Another poem

This one is one I wrote a while back, and there is actually a melody for it as well, which I obviously can't share on a blog. This one's a sonnet, so if I wanted, I could take the same tune and apply it to any sonnet, since they share a rhythmic template. I like this one better than the last one I posted because it has rhythm, rhyme, and structure, and yet still conveys a message.

The Sweetest Thing

The winter frost makes patterns on my soul
For three long moons I put my heart away
What’s left is but a hungry gaping hole
There’s nothing I can offer, do or say
And so I hibernate and wait for spring
I take myself and store me all away
I wait for all the warmth that March will bring
The winter took the sweetest thing away

Feel not for me the same angst filled sorrow
I feel, now sure of what’s to come for me
This is an opportunity to grow
I won’t call out for help a silent plea
I find my strength inside myself today
To live life while the sweetest thing’s away.

One Person

Quiet, serene, in a little corner of the world
Lies a pool of water so calm and clear
A mirror, displaying the splendors of the sky
A window to a paradise below

One wave, one simple little ripple
The calm can endure and overcome
Another and the mirror breaks
And the world below goes into hiding

O! The despair! Splendor destroyed, dashed!
The garbled ruination of golden promise
Patches of skylight, shreds of dreams
Reminders of what was had and lost

But lo, all it takes is one sure hand
A guide to lift chins, set sights high again
Or to take one below, beneath the waves
To see clearly that the treasure holds strong

One person to obscure
One person to reveal
Take the guiding hand
And leave the waves behind

Calais, Zetes and Chione

Last night, in LotRO, my Lore-master character earned her pet eagle. I am allowed to name these pets pretty much whatever I want, but naming pets can be difficult. I like short, easy to pronounce names, and my one attempt at naming a pet with Sindarin nomenclature (befitting Middle-Earth) fell flat, and I ended up renaming that pet. In LotRO, there are also special amulets that change the appearance of your pet, in effect giving you another pet (cosmetically). Each appearance of a pet can be named individually, and it turns out that I had access to two amulets that change my eagle's appearance, so I had to think of 3 names for my new pet(s). Traditionally, my pets that share a species also share the first letter of their names (because I'm dorky that way), but for my eagle, I wanted to do something a little different. I ended up naming them after figures from classical Greek mythology. My eagles' names are Calais, Zetes and Chione.

Calais and Zetes were twin brothers who travelled with Jason and the Argonauts. They rescued Phineas from the harpies and were rewarded with wings. When these brothers met an untimely death, they were transformed into birds. I thought these would be cool names to give my eagles. Then I found out I could make myself another amulet, so I had to think of a third eagle name. After some digging around, I found out Calais and Zetes had two sisters: Cleopatra and Chione. Cleopatra is a name that has been done to death, so I read up on Chione, and it turns out she has a bird-related story also. Chione was beautiful - so beautiful, in fact, that two gods came and, er, canoodled with her in the same night. She ended up giving birth to twins as a result. Anyways, she preferred her beauty to that of the goddess Artemis, and was summarily put to death, at which point she was transformed into a hawk, which, while not an eagle, is still a pretty cool bird.

These stories - especially Chione's story - really make me wonder about the ancient Greeks. On one hand, their civilization was a time of huge breakthroughs in rational thought, but on the other hand, people were making up stories like this and other people were believing them. I sometimes wonder if there were some secret society that had some kind of contest going with prizes for the most ludicrous story that people actually believed.

Democracy

This is how things should work.

(from xkcd.com)

Optimization

This is, in my mind, a pretty simple concept, but I think it is one people don't think about. When people make decisions, I have concluded that they always make whatever decision is perceived to be the best course of action at the moment the decision is made. It doesn't matter whether the decision is, ultimately, a good decision or a bad one, but to the person who made the decision, all the factors were weighed in some fashion and a conclusion was reached.

Here is an example: suppose there's a 16-yr old boy who is approached by his friends to go smoke behind the grocery store with them. Depending on a multitude of factors (social acceptance, health, parental control, ethics, money, etc), coupled with an importance he internally places on each of those factors, he may or may not decide to join them. If he has heard a lot of horror stories about cigarette smoke, or he knows someone who suffers their ill effects, he may place high importance in deciding 'no', but on the other hand, perhaps he is desperate for social acceptance - he might then place high importance on 'yes' too. Whether he's consciously thinking of any of this is irrelevant - I argue that the process still happens whether he's cognizant of it or not. Ultimately a decision will be reached, and it will depend on all the factors at that given moment. He may later change his mind, or have regrets about whichever decision he makes, but at the exact instant he arrives at a decision, it is optimal according to his brain, as an accumulation of all his prior experiences, thoughts and feelings.

