Personality Tests

I'm a sucker for a good personality test. It has to be difficult, however. I can see results a mile away, and can't help tweaking my answer toward one result or another, or spreading my answers out so I know the result could have gone in multiple directions.

This one, however, stumped me. (Disclaimer: flashy lights, avoid if epileptic.) You're given a couple circles on a pulsing background and asked a question, such as, "Which one is angry?" or "Where will you never be safe?"

I, being the smart-aleck I am, started out picking the opposite of what I thought was obvious. As I went through it got a little disturbing, and I started to play it straight. My results were... me.

Though quiet on the outside, you are often the hidden hero; someone who rushes in when needed and then after the emergency is over fades back into the woodwork. Because of this sense of duty and honor, you can also on occasion be rigid in your viewpoint and unyielding in the face of other ways of thinking. Usually cynical and rarely trusting of others, you maintain a small set of intimate friends. These bonds are stronger than most. You are always grounded in the present moment. Your close bonds can also lead to clique-ishness and a tendency to gossip about those who are deemed less worthy. You are an integrative thinker, collecting data from a wide range of sources and applying it to your worldview. You can become overly task-oriented. In stressful situations you often withdraw from the world to seek peace in contemplation. You often seem cold and withdrawn. Often you will withdraw rather than verbalize your discontent.

Maybe not the best parts of me, but that is me, minus the bravado. That's me minus the logic that keeps me going. "I feel ____, but logically I know ____, so I refuse to show anger because I have no real reason to be angry."

Eh, it makes my mind swim. So of course I took the second test in the series immediately.

This one was four pulsing colored squares, each with shadowy figures in the center. "Which one knows your secret?" "Which is better than you?" Entirely different results, but still me.

A risk taking individual who fights against the burdens of life through a quest for excessive stimuli. This individual is not only impulsive but admires impulsive behavior, as this is perceived as being free of the exhaustion he or she feels from everyday life. Best method of entry is to appeal to the novel and the future development of our protocol. 

This client feels that times have come to a juncture that is requiring immediate action. This belief is often mistaken however and such an individual can react to perceived threats with overzealous behavior or asymmetrical responses. This client will not heed advice, whether good or bad, and will take his or her own guidance, even if it is only chosen as a means of asserting individuation.

This one cut deeper. Part of it is who I want to be. I want to take risks. I want something to truly interest me. Yes, I admire people who can set aside that very logic that I hold to and do what they want. Freedom is a heady thought. Freedom from constantly thinking about the consequences and deciding "It's not worth it," because maybe sometimes it is.

Also, interesting little fact here: When trying to read the second paragraph, I blanked out. I do that sometimes when something hits too close, or is too stressful. Rather than stressing over it, I just lose my train of thought and have to start over (much easier when I can reread what I've written). A quick read tells me that I sometimes go overboard and I don't trust advice. Sometimes just to prove that I have my own mind.

Well, ouch.

You know what's really fun? They have a third test, complete with pulsing lights and disconcerting noises.

You feel frustrated in your attempts to make your will manifest in a relationship, either personal or public. This frustration can be seen by others as irritability or anxiety and occasionally a tendency to drift into righteous anger. There is a feeling that society or people are holding you back, which can lead to a moral exhaustion and a sense of apathy if allowed to fester. If this continues you will ultimately desire only to be left alone.

Insecurity is the watchword for you at this moment. There is a strong sense that you have been socially demeaned or ignored recently. Hopes and dreams have been stymied, leading to an ever greater anxiety or unease. You need reassurance and to believe that your problems will someday be overcome, whether or not this is actually the case. Often your anxieties will lead you to become unreasonable or demanding. 

Mild discomfort now. I'd really rather deny this one and delete this entire post, but I won't let myself.

Big Disclaimer:
The tests I just took may beat your ego to death and creep you the heck out. In fact, they recommend not taking them unless you have a clinician ready to look at your results. I don't know if I just took one for the team or if I'm psyching myself out.

Little Disclaimer:
I love stuff that messes with your mind. For example, The Game, starring Michael Douglas, is an awesome movie that will drag your brain through the mud, push it off the roof on your dad's birthday, then laugh at you.

