08-06-04 @ 3:04 am EDT

Yesterday morning I finally finished up the dream transcription project. 64 90-minute audiocassettes at last done!! I thought it would never end. -_- But now comes all the typing...*groan* I have like five or six full notebooks to type up and I just don't feel like doing it right now. So maybe I should take a small break. One interesting thing I noticed was that on the final night of the project, back in August '97, I prayed for and had a lot of dreams, including one very long one which might very well be a big dream. It involved some sort of British dormitory, and a loud noise, and two lesbians making out during a potential disaster, and some costume jewelry, and me dragging along behind a carriage, and a mad horse chasing after me, and me chasing after the mad horse, and me looking for the letter N along a lakeshore while yelling, "DANGEROUS! DANGEROUS!"...like I said, big long frigging dream. It shall be interesting to come across the more "big dream"-sounding ones and typing those up to share online...whenever that will be. -_-

You know why I was so interested in finishing up this thing so promptly? I had actually had some dumb hopes of possibly submitting all of my collected dreams so far to an online dream database for inclusion among their dream records. Mm-hm. There is actually such a site out there called the Dreambank, I believe. They have numerous collections of many dreams by various dreamers; one woman has over 3000 of her dreams spanning decades there, I believe. I saved them all to my hard drive to read them someday. The dreams are from all sorts of different people. I'm not an outstanding representative in any way, but I COULD market my dreams as being "from a socially anxious, creative individual." I mean, hey, being ultra-avoidant and imagining entire worlds must count for something when it comes to what my dreams might contain, right?

I even browsed through the numerous dream files and saw that the most recent dream was from May '03 I think, which, when I picked up the dream transcription project again, hadn't been that far in the past. But now I think my idea is a lame one. I really don't know if they still do accept dream collections, and if so, if they just accept them from any old schmuck on the Net. Even if they do, mine probably aren't in the format they'd wish; I tend to include lots of extra commentary, for better or for worse, along with my dreams. Lately for example I've taken to trying to include possible real-world influences on the dreams. My latest recorded one, about Rick Springfield and some guy named Ira being charged with murder, didn't have any that I could think of. o_o

Plus that's a lot more typing AND I have my little journals from '92 or whatever that I haven't done up yet, so...I probably won't bother. They seem to have more than enough dreams there to deal with. If you want to see the site, it's here:

http://www.dreambank.net/

Anyway. I also finished up the rewrite of Part 17 of the Chronicles, which was absolutely atrocious in the first place...it was SO out of continuity. I believe I've fixed it, at least somewhat, so Mekhet's arrival at the Great Red Tribe ties in a TEENY bit to a much later storyline. It's still basically a nothing chapter, but at least it isn't COMPLETELY out of place now, like it was before. You know in the original version I had Mahakhi unstrapping his sword from his back (most Kana seem to wear them at their waists, I assume because of their wings being in the way otherwise!), and referring to the tribe city as a camp? UGH! Horrid. I had no idea what I was doing.

And I've started the rewrite of Part 18, that is, THE PART WHERE THE PLOT FINALLY BEGINS. This is the chapter that introduces Bakh'asu, whose appearance pretty much fouls up everything to come, and this is also basically where Ameni starts to drop out of the story altogether. o_o Never intended that. He just got kind of boring for me. I should've renamed the series the Djuta Chronicles right about here.

I just dislike how much DIALOGUE there is. I mean, *I* like it, but these Kana just BLITHER and BLITHER like there's no tomorrow! I have no clue if that's a good addition or a bad addition. I'll get way into typing up some interesting dialogue and then I'll think, "Is this just putting everybody to sleep?" :/ Well, the other two people offsite who I directed to the story from elsewhere seem to have stopped commenting although I asked them to please keep doing so (*sigh*), and only one person was still commenting, and that was a bit ago, so who knows; it's not like I have a legion of fans to bore off.

I tried adding Interests to my social_phobe profile at Yahoo! for whatever dumb reason, so accessed my tehuti_88 profile to find them easier. And get this--as of the last time I checked, EVERYTHING under the Mental Health Disorders and individual artists in the Music category leads to DEAD LINKS! That's right--Yahoo! still has these things LISTED, but if you try to access the members list or add yourself--or if you even so much as view the individual mental disorders or music artists--it says there's no such page! And that's only the Interests I CHECKED--who knows what else they're missing? How unprofessional and sloppy! There is HUGE interest in mental disorders and music artists--how can Yahoo! have possibly deleted those pages?? I can't even add Anxiety Disorders or Social Anxiety or Enya or anything else like that, which are still listed on my tehuti_88 profile yet also lead to dead links even from there. Way to go, Yahoo!, in the Member Directory! This pisses me off almost as much as not allowing ADULTS access to ADULT GROUPS AND CATEGORIES. I'm signed in and my age is listed as 27; why can't I view any adult Groups or categories?? (I'm not interested in surfing for porn; actually I'm interested in locating good active yaoi or adult furry Groups or some such, and I CAN'T even though I'm TWENTY-SEVEN!) Even the one adult Group I DO belong to (and I found it only because it was linked to from the adult fanfiction site) occasionally asks me to verify that I'm the right age before I visit it. FOR CRIPES' SAKES! My profile SAYS I AM 27!! Besides, does Yahoo! REALLY think that making me click a "I am 18 or older" button will deter kids from viewing adult material?? "Oh my Gawd, an extra button to click..." *head explodes*

