I know I don't update often. I go up and down. But I just have to share this.
I'm at a roleplaying session of a game called Exalted, and we're currently digging a gigantic hole. This hole was so huge that it sunk one of the nearby buildings, turns out it was one of the private libraries of the mayor, who also would have killed us on sight if he knew what we were. The mayor came out to complain at us.
What's funny is that the musical member of our group tried to distract things with a soothing song. Being a fan of roleplaying, he began by strumming his guitar and saying "You know, that reminds me of a song about libraries collapsing..."
And later, there was "Oh, sometimes you gotta crush the head of your rickshaw driver, and sometimes you gotta not kill the guy playing the guitar..."
Just felt that this was too funny not to tell y'all about.
Monday, March 23, 2009
Monday, March 9, 2009
My Experiences So Far In NYC
All right, the poem wasn't that good.
New York City was, and is, a blast. In brief, I've been to Central Park, the Museum of Natural History, Little Italy, the Upright Citizen's Brigade Theater, Ground Zero, Radio City Hall, Carnegie Hall, the Rockefeller Center, Times Square, the Statue of Liberty, Wall Street, the Garment District, Hell's Kitchen, the New York Times building, and a massive comics shop in Midtown (named Midtown Comics).
In length:
New York City cabbies are about as ridiculous as everyone says they are. Lanes are treated as mere suggestions, and the horn is indeed a surrogate for the brake pedal in many cases. Cabs miss other cars and people by mere inches. This was while I was in one (we've taken two), and they're even more intimidating outside. But they demonstrate such an unparalleled mastery of their vehicles that it really isn't that terrifying. They may miss me by an inch with their horn blaring all the while, but I still feel completely safe. Which is interesting. Rides with NYC cabbies are like two-dimensional roller coaster rides - you may go all over the place, but you don't feel like you're in any actual danger.
Restaurants in New York City are easily a cut above any other restaurants I've been to anywhere. Not that they're all superior, I've been to some REALLY nice restaurants, but in general, the average in NYC is much better than the average anywhere else. There was this Irish pub style place where we were still walking towards it at 6:00 - and had our meal, after appetizers, at 6:15. And it was delicious. I haven't had a bad meal since I've been here. I'm making a dedicated effort not to go to any place I've ever been to before, rationalizing that it's a waste to fly all the way to the Big Apple and eat at Subway.
The subway is at the same time enormously confusing and enormously useful. I can't help but think of it as described in some 1900s-esque period sci-fi novel where the protagonist, in the far-off year of 2000, sees a marvelous system of trains that go underground, that shuttle millions of people around every day, for a mere pittance. Once, we got lost and ended up in Brooklyn.
Central Park: We both agreed, my father and I, that it would be much more interesting in the spring when everything wasn't all withered and leafless. It was still pretty nice, but, y'know, everything's dead or hibernating. It's still forty degrees out. Not spring yet. There was a playground and a bunch of rocks to climb on, and the whole place was flanked with horses, making it practically impossible to get in for me.
Museum of Natural History: Awesome. Dinosaur skeletons, a planetarium show, a butterfly exhibit where we got to mingle with hundreds of butterflies. It was 80 degrees and 80% humidity inside the butterfly enclosure. People were panting, sweating, complaining, wiping their foreheads, I just shrugged and said that this is my existence for four or five months out of the year.
Little Italy: Practically invisible to us until we found twelve or thirteen Italian restaurants in a two-block diameter. The one we went to was excellent. I actually had manicotti with sauce, and enjoyed it. See? New York City is broadening my horizons. I may yet embrace sauce.
The Upright Citizen's Brigade Theater: An improv theater, a small underground place (literally and figuratively). We went for two hours of the most gut-bustingly hilarious improv I've ever seen, that blows any Whose Line? sketches out of the friggin' water. Well, maybe not Sound Effects.
Ground Zero: Sad. Full of construction. Apparently they're building a new building that'll be some sort of memorial, or maybe a replacement, I wasn't too clear on the details.
Radio City Hall, Carnegie Hall, Rockefeller Center: Were closed. Or unavailable. We stopped outside, oohed and aahed, then left.
Times Square: As big and flashy as I've ever seen it. I tried and failed to pinpoint the exact location where the sailor kissed the nurse in that famous photograph (if you don't know which photograph I'm talking about, get a friggin' clue and look it up, it won a Pulitzer for God's sake). We got to see a fight between two big guys, which the police broke up relatively quickly. My father started counting when the first punch was thrown; the police showed up 32 seconds later. Commendably fast. Giuliani really did make a difference.
The Statue of Liberty: Did you know that the copper exterior of the Statue is only as thick as two coins? Most of it is an iron frame. Anyway, not much to say - it was a statue, it was impressive, the gift shop shilled it for everything it was worth. The ferry ride over and back was fun. Plus, New York's feral seagulls and evil pigeons duked it out for bread crumbs. That was entertainment in and of itself.
Wall Street: I didn't get to see any of the fun parts of Wall Street, you know, with lots of smartly besuited people waving bits of paper and shouting their lungs out. Apparently that's forbidden to the public. I got some good pictures in front of the New York Stock Exchange building, though.
The Garment District: Lives up to its name. Holy crap, are there ever a lot of clothes stores. There was one Macy's that dwarfed any department store I've ever seen. (Maybe Harrod's in England was bigger. I really couldn't say, it's been nigh on a decade.) I didn't end up buying anything, though.
Hell's Kitchen: Did not live up to its name. Wasn't really that terrifying, to be honest. There was a flea market, at which I bought some VHS tapes my father will convert into DVDs for me, since I possess no VHS player.
The New York Times Building: Got a picture in front of it with me rolling my eyes derisively. Stupid New York Times. They charge $5.00 for a Sunday edition that's two-thirds advertisements and wonder why they're losing business.
Midtown Comics: I now have a reason to live in New York City, and that reason is this store.
Overall, I'm loving it, and I'll visit other things like Fifth Avenue and the Empire State Building later in the week. I definitely want to move here after law school. It'll be fun!
New York City was, and is, a blast. In brief, I've been to Central Park, the Museum of Natural History, Little Italy, the Upright Citizen's Brigade Theater, Ground Zero, Radio City Hall, Carnegie Hall, the Rockefeller Center, Times Square, the Statue of Liberty, Wall Street, the Garment District, Hell's Kitchen, the New York Times building, and a massive comics shop in Midtown (named Midtown Comics).
In length:
New York City cabbies are about as ridiculous as everyone says they are. Lanes are treated as mere suggestions, and the horn is indeed a surrogate for the brake pedal in many cases. Cabs miss other cars and people by mere inches. This was while I was in one (we've taken two), and they're even more intimidating outside. But they demonstrate such an unparalleled mastery of their vehicles that it really isn't that terrifying. They may miss me by an inch with their horn blaring all the while, but I still feel completely safe. Which is interesting. Rides with NYC cabbies are like two-dimensional roller coaster rides - you may go all over the place, but you don't feel like you're in any actual danger.
Restaurants in New York City are easily a cut above any other restaurants I've been to anywhere. Not that they're all superior, I've been to some REALLY nice restaurants, but in general, the average in NYC is much better than the average anywhere else. There was this Irish pub style place where we were still walking towards it at 6:00 - and had our meal, after appetizers, at 6:15. And it was delicious. I haven't had a bad meal since I've been here. I'm making a dedicated effort not to go to any place I've ever been to before, rationalizing that it's a waste to fly all the way to the Big Apple and eat at Subway.
The subway is at the same time enormously confusing and enormously useful. I can't help but think of it as described in some 1900s-esque period sci-fi novel where the protagonist, in the far-off year of 2000, sees a marvelous system of trains that go underground, that shuttle millions of people around every day, for a mere pittance. Once, we got lost and ended up in Brooklyn.
Central Park: We both agreed, my father and I, that it would be much more interesting in the spring when everything wasn't all withered and leafless. It was still pretty nice, but, y'know, everything's dead or hibernating. It's still forty degrees out. Not spring yet. There was a playground and a bunch of rocks to climb on, and the whole place was flanked with horses, making it practically impossible to get in for me.
Museum of Natural History: Awesome. Dinosaur skeletons, a planetarium show, a butterfly exhibit where we got to mingle with hundreds of butterflies. It was 80 degrees and 80% humidity inside the butterfly enclosure. People were panting, sweating, complaining, wiping their foreheads, I just shrugged and said that this is my existence for four or five months out of the year.
Little Italy: Practically invisible to us until we found twelve or thirteen Italian restaurants in a two-block diameter. The one we went to was excellent. I actually had manicotti with sauce, and enjoyed it. See? New York City is broadening my horizons. I may yet embrace sauce.
The Upright Citizen's Brigade Theater: An improv theater, a small underground place (literally and figuratively). We went for two hours of the most gut-bustingly hilarious improv I've ever seen, that blows any Whose Line? sketches out of the friggin' water. Well, maybe not Sound Effects.
Ground Zero: Sad. Full of construction. Apparently they're building a new building that'll be some sort of memorial, or maybe a replacement, I wasn't too clear on the details.
Radio City Hall, Carnegie Hall, Rockefeller Center: Were closed. Or unavailable. We stopped outside, oohed and aahed, then left.
Times Square: As big and flashy as I've ever seen it. I tried and failed to pinpoint the exact location where the sailor kissed the nurse in that famous photograph (if you don't know which photograph I'm talking about, get a friggin' clue and look it up, it won a Pulitzer for God's sake). We got to see a fight between two big guys, which the police broke up relatively quickly. My father started counting when the first punch was thrown; the police showed up 32 seconds later. Commendably fast. Giuliani really did make a difference.
The Statue of Liberty: Did you know that the copper exterior of the Statue is only as thick as two coins? Most of it is an iron frame. Anyway, not much to say - it was a statue, it was impressive, the gift shop shilled it for everything it was worth. The ferry ride over and back was fun. Plus, New York's feral seagulls and evil pigeons duked it out for bread crumbs. That was entertainment in and of itself.
Wall Street: I didn't get to see any of the fun parts of Wall Street, you know, with lots of smartly besuited people waving bits of paper and shouting their lungs out. Apparently that's forbidden to the public. I got some good pictures in front of the New York Stock Exchange building, though.
The Garment District: Lives up to its name. Holy crap, are there ever a lot of clothes stores. There was one Macy's that dwarfed any department store I've ever seen. (Maybe Harrod's in England was bigger. I really couldn't say, it's been nigh on a decade.) I didn't end up buying anything, though.
Hell's Kitchen: Did not live up to its name. Wasn't really that terrifying, to be honest. There was a flea market, at which I bought some VHS tapes my father will convert into DVDs for me, since I possess no VHS player.
The New York Times Building: Got a picture in front of it with me rolling my eyes derisively. Stupid New York Times. They charge $5.00 for a Sunday edition that's two-thirds advertisements and wonder why they're losing business.
Midtown Comics: I now have a reason to live in New York City, and that reason is this store.
Overall, I'm loving it, and I'll visit other things like Fifth Avenue and the Empire State Building later in the week. I definitely want to move here after law school. It'll be fun!
Monday, February 23, 2009
I Wrote A Narrative Double Sonnet
I was assigned in my poetry class to write a narrative double sonnet that's a retelling of a famous myth or legend. I chose the myth of Icarus. I followed the Shakespearean rules for sonnets - 28 lines, a-b-a-b-c-d-c-d-e-f-e-f-g-g rhyming, in iambic pentameter. Tell me what you think.
A sparkling wave broke forth across the sea
Lashing and foaming, pounding far below
As Icarus stood, small heart filled with glee,
At all the great lengths Daedalus might go
To gain their freedom. Great wings, wide and proud,
All flighted with the feathers of those birds
(Except, i’faith, he should have wove a shroud,)
Whose clarion calls could every day be heard
Across the island. Daedalus called heed
To his young sun, snapped his fingers fast,
He bade him listen to his words of need,
“Flap not too high, lest that flap be your last.”
Fixed Icarus with flutt’ring wings, quite light,
Kissed him once more, then both of them took flight.
The sun upon their faces warmed their heart
More than their bodies. The cold ocean spray
Would often foam up, forcing them apart
With bitter, icy fingers. The boy’s play
Took them into a squawking flock of gulls
Enraged at this invasion of their space,
They drove old Daedalus down near ships’ hulls
While Icarus soared up to the sun’s face,
But then, the sun, cruel master that it is,
Shined down its burning rays with terrible strength,
Melting the wings of poor young Icarus
Robbing his flight of its remaining length.
He plunged into the unforgiving sea,
The birds, still heedless, flapped away, still free.
A sparkling wave broke forth across the sea
Lashing and foaming, pounding far below
As Icarus stood, small heart filled with glee,
At all the great lengths Daedalus might go
To gain their freedom. Great wings, wide and proud,
All flighted with the feathers of those birds
(Except, i’faith, he should have wove a shroud,)
Whose clarion calls could every day be heard
Across the island. Daedalus called heed
To his young sun, snapped his fingers fast,
He bade him listen to his words of need,
“Flap not too high, lest that flap be your last.”
Fixed Icarus with flutt’ring wings, quite light,
Kissed him once more, then both of them took flight.
The sun upon their faces warmed their heart
More than their bodies. The cold ocean spray
Would often foam up, forcing them apart
With bitter, icy fingers. The boy’s play
Took them into a squawking flock of gulls
Enraged at this invasion of their space,
They drove old Daedalus down near ships’ hulls
While Icarus soared up to the sun’s face,
But then, the sun, cruel master that it is,
Shined down its burning rays with terrible strength,
Melting the wings of poor young Icarus
Robbing his flight of its remaining length.
He plunged into the unforgiving sea,
The birds, still heedless, flapped away, still free.
Saturday, February 21, 2009
My Web Site Is Actually Online Now
Originally this post was called something like "So My Web Site Will Be Online Very Soon," but then I checked my email and my instructor had put it online already. So here it is:
http://iml.jou.ufl.edu/homepages/s09/moreau%5Fl/
For best results, view in Firefox, it loses some of its luster when it goes to Internet Explorer. It's very basic, but I built it myself and it is mine. And it's not that bad.
I remember being terrified when I finally finished it then ran it through an XHTML validator, and got back like 25 errors per page. Fortunately, most of them were just that I forgot to close one tag and then it just caused errors to cascade. I had to make a total of like five fixes to solve 100+ errors.
http://iml.jou.ufl.edu/homepages/s09/moreau%5Fl/
For best results, view in Firefox, it loses some of its luster when it goes to Internet Explorer. It's very basic, but I built it myself and it is mine. And it's not that bad.
