Tag: about someone

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Letters

💌

I really regret if I hurt you, which it sounds like I did. I admit I base most of my friend-interactions as an adult on the kind of playful fun I had as a kid, and it works a lot of the time. The inner child and all that. Except now most of us have better jokes and our own money and greater aptitude in not being unintentionally shitty to each other. Kids are, like, monsters ain’t it.

But the inner children thing has never quite worked the same with you and me, has it? The thing is, on my better days — ok, on my best days — I can be the kind of kid that’s a bit annoying, a bit pretentious, but occasionally spouts some weird-ass corner-case trillionth-percentile never-yet-spoke-upon-planet-Earth sentence that unfurls a teensy part of reality you never suspected was there. The luck of being that kid? Mixed bag. Some days, hellz yeah… other days… hopefully you can relate to this feeling, because YOU KNOW you’ve been that kid for me.

(First date, morning after, walking back, “I almost feel like I should’ve warned you. I have this thing where I’m a catalyst for people, they meet me and stuff starts changing really fast for them. I don’t know why.”)

So if you find yourself occasionally wondering why it may seem I (or others?) view you as alien yet akin, fascinating yet unfathomable, worthy yet disparaged, or any other false dichotomies we even label ourselves as sometimes, remember this:

I. Fuckin. Love you. Ok?

I love you. Fuck it.

As cheesy as it is, I love that you’re alive and that I met you and that you’re so damn… whatever the hell you are. I love your sacred immutable being-ness. I also love you in that I’m sexually attracted to you, but you already knew that. I do love you though.

Not trying to make stuff awkward here, I promise I’ll stop in a minute, but just let’s agree: it’s probably as difficult to love someone else as it is to love yourself. Coincidentally, both Eckhart Tolle and Wedding Crashers (2005) assert that true love is the soul’s recognition of itself in another. Which in case you haven’t been reading carefully haha, that means WE ARE FUCKED

WE ARE ALL FUCKED, [NAME]
ALL OF US. FUCKED, FUCKED, FUCKED, FOREVER

It took me so much processing to grasp the possible intention[s] of your message — it’s literally so distant an interpretation from what I thought I was saying — though I affirm my frequent, thoughtful consideration of your reactions — yet somehow this whole over-edited notepad monstrosity is still the most linear response I could come up with?! Whence and wherefore hath skewed we awry, I known’t. But here we are.

I’m afraid of losing you again,
but I’m also pleased to talk with you,
but I also grapple with expectations,
but I also just wanna maintain cuz world be fucked rn,
but I know it’s almost always productive to intellectually engage with you,
but you do actually think rather differently than me,
but I also believe that’s ultimately bollocks,
but what the fuck would even BE the answer anyway,
and is the question actually just “hey, are you fucking with me?”

If so here is my gift to you, to both of us, for this day and for every day.

Here it is.

I am no more fucking with you as I am fucking with myself.

Same goes. I still ❤️ you no matter what.

💌 Boop. 💌

Categories
Glot

Roommating

Goodbye, old roommate. Hello new roommate. Oh! Hello, second new roommate.

Jerome got his bed yesterday. He was sleeping on the couch before that. He was sleeping in our apartment because he’ll be staying with us the next three months. Three months! This is Jerome (and this is Jerome en English). He is Quebecois, from Quebec City. An international traveler extraordinaire, he planned a three-month internship as a Mac developer, not to mention found a place to stay (with me), completely through Gmail. That’s impressive.

Jerome, meet Rhiannon. She’s our roommate—as of two weeks ago. Yup. She had to move three times in the past two months to find a place as good as ours. She’s planning on settling down and having some action figures. We met her at Bad Movie Night and kept coming back, long enough to make friends with the girl taking our $5 every week. Now it’s free for us. You can come too, Jerome, and be subjected to the horror that is “I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry.” It’s ok, though! It didn’t actually win any Razzies, so that means it must be a good movie.

