Something not surprising: a lot of people (after noticing my Deathly Hallows tattoo) usually ask me what my favorite HP book/movie is. That's pretty broad to assume I've (hopefully) read and watched the movies based on where (as far as anyone else knows) the symbol came from.

My answers are always: (book: Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows && movie: Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban)

And my reasons:
Book - Deathly Hallows are what all the build up is to and where all the real shit happens. Real deaths. Heartbreaking moments. Acts of selfless heroism. Even the part where Hogwarts because a war zone, a fucking school where CHILDREN are taught. There's something WWII about it that's dystopianly beautiful.

Movie - I know that Prisoner of Azkaban is a somewhat unpopular choice to some, but the whole look embodies (and is copied for the latter films to a degree) what the darkness of Voldemort's existence would bring to an otherwise normal/bright land. Not to forget that two of my favorite characters in all the books are introduced (Sirius and Reemus), so to actually get to see their actor counterparts beautifully cast and walk around in their skin is something really exciting for me.

The next typical question: What house do you think you would be sorted into?

Gryffindor. There's no doubt in my mind about that. Not that I'm particularly heroic, but I'm honest and hit the mid-range on smart. Plus I'm stubborn but honorable. The only other place I would even fit would be Ravenclaw, but I think they're a bit too intellectual for my brain.

But the question that never comes up, so I have to ask it myself is: What's your favorite spell?

Which usually catches a few people off guard, and they jump to the familiar ones - accio (the summoning charm), alohomora (unlocking charm), stupefy (stun charm), or wingardium leviosa (levitation charm). Well, that's aside from the killing and torture curses.

I have to stray from the pack on this one, though. I think the best spell in the book is one that's introduced in Half-Blood Prince - sectumsempra. Swords flying out of your wand? Are you kidding me? How is that NOT the coolest spell around? Though, wielded carelessly could straight up murder someone, like Harry almost did to Draco - it's still both handy and badass. I'm just curious as to what would happen should two wizards/witches cast this spell simultaneously and at each other. Would it be like a ghost sword fight or would they pass each other unfazed and continue to fuck shit up?

Either way, pretty fucking legit if you ask me.

Tonight was a night that, when driving, I just wanted to keep going until the streets ran out.

Not that I'm trying to run or leave anything behind. It just felt nice to push through space with the windows down at night. The smell was nice. The breeze was cool. And everything felt good.

And now I'm just thinking of Protomen lyrics from "Breaking Out".

Sometimes, it's more obvious how selfish I am than others, even still after knowing for so long.

I'm not an only child, but the age difference between my sister and I is seven years, by a psychologist's standpoint, that's apparently like having two only children. Though, in some cases, they bond less like siblings and more like parent and child - it's not the case between my sister and I. We shared the same parents, the same fundamental ideals that came with living in the same household, but things get a bit foggy after that, despite how much I respect her as a person.

So, growing up, I got away with a lot that she didn't. I even got to blame a ridiculous amount of stuff on her, which - I guess - instilled some weird sense of entitlement in me. I got called spoiled a lot when I was younger, and often couldn't understand how things existed outside of my dome. I always put myself first - to hell with everything else. But over the years, I've consciously tried to correct myself and reset my compass. There's a POV that I'll always think in and see through, but I'm trying to consider and react with educated information, rather than jump on the Tristan train and plow through what-the-fuck-evers.

But sometimes, Braille-Reader, sometimes I apparently just have no fucks left to give and I'm back in the Tristan Show, ready for my prizes just for existing.

That's probably why I like things like karaoke and being decent at telling stories or commanding attention for a brief window. All eyes on me until I'm done with it. It used to be all the time, but recently, I've toned it down. Maybe that's getting older or maybe the effort I'm putting forward to not be a selfish dick all the time is actually paying off.

A.I.

An interesting thing to think about (especially with movies like Ex Machina and The Machine being release relatively recently) is artificial intelligence.