I actually countered a point a parent made about this matter the other day while posting in this adult Group. And no offense to her but I found her argument very pathetic, plus it made her look like a very bad parent. In short I pretty much asked about the above, why, as an adult, I could not access adult pages on Yahoo! What is the point of even listing our ages, filling out our profiles, and even designating our profiles as adult, if we can't ACCESS the adult pages? It's true, go try it; log in to Yahoo!, go to Yahoo! Groups, and try to find the "Adult" category. Good luck actually viewing any of the Groups there--there is no link to view them. You can START one, but you can't FIND any. Even if you're a hundred years old, or Hugh Hefner. I feel sorriest for the poor people who CREATE adult Groups in the hopes of gaining readers or fans, then can't even get the word out unless they Spam other Groups. This is a very stupid tactic of Yahoo!'s, and I said so.

A mother countered with something like, "Imagine you are me. I am surfing online when my eleven year old comes in and tells me of a dog that has appeared in the front yard, near where my even younger children are playing. I go outside to scare the dog off, then play with the kids for a half hour to make sure it's gone. All the while my eleven year old is inside and comes across an adult website. That is forty-five minutes that she had to surf adult material. That is why Yahoo! has these restrictions in place."

To which I pretty much said...you would leave your eleven year old in the house, ALONE, for forty-five minutes?? Without logging off?? Oh, I was polite and courteous in my reply, but what I REALLY wanted to say was...what sort of moron parent lets their even YOUNGER children play outside, UNATTENDED, while they surf adult sites online? Then, when one child comes in, STAYS ONLINE and goes outside, leaving that child inside unattended for almost an HOUR? Screw finding an adult site, that kid could be drinking poison or playing with matches for all she knows! And what's more she can't even LOG OFF or TURN OFF THE FRIGGING COMPUTER?! Even if she has a cable connection, surely she could turn the damn computer off! But, I bit my tongue and just made my above points politely lest I offend, then said that even while we had the right to disagree, I fully believe that PARENTAL SUPERVISION is the only way to keep kids from accessing adult material online. As I told her, "Even with Yahoo!'s unfair restrictions in place, so long as you were still logged into your account, your daughter could have easily accessed this adult Group if left unattended. The only sure prevention is supervision." Cripes, lady. Get a clue. You were the one ready to leave your eleven year old unattended near a Net connection, just after you had been browsing an adult site, for almost an hour while you play with your OTHER unsupervised kids! Would you leave them in the car with the windows up in 90-degree weather, too? >:/

Somebody else replied a bit later with, "Show me an eleven year old who can't find their way to an adult site." I think they were trying to argue with me, but as I replied to them, "You just made my point. Parental supervision is the only way to go." And it's true--I remember how smart verus stupid I was at eleven, and I bet I would have easily been able to locate adult material, even with Yahoo! hiding their adult Groups. I mean, cripes already!--I get much more graphic stuff in my E-MAIL every day, without HAVING to look! So COME ON, Yahoo! Do the "Verify your age" thing if you must, if it makes you feel happy, but at least let those with an ADULT AGE listed on their profile view what they have the right to CREATE but not to SEE! (Really, right this moment some eleven year old might be CREATING an adult Group, with no problem. Ever think of that?)

I felt kind of awkward, though, stating this when I don't have any kids of my own, like that invalidates my opinion. Though I know for a FACT that if I had kids, my position would not change. Yahoo!'s measures may be keeping ME from accessing the pages I want to view, but I know that they aren't good enough to keep all kids from finding such pages. I find it tremendously unfair that the only way one can view the most adult Groups possible is to pay some ripoff paysite to view the listings. Doesn't Yahoo! care that some other sites are making lots of money over their stupid restriction? Guess not. Fortunately, another parent stepped forward, a man with three young kids, to state that he agreed with MY comments that parental supervision is the only way to protect kids from this stuff. *whew* I was really starting to think all parents would disagree with me.

Hm, what else...? I can't even remember why I went off on that rant. O_o Oh yeah. Interests in the stupid broken Member Directory. Anyway after I added what Interests I COULD (which wasn't all I WANTED to...nobody will ever know that a person with the username of social_phobe is in the least bit interested in Social Phobia!), since then I've already gotten three invites to weird Groups. Some of these people are downright strange in who they invite. I've been invited to a paranormal Group (nah, not active enough), a Texas pagans Group (well...I DO have Paganism listed, but not Texas, since I have Michigan listed!--would they mind that I'm neither Texan nor pagan??), and just tonight, a horror discussion Group. Ecch! Just because I have HP Lovecraft listed doesn't mean I want to join a horror discussion Group. Bore me out. No thank you.

I've been adding more pics, of Mackinac Island, to my Yahoo! Photos account...check 'em here. Is this the right link? Guess I'll find out.

http://photos.yahoo.com/social_phobe

And more are coming...currently uploading Mackinac Island 2002. It was bright and sunny and blue that year, unlike the previous year, when we were rained out. I walked the lakeshore from west to east for a change.

I think I had more to say--including about my hair!--dammit!--but this is boring enough, and I have to log off, so tar.