Nice to finally introduce you two. This place isn’t the cleanest in the world, now that our former roommate is gone. She sure liked that cleaning. So there’s some Dr. Pepper boxes that are being saved for no reason. We’ve got extra couches, now (not sure what to do with those). I’ll be the first to admit that there’s too many open projects to count. Expect things to be in unlikely places, like my hats on the couch or network cable strung up in the hallway. It’s a creative disorder, a constantly brewing ferment of materials and activities and ideas all swirling around in too small a space for their own good. Welcome.

Categories
Stuff-n-Glot

Flowers and Trees

A long while back, way in April 2004, I made a school project to impress a girl. +20 Dork points.

Good news and bad news about the outcome: it totally worked, she and everyone present thought it was a masterpiece. Even better, afterwards she wanted to get the software I used. From me. Bow-chicka-wow. Bad news: when I met her in the library, I acted the total dork-azoid. Had it not been for the timely appearance of my good friend Emily, I am certain I would have tumbled headfirst-chairlast into a piece of abstract art. Bad abstract art. Thankfully, Emily also gave us the topic of couples with matching hair (she and her dood both sported Pepé le Pew styles at the time—neither knew of the other’s current look until they first met—aww). The nervous klutz-ass factor, despite the presence of awesome friends, and combined with the fact the software later might’ve got that girl a virus (oops)… all of them accounted for why I didn’t do so well that season.

But that’s alright. I later learned on some pseudo-date with her roommate that she was a massive sto-o-oner rivaling Tommy Chong. Some things aren’t meant to be. Now that is hearsay and if you’re reading this, business major Maria T., you do have a chance to defend yourself. What totally reasonable explanation can you think of that we shouldn’t have worked out, other than the fact I acted like a doofus (the bad kind)? Cause that doesn’t count.

At least I got a movie out of it. It is what those involved in online, remix and collage culture might call a “mashup,” and what my parents might call “pretty neat.” Normal people might call it “putting the sound from one thing with the video from something else.” Your pick. Samples include:

  • 1932 Disney classic (now public domain) “Flowers and Trees”
  • Air and Jean-Jacques Perry — Cosmic Bird
  • Malagena something mourning song
  • Secret Chiefs 3 — Dolorous Stroke
  • Joan Jett

That’s all I have to say on that. I didn’t get the girl, but I did get the A+. Go figure.

Categories
Glot

Your Drama

I do not want your drama. Your drama irritates me, and makes me stressed out for things that are not my fault. If I were to make your drama into some sort of woodland creature, I would make it into a bear. A rabid bear. A rabid bear that is raging through the forest, knocking over trees and stomping other wildlife, growling menacingly at deers and chipmunks, until it makes it’s way to my house where it proceeds to abuse my floor and frighten my children and almost destroy it’s own damned TV. In this scenario, the bear has a TV. Let’s not really go into what’s actually happening with this obfuscated bear symbology. Let’s just say that a bear has entered my home, and the bear is quite terrifying. The bear wants me to pay more money to live in my apartment. The bear is going to lick it’s wounds and howl for long stretches into the night. The bear wants to borrow my cellphone, again, for the sixth time. I do not want to live with a bear. Also, I do not want to live with crazy people, who, in magnitude of disturbance to one’s wellbeing, is worse than a rabid forest-bear who drinks all my booze. No bears.

Categories
Glot

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.

Categories
Glot

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?

Categories
Glot

Reasons Not to Kiss Me

  • I have a thick beard, and it’s getting thicker by the day.
  • I’ve got a sore spot on the bottom left where I bit my lip, and it hasn’t healed yet because I keep sneezing too hard.
  • My teeth are crooked.
  • I only brush once a day.
  • I’ve lost the Burt’s Beez stuff and am back onto the Nivea Lip Care addiction.
  • You might accidentally suck my lips off (you don’t know! it could happen!)
  • People tell me I smell, just in general.
Categories
Smartglot

The Mating Memes

Suppose you take a few species of apes that lived in Africa about ten million years ago. Think of these species as nearly identical, but seperate populations. Now turn loose on each species the force of runaway sexual selection—an evolutionary positive feedback loop of genetic traits and the mating preference for those traits. One species might develop a runaway preference for large muscles, and turn into gorillas. Another might develop a runaway preference for constant sex, and turn into bonobos. A third species might develop a runaway preference for intelligence, and turn into us.

