Blame is Fleeting

You probably knew it was coming, so here it is: my thoughts on the Slenderman stabbing.

I am Wisconsin born and raised. I love my state. I may not love long winters or bordering Illinois, but you put up with the bad to take advantage of all the good. So when something so tragic happens in the place I am proud to call my home, it hurts. I'm not saying it would have been any better or worse if it happened elsewhere, but I think most of us can agree that the closer to home something is (physically or emotionally), the harder it hits you.

I've read several articles about the incident, and I've read a ton of comments about it, and it seems to me that a lot of people are looking to place blame (duh). Some people are keeping it broad, suggesting that the internet is essentially the downfall of mankind. Others are getting quite specific, aiming their frustration toward the people behind Slenderman and Creepypasta.com. I can write those both off as ridiculous notions. 

The internet is always going to have opponents, largely because people love to have something to argue against, so this is just the most recent brick laid on their never-ending path to nowhere. And blaming the creator of a fictional character, or a site that caters to horror writing (a pretty wicked genre if you ask me), makes about as much sense as using a steak knife to eat pudding. Could you do it? Sure. But your time would be better spent doing something else and you're probably just going to hurt yourself along the way. 

I think it was best said in the statement on creepypasta.com: "...I believe placing blame solely on an interest in reading/writing about horror, paranormal, myths, urban legends, etc for a tragedy would be off the mark. Hundreds of thousands of people read scary stories, play horror video games, watch TV shows about ghost-hunting and all other varieties of the macabre and creepy... and if we could truly blame any violent crimes solely on one specific form of entertainment as the trigger – well, I suppose it would be a relief as we’d be able to expunge said cause and clear the world of such awful happenings."

Also, an unsettling amount of blame is being thrown at the girls' parents. Yes, I understand that it is a parent's responsibility to know what their kids are up to. (In fact, I'm a big fan of people taking responsibility for themselves and their children. That's how it should be!) Monitoring computer and television usage is great. Spending time with your kids is awesome. But let's be realistic: most of us did things that our parents didn't know about. Even if you got caught doing something and were punished, the implication is that you were doing something they didn't know about in the first place. I'm not saying the majority of us were trouble children. It might have been as benign as using a flashlight after lights out to finish reading a chapter (yep, I'm a nerd), but odds are there was something you kept from your parents at one point or another. Does anyone out there truly believe that these girls' parents were aware of their daughters' plans and let it happen anyway?

I'm not excusing the parents completely. There must have been signs that something about these girls was a little off. Too much time online. Overdeveloped interest in horror or fantasy with no visible outlet. Something. I mean, some reports are saying that one girl's brother knew at least something about her obsession, though he admittedly didn't realize that it had gone from fantasy to reality for her and thought she was a "normal" girl. 

I think the hope is that if parents are paying enough attention to their kids, that they will see signs that something is amiss. The reality is that it isn't always possible. Parents don't always have the ability to oversee every part of their kids' lives, and even if they do see something disconcerting, they might not know what to do, or might not get to it in time, or might think they're misreading things. Not every kid who shows an interest in horror stories is disturbed, so at what point do you decide that it's gone from a normal hobby to something that will spark violent behavior? 

And possibly the most important thing here is that no one wants to believe that something is seriously wrong with their child or that their child is capable of something like this. Denial is as strong as it is dangerous, but it's human nature. How many times have you noticed something weird, but just ignored it and hoped it was nothing or that it would resolve itself? Maybe you convinced yourself that a mole you don't remember having has been there your whole life. Or maybe your car started making a funky noise, so you just turned the radio up and kept on driving. And if we don't want to admit that something is potentially wrong with our cars or even ourselves, I can only imagine how hard it would be for a parent to accept that something about their child might not be OK.   

