The Unblogged

The following post is a collection of posts that I didn't post, or simply gave up on before they got anywhere. I find it interesting what some of my old thoughts and feelings were, as well as entertaining to imagine my half thoughts.
If you hadn't picked up, the new notes will be brought to you by the colour RED.

1/20/10 Scientific Exhaustion
I was going to continue a discussion on my Facebook page,
BO-ring!

12/19/09 When Did It Happen?
I've stopped being honest.
I'm not sure, but I think this may have been about hiding (or trying to hide) my feelings for someone. Kinda like a Humphrey Bogart at the end of Casablanca kind of deal, only, you know, not as good.

10/25/09 (Untitled)
I fight such an odd war. I have nothing against my enemy, but I know that he hates me. He even seems like a decent enough guy. It's not political, I want to destroy him and it is most malicious. Maybe it's the testosterone, but I'm not usually a guy who feels the need to win. I can't tell you what it is. What I can tell you is that I like it. I love it. Even though I'm terrible at it.
I don't know about anyone else, but I fucking love being hated sometimes. In my old situation, being hated was the next best thing to being loved. Being a threat to someone is empowering.
But that is an underdog thing too. When you're at the top, you're not a threat to anyone. In an ironic sense, you lose that power.

10/20/09 My Ultimate Team
Skip this one if you want. It's exactly what it sounds like.
In response to TK's Ultimate Team blog, here is my Ultimate Alliance 2 Team:

Storm.
What can I say about the master of the elements? Her in game taunts are the most justified of anyone. She controls the weather itself. She defeated Magneto. She is through and through awesome. I'll admit that when I started I was wary of Storm, since in UA1 she refused to use her one good power of Lightning Blast. But in UA2, her Lightning Blast is unparallelled and her Gale Force is the first and best of its class. The ability to dismissively blast an oncoming troop of enemies off a ledge is nothing short of god-like. While the rest of my crew is busy hacking away at single targets, Storm is blasting small armies away and causing massive random lightning damage all over the field. Inescapable lightning damage, too. It cannot be blocked and it cannot be dodged.

Wolverine.
Begrudgingly. There is a reason this guy is such a cliche. He's a-goddamn-mazing. Massive damage, massive hit points, regeneration, and a good spread of attacks. Some characters I find have a tendency to have just one good move and the others are simply there for show. He spins, he charges, he dives, he slashes... things wind up dead. I have the damage numbers on and when Wolverine comes in contact with someone there is just a stream of numbers. I wanted to trade him in, and he was usually on the bench while I was trying other guys out, but when it comes to an Ultimate Team, you'd be crazy not to bring in this cat... dog... monster-thing. What the hell is a wolverine anyway?

Venom.
He didn't get added to the roster until late in the game, but jesus tits this guy is a monster. Like, literally. In every sense of the word. Here is a case of someone who was pretty much a one trick pony, with other skills to fill the skill points out. He has this move where he leaps at someone, tackles them, and then devours them. For the little guys, Venom is unstoppable! Combined with his Pull move, if the first attack doesn't kill the guy, the second surely will. A big sack of hit points that can beat people to death with other people. Venom has always been pretty awesome.

Other.
There are honestly too many people that could fit into this last spot. Spidey was fun, but not great at anything. Ms. Marvel was hot, but I don't know who the fuck she is. Gambit was classic, but he never wowed me. I honestly never tried Deadpool, but that guy comes off as a more obnoxious Spider-man. Luke Cage was on my team for a while for racial diversity. He was okay. Ironman was denied from my team, so when I got him back I thought he could go suck a dick. Jean Grey was wicked powerful, but awfully dainty. Honestly, I never became that attached to anyone. I got Hulk late, and he was doing well, but he didn't seem to be pulling his weight. I wanted him to devastate people.

Anyway, I'm going to play it a second time around on hard and go Pro-Regulation. Maybe Ironman will grow on me again, but I somehow doubt it.

10/15/09 Contending the Winter of Discontent
I'm trying to work out the logical cycle of the miserability scores of the winter. The last two years have been horrible cold, but
Did winter get better this year? Depends where you start and finish winter. This post was obviously in mid-October and winter didn't technically start for another two months. If it's based on the weather, then winter was over by the beginning of March, and even then things started looking up. But maybe that's just the thing: cold = suck.

5/25/09 Recess
So I was at a party the other night to substantially increase the man count of the evening. Little did I know I was to increase the man count by an infinite percentage. First, let me drop some knowledge on you. Being the only guy in a group full of girls is only beneficial when these girls are deprived and competing over, or better yet, considering sharing you. However, even if you arrived before many of the women, you are on the outside
Ha ha! I can't even tell you where I was for this, but I'm sure it was entertaining! I have a feeling I was in Lethbridge.

4/4/09 My goals
#1 Outlive Thom.
#2 Failing Goal 1, outlive wife so I don't have to tell people
What don't I have to tell people? I don't know. I'm too busy laughing at goal #1!

4/3/09 Secrecy
I find it funny that despite all the honest feelings we can express to each other there is always a level we feel the need to hide. There are always things we don't want to say because we're worried what the other person will think. Worse, sometimes we worry what the other person will do. More often than not, I think we're wrong. I think people are a lot more calm and reasonable than we give them credit for.

But despite all that logic, I still can't bring myself to explain the truth. I don't even know how to say it. I can make a lot of fuss about things that don't really matter, but when it comes to the important things... I don't know how to say them. I tried to once and it blew up in my face. I suppose wildly bitching to the internet hasn't been productive either.
Seriously. But I still do it. What's the deal with that?