I remember being terrified when I finally finished it then ran it through an XHTML validator, and got back like 25 errors per page. Fortunately, most of them were just that I forgot to close one tag and then it just caused errors to cascade. I had to make a total of like five fixes to solve 100+ errors.
And I think I'll get a decent grade on it, so I'm in a good mood. And Megacon is next weekend, so I'm in a better mood. And a friend of mine just got something she's wanted for a very long time, so I'm in a great mood.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
I Built A Web Site
Tremble with fear, brief mortals, for now I have a basic competency with XHTML and CSS. I used it to build a Web site for class, which I'm handing in in, oh...an hour and a half.
It has pictures, and borders (I do so love the border declaration), and humorous title tags on each and every picture. And a background made of bubbles. Since I have absolutely no way to host it, though, I can't show it to you, at least until I get back home or go to Megacon or something.
Rest assured, it's decent-looking. I'm actually kind of proud of it.
It has pictures, and borders (I do so love the border declaration), and humorous title tags on each and every picture. And a background made of bubbles. Since I have absolutely no way to host it, though, I can't show it to you, at least until I get back home or go to Megacon or something.
Rest assured, it's decent-looking. I'm actually kind of proud of it.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Between Classes
I was looking at the tuition for UF's law school. $10,800 a year for residents. Blech. And here I was hoping I could get out of college without owing tens of thousands of dollars in student loans.
But the average salary for UF law school graduates in their first year was $72,000, so that makes me feel a little better. Those loans'll go away in no time.
My stomach is feeling fine. I have class in a few minutes. I can't wait for Megacon, I already ordered the trench coat and am going to the mall this afternoon for the hat, scarf, and gloves. May have to order the gloves online...I hope not.
But the average salary for UF law school graduates in their first year was $72,000, so that makes me feel a little better. Those loans'll go away in no time.
My stomach is feeling fine. I have class in a few minutes. I can't wait for Megacon, I already ordered the trench coat and am going to the mall this afternoon for the hat, scarf, and gloves. May have to order the gloves online...I hope not.
Monday, February 16, 2009
Oh Really?
Just because I go a little while - a little while packed with drama and intrigue and crap, mind - without responding doesn't mean I'm gone.
I'm still here.
In fact I was in town this weekend. I can only assume that the last person to comment was someone who knows me from home. Well, I was there.
But, uh, yeah. Last few days have been pretty crazy - I couldn't think of anything but what was happening. Lots of drama.
Right. Stomach hurts. Gotta take a shower. Gotta write this stupid proposal.
I'm still here.
In fact I was in town this weekend. I can only assume that the last person to comment was someone who knows me from home. Well, I was there.
But, uh, yeah. Last few days have been pretty crazy - I couldn't think of anything but what was happening. Lots of drama.
Right. Stomach hurts. Gotta take a shower. Gotta write this stupid proposal.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Microposting - The Method of the Future
Microposts. Small posts that describe how I'm feeling at any given moment as opposed to big huge updates. Hopefully more frequent. Sentence fragments abound.
In class right now. Should be paying attention. Stomach hurts. Has been doing so last few days. What's with that?
Assignment due at 4:00 today. Damn everything. I need to do these things sooner.
In class right now. Should be paying attention. Stomach hurts. Has been doing so last few days. What's with that?
Assignment due at 4:00 today. Damn everything. I need to do these things sooner.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
My Thoughts, Such As They Are
My head hurts, a bit. Can't really say why.
Tired.
I have something due every day starting tomorrow until Wednesday...no, Thursday, since that day I have a test. It's a bit grating on the nerves. Maybe at one point I'll actually have a look at what any of it is. (Joking.)
I'm watching a friend of mine play Spore, this sort of weird evolution-civilization game. You can start with a single cell and end with an intergalactic civilization, with all the steps more-or-less well-documented on the way.
I must confess to having a bit of writer's block, but Jamie (the aforementioned friend) is adamant that I update. Not that I've ever known him to read it before, but there we are. So, basically, he's telling me to update something he barely knows exists.
Now he's eating my candy.
It's bad enough that, in my ignorance, I decided to go to Red Lobster that morning, and I couldn't very well leave Jamie to languish at home while I ate Red Lobster, so I brought him along, and decided that hey, I'm under food budget for the week, I'll take care of this.
I don't even want to think about the cost. What I do want to think about was that it was one of the greatest meals of my life. Because of circumstances that probably fall squarely into a crushing lack of lobster in my life, I found myself making the interesting lifestyle choice: ordering two one and one-quarter pound lobsters because it was slightly cheaper than ordering one three-pound lobster, and anyway this way I'd get two helpings of everything I liked.
This after mozzarella sticks and a big shrimp cocktail. And three of those famous Red Lobster cheesy buttery biscuits.
I ate everything. My God, was I hungry.
More later.
It's later now.
No, all that did not fit into my food budget. I got...overexuberant. And hungry. Let's not forget the hunger. I went grossly over-budget. Let me put it this way...I exceeded what is normally my budget for the whole week on one meal.
But it was worth every penny because it was delicious.
Anyway, I just ordered the hotel rooms for Megacon. Four rooms. Two for guys, one for girls (because some of the girls coming insisted, I say, whatever floats yer boats), one for my parents who like to come as well. And I have got to get my measurement taken for that dumb trenchcoat.
And I've got to stop spending money so recklessly. Seriously. I must cut back majorly or face poverty.
Tired.
I have something due every day starting tomorrow until Wednesday...no, Thursday, since that day I have a test. It's a bit grating on the nerves. Maybe at one point I'll actually have a look at what any of it is. (Joking.)
I'm watching a friend of mine play Spore, this sort of weird evolution-civilization game. You can start with a single cell and end with an intergalactic civilization, with all the steps more-or-less well-documented on the way.
I must confess to having a bit of writer's block, but Jamie (the aforementioned friend) is adamant that I update. Not that I've ever known him to read it before, but there we are. So, basically, he's telling me to update something he barely knows exists.
Now he's eating my candy.
It's bad enough that, in my ignorance, I decided to go to Red Lobster that morning, and I couldn't very well leave Jamie to languish at home while I ate Red Lobster, so I brought him along, and decided that hey, I'm under food budget for the week, I'll take care of this.
I don't even want to think about the cost. What I do want to think about was that it was one of the greatest meals of my life. Because of circumstances that probably fall squarely into a crushing lack of lobster in my life, I found myself making the interesting lifestyle choice: ordering two one and one-quarter pound lobsters because it was slightly cheaper than ordering one three-pound lobster, and anyway this way I'd get two helpings of everything I liked.
This after mozzarella sticks and a big shrimp cocktail. And three of those famous Red Lobster cheesy buttery biscuits.
I ate everything. My God, was I hungry.
More later.
It's later now.
No, all that did not fit into my food budget. I got...overexuberant. And hungry. Let's not forget the hunger. I went grossly over-budget. Let me put it this way...I exceeded what is normally my budget for the whole week on one meal.
But it was worth every penny because it was delicious.
Anyway, I just ordered the hotel rooms for Megacon. Four rooms. Two for guys, one for girls (because some of the girls coming insisted, I say, whatever floats yer boats), one for my parents who like to come as well. And I have got to get my measurement taken for that dumb trenchcoat.
And I've got to stop spending money so recklessly. Seriously. I must cut back majorly or face poverty.
Monday, January 12, 2009
Yes, Yes, I'm Still Alive
But don't worry. As long as I know how to love, I know I'm still alive. I have all my life to live, why I - okay, forget it.
I'm making this post standing out in the rather chilly weather wearing only a T-shirt and my exercise shorts (and soggy shoes) with my computer on top of a newspaper dispenser, for a series of rather excellent reasons which I will elaborate upon in due time. But first.
Yes, I didn't update for a month. But for three weeks of that month, I was home, where 90% of my reader base lives! They sort of knew what was going on. Lots of fuss over my sister's baby, lots of games of Smash and Left 4 Dead, all that sort of thing. To those who may be following the exploits of this blog over the Internet...sorry, but I honestly don't know if you exist or not. It's tough to write to an audience that you may or may not believe in. It's like an agnostic praying to God...he's not entirely sure if he's just making a fool of himself to no effect.
So. Couple of big things happened recently, notably among those being that - Oh, bugger this, I don't care that I'm going to get all wet, I have to find a seat. This standing position is irritating the bejeezus out of me. Stand by.
*moves*
...Why did I go to all that trouble? It's not as if I'm updating in real-time. Oh, well. This is supposed to be a sort of stream-of-consciousness endeavor anyway.
Anyway. Notably among those being that my university's football team, the Gators, won the national championship 24-14. Go us. Woot. I went to see the game at the O'Connell Center, the big basketball stadium, wherein they had the game playing on a bunch of big-screens strategically arranged around the place. It was tense stuff for the first three-quarters of the game - at the end of the first half, the score was 7-7, and this from two teams who regularly scored over twenty or thirty points in the first quarter. On two separate occasions, the Gator defense stopped the opposing team from scoring at the 1-yard line. That's hot. That's hot like fire.
Afterwards, me and the big group of friends I had gone to the stadium with went out to University Avenue, where more or less the entire student population of Gainesville had turned out to celebrate. In classic form, the streets were one giant mosh pit, and we were forced to hold hands or link arms to stay together. People were throwing rolls of toilet paper (good stuff! Two-ply! Cushioned! Why waste it when there's an inexhaustible supply of cardboard-quality crud from the dorms, I ask you?) and a few brave souls were lighting fireworks. There were the usual people dancing on awnings, a handful of idiots trying to climb the light poles (which the Gainesville police had thoughtfully greased to prevent this, see how well that turned out), and the big crossing where all the restaurants were was the fullest I've ever seen it.
It took us twenty damn minutes to cross the street. And we were lucky. Well, most of us were lucky. My part in the human chain was unfortunately broken when an avalanche of people decided to smash through the chain, just behind me. I lost my link with John, because to be frank, it was him or my arm, and my arm couldn't very well call me an hour later or meet me in the morning if I lost it.
It was very dramatic, though. I stretched out my hand, movie style, and cried out "JOHHHHHNNN!!!" He similarly extended his arm and bellowed "LUUUUUKE!" But then the crowd swallowed him.
"I lost John!" I yelled to Steve, who was ahead of me.
"Shit!" he growled. "We can't stop. We have to keep moving!"
"But John's still back there!" I roared.
"We don't have the time! He's gone, leave him!" Steve snapped. "If we try to get him, we'll be lost too! Now move!"
With a heavy heart, I continued. We finally made it through the scrum (or maybe it was a fracas?), whereupon several of us tried to call John (and Rachel, who was behind him when we were separated), to obviously no avail. I mean, hearing one's cell phone in the middle of that mob? Not a chance. Disconsolate at losing some of our group (and quite unfairly blaming me, what was I supposed to do? Use my Go-Go-Gadget-Arms to haul him in?), we made our way through the back streets of Gainesville, until he called us fifteen minutes later and said he'd meet us at the Krispy Kreme. Which he did.
Then we split three boxes of donuts. Since there were twelve of us, it worked out rather well. Most of us went home after, a few of us splintered off and came back to my apartment so we could beat up my roommate Zack, who had preferred to stay indoors and play World of WarCraft instead. (Mental note: Though this is mean to say, it's true - whenever I need an impetus to get off my arse and get out and meet new people, I imagine ending up like Zack, and I get in gear. He seems to be okay with being antisocial, though, so whatever.) We didn't actually beat him up, but we gave him a stern talking-to.
Oh yes, that reminds me. I had tried to convince him to come with us, using the only terms I thought reasonable:
"Zack, think of it this way. Think of it like...like the student body is a faction, and you need to grind reputation with them by doing a bunch of quests. Now, you may not like these quests, they may be onerous and difficult to handle, but you stick with them because there are some absolutely awesome rewards waiting as soon as you're the right rep level. Sure, grinding rep sucks, but think of what awaits you."
He didn't go for it. Too bad, his loss. I did the best I could.
That was Thursday...not much happened of note Friday or Saturday, Saturday was mostly spent making up a character for this BESM campaign my friend David is running. BESM is another RPG like Vampire, anime-styled, BESM standing for Big Eyes, Small Mouth, in the traditional anime drawing style. Our party consists of:
The silent assassin who can use illusions, invisibility, and mind-control to strike unseen and kill opponents before they even know she's there.
The angel who can call down holy fire and heal the wounds of others, in addition to having totally awesome wings and a force-shield.
The buffing specialist who has no powers of his own, but can elevate the powers of others to absurd levels. Absurd even for anime. Imagine.
The telekinetic whose misanthropy was upgraded by years of horrible genetic splicing, magical injection, and experimentation mixed with torture into full-blown genocidal mania, who wants to see every person in the world dead including himself. But his powers won't let him kill himself, so he kills everyone else instead.
The 99-year-old man who doesn't have that many actual powers, but has an unbelievable amount of knowledge in the oddest subjects (Knowledge - Region - North Mexico, Sculpting, Mechanical Engineering, all that sort of thing), and who is ageless.
Which of these characters do you think is mine? I'll mention at the end, so stay on tenterhooks (unless of course you just want to skip to the end and see, you horrible person you). Oh, and I've been known to play female characters, so don't immediately discount the assassin.
Anyway...boring stuff aside, oh yeah, Friday I went and got some blood sucked out of my body, and then put back in, minus my plasma. Gruesome stuff, but I got twenty-five bucks, and I'll go back tomorrow (Monday) for forty-five more. So, good news there. I need some extra spending cash, and this is the most convenient way to do it that doesn't involve actually (gasp!) working.
...I can hear bats above me. Makes sense, given the enormous bathouse that's not far from where I am. Oh, right, you probably wanted to hear the story about why I'm here and dressed like this. Well.
Today sucked. Absolutely horrible. It was gray, clouding, and rainy all day, and nobody was available to do anything, so I mostly sat inside, cooked meals, and messed about on the Internet. When I had to go out to pick up an ingredient for dinner, the rain, which had been a gentle mist for three hours at that point, suddenly upgraded into a fierce downpour which soaked me over and back. This rendered my last pair of clean pants soaked. So now I have to do laundry. Tonight. *sigh* (Hey, a whole paragraph without using parentheses. ...Poop.)
