Single's Awareness Day 2014

On this day of Singles Awareness here in the United States I note that I have been alive post-partum for 526 months and of those I have been alone and single for 495 months.

I am beginning to recognize and may have to accept that I might never again experience the sort of amazing multiple layers of love I felt for two different people in the 2000's which were my first serious forays into any sort of emotional intimacy and romance in my entire life. The first one was a one-sided emotional affair for me with an amazing (in so many ways) but also extremely messed up young woman (whom I loved so much it hurt) who did adore me as a dear friend (and we remain dear friends to this day). The other one was a rebound relationship from that first one and was also my first ever romantic relationship, period, and it was with someone half my age at the time.

Now that I am in my 40's I realize my youth is ending and I may never again experience youthful love and have it be requited and consummated. My life has been a strange and mostly solitary journey that I am grateful to be undertaking but it is periodically tinged with a bit of loneliness and longing for love. To quote Selina Kyle a.k.a. "The Cat Woman" in the movie The Dark Knight Rises, "I'm adaptable". I will endure and survive and I will derive profound meaning from my life. I do not need another person to complete me. However, I do desire a companion and compliment and help-meet and soul-mate and lover.

It is thoroughly untrue what they say about one not being able to miss what one has not experienced. I am painfully aware of what I feel I have missed and am missing now. I will be patient and wait for God's provision.... regardless of what He does or does not provide and when if at all. My solitude has forced me to become emotionally self-sufficient and I am developing into a complete person all by myself. This is a good consequence of my ongoing status.

On the flip side of this equation is the fact that God has not given me the gift of celibacy which for me is therefore an unnatural and unhealthy state of existence. Consequently, my ongoing celibacy is a white knuckle experience wherein I find myself daily holding on for dear life baring this cross all the while being naturally wired by God to be anything but this sort of person. I am in an ongoing quandary, but I will continue to trust God because things always seem to ultimately work out best when I do and not work out well when I do not.

Going back to the wonderful cinematic character of Selina Kyle as portrayed masterfully by Anne Hathaway, she clearly is emotionally self-sufficient and rather cynical about men and relationships and seems to have given up on relationships apart from using men. Yet, by the end of the movie she has unexpectedly met her match and her soul-mate in the form of her nominal nemesis. Let's see if I receive an unexpected and wonderful surprise from God in the form of someone as equally well-matched to me as that fictional union.

How To Satisfy A Woman... Is Rocket Science!

Sunset Above The Clouds

My big sis by another mother, Linsis, found this and posted it on Twitter a little while ago... provenance unknown, author unknown, but titled "Sunset Above The Clouds" and clearly captured from an aircraft at a tropical latitude.

Are Liberals Inherently Racist?

One of my white, female, knee-jerk Liberal acquaintances on Facebook posted the graphic below on her Wall which I found just a short time ago. Upon seeing it I was amazed and stupefied by its contents from start to finish. This is so rich that it seems almost cartooonishly Onion-esque... but it's fer realz! In its caption below I respond to its contents.

"Genetically-inherited ignorance and racism"? WOW, what could be more racist than that? How is that any less racist than the Bell Curve or suggestions that black people are genetically predisposed to crime generally and/or sexual aggression on white females specifically? If this doesn't confirm and conform to the concept of perception-as-reality I can't imagine what could.  "Smartest" president? Smarter than Bill Clinton? I trow not! "Overwhelmingly loved" by what majority? Talk about a Liberal wet dream! Whoever wrote this was smoking crack. That is simply not supported by any reasonable approximation of reality. Obama is not our first African-American president... he's our first self-identifying African-American president but grew up white (his friends knew him as "Barry") and then when he decided to re-brand himself for political reasons he was such an Oreo that in order to acquire Honorary Blackness he had to attend an Angry Black Church for 20 years and be pastored by its racist pastor who also presided over the ceremony for his marriage to his racist wife. It is also self-aggrandizing racism to suggest that to deign to disagree with this insidious man is somehow inherently racist... but I suppose that since Liberals can't win on the facts they have to play the race card which they invariably end up chronically doing since they can't win most debates on the facts anyway.

Live The Life

This afternoon while hitching a ride with my buddy Kameron I heard "Viva La Vida" (trans: "Live The Life") by the British band Coldplay playing on his smart phone through his pickup's speakers. I had forgotten about this song of late, but loved this 2008 modern rock classic from the moment I first heard a short clip of it from the pre-release hype leading up to its hitting the airwaves. I not only love its sumptuous sound but being a lover of history and theology and the like the lyrics stimulate my mind and soul with its rather haunting existentialist elements. The visual component of the music video itself is also rather stirring and stimulating as it features the texture of the entire surface of the field of view being crackled like an old painting. Below the music player are aforementioned the lyrics provided for your edification.