I suppose what I need to say is that I'm sorry. My feelings were misdirected and my action was out of line. I know this is an open place, and that doesn't bother me. But if I'm going to be open, I need to be open.
So, here it goes.

Dear Blog,
I've fallen in love.
At least to the point that I understood love a year ago. And the irony kills me that a year ago I could only understand that level of love and it might have happened, and now I can see the infinite ocean of emotion that I hadn't yet reached. But at this ledge I am stopped. I am unable to explore. And maybe that's for the best. Maybe if I were to explore, I would soon run out of air (or maybe vice versa) and would have to resurface. Getting dumped out of the ocean is one thing, but the bends is another. Maybe diving in and exploring this is a bad idea. But I see something in the depths. I feel it. How can I ignore it? How can I stay here and never go? I could go to the reef. Reefs are safe; stable. But how can I ever forget those endless depths of the unknown? Even if I had to come back, why couldn't I try? Why couldn't we try?
This right here is why I never posted this. What the fuck am I talking about? That metaphor is constructed worse than slip n' slide built with bristle blocks. It is literally painful to read.

Blog, I'll cut the metaphor for a minute here. Thank God. I want to try this out. Even if it's built to break, even though there are so many signs that say we shouldn't, even though I've done so much to damage it... I want to try. And if I experience a whole new level of heartache, then I have experienced a whole new level of love. I know all the pain I've been through, and I remember it all as I bring those memories back. And all of that heartache, all of those tears and all that regret combined is worth a shot at this.
Wisdom, if I do say so myself.
...

If I'm being honest with you, I wonder now if I've placed her on a pedestal. I've ignored anything with her picture because she is too fucking beautiful. I sometimes think I might be the only one that really sees that. I mean really sees it. I can't even describe the feeling. It's like I want to... absorb her. I don't know, that's really all I can think of. Like I want to hold her so close that we occupy the same space to a scientifically impossible degree, as if our images overlapped. Is it all in my head, or is it all in my heart? I don't know. I wish I knew. I wish I didn't regret running away as much as I have. I wish the conviction I felt once hadn't been so terribly battered. I'm breaking down.

I don't know if I'm making sense. I don't know about you, but I'm following along. I guess I wrote it, though. I'm starting to get the bed ("bad". Though I imagine I was having bed feelings at this point too) feeling that this whole post is a mistake. But I'm going to push through it because I think there has been a lack of communication. And yes, I should say a lot of ("to") this in person. But, like I said, I'm scared. So much for pushing through and communicating. A coward to the end, I suppose.

...I'm trying to be interested in other people. It's a hard thing to say and I don't know why. I guess it goes back to worrying what people will do; how they'll react. I think a lot of the time, I promise feelings that I can't deliver in circumstantial situations. "We'll always be friends" is the biggest one, I think. It's not that the prospect of being together was the only thing holding us together, but sometimes things change and there is no overlooking it. I can't dissolve my feelings. I need to escape and dispose of them. I've got to get away. But it's so hard when I want to stay. Fuck you, old me! I'm doing it.

I didn't really get to say everything I wanted, but my head is killing me.

This is why it's good not only to keep a record of what you think, feel, and do, but also to go back and read it once in a while. If you take anything from this whole thing, take this piece of advice: go back and look it all over. Revisit your thoughts. The insight you gain about yourself is incredible. Everything changes when you take a trip back to visit who you were. I've been known to say it before, but I don't like me 5 years ago. 5 years from now Alex won't like Today Alex, even though Today Alex is fuckin' awesome. I'm sure even 6-months-from-now- Alex won't really be fond of Today Alex, but what can you do?
Learn.

3/13/09 Post it
(I'm trying this quick summary thing. Read this; get the jist. Read on for more info. I don't know whether this girl likes me back or not.) Semi- spoiler! I don't know who I'm talking about yet, but I bet she doesn't!

I have a note on the side of my computer that reads "Keep it to your goddamn self!"
I don't know why she troubles me the way that she does. It has got to be in my head. So, here I write to the abyss of the internet. Remember you're reading my blog. I'm not complaining to you. Aha! A loophole! Stuff it, Thom!

Is it bad that I can't tell if I'm the hero or the villain in my own story? I suppose good or bad is the same as right and wrong; good and evil. These are the things I cannot determine. Am I the heart of the righteous stuck in the body of the wicked, or the malevolent soul presented in a body of innocence? I want to do good, but am I the good that resists the temptation of evil, or am I the evil that seeks redemption? Is my destiny to be all the good which I wish to be, or is it to lay ruin to the supposed goodness I have created?
I really write like this sometimes, not a word of a lie. I just normally don't show anyone. There's a fucking reason for that. These longwinded posts are embarrassing bullshit!

Let me explain. I pride myself in goodness. I am fulfilled by doing what I think to be right, even if it is not the easiest route. But there has been a record so far of 100% violation of supposition among past lovers. Whether this be violation of ideas of fidelity, temperament, deceit, opportunism, or abandonment, there is always an aspect that appears in a relationship, or post relationship, that serves no purpose greater than destruction. Simply put, I hurt the ones I have loved and cared for.

Enter the girl. Yes, the girl. I would be remiss in believing that this girl is the end-all be-all of womankind purely by nature of her virtues - there are many thing that are simply incongruent among us - but somehow she attains the position in my mind of the girl ("the" should be in italics). And perhaps is something that I will talk about later. But for now, I ponder, does not the woman that corrupts man cancel the man that corrupts love?