The moral of this blog post: How I entertain myself alone on the Internet.

PRIVACY NOTICE

Warning: any person and/or institution and/or Agent and/or Agency and/or fanboy/fangirl and/or stalker or any governmental structure (except the high school I graduated from, you know who you are) including but not limited to the United states Federal Government, the government of any nation in, on, or near any continent whose name begins with an A, an E, or any other recognized letter, the moon, Mars, or Venus (excluding Venus's southern hemisphere) monitoring/using/not using/unaware of this website, any of its associated websites, or any unrelated websites...

*pauses for air*

...you do NOT have my permission to steal everything I've ever written under all my various pseudonyms (because I acknowledge that you are all-knowing, omnipotent, know when I am sleeping, know when I'm awake, know when I've been bad or good, but I'm good, for goodness sake so stop watching me pee!) and use it to better the world, including my pictures, and use them to throw darts at, including my art, and draw mustaches, then say you drew it.

Because, of course, the government has nothing better to do than break into random Joe Blow's Facebook and download pictures of his rottweiler sleeping with the new kitten or his kids sitting in a wading pool. In fact, their intention is to steal the pictures of every middle-class person with a Facebook account, edit them in Photoshop, then use this doctored photography to throw them into one of the many empty prisons just sitting around.

Oh damn, I got sidetracked.

You are hereby notified that you are strictly prohibited from disclosing, copying, distributing, disseminating, or taking any other action against me with regard to my stuff that I already mentioned. Even if it's illegal. Especially if its legal status is questionable. Because I know that telling you not to prosecute me means that you can't. In fact, I could go rob a bank, but if I told everyone in the bank before I robbed it that they are hereby notified that they can't identify me in a police lineup or a court of law, they are legally forbidden from doing so. Because I said hereby, and that means business.

(Note: I have never robbed a bank, and I don't intend to, just saying.)

The foregoing prohibitions (See? I said foregoing too. Ha on you, loser!) also apply to anyone I forgot to mention, including Venus's southern hemisphere, your employees (yes, yours), agents, students, friends, families, and any pets capable of speech, whether they're under your direction/control or not.

In other words, consider everything I've ever done, even if I posted it on the internet for the world to see and checked the "public" button on my privacy/security settings, private and legally privileged and confidential blah blah, blah, the violation of my personal privacy is punishable by law.

Celebrities are so dumb not putting signs up or wearing buttons that say this stuff on them, because if they did, they wouldn't have to worry about paparazzi anymore.

Wait, what's this? Is it a link? I wonder where it goes...

Fear-mongering: bored of it.

So one time at the cheese factory, I told them that they were legally forbidden from firing me, and they didn't. No, just kidding, I never said that and anyway, I quit that place.

Alone in Nowhere

I am lonely. The group of friends I had in college has narrowed down to two, neither of whom lives in this part of the country. Somehow, socializing with family doesn't do it for me. I can spend hours talking to them, and I'm only more tense at the end because frankly, my family doesn't like or understand me.

This isn't the kind of they don't understand me that I spouted when I was in high school. I suffer from clinical depression, and they can't wrap their minds around the concept of not just "cheering up." We have different interests. I'd rather stay inside where I'm physically comfortable than sit by a lake. I enjoy exploring the Internet. I enjoy researching something to death in order to write a one-page short story that I'll never show anyone. I tend toward solitude, and my family is made up of highly social people. Overwhelmingly social people. Opinionated people.

Not that I'm not opinionated. The problem, however, is that they have difficulty accepting other viewpoints as valid, and when someone explains motivation for a different viewpoint, they tend to zone out and start thinking up their next argument instead of listening.

So I'm ruling out calling my father to chat about my day-to-day life. Just saying.

That leaves me with two friends, with whom I can only communicate online. I have no phone. I cannot afford a phone. I believe I have three dollars to my name right now, and every two weeks I get between thirty and forty dollars of child support, so driving to the nearest city (an hour and a half) to find an open social group other than the Eastern Star Lodge isn't feasible. To be fair, I have been to the lodge before. I was just bored and uncomfortable being stared at by the other members, all of whom are at least forty years older than me.

