You know tonight is something different.

I logged onto Second Life tonight for the second or third time. It occurred to me that I once had a goal when I went there, to engage in activities otherwise thought of as harsh or shocking in normal society, for the sake of only being shocking. Perhaps to attract someone's attention, but who? I wondered if I would inevitably meet someone I knew in Real Life that would comfort me, or anyone who cared, but it never happened.

There are other people there, in SecondLife who have mastered the art of their displays, and wander to show their artistic abilities, and I respect that Nerdiness, their fabulous digital files and scripts that allow for the appearance of silken flowing garments, blowing in a digital wind that does not exist in reality.

I was one who thought I achieved greatness through the knowledge of the Apple ][ machine language, way back before there was a mouse, these people today have been allowed to pursue their creativity to a surreal extreme that would bead sweat across the brow of Salvador Dali.

I crave to find people who feel as I do, and I try to find them in SecondLife.com, but most of the time, they are not online at the same time as myself. There is only left the stimulation of the unreal, for the world outside is only made to the limitations of the materials provided. Cement, glass, steel, paint, etc.

Let's all forget the real and escape into this nether region where no resources are consumed. www.secondlife.com

God don't let it rain on me.

I work nights. I'm a security guard at a hospital. I see all kinds come and go. All the time, different ailments and injuries. There's no sense at all to it except for the fact that it's easier for one reason or another to travel to the hospital. Good Weather, the right time of the week or the right time of the month.

It seems that some times it's crazy busy, and other times it's not. Two weeks ago there was a huge earth quake that shook Japan, followed by a devestating tsunami that damaged a nuclear power plant on the island.

The reports of radiation levels kept changing between being lower to being too high, every few hours it was different. I was in the middle of the continental United States, so I felt safe. I was east of the Rocky Mountains.

Last night I noticed that there was an unusual haze around the moon. It had color. Normally at night it seemed devoid of color, but moisture in the upper atmosphere gave the ring a slight reddish hue. Normally this is attributed to a refraction of light through moisture, creating a rainbow effect, but for some reason at that moment, I had an extra count of rods on my retina that received the lower frequency of light that allowed me to perceive the red light emitted from the haze.

In other words, I was able to perceive the red end of the Electromagnetic Spectrum (EMS) because stress had activated the extra rod receptors in my retinae that are reserved for perceiving light during the day. Normally, cones would be activated for perceiving shorter wavelengths.

I was seeing a reddish hue around the moon, days after the nuclear particles were released into the atmosphere in Japan, and all I could wish for was that it didn't rain down on me.

I only now wonder what it might be like to have been lying in bed one moment, and then poured over with sea water, mud, broken boards, cement, crumpled vehicles, or other debris. I take a breath and remember where I am, then I look up and wonder what kind of air I'm breathing.

I imagine what I read about Hiroshima, and I remembered what happened to those who long after the initial radiation exposure, were rained on by black drops of poison. The horror of what we all face right now is so much that governments are working to supress it, only to prevent panic.