Perhaps it is the man that corrupts woman? Very well. To an extent, I am that man. Should not then we two form a unison of which none more is perfect? I fear not.

I apologize. In my state I confuse eloquence with verbiage. Yeah, no shit, you pretentious wanker! What the fuck are you trying to say. Jesus Christ, this is the worst thing ever...

Why aren't things working? Why aren't we together? We want what we cannot have. Perhaps, by making up my mind on the course of action to take, I am no longer available. Perhaps I project this emotion more than I am aware. I know in my mind that it is impossible, and purely by virtue of impossibility is it something which I desire? Do I want what I cannot have because I have concluded that I cannot have it? Perhaps, though I did want it before I reached such conclusion. Is she so observant, though, that she perceives my decision and thus has become attracted to that which I have decided she cannot have? Perhaps. Now, supposing that both of these are true, am I not free to retract my previous conclusion and thus formally admit that my conclusion was invalid and that we two must be together?
I think I was in a philosophy class at the time, and they all write like this. Maybe I could make sense of it then, but I sure can't pull it apart now. Maybe philosophers need to stop being philosophers for a few months before they review their own work. It's like living in France for a few months and coming back to America and ordering jus d'orange. It's orange juice, motherfucker, and you're not cultured, you're a fucking idiot.

Yeah, it confuses me sometimes too. Here it is: if I gave up and the girl now likes me because I am unavailable, can I really just say, "hey, I'm all yours!" and things will work out dandy because she likes me? See? That's concise. I get that. I know what I'm talking about here.

They won't. She won't. The feelings are contingent. There is only one course to take.

I really should keep it to myself.
Okay, I was wrong. The girl may have liked me at the time. Although, that was a full year ago! That's incredible. Maybe I was right then. Maybe she didn't like me a year ago. A year is a longer time than I give it credit. It doesn't feel that long looking back, but it really is a long time. I could go on about "what ifs" and muse about the possibilities of what could have been, but that'd end up sounding like all the garbage I wrote a year ago! So here is my conclusion: I made my choices.


These next ones are over a year old, but they were in my "draft" folder, so what the hell!
1/28/09 Proof that Women are greater than Men
A lot of people on both sides of the gender spectrum (oh, it totally is a spectrum) believe that men are better than women. But I have proof that this is not the case.

All women carry our future sons their entire lives.
All men are born of women.
It takes the defiance of many men for a boy to become a man, yet only the love of a single woman.
Through hail of bullets and rain of bombs, between polished swords and sharpened spears, under thrown rocks and over the pitched fires of men a man can resist, but the absence of a woman can leave a man destroyed.
Oh how poetical... shit. To put it another way: women are man's only weakness.

1/23/09 Inequality
Men an women are different. I don't care what you say, but they are. There is a reason why boys like practical academics and girls like visual aesthetics (not that one does not grow to appreciate the other).

Men were made by scientists and women were made by artists.

This is where I wrote a little play about the creation of man and woman.
Genitus: Hurry up, everybody! The deadline's here and God needs these last bits!

Enter Penus.

Genitus: Ah! Penus. What do you have for us?

Penus: Check this out.

Penus whips out the first wang.

Penus: I call it The Penus!

Genitus: Wow, that's... something.

Penus: No, check this out!

The Penus erects.

Penus: Eh? Eh?! Totally involuntary! No bones or nothing.

Genitus: Ha! That is totally awesome! God's gonna be stoked!

Penus: I know, eh?

Penus plays with his newest invention.

Genitus: "The Penis," right?

Genitus scribbles on his clipboard.

Genitus: ...N, I, S.

Penus looks up from the willie.

Penus: Hmm?

Genitus: So, how does it work.

Penus: That's the best part. I was working with Testiclulus on this one. It shoots stuff. Testucles

Enter Testucles, slightly out of breath.

Testucles: Sorry, boss. Here it is.

Testucles holds up a pair of testicles.

Genitus: I don't follow.

Testucles: They're like mini factories. They make these little tiny cells with tails that can swim.

Genitus: Can I see?

Testucles: Just be careful. They're a little delicate.

Genitus: How delicate?

Testucles: Well, it's a complicated system. They're really sensitive and need to be kept at about 33 degrees.

Genitus checks his clipboard.

Genitus: Not 37 degrees?

Testucles: No.

Genitus: So what the hell are we going to do about that?

Testucles: I got it all planned out. We keep 'em in a bag.

Genitus: In a bag?! They're going to lose them!

Testucles: No, like a skin bag.

Genitus: A skin bag? Testucles, we can't afford that much material.

Enter Scrotus hurriedly.

Scrotus: Master! Master! I found something!

Scrotus hands Testucles fistfulls of skin.

Scrotus: They're elbow skin that God was just throwing away!

Testucles: That explains all the hair.

Penus hits Testucles with The Penus.

Penus: I thought we agreed on no hair!

Testucles: I'm sorry! Look, it's the best we can do.

Genitus: I'll let you sort that out for a minute while I check the design for Woman.

Penus, Testucles, and Scrotus huddle together.

Enter Vagino and Ovariam.

Genitus: Vagino! Ovarium! What do you have for us?

Vagino: Genitus, I say with no ego that this is our greatest creation. It's hidden, protected, sleek, soft, runs like clockwork, never needs replacing.

Genitus: Impressive! How does it work?

Ovariam: So, I've got these two little balls-

Genitus slaps his face into his palm.

Genitus: Calibrated to 33 degrees?

