The Musings of a Confused Man

The powers that be over at the Paintball Review Forums decided to permanently remove the Religion and Philosophy forum. (They also axed the World Politics forum, but I tended to stay out of there as a rule, and don't mind it's disappearance.) I have to admit that I'm a bit saddened by this. While I certainly respect PBR administration's right to make this decision -- and even admit that they probably thought long and hard before making the decision -- I can't think about the handful of awesome, respectful, and insightful posters there. I'm going to miss that.

Anyone who has spent any time at any sort of religious forums quickly discover that creating an atmosphere that attacts and keeps the kind of discourses people can truly enjoy are few and far between. So when you find such a place, you tend to latch on to it. Oh, don't get me wrong. The R/P forum at PBR had its problems But compared to a lot of places, it really managed to rise above the "noise" and get some great discussions going.

The only other forum that I can think of that might come close to that is the CPPA Forums. Unfortunately, it's a forum that tends to focus on Christianity and it's promotion -- and rightfully so. That means that I can't be quite as open and forthright as I felt I could be at PBR. So I guess I'll need to start looking for a new place.

I've decided that I'm going to run to Best Buy after work tomorrow. The plan? To spend part of my tax refund and buy a laptop computer. It's occurred to me that I'd really like to have one. I often like to go to places like Equal Grounds and Spot Coffee to hang out and relax. And it seems to me that it would be nice to be able to work on my writing projects, including my online projects, while relaxing at places like them.

Granted, I already often take my journals there and write by hand. But having a laptop would allow me to type things up directly. And in cases where I'm at someplace that offers a wireless Internet connection, I can even directly upload my content while I'm there.

This is a great solution to one of the problems I'm currently facing. I want to get out more often, an create opportunities for socializing. And yet, I have a number of writing projects I want to keep up with. Getting a laptop will hopefully enable me to combine the two in a creative way. And perhaps my writing in public will occasionally help generate conversation.

A while back, Seething Mom was kind enough to post a link to my coming out story on her website. Apparently, this has led at least one other blogger to mistakenly assume that I'm Seething Mom's son.

I discovered this fact this evening when I checked my site statistics and saw a large influx of visitors from Rising Up Whole. Naturally curious as to who's linking to me, I paid a visit. And while I'm certainly grateful for the added attention the post over there has brought to my story, I'm sorry that there's been a bit of a confusion over the relationship between myself and Seething Mom.

So to clarify to anyone who might be confused, Seething Mom and I are just friends. I found her diary originally through a mutual friends. Since then, I've had the pleasure of communicating with her via blog posts and comments and even a couple of emails. However, I am not her son. I only wish I was. ;)

Today, I dcedided to play around with the information that Xinu Returns provided about my blog. I discovered that some search engines reported a link to my blog from this page. So naturally I decided to check it out. Imagine my surprise when I discovered it was a cut and paste of my blog entry about ritual nudity. (I reread that entry and still love it, by the way.)

I have to admit that I'm rather flattered that someone found something I wrote so worthwhile that they put it up on their site. It's nice to get that kind of compliment. Of course, I also would've liked it if they had contacted me to ask permission. I would've gladly granted it to them. (Though I might've offered to polish the rough edges first, as I was writing informally for my blog rather than working on what I would consider a high quality article meant for publication).

And of course, I would've also told them how I'd like to be credited for it. Currently, the page gives no authorship information, though I will note they graciously included a link back to my original blog post. I'm thinking about contacting the site and asking them to add a note of authorship to the page.

The only other thing that bothers me is that it's posted under the category of "Traditional Craft." While I can certainly understand why they put it in that category, it does leave me concerned that someone might get the wrong idea -- namely that I'm claiming to be a Traditional Witch of any kind. (At this time I'm not.) And I hate even implying (or having others imply on my behalf) that my occasional musings on such topics are in any sense authoritative. Because to be honest, they're not. So I may also ask about having some sort of disclaimer added in addition to my name.

Last month, I posted a bit about a synchroblog wherein a number of Christian bloggers talked about Christianity and Paganism and discussions between members of both faith groups. This month, the same group is having another synchroblog, with the topic being about Halloween this time. So far, I've read a handful of posts from the event and enjoyed them thoroughly. The link above is to Sonja's post, where anyone interested can find links to the rest of the participants' blogs.

I'm not going to say much about the synchroblog yet, as I'm still reading. I expect to have many thoughts to share by the time I'm done. I will briefly note that Sonja's daughter cracked me up with her "emergency vampire protection" though.