Diamonds aren't forever. Knowledge is.

I am quite the nerd. I follow under the ideals of Sherlock. Your mind has a limited amount of space, so what you put into it better be worth it. Thus, I end up reading books and watching shows that just promote learning of some kind. There are a few exceptions but for the most part I follow that rule. So after 3 weeks of being in the middle of the sea and only armed with books I bring you more odd and interesting facts to show you what a odd and diverse world we live in.

To those that prefer diamonds I have bad news for you. Even though they say that diamonds are forever it is not so. For those of you who skipped chemistry class, diamonds are made through heat and pressure of carbon. The carbon atoms form a pyramid  like structure. Graphite, the stuff in your pencil instead of lead, has a layered planar structure. This makes Graphite more chemically stable than diamonds. In chemistry everything wants to be stable so over time diamonds turn into graphite. Now before you run to your dresser to check your earrings, calm down. The process does take quite a while and your earrings will not turn into graphite any time soon. A few more facts on diamonds and then we shall move on.

Diamonds are extremely good conductors of heat so they best way to see if your diamonds are real(natural) is to see how well said jewels conduct heat. That is seriously the test that most scientist/suspicious jewelers  use to find out. Also diamonds are no longer the hardest substance known to man. In 2005 scientist at Bayreuth university in Germany created a new material by compressing pure carbon under extreme heat. Its called a hyperdiamond. It doesn't have diamonds looks though. It looks more like asphalt or the stones at the bottom of a fish tank. Following the hardness test, which pretty much is if it leaves a scratch then it is harder, it leaves scratches on diamonds.

Moving on, the loudest thing in the ocean is not the biggest. Its not even medium sized. The loudest thing in the ocean is actually shrimp. In fact they are so loud they can white out sonar from a sub so nothing can be heard around the shrimp besides them. This is what happens. The shrimp get into a large group and they start to snap their claws. Its not the snapping that makes the noise though. On the shrimps claws their is a groove on one side and a bump on the other so when they snap their claws water shoots out at 62 miles and hour. This creates bubbles that when they slow down and pressure takes over they pop and create the noise as well as heat and sometimes light. The noise registers at 246 decibels in water and in air that is 160  decibels. At jet taking off is 140 dB. They use this noise to stun predators and find mates. Besides giving OS' a headache the noise can be heard through the hall of the sub and it can dent propellers along with the heat.

Polar bears are NOT left handed nor do they cover their nose to hide, but they do enjoy toothpaste. Apparently they are concerned about oral hygiene because polar bears have been known to trash camps all to steal toothpaste. I guess they can not hide as well if they have yellow teeth Roaming polar bears have become such a problem that the town of Chruchill in Canada has a polar bear prison.They hold their inmates until autumn or spring, the season that polar bears hunt in, and then they are released. This could be quite a few months. They can hold up to 23 polar bears at one time. Still, they do not have to feed them, since polar bears only eat in those season. I hope that they learned their lesson though. Toothpaste is our right as humans. Still makes me wonder what a polar bear jumpsuit would be. I guess the easiest thing would be just to shave lines on them since their skin is black. Also, all polar bears are Capricorns, being born in late December or early January. So this means I am a polar bear. Ha.

For those champagne drinkers out there, its not carbon dioxide that makes champagne bubble. It is not the grooves on the glass that makes it bubble either. What makes champagne bubble is actually the dirt in the glass. Without the dirt and dust in the glass the carbon dioxide has nothing to bond to that creates the bubbles. So in theory, in a perfectly clean glass champagne will not bubble, only one with questionable sanitation with create the bubble that connoisseurs to desperately crave. Legally, now only sparkling wine created in the champagne region can be called champagne. Before 2006 any created in the US could have the same name. This is takes to a treaty with the European countries that states that only champagne from that region can be called as such. The US signed no such treaty and the treaty that they did sign that stated such, the treaty of Versailles that ended WW1, stated that it was only European countries. In 2006 the US accepted that ban so any sparkling wine made after 2006 can not be called champagne.