Ovariam: No. 37. Who calibrated to 33?

Genitus looks over his shouler at Penus, Testucles, and Scrotum.

Testucles: -no, no, you've got to pin it here!

Genitus turns back to Vagino and Ovariam.

Genitus: Doesn't matter.

Vagino looks over.

Vagino: What are they doing?

Genitus: Please, continue.

Ovariam: Right. So I have these balls. We can call the ovaries to avoid confusion. Anyway, so they are filled with, like, thousands and thousands of eggs-

Genitus: And the woman simply releases an egg when she wants to bear a child! Brilliant!

Pause.

Ovariam: We were thinking more of a timed release.

Genitus: So, they just sort of leak eggs from time to time?

Awkward pause.

Ovariam: You could say that.

Genitus: What happens?

Ovariam: Well, it's more than just an egg. But don't worry. We've devised a hormonal mechanism to keep it hidden.

Genitus: All right, I'll trust you know what you're doing. So, the egg comes out and then the man shoots Testucles' swimming cells onto it and it makes a baby, right?

Ovariam: Well, no. The baby has to grow inside here in this big chamber.

Genitus stares.

Genitus: And then...

Ovariam: Then you have a baby.

Genitus: How does the baby get out?

Ovariam and Vagino exchange looks.

Vagino: Ohhhhh no. No no no no no. No way. This is a masterpiece!

Ovariam (lowered voice): Vag, you're making me look bad.

Vagino: Ovariam, you make yourself look bad. We're not cramming a baby through my Vagina.

Ovariam: It's too late to change everything. C'mon, Vagino. It's the only way!

Vagino (sighs): Fine.

Genitus: Great! I've got to write up a report for God right now. Feel free to share your project with the other.

Genitus exits.

The huddled group of Penus, Testucles, and Scrotus opens up to reveal their package.

Penus: Ta-dah!

Vagino: eugh.


Next week: Gentius tries to explain to God how these parts are used to make new people.

I'm not thrilled with Ovariam and Vagino. They're not quite as entertaining as the stooges that are Penus, Testucles and Scrotus. Also, I'm more of an expert on the poor design of male genitalia than I am with regards to how women feel about their genitals. I don't know if anyone else finds it as funny as I do, but come on, a man's junk is the most poorly designed part of nature on a whole.



Hooray! You either read everything or scrolled to the bottom and said "Fuck that!"
Either way, thanks for getting to this point!

Thought Experiment

Okay, readers, I'm drunk as balls.

Why? Well, I have to pick my long lost buddy up in six and a hlaf hours, so I though the liquor would calm me down enough to sleep. Jagermeister just gets me excited. Jag and 80's music.

There was a point to writing this blog. Something about people at work...
Right! I miss the deaf guy! There was a deaf guy who used to come into the grocery store and I really miss him. I miss the non-verbal communication. I miss being able to talk to someone without having to talk. Fuck, man, he was awesome. But everyday at work it seems like I say words that no one hears. "Your total is $195.85. Debit? Stripe side out." And then they still put the fucking stripe in.

Fuckin' Deaf Guy and and I used to be way cooler. You know, we'd just see each other and nod like we knew what the shit was going down. None of the service industry bullshit. We both knew the score. He was buying food, I was selling it. Why put on a show? He and I could nod acknowledgment, point out pricing, and motion to one another what we needed.



We were always glad to see one another. It's like we were company. We got to know each other on a semi professional level. Not just a sales clerk to a patron and not quite a friend to a friend, but... kinda like people who waited at the same bus stop.


Shit, man, I don't know. I'm drunk as fuck and I don't know what I'm writing about.
I like those knowing smiles. I like knowing about someone. I like that idea of a special bond. Maybe I'm losing that, maybe I'm finding that, maybe it's just over the horizon.

Let me say for now that I will try to clarify tomorrow when I sober up. For now it is time to sleep. Fuckin' finally.

Wisdom

It seems not so long ago that the world was the other way around in my circle of friends. Not all of it is good for my friends, but in this post I will focus on the good. This has to do with my buddy TK. Where once I had a stable relationship, promising future, and wisdom beyond my years, these qualities now belong to him, but with credentials this time.

He's actually in a positive, functional relationship. He has actually started his career. He actually knows what the fuck he's talking about.

I found myself tempted to embark on a fool's errand, lured toward the rocks by the sweet song of a smoking hot babe. Not only did TK point out to me the nature of the beast, but the evidence was already right under my nose.

I guess what I'm trying to say is this: Thanks, TK, for looking out for me. I need it.

Never Like Anyone

This is how misogynistic men are born. Never like anyone because they'll just as soon turn their back on you as look at you. That's right, one minute they're ready to leap into be with you and the next minute they wouldn't touch you with a ten foot pole. Maybe it's their "whimsical gender," or maybe it's all part of a grand scheme.
I, for one, am fucking sick of it, and I think I'm becoming something that I once hated. But that's the way life goes sometimes. Things change, people change, times change, and before you know it, you change too.

I had a dream...

Last night was all sorts of crazy. It was about death, in three parts.