I've mentioned this before, but my friends have lives. So what do I do? This is a legitimate, honest question. I've set emotion aside for now to deal with this logically, mostly because I'm wiped out from entertaining my grandmother for five hours. She's lovely to talk to now and then, but it's difficult making conversation when I can't talk about any of my interests.

Sample of Interests (moi)
computers
internet and internet trends
contemporary art
typography
fiction writing
internet research: most recently, BDSM and D/s relationships, and rubber ducks. Totally unrelated, I swear.
abnormal psychology

Everyone's got some oddball combination of things they enjoy discussing, and that's not a finite list, but perhaps you can see the potential for conflict when I'm living in a small town near another small town known for its lake and fishing.

So now I've bored you to death. Pumpernickel. Quartz. Bonobo chimpanzee. That ought to spice things up.

This one time at the cheese factory, a chunk of fat-free cheese fell on the floor, thereby making it inedible. Since it smells like rubber in large volumes, I used my box knife to carve it roughly into the shape of a ball, then dropped it on the floor. Nothing as awesome as a SuperBall, but the fact that it bounced well enough to entertain me for a while is worth noting. I don't eat fat-free cheese, by the way.

You Can Drop the SOPA Here

We're not in prison, so you can feel free to drop the SOPA. You hear that, Congress? DROP THE SOPA.

Enough with the lame jokes. I know you're at least vaguely interested in using the Internet, as you wouldn't be reading this otherwise. Maybe you just pop on once or twice a week to check your Facebook or maybe you spend five hours of your nine-hour work day surfing in ten-minute blocks, I can't tell that much, but what I can tell you is that SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (PROTECT-IP Act) would probably kill whatever you're doing.

To take a large topic and sift it into a very simple statement, either of these Acts would block "objectionable" websites. By "objectionable" I don't mean weird random sites like Chicks and Cows or Five Year Plan to Getting Megan Fox, I mean Wikipedia, I mean I Can Haz Cheezburger, DeviantArt, anything that might have copyrighted content, however altered, or even link to copyrighted content. By the way, about everything is copyrighted.

To quote Stop American Censorship:
The US state department constantly speaks out against internet censorship in other countries. Pressure them to speak out against America’s new domestic censorship system.

Tomorrow, a long list of websites will be going black in protest (including those listed above here). If you have your own website, you may consider doing the same. Maybe warning a couple people. I'll be hiding my blog and my Facebook in the morning.

Tomorrow may be the most productive work day in a decade. It may be a day that changes how the government looks at the Internet. Or it may just be a day when we remember how to play Solitaire. If you've got the time (and without Wikipedia, you just might) drop Congress a note. You can do that here, if you want. They've even got one written out for you.

Here's to fighting censorship,

and here's to slapping Congress on the butt with a wet towel.

DROP THE SOPA!

courtesy of http://go-devil-dante.deviantart.com

99% of people who read this won't re-post it.

People who have backbones, people who read their friends' statuses, people who think abuse is bad and people who believe any number of honorable things will NOT repost this because they see it so much that it begins to lose meaning, or they're tired of reading that they're unworthy if they don't re-post or click like.

Am I really not your friend because I wouldn't post the third letter of my last name? I read the post, must I then prove my worth by responding to every chain-post on every friend's wall?

Yes, I added you to get friends on an application. I needed more neighbors, more vamps in my clan, whatever, and I added hundreds at a time a few times. But if you've been around more than a couple months, I've kept you for a reason. This is where you can pretend to get worried that I've stalked you, because I've visited your profile. I've kept up with your public status updates, and we probably have more in common than the games we choose to play, though that alone says something.

Some of you may have noticed we don't even play the same app anymore. Are you still a wizard? How many farms do you have? I may not remember, but when you change your avatar, I notice. I send a prayer your way when you ask, but I don't click like because hell, you don't know me. I don't know you, either. I know this guy's cat is stupid, but hilarious, I know this woman is beautiful in a way that implies she doesn't realize it, but it's all superficial.

Okay, so maybe I'm really not your friend.

I don't click that stuff for my family or my "real life" friends either, though. Really, Aunt So-And-So? You're going to delete everyone who doesn't have the backbone to re-post a copy/pasted, recycled, mass-produced comment? Delete me, then.

