a comment saying, "Interview me." 2. I will respond by asking you five questions of a very intimate and creepily personal nature. Or not so creepy/personal. 3. You WILL update your LJ with the answers to the questions. 4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the post. 5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions" brianskpeak asked me, so far: 1. Where are you on the gender spectrum I've never asked If it's too personal then...question 2 is when r u comin back to t.dot My response: Not too personal at all. I'm a female man. I have no intention of altering my body with surgery or hormones, but linguisitically (and seeing that gender is a socially constructed phenomenon) I like to move between 'he' and 'she' depending on the cultural circumstances. Mostly, I agree that the world sees me as female and allow them to do so, without any encouragement on my part. Some people who are better acculturated us 'he' when refering to me. My oldest friends (going back more than 25 years) call me brother. 2. When r u comin back to t. dot ? I assume that means Toronto? Just left, in fact, a few hours ago. Coming back on Friday to get Johnny; we are in Buffalo this weekend.
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Borrowed from Johnny	[Apr. 19th, 2006\|05:57 pm]
Ten years ago, it was early 1996. Take this survey, post the results, and see how many things have changed since then. Q1) How old were you? 28 Q2) What grade were you in? Graduated from college, not yet in grad school Q3) Where did you go to school? NA Q4) Where did you work? Hmn. Prima Pizza? Q5) Where did you live? Buffalo, NY Q6) How was your hair style? Oh, heck. Bad lesbian mullet? Q7) Did you wear braces? no Q8) Did you wear contacts? no Q9) Did you wear glasses? yes Q10) Who was your best friend? CJ, Margaret Smith, Cyd Cox Q11) Who was your girlfriend/boyfriend? Ex-wife. Q12) Who was your celebrity crush? In 1996? I don’t recall. That blond chick from Star Trek? Q13) Who was your regular-person crush? Don’t think I had one. Q14) Were you a virgin? In no sense of the word. Q15) How many piercings did you have? none. Q16) How many tattoos did you have? none. Q17) What was your favorite band/singer? Melissa Etheridge Q18) Had you smoked a cigarette yet? Yeah. Q19) Had you gotten drunk or high yet? Sure. Q20) Had you driven yet? Sure. Q21) If so which car? At that time, a beat up Chevelle donated to me by a Japanese exchange student, until the city towed it away. Q22) Which of your pets were still alive? none. Q23) Looking back, are you where you thought you would be in 1996? Thought I’d be married, and a professional of some sort (didn’t know I’d be a librarian yet) and hoped to be a writer. Though I’d have kids. Divorced, no kids. Now, I’m a published writer and a librarian, engaged, with the hope of children. I suppose I am where I thought I’d be, but not in any fashion I’d imagined.
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Not sure I did this right, but-	[Feb. 17th, 2006\|08:32 am]
brother in law Conan had this up, and I thought it was genius, so I stole it. Go here, indulge me. or help me learn my blind spots. Johari Window
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survey	[Feb. 10th, 2006\|11:23 am]
I'll be merciful. The long boring crap is behind the cut. ( Read more... )
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hee hee hee

[Feb. 10th, 2006|10:26 am]


	Dear Cupid, This year, I've had my ups and downs in the love department.
I painted a portrait to impress Sannion... but the portrait was of Johnny-class so it didn’t work quite as intended. I got drunk at a party and ran around naked and Johnny-class still makes fun of me. Furthericity and I had a sexy mud fight and I was victorious.
So, as you can see, it's been a hectic year. Can you please make Combatbootboy fall in love with me this Valentine's day? Sincerely, azarnes

Take this Quiz at QuizGalaxy.com
( or, take the 'adult' version at QuizUniverse.com )