Part 1
I'm on the river rafting with my first girlfriend. I didn't really want to be there, but it seemed like such a great day for rafting that I might as well enjoy it. We rafted down the wide, winding river lazily; we soaked in the sun and the sights. But before we knew it, the river picked up speed and we started to collide with other deserted rafts. I should mention that when I say "raft" I don't mean an inflatable dingy, but a traditional planks-and-logs kind of thing. I was sure I could navigate us through, but my ex was worried and sceptical. What's really strange is that we came out to a labyrinth of aqueducts and waterways. The raft became a hover-raft (don't ask 'cause I don't know) and I simply flew over the whole system toward the lake on the other side. My ex insists that we're skipping over the best part, so I land it in the waterways. Turns out they're part of the zoo/amusement part and are those water-type rollercoasters. Our raft gets picked up on the unreasonably fast conveyor and brings us up to the top. We whip around a corner and are plummeted down towards the waterways again. I'll admit, while there was an element of fun, there was also the absolute terror in the fact that we were not attached. The raft was not designed for this track. We were taken up another ramp, but we hadn't lost much momentum. We round the corner at the top and, with nothing to hold onto, I am cast off the edge. From a wide angle shot from the shore I see my body fall seventy feet towards the water with speed and grace like I fell out of the back of a pickup truck. Just before contact, I wake up.

Part 2
I went back to sleep A) to see if I could resume and save myself (with the brilliant plan of pulling myself into a dive and cutting through the water like a dolphin in a show. I did not. The ending was cut from when I last woke up. But soon after, I start a new story.
It's me and the love of my life. It's the holidays and her parents (who are actually another girl's parents, I just know and like them better) are having their friends over constantly. I suggest to the girl that we get away from it all and hide away in my treehouse, which is literally a modern cabin built in a tree. Before I know it, there are two men at the door (of my treehouse). The girl opens the door. They don't say a word. They shoot her and walk quickly through the house. I duck out a side door and and call the secret service (again, don't ask. I just know them, I guess). I scream and panic and threaten the men.

Part 3
My sister's boyfriend (the love of her life) who lives across the street from the treehouse came to investigate. He opens the door and before he gets a chance to even speak, the men kill him too. I could try and stop them, but I've already died in my dreams once today. I would barely step in the room before I was shot dead too. Though, given the rest of the dream, it may have been better to have died.

Epilogue
I return to the parents' house. It all happened a minute ago to me, and is years ago for them. The same holiday party. The same people. The livelihood is superficial, but they're trying. I remember a line to a song:
"Love of mine, someday you will die, but I'll be close behind to follow you into the dark."
I've almost got myself convinced to kill myself, but I knew she wouldn't want that. If she was waiting there for me, she'd wait for me until my time came. But she wasn't waiting. There was no sense dying. No real sense in living other than you can't change your mind about it later. So there I was, the world around my moving while my life had ground to a stop under the burden of a lost love and the guilt of the loss of another's love. I don't know what I could have done to stop him from being killed, but I feel like I could have done something.

-

I'm on that old raft again, drifting down the river. The world lacks even the indication of colour. I look at the shore and there is her mother driving her car on the road along the bank. She looks at me and I stare at her. She's drained, somewhat emptied, but hopeful at the same time. She is who the girl would have been. She is who the girl will never be. She is the woman I will never know.

Tactics

Do you flirt with the cute girl who works at the video game store, or do you act aloof?

Slim (or less so) Pickings

I have just come to the horrible realization that women are getting married.

There are only a certain number of women in the entire world who are my age. Now, while the acceptable age range grows, availability of women is decreasing at an exponential rate. Women are getting married, turning gay, dying, and becoming bitter, jaded shells of feigned human compassion everyday (see "Independent" Woman, or Female Dick). At any rate, there are fewer and fewer women available and once they're off the market they are almost always lost forever. They are a non-renewable resource until I can be frozen in time and awaken to an entirely new demographic; something which I would be very adamant against. I don't have anything in common with people who were born in 1989. I can't imagine what I wouldn't have in common with someone who were born in 2029.

Part of me says, "Shit, I gotta get on that," but there is the more prevalent problem that women don't look their age. It seems to me that women hit puberty and look anywhere from 15 to 28. Somewhere along the way to 28-hood, they suddenly become much older and fall into the 28-35 range. So I have no way of identifying a woman who is 23 with any degree of certainty that she isn't an old looking 17 year old. Similarly, I have no way of positively asserting that someone who appears to be 28 isn't actually 23.

Perhaps if I can break through the 28 year barrier I can enter a new and wonderful realm of sensible women in their early 30s who look and act their age. Unfortunately, I don't know if, at the age of 28, I'll be able to act mine.

Words and Sounds

As a general rule of thumb, I believe that it is discourteous to produce a sound from your mouth that cannot be spelt.

T'ch is the best facsimile I can use to describe the sound that this girl consistently makes after every mouthful of food she packs into her gob as well as every time she talks, which is entirely too often. It's as if there is residual food in her mouth that she takes every opportunity to suck down. Maybe the noise knocks it loose.

Maturation

I must be getting old.

Remember back in the day when you were a teenager and the most important part of a sexy dream is that you totally boned someone? Sort of like how the most important part of a sex scene in a movie was the fact that you saw boobies. But as we grow older we refine our tastes and understand that sometimes less is more. Sometimes an implication is better than a statement (or visual statement, as the case may be). We even come to realize that not getting what we want is often more enjoyable than getting it right away. We no longer have a need for the gratuitousness of sex (on a side note, why is the word "gratuity" used for tips? Shouldn't it be gratituity? I henceforth will object to paying gratuities on the basis that it is completely unnecessary).

I'm not going to go into details about this dream I had. Though I'm sure it is inferred that is was a particularly good dream, I assure you that you assume too much. It was good in the sense that a cup of tea is good compared to the goodness of a Dirty German (French Toasted Cheese and Bacon Pancake Sandwich grilled in Maple Syrup. Don't ask why it's a called that, I don't remember). Again, it wasn't gratuitous.