The guillotine was not invented in France. It was actually invented in Halifax Yorkshire and was pretty much beams of wood and an axe that came down with a rope attached to a pulley system. How the guillotine got to France was due to the Dr Joesph Ignace Guillotine. He hated public executions and thought that it was completely unfair that the poor should be hanged which was messy and could fail to work thus causing more suffering and the rich were beheaded. He suggested that things should be equal and that was what made the french take the idea and run with it. They gave the device a new name and sadly a new face. Also, despite what your histroy teach may have told you, the good Dr was not beheaded. He died from infection. The last person killed by the guillotine was killed in 1977. It was officially abolished in 1981.

For the moment that is what I will leave you with.

Giraffe in the jungle.

So if you go to a party store that sells supplies for kids parties you will not have to look very hard until you see a Jungle Party theme kit. Though I have yet to got to a kids party that actually used that theme, they are always there. Always. There is always a banner that says something like"Jungle Fever" of something equally cliche. In that theme there are various animals, a tiger, an elephant, monkeys, a croc, a lion, and a giraffe. We all except this without question.

The problem is, where a tiger, Asian elephants, some crocodiles, and Indian lines can roam into jungles, there is something wrong. Giraffes do not live in jungles. Yet there are ALWAYS there. Every jungle theme EVER. Why? They would hit EVERY branch. They couldn't survive. So why? Why?

It seems fitting for how things are now. At the moment where I live is filled with BS high school drama. I hide in my rack but even still it finds me. These queens of drama want to circle me with lies and rumors until all truth is displaced and I die with their lies filling my chest. I am the giraffe surrounded by screaming monkeys.

I work down in the galley, at the moment, far from my real job. Its temporary but it last for 4 months. Its to the point where I no longer want to eat. Its horrible. It really is. I have seen food dropped on the floor and then served, I a aware that the beverage machines carry 2 year old syrup. I know that hygiene isn't that pressing, and no one cares. Again I am the giraffe, and there are so many other little things going on that I almost feel that I should start looking for spots and horns.

Soon, but not soon enough I will find my way back to the savannah were I belong. I have plans to get an apartment and possible a dog. I have been dreaming of both for so long now it just doesn't seem real. I found a place that online looks PERFECT.  I want it. I want it so bad. What is holding me back is a possible money issue. Still here is hoping for my savannah.

To those who would think otherwise:

 To those who do not know me, this will be quite boring. With luck the next post I will have found something interesting to write about once more. Please pardon me for stating something that needs to be said to the few that know my face.

Deep down I am not a good person. I do well to hide this fact, I even try, but I am not fooled. Call me arrogant, I have done so myself, but I am smarter than many. I know this. I try to hide it in a vain attempt to seem normal. Abnormal people get too much unwanted attention. That and I wouldn't dare let people I am close to see just how cold I really am. I wear a small amount of coldness to ward off the stupid and ever chipper. Once the person in question has passed those two qualifications than they are a friend. That is all. Just a friend. There are few that are closer, and even they have not seen my quite like this. At most they have seen me quiet. I pretend I am normal and in some way or another they all believe it. Sometimes I even believe that I am normal, not for very long though. Eventually something calls to my intelligence and I am reminded just how useless people can be, so stupid, and annoying.

I vent my intelligence into different formats, to better hide it. Why else would I learn all the presidents of the US? Of course there is the ever present sarcasm that I use. I vent and hide and it gets me through. I focus some of it through the very people I hide it from. They can be interesting at times, and they were my first obsession, but now that I have the key to most puzzles that they present, they seem boring and uninteresting, predictable at best. I dare not draw too much attention, but I dare not loose an ounce of my intelligence and potential. It is the siren call of intelligence that I am not immune to. It is then I am at my worse. I am cruel and uncaring. In short I am an ass and I know it, and I DO NOT CARE.

No one has seen me this way. I hide in isolation and if that is deemed impossible for the moment, then I don my mask and dance in the masquerade that is normalcy, all the while, waiting for the moment when I can strike off and examine what has caught my attention. Each call becomes a new obsession for me. Thankfully they are far between, everything else I handle on a normal level and all seems well. Its the puzzle that I must solve, the rush I love and hate, for it is addicting, and I must solve it. I hardly care what gets in my way, or what I must say or do to do so.