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Doves, not just ice-cream bars anymore!	[Feb. 10th, 2006\|09:42 am]
I wanted to deface a non-violence sign this morning. Cover the sweet, peaceful blue silhouetted dove with barbecue sauce and hack it up like a Gaul on a rampage, like a Norseman gone bear-shirt crazy. Ber-sark. Berzerk. Wouldn’t it be lovely, once in a blue moon, get a free pass to pure madness? Here’s your axe, here’s your loincloth, go nuts. Sanity just poof- goes out, like a candle in a hurricane. Like a tiny white nonviolence candle, held against the wind at an outdoor peace rally or memorial service for a great social justice activist who died on a hunger strike in prison to commemorate the suffering of the children in refuge camps. Hand me the tofu but make it ironic. Really, have you ever seen a cat steal a piece of tofu? Cats will eat sock fuzz if they think it’s a spider. But they will not touch tofu. I’m just saying. I was just cruising along minding my own business, clenching my jaw on the way to work, after a night spent grinding my teeth in my sleep to keep pace with my stress levels and parade of phantasms that call themselves REM sleep, and it hit me. Look, I was just minding my own business, officer! Editing, working two jobs, looking for work, occasionally having a life, on weekends. Managing, thanks, even feel a little like an adult now and again. I wasn’t looking. Lord knows, Gods know, the long nights I’ve prayed for it, in the past- Muse, find me worthy! Baptize me in your bloody inspiration! Taurobolium my worthless mortal self. Nuthing. Silence of the Hams. So, I go back to being normal and work myself to death, as I suspect most of the world does. And, months later, when I’m reconciled to being where I am, inspiration wise, I get slapped upside the head by a Muse in a fool mood. Not foul. Fool. She has a hell of a sense of humor. My next book came and grinned like a eight year old holding a frog in my face. Look, I argued, I’m busy. Bills to pay. Taxes. I need new tires. I’m editing. I have to find a job. There’s that emigration business. I do not have time for this right now! Where were you when I begged on my knees for a voice whispering in the dark? Bupkes. You can’t argue with Her. You do as she says, or know that you’ll be half the human you ought to be. I submitted. The change was palpable immediately. Cyd said to me, after a few days of my being a joy to be around again, “You’re a much better person when you are writing.” Thanks. I know.
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Figures

[Jan. 23rd, 2006|10:14 pm]

Televangelist
You are 0% Rational, 100% Extroverted, 28% Brutal, and 57% Arrogant.

As the Lord as my witness, I swear upon the good book that you are indeed the TELEVANGELIST! Characterized by extreme arrogance, self-assurance, and extroversion, you would make a very charismatic leader (or a very despotic one). On top of that, you are also more intuitive than rational, predisposing you to a more spiritual or emotional outlook on life. Thus, you are thoroughly irrational. You also tend to be rather gentle and considerate of others' feelings. Clearly, you would make the perfect televangelist. You could easily fleece people of their money and their dignity like so many sheep. Emotional, extroverted, arrogant, and gentle, you annoy the hell out of people who have to listen to the feel-good, intuitive shit spewing from your mouth. Not only that, but people may look down on you as a self-centered asshat. So while you are gentle and genuinely care about others, it is quite clear that you still care about yourself MORE. Why is your personality flawed? Because you are too damned extroverted, emotional, and arrogant. So preach your irrational message, brotha-man! I assure you, no one will be listening. Except for a few bums. But they just want you to feed them crackers and wine.

To put it less negatively:

1. You are more INTUITIVE than rational.

2. You are more EXTROVERTED than introverted.

3. You are more GENTLE than brutal.

4. You are more ARROGANT than humble.

Compatibility:

Your exact opposite is the Spiteful Loner.

Other personalities you would probably get along with are the Hippie, the Starving Artist, and the Robot.

If you scored near fifty percent for a certain trait (42%-58%), you could very well go either way. For example, someone with 42% Extroversion is slightly leaning towards being an introvert, but is close enough to being an extrovert to be classified that way as well. Below is a list of the other personality types so that you can determine which other possible categories you may fill if you scored near fifty percent for certain traits.

The other personality types:

The Emo Kid: Intuitive, Introverted, Gentle, Humble.

The Starving Artist: Intuitive, Introverted, Gentle, Arrogant.

The Bitch-Slap: Intuitive, Introverted, Brutal, Humble.

The Brute: Intuitive, Introverted, Brutal, Arrogant.

The Hippie: Intuitive, Extroverted, Gentle, Humble.

The Televangelist: Intuitive, Extroverted, Gentle, Arrogant.

The Schoolyard Bully: Intuitive, Extroverted, Brutal, Humble.

The Class Clown: Intuitive, Extroverted, Brutal, Arrogant.

The Robot: Rational, Introverted, Gentle, Humble.

The Haughty Intellectual: Rational, Introverted, Gentle, Arrogant.

The Spiteful Loner: Rational, Introverted, Brutal, Humble.

The Sociopath: Rational, Introverted, Brutal, Arrogant.

The Hand-Raiser: Rational, Extroverted, Gentle, Humble.

The Braggart: Rational, Extroverted, Gentle, Arrogant.

The Capitalist Pig: Rational, Extroverted, Brutal, Humble.

The Smartass: Rational, Extroverted, Brutal, Arrogant.