As to compound things, our Internet connection failed earlier this evening. It was actually kind of amusing - all three of us (me, Mike, Zack) came wandering out of our rooms, complaining about the Internet, sort of confused and sad that our primary form of entertainment was gone...bumping into walls, bursting into tears, falling down stairs, losing ourselves in apathy and despair. Well, maybe not, but we did all stand around in the hallway like dopes for a few minutes, trying to grasp the enormity of the situation.
It was about half an hour ago, maybe forty-five minutes, that I realized I had set a skill to train in EVE Online (the new online game I'm into), and that EVE has this annoying thing about skill training not doing the logical thing and proceeding to the next level of training once one level is done training. Since high-level skills take days or even weeks to train in EVE, I didn't want to waste the whole evening or more not training, so I grabbed the laptop and the only pair of below-the-waist clothing I owned that was still clean and trudged out to campus, where I could access the wireless network.
Which is how I'm posting. Aren't you glad to hear the end of that story? If I go back and the Internet is still down, I'll...probably go to sleep, I have class in the morning, but I'll be very put out. I hope it's back up by tomorrow afternoon. Like...really.
Oh, I'm the telekinetic character. I would mention this later, but I put it here just in case anyone actually did skip to the end to see which character I am. And stop staring, it's good for the blood to play an absolute psychopath every so often. Besides, his general lack of caring towards his personal well-being being what it is, he'll probably get himself killed before he can inflict too much damage.
Ugh. I gained back all the weight I lost when I was on the gym and running kick I was on that one time. I need to start doing that again. That probably means I won't be able to sell plasma...can't drain all the blood from my body and then go running three miles that evening. Le sigh. I'll at least do it for these first couple of weeks so I get the lucrative startup pay. I did recall that I should be calling Jamie and asking him if he knew someone at the hospital who knew where there were sperm banks in Gainesville...? I can do THAT and go running, by cracky.
Right. Now that I've put that image in y'all's heads, it's time for me to head back to my apartment. Night. I promise to update more often.
You DID just skip to the end, didn't you. Is finding out which character I'm playing so important that you don't want to read anything else I've written? Or is it all that boring? Well, I'm not saying. Go through and actually read the damn post. It'll be good for you.
I'm making this post standing out in the rather chilly weather wearing only a T-shirt and my exercise shorts (and soggy shoes) with my computer on top of a newspaper dispenser, for a series of rather excellent reasons which I will elaborate upon in due time. But first.
Yes, I didn't update for a month. But for three weeks of that month, I was home, where 90% of my reader base lives! They sort of knew what was going on. Lots of fuss over my sister's baby, lots of games of Smash and Left 4 Dead, all that sort of thing. To those who may be following the exploits of this blog over the Internet...sorry, but I honestly don't know if you exist or not. It's tough to write to an audience that you may or may not believe in. It's like an agnostic praying to God...he's not entirely sure if he's just making a fool of himself to no effect.
So. Couple of big things happened recently, notably among those being that - Oh, bugger this, I don't care that I'm going to get all wet, I have to find a seat. This standing position is irritating the bejeezus out of me. Stand by.
*moves*
...Why did I go to all that trouble? It's not as if I'm updating in real-time. Oh, well. This is supposed to be a sort of stream-of-consciousness endeavor anyway.
Anyway. Notably among those being that my university's football team, the Gators, won the national championship 24-14. Go us. Woot. I went to see the game at the O'Connell Center, the big basketball stadium, wherein they had the game playing on a bunch of big-screens strategically arranged around the place. It was tense stuff for the first three-quarters of the game - at the end of the first half, the score was 7-7, and this from two teams who regularly scored over twenty or thirty points in the first quarter. On two separate occasions, the Gator defense stopped the opposing team from scoring at the 1-yard line. That's hot. That's hot like fire.
Afterwards, me and the big group of friends I had gone to the stadium with went out to University Avenue, where more or less the entire student population of Gainesville had turned out to celebrate. In classic form, the streets were one giant mosh pit, and we were forced to hold hands or link arms to stay together. People were throwing rolls of toilet paper (good stuff! Two-ply! Cushioned! Why waste it when there's an inexhaustible supply of cardboard-quality crud from the dorms, I ask you?) and a few brave souls were lighting fireworks. There were the usual people dancing on awnings, a handful of idiots trying to climb the light poles (which the Gainesville police had thoughtfully greased to prevent this, see how well that turned out), and the big crossing where all the restaurants were was the fullest I've ever seen it.
It took us twenty damn minutes to cross the street. And we were lucky. Well, most of us were lucky. My part in the human chain was unfortunately broken when an avalanche of people decided to smash through the chain, just behind me. I lost my link with John, because to be frank, it was him or my arm, and my arm couldn't very well call me an hour later or meet me in the morning if I lost it.
It was very dramatic, though. I stretched out my hand, movie style, and cried out "JOHHHHHNNN!!!" He similarly extended his arm and bellowed "LUUUUUKE!" But then the crowd swallowed him.
"I lost John!" I yelled to Steve, who was ahead of me.
"Shit!" he growled. "We can't stop. We have to keep moving!"
"But John's still back there!" I roared.
"We don't have the time! He's gone, leave him!" Steve snapped. "If we try to get him, we'll be lost too! Now move!"
With a heavy heart, I continued. We finally made it through the scrum (or maybe it was a fracas?), whereupon several of us tried to call John (and Rachel, who was behind him when we were separated), to obviously no avail. I mean, hearing one's cell phone in the middle of that mob? Not a chance. Disconsolate at losing some of our group (and quite unfairly blaming me, what was I supposed to do? Use my Go-Go-Gadget-Arms to haul him in?), we made our way through the back streets of Gainesville, until he called us fifteen minutes later and said he'd meet us at the Krispy Kreme. Which he did.
Then we split three boxes of donuts. Since there were twelve of us, it worked out rather well. Most of us went home after, a few of us splintered off and came back to my apartment so we could beat up my roommate Zack, who had preferred to stay indoors and play World of WarCraft instead. (Mental note: Though this is mean to say, it's true - whenever I need an impetus to get off my arse and get out and meet new people, I imagine ending up like Zack, and I get in gear. He seems to be okay with being antisocial, though, so whatever.) We didn't actually beat him up, but we gave him a stern talking-to.
Oh yes, that reminds me. I had tried to convince him to come with us, using the only terms I thought reasonable:
"Zack, think of it this way. Think of it like...like the student body is a faction, and you need to grind reputation with them by doing a bunch of quests. Now, you may not like these quests, they may be onerous and difficult to handle, but you stick with them because there are some absolutely awesome rewards waiting as soon as you're the right rep level. Sure, grinding rep sucks, but think of what awaits you."
He didn't go for it. Too bad, his loss. I did the best I could.
That was Thursday...not much happened of note Friday or Saturday, Saturday was mostly spent making up a character for this BESM campaign my friend David is running. BESM is another RPG like Vampire, anime-styled, BESM standing for Big Eyes, Small Mouth, in the traditional anime drawing style. Our party consists of:
The silent assassin who can use illusions, invisibility, and mind-control to strike unseen and kill opponents before they even know she's there.
The angel who can call down holy fire and heal the wounds of others, in addition to having totally awesome wings and a force-shield.
The buffing specialist who has no powers of his own, but can elevate the powers of others to absurd levels. Absurd even for anime. Imagine.
The telekinetic whose misanthropy was upgraded by years of horrible genetic splicing, magical injection, and experimentation mixed with torture into full-blown genocidal mania, who wants to see every person in the world dead including himself. But his powers won't let him kill himself, so he kills everyone else instead.
The 99-year-old man who doesn't have that many actual powers, but has an unbelievable amount of knowledge in the oddest subjects (Knowledge - Region - North Mexico, Sculpting, Mechanical Engineering, all that sort of thing), and who is ageless.
Which of these characters do you think is mine? I'll mention at the end, so stay on tenterhooks (unless of course you just want to skip to the end and see, you horrible person you). Oh, and I've been known to play female characters, so don't immediately discount the assassin.
Anyway...boring stuff aside, oh yeah, Friday I went and got some blood sucked out of my body, and then put back in, minus my plasma. Gruesome stuff, but I got twenty-five bucks, and I'll go back tomorrow (Monday) for forty-five more. So, good news there. I need some extra spending cash, and this is the most convenient way to do it that doesn't involve actually (gasp!) working.
...I can hear bats above me. Makes sense, given the enormous bathouse that's not far from where I am. Oh, right, you probably wanted to hear the story about why I'm here and dressed like this. Well.
Today sucked. Absolutely horrible. It was gray, clouding, and rainy all day, and nobody was available to do anything, so I mostly sat inside, cooked meals, and messed about on the Internet. When I had to go out to pick up an ingredient for dinner, the rain, which had been a gentle mist for three hours at that point, suddenly upgraded into a fierce downpour which soaked me over and back. This rendered my last pair of clean pants soaked. So now I have to do laundry. Tonight. *sigh* (Hey, a whole paragraph without using parentheses. ...Poop.)
As to compound things, our Internet connection failed earlier this evening. It was actually kind of amusing - all three of us (me, Mike, Zack) came wandering out of our rooms, complaining about the Internet, sort of confused and sad that our primary form of entertainment was gone...bumping into walls, bursting into tears, falling down stairs, losing ourselves in apathy and despair. Well, maybe not, but we did all stand around in the hallway like dopes for a few minutes, trying to grasp the enormity of the situation.
It was about half an hour ago, maybe forty-five minutes, that I realized I had set a skill to train in EVE Online (the new online game I'm into), and that EVE has this annoying thing about skill training not doing the logical thing and proceeding to the next level of training once one level is done training. Since high-level skills take days or even weeks to train in EVE, I didn't want to waste the whole evening or more not training, so I grabbed the laptop and the only pair of below-the-waist clothing I owned that was still clean and trudged out to campus, where I could access the wireless network.
Which is how I'm posting. Aren't you glad to hear the end of that story? If I go back and the Internet is still down, I'll...probably go to sleep, I have class in the morning, but I'll be very put out. I hope it's back up by tomorrow afternoon. Like...really.
Oh, I'm the telekinetic character. I would mention this later, but I put it here just in case anyone actually did skip to the end to see which character I am. And stop staring, it's good for the blood to play an absolute psychopath every so often. Besides, his general lack of caring towards his personal well-being being what it is, he'll probably get himself killed before he can inflict too much damage.
Ugh. I gained back all the weight I lost when I was on the gym and running kick I was on that one time. I need to start doing that again. That probably means I won't be able to sell plasma...can't drain all the blood from my body and then go running three miles that evening. Le sigh. I'll at least do it for these first couple of weeks so I get the lucrative startup pay. I did recall that I should be calling Jamie and asking him if he knew someone at the hospital who knew where there were sperm banks in Gainesville...? I can do THAT and go running, by cracky.
Right. Now that I've put that image in y'all's heads, it's time for me to head back to my apartment. Night. I promise to update more often.
You DID just skip to the end, didn't you. Is finding out which character I'm playing so important that you don't want to read anything else I've written? Or is it all that boring? Well, I'm not saying. Go through and actually read the damn post. It'll be good for you.
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
What I Learned Today
1. People get annoyed when you go a month without updating your blog.
2. Fruit, despite being generally cheaper than meat, adds up in price if you buy a lot. Which I did.
3. My luck with women is at an all-time low. Liz blew me off, Mercedes (the Olympic chick) denied me, and Carolyn (the redhead) told me today that she was interested in another one of her male friends.
4. One eats starfruit by just taking great big bites out of it. I thought you had to peel it or core it or something.
5. The character creation system in Scion is ridiculously complicated, to the point where even Matt, our endlessly indulgent GM, shrinks at the thought of going through it for a whole group.
6. Prune juice tastes decent while you're drinking it (sort of like apple juice, but more sour), but it has a horrible aftertaste.
7. Drinking an entire half-gallon jug of prune juice in one sitting is generally a bad idea.
8. Scratch that, it's a terrible idea.
9. I mean, seriously. Dang.
10. I actually went down a size of pants. I have a 32 waist now. Not even freaking joking here.
11. I need to buy a belt.
2. Fruit, despite being generally cheaper than meat, adds up in price if you buy a lot. Which I did.
3. My luck with women is at an all-time low. Liz blew me off, Mercedes (the Olympic chick) denied me, and Carolyn (the redhead) told me today that she was interested in another one of her male friends.
4. One eats starfruit by just taking great big bites out of it. I thought you had to peel it or core it or something.
5. The character creation system in Scion is ridiculously complicated, to the point where even Matt, our endlessly indulgent GM, shrinks at the thought of going through it for a whole group.
6. Prune juice tastes decent while you're drinking it (sort of like apple juice, but more sour), but it has a horrible aftertaste.
7. Drinking an entire half-gallon jug of prune juice in one sitting is generally a bad idea.
8. Scratch that, it's a terrible idea.
9. I mean, seriously. Dang.
10. I actually went down a size of pants. I have a 32 waist now. Not even freaking joking here.
11. I need to buy a belt.
Friday, October 31, 2008
Lissette Elizabeth Escariz
Is the name of the girl I am currently...well, perhaps I could describe her as...er, it's only been just over a week, so...
I have gone out with her twice. And I am currently absolutely flippin' obsessed with her.
I mean it. I've never felt this way about a girl before. We connect on every level. Emotional, mental, physical (Eventually? So far, all we've shared is a goodnight kiss on the cheek), everything. She's easily my match in terms of intelligence, if not my superior, she has a fiery independent streak that I can't help but respect, she can listen as well as talk (and she's teaching me how to listen as opposed to just waiting for a gap so I can begin to talk again), and whenever she takes down her hair out of the ponytail she traditionally wears it in and shoof-shoofs it around her head, I lose track of everything I am currently saying and/or thinking.
I, of course, am no mind reader. I don't know how she feels about me. But from the conversations we've had and what we've shared, if I am any judge of character at all...well, I can hope really hard, anyway. And I believe my hope has some merit.
In any case, my week has gone sort of up-down-up-down. Saturday, I went out with Liz for the first time, and in case it wasn't already blaringly obvious, that went extraordinarily well.
(I knew, KNEW that the ballistic approach to dating - ask every girl that piques my interest and rely on the law of averages to ensure I'd find a suitable match - would work. I'm just stunned that any method worked well enough to bring Liz to me.)