My intelligence is especially in people, social interactions, and what lies behind the day to day. I can read people, quite easily. My childhood was good for something after all I guess. I know what to say, how to act, how to stand, to act like I am just like them. Its second nature now. There is a simple pleasure in not thinking, just like them. Its how I made it through bootcamp. I turned my intelligence away and my social skills. It made it a lot easier. I was able to avoid a lot of the drama and frustration. The RDC were making decisions for me anyway, so why bother with thinking about how stupid it all was. It would do me no good, so why? Why make more than 3 friends? I was never going to see these people ever again and more than 3 was asking to bring how their pointless drama. Be-friend the people who mattered and screw everyone else. Simple.

The result was when I returned I was all the dumber. There was no avoiding it. Survival or insanity? Simple. I did my best to regain what I had lost, and now that I have been away from boot for almost a year I finally feel I have gotten most of it back. We all have our darkness and mine seems tied with my brightest light.

I have not reached my potential, my mental "growth" was stunted with the need to survive. That is how I am so cold to begin with. If I didn't learn that trick I would be dead now. I came close a few times before I just shut my emotions up. Children are not meant to be raised like that.

And with that I could have been so much worse. I could have quite easily become a sociopath. The true heights of my intelligence and what I could and couldn't be or have become I can only guess at. There is a lot I imagine I could be, but no proof and without said proof there is no point.  

And here I am on the side of angels as it were. Good intentions and an understanding of right and wrong do not make a good person. If needed be I'd shake hands with the devil, most likely for a good reason. It is because I understand one thing, I will never be pure, or innocent, or good, so why stain the hands of someone who is when my hands are already stained with sins. In a way that makes me good, if that is the way that you wish to see it, but I know better.I am no hero, I am no angel, I am no concerned citizen. At best I am demon with morals.

Odd facts and musings

There is an old Romani legend about watermelons that kill. Apparently if you leave a watermelon alone long enough it turns into a vampire. It still looks like a fruit but now it thirst for blood. In the night it causes all kinds of chaos, as they roll themselves and attack. They even growl. Its thought that they couldn't do too much harm to people since apparently they have no teeth so they weren't out right feared.Yet they still do attack and drink blood. It isn't sure if this was told as a fairytale nightmare, in the sames sense as the boogeyman, something adults laugh at but children are unsure of, or it was actually believed. The legend comes form that fact that an aged watermelon develops red spots on the skin or "blood". This only shows up right after the transformation, or right before. Apparently  its tied in with the lore that if you leave any inanimate objects out on the full moon it will become a vampire. Pumpkins and Watermelons are the most common, and it apparently takes 10 days for it to happen.

Still the next time you cut open a watermelon and you see that sweet pink inside, you have to wonder if it was always pink to begin with, or did you just kill a monster? Was your melon a killer and you are now drinking what you think is watermelon juice but is actually AB+ from some poor, blood drained farmer. Who knows, maybe the farmers are feeding the melons blood to begin with. Mmmm, delicious. Would that make
watermelon eaters cannibals, and if you feed watermelon to someone in need of blood would that help?

I guess its no worse than eating jello which is made of boil animal bones, tendons, and skins. Seriously. Anything with gelatin is most likely made of that. Gummy anything folks. I say this as I eat gummy worms. Yumm! Marshmallows get their names from marsh mallows, a plant found in swamps, and were made from the sap of said plant. The plant even has pink flowers. Today most marshmallows are made from corn syurp, starch, sugar, water, and gelatin.That is right, gelatin. Its everywhere. We probably have never had real marshmallows. What a rip off. Egyptians used the real deal to cure sore throats.

Marsh mallows. Yum!