If you like good humor, be sure to take my girlfriend's Mullet Test, because it is much more awesome than this test.</i>

My test tracked 4 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:

You scored higher than 0% on Rationality

You scored higher than 96% on Extroversion

You scored higher than 25% on Brutality

You scored higher than 65% on Arrogance

Link: The Personality Defect Test written by saint_gasoline on Ok Cupid, home of the 32-Type Dating Test

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Stolen from Johnny

[Jan. 11th, 2006|01:26 pm]

You fit in with:
Spiritualism

Your ideals are mostly spiritual, but in an individualistic way. While spirituality is very important in your life, organized religion itself may not be for you. It is best for you to seek these things on your own terms.

80% spiritual.
80% reason-oriented.

Take this quiz at QuizGalaxy.com

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January and Aqua-net	[Jan. 5th, 2006\|04:27 pm]
Sometimes, I feel like such an alien to life. Life is too broad. Culture? Yes, that’s more it. Culture. It gets to feeling like every choice a person could make for a Normal life, I’ve done the left hand turn. My experience is so outside the boundary of a normal life, yet here I am in the nation of Normal, raised to speak the language and act like I belong. I can be good at it- I can make it seem like I’m as much of the soil as a Pelasgian, I’m from the Old Country, I’ve been here since the grasshopper came. I can smile ruefully with stories about growing up in a small town, growing up female, having a crazy family (or one just slightly off; most are) and so on. I get it, I sympathize, I understand. I laugh, with recognition and warmth and affection. Then the costume starts itching, and the mask slips, the music is too loud, the make-up too garish, everything is just a bit off- I’m outside again. I made up that part about make-up, I don’t wear any. That’s part of the problem. I have never, other than a brief, despair fueled try in 7th grade, to not live forever as an outcast. This, culture said, holding out a can of Aqua-net and blue eye shadow, are what being a woman is about. Go, daughter, and learn. I gave it a stab, not because I was drawn to it, or to the power those symbols represented- power of attraction, which is status to a teenager. Or adult. Power of attracting males. I tried, because by seventh grade it was crystal clear to me that I was no longer acceptable. Certain personal abnormalities and quirks you can get away with, or even trade on, when you are younger. Its fine to have personality as a girl in 6th grade. It will make you want to end your life in 7th. Don’t try this at home: say to a girl in 7th grade, you have a nice personality. You might as well spit on them. You just told them they cannot stand within the rating scale of their peers. Even the consolation prize is an insult. Now make it worse. Recognize that, by this age, girls are desperately trying to figure out who they are, how they fit with their group, and how the adult world can be managed. Without being chewed up and spit out. Keep in mind, that a girl by this will have experience with men, in her family and outside it. Likely, she’s already encountered the ugly facts of being female in the world. And, likely she’s absorbed the weight of silence- you cannot talk about what it means to be female in a world of men. Rein it back in, before that horse bolts on me. I stopped being a part of my peers’ social development in 7th grade. My life existed in a kind of stasis. I was well aware that my life was marginal, and I had no hopes of ever being anything else. Friendship, I had. That I got good at, and it saved my life. I have those same friends today, and I thank any God you care to name for them. It did get better as I got older, left that small town and went to college. I got exposed to a broader run of humanity. I had the experiences my former peers might have had as teenagers. For a while there, I had a social footing, a set of experiences I could discuss with my peers. Then I graduated, worked, went to grad school, and worked. I find myself working in a suburb, with a raft of normal people. Nice, sure. Pleasant, sometimes. Better trained than the 7th grade equivalents; they know enough to pretend everything’s peachy having me around. But I am still an alien. Women my age talk about: their husbands. Their children. More than anything else. I’m not in possession of either. You know, spouse-equivalent doesn’t always fly in idle conversation. So I get strangely neutered. My life vanishes. I borrow one, so I can talk about it. My weekend was spent in Toronto, with my lover. I talk about the kids I live with, the children of a friend. They are currency- I can say that the baby was up all night crying, suddenly I’m human and have a story everyone can empathize with. My Aqua-net, and my blue eye shadow. Even though I dress exclusively in men’s clothing. Even though I am ‘out’. Even though I couldn’t pass as straight, or even female, some days. I need a conversational crutch to get through the grind of being dropped down into a Normal existence. Janus, the Roman god, had two faces- he could gaze in both directions at once. This is his month. He was lord of beginnings and endings, of doorways and gates. Progression from one state to another. I know how he feels.