I used to rule the world
Seas would rise when I gave the word
Now in the morning I sleep alone
Sweep the streets I used to own

I used to roll the dice
Feel the fear in my enemy's eyes
Listen as the crowd would sing
"Now the old king is dead! Long live the king!"

One minute I held the key
Next the walls were closed on me
And I discovered that my castles stand
Upon pillars of salt and pillars of sand

I hear Jerusalem bells are ringing
Roman Cavalry choirs are singing
Be my mirror, my sword and shield
My missionaries in a foreign field

For some reason I can't explain
Once you go there was never
Never an honest word
And that was when I ruled the world

It was the wicked and wild wind
Blew down the doors to let me in
Shattered windows and the sound of drums
People couldn't believe what I'd become

Revolutionaries wait
For my head on a silver plate
Just a puppet on a lonely string
Oh, who would ever wanna be king?

I hear Jerusalem bells are ringing
Roman Cavalry choirs are singing
Be my mirror, my sword and shield
My missionaries in a foreign field

For some reason I can't explain
I know Saint Peter won't call my name
Never an honest word
But that was when I ruled the world

Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh

I hear Jerusalem bells are ringing
Roman Cavalry choirs are singing
Be my mirror, my sword and shield
My missionaries in a foreign field

For some reason I can't explain
I know Saint Peter won't call my name
Never an honest word
But that was when I ruled the world

View Atop Atascadero's Pine Mountain

Today I hiked Pine Mountain in Atascadero for the first time this year. I also took my new Canon EOS Rebel digital camera (one of my Christmas gifts from mom) out with me for its maiden voyage and with it captured these images. My focus today was top of the mountain and the view from there. The sun was unseasonably intense, the sky was washed off from the recent rains as was the long-dusty land which today was germinating its grasses and other annuals en masse. However, given that this germination has only now just begun in this second week of February, therefore the landscape across California is inordinately brown to dull gray as opposed to verdantly green as would be typical this time of year. Another thing that was evident on this walk was the fact that despite the rain totals we received late last week in the year's first significant storm (or rather, first storm PERIOD!) the land seems to have sucked up the water as I did not encounter the mud that I would have expected to find on the mountain and its flanks.

The view northwest from the northern-most rampart of the mountain. Note the original downtown at center.

Detail of the original downtown including the Rotunda Building and the Carlton Hotel as well as Masonic Lodge and Atascadero Junior High School.

Very top of the Pine Mountain as viewed from the north looking south at the end of the ascent.

View from the top looking northwest. Note the U.S. Coast & Geodetic Survey marker in foreground.

Very top of the Pine Mountain as viewed from the south looking north at the beginning of the decent.

Pine Mountain now features a marked and maintained trail system.

View looking south from the central rampart which forms the joint in  the L-shaped ridge line atop the mountain.

Another view looking south from the central rampart of the mountain. Note the main drag of town and Chalk Mountain.

View looking southeastward from the central rampart. Note the monstrous brown terror at right know as Tequila.

The most dramatic remaining evidence to be found atop the mountain of the wildfire here in August, 1997, is this blackened stump.

Tequila angling for a kiss beneath the mistletoe.

Remember the South Slide Bowl? Any respectable Atascadero childhood involved sliding down this drainage's steepest part at least once... preferably following a rain or hail storm but I did it dry-assed one time. Remember that Jon Marsh?

View from the easternmost rampart overlooking my old neighborhood. Note the sewage treatment plant ponds, the railroad tracks and the X formed by the tracks and Curbaril Ave.

Vulcan Mesa horse farm has been largely replaced with a vineyard.

The main trail leading down into the bowl or to the trailhead directly depending on the route taken.
All photos by Kim Patrick Noyes (all rights reserved).

Breaking Bad Look Back

I do believe that I have somehow neglected to share with you my utter addiction to the legendary television series Breaking Bad which ended last year on AMC. I was late to the game when my friend/neighbor/landlord/nemesis Mark Wiberg convinced me to watch this show I had seen advertisements for since it first aired and utterly hated based upon the basic premise of the show. How wrong I was and how fortunately I am to have crammed through the series in a matter of several weeks just in time for the series finale last Fall. I now own the series on DVD and still think about it. In another posting here later I will share with you why I feel the show is so wonderful and indeed, important.

For those of you who lurk or prowl (or rampage if you're like me) on Facebook you have surely noticed by now these new "look back" videos which using various algorithms automatedly determine one's most important posts and pictures and such and fabricate said videos which are about a minute long. In a tongue-in-cheek ode to Breaking Bad the following video was put together by Faceook to celebrate its 10th annversary. For more on this read HERE. Enjoy!