So whom, then, do we blame? The girls? Maybe. They're young, so it seems obvious that their brains aren't yet fully developed. Their understanding of right and wrong is still in the works, as is their capacity for making decisions and moral judgments. This is why younger offenders are typically not tried as adults: they simply don't have the same cognitive abilities as someone 5 or 10 years older. It's also clear that they had trouble distinguishing between works of fiction and the realm of reality, which we can chalk up to youth, mental illness, or a bit of both. But these girls are admitting to feeling little or no remorse. They put aside time and planned this attempted murder. They thought through their actions and they know what they were trying to accomplish. They said that they wanted to become "proxies" of Slenderman, and that they had to kill someone to do so. The key here is that whether or not they believed in Slenderman is far less important than the fact that they were willing to stab someone to death at all.

Honestly, I don't know who's to blame, and I'm not entirely sure it matters anyway. Regardless of the reason these girls tried to murder another girl, someone they called a friend. Whatever the justification, the act was horrendous. So instead of trying to figure out where to point our fingers or direct our anger and sadness, maybe we should just try to focus on what needs to be done moving forward. If mental illness is involved, let's get help for these girls and work on getting help for anyone else who needs it. If they're just sick girls who are OK with stabbing people, let's put them somewhere they can't hurt anyone else. Demonizing a website or the girls' parents isn't going to fix anything. Let's find something that will.

Christmas 2012: We Survived (Part 1)

Not the Mayan apocalypse; I already planned on surviving that. But the rest of the holiday, I just wasn't sure.

Let's go back to last Wednesday, the 19th. Things were going fine until I got a call from my mom. She had three things to tell me, and none of them were terribly positive. 

The first was that because of the snow Madison was about to get on Thursday, no one was going to be able to pick my Grampa up from the airport here in Milwaukee. OK, no big deal, we can handle that. Mom booked him a hotel room (we don't have a proper guest room, and I doubt Grampa wanted to sleep on our sleeper sofa or the futon) and all we had to do was pick him up when his flight landed on Thursday around 3:50. Sweet. Sad that Grampa would have to spend the night in a hotel in MKE, but at least we could help.

The second was that Mam-maw (my dad's mom) - who is staying with my parents right now - had gotten in on the 15th, but had already been in the hospital. Ugh. She was dehydrated and sick, but fortunately my dad was able to go pick her up that afternoon and take her back to their house. Again, not good that she was sick, but good that she was being released.

The third had no up-side. My aunt's husband (my uncle through marriage) had been in a car accident and had died. That one made my heart ache. My aunt is one of the nicest, sweetest people you could know (a lot like Mom) and to know something so terrible had happened made the world seem wrong. Even worse was when I found articles online about the accident; it wasn't really a car wreck, it was a "freak accident" that killed him. There are so many questions that might never get answered, and I'm afraid the hurt will stick around for a long, long time.

On Thursday, the snow storm hit Madison, but we only got rain here for most of the day. Regardless, Grampa's flight ended up getting canceled, and Mom had to make arrangements for him to stay at the airport in Orlando and to get another flight booked (which meant Mom was on hold for almost an hour and a half). After my lunch break, Hubby asked me to check our basement for flooding, since  a coworker of his was having some issues. I ran downstairs to check, didn't find any water, and came back to work, only to find that my internet was out. Poor Hubby spent about 2 hours trying to help me troubleshoot (via text and phone call), but to no avail. He called our provider, but they couldn't get out to the house until 2 PM on Friday. Great. There goes the rest of my work week.

Even better was when the guy came and figure out what had happened. Our internet amplifier is in the basement and, for whatever reason, is hooked up to a light switch in the back room. (See where this is going?) When I had gone down to check on the flooding situation, I had flipped the switch, but when nothing happened, I assumed the bulb was out and I just moved on. Instead, I had essentially turned off our connection. (Insert facepalm here.) Thankfully, it turned out that had been only part of the problem; we also had a cable that had gone bad, and had he not figured that out, I might've gone insane trying to make our internet work on my desktop. Aye yi yi.