I don't really know where to start. I guess the idea had the most profound impact on me when taking in anime like Ghost in the Shell and AniMatrix (which was based on a movie series that WAS heavily influenced by manga and anime). I started to think about young A.I., as in the early days of its existence before human beings were used to it, then the struggle it would have to go through for equality. We as flesh and blood humans beings don't even recognize many of our own ilk as equal based on gender, orientation and skin color, so how would we react to something so foreign trying to ask for their right to vote or have a say in how the world works.

Honestly, my mind is drifting into bigger things while I'm trying to write this, such as humans viewing A.I. as the new kid on the block that haven't earned the right to have a say - when/if we join a pre-established galactic senate, we (as a race) will be viewed the same way. We'd react kicking and screaming like the spoiled children we are, when we'd be subjugating our own world population in the same manner.

Back to point, people (on the whole) are flawed creatures, and creating a system that can divide logic and emotion to make a swift, decisive action - would ultimately lead to human beings being targeted as a problem. Maybe that's after hundreds of years of conflict, maybe a few decades, evolution is weird like that and I, for one, wouldn't be able to fully understand or predict what evolution in an unorganic creature would be like, especially since I know pretty much jack shit about how it works now with organic life.

But then that brings in more interesting thoughts on co-existence, or if there would be any usefulness to humans at all. And would be utterly destroyed or harvested? Maybe even ran off world, or left to the dying world that we've ruined with battle and a greedy existence. All of these ideas have been ran with in some form or another through fiction, and they're all (mostly) amazing as they explore a good chunk of what-if scenarios. I'm only curious about which would be the reality.

Backtracking a bit, though, what I find highly intriguing is the infancy of A.I. after it's self-aware. Would it at first want to be like us or would it immediately recognize our potential threat? And what if, eventually, when A.I. developed emotion and learned to love - how would it procreate? Would that be a need? And if two A.I. in a loving relationship wanted to have a child (or whatever their version of creating life would be) would they build it a body, or would it be a software that learned and grew? What would the gestation period be before it was considered an adult A.I.? How long (if they would) would they model their lives after humans? Would they build tiny robot bodies to house their minds and upgrade and grow the form until it was an average, but unique model?

Okay... okay... I'm asking a lot of questions that only theory can answer, and I've gotten my brain all worked up on science-fiction. But I'm curious and wildly interested to see what would happen. That's the fun of writing and thinking and developing, there's no particular 'wrong' and nothing but possibilities laid out in the vast outstretching of imagination. This is one of the subjects I like to have running in my mind's background, along with Mad Maxian stories and wasteland worlds. I won't get started on those right now, but just know that it's likely an imminent topic of rant.

Three Secrets

I think I'm gonna get real for a minute. I've been thinking about adding a bit more structure to this personal blog, maybe chasing down a few topics and digging deep on some ridiculous questions since, sometimes, it's just plain nice to write and have a bit of focus here and there. Needless to say, I've been making notes on what to focus on when my mind is blank and the urge is there to write away.

Tonight, the focus falls on this: Three Secrets.

There's no condition, and I don't typically have secrets, but what I have in mind are things I keep close to the chest and don't normally parade around for the world to see. These aren't ever things that I'm ashamed of, and these are things that I've worked passed, so mostly I don't bring them up because of other people's reactions. If you live for long enough, some fucked up shit happens along the way. I like to think of it as the hero's journey, and these trials forge the person I'm to become in fire. Anyway, without further tangent...

1.) When I was younger - right around 13/14, a friend of mine committed suicide. Shot himself in the head with a shotgun, and I saw the aftermath in person. I've shared this with a lot of people over the years, especially since it happened when I was younger and more open with my emotions - and even in some fucked up way, thought it gave me a one-up over everyone else in being weird. I wrote a short story about it, though I can't remember if I put on online yet or not, either way - I'll save the whole of the story for those more interested. I'd say that of the three, this one feels like it effects me to this day the least, but I was also really good at repression from a very early age. I didn't go to his funeral, and rarely spoke about him afterward outside of the suicide story. Quite literally, I shut down and shut everything out for a very very long time. Today, I'd say the most prominent effect I see is my desensitization to violence and gore, be it in movies or weird online leaks.