Some might say that it is boring or sad to have the realism of a dream be not in the vividness of boundless experience but rather in the modesty of situation. While some people have dreams about flying or superpowers or whatnot, I have dreams about attending lectures, volunteering to speak at a seminar, and all my real relationships being exactly the way they are in real life. But in the end, there is always something to be learned, something to be taken away and even shared here on the internet with the people who are even just curious about what I have to say.

From this dream I have learned this: It feels better to be wanted than to be had.

Maybe you can apply this to your lives. I know, much to my chagrin, that I can.

Be Married

I just finished catching up with one of the few people I met last year at school. When I first met her I thought to myself "now here is a very attractive, smart, cheerful, bright, all around positive woman my age and she's sitting down next to me and talking to me. This can't be happening."

I soon found out in that semester that she was engaged to be married this past summer. After that, I had no problems talking to her. There really wasn't anything for me to be nervous about. There wasn't anything on the line.

I tried to work myself up to talk to this other girl in the same class. Well, the day I was going to ask her if she wanted to do something was the day she stopped coming to class. I emailed her and asked her what was up and suggested that we get together. She said we should and we back and forth'd a bit, and then I never heard from her again.

This is the case of so many single girls. Hook up with a single girl, get rejected. Talk to a single girl, she leaves the class. Friend of a friend, potential lesbian. Primed for a blind date, mysterious disappearance. Try and sit next to a girl in class, she moves to the other side of the room.

My conclusion is thus: Fuck single girls. One of the most fun times I've ever had in my life is stealing a girl from her boyfriend. Yeah, that ended poorly, and the type of girl that'll leave her boyfriend for me is the type of girl that'll leave me for her new boyfriend, but shit, that wasn't so bad, was it? So maybe the plan should be to subvert boyfriend "authority" and steal a girl who is already taken.

For all the talk I do about not wanting to do marketing because I don't like the idea of a competitive market, I sure do like winning. I like being better than someone else. And watching a social dynamic shift in my favour is the highest form of entertainment I have ever experienced.

Maybe I am enough of a bastard for marketing.

Blag to the Basics

With an hour break to eat between Philosophy and Physics (why are the Ph- classes always either dreadfully boring or exceptionally awesome?) I should be conducting more consistent blogging. It's not really the hour break that's doing this, but the hour break with no one around.

That's been the anticipated biggest problem with going back to school; I am now on average 4 years older than everyone else. That's an entire presidency. Although I am an adult and 4 years doesn't seem like that much time, these kids are 19... Four years ago they were 15. When I started sleeping with girls, they started liking girls. How fucked up is that? Not that I'm interested in people who started liking girls, but think about the first girl you liked. Now think about the first girl you slept with. Now think about them at the same time. If this is arousing, I would kindly ask you to no longer be associated with me (that, or shit, dude, you were one academically focused little motherfucker).

But I can still get past that. What I can't get past is that all these girls here are in High School 2: I Can Do Who I Want, Mom! I thought Lethbridge was bad for being high school all over again, but we all seemed to grow up in our time there.

I feel like an amateur anthropologist in this food court, observing these ex-children/pre-adults (protodults, if you will). But I can't form any conclusions other than that I don't fit in at all. To boil it down, we have nothing in common. I'm not in a program, I don't know how long I'll be here, we come from many different places and live in many different areas and do many different things. That's what I miss about Lethbridge. People lived on the West Side. We were all in there for the long run. We ate at the same places, we drank at the same bars, we hung around on campus for hours on end because we had nothing better to do. I saw someone I knew every day at school down there. I've seen people here that I've seen before. So far, no one that I've talked to (save for Zack, who I came specifically to have lunch with) I have seen again. And I don't think I'll ever build those relationships with people here like I did in Lethbridge. Maybe it's who they are, maybe it's who I am, maybe it's just who they aren't.

A night out.

My brother got married today.

We drank, we laughed, we drank some more.



I want to work at the bank. We went down to the Met afterwards and I tried dancing, but I couldn't get into it. I don't want to dance with some stranger at a bar. What's the point. I looked out the window and saw the bank. I though to myself, "I want to drink me drink because it is Friday, but I want to got to work on Monday morning in my suit and tell people the way that I think the world should be run.

It's weird that the prelude to a marriage if fraught with me thinking that love is above all else in my life and that I wish that I could believe in something more. Yet after the marriage I went out and thought that there was something beyond love that I could want out of life; and that love and a career can occur at the same time... but not tonight.

Tonight, I was a man divided. Though I am always there for my brother, I may also always be caught up wondering about my own life. I wonder, though I don't envision a day like today being held in my honour, if we have a future. I wonder if I can let myself share this, and if you can share this with me. I wonder why tonight no other girl, not in all of their makeup, not in their fanciest dress, not with copious amounts of liquor, and not in the loverly mood of a wedding, I wonder why not one girl could compete with a simple phone call.


Not one.




But, alas, here's to the bride and groom. I hope that I will find my way as you did yours.

Beards: The Public Pubic Hair?

Okay, okay, I know you're all thinking "but you have a beard. And more importantly, I have a beard!"

This is largely true (some of you may not be able to grow beards). But let's look at the facts, shall we?

1. Beards and pubic hair both start growing at puberty.
2. Beard hair is unlike head hair, much like pubic hair is unlike head hair.
3. Both yield a very good scratch when you have an itch.
4. You can experiment with making fun designs in them.
5. Proper maintenance is important.

