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The Nature of Frustration

It’s kind of a tangled ball of string that you have to pluck delicately painstakingly apart; a string that unravels your favorite shirt; a string that trips you in the dark; a string stretched taut between the limits of your patience; the same string scraped by the 10 year-old violinist torturing their parents; it’s a string that makes no sense; a string that defies the reality of the universe.

Much as I’d like to be speaking at length on the failures of string theory in the past 20 years—which I can’t—I’m not. I think instead another list is called for.

Callouts:

  • Planned Parenthood: If you’re gonna try to bill me for things that you said were free, have the balls to call me back. We can have a discussion like civilized people/organizations. Just because you misrepresented information and didn’t ever contact me after my appointment, like the bad one-night stand that I never had, doesn’t mean we can’t be civil. Step off.
  • CSUMB Administration & Records: Please mail my transcripts to me. Please do it now, not when you feel like it. This is important, cause otherwise I don’t go to SF State on the 24th. And you don’t get to continue not stepping off. Step off.
  • S.F.P.D. Meter Maid Task Force: You need to call me back too. And then we can discuss under what circumstances, exactly, free parking isn’t free. Steppoff.
  • My Computer: Houda, you heard me, that was totally uncalled for the other day. Getting unplugged and losing all my work was out of line. You made the list, nowsssstephoff.
  • Email Spammer Using my Domain: I’m just gonna tell you up front, and we’ll keep this simple: you need to DIE. Step off da face of da Urf.

OHthatFEELSgood—out, damned string.

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Balance

Things that are good:

  1. friends
  2. letters
  3. books
  4. food
  5. sex
  6. creativity
  7. maturity
  8. understanding

Things that are not as good (“are bad”):

  1. weather
  2. bills
  3. money
  4. “Breakin’” (1984)
  5. time management
  6. memory

Eight to six. Not bad.

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Flaming Chili Peppers with Sunglasses and Big Grins

That’s the pattern on them, anyways.

Cryptic messages are better. Better than just telling someone. If you just tell them, they’re all “why is this important? how does it affect me?” Now if you don’t tell them, then they’re all going to ask you, beg you to tell them. Cause obviously there’s a good reason you aren’t telling them.

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Cordless! ess-five-ten Logitech

I am so happy that my new keyboard works as intended. This is, like, the most awesome thing that has happened to me all hour. The keys pronounce a pleasant clicking sound with each nimble tap on their scissor-switched little square black forms. And while they are not as sensate-savvy as the infamous Model-M‘s, the relative mechanical feedback is quite satisfactory. Plus, I can appreciate the wrist-rest for what it is—a boon from heaven. Plus, plus, the weight’s a plus. All in all: A+.

 
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Bloody Racists

Damn racists at the blood donation clinic. Discriminating just cause I “turned three shades too white.”

I ain’t ready yet, apparently. I tried, I tried… As soon as they thought I started fainting the deal was off. But, see, that’s the whole point. It is my wholehearted desire to conquer one of my last two irrational fears: needles. I can handle pain. Apparently I can’t handle a rather small needle poking my digit-flesh. And the language of the forms. Oh God, the forms. They gave me extra water and pretzels and sent me packing. Another day, crossed-fingers.

Maybe I’ll go find a clown and scare him. Gotta conquer something.

Give blood
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Birthday Wishes

Starlight, star-bright, first star I see tonight, I wish I may I might… you know the rest.

I didn’t actually get that much for my birthday. Bought myself a wireless keyboard. Walked my dad through getting another year of Flickr (typed in the credit card myself.) What I got was um… kind of a uh… peace-a-mind. A resolve. Something I’ve wanted to do for at least a month now: write everyone in my life who deserves to be written. Oh, and there’s a big list to get to…

  • Aynne Valencia
  • Lynae Straw
  • Meredith Scheff
  • Jenna McKay
  • Donna Fitzgerald
  • Emily Wentz
  • Michael Bandli
  • Lauren Wolfer
  • Josh Nebgen
  • Petr & Zdenka
  • Allegra
  • Ryn
  • Jerome Gagnon-Voyer

And I think that’s it. I’d always like to add more. This year for my birthday I want something from myself [laughter]. I want myself to be the kind of person who fulfills that which I want from myself. This is all very deep, and very cathartic. And I’m glad I went outside with a tape recorder and acted all inspired and talked into it and then came back inside, feet freezing, and transcribed all of it. I might go outside more often.

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Self-Portrait Tuesday

There is such a thing as self-portrait tuesday. I didn’t make it up as an excuse to post “pix” of me posing for a silly internet contest that a friend interrupted and made cooler and more posse-like. I put this up here, cause, well, I ain’t gonna look this good forever. Tomorrow I turn twenty-three.

Twenty-three. Nothing important. Hump number. Odd, not even. Obstinately indivisible by anything but itself and one. Not between anything; just older. Twenty-three Skidoo. Psalm 23. Michael Jordan. The human genome and its 23 pairs. In mathematics, “The Birthday Paradox” — given a group of 23 or more randomly chosen people, the probability is more than 50% that at least two of them will have the same birthday (ask my good friend Emily). On a standard QWERTY keyboard, the 23rd letter W is right below and between 2 and 3. Alright, alright, this’s just getting ridiculous.