In "real life" I'm one of those people who's quiet so much of the time that people forget I'm there. They either assume I know everything and tell me nothing or tell me things several times because they're sure no one has mentioned it. Thanks, Dad. You told me about your congestion (read: constipation) medicine when you called two hours ago. I haven't forgotten. No, Grandma, I wasn't told that my cousin is having a bridal shower tomorrow, I did not plan on going and I have nothing to give her.

Don't re-post this if you don't care. Don't re-post it if you're too busy. Don't re-post it simply because the title has challenged you, or because you labor under a belief that people will think you uncaring or unpatriotic if it doesn't immediately grace your Facebook wall.

If it pisses you off, however, you may re-post it to share another example of how much stupidity exists on the internet. You may also re-post it if you think it makes a good point, or if the whim takes you, or if you're bored.

And remember, even though 99% of my readers WILL NOT RE-POST THIS, between 28% and 76% of statistics are made up on the spot anyway. So sayeth I.

A Shmoo Can Do Most Anything

I have a somewhat important and completely random question for anyone who knows what a SHMOO is.

The shmoo was a creature from Al Capp's Li'l Abner, which became insanely popular on its introduction, and I'm trying to find a certain shmoo-themed song for my grandmother online somewhere. That would be "A Shmoo Can Do Most Anything" (1949) Music You Enjoy, Inc. Any video, or anyone who remembers the lyrics would be greatly appreciated. This is as much as I have:

a shmoo could do most anything because he is a shmoo
a shmoo could be most anything that you want him to
if he's in trouble he won't cry
he knows just how to multiply

If you don't know what a shmoo is, you should google it. Seriously. A single shmoo could fix the world. After destroying the economy, but I'll let you insert your own joke about that.

Image borrowed from http://www.deniskitchen.com/docs/new_shmoofacts.html

Build a Bridge

I'm officially over living in the middle of nowhere.

I used to live just north of the middle of nowhere, but I don't anymore, and the difference is huge. I live in a town with no gas station or grocery store. There is, however, a hardware store, a bar, and at least five churches. For around five hundred people, if you count the area around the town, which actually belongs to no town at all. The church I've been to actually gets about twelve people on Sundays.

But I digress.

My current gripe is about the lack of Internet access. No one (including my grandmother, who is paying the bills while I'm unemployed) can afford it. The options are Verizon, which is apparently too pricey, and this guy who gets such a good connection that, for a fee, he'll give you the access code and you can use his. That's what everyone has. And yet, last month, for $40, the internet worked in five-minute blocks for maybe a total of an hour, maybe less. This needs no exaggeration to be true.

I have a smartphone, which is my lifeline because I can't in good conscience ask grandma to pay $40 (or, at dial-up speed, $30) for Internet that doesn't work. This leaves me unable to do a lot of things that I do online. Of course, I wasn't able to do them the past month and a half either, so the difference is that now we're not paying for it.

I love Facebook. Or, I loved Facebook. There's only so much to do on a mobile phone, which means my apps are all null and void. Can't check on my farm, restaurant, city, etc. on my phone. The family gets pissy when I don't announce things, such as the vacation I'm currently on, and earlier I got a message on one of my photos that my cousin was mad at me for being in California and not telling her. My cousin who lives in Vegas, and who'll be visiting California after I've left. Sorry, cuz, that I didn't FB-alert "the fam" that I'd be in the state.

I'm only here for a week, and my daughter is going to the mountains, the beach, Disneyland, Universal Studios, and Hollywood. I really can't visit the six-plus cities from San Diego to San Francisco where extended family resides, especially when I'm staying with the friend who paid to fly me out here, and I don't have a rental car.

Those are not complaints, by the way. Those are the fun part. The complaint is that my family is butthurt that I'm not doing my duty.

Back to the point. No Internet once I get home. I'm on a badass little two-screen setup right now that makes me want nothing more than to pull up Photoshop and multi-task the hell out of it to see what it can do, and I'm soaking it in while I'm here. In the evenings, between running around doing glamorous and exciting things, none of which involve trying to explain my life to people who don't try to explain theirs to me, either. [/bitterness]