On the plus side, I got to spend Friday wrapping presents and finishing up crafts. I watched a couple of movies on demand (Mr. Poppers Penguins was pretty sweet) and cleaned some things up a bit. That cleared up some time on Saturday, which means I had time to make all 3 kinds of cookies I'd set out to bake. I made Oreo truffles, peppermint pinwheels, and meringue cookies with mini M&Ms (they were out of the dark chocolate and mint pieces by the time we went shopping). Unlike last year's meringue cookies, these didn't turn out to be globs of gooey messiness, so that was nice. And the Oreo truffles are kind of like crack (my dad told my family that the first one's free, but the rest are $20 each). And Mom really liked the pinwheels, which made me happy. Saturday evening, K got into town, and that night, she and S came by and we went out for dinner. I love having time with my sisters, and dinner was just what I needed.

Sunday we drove into Madison. Our original plan was to have our traditional dinner and gift exchange with K that night, but instead we went to my uncle's visitation and funeral. It was actually nice to spend some time with my family and it wasn't nearly as uncomfortable as I'd imagined (except for the chairs, which were terribly uncomfortable; Hubby's leg even went numb at one point). We also got to have some awesome Italian food after the service (thank you, Biaggi's!), some of which we got to take home as leftovers. That night, we had a fire in the family room and sat around to enjoy it, just Mom, Dad, Hubby, Mam-maw and I. 

Christmas Eve Day meant more cookies! My mom made the traditional sugar cookie dough, and I rolled it out, used the cookie cutters and baked them up. While we let them sit, Hubby and I headed to grab some lunch (more Italian food; I'm not Italian, but I think my taste buds are) and then to the grocery store where K and S were ringing bells for the Salvation Army. Mom gave me $5 to donate (I give my money elsewhere) and we picked up some raisin bread for Mam-maw. When we got home, I made frosting and Hubby and I decorated the sugar cookies. We got to relax for a bit after that, and then eventually we opened presents (before dinner this year; another tradition broken). Hubby got me season 1 of Sherlock on DVD, Dumbo on blu-ray, and a couple other fun things. I also got a puzzle, a beautiful scarf, and we got a ginormous generator. Dad told us the idea was originally for camping, but that the unit he got was a bit bulkier than he anticipated, so we were given the option of keeping it or returning it to Gander Mountain and using the money for other camping stuff. (We're not 100% decided yet, but I think we're leaning toward returning it and getting a new tent and some other things.) Everyone seemed to be happy with their presents, and that's all I could really hope for.

More to come.

Riki's History Part 4: Depressed & Desperate

Even after the past three entries, I know this one is going to be the worst.  I'm reliving some seriously messed up stuff and I honestly look back at my life and wonder how I let it get to that point.  The best I can do is try to learn from the past and keep moving forward.

So, when we left off, I was about to leave college for the second time and had met Shane.  Shane was a 19 year old guy I met online.  He was from Missouri, and we had a few things in common.  At college, I didn't date much (or really at all; I was seeing one girl for awhile, but nothing really came of it), so the attention I got online (AOL, baby... I'm that cool) made me feel special.  There were a few guys I IM'd with frequently, but Shane was my favorite.

After I had gone home, my parents insisted I get a job.  I half-heartedly looked, thinking I'd be back for the spring semester, but it wasn't to be.  For a couple of weeks, I lived with my best friend L and her family because I just couldn't take my own family anymore.  "You're breaking your mother's heart, you know," my dad told me.  I knew.  But at the time, I just needed to get out.  On top of this, I had stopped taking my anti-depressants.

The first time we talked on the phone (January 2005), Shane had told me he would sound funny, something about altering his voice.  It should've been a ginormous flag, but I just figured he was being goofy.  That's what we did!  We had fun and flirted and laughed.  Shortly thereafter, I finally got a part-time job.  A few weeks in, I bought my very first cell phone so I could talk to Shane any time I wanted.  By that summer, I was racking up some hefty phone bills (mostly because of texting).