2.) I once came close to proposing to a girl I dated. I was 25, and the relationship was rounding on a year. All I knew is that I was madly in love with this girl (though in hindsight, we had more than our fair share of unhealthy problems outside my being a terribly shitty boyfriend). She had no idea. I was broke all the time because of student loans and saving up for a deposit on a ring that I never told her about that I just looked like an asshole. I never asked her to pay for anything, but it put a damper on going out with friends or just getting drinks. I can't say if that was the biggest strain on the relationship, the main crack that the fissures started to pour out from, but it was definitely an anchor in my head. In the summer, she left with her friends on a trip to Florida. Right before she left, we stood outside for an hour because she didn't want to leave. I guess she had separation anxiety, but I encouraged her to go, it'd be good and fun and summer and blah blah blah. I was pretty stoic, and fucking stupid, but I had planned on asking her when she got back. Once the week was up, I was so excited I couldn't contain myself - I'd put the deposit down and set up a payment plan and everything. It was the first real adult thing that I felt like I'd done. But while she was on the way back, her texts were mired in this distant voice and I knew something was up. I couldn't let it go and kept pushing until she eventually spilled it. And like the adult I actually wasn't, I curled up into myself. Watched her come and pack up all her things and leave. And never once uttered anything about a ring. To this day, she had no idea whatsoever, and to this point I think I've only shared that with about five people. It was the second most difficult thing I've faced, next to...

3.) I almost had a kid. Yep, me. Even earlier than that near proposal story. It was a bad, too fast relationship with a lot of details of those that were there know, but otherwise I feel too lazy and apathetic to fill in the blanks now. Only two things need to be said before going in: all of my friends hated her (the would-be mother) and the kid was mine (despite everyone thinking otherwise). Now, the situation wasn't just a pregnancy scare. The test was positive. I'd even thought I was smart enough to get ahead of the game and pick up some clothes and essentials here and there - so we weren't overwhelmed when the time came. I forget how far along she was. There's actually a lot of the smaller details that I've pushed out of my head because it was easier to forget as much as I could to get on with my life. Anyway, this one - pregnant - borrows my car to go see her ex play in a band in Cincinatti (while we were living in Lexington), and I (being the type to trust the people I date) say "go for it", but stay back because I had to work early the next day. That night, she cheats on me with her ex and I don't find out until a couple of days later, on my birthday, only because she left a window up on my computer with their whole fucking conversation. It was pretty rad. A couple of days later, I'm working passed it (you know, because of incoming kid) when she tells me that she's leaving me to move back home and get back together with her ex... also pretty rad. Now, at this point I have no idea what the hell I'm doing, I'm in a fugue state for weeks, until I gain enough composure to plan on how I'll deal with it when the time comes. It was summer at this point and the kid wasn't due until December at the latest. It must have been two months after she left, maybe three - but that September, she decided to drop a line through MySpace (hold your fucking judgments on my social media choices) just to tell me: "Hey, just thought you should know I took care of our little problem. I got an abortion." To that point and since, I'd never felt a maelstrom of emotion from (sadly) relief to extreme sick depression and devastation. And I rambled on and on about it for months, until my friends got tired of it and someone told me to get over it. (Sounds super inconsiderate and rude, but if that hadn't happened, I would have sulked into the bottom of a bottle at some point. So it helped.) But the most revolting development is that I found she had a kid that April (following the December that our kid would have been born), meaning that she vacuumed out that little spark we got burning, just to get pregnant again. It fucked me up for a while, I'd gain a little traction in sanity just to slip back down the dark mountain. All in all, though, I guess I avoided a lot of terrible days that would have laid ahead in dealing with this woman. Though I would've made being a parent awesome.

Three secrets. There they are. Now, Braille-Reader, you know more about me than you did before. And I got the need to write out of system, for now. I'm learning to be open and feel less guilt for some of the shittier things I've experienced. I'd like to stick with it and see what kind of a person it'll make me. I've been wondering about it a lot and hopefully I'll take it with me to the next where ever I go.

How slow I've been in getting here, and who knows how long this surge of motivation will last. But I like this freedom I've been feeling, not a pressure to create, but a foreboding fulfilledness that this is what I'm supposed to be doing.