My favorite fact, after watermelons of course. is that Tequila is perfect for making diamonds. It has the perfect amount of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. If you just heat up eighty proof to 1,400 degrees it makes a thin diamond film. Its too thin to make jewels, but it still is pretty cool. You are drinking liquid diamonds, and getting smashed. On the note of liqueur, in 2001 Belgium started a program that served beer with children's  lunches instead of sugary drinks like soda. The kids could choose between lager and bitter. The kids liked it. It was only 2.5 proof though. The beer club ran with it and said "Beer is for the whole family!" Indeed. Why wait to start an alcohol problem? I can just see those little tikes, slurring and staggering their way through their elementary days. Hey, they won't remember them anyway. But now, for some reason, they get the shakes during the summer, and they are WAY to excited for school to start.

tequila diamonds

yay! Drunk children!

Death by chocolate really can be. Chocolate is poisonous, though it takes a few pounds to kill you. The toxic part is the alkaloid thebromine, which  is mostly in bakers chocolate and dark chocolate. Chocolate is very toxic to dogs and they love chocolate, just like we do. I had a dog that was really bad about stealing chocolate. If there was any in the house she would find and eat it. The problem was she was way to smart. She once found a box of eight chocolate donuts and she ate them all, and then hid the box under the bed so we wouldn't find it.  For a dog it starts off with bad stomach ache and if they eat to much they die. The bigger the dog, the more it takes, which is why my Greyhound didn't die on the spot, or even get that sick from eating the donuts. She lived to eat a lot more chocolate until age caught up with her. Cats have the same problem but the thing is, cats have no interest in Chocolate. They do not perceive sweetness at all.  That is probably why cats are so mean and dogs are so sweet.

And for those that do not take the platypus serious know that the male of that species is poisonous. Its got a spur on the back of each hind leg that is 15 mm long. No worries. It isn't fatal, just very painful. Also, though it is a mamal, mother platypuses (one of the two correct plural  forms, the other being platypus) do not nurse their young. Well, not the way that we think of nursing. They excrete milk through pores through their abs. No nipples at all.

So raise your glasses of liquid diamonds in a toast to killer fruit and gummy bones. To the marshmallows that we will never eat and drunk elementary school kids. Here is to chocolate dogs and the dangerous platypus. Here is to what makes life interesting.  I hope I have brightened your day, and at least you realize how interesting our little world can be, if we look.

Obssesions

Forever driving us forward but they are hardly ever seen in a good light. They are seen as devils things that drive one down the path of sins and disparity. They are a marker of insanity, an unstable mind, restless and forever at work. Even the word has a bad connotation. I have never heard it used positively. Still, without obsessions we would have nothing. Inventions, discoveries, ideas, and ways of thinking, all come obsessions. They make us better in all ways. They are the fire to the human spirit. Something as simple as a comic book obsession can save a life, seriously.

Today I read of a 12 year old boy who saved his sisters life and his own because of the game World of Warcraft. I am Not kidding. They were attacked by a moose, which are seriously very deadly because of the giant horns on their heads and their seriously bad attitudes when in their territory, so the boy taunted it away from his sister and then played dead. He said that he got the idea to do that because of his character on the game and the skills that his character acquired on level 30. Seriously, this is true. Look it up.

Obsessions stir the mind and they mix, creating new ideas and paths. A comic book meets science and low and behold we have things that people laughed at, like most of what was on Batman's belt in the 50's. It was some kid that grew up thinking, I want what Batman has. Obsessions make a person who they are and it is just amazing. I know I have my only little concoction that go around and around in my head. So just think, all the people around you have their own little obsessions, their only little vices and virtues, that shape what they do and say . Half the fun is discovering them, they seem silly and childish, but your own appear the same way to them.

So why the bad reputation? As with everything, there are those who over indulge and they ruin things for everyone. 

its odd what triggers each person's imagination and yet it isn't. I know that bugs do not hold much interest in me and yet there are people devoted to the science. You just have to look and see for yourself.

My Shenandoah

My high school band played the piece Shenandoah I believe my sophomore year. My father later remarked that he always liked that song. He said that the song sounded like the south, laid back and easy. I now find myself far away from my once home, in a totally different place filled with odd people. I don't hate it, but I am not too sure that I like it. So many people, all trying to go one way on streets only big enough for two at a time. Who ever though of that was silly to say the least. People are so much impatient, so much more ready to fight, and all courtesy has gone out the window. They are all just to angry for that.