I considered Shane my boyfriend.  I talked to him more than anyone else I knew, and we had such great conversations.  Most of the time.  Sometimes it felt like he wanted me to do nothing but sit around at home and talk to him or (in his absence) think about him or just do nothing.  One time that bothered me in particular was my 21st birthday.  He didn't want me to go out to drink, but there was no way I was missing out on hitting the bars for the first time.  Between texts and phone calls, he kept bugging me all night until I finally stopped responding.

A few times we had broken up (the first time having been a few weeks before my 21st birthday) and then gotten back together.  We were in love, and someday we would get to be together in person.  The drama kept mounting, though.  Hindsight, of course, is 20/20, and looking back, I can't believe how gullible I let myself be.  I believed all kinds of things. 

Want an example?  Once, I believed that he was at a water park and hit his head, giving him some form of amnesia.  I learned this through texts that were supposed to be from his friend telling me this, and warning me that Shane might not remember me.  I was devastated (K probably remembers this; we were over at D's for movie night, I think) and didn't know what to do.  Miraculously enough, everything ended up OK and Shane was fine.

Every day, every week it got harder and harder.  One day we'd be happy and all would be well.  The next we'd be fighting or breaking up and I'd be sure my life was over.  For awhile, we were "engaged" and were planning to get married in a few years.  I even started picking out dresses and rings online (it's the closest I ever got to dreaming of my wedding before I got engaged to Hubby).

For a year this all went on.  My friends thought I would be better off without him.  I know my parents thought so.  But he was the only person I was certain loved me at that point in my life.  I didn't get to go back to school that fall (I hadn't earned enough money for my parents to give the OK), and soon I found out that my sister (K) was moving across the country.  Nothing felt right except for Shane.

So, naturally, that's when my world came crashing down.

In November 2005, more than a year after I'd first "met" him, Shane called to say there was something important we had to talk about.  20-year-old Shane was in fact a 15-year-old girl (we'll call her Girl X).  Her parents had found out about how she had been lying to me (and them) and made her own up to things.  As I talked to her mom and things unraveled, everything started making sense.

The reason "Shane" was always at the local high school ("he" told me he worked there, but Girl X was really a student there).  All the times I heard people call her by her real name (a unisex name).  The extravagant stories meant to force us to break up because she couldn't simply do it.  The excuses for why we couldn't meet (because she wasn't who I thought), and the "altered" voice (in my defense, she had a very gender-neutral sounding voice over the phone). 

Girl X wasn't to contact me anymore, but she did.  She apologized and told me that she really did love me.  And being as depressed and desperate as I was, I kept talking to her because I loved her, too.  I don't care about gender (it's one of the perks to being bisexual, I guess).  A body is just a body; I was in love with the person inside and the body wasn't even a factor.  We secretly kept talking for a day or two until her dad found out.  At that point, it came down to this: Either I stopped contacting Girl X, or they were going to essentially flag me as a child predator and things would've gotten U-G-L-Y.  I opted for the former.

She kept trying, though.  I'd get texts, but I kept ignoring them.  Her or her friends would keep emailing me or IM'ing me.  Within a week, I changed my phone number.  I had blocked her on AOL, along with all her "friends."  At least once she tried to trick me into talking to her.  I had gotten an IM and was chatting with some guy when things started getting weird.  It dawned on me that it must've been her, and I said goodbye and blocked that name, too.  A few years later, I think she might have tried again, but I can't say for sure.  The last time I know I talked to her was 6 and a half years ago.  

This whole thing sounds insane.  I'm aware.  It's hard to believe that I didn't see the signs, right?  You only see what you want to see sometimes, and all I wanted was someone who loved me and made me feel worthwhile.  I sometimes suspected that maybe "Shane" was in high school, but I figured maybe he was a senior and just didn't want me to write him off as being too young.  Never did I suspect he was female, nor that she was only 15. 