Twenty-three: not as boring as I thought. I might even have fun this year.

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Returning Books

I’m finished. Done for. Through.

More Than Human was a good book. I can understand why it came recommended. Mating Mind, while also a good book (I’m guessing) did not come as a recommendation. It came as a lucky charm. I didn’t read it all the way through, cause that book already gave me what I needed a long while ago. And it did that by granting me just enough smarts and insight to influence human events.

Whoa… wait, what? That’s right—influence human events. Not Machiavellian machinations, but memes between me and she-who-knows. Powerful transmissions between us transmuted into something else. Our brains interfaced on a level commensurate with the venerable 28.8 modem at first, and then we upgraded to wireless ISDN. Which—granted—isn’t the best service but if you live in Belize who’s going to complain? This’d be fine if I could read her blog (and by blog I mean mind) across town. But wireless service isn’t that great in Belize.

To stretch an already thin metaphor across a perilously dumb (Central American?) chasm, we file-shared. We traded ideas. We’d sit around going “Oh, have you heard of this?” “Do you know about that?” “How about other thing?” It got to the point where our… our “pings” were just… what’s true computer jargon for ‘clogging up the hard drive till you just really have to defrag cause you’re unwilling to delete all those really good, but infrequently-listened-to electronic/ambient tracks?’ That. We had that. Then I started reading “The Mating Mind,” synthesized it with my own experience, and wrote out what is I daresay a rather entertaining little essay. Proud of that.

Call it a confirmation bias, but it changed the whole tone and our… our talking, it took on a different character. Less communicating and more communication. Actually received a genuine transmission in the form of a book—sure you could guess which one by now. And I read it. And I’m done with it. I liked it, I liked what it said about the person on the other end of the line, but it didn’t change the fact that nowadays me and she-who-knows aren’t exactly practicing telegraph operators. So now I’m done, and now what?

Later today I’m returning the Mating Mind back to the library whence it luckily found me. Gluttony is a vice, you know… even for information. And the other book? Well, haven’t figured that out yet. But I’ve been getting an idea. Not on the internet, not in science fiction books loaned to you by nerdy girls, is anybody familiar with real psychic transmissions?

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Consu-totha-mating

Yo! Traffic spike. You gotta know, I seen a lotta people be comin’ here lately from old Consumating.com. Who’s gonna say why. I mean, I could. I could tell all y’all. I could if I wanted fosho.

And why don’t I? Mystery and subtlety aren’t my obsessions lately. I’ve better things to figure out. Makeouts. Masculine identity. Communal living. City living. Financial deterrents. Financial dependence. Desire. Purpose. Choice. Path. Consumating.

One of these things is not like the other…

Consumating.com is a website. The same as MySpace, but tucked away and with a better crowd. No hustlers or 15 year-olds trying to get in. These people don’t dig the scene but they love the music. They’re internet locals. They live there and they know the place. They’ll flirt with you at two o’clock in the morning same as they would at two in the afternoon. The games are good, and the kissing’s great. Conversation’s even better. It’s the bar I never had growing up.

But then again I never been to a bar with a point system. Up front, strait up, above the table, not by the way, point system. Here’s how it works (like you don’t know): two points each thumbs up, one less every thumb down. Gladiatorial life and death has never been so simple. Your profile is there for all to look at (and it looks like everyone’s—no HTML soup to serve your friends). It’s got pictures, it’s got space for a witty l’il quote. So far it’s MySpace without the ugly. But instead of general movies music television schools businesses boring boring you go ahead and outright LABEL yourself with some web2.0y tags. Me, I’m tagged memetics, dinosaurs, pixel_fonts, and abandoned_buildings. I like ’em, and that’s who I am. And the “About Me” section? Who you’d really like to meet? All bullcrap anyway. He who gets his whole personality across when asked those questions doesn’t deserve to be met. An ingenious solution: don’t ask dumb questions; try interesting ones. More opportunities to be clever than you can shake on a pogo stick… That a pogo stick bounces at… That you can bounce a pogo stick to shake… Well, it doesn’t come if you force it.

The point is points. You get ’em when people like you’re answers, when they like your photos, when they like you. You collect points and get ranked against everybody else. Life or death. Being clever is fun. Taking jiveass pictures is fun. Flirting, notepasssing, and rating strangers is fun. Getting more popular is a job—an addictive job.

I wanna be cool like all the other cool people. I don’t wanna play SEO and figure what attitudes provide the most ROI. I wanna kill time, not waste it. I wanna attend Secret Santa consu-meetings and meet worthy people from another world, give worthwhile presents and get worthwhile kisses. But you know what else? I wanna break the triple digits. In the past month I’ve doubled my points. I wanna break 1000th place.

So why couldn’t I just say that up front? I linked to my own page from Consumating. And I did it because it’d be fun, sure. But I did it for points too.

Subtlety can be good. You don’t just walk up and ask a fella for a beer, you say hi and give an interesting perspective and make friends, then you ask for a beer. If it’s a good bar, you might be lucky enough to get that far.

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Notice the New

Please refer to post #35 (the Tragedy of Blogs) and post #55 (Cheating) if you require an explanation as to why I suddenly have all these new entries. I do what I want, people. I’m free.