I'm not homesick. Not in the least. I do not miss the heat and the stupidity. I do not miss the boredom and the pointlessness. There are things to do, there are new things to experience, and new ideas. More people means new points of view. No longer are there bible thumpers on the corner of every street, screaming their views as cars pass by, wearing full suits in 90 degree weather.

Its all so complex and new. I love my job, I even like some of the people, I'm just not too sure of the location. I want my own Shenandoah. The south just never seemed that way to me. It was never laid back. It was filled with people that had narrow views and judgments, that is expect for my few friends. It was all I knew and now all so different. Freedom helps I guess. I finally get my own choices.

So here I am, starting this new year of my life in a new place with new people and new experiences.

So I pose a question. Is how you start a new year dictate how it will turn out? Does kissing your love mean a good year to follow? Does starting with anger mean a bad one? Is your whole year decided in a moment? That one minute states how it will all end? Last year started with a missed kiss. My Fiance couldn't make it in time and that is how I year continued. We just kept missing each other and only saw one another in stolen moments. A missed opportunity at college led me to my job in the military. A missed friendship led me to a new, close one, and yes I am talking about my Angel. Could it really be that simple or is the universe just fucking with me.

well hopefully this peace will hold out as I sit with my sister and bro in law watching movies, but if we keep watching comic movies then I doubt it. Seriously, argue with the comic obsessed geek about comic books? Really?

I just want my Shenandoah. My laid back and easy peace. No family drama, and as little work drama as I can get away with, Freedom, I want my simple easy freedom. My Shenandoah.

Truth in advertising.

I am leaving the only place that I have really know for the last 19 years in a few days. Finally. I have longed for and wanted this for so long it is almost unbelievable that I will ever really leave. In the next three years I will have left the country, made tons of new friends, played in snow for the first time, hit legal drinking age, get married, and have my own place. I will have also missed Christmas for the first time as well as a slew of other birthdays and holidays.

I have so little family left that it makes it hard to care. It makes it hard to miss all the disappointment and hurt. Every year every holiday is the same thing over and over. we all awkwardly try to pretend we care though it is obvious that most of us do not. My older brother is spoiled, I'm forgotten, and my nieces and nephews run free. Once you are an adult Christmas sucks. Everyone pretends its "so hard" to shop for you just so they do not have to put in the effort. Excuses. I'm tired of it. Really I am so simple to shop for. Get something Batman related. I will be happy. It is that easy, but no, my older brother gets 200 dollars (seriously) and I get a 20 dollar pj set that doesn't fit, because my mom thinks I am 20 times fatter than I am, and of a character I do not even like that much. Awesome. Then she seriously has the nerve to say "Well I though of you." to justify it.  Yeah, pjs  are the same as 200 dollars. Totally fair. She even gave more money to my brother than she did my sister who is a stay at home mom with three kids who is having a hard time making ends meet.

It is just the fact that I have to act like I so wanted those pjs and by not saying otherwise, its like I approved of the injustice.  The fact that I can not even voice how unfair that is angers me. I gave the pj set to my sister, as soon as my mom walked out of the room, who loves that character even though she doesn't fit it either. She loved it. I sit there and labor over getting the perfect gift because I actually care, and my mom picked up pjs the day before and didn't even bother to wrap them because even that was too much of an effort. I am so sick of disappointment. I am sick of gifts that I don't want that I have to pretend I like. I am sick of the "HERE." attitude that prevails, instead of excitement. When did it all become a hassle? 

It just depresses me. My birthday is the worse. Most of the time my only present is the cake itself, which my dad and my bother eat half of,  and yet my brother pretty much gets whatever he wants on his birthday. He is 2 years older than me, has no intention of moving out, barely makes any money at a job that he has been at for 6 years, and then spends it all on trips to Atlanta instead of making any means of saving it. His major is art but he doesn't want to be an artist, nor does he actually know what classes he really needs or how many hours he needs to get that degree. My mom took my other sisters' college pre-paid plan that she set up for all of us from her so she could give it to my brother because his is almost out.  My dad is sure that he will live with my parents until he is 30, and my mom will let him get away with it.