Now you're thinking "yeah, okay, maybe, I guess. But it still doesn't sound very good." And, if you're a woman, you- I'm sorry, first let me welcome you to the blog - if you're a woman you're possibly thinking "but I don't like beards."

Here's what the problem is. A man grows a beard at puberty and separates himself from the boys. A woman grows pubic hair at puberty and separates herself from the girls. By removing the hair of our puberty we only attempt to emulate our childhood. First off, how sick is that?! We all know that every man is some percentage of a paedophile. If you say you've never looked at an underaged girl you're lying or a woman. But what about the women that desire men to emulate prepubescent boys? If a woman said that she shaved her pubic hair because it was expected of her we would be outraged, right? Who is a man to expect a woman to shave to look like a prepubescent girl? Yet women have conjured up this social expectation that men should have to remove their beards. What's worse is that some men reinforce this idea!

Now, I'm not saying that I'm opposed to anyone's removal of any of their hair (other than entire eyebrows... I just don't get that) but no one, man or woman, should feel obligated to remove a natural part of their adulthood, nor should anyone be told that they need to, or even that they should.

Now, I know what you women are thinking. First of all, I'd like to thank you for reading this far. Not only am I excited to have your readership, but look forward to seeing some feedback in the comments.

But like I was saying, I know you women are thinking "but we put our faces on your face and it's itchy/scratchy/krusty etc. You don't put your f-"


Oh really?

Fight or Flight

So when is the appropriate time to fight for someone you love? We often here the phrase "if you love her, let her go," though I often think that's "dude, she's such a bitch!" in disguise. That or "you're being such a bitch and I don't want to hear about it anymore."

But what about Love? There is always that mentality that we must fight for the things we love, especially when it comes to women. Why especially with women? Because women are confusing. Women want you to fuck off out of their lives as much as they want to still be friends. So when a girl tells you she likes you and thinks you're great and doesn't want to be in a relationship with you and goes and fucks around with another guy but still wants to be friends... where does that leave you? It's like hooking fingers together while you're at the park, arm's length apart, while she's making out with some other dude. Stay close, don't go away, but idle while I'm with someone else.

Maybe we're not supposed to be idle. Maybe this is one of those things where she doesn't want you to be idle and the other guy is a test of how much you love her. But by "proving your love" you either have to be a total asshole and try and break them up, or you have to careen down the road to the Friend Zone where you and your girl will be reunited in love... totally platonic love.

I think about 1% of the female population sees the problem with that. It's like selling your independent record label to Viacom so they can throw out everything you've ever produced and start over under the guise of an independent label. Sure, your label still exists, but with all of the soul and heart dissected from it. It'd be better to just let it die (or better yet, find other options and fight through the rough patches, but hey...).

There must be some sort of line that separates when you should fight and when you should let her go. It's probably the same line that separates persistence and creepiness. The movies always tell you that persistence pays off and that those who fight for their love will win their love back. But reality seems to always favour the other side. Persistence will get you peppersprayed and fighting will destroy everything you once had or leave you stranded in the Friend Zone.

Music versus Alcohol

Drinking does not necessarily coax truths out of ones self, but rather, I have found, amplifies emotions. Certain emotions. Not that there isn't more truth coming from a person under the influence, but that it is a momentary truth. This is how we can say things we don't really mean, yet still feel. You may say that you hate someone while under the influence, and that may not be the case. You may say that you love someone under the influence, and that may not be the case either.

Although I probably have said things that were an exaggerated version of my normal feelings, this is not the root of my revelation. I'm sitting here in bed listening to music, and I start with a song by the Mad Caddies; Drinking For 11. Then the shuffle moves to Thrice's Stare At The Sun. Despite both songs reflecting my feelings, they have very different tones. While I am drinking, the first song made me feel hope. The second song fills me with hopelessness. So, while I assume that I have but one universal feeling, the music can alter the manifestation of that feeling, amplified, of course, by the alcohol.

In fact, that is a good way to look at it. Alcohol is your amp, not your pre-amp. Music is the pre-amp. Music changes what you can hear and what you can't; alcohol only makes it louder. This is why at a party you can totally hook up with someone or end up staying up all night talking. You still like the girl, but the music manifests different actions (also, iPods versus vinyl, very different results).

To emphasize my point, my iPod has just switched from Slipknot to Vivaldi and I'm too confused to go on. But the point I wanted to make is that I say a lot of things that may not fairly represent how I feel. I guess I also want to say I'm sorry for this. Things that are black and white are express than this sea of grey.

Of Boats and Breakups

When it comes to breaking up/being left behind by someone you love, the initial reaction is to think that it sucks because it hurts. I, however, have come to the conclusion that, in the long run, that is not the fact. In truth, it sucks because you've failed, and that brings along all the baggage of failure.

Let's look at it from the perspective of several years ago. You broke up with someone, it sucked, you hurt, you moved on. Today, you can't honestly say it hurts (if it does, you need to get her back whatever the cost; she's the one! (ladies, I can't even imagine you having these kinds of feelings; boys aren't that special)). Today, you can't say that you feel the same way you feel when it first happened. So is it even a bad thing to break up? After all, you learn something each time it happens. Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger, right? Well, yes. Are breakups a good thing? Well, no.