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Fictional Amour	[Dec. 22nd, 2005\|09:51 am]
I was thinking about the difference between real love, and fictional love last night. What makes a good story is conflict, suffering- brooding, angst, all that rot. Conversely, what makes a good real life love affair – connection, warmth, respect, understanding, are not the foundation for a good story. I’m a very, very lucky fellow- I have the real life love affair- passionate, honorable, connected, respectful. Not an angst ridden nightmare. So these notes are for fictional characters, or people trying to live like fictional characters. Ok, fine, they are for me ten years ago. If your new love object is troubled, filled with pain and unable to escape an old tragedy, offer them a firm handshake and therapy coupons. In fiction, pain is enticing. In person, pain is hideous and tragic and unacceptable. Nobody wants it. You do not need a tragedy to make you interesting. Particularly an unsolved tragedy. I’m not looking for the one who is suffering the most. What does impress me is someone who has suffered (as indeed anyone over six generally has) and who has developed good coping skills, a life of their own, and a sense of humor. Tortured sucks. Adaptive and gentle rocks. “I will treat you harshly, but I can’t help it, I’ve been in such pain as you cannot imagine...” yeah, bullshit. I can imagine. I can go you one better, more than likely. Do not be unable to form or maintain long-term friendships- that’s just a bad sign all around. Here’s a tip- everyone has suffered. Now tell me how you’ve grown from it, learned from it, created yourself as a better, kinder, stronger, more loving person from it, and we can talk. If you want to impress me, show me compassion, for yourself, for me, for the world. Not hatred, not bitterness. Compassion. I’ve suffered, so I know how things can hurt, so I’m gonna be nice to people and help out folks who are currently suffering. There you go, you got my attention. Be kind to your friends. Be generous, and impulsive, and loving. That makes me hot.
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Administration betting pool	[Dec. 21st, 2005\|04:33 pm]
I'm a librarian at a small private business college. In the four years I've been here, I've gone through five changes of Deans, and four Campus Directors. The last Dean of Instruction, my direct boss, a man I charitably called The Undertaker, resigned in June. They've made no move to replace him as yet. The fill-in Dean of Student Services just resigned three minutes ago. She made it nine months, and we had an informal pool going to see how long she'd make it. We now have no Deans. To top it off, in a move of stunning arrogance and crassness, the email with all the attached discussion of how to frame it (when she agreed to be portrayed as leaving for 'personal and family reasons') went out to all staff, and had to be recalled. Less humanity than a pool of mollusks. My Christmas bonus was a tote bag, with the school logo. Happy Solstice! Maybe I will get hired elsewhere for the New Year.
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Kiddie Crack	[Dec. 21st, 2005\|09:50 am]
I haven't been around much lately, between work (with my assistant librarian gone) other work, editing, and holidays in both countries. So I thought I'd hang out at the house last night, and watch a movie with the adults. Cyd's cousin was in town. Morgan went to bed like clockwork, the kid never varies. But Rowan would not settle down. Then her dad let her have a cookie. I swear that thing was Red Bull in crumbly form. Rowan is 18 months, she isn't ready for that! It looked like a harmless, innocent little treat. But within fifteen minutes, Rowan was climbing on the coffee table, where she proceeded to dance and sing for the first hour of the film. That was interspersed with jumping on the dog (also visiting) throwing her brother's toys, stealing my book, and generally running around like an overwound top. The kid was in rare form. Earlier in the evning, she'd been trying to master her latest linguistic challenge- "Ooh la la." She'd heard someone say it, and spent the rest of the evening trying it out. First it was a sort of uuuh, then the secondary notes were added- uuuh le le. It devolved into a howl later on, just a pure owooooooooo! that she'd already learned, from Johnny. Part of the time dancing on the table was howling. Her mom and dad had martinis. Rowan naturally wanted what they had, and zeroed in on the fragile glasses. She'd make a beeline for them if they were set down, and ask "Have bite? Have bite?" Her request for whatever food related item you might posses. She was denied. But later, when the glasses had been moved to let her dance on the table, one ended up on the floor by the couch. Empty of martini, at this point. However, the baby found it- and proceeded to try to drink from it. She spent some time chewing on an ice cube, then cried when the glass was taken away from her. She did crash eventually, but I have never seen such a show from her. I want one of those cookies.
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	[Dec. 21st, 2005\|03:42 am]