I am a sailor in the US Navy. I only come home on weekends. I pay for my own things and I end up doing everything my mom is too lazy to do, like wrapping presents, getting the mail, doing the dishes, ect. I dream of becoming a doctor and I have the means to pay for it myself without the prepaid plan, though I will for sure use that too. I am happily engaged, desperate to get out from under her, and I can take care of my own business.  I  am even leaving at the end of the week to join the fleet on my ship, CVN 77.  I won't even be in the same state as her for the next three years, yet my mom didn't even want to do an early Christmas with me. My dad had to make her.

I am just so sick of this place and my family. Why should I be upset that I will miss Christmas and my Birthday? Why? The only person I actually want to be with is my sister, and on holidays she has to be the peace keeper, not my sister. I am sick of the false pretenses, and the whole stupid game of it all. I get it, no one wants to be with one another. That is why no one puts any effort in at all.

It will be nice not having to do everything for a while. This was the first year I didn't have to put up the tree by myself because no one else cared to. This was the first year that my family actually sat down to watch White Christmas without me dragging them to do so. The first year that I wrapped only my presents. The first year that I actually looked forward to my birthday, knowing that I probably will be working that day. I'm actually happy to. I'll even work Christmas. Who cares. People long ago stopped caring about spending Christmas with me.

I just want it to be done. I am tired of the hurt. I am tired of being lonely surrounded by my family. I am tired of the lies and the disappointment. The disappointment is the worst. Somehow I always convince myself that somehow this year will be different, that somehow I might even have a good time, and then I end up crying my eyes out for a few hours alone in my room and no one notices. Then I have to dry my eyes, and drag everyone into the living room to do the one of two traditions we do every year. We watch White Christmas, but we don't even do that. I drag them into the room for minutes at a time and then they are gone to their own respective corners once again. My sister tires, she really does, but she can be just as bad. She just doesn't seem to understand that I want a family, not to be alone, for Christmas. I want hugs and laughs and kisses, but somehow I get none of that. That is what I want for Christmas and my birthday, happiness. Apparently that is all out this season.

So please, send me away. Please. It would be kinder.

My love is away at college and has to work over the season, and there goes my only joy.

Let me leave and start this new thing. Let me work so others can go home to loved ones. Mine don't want me anyway. They have yet to really try to spend any time with me before I leave and the only one who has a real reason for why she can't is my sister and that is because she has children, which is totally fine. My bother hardly cares, my dad, who is home all day, stays in his computer room and says 2 words to me all day. He says that "family is so important to him", that he really cares, but he is such a hypocrite! He obviously doesn't give a shit either, and yet he has has my sister eating out of his hand. She even sits there and actually believes that he cares, knowing that he tried to put me in foster care at age 16 because I was depressed. He made no move to get me any kind of help, like he tells everyone that he would. "if you ever have a problem, I'll always help." My mom is even worse, but no surprise there. My oldest brother I haven't seen since I got back from Boot Camp and he lives 15 minutes away. So fuck them. FUCK THEM! I'm tired of it. SO tired of it. They are all lies.

Right now, I only care for Michelle and the kids.

I feel so lonely and upset because no one will make the effort. I am thankful for every single one of my friends and my sister. I am thankful for my job and the people I get to work with. I am thankful for my loving fiance and his great family. I am thankful for so much, I truly and honestly am. I know that I have gotten some things that others would love to have, but  most of my family is not included. I try and try to be thankful for them, to see the silver lining because I know that I am lucky, but I have had it. All they give me is heart break.

Not sure how this turned into a rant about my family but whatever. I guess I needed to say it. My last two post have been quite angry. Sorry for the change in program folks. The holidays do that to me, if you couldn't tell.

So happy holidays from my island of loneliness and isolation.