I like to keep this in mind when people come to conclusions that I think are baffling. I know that there is always more information that goes into any decision than I am, strictly speaking, privy to. I think that if more people understood this concept, then tolerance would increase world-wide. It all ties in with empathy - seeing things from another's perspective. It's just that in this regard, you can't always do that.

If someone does something that you perceive to be sub-optimal, then it may be time to analyze the situation. For example, let's go back to that 16-yr old boy. If I were, say, his mother, and I found out he elected to smoke with his friends, then I would try to discuss this with him why he made that decision. I might not successfully get the truth out of him (either because he doesn't know it himself, or because he decides he'd rather not say, or he's feeling guilty about it, or whatever else), but I would be against his decision and try to tip his mind's scale the other way. I might try to add more weight to the 'no' side of that prior decision, or lessen the weight on the 'yes' side, that he may one day change his mind and quit smoking.

People try to persuade other people all the time this way, either by adding weight to one side, or by taking weight away from the other side. I think in this way, people are pretty decent at working together to optimize in a social sense. Of course, people also try to 'look out for number one', so it's good to have your wits about you when someone is trying to persuade you to make decisions a certain way. Society is also shaped by balancing scales like this - every rule, convention, and custom is a result of a conglomeration of a meeting of these internal scales. It is important that we, as a society, revisit our old decisions when they start to chafe, to see whether there is anything we can add or subtract from the scales of decisions past. This is how slavery was outlawed, this is how women claimed their right to vote, this is how revolutions occur. This is how we grow as people and as a society.

Games for Girls?

Okay, here is a prime example of meaningless segregation: Ultimate Games for Girls 5. It insinuates that games otherwise are for boys, which is absurd. Further, if any boys wanted to play these games, they'd be emasculated for it - not really a great marketing tactic. Now let's take a good look at the games they think are for girls: Family Restaurant, Let's Ride, Fetch, Miss Popularity, and Pet School. Dig in, everybody; it's a veritable buffet of stereotypes! What kind of message does this send to girls? Games for girls: Fetch. Seriously. Family Restaurant - because if it's about food preparation, it has 'girl' written all over it - especially if 'family' is also involved. Hey girls, 'Let's Ride'! (I can't get over this). I can't believe that people buy this, but they must, because this is the 5th one they've made! I know the gaming market is generally geared towards boys, but this is no way to try and balance things out. I suspect games would be far more popular if they weren't geared toward specific crowds. Look at the popularity, for instance, of the Nintendo Wii - there's nothing divisive about the Wii; in fact, I think that they're trying to be as inclusive as possible. But this 'Games for Girls'? Come on, people, don't stoop to this! The games themselves may or may not be any good, but for goodness' sake, don't package them in such an ridiculous manner. Don't reward this kind of nonsense and maybe they'll stop doing it. That's my hope, anyways.

Keeping Up

It looks like I've dropped the ball (again) on this blogging thing. I know I was going to try to update more frequently, but honestly, sometimes I just don't have anything of merit to post. I've been filling my time with Christmas shopping, Christmas parties, Christmas concerts and Christmas decorating, which there isn't much to say about - the concerts and parties have been good, and the shopping and decorating have been a bit of a hassle, but nothing in particular jumps out that's worth mentioning because the only people who would care are the very same people who were in attendance. And of course, I can't talk about the shopping, because there are secrets involved, and don't be fooled - there are no secrets on the internet.

When I'm not Christmassing it up, I'm still playing LotRO (and I'm Christmassing it up there too). I've been trying to act with Christmas cheer and good spirits, and I've been trying to be generous and thoughtful to those I encounter in Middle Earth - moreso than usual, since 'tis the season and all. I have my own goals and ambitions, some with self-imposed deadlines, that I've been frantically working towards, but if someone needs me, I've been shelving that to go help them, and sometimes that works toward my own ends too, whether I knew that it would at the time or not. Things have a way of working out in the end.



This is a picture of the Bards of a Feather, the virtual band my character is a part of. This outfit is specially designed for the holiday concert line-up we have planned. In LotRO, you can play free-hand by hitting certain keys on your keyboard (this is customizable) while in 'music mode', or you can play music files that are written in abc notation. The musicality of this is somewhat limited in that there are no provisions for dynamics - everything is played at the same volume. Even still, quite a number of songs have been formatted into abc notation, and the results can be quite nice. I've tried my hand at transcribing various songs, with varying degrees of success, but for this Christmas season, I took it upon myself to create an original arrangement of Jingle Bells - the next step, I guess, would be to move into original composition. Technically, I've already done this, but I would like to do this for multi-part arrangements. It's very exciting, and I'm feeling inspired, so perhaps with some of my Christmas time off, I can set to work on this.