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Birthday	[Dec. 19th, 2005\|09:54 am]
Started the morning by going down to the basement, and finding the laundry I'd put in the drier the night before hadn't actually run, and was still wet, and ice cold. So I ran the drier, and chose other things to wear for work. Got to my car, parked in a small lot down the street where I'd been parking for, oh, ten years without a hitch, and had a $50 ticket. Made it to work, and got swamped immediately. Spent the day putting out fires. Was informed that I'll need to stay even later than expected tomorrow on my already 13 hour shift. But my best friend remembered my birthday, and sent out a warm message saying that he wouldn't be the same without me. So go ahead and snipe at me, Life! Hailstones, nothing more. I'm a Sagittarius, dammit.
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Anger	[Dec. 12th, 2005\|09:55 am]
Getting angry is like getting drunk. I find myself saying that much more these days. Like doing shots of bourbon, back in the day. I know that what I am doing will alter my perceptions, make me sick afterward and a bit weak, but during, it is hard not to feel the power of the heat. Hate/heat. Used to think I didn't get angry all that often. I started noting, in the last four years, how much easier I am to anger, and how immediate it can be. How strong. Fire along the veins, clenched jaw, an uplifting rage for days, until it bleeds off. I don't feel as ill afterward, either. I ascribed this to a consequence of trauma and growing up. Just now, I had a thought that made me cold. Well, cold-er, it is December in Buffalo. I've always been this angry. I just repressed it, for the majority of my life, and it came out as depression. Cold rage just sucks. No uplift, no heat, just the sickness. It doesn't pass, either. It accumulates, like the Dead Sea. Try going fishing there, and finding anything to sustain you. So what I've been noting, in the last four years, is my ability to get angry outwardly, and not keep it all directed at myself, until I roll into the depression and never come out. I like the heat. Burns things down that get in the way. Clears out the refuse of life. In that sense, it can be healing, and a positive experience. All that Shiva Nataraja stuff. But I have to admit, I like the heat.
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Marriage Rights	[Dec. 2nd, 2005\|09:56 am]
It has begun. Worldwide, the shift in cultural views on same sex marriage is happening. South Africa just became the fifth nation to offer its gay and lesbian citizens full civil rights. Sometimes, we get drunk and sated on history, and think that everything has already happend, passed, come to its fulfilment. Nothing new under the sun. History is dead. Hear that? Brothers and sisters, that is the drumbeat of history. In North America, Canada offers marriage rights. The United States, the country of my birth, is fouling itself to rush backwards against the change of history, and write as much discrimination into law as it can, before history catches up. Plenty of people fought the ending of slavery, hanging on by their fingernails to the system that kept them in power and kept discrimination enshrined. Who speaks openly, positively of slavery today? Women have the right to vote. Is anyone working to take it back from them? We're in a spasm of reactionary politics. It will get uglier before it clears. It always does. But I think it inevitable that the US will wake up, perhaps long after the rest of the world, and look back with shame upon the current discrimination. History is already being written.
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Living in two worlds	[Nov. 30th, 2005\|06:34 pm]
I like having a home. I make myself at home easily, the way any dog does. My toys, my place, my blanket, my person. Mostly that last one. I get real lonesome without the people. I hate moving. Its a psychological distress for me. Its been more than four years since I moved last, and the thought of it still grips me with a quick terror. Now I'm living in two places. I feel like I never stop moving. I've got anti-nomad sickness. I don't yearn for the open road, the broad sweep of the desert under a summer moon, the highway rolling under me, the displacement of leaving home to go home. This part of the world is home to me- western New York and Southern Ontario, the same beautiful hills and orchards, the smell of grapes in the fall, the sere and elegant beauty of trees gone black and naked before the snowfall. It hurts my heart looking at it, the way no other landscape ever has. The desert numbed me. What started out with snarling antipathy wore down to brute survival. If god painted a picture, it'd be the sun breaking through the gunmetal clouds over Lake Ontario, and the city of Toronto lit up with last long red fire, all the glass towers burning, as you roll into town. The Flame of the North. Pointed and pricked with snow. Then the morning, the alarm. The disbelief, bargaining with time- five more minutes. Knowing I won't sleep, I'm just staying in bed for the warmth of the arms around me, five more minutes of that sleeping form pressed up to me. Five more minutes of feeling like I'm at home, before the day owns me. I'm a good soldier. I shrug, and rise. Jacket, scarf, boots, backpack, coffee. Car still parked in front of the Kit-Kat store. Strapped in, fired up, back to the highway. Running across the two hours between one world and another. Back to the Peace Bridge, and that one moment when you hang beteen Canada and the US, over the Niagara River. Customs. Declare myself- I declare myself often. And I go back to work.
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