I want to know more people. I want to sit down and talk to everyone that holds my attention for longer than two minutes and really get into the weird shit with them. I'm genuinely curious, but I don't like forcing things. Don't like the conversation unless it's organic. I don't know how to introduce myself to people I've never met and I rarely know how to be serious with those that I have.

Maybe I should start a podcast and interview random people. Break out of the comfort zone and focus on what makes people people. Then again, I often say that I don't like people, generalizing or not.

Am I a hypocrite or am I growing?

I wanted to take a minute and explore something for a bit:

Yesterday, a friend of mine ask (or posed a question): Do men pursue a friendship or show any interest in a woman based on sexual/physical attraction?

Obviously, this does go on a case to case basis, and there are a lot of circumstances to include. But all in all, I'd like to think that men are more open-minded than to just regard a woman as a thing. I know, speaking for myself, that I have good relationships with female friends who are/aren't attractive (to me). Now, the relationships that I'm thinking of were built on things other than my free will drawing me to them. Most of these were either forged from mutual friendships or they're my coworkers, at least for the most part. I can count a few that just slipped in there, but there's some sort of commonality there that spurred a friendship.

That being said, I also don't mind being friends with attractive women, there will always be a part of my ape brain that just likes to look at pretty faces.

I'm also the kind of person that doesn't often make new friends, because I generally don't like people. If you're someone who doesn't annoy me immediately and you have some staying power, then eventually you get passed my shell of trivial knowledge and get down to some chewy nugget.

I also can't say that if a super attractive woman approached me, and ended up being super rad, that I'd be hard pressed not to jump into the "Hey, let's get romantic." spectrum. So, that pretty much throws out all that exposition I dumped previously. So, like I said, circumstantial - and I'll take the optimistic route, though it may not always be the truth.

There was another point I wanted to touch on, since it's a tangent of this thought (sort of) that I find funny. It's a observational difference between men and women that I think is really funny and attributes more to men thinking they own and deserve more, like an innate territorial thing.

In the service/retail industry, one is expected to treat everyone nice and pleasantly, being super friendly and helpful while helping a customer part with that hard-earned cash for some trivial thing in the story/restaurant. Now, when a woman is approached by a man who's nice and friendly - they get what they want, thank them and go on their merry way. No one says anything about how the guy was making eyes or being flirty. On the other side, however, this always changes. When a woman is helping a guy and engaging in the exchange, like a normal human being would, suddenly the woman is TOTALLY into the guy and probably wants to have all of his babies and follow him to the end of the earth. Weird, right? I've dated women in the field, as well as have a lot of friends there, and it has happened to each and every one of them multiple times, sometimes going on just a smile. Hell, my first super serious relationship spawned from me thinking that my ex was really into me when she sold me a fucking movie ticket. Turns out, she didn't even remember who I was, but I had the audacity to track her down and bug her about it, and it just so happened to work in my favor (for a little while at least). And I'm even still guilty of assuming things like that TO THIS FUCKING DAY. I remember a woman smiling at me, just a little longer than usual - with eye contact and everything - and I really thought that I was in. All I had to do was make a joke and she was all mine. Turns out, I'm just as dumb as most men. She was already dating someone and I just made an ass out of myself, which is typically why I don't approach women, since I'm not great at context clues.

But that's my rant for today. I'm losing focus and I'm pretty sure a bunch of the stuff I've written has already negated other things I've strung together with words.

Sometimes I question why I don't immediately start writing when I'm mad with inspiration. Such was the case last night, I felt a click of the buzzing cogs in my head and just KNEW that I had that demon in me. But I turned over and tried to claw my way back to sleep since I had to be up early for work.

All I saved where two lines that could've been part of something amazing, but have settled into what I made for them instead.

I just remember the biggest part of my mind wholly wrapped around the juxtaposition of ourselves (as materialistic people) basically being Pavlov's conditioned dogs. We jump for a paycheck. We roll over for entertainment. We'd salivate at the thought of being free. This is where we are. How we live. And for the most part, I don't know if anyone cares. I know I don't. Seeing and understanding are one thing, but changing is a far different tune to dance to - and I'm terrible with keeping rhythm. I know my symptoms, and I'll likely always stay sick.