The problem with breakups, like any other failure, is not the pain, misery, dejection, remorse, what-have-you of failure, but the fact that you have to reset the experiment. You need to find someone else and start all over! What's worse, is the more promising a social experiment like dating (the hypothesis being that she is the girl for you) the more resources are poured into the experiment. Now, I'm not talking money here, so all you raging feminists can put a sock in it right god damn now. I'm talking about less tangible resources. Time (we've only got so long on this planet), ideas (perhaps this is a personal thing, but once you use a good idea on a girl that idea is spent forever), songs (like ideas, one per customer. "Everything I Do" was such a good one...), love (though a renewable resource, a resource that shouldn't be wasted nonetheless), and, one of the more obscure and less thought of resources, brownie points.

Yes, brownie points. I have a collective 6, if not more, years of generating brownie points and I've traded them in for nothing! I'm always saving up for that boat! So after a breakup, where do those brownie points go? They're lost forever! They're non-transferable! Your ex isn't going to tell your current girlfriend that you're awesome because you're not dating anymore! It carries no value! Shit, if I got to keep all my brownie points, I could have had a turtle by now!

And before you say that I could buy a turtle now because I'm single and I can do what I want, that's not the point! The point is that it's part of the continued experiment. When the effects of Alex on Girl are very well known and things become stable, you have to use brownie points to introduce something new (because the effects of introducing something that she wants are negligible. She gets something new. She's happy about it for a bit). If I was in the same relationship, I could be testing Alex+Turtle on Girl. Can you imagine the ramifications of that equalling win?

Seriously, God's gotta throw me another bone (no pun intended) or I'm going to end up an arsonist.

Coordination

I have no brain-girl coordination.

Running

I used to think that running away was based solely on personal fears; fear of being hurt, foremost. I used to think people would run away because they were scared of something bad happening, which boiled down to them being afraid of risking or committing to something or someone. I used to think that I ran away to protect myself, to let myself heal. But things have changed.

I find now that I've grown older and relationships have become more complicated. While some things get easier, other things get harder. For example, while it may be easier to ask and take a pretty girl out on a date, it is more complicated when it comes to where things are going, how you get along, what your personalities are like. The standard list of adjectives, while still being applicable, is no longer the basis of conduct. A girl can be beautiful, fun, exciting, nerdy, playful, smart, what-have-you, and still somehow lack that intangible force that attracts two people together (or, as seems more often than not these days, one person to another). The same applies to the opposite. A girl can be crazy, indecisive, insecure, secluded, even abusive, and there can still remain something, some intangible something, that grants that girl a special place in our hearts. I digress. Things have changed. Where once I ran to escape somebody, now I run to remove myself. Where once I ran to protect myself, now I run to protect another.

Even still, I wonder if people run away because they are scared for themselves. Perhaps they are scared for someone else. I know I don't mind getting hurt. I'd rather they didn't run away from me. Perhaps I should assume the same about them and stand my ground.

The birds are singing. Time to switch shifts. Dream time.

Ego

I was relieved to find out the other day that my self esteem issues are no more. In the past rejection would lead me to believe there was something the matter with me, something that needed to be corrected. But now i can safely say beyond any doubt that I'm pretty awesome. I'm not the greatest guy in the world, but I'm certainly not the worst.

But what I worry is that I've gone from thinking too little of myself to thinking too much of myself; as if I have all of the answers to everything for everyone. Sure, there are some things like forcing the homeless into employment and putting turnstiles at the LRT stations to more strictly enforce payment and generate revenue, but those are large scale problems that have their own endless subset lists of individual problems, which I'm sure I could deal with in a very stern "fuck you if you don't follow the rules" manner.

However, there are people's personal problems that I seem to think I have the answers to as well. Some people agree with my solutions and some people reject them very strongly. My buddy got a second job as a clerk the other day. Well done. You gotta push through this recession. You can't afford to be picky. In the words of Meat Loaf "You don't have a lot, but it's all that you've got, and you can turn it into more than it seems." It confuses me that some people don't accept this philosophy.

I don't know, there's a time to be picky and there's a time where you need to accept things as they come. For example, 5 years ago you could reject a job because your heart wasn't in it or the money wasn't there. Now, take the fucking job! 2 years ago you could shop around for the right location to live, the right price, the right people. Now, you will live in shit-central with a meth dealer because it's better than being on the street. Six months ago you could go anywhere, see anything, be anyone. You could afford all of that. The world was nothing but possibilities. Now all we have is each other.

But that's just me. I figured it was just normal. Automatic. I understand how people can put their careers ahead of other people. A career can be what defines a person in their eyes. But when the kitchen is out of steak you don't sit there and starve! At least I wouldn't. I suppose some people really like steak...

I've figured it out

Here's the plan:

- Move to a new city
- Reinvent self as non-committal
- Meet nice girl
- Fool her completely into thinking I hate commitment
- Pull a fast one on her and reveal that I want to be committed to her
- Let girl believe that she changed me
- Live happily ever after

Girls, seriously, why should I have to trick you into understanding that I'm a nice guy? Admit it. A guy goes from being non-committal to only wanting to be with you and you think he's amazing and sweet and loving and caring. But as soon as a guy even suggest that he likes commitment you're immediately repulsed!

I've tried being casual. I've tried saying "you know what, whatever happens happens." But when a girl stands up through all of that and is impossible to take your attention off of through not active fault of her own, isn't that a sign that she is special? Isn't that the human version of my storybook plan?

I wish things worked like how they do in the stories. Like "I like you, you like me, let's be together." That was always my favourite story. All the trials in between were created by the union, sure, but they were all solved by devotion and commitment to it. And in the end, everything was always better than before.