At first, I missed her.  Terribly.  My best friend/sister was moving away, I'd lost the person I loved, and I was feeling utterly alone.  But as time went on, I realized that she had lied to me for a year, and instead of being sad, I was just plain old pissed off.  Mostly, I think, at myself for being so trusting, so blind to everything.  I was embarrassed and hurt, and I told very, very few people the truth about what happened.  Now you all know the truth.

My depression and low self-esteem can't take all of the blame for what happened, I know, but they played a pretty major role in things.  Had I been a happier, more confident person, I wouldn't have been spending my entire life online talking to strangers who (at least seemingly) accepted me without question.  I probably would have found more joy in the world around me, I might not have felt like the only way someone could love me was without having to be physically with me, and maybe I could have found happiness in loving myself instead of seeking someone else's love.

5 Reasons You Should Stop Whining Whenever Facebook Makes Changes

1) It's never going to stop.  No, seriously.  Remember back when it was only for people with college email addresses?  When Facebook first opened up to the general public, a lot of people were PISSED.  I may even have been among them (even though I wasn't actually in college at that point, so I was kind of bending the rules to begin with).  These days, I'm actually happy that it's open.  I have tons of friends I can keep up with, lots of random games to check out, and opportunities that wouldn't have existed if FB had never changed since its original format.  And because FB wants to stay around, they will KEEP updating to try to get the most out of its existence.  I wish you luck in finding a social networking website (or, really, any website worth anything) that never changes things up.

2) If FB changes are the worst thing that you encounter today, your life is pretty flippin' good.  Seriously.  Clearly you have access to the internet, which makes you luckier than a lot of people in the world.  Odds are you're using a computer or smart phone that you own or can easily access, so you likely have an income of sorts and/or a place to live.  If your main complaint for the day was that FB made some stupid changes, maybe you should take a look around and realize how good you have it.  

3) It's a free site.  Free.  As in, no money needed to participate.  As long as you have internet, you can be a part of Facebook.  In all likelihood, no one's forcing you to use it.  (If someone out there reading this currently has a gun to his or her head and is being forced to stalk others via FB, my apologies.)  When you don't pay for something, should you really expect it to be perfectly to your liking?  No, you really shouldn't.

4) There are other options.  The internet is bursting with random websites.  Some of them are even other social networking sites (anyone remember MySpace?).  If you're that unhappy with FB, why not just go somewhere else for entertainment?  Goodness knows there are other ways to keep in touch with friends, if you're so inclined, so it's not like FB is the ONLY way you can live.

5) Facebook (not to mention many of your friends) doesn't care.  With more than 750 million active users, my guess is that your whining doesn't really matter to them.  Empty threats of leaving aren't going to garner much attention.  Hell, even if a bunch of you DO leave the site, there are still MILLIONS of other users willing to put up with a few stupid updates.  Sure, you might get a few "Likes" on your status about how FB can suck your reproductive organs or copulate itself.  And a few friends might write some encouraging comments noting their agreement with your feelings.  But in general, your words are falling on deaf ears (or blind eyes... is that how it would work on the internet?  Oh well...).   

Tragic Tales of U-Verse

Well, readers, there are 2 primary reasons that I haven't been posting lately:

1) I am sick.  I've had a nasty cold for about two weeks now.  It's slowly (and I mean slow like molasses in January) getting better, but I still have a few coughing fits a day and am keeping the Kleenex handy.

2) Our internet was on the fritz for the better part of the past 2 weeks as well.  We never knew if/when we'd be connected or for how long.  It was terrible.  Even more terrible if you'll recall that I work from home.  99.9% of my job is done online, so no internet = no worky worky.  

The cold was so bad at one point that I couldn't taste anything for 2 days.  Of course, this had to coincide with my brother-in-law's wedding, so I couldn't taste a damn thing while we were there.  Actually, let me take that back.  For some reason, I could taste Mountain Dew.  Or maybe I just know the taste so well that I imagined it.  Either way, that was a pleasant surprise.

The internet was so bad that I have had to take 1 hour unpaid time off, 2.5 hours paid time off, had to work from 9:30 until 11 one night, and we decided to ditch AT&T all together.  Seriously, it was a clusterfuck.