I met her on the bus, in case you're wondering. I was headed home from Publix, which I went to on a whim with Zak. There were no seats, so I remained standing. I noticed I was sort of standing directly over this cute girl (who had her shirt on inside-out, that's the sort of detail that lodges itself in the mind), so I apologized for looming. She said it was no trouble. A few minutes later, I asked her about her Gator Growl necklace-thing, and we began talking. By the time she got off the bus, she had given me her phone number. We met on Saturday. Went to a sushi restaurant, where I decided to eat something new and had a raw quail egg. Not bad, but I'll certainly not have another. Serendipity itself, the bus ride, I think - had I not decided randomly to go to Publix with Zak, we would never have met, and I would still be as lonely as I was two weeks ago today.
I've just realized that I'm sort of going about this the wrong way. I'm thinking about her as if I have finally scored some important goal - that I've reached some objective, gained a MacGuffin. And that's not it at all. I have certainly reached my personal goal of finding a girl with whom I can connect, but it's not as if I beat a level in a video game and got a prize for it. I've gotta break out of that way of thinking.
Ill-formed line of thought aside, I gotta continue with my story. Sunday was down, for the downstairs toilet exploded. Not burst into pieces, but...was overwhelmed, let's say. Yes, it might have been my fault. Yes, I should eat more fiber. That is so far from the point that you can't see the point from it on a clear day. A lot of mopping and swearing ensued, and I gotta thank Mike for this one, for knowing how to deal with a mess such as I have never encountered. So...thanks, Mike. Our squabbles aside, you do know a lot of things I don't. (Now I just gotta hope you read this, it would be way too self-aggrandizing to mention it.)
Monday was up again. I got 25 points of extra credit in a class in which I had recently scored a 76 on a test, so that promoted my C to an A+. I like that. Tuesday...Tuesday, my landlord called me to tell me that the people who own the place directly downstairs from us complained that their roof was leaking. So that was down, because technically that might have been my fault. He said probably not, but he'd have to see.
Interesting things happened on Wednesday. I saw Liz again, we went out to lunch, and enjoyed each others' company some more. I really do enjoy spending time with her. (Details are sparse, yes, but I'm not entirely sure how comfortable she is with my relating any sort of details on this blog, so until I get a solid opinion from her one way or the other, they shall remain sparse.) So that was up. Also, game club, which is endlessly entertaining.
I believe I have successfully reached a low point today, given that work was an endless tedium of sorting games and putting games away, and I might, might just have to pay for the water damage downstairs. Hopefully not, probably not...but might. Oh, I voted today, but I'm not saying for whom I voted. No matter what answer I give, I'm going to piss half of the people around me, so I'm just clamming up. (A conversation with my mother, unfortunately, indicates that this will just instantly cause people to assume I voted for the person they didn't want to win, so it's sort of rendering me worse off than I would otherwise be, but a man's gotta have principles.)
If the past is any indication, tomorrow will be up. Which is fortunate, because tomorrow is Halloween, and I fully intend to don a badly put together ninja costume (I love my badly put together ninja costume) and gorge myself on candy at various parties. Hell's bells, I don't drink any more and I'm cutting down on fast food, I have to have some kind of vice.
If there was anything that amazing that happened between last Friday and my last blog post, it has escaped me. It probably wasn't that worth mentioning.
I'm still raving about Liz to anyone who will listen, though. I'm presenting a calm face to her, and my ravings aside, I'm really not all that jazzed up - excited, yes, but not manic - but I have literally never felt this way for a girl before. I take the lamest of excuses to talk for hours, why not take an excellent one?
(Intriguing, isn't it, that every paragraph in this blog post - except one - has begun with the letter I? Excluding punctuation? I noticed that for the first few, and just started to run with it.)
...
...
I see what you did there. You went back up and looked for the one that didn't start with I, didn't you. And if you didn't then, you're probably either going to do it now or are going to refuse to do it just to spite me. Since I can only assume that if you're still reading this far without knowledge of which paragraph it was, it's the spite option, I'll just go out and say it - the tenth paragraph began with "Monday".
I'm sorry if this post is a little more "meta" than mine usually tend to be, I just finished reading a comic strip called 1/0, which is the most interesting experiment in metafiction I've ever seen. Read it at http://www.undefined.net/1/0/ but immediately hit the "First" button if you don't want to see the last comic first. It's not a big spoiler, by the time you get to it you'll already know what's going to happen...but first things should come first.
I'll see y'all later.
(Heh, finished on an I.
...
Dammit.)
I have gone out with her twice. And I am currently absolutely flippin' obsessed with her.
I mean it. I've never felt this way about a girl before. We connect on every level. Emotional, mental, physical (Eventually? So far, all we've shared is a goodnight kiss on the cheek), everything. She's easily my match in terms of intelligence, if not my superior, she has a fiery independent streak that I can't help but respect, she can listen as well as talk (and she's teaching me how to listen as opposed to just waiting for a gap so I can begin to talk again), and whenever she takes down her hair out of the ponytail she traditionally wears it in and shoof-shoofs it around her head, I lose track of everything I am currently saying and/or thinking.
I, of course, am no mind reader. I don't know how she feels about me. But from the conversations we've had and what we've shared, if I am any judge of character at all...well, I can hope really hard, anyway. And I believe my hope has some merit.
In any case, my week has gone sort of up-down-up-down. Saturday, I went out with Liz for the first time, and in case it wasn't already blaringly obvious, that went extraordinarily well.
(I knew, KNEW that the ballistic approach to dating - ask every girl that piques my interest and rely on the law of averages to ensure I'd find a suitable match - would work. I'm just stunned that any method worked well enough to bring Liz to me.)
I met her on the bus, in case you're wondering. I was headed home from Publix, which I went to on a whim with Zak. There were no seats, so I remained standing. I noticed I was sort of standing directly over this cute girl (who had her shirt on inside-out, that's the sort of detail that lodges itself in the mind), so I apologized for looming. She said it was no trouble. A few minutes later, I asked her about her Gator Growl necklace-thing, and we began talking. By the time she got off the bus, she had given me her phone number. We met on Saturday. Went to a sushi restaurant, where I decided to eat something new and had a raw quail egg. Not bad, but I'll certainly not have another. Serendipity itself, the bus ride, I think - had I not decided randomly to go to Publix with Zak, we would never have met, and I would still be as lonely as I was two weeks ago today.
I've just realized that I'm sort of going about this the wrong way. I'm thinking about her as if I have finally scored some important goal - that I've reached some objective, gained a MacGuffin. And that's not it at all. I have certainly reached my personal goal of finding a girl with whom I can connect, but it's not as if I beat a level in a video game and got a prize for it. I've gotta break out of that way of thinking.
Ill-formed line of thought aside, I gotta continue with my story. Sunday was down, for the downstairs toilet exploded. Not burst into pieces, but...was overwhelmed, let's say. Yes, it might have been my fault. Yes, I should eat more fiber. That is so far from the point that you can't see the point from it on a clear day. A lot of mopping and swearing ensued, and I gotta thank Mike for this one, for knowing how to deal with a mess such as I have never encountered. So...thanks, Mike. Our squabbles aside, you do know a lot of things I don't. (Now I just gotta hope you read this, it would be way too self-aggrandizing to mention it.)
Monday was up again. I got 25 points of extra credit in a class in which I had recently scored a 76 on a test, so that promoted my C to an A+. I like that. Tuesday...Tuesday, my landlord called me to tell me that the people who own the place directly downstairs from us complained that their roof was leaking. So that was down, because technically that might have been my fault. He said probably not, but he'd have to see.
Interesting things happened on Wednesday. I saw Liz again, we went out to lunch, and enjoyed each others' company some more. I really do enjoy spending time with her. (Details are sparse, yes, but I'm not entirely sure how comfortable she is with my relating any sort of details on this blog, so until I get a solid opinion from her one way or the other, they shall remain sparse.) So that was up. Also, game club, which is endlessly entertaining.
I believe I have successfully reached a low point today, given that work was an endless tedium of sorting games and putting games away, and I might, might just have to pay for the water damage downstairs. Hopefully not, probably not...but might. Oh, I voted today, but I'm not saying for whom I voted. No matter what answer I give, I'm going to piss half of the people around me, so I'm just clamming up. (A conversation with my mother, unfortunately, indicates that this will just instantly cause people to assume I voted for the person they didn't want to win, so it's sort of rendering me worse off than I would otherwise be, but a man's gotta have principles.)
If the past is any indication, tomorrow will be up. Which is fortunate, because tomorrow is Halloween, and I fully intend to don a badly put together ninja costume (I love my badly put together ninja costume) and gorge myself on candy at various parties. Hell's bells, I don't drink any more and I'm cutting down on fast food, I have to have some kind of vice.
If there was anything that amazing that happened between last Friday and my last blog post, it has escaped me. It probably wasn't that worth mentioning.
I'm still raving about Liz to anyone who will listen, though. I'm presenting a calm face to her, and my ravings aside, I'm really not all that jazzed up - excited, yes, but not manic - but I have literally never felt this way for a girl before. I take the lamest of excuses to talk for hours, why not take an excellent one?
(Intriguing, isn't it, that every paragraph in this blog post - except one - has begun with the letter I? Excluding punctuation? I noticed that for the first few, and just started to run with it.)
...
...
I see what you did there. You went back up and looked for the one that didn't start with I, didn't you. And if you didn't then, you're probably either going to do it now or are going to refuse to do it just to spite me. Since I can only assume that if you're still reading this far without knowledge of which paragraph it was, it's the spite option, I'll just go out and say it - the tenth paragraph began with "Monday".
I'm sorry if this post is a little more "meta" than mine usually tend to be, I just finished reading a comic strip called 1/0, which is the most interesting experiment in metafiction I've ever seen. Read it at http://www.undefined.net/1/0/ but immediately hit the "First" button if you don't want to see the last comic first. It's not a big spoiler, by the time you get to it you'll already know what's going to happen...but first things should come first.
I'll see y'all later.
(Heh, finished on an I.
...
Dammit.)
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
I Missed My 100th Post, Damn It To Hell
It was two posts ago. I should have mentioned something. Oh well.
The week was fairly eventful. Well, during the week wasn't that grand, but some cool stuff happened. I met a girl in my Reporting lectures who seems quite nice. Her name is Jarahlee, which is a bit odd, but certainly interesting. (Spelled like that and everything.)
We were given a BS little quiz thing that the professor gives out to ensure attendance. The questions:
1. Do you have any tattoos?
2. If so, where and what? If not, why not? Are you boring?
3. Do you have any piercings?
4. If so, where? If not...why do you suck so much? (Maybe.)
Jarahlee (she described it as "Like Sarah Lee, except one word and with a J") mentioned that she did, in fact, have a tattoo. I asked about it. She said that it was angel wings, between her shoulder-blades. That is very neat, and I said so. We talked for a bit, and we've been sitting next to each other last few classes.
I realized recently that there is only one thing that people care about less than hearing about role-playing game sessions that they weren't at and don't know anything about, and that is hearing about other peoples' dreams. So I'll keep the descriptions of the various sessions to a minimum. To wit:
Friday's Vampire session: We tracked down and killed the conspirators who murdered Julius Caesar. (It's set in Roman times.) Gave their bodies to Cleopatra, who was a little insane and had them converted into massive puppets and sent back to Rome, to general rejoicing. Sat around for fifty years and grew in power. I developed a messianic cult. My character is making a play to become Emperor of Rome.
Saturday's session that I ran: Those blasted players took what I was building up to be an effective and deadly villain, truly evil and horrible, and jumped ahead in the plot and set up a situation in which he was made completely ridiculous. Now they'll never take him seriously. Even when I had him threaten the party with certain death and loom large, they were complimenting me on how he "wasn't really that evil, just sort of a rival" and "interesting portrayal of a villain who isn't that villainous." I hate them.
Sunday's session: Despite being overpowered gestalt characters with two classes each and recharge spellcasting, we proved that our distinguishing characteristics as a party are:
1. Crushing incompetence, and
2. Boiling hatred for each other.
This would normally be bad, but it's shaping up to be one of the funniest dungeons I've ever played through. Upon leveling a bit, we got past incompetence and are now stampeding headlong towards grotesquely overpowered. Fun times.
Right, that's over with. Friday night, after Vampire, I went with Steven and his female friends to see a hip-hop dance competition. Normally, when one tells me about a hip-hop dance competition taking place, you can usually find me leaving to go play pool, but his friends were hot, and so I went.
Oh, right, just remembered. Before this, Steven and I played the most ridiculous set of games of pool I've ever seen. Probability and physics had no place at this table. We were both making and missing shots neither of us had any right to do so with. He would hit in three balls in one shot, then miss at a range of six inches. I ran the table on him from the break until I only had one ball left before the 8, then chased that around the table for the rest of the game while he sunk all his and won.
The first nine games of 8-ball we played ended with Steven sinking the 8...but he only won about half of those. Every game, he sunk the 8, but sometimes he did it before the rest of his balls were sunk, sometimes he scratched on the sink, sometimes he put it in the wrong pocket. On one memorable occasion, he scratched on the sinking and put it in the wrong pocket. Fun times.
Hip-hop dance was a bit of a misnomer. It was mostly breakdancing, which I like. Some of these people...are absolutely insane. One guy in particular didn't seem to have any bones. He was made out of rubber, and could bend and twist any which way, leaping and jumping and spinning in place until we all just gave up and handed over all of our worldly possessions. I would have, except then this tubby guy got on the floor with a shirt saying "I AM hip-hop." And he was. Dear God, he was. Name a part of the human body, and this guy could spin or twirl on it. Palms of his hands, shoulders, knees, top of his head, anything. He was hip-hop.
He was overshadowed only by the last group we saw, which forsook general breakdancing and such in favor of a choreographed routine, led by this shirtless guy who was so built, he could not possibly have been born. He was constructed. Out of muscle and awesome. Not ugly-huge like you see bodybuilders like, just perfectly muscular and flexible as hell. His dancing was art, sheer and simple. (On a side note, it appears that I am gay now. Huh.)
I reasserted my heterosexuality afterwards by chatting up one of Steven's hot friends, a girl named Ali, and getting her phone number. In addition to being attractive, she plays Halo 2 and reads comic books, so I figure, match made in heaven. I'll see her again tomorrow at Juggling Club, which she attends every week. We've talked on the phone a bit in the interim. She's quite nice.
Monday...ah, Monday. I had a test in Geography on Wednesday, and arrived at Monday's class about twenty minutes early, through sheer happenstance. I noticed everyone was studying furiously, paging through their notes.
Oh shit, a little voice said.
I sat down next to a guy and asked what was the deal with everyone. Was there some review today, before Wednesday's test?