Hypacrosaurus - no giant tail, but possibly very colorful Intelligence is a fitness indicator, which might be why we have it. Animals use them to judge potential mates. The brain—like a gigantic shiny colorful tail—is a good choice. It’s sensitive to the animal’s condition, it’s hard to fake, and it’s a pretty good show of what sexy genes you have. A mind gets pretty screwed-up if you have a screwed-up existence—and crazy isn’t sexy. Conversely, a good mind is, and it shows. Story-telling, humor, playfulness, creativity, wit, kindness, a broad vocabulary, social savvy, imaginative problem-solving, and refined taste are all mental fitness indicators used by humans. All these sexy personality traits lead to more sexy persons, the better brain genes making minds bigger and better.

That’s the idea behind Geoffrey Miller’s The Mating Mind, in particular the chapter appropriately called “A Mind Fit for Mating.” Pages 77 and 111 are partially (and liberally) paraphrased above. His hypothesis is that our swollen primate cerebellums are the result of a sexual fetish preference our ancestors were lucky enough to stumble upon. Her+Him Stick Figures — now a memeAnd because our courtship (and brain evolution) got so carried away with itself, we very accidentally discovered all these really cool survival mechanisms like agriculture, language, architecture, metal-working, medicine, and the other stuff you can research in Civilization. Even more astounding is that all the quintessentially human self-expressives like literature, art, philosophy, music, dance, and making comic books are for mating purposes just ornamentation to show off our big sexy brains.

So here’s our modern mating problem, as I see it: we’ve got these neat survival strategies that freed up time otherwise spent acquiring food, finding shelter, defending from predators, etc… and so we’re supposed to have more time to develop our courtship skillz = music, art, being a total genius at pinball, etc. But we in modern society also have to work at time-consuming jobs so we can pay for food, shelter, cool new electronic gadgets, etc. And it’s usually the young, the horniest ones with the least developed courting-collections, who have the most time-consuming (and least expressive) jobs. Oh, sweet and hilarious irony! Etc!Not pictured: pinball

Yet, the young are not doomed to unsexiness. Thanks again to our big brains, we don’t have to go through the first several years of courtship feeling dumb and unattractive. We have an excellent prosthetic using the now super-stylish concept of memetics (which you were sure I was gonna get around to eventually). Much the same way we horny youngsters long to transfer our living genes, information can move between the habitable environs of our minds, in discrete packages called memes. Memes move from brain to brain, making possible things like culture, religion, politics, and inside jokes. Just like organisms, the ones good at propagating get propagated more. There are harmful memes and relatively harmless memes, just like organisms. Yet again just like organisms, there’s mutations and migrations and whole populations of them.

This is good news for those of us who don’t have time to write the great American novel. Memes give us the opportunity to communicate, in a less forceful way, all our cultivated artistic tastes we’ve worked so hard on. Even better, they give us references for how good our own could be once we get around to it. Even better, individual memes vary from common to rare, meaning the rarer ones often reveal a deeper connection when they’re shared. Even better wow-I-know-so-awesome, they are a great social activity, entertaining, stimulating, lubricating, moldable, re-usable, bond-on-contact, dishwasher-safe, usually with a decent manufacturer warranty.

Memes seem like the perfect consumer item (and lots are). But the really good ones are also the perfect brainy aphrodisiac—for when we humans do finally get around to mixing those sexy genes. So now, whenever young people just sit around starting their sentences with:

“Hey, do you know about…?”

Well, you’ll understand.

Categories
Glot

Smiling Eyes

The subtitle of this entry is “a fine example of the problems with revealing personal experiences in a public forum, especially as relates to sexual equality and hot chicks in the 21st century.”