I think it all started on May 24th.  While working, my internet was suddenly going goofy on me.  One second I'd be connected, the next -POOF!-  No internet.  Since we had U-Verse, that meant our cable was out, too.  Beautiful. 

On Wednesday evening (the 25th), it seemed our internet was done for.  We called AT&T and they sent someone out on Thursday afternoon (the 26th).  The first guy got to the house and, of course, the internet was working.  He determined that this was an outside problem and he was an "inside guy," so he went to take a quick look around outside and then pawned things off on an "outside guy."  He evidently determined this magically, as he never once went downstairs to check the modem/router, didn't even look at my computer or TV, and was here for a total of 15 minutes.  I should've called bullshit when he told me it was, "probably the wind" that was interfering.  I mean, we live in a freakin' wind tunnel.  It's ALWAYS windy on our street, and for 6 months we haven't had any issues...  Ok, mister.  It's the wind.

Heard next to nothing about the outside guy from that afternoon, but since the internet seemed to be mostly working, we let it go.  AT&T called on Friday to ask if things were working and, again, things were - at the moment.  We left that Friday evening for the wedding and weren't back until Sunday afternoon, at which point we realized that our internet and cable weren't working.  Period.  We called AT&T, and they actually sent a guy over that Monday morning (even with it being Memorial Day).

Once again, when the new inside guy got there, everything was up and running.  However, this guy actually took the time to look around and see what was what.  He didn't like the wiring we had, and re-did some of it for us.  He ran a ton of tests, went downstairs to check things out, and was really nice about everything.  He, like the first guy, said it was likely an outside issue, but actually gave a better reason than "the wind" for the culprit.  He said it was likely water getting into the line somewhere between the house and the end of the street.  He put in a ticket for the outside guy while he was standing in our kitchen still, and away he went.  

Hubby left to hang with some friends, and I found myself suddenly without internet again.  Joy.  Hubs called to tell me that the outside guy was on his way to check things out, so I just played with my puzzle and other non-internet things for the rest of the day.  

On 5/31, that Tuesday, I couldn't get online until almost 10 AM.  So much for internet getting fixed, eh?  Hubby called Time Warner to get an appointment to get their internet services, but couldn't get an appointment until Friday.  Oh well.  I got booted off AT&T around 2:45 and couldn't get on again until 9:30 that night.  I worked until 11 and called it a night.  Thankfully, my boss was super understanding about the whole thing.  Phew.  We called AT&T again that night (prior to getting back online, so maybe around 8:30 or so).  We went through the normal stuff (re-setting the modem, etc) and eventually, somehow, got things back up and running, but the lady said they'd send someone over the next day.

No one from AT&T ever showed up on Wednesday.  I managed to get working right away in the morning, but got booted around 10:30.  Back online at 1:30 and worked until 7.  Ugh.  Thursday I somehow got to work through the day without issue.  We thought maybe it had been fixed, but agreed it was too little too late.

We were wrong anyway.  Connection crapped out on me again on Friday.  I told my boss I'd make up the lost time on Saturday, after TW had come and connected us.  That would've been great, except no one from TW ever showed up on Friday...  What.  The.  Fuck.  Hubby called to inquire, and it turns out they had us down for an appointment for Wednesday, 6/8.  UGH.  We got it changed to Monday the 6th, but still.  I wasn't able to make up the time for work, and we had virtually no internet or TV for the whole weekend.  

Now that we're all set up with TW, I am a happy little clam, kids.  Having internet that doesn't crap out every few hours is a beautiful thing!  I do miss the DVR set-up with u-verse, but the fact is that they had almost 2 weeks of notice that we were having issues and never actually fixed anything.  It was clearly a localized problem, but had they been competent enough to do something about it the FIRST time they sent someone out, maybe they would've kept us as customers.  Oh well.  Their loss.  A-holes.

Annnnnnnd that's enough ranting for now.  Riki out.