He looked at me funny and told me that the test wasn't on Wednesday, it was today. A panicked glance to the guy nodding on the other side of me confirmed this fact.
Oh shit.
Not to worry, though, I've attended class and I have good notes on my computer, I thought. So what if I can't look over the official notes? I can bluff through most of it, and I have notes here, so...
...my hard drive chose that point to detach, and my computer would not boot, a condition I could not possibly fix without a screwdriver.
OH SHIT.
Fortunately, a pair of thinly veiled deus ex machinas were on hand to save my worthless hide. A guy sitting outside had this massive, ridiculously well-written packet of notes which he let me page through at thought-blurring speed, and the girl I sat next to in the test room proper let me go through her fat stack of notecards in the ten minutes or so I had before the test began.
Flush with recently acquired/remembered information, I received the test, only to discover that the test was about a tenth as difficult as the first rough one was, and I demolished it. So, good news there.
Tomorrow I go to see Michelle Obama give a speech in favor of her husband (I can only assume, I kinda doubt she'd suddenly come out in favor of McCain at this point). I don't want to, but it's the biggest news event this week and I have to have a good story for Reporting. So off I go. It's gonna be boring, but whatever. Anything to pass the damn class.
That's more or less it. This personal trainer is kicking my ass, but since I'm paying him to do that, it's working out well. I set it up so I go to the gym on Mondays (when I see him), Thursdays, and Saturdays, and go running Tuesdays, Fridays, and Sundays. Wednesdays are my off days. If this doesn't get me results, I am terminally out of shape and might as well just forget doing anything. (I'll give it a couple months to see results, of course. I'm not dumb enough to think that a single week of exercise will change anything whatsoever.)
Oh yeah, today I went to Tatu, a sushi place I'd never even heard of, with Henry and his friends. Again, didn't really feel like, but hot female friends (sadly, both with boyfriends), so off I went. Their salmon rolls are awesome, and I tried their fried tofu steak.
I now know for certain: I don't like tofu.
The week was fairly eventful. Well, during the week wasn't that grand, but some cool stuff happened. I met a girl in my Reporting lectures who seems quite nice. Her name is Jarahlee, which is a bit odd, but certainly interesting. (Spelled like that and everything.)
We were given a BS little quiz thing that the professor gives out to ensure attendance. The questions:
1. Do you have any tattoos?
2. If so, where and what? If not, why not? Are you boring?
3. Do you have any piercings?
4. If so, where? If not...why do you suck so much? (Maybe.)
Jarahlee (she described it as "Like Sarah Lee, except one word and with a J") mentioned that she did, in fact, have a tattoo. I asked about it. She said that it was angel wings, between her shoulder-blades. That is very neat, and I said so. We talked for a bit, and we've been sitting next to each other last few classes.
I realized recently that there is only one thing that people care about less than hearing about role-playing game sessions that they weren't at and don't know anything about, and that is hearing about other peoples' dreams. So I'll keep the descriptions of the various sessions to a minimum. To wit:
Friday's Vampire session: We tracked down and killed the conspirators who murdered Julius Caesar. (It's set in Roman times.) Gave their bodies to Cleopatra, who was a little insane and had them converted into massive puppets and sent back to Rome, to general rejoicing. Sat around for fifty years and grew in power. I developed a messianic cult. My character is making a play to become Emperor of Rome.
Saturday's session that I ran: Those blasted players took what I was building up to be an effective and deadly villain, truly evil and horrible, and jumped ahead in the plot and set up a situation in which he was made completely ridiculous. Now they'll never take him seriously. Even when I had him threaten the party with certain death and loom large, they were complimenting me on how he "wasn't really that evil, just sort of a rival" and "interesting portrayal of a villain who isn't that villainous." I hate them.
Sunday's session: Despite being overpowered gestalt characters with two classes each and recharge spellcasting, we proved that our distinguishing characteristics as a party are:
1. Crushing incompetence, and
2. Boiling hatred for each other.
This would normally be bad, but it's shaping up to be one of the funniest dungeons I've ever played through. Upon leveling a bit, we got past incompetence and are now stampeding headlong towards grotesquely overpowered. Fun times.
Right, that's over with. Friday night, after Vampire, I went with Steven and his female friends to see a hip-hop dance competition. Normally, when one tells me about a hip-hop dance competition taking place, you can usually find me leaving to go play pool, but his friends were hot, and so I went.
Oh, right, just remembered. Before this, Steven and I played the most ridiculous set of games of pool I've ever seen. Probability and physics had no place at this table. We were both making and missing shots neither of us had any right to do so with. He would hit in three balls in one shot, then miss at a range of six inches. I ran the table on him from the break until I only had one ball left before the 8, then chased that around the table for the rest of the game while he sunk all his and won.
The first nine games of 8-ball we played ended with Steven sinking the 8...but he only won about half of those. Every game, he sunk the 8, but sometimes he did it before the rest of his balls were sunk, sometimes he scratched on the sink, sometimes he put it in the wrong pocket. On one memorable occasion, he scratched on the sinking and put it in the wrong pocket. Fun times.
Hip-hop dance was a bit of a misnomer. It was mostly breakdancing, which I like. Some of these people...are absolutely insane. One guy in particular didn't seem to have any bones. He was made out of rubber, and could bend and twist any which way, leaping and jumping and spinning in place until we all just gave up and handed over all of our worldly possessions. I would have, except then this tubby guy got on the floor with a shirt saying "I AM hip-hop." And he was. Dear God, he was. Name a part of the human body, and this guy could spin or twirl on it. Palms of his hands, shoulders, knees, top of his head, anything. He was hip-hop.
He was overshadowed only by the last group we saw, which forsook general breakdancing and such in favor of a choreographed routine, led by this shirtless guy who was so built, he could not possibly have been born. He was constructed. Out of muscle and awesome. Not ugly-huge like you see bodybuilders like, just perfectly muscular and flexible as hell. His dancing was art, sheer and simple. (On a side note, it appears that I am gay now. Huh.)
I reasserted my heterosexuality afterwards by chatting up one of Steven's hot friends, a girl named Ali, and getting her phone number. In addition to being attractive, she plays Halo 2 and reads comic books, so I figure, match made in heaven. I'll see her again tomorrow at Juggling Club, which she attends every week. We've talked on the phone a bit in the interim. She's quite nice.
Monday...ah, Monday. I had a test in Geography on Wednesday, and arrived at Monday's class about twenty minutes early, through sheer happenstance. I noticed everyone was studying furiously, paging through their notes.
Oh shit, a little voice said.
I sat down next to a guy and asked what was the deal with everyone. Was there some review today, before Wednesday's test?
He looked at me funny and told me that the test wasn't on Wednesday, it was today. A panicked glance to the guy nodding on the other side of me confirmed this fact.
Oh shit.
Not to worry, though, I've attended class and I have good notes on my computer, I thought. So what if I can't look over the official notes? I can bluff through most of it, and I have notes here, so...
...my hard drive chose that point to detach, and my computer would not boot, a condition I could not possibly fix without a screwdriver.
OH SHIT.
Fortunately, a pair of thinly veiled deus ex machinas were on hand to save my worthless hide. A guy sitting outside had this massive, ridiculously well-written packet of notes which he let me page through at thought-blurring speed, and the girl I sat next to in the test room proper let me go through her fat stack of notecards in the ten minutes or so I had before the test began.
Flush with recently acquired/remembered information, I received the test, only to discover that the test was about a tenth as difficult as the first rough one was, and I demolished it. So, good news there.
Tomorrow I go to see Michelle Obama give a speech in favor of her husband (I can only assume, I kinda doubt she'd suddenly come out in favor of McCain at this point). I don't want to, but it's the biggest news event this week and I have to have a good story for Reporting. So off I go. It's gonna be boring, but whatever. Anything to pass the damn class.
That's more or less it. This personal trainer is kicking my ass, but since I'm paying him to do that, it's working out well. I set it up so I go to the gym on Mondays (when I see him), Thursdays, and Saturdays, and go running Tuesdays, Fridays, and Sundays. Wednesdays are my off days. If this doesn't get me results, I am terminally out of shape and might as well just forget doing anything. (I'll give it a couple months to see results, of course. I'm not dumb enough to think that a single week of exercise will change anything whatsoever.)
Oh yeah, today I went to Tatu, a sushi place I'd never even heard of, with Henry and his friends. Again, didn't really feel like, but hot female friends (sadly, both with boyfriends), so off I went. Their salmon rolls are awesome, and I tried their fried tofu steak.
I now know for certain: I don't like tofu.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Philosophical Ramblings (Hey, Callback Title)
I’m on the bus home. I read Ender’s Game just now. It was extremely good. I almost say “surprisingly,” but from all I’ve heard about it, there’s nothing surprising about it. It is, after all, one of the classics of science-fiction, written by one of the SF greats. I learned a couple of things from reading it. A couple of important things, I think.
Here’s the first thing. There are two kinds of power – mental power and physical power. Physical power is the stuff that intrigues and thrills me, why I read comic books and play D&D and bang away at video games, whether I’m a stout warrior slicing down a foe a hundred times his size, a powerful wizard blasting away at legions of enemies with fire and lightning, or a battleship defeating a fleet a thousand times its size.
Physical power is what fills my fantasies and my dreams. When I walk to class, when I walk to the store, when I walk just to go out and have a walk, my head is filled with thoughts of might and magic. Bizarre anime-like plots like the one I described, with legendary heroes performing fantastic feats. Or different, thinking of my own self, doing crazy things I’d never be capable of, playing the hero, rescuing the innocent, protecting those weaker or disadvantaged, showing my strength.
I dream like this because physical power is something unattainable to me. At least, in any significant amount. I can train my body and become fit and toned and muscular, but the most I’ll ever be able to hope for is to hold my own in a fight against worse odds, or perform impressive feats undoable by those in worse shape. I’ll never be able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, never be able to dodge bullets, never be able to throw a train or project searing beams of energy from my hands.
I’ll never be able to do any of it. So that’s what I dream of. Physical power is the unreachable star, what I’ll always want and never have. But there is another kind of power which I will have, which I do have, and that is mental power.
This was demonstrated in Ender’s Game, very well. Ender was not very physically adept. He defeated opponents physically superior to him through tactics and trickery. He led a fleet against an impossible foe and won, not because of a massive planet-destroying weapon (though it helped), but because of his invulnerable skill at strategy and command.
Mental power is something I do have. I’m no Ender – I couldn’t lead a group of starships to victory against a foe that outnumbered them a hundred to one – but I do fancy myself to be quick in a tight spot and pretty good at coming up with ideas. This, I can sharpen. If I focus on training my mind like I’m going to be training my body, I can eventually do amazing, marvelous things – far more amazing than I ever could with biceps that could bend steel or glowing eyes that could burn a hole through concrete.
That was the first thing that the book taught me. If you were to pit mental power against physical power, assuming equal circumstances and equal skill, the mental power is heavily favored to win. Take the strongest man in the world, hunting down a weakling in a warehouse. Cut the lights, all of a sudden his strength means nothing. He can’t punch what he can’t see. Mental power can trump physical power because it can go around it, or circumvent it, or put it in a situation where it is useless. And since I have, or can have, mental power, that favors me in situations where I would otherwise be in difficulty.
That was one thing. That was important. That may fundamentally change things. But more was changed than just that. Something very important occurred to me. My philosophy of life is wrong...again.
For the longest time, I thought the most important thing to a person was happiness. To be happy, or content, that was the acme of a person’s life. What more could one want? And I was happy, or content, in my idle pleasures and simple things. But I was bored, and I knew it. I craved more. That’s why I constantly manifest such odd fantasies in my head – because my mind was (is) being so underused that it is (was) forced to craft its own scenarios in which something, anything, interesting happened to me.
Then I spoke with Henry, experienced the epiphany I’ve shared with all around me, knew for a fact that I was living my life wrong – and I was. I still believe this, absolutely. Talking to Henry and coming to the realization that I did was the best thing I’ve done for myself in years. I resolved that no more would I merely be content to loaf around and do nothing, I would be social, I would go out and talk and experience new things.
I thought that the most important thing to a person was excitement. Firework moments, Henry called them. Crash, boom, bang, colored lights and explosions and bang, pow, kaboom, something fun’s happening, now it’s over and there’s nothing left but a wisp of smoke and the dying echoes. But the memory persists, blazes as brightly as the fire it conjures forth in the mind.
Having thought more thoroughly about it, I came to the conclusion that this too was wrong. That’s a fun way to live, certainly more interesting and entertaining than the way I was living previously, but it’s unsustainable. A person can’t live expecting a constant stream of excitement. It’s impossible to expect, because it won’t happen. On the odd circumstance that constant excitement does occur, it’s a temporary and transient thing, and when it leaves it leaves you hungry and drained, tired from the fun but wanting more, but more won’t come, because the only thing a life full of explosions can lead to is disappointment when they stop – or nothing at all, because a particularly large bang can be the last one you ever hear.
I still plan to seek excitement. I’m young, I’m in college, I’m ideally placed for fun things to happen and to seek new and entertaining possibilities. But that isn’t the basis of my life. It’ll be fun, but it won’t be everything. I realized, now, what the most important thing to a person is:
Other people.
Humans are social creatures by nature. We want to associate ourselves with others, because other people are the only thing that can provide the variety we crave – the companionship we seek – the emotions we live for.
Not that a man should define himself by the company he keeps. I’m certainly the last person to start hanging out with a given crowd just because it’s the “in” thing to do, because I seek credibility or approval. But it’s because I made a similar inventory of myself as I did when I had my epiphany over a month ago.
Back then, I looked back through my life, and I couldn’t identify any periods of strong emotion, any periods of serious excitement. I resolved to change, and so I have, slowly. But I have looked over my life, and I have made the terrifying realization that there’s nobody left who I feel really close to.
At home? My friends...I’m drifting away from them. Jake, Matt, Nolan, James, Daniel, they’re all fun people, but they’re starting to feel farther and farther away. Dan, seems more of a kindred spirit, but he’s different from me in too many fundamental ways for me to really connect with him. Kait, closer than home, but somehow a million miles away. Travis, used to be my best friend, what can I call him now? We annoy each other too much to enjoy the intimacy (platonic, mind) we once had. We’ve drifted like icebergs.
At the university? All fun and good people. I’ll not say a word against any of them. But they’re friends in the transitory state. I certainly enjoy their company and want to hang out with them and do things with them, but when I think of who I’ll know in ten years and quickly run through everyone I know in Gainesville for possible candidates, not a single name pops up as likely.