Irish Smiling EyesSo I met this girl last Thursday. Mary Catherine. She’s Irish, full of spirit and sprite and more than a little bite. Master’s degree, English lit-er-a-ture. Carried around Jane Eyre the whole time I knew her, and had the romantic inclinations to match. We met not at a bar, but walking home from one. Thank God for girls with a poor sense of direction (and the male protection mechanism that helps their sorry situation). If not, I doubt that I’d have known her outside of a hostel stairwell. As it was, we feverishly debated feminism and modern sexual equality for the next hour. This is sometimes called “foreplay.” I was the first American with whom she could hold a conversation (so she said), and she spent a year in New York. This says a lot about me but perhaps more about New York.

By round about 2 o’clock, when all the others arrived home from the barbary-coast brewery/bar, I’m content to think I had her English-lit educated, female-favoring Gaelic greymatter headily haywire, helped certainly by our intermediate intoxication. Jane Eyre is justifiably lambastable—melodramatic moth-magnet that it is—necessitating nearly not-nice opining on my part. Being quite respectable, she took umbrage (very well). XXX yakking zinged zealosly zereafter.

Did I mention we had fun? Not just with words (which we did). The kind of fun two people of opposite sexes can have after a night of drinking and sharply sparked conversation. Oh yes, there was thumb-wrestling. Of course with 6 people per room in a hostel, it limits how much fun two people can respectably have. We passed those limits. Not too much! Just enough. Enough to wake people up, ahem. But by this time it was… what, maybe 6 o’clock in the morning? And I learned that girls who still travel with teddy bears have a tendency to fall asleep when they happen to hug them. Even if they are 24 and have a Master’s. Even if it’s not the best time to be falling asleep.

We had a good time the next few days. She gave me life outside of emailing my résumé. I gave her a sense of class, romance, and a deeper understanding of the fine line between confidence and arrogance. What can I say?—I played “the American.” She played “vulnerably self-empowered and inexperienced yet highly educated 21st-century 20-something Catholic-guilt-having yet steamy-romance-needing girl/woman with an endearing foreign manner.” She played it well. There wasn’t ever a moment when the tension left. I did things I’m certain I wouldn’t have done otherwise. It was, in short, a really good thing that happened to both of us. Our last night together was eventful. I won’t write about it here, as it’s too complicated. And still too close. And really, not the kind of story I’d share with everyone on the internet. We never… how can I say? Consumated our relationship. She left, and I haven’t heard from her since.

Around this point, most men would say something along the emotions of “dammit, I was so close, but oh well.” I know better. Everything worth doing will be bittersweet in the end. She left, and I haven’t heard from her since.

Now, here’s the problem with writing this story, and its attraction. I’m exposing myself. I’ve invited full-frontal unsolicited judgement of my character. You probably came here Googling me, seeing if I’m fit to date or employ or write a book with, and here I’ve just shared a deeply personal experience with strangers. Not only did I just voluntarily share an intimate experience in a public forum, I featured my own dummy-moves doing it! I didn’t pair it with the standard-issue “that’s the way I am” or “I don’t care what you think” attitude. Maybe you now think I’m a player who plays with girls, goes for the drunk ones cause their easy. Maybe you think I’m a love-starved loser, quick-to-love. Maybe you think I’m really, really considering this whole thing too much. I’m practically inviting, nay, demanding unseen repercussions. I’m the trenchcoat-flasher who squints his eyes closed.

That’s my problem—I’m willing to share, I’m not ready to accept the consequences for doing so. I’m unwilling to let certain people (who know who they are! who’ve been named! who’ve read too much already! who have disobeyed my specific hints!) find it and read it.

This means you, Mom.

But God, it’s fun to do. And I think I may have solved my problem, in the process of spelling it out. Being explicit about the expected judgment places that judgment in the forefront of a reader’s cerebrum, thereby making it a conscious choice instead of an pre-conscious one. This is much the same mechanism detailed in Post #45. For me, it’s also an elegant (but partial) solution to the troubling axiom proposed in Post #35. I shall henceforth refer to this as:

  • Counter-intuitive rule #110: if you expect something to happen, then say what you’re expecting, the actual result is guaranteed to change (Heisenberg’s readership principle)