Of course, there is my family. My parents, hopefully, will be around for years to come. I’ll always feel close to them. My sister, in recent years, we’ve become much closer than we were. For almost a decade, we were too far apart, too different, in worlds that were too distant for us ever to connect. Now we’re friends, more than friends, we’re true siblings again, like we used to be when we were both children.
A girl, too young yet to have a personality attached to her name, who stares at me with wide and uncomprehending eyes. She doesn’t know me, except as the weird guy who holds her while her mother ducks outside for a cigarette break or a ten-minute reprieve. I don’t know her, except as someone who can only communicate through cries and can already almost crawl at only two weeks old. Who will she be in ten years? I cannot say. There are none who can. I can only hope I’ll know her as she grows up, that my interaction with her won’t be limited to the occasional phone call and Christmases where I pinch her cheek and proclaim about how much she’s grown. (I will do this, though. There are certain ways in which an uncle is expected to act, after all.)
...Will she ever know my name? Will she ever know me beyond "that weird uncle I see on holidays"? Michelle's and my lifestyles will inevitably drive us apart. Will I see her grow up?
But beyond them...nobody.
Nobody.
...
I need a girlfriend.
This is not a sex thing. Trust me. If a mysterious stranger were to approach me tomorrow and promise that I would meet a girl with whom I could truly connect to on an emotional level, who could know me better than anyone and I her, with whom I could share my hopes and fears and dreams and pour out my soul, and the price for this was that I could never do anything sexual with her – or even kiss her – I would agree before he finished speaking.
I need a girlfriend.
(But sex wouldn’t hurt.)
Here’s the first thing. There are two kinds of power – mental power and physical power. Physical power is the stuff that intrigues and thrills me, why I read comic books and play D&D and bang away at video games, whether I’m a stout warrior slicing down a foe a hundred times his size, a powerful wizard blasting away at legions of enemies with fire and lightning, or a battleship defeating a fleet a thousand times its size.
Physical power is what fills my fantasies and my dreams. When I walk to class, when I walk to the store, when I walk just to go out and have a walk, my head is filled with thoughts of might and magic. Bizarre anime-like plots like the one I described, with legendary heroes performing fantastic feats. Or different, thinking of my own self, doing crazy things I’d never be capable of, playing the hero, rescuing the innocent, protecting those weaker or disadvantaged, showing my strength.
I dream like this because physical power is something unattainable to me. At least, in any significant amount. I can train my body and become fit and toned and muscular, but the most I’ll ever be able to hope for is to hold my own in a fight against worse odds, or perform impressive feats undoable by those in worse shape. I’ll never be able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, never be able to dodge bullets, never be able to throw a train or project searing beams of energy from my hands.
I’ll never be able to do any of it. So that’s what I dream of. Physical power is the unreachable star, what I’ll always want and never have. But there is another kind of power which I will have, which I do have, and that is mental power.
This was demonstrated in Ender’s Game, very well. Ender was not very physically adept. He defeated opponents physically superior to him through tactics and trickery. He led a fleet against an impossible foe and won, not because of a massive planet-destroying weapon (though it helped), but because of his invulnerable skill at strategy and command.
Mental power is something I do have. I’m no Ender – I couldn’t lead a group of starships to victory against a foe that outnumbered them a hundred to one – but I do fancy myself to be quick in a tight spot and pretty good at coming up with ideas. This, I can sharpen. If I focus on training my mind like I’m going to be training my body, I can eventually do amazing, marvelous things – far more amazing than I ever could with biceps that could bend steel or glowing eyes that could burn a hole through concrete.
That was the first thing that the book taught me. If you were to pit mental power against physical power, assuming equal circumstances and equal skill, the mental power is heavily favored to win. Take the strongest man in the world, hunting down a weakling in a warehouse. Cut the lights, all of a sudden his strength means nothing. He can’t punch what he can’t see. Mental power can trump physical power because it can go around it, or circumvent it, or put it in a situation where it is useless. And since I have, or can have, mental power, that favors me in situations where I would otherwise be in difficulty.
That was one thing. That was important. That may fundamentally change things. But more was changed than just that. Something very important occurred to me. My philosophy of life is wrong...again.
For the longest time, I thought the most important thing to a person was happiness. To be happy, or content, that was the acme of a person’s life. What more could one want? And I was happy, or content, in my idle pleasures and simple things. But I was bored, and I knew it. I craved more. That’s why I constantly manifest such odd fantasies in my head – because my mind was (is) being so underused that it is (was) forced to craft its own scenarios in which something, anything, interesting happened to me.
Then I spoke with Henry, experienced the epiphany I’ve shared with all around me, knew for a fact that I was living my life wrong – and I was. I still believe this, absolutely. Talking to Henry and coming to the realization that I did was the best thing I’ve done for myself in years. I resolved that no more would I merely be content to loaf around and do nothing, I would be social, I would go out and talk and experience new things.
I thought that the most important thing to a person was excitement. Firework moments, Henry called them. Crash, boom, bang, colored lights and explosions and bang, pow, kaboom, something fun’s happening, now it’s over and there’s nothing left but a wisp of smoke and the dying echoes. But the memory persists, blazes as brightly as the fire it conjures forth in the mind.
Having thought more thoroughly about it, I came to the conclusion that this too was wrong. That’s a fun way to live, certainly more interesting and entertaining than the way I was living previously, but it’s unsustainable. A person can’t live expecting a constant stream of excitement. It’s impossible to expect, because it won’t happen. On the odd circumstance that constant excitement does occur, it’s a temporary and transient thing, and when it leaves it leaves you hungry and drained, tired from the fun but wanting more, but more won’t come, because the only thing a life full of explosions can lead to is disappointment when they stop – or nothing at all, because a particularly large bang can be the last one you ever hear.
I still plan to seek excitement. I’m young, I’m in college, I’m ideally placed for fun things to happen and to seek new and entertaining possibilities. But that isn’t the basis of my life. It’ll be fun, but it won’t be everything. I realized, now, what the most important thing to a person is:
Other people.
Humans are social creatures by nature. We want to associate ourselves with others, because other people are the only thing that can provide the variety we crave – the companionship we seek – the emotions we live for.
Not that a man should define himself by the company he keeps. I’m certainly the last person to start hanging out with a given crowd just because it’s the “in” thing to do, because I seek credibility or approval. But it’s because I made a similar inventory of myself as I did when I had my epiphany over a month ago.
Back then, I looked back through my life, and I couldn’t identify any periods of strong emotion, any periods of serious excitement. I resolved to change, and so I have, slowly. But I have looked over my life, and I have made the terrifying realization that there’s nobody left who I feel really close to.
At home? My friends...I’m drifting away from them. Jake, Matt, Nolan, James, Daniel, they’re all fun people, but they’re starting to feel farther and farther away. Dan, seems more of a kindred spirit, but he’s different from me in too many fundamental ways for me to really connect with him. Kait, closer than home, but somehow a million miles away. Travis, used to be my best friend, what can I call him now? We annoy each other too much to enjoy the intimacy (platonic, mind) we once had. We’ve drifted like icebergs.
At the university? All fun and good people. I’ll not say a word against any of them. But they’re friends in the transitory state. I certainly enjoy their company and want to hang out with them and do things with them, but when I think of who I’ll know in ten years and quickly run through everyone I know in Gainesville for possible candidates, not a single name pops up as likely.
Of course, there is my family. My parents, hopefully, will be around for years to come. I’ll always feel close to them. My sister, in recent years, we’ve become much closer than we were. For almost a decade, we were too far apart, too different, in worlds that were too distant for us ever to connect. Now we’re friends, more than friends, we’re true siblings again, like we used to be when we were both children.
A girl, too young yet to have a personality attached to her name, who stares at me with wide and uncomprehending eyes. She doesn’t know me, except as the weird guy who holds her while her mother ducks outside for a cigarette break or a ten-minute reprieve. I don’t know her, except as someone who can only communicate through cries and can already almost crawl at only two weeks old. Who will she be in ten years? I cannot say. There are none who can. I can only hope I’ll know her as she grows up, that my interaction with her won’t be limited to the occasional phone call and Christmases where I pinch her cheek and proclaim about how much she’s grown. (I will do this, though. There are certain ways in which an uncle is expected to act, after all.)
...Will she ever know my name? Will she ever know me beyond "that weird uncle I see on holidays"? Michelle's and my lifestyles will inevitably drive us apart. Will I see her grow up?
But beyond them...nobody.
Nobody.
...
I need a girlfriend.
This is not a sex thing. Trust me. If a mysterious stranger were to approach me tomorrow and promise that I would meet a girl with whom I could truly connect to on an emotional level, who could know me better than anyone and I her, with whom I could share my hopes and fears and dreams and pour out my soul, and the price for this was that I could never do anything sexual with her – or even kiss her – I would agree before he finished speaking.
I need a girlfriend.
(But sex wouldn’t hurt.)
Friday, October 10, 2008
And Another Thing...
I do peculiar things. People who know me will vouch for this. Sometimes I do them for seemingly no reason at all, sometimes I actually have a decent reason for the junk that I pull.
One of these things is a concept that I can barely put a name to, since I never think of it as a concept and I’ve never heard of it outside of when I, personally, do it. If I had to put a label to it, I would call it...reverse plagiarism.
Plagiarism, as you know, is when someone passes off someone else’s work as their own, stealing credit for an idea. What I do is more or less the opposite of that. I take ideas of my own and pass them off as those of other people. I’ll do this several ways, such as if I think of some plot or something that I for whatever arcane reason don’t want to take credit for, I’ll say “I saw this TV show where...” or “I was reading this book, and in it...”
Basically, if you’ve ever heard me describing some fantastic and ridiculous plot from a book or TV show or anime or some such, but I mysteriously couldn’t remember the name of the show or the names of any of the characters, or any specifics beyond the fragment of plot I share with you, the odds are decent that I was actually the one who came up with it, and just chose not to take credit for it.
Why do I do this? Because most of the time when I come up with something that I’ll do this to, it’s a completely insane, fantastic, mindless, bizarre concept that sounds crazy even to think about, but I just think it’s cool. Chalk it up to a lifetime of too much anime and video games.
I realize that if I just tell people my idea for a story fragment, nobody will take me seriously. Years ago, when I shared all my ideas with everybody, people would give me looks like “Luke, whatever medication you’re not on, you need to find it and get on it, posthaste.” Now, when I tell them my bizarre tale but say it was from this one anime that has a long Japanese name that I don’t remember, they nod their heads and agree on how cool it is.
I suppose that if people think it’s from an outside source, they’re free to shake their heads with disbelief at how crazy the unknown author was while still being able to appreciate the story fragment itself. If they thought it was from me, their incredulity at the plot outweighs their sense of thinking it’s interesting. (Or not. This is also a way to shield myself from taking flak for bad ideas, because if what I’m saying tanks horribly and nobody likes it, I can just shrug and never mention it again.)
Let me give you an example of the sort of thing I’m talking about. This has been drifting through my head for the last few days, starting when I heard “The Night” and “Perfect Insanity” by Disturbed, off their new album Indestructible.
A callow youth trains to be a swordsman, and everyone expects great things from him because he is the descendant twenty generations down the line from a legendary hero swordsman who was fantastically skilled and extremely powerful. Upon completing his formal training, he’s granted his ancestor’s blade and given a sudden realization – the “inheritance” is more than a weapon, the legendary swordsman’s personality has actually survived through the generations and emerges as a separate personality inside the hero’s head.
Normally, this would be a good thing, as the legendary swordsman can take over the body in times of great need when the hero is completely outclassed and defeated. And he really is legendary, being skilled and generally badass enough to do things like catch enemy blades (in his open palm, between two fingertips, in his teeth) or deflect bullets with his sword...from a machine-gun. (When this switch occurs, his eyes go all crazy-red and such.)
Unfortunately for the hero, the legendary swordsman is also homicidally insane and prefers to slaughter his opponents, the friends of his opponents, and anybody who happened to be nearby while he was butchering one of the first two groups. So the hero and the legendary swordsman start to bicker and battle for control of the hero’s body. (The hero, being a swordsman himself, is certainly skilled and no stranger to killing, but there’s a difference between killing your opponent in an honorable way and indiscriminate murder, which is what the legendary swordsman prefers.)
This all comes to a head when the hero is in a climactic battle against many foes, which he just can’t win alone. The legendary swordsman figures this is the perfect time to rise up and gain control, so the two of them battle it out while the hero’s body, controlled by one personality or the other, fights the group of swordsmen.
Whenever the enemies are about to score a killing blow, the legendary swordsmen pushes his way forward and asserts control, as he really doesn’t want to see his last descendant die without an heir, and with his skill he starts smacking around the entire group. Whenever the legendary swordsman is about to kill one of his enemies, the hero, who wants to stop the legendary swordsman from killing everyone he meets, manages to retake control, and he fumbles the blow.
Eventually, the hero, in a burst of heroic willpower and resolve, manages to win the battle for control, but resigns himself to dying at the hands of his enemies, as he lacks the skill alone to win. His opponents, though, are so completely freaked out by his constant switching from “strong, but outclassed” to “clearly able to win disarmed and blindfolded” and back again, that they panic, assume he’s just toying with them, and flee before he decides to get serious and rip them all to pieces. The hero is left standing alone, wondering what just really happened.
See? That sounds like the plot of an anime, and I presented it to one of my friends in just such a fashion. He liked the idea. But were I to have told him it was my idea, he probably wouldn't have listened through the whole thing, dismissing it as just some random byproduct of my craziness.
Yes, technically I could be making this up, but why? It seems like a whole lot of unnecessary effort and talking to convince you of a lie that nobody remembers any specifics of. So that's that, really.
I guess...that's it.
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Stuff Happens
I missed what has been coming to be my traditional Monday update. I lost all Monday. I slept in, missed my classes, and spent the whole day indoors. I consider the day completely wasted, with absolutely nothing useful coming from it except for the fact that I got my laundry done. (The dryers at my apartment complex suck completely and require two cycles, at $1.50 per dryer per cycle, to dry my clothes. I’m just going to bag them up next time and take them to my friend’s place at Lakeside or Hume, it’s cheaper.)
So Monday was a blowout. Tuesday was somewhat better, though. Made it to my class, and I set up a couple of interviews for today with two professors of economics that I’m hoping I can turn into some kind of story on the economic crisis we’re going through. Here’s hoping I don’t completely demonstrate my ignorance on the subject in front of these scholarly men. Though I doubt I can successfully bluff to high-ranking professors.
Last weekend was pretty interesting. Saturday I spent at the Reitz Union, setting up a game of D&D with a couple of guys I met last Wednesday, Brett and Harold. I’m running the campaign, and I wanted to oversee their character creation and set up a world with them.
They took different approaches. Brett made a bard, a singer and storyteller, and exploited every trick he could find in the rulebook to increase his Perform ability, which allowed him to fascinate people with story and song. One particular instance concerned his desire for a device called a songblade, a musical sword that would make his performing better, but only when he was wielding it:
Him: Can I use it?
Me: Sure. Don’t you play a two-handed instrument, the lute?
Him: Er...I could grip the blade in my teeth.
Me: ...Okay, but then how are you going to talk to people once you’ve got them fascinated?
Him: ...
Harold: Why don’t you pick up a one-handed instrument?
Him: Like what?
Me: A harmonica?
Him: *glares* No, how about...storytelling. That doesn’t require either hand.
Me: True. But then you don’t get the bonus for a masterwork instrument. And don’t even try to convince me that masterwork dentures count, or something.
Him: All right, but then...
Me: ...How about this.
Him: What?
Me: Masterwork puppet pals.
I successfully convinced him that he could use all of his bonuses if he had a puppet on one hand and used it to help his storytelling. I did not quite mention how silly this would make him look, but I figure the NPCs will act appropriately. The things people will do for a +2 circumstance bonus.
Harold was more subtle. He didn’t go for the “overpowered twink” concept, preferring instead to build a mechanically inferior but flavor-aligned character – a creeping crawling rogue who climbs and jumps. He showed me several neat items that I’d never seen before, like finder’s chalk (fades from view after a minute, but can be seen hours later with a special finder’s lens) and finger-blades (used to cut purse-strings and open pockets more easily). I do have this terrible feeling that he’ll suddenly reveal this incredibly overpowered character that he’s quietly been constructing with innocuous items. Sigh.
But the fun part came when I wanted to design the city that the campaign would be taking place in. I decided one thing about this city that would set the tone for, basically, everything:
The city is 300 miles wide and long. Roughly.
Though it has been pointed out to me that at this point it is less a city and more a dense, walled country, I don’t care. I like the idea of a city stretching hundreds of miles in every direction, because of the sheer number of things that it can contain. Between me and two friends, we brainstormed the following concepts:
- The Mountain District. This is an actual mountain that was in the path of the city’s expansion, and rather than go around it, they built over it. And through it. It’s covered and honeycombed with passages, buildings, and homes.
- The clear idea that there could be people who were born, lived their whole lives, and died within the city without ever knowing there was anything outside. Obviously, these wouldn’t be the people who lived near the walls or the docks.
- The Forest District. This is a massive forest, cultivated by the city’s druids who demanded an area within the city that was set aside for nature. It’s about twenty-five miles on a side. We further wondered – could there be people who were born, lived their whole lives, and died in the forest without ever knowing it was in a city?
- The Street of Cunning Artificers. It’s all clockwork. You can’t see the sky for the smoke and the freakishly tall buildings, and cogs and gears litter the streets. This place will be a lot of fun.
- The Mages’ Guild, also a college, which has served as the basis for more and more interesting senior pranks on the part of its students over the years. One year, the entire Guild went invisible, and stayed that way for the better part of a decade.
- The Upside-Down District, a place a few blocks on a side that is upside down, the buildings resting on a patch of sky about eighty feet up and stretching down to the ground. This is also the result of a senior prank from the mages, but the people living there got used to it and put big piles of cushions at the gates in and out of the district so they can enter and leave without splattering on the cobblestones. This just goes to show that people can really get used to anything.
- How does a city this big get food, we asked? Clerics casting “create food and water” and magical ever-full cauldrons of stew would only go so far, so Matthew decided that there was an army of mages who only cast “stone to flesh” constantly, and that there would be: meat mines. Turn the stone to meat, mine it, process it, sell it. The Mountain District used to be the Mountain Range District, but the other mountains were finally mined out a couple centuries ago.
There’s more, but you get the idea. The only thing I haven’t thought of for this massive, epic city is one thing: a name. I am really, really bad with names, and it occurs to me that a city like this deserves an amazing name. I don’t want to just reuse a name from some other work of fiction, don’t want to call it Ankh-Morpork or Mechanus or Gondor, this city deserves better than that.
And yet I have nothing. Anyone gots a suggestion that they came up with themselves (or at least didn’t crib from somewhere written down, if someone else said it I guess that’s okay), then I want to hear it. Comment with one. Call me. Email me. I need a blasted name for this blasted blasted city.
It’s weird. Since I talked to Mike and Victoria told me she read what I’d wrote, we all agreed that limiting our contact was truly for the best, as our personalities just clashed on several levels. Since then, our contact has been much more tranquil and pleasant than usual, what little there has been of it. I suppose whatever works, works.
Last night, Anne-Flore’s (my roommate) friend Anna had her 25th birthday, so I cooked her and Anne dinner. Technically, her birthday was Monday, but she’s celebrating all week, so this worked. It’s the first time I’ve ever made a meal with more than one course. I made:
A shrimp cocktail, which I did by the supremely complex route of boiling shrimp (a little too much, I fear) and putting them in a bowl with ice, and opening a bottle of cocktail sauce
A salad, by which I mean I bought a bag of “European” salad greens and some random vegetables (olives, grape tomatoes, broccoli at Anne’s request) and mixed them all into a bowl
Those good frozen yeast rolls, which actually turned out really nicely
And I tried a new recipe with some tilapia, Tilapia in Garlic Butter, which was a little tricky
It was well-received. Mincing garlic is hard without a mincer, and I think I got a little too into it, shredding it with a knife into miniscule bits that I could hardly see. Also, I resent buying bottles of three different spices just to use “a dash” or “a pinch” of one or the other. It’s expensive.
Honestly, as far as how it tasted, I more or less had to take their word for it. This is my problem, and why I’ll never be a good cook – I can barely taste. I know I like those yeast rolls, and shrimp is shrimp, but the fish, I had to believe what they told me. It didn’t taste like anything much to me, but they assured me that it was good. This could have been them being charitable, but I don’t really have a reason to doubt them.
Meh.
So Monday was a blowout. Tuesday was somewhat better, though. Made it to my class, and I set up a couple of interviews for today with two professors of economics that I’m hoping I can turn into some kind of story on the economic crisis we’re going through. Here’s hoping I don’t completely demonstrate my ignorance on the subject in front of these scholarly men. Though I doubt I can successfully bluff to high-ranking professors.
Last weekend was pretty interesting. Saturday I spent at the Reitz Union, setting up a game of D&D with a couple of guys I met last Wednesday, Brett and Harold. I’m running the campaign, and I wanted to oversee their character creation and set up a world with them.
They took different approaches. Brett made a bard, a singer and storyteller, and exploited every trick he could find in the rulebook to increase his Perform ability, which allowed him to fascinate people with story and song. One particular instance concerned his desire for a device called a songblade, a musical sword that would make his performing better, but only when he was wielding it:
Him: Can I use it?
Me: Sure. Don’t you play a two-handed instrument, the lute?
Him: Er...I could grip the blade in my teeth.
Me: ...Okay, but then how are you going to talk to people once you’ve got them fascinated?
Him: ...
Harold: Why don’t you pick up a one-handed instrument?
Him: Like what?
Me: A harmonica?
Him: *glares* No, how about...storytelling. That doesn’t require either hand.
Me: True. But then you don’t get the bonus for a masterwork instrument. And don’t even try to convince me that masterwork dentures count, or something.
Him: All right, but then...
Me: ...How about this.
Him: What?
Me: Masterwork puppet pals.
I successfully convinced him that he could use all of his bonuses if he had a puppet on one hand and used it to help his storytelling. I did not quite mention how silly this would make him look, but I figure the NPCs will act appropriately. The things people will do for a +2 circumstance bonus.
Harold was more subtle. He didn’t go for the “overpowered twink” concept, preferring instead to build a mechanically inferior but flavor-aligned character – a creeping crawling rogue who climbs and jumps. He showed me several neat items that I’d never seen before, like finder’s chalk (fades from view after a minute, but can be seen hours later with a special finder’s lens) and finger-blades (used to cut purse-strings and open pockets more easily). I do have this terrible feeling that he’ll suddenly reveal this incredibly overpowered character that he’s quietly been constructing with innocuous items. Sigh.
But the fun part came when I wanted to design the city that the campaign would be taking place in. I decided one thing about this city that would set the tone for, basically, everything:
The city is 300 miles wide and long. Roughly.
Though it has been pointed out to me that at this point it is less a city and more a dense, walled country, I don’t care. I like the idea of a city stretching hundreds of miles in every direction, because of the sheer number of things that it can contain. Between me and two friends, we brainstormed the following concepts:
- The Mountain District. This is an actual mountain that was in the path of the city’s expansion, and rather than go around it, they built over it. And through it. It’s covered and honeycombed with passages, buildings, and homes.
- The clear idea that there could be people who were born, lived their whole lives, and died within the city without ever knowing there was anything outside. Obviously, these wouldn’t be the people who lived near the walls or the docks.
- The Forest District. This is a massive forest, cultivated by the city’s druids who demanded an area within the city that was set aside for nature. It’s about twenty-five miles on a side. We further wondered – could there be people who were born, lived their whole lives, and died in the forest without ever knowing it was in a city?
- The Street of Cunning Artificers. It’s all clockwork. You can’t see the sky for the smoke and the freakishly tall buildings, and cogs and gears litter the streets. This place will be a lot of fun.
- The Mages’ Guild, also a college, which has served as the basis for more and more interesting senior pranks on the part of its students over the years. One year, the entire Guild went invisible, and stayed that way for the better part of a decade.
- The Upside-Down District, a place a few blocks on a side that is upside down, the buildings resting on a patch of sky about eighty feet up and stretching down to the ground. This is also the result of a senior prank from the mages, but the people living there got used to it and put big piles of cushions at the gates in and out of the district so they can enter and leave without splattering on the cobblestones. This just goes to show that people can really get used to anything.
- How does a city this big get food, we asked? Clerics casting “create food and water” and magical ever-full cauldrons of stew would only go so far, so Matthew decided that there was an army of mages who only cast “stone to flesh” constantly, and that there would be: meat mines. Turn the stone to meat, mine it, process it, sell it. The Mountain District used to be the Mountain Range District, but the other mountains were finally mined out a couple centuries ago.
There’s more, but you get the idea. The only thing I haven’t thought of for this massive, epic city is one thing: a name. I am really, really bad with names, and it occurs to me that a city like this deserves an amazing name. I don’t want to just reuse a name from some other work of fiction, don’t want to call it Ankh-Morpork or Mechanus or Gondor, this city deserves better than that.
And yet I have nothing. Anyone gots a suggestion that they came up with themselves (or at least didn’t crib from somewhere written down, if someone else said it I guess that’s okay), then I want to hear it. Comment with one. Call me. Email me. I need a blasted name for this blasted blasted city.
It’s weird. Since I talked to Mike and Victoria told me she read what I’d wrote, we all agreed that limiting our contact was truly for the best, as our personalities just clashed on several levels. Since then, our contact has been much more tranquil and pleasant than usual, what little there has been of it. I suppose whatever works, works.
Last night, Anne-Flore’s (my roommate) friend Anna had her 25th birthday, so I cooked her and Anne dinner. Technically, her birthday was Monday, but she’s celebrating all week, so this worked. It’s the first time I’ve ever made a meal with more than one course. I made:
A shrimp cocktail, which I did by the supremely complex route of boiling shrimp (a little too much, I fear) and putting them in a bowl with ice, and opening a bottle of cocktail sauce
A salad, by which I mean I bought a bag of “European” salad greens and some random vegetables (olives, grape tomatoes, broccoli at Anne’s request) and mixed them all into a bowl
Those good frozen yeast rolls, which actually turned out really nicely
And I tried a new recipe with some tilapia, Tilapia in Garlic Butter, which was a little tricky
It was well-received. Mincing garlic is hard without a mincer, and I think I got a little too into it, shredding it with a knife into miniscule bits that I could hardly see. Also, I resent buying bottles of three different spices just to use “a dash” or “a pinch” of one or the other. It’s expensive.
Honestly, as far as how it tasted, I more or less had to take their word for it. This is my problem, and why I’ll never be a good cook – I can barely taste. I know I like those yeast rolls, and shrimp is shrimp, but the fish, I had to believe what they told me. It didn’t taste like anything much to me, but they assured me that it was good. This could have been them being charitable, but I don’t really have a reason to doubt them.
Meh.
Thursday, October 2, 2008
Why I Look Like It
Viral conjunctivitis, also known as pinkeye, is currently plaguing me. I am not to look at TV or computer screens, or even read small print. At least, with my afflicted eye.
So, the eyepatch. More of a headband, really. I have a mandatory meeting tonight for my TV class, and I found a solution. Inelegant, but it works. Hopefully the conjunctivitis will be gone by tomorrow or the next day, as the doctor predicted it would, especially if I keep my eye half-closed constantly with this device here.
Huh.
So, the eyepatch. More of a headband, really. I have a mandatory meeting tonight for my TV class, and I found a solution. Inelegant, but it works. Hopefully the conjunctivitis will be gone by tomorrow or the next day, as the doctor predicted it would, especially if I keep my eye half-closed constantly with this device here.
Huh.
Amendment
People have made the point that I should attempt to talk things out before making unilateral decisions. And, well, they're right. It's just that I'm so, so, so disillusioned with sitting down and calmly discussing my problems. Why? Victoria. We have sat down, talked out all our problems, and agreed not to fight anymore...I don't know how many times now. And it never, ever works. But I was wrong not to talk to Mike about it.
So I did. It appears that the majority of the problem was my enthusiastic new approach towards life, and with it my rejection of my old lifestyle, was seen by him as an attack on his lifestyle - the very one I was rejecting. This is far from true, but it's easy to see how he could see this. So we talked it out, and agreed not to fight.
It remains to be seen how this will work. I could not say one way or the other, yet.
As for Victoria? We haven't spoken in days, and it's probably for the best. We simply do not like each other any more. And as I have noted, sitting down and talking things out will have as likely a success rate as would a similar talk between the Israelis and the Palestinians. All the good intentions in the world aren't gonna make it happen, so screw it. We're both better off without each other.
Oh, yeah, my sister finally gave birth a week ago. Jasmyne was the kid's name. Healthy as a horse. My sister put up a billion - or maybe nine - pictures of her, on her blog, here: http://michelleldub.blogspot.com/ So check it out. My new baby niece. I'm an uncle.
I feel like I should buy a sweater-vest.
So I did. It appears that the majority of the problem was my enthusiastic new approach towards life, and with it my rejection of my old lifestyle, was seen by him as an attack on his lifestyle - the very one I was rejecting. This is far from true, but it's easy to see how he could see this. So we talked it out, and agreed not to fight.
It remains to be seen how this will work. I could not say one way or the other, yet.
As for Victoria? We haven't spoken in days, and it's probably for the best. We simply do not like each other any more. And as I have noted, sitting down and talking things out will have as likely a success rate as would a similar talk between the Israelis and the Palestinians. All the good intentions in the world aren't gonna make it happen, so screw it. We're both better off without each other.
Oh, yeah, my sister finally gave birth a week ago. Jasmyne was the kid's name. Healthy as a horse. My sister put up a billion - or maybe nine - pictures of her, on her blog, here: http://michelleldub.blogspot.com/ So check it out. My new baby niece. I'm an uncle.
I feel like I should buy a sweater-vest.
Monday, September 29, 2008
A Week In Study, Also, Interpersonal Relationships
The week was good. Thursday I went out with Dana, and we've spoken since then once or twice. Oddly, after I got back from dinner on Thursday, I fell asleep - at 7:30 p.m. Didn't wake up until the next morning. I don't quite understand that, since I hadn't been lacking sleep, but oh well. I've had worse happen to me than losing an evening to sleep.
Friday was entertaining. We went out for Mike's birthday party. We went to a restaurant called Rolls and Bowls, a sushi and such place. I tried cucumber for the first time, and by God it tastes like nothing at all. I could eat a barrel of these things. Though I am slightly bitter that when they say "steamed shrimp" for one of the ingredients, they mean "we throw on two shrimp." Two. I'm hungrier than that.
Then we went to see Kung Fu Panda, which I hadn't seen before, and which is surprisingly good. It messes around with a lot of the established kung-fu movie tropes, and has a good story. Even if I can follow the narrative arc easily of "beginning, establishing characters, ascending action, preview of villainy, fun times as the story unfolds, villain attacks, low point as characters are demoralized, upswing, final battle," that's not necessarily a bad thing, since most movies are like that. I really enjoyed it. Even if Matt did deliberately laugh during inappropriate times, because he's a misanthrope like that.
Then pool. Not much to say here, I lost. Kevin managed not to finish by sinking his own ball this time, like he did against Mike and me earlier in the week. I...honestly don't remember who won. Doesn't really matter, we played like fifteen games.
Saturday, I went with Rachel and some of her friends to Lake Wauburg, to which I have never been. I got there first and explored, finding a 55-foot-tall rock wall that I had originally planned to climb, but quailed and left. Not entirely my fault, though, as none of the girls wanted to climb it either except Rachel, and she demurred on account of nobody else was going to and there was a big line.
So we went to the other side of the lake and borrowed some kayaks. I've never kayaked before, but it was surprisingly easy. I managed not to roll the boat and drown myself, which is a plus. I went swimming, met a bunch of girls in the water, suffered once again from the Paradox of the Glasses-Wearer, made a new friend named Julie.
When I got home, nobody had moved in the time I was gone. I played a bit of WoW, then went downstairs and watched Die Hard with everyone. This was the result of an argument between me and the others over which was the rotten Die Hard movie, #2 or #3. I maintained #3 sucked, they maintained #2 sucked. I suggested we compromise and watch #1. We agreed. It was as good as it ever was.
I was dismayed to hear that at the end of the movie, everyone was packing it in. In summary, my friends, after a long and hard day of sitting around the house, punctuated by a grueling expedition to Publix to buy some food, decided to call it a night at ten o'clock p.m. on a Saturday. This...annoyed me. So I went out and visited Henry, then eventually resigned myself to the fact that nothing was going to happen and returned home. But I tried, dammit, I tried.
But whatever. On Sunday, I started the new D&D campaign with Chuck DMing and Steven, Matt, and Victoria with me. It's this weird variant called "gestalt" where we all play two character classes at once, very overpowered, but interesting. It allows for a changeable style of gameplay.
At the end of the session, we heard that Megacomics, the local comics/games/Magic card shop, was closing its doors for the very last time that day, so we all piled into Chuck's car and took advantage of the "Everything is 50% or 75% off" sale. Though there is a silver lining - the shop may soon open up again under a new owner.
But interacting with the others this week has taught me a valuable lesson about two people I regularly interact with, those being Mike and Victoria.
They...don't like me. This is the only conclusion I can draw. Despite apparently being my friends and hanging out where I hang out, they seem to take every opportunity to call me out, to put me down, to just generally crap in my casserole. I have a couple of theories as to why this is true.
On Mike's part, he and I have very similar personalities, except for a few key differences. Both of us act in a way that annoys the other, insofar as we both think we're right about everything and are similarly loath to admit we're wrong. Whenever a clash of facts occurs, one or the other of us races to the Internet to prove the point, with the person proved wrong dismissing the argument or just giving the point up, claiming that he is no longer interested. Both of us do this. I am realizing the futility of the whole thing.
As for me relating to him, I see a lot in him that was once in me...and a lot about him that I still have within me, and I don't like it. I see a lot in him that is also in myself, and it makes me angry, like I'm looking at a backsliding version of myself. Bluntly, there's a lot in him I see in myself that I no longer want to. So I guess I sort of resent him. Not the fairest thing in the world, but there we are.
Victoria? Ex-girlfriend, plus she's a little bit psycho. Her admission. So no real surprises there.
My new plan is this: I'll simply limit my contact with these two to the absolute bare minimum that is required for things like getting work done around the house, interacting with each other in a group context, all that sort of thing. Talking to them when unnecessary doesn't really do me or anyone else any good - people tell me that it annoys them when Mike and I snipe at each other, and I can't imagine my squabbles with Victoria endear me any more to the people around me, so I say, fuck it and good riddance.
Some might wonder how I'll avoid contact with a person who lives with me. To those people, I refer them to my fourth roommate, Anne-Flore, who hardly says a word to Mike or Zack, despite living with them. They just have nothing to do with her, and she with them. I can pull that off if she can.
I know he'll read this. Mike. Victoria will either read it on her own or be referred to it by Mike. I don't really care. Them knowing about this change will only make it easier, unless either of them makes the perplexing move of deliberately confronting me about my isolationism at every opportunity. Unless they actually derive some sick pleasure from cutting me down (which I don't really think they do, I'm just a convenient target when I'm around), I can't see this happening. So them knowing won't alter the plan at all.
This really came to a head a few days ago, when I decided I would put two columns on a bit of paper I carry in my pocket, one each for Mike and Victoria, and every time one of them said something hurtful, rude, hostile, or just generally mean-spirited to me without provocation (obviously, we go back and forth a lot, exchanging volleys of barbs, I mean the instances wherein I would merely walk into the room or say something like "What's this music you're listening to?" and get blasted for it), I would put a little tick mark underneath the column appropriate. After only two days, I was...distressed, let's say, at the rate at which the little tick marks accumulated. Seeing concrete evidence like that was really what convinced me to make this change.
Michelle said he and the others are holding me back, and cautioned me about spending time around Victoria. Chuck and Henry both identify Mike as "the ultimate cock-block," both of them using those exact words without knowing the other did so, and both have told me I'm a fool for maintaining ties with Victoria after our history. I listen very closely to what these people tell me about my life, since a lot of the time they're right. (Michelle is my sister and knows more about interpersonal relationships than anyone else I know, I've listened closely to Henry since his advice changed my life, and Chuck is generally knowledgeable, despite kind of being a jackass a lot of the time.)
So whatever. Hello and farewell, say I, I know a lotta people and two less ain't gonna kill me. Especially two less people who take every opportunity to belittle me. And while some contact is inevitable, I'll just swallow their words and not respond unless absolutely necessary to the plot.
k. That's a plan. Now to see if I can follow through with it.
Friday was entertaining. We went out for Mike's birthday party. We went to a restaurant called Rolls and Bowls, a sushi and such place. I tried cucumber for the first time, and by God it tastes like nothing at all. I could eat a barrel of these things. Though I am slightly bitter that when they say "steamed shrimp" for one of the ingredients, they mean "we throw on two shrimp." Two. I'm hungrier than that.
Then we went to see Kung Fu Panda, which I hadn't seen before, and which is surprisingly good. It messes around with a lot of the established kung-fu movie tropes, and has a good story. Even if I can follow the narrative arc easily of "beginning, establishing characters, ascending action, preview of villainy, fun times as the story unfolds, villain attacks, low point as characters are demoralized, upswing, final battle," that's not necessarily a bad thing, since most movies are like that. I really enjoyed it. Even if Matt did deliberately laugh during inappropriate times, because he's a misanthrope like that.
Then pool. Not much to say here, I lost. Kevin managed not to finish by sinking his own ball this time, like he did against Mike and me earlier in the week. I...honestly don't remember who won. Doesn't really matter, we played like fifteen games.
Saturday, I went with Rachel and some of her friends to Lake Wauburg, to which I have never been. I got there first and explored, finding a 55-foot-tall rock wall that I had originally planned to climb, but quailed and left. Not entirely my fault, though, as none of the girls wanted to climb it either except Rachel, and she demurred on account of nobody else was going to and there was a big line.
So we went to the other side of the lake and borrowed some kayaks. I've never kayaked before, but it was surprisingly easy. I managed not to roll the boat and drown myself, which is a plus. I went swimming, met a bunch of girls in the water, suffered once again from the Paradox of the Glasses-Wearer, made a new friend named Julie.
When I got home, nobody had moved in the time I was gone. I played a bit of WoW, then went downstairs and watched Die Hard with everyone. This was the result of an argument between me and the others over which was the rotten Die Hard movie, #2 or #3. I maintained #3 sucked, they maintained #2 sucked. I suggested we compromise and watch #1. We agreed. It was as good as it ever was.
I was dismayed to hear that at the end of the movie, everyone was packing it in. In summary, my friends, after a long and hard day of sitting around the house, punctuated by a grueling expedition to Publix to buy some food, decided to call it a night at ten o'clock p.m. on a Saturday. This...annoyed me. So I went out and visited Henry, then eventually resigned myself to the fact that nothing was going to happen and returned home. But I tried, dammit, I tried.
But whatever. On Sunday, I started the new D&D campaign with Chuck DMing and Steven, Matt, and Victoria with me. It's this weird variant called "gestalt" where we all play two character classes at once, very overpowered, but interesting. It allows for a changeable style of gameplay.
At the end of the session, we heard that Megacomics, the local comics/games/Magic card shop, was closing its doors for the very last time that day, so we all piled into Chuck's car and took advantage of the "Everything is 50% or 75% off" sale. Though there is a silver lining - the shop may soon open up again under a new owner.
But interacting with the others this week has taught me a valuable lesson about two people I regularly interact with, those being Mike and Victoria.
They...don't like me. This is the only conclusion I can draw. Despite apparently being my friends and hanging out where I hang out, they seem to take every opportunity to call me out, to put me down, to just generally crap in my casserole. I have a couple of theories as to why this is true.
On Mike's part, he and I have very similar personalities, except for a few key differences. Both of us act in a way that annoys the other, insofar as we both think we're right about everything and are similarly loath to admit we're wrong. Whenever a clash of facts occurs, one or the other of us races to the Internet to prove the point, with the person proved wrong dismissing the argument or just giving the point up, claiming that he is no longer interested. Both of us do this. I am realizing the futility of the whole thing.
As for me relating to him, I see a lot in him that was once in me...and a lot about him that I still have within me, and I don't like it. I see a lot in him that is also in myself, and it makes me angry, like I'm looking at a backsliding version of myself. Bluntly, there's a lot in him I see in myself that I no longer want to. So I guess I sort of resent him. Not the fairest thing in the world, but there we are.
Victoria? Ex-girlfriend, plus she's a little bit psycho. Her admission. So no real surprises there.
My new plan is this: I'll simply limit my contact with these two to the absolute bare minimum that is required for things like getting work done around the house, interacting with each other in a group context, all that sort of thing. Talking to them when unnecessary doesn't really do me or anyone else any good - people tell me that it annoys them when Mike and I snipe at each other, and I can't imagine my squabbles with Victoria endear me any more to the people around me, so I say, fuck it and good riddance.
Some might wonder how I'll avoid contact with a person who lives with me. To those people, I refer them to my fourth roommate, Anne-Flore, who hardly says a word to Mike or Zack, despite living with them. They just have nothing to do with her, and she with them. I can pull that off if she can.
I know he'll read this. Mike. Victoria will either read it on her own or be referred to it by Mike. I don't really care. Them knowing about this change will only make it easier, unless either of them makes the perplexing move of deliberately confronting me about my isolationism at every opportunity. Unless they actually derive some sick pleasure from cutting me down (which I don't really think they do, I'm just a convenient target when I'm around), I can't see this happening. So them knowing won't alter the plan at all.
This really came to a head a few days ago, when I decided I would put two columns on a bit of paper I carry in my pocket, one each for Mike and Victoria, and every time one of them said something hurtful, rude, hostile, or just generally mean-spirited to me without provocation (obviously, we go back and forth a lot, exchanging volleys of barbs, I mean the instances wherein I would merely walk into the room or say something like "What's this music you're listening to?" and get blasted for it), I would put a little tick mark underneath the column appropriate. After only two days, I was...distressed, let's say, at the rate at which the little tick marks accumulated. Seeing concrete evidence like that was really what convinced me to make this change.
Michelle said he and the others are holding me back, and cautioned me about spending time around Victoria. Chuck and Henry both identify Mike as "the ultimate cock-block," both of them using those exact words without knowing the other did so, and both have told me I'm a fool for maintaining ties with Victoria after our history. I listen very closely to what these people tell me about my life, since a lot of the time they're right. (Michelle is my sister and knows more about interpersonal relationships than anyone else I know, I've listened closely to Henry since his advice changed my life, and Chuck is generally knowledgeable, despite kind of being a jackass a lot of the time.)
So whatever. Hello and farewell, say I, I know a lotta people and two less ain't gonna kill me. Especially two less people who take every opportunity to belittle me. And while some contact is inevitable, I'll just swallow their words and not respond unless absolutely necessary to the plot.
k. That's a plan. Now to see if I can follow through with it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)