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Wallcrashing

I am the worst blogger from bed ever.

“This week is like… can… it’s weird you’re not looking at me… I work now.”

Sometimes people work too hard. It’s not just an overachiever thing. It’s an “I need to be financially independant and I’m sorta working two jobs and planning on starting my own business too” kinda thing. Or maybe a little “I do everything I can for everyone I see all day long and never complain and by the end I’m just so through that I crash.” I take it back It might be an overacheiver thing. It’s easy to get carried away once you realize what you want and realize that it’s only the amount of effort you’re willing to put in that determines how successful you are. And then you hit a wall and realize your human.

Yesterday, yesterday was a hard day. I fell asleep before 12, on the bed, with my clothes on, while my woman sat right beside me trying to work. She couldn’t wake me up. Or, rather, she could wake me up but I was still dreaming and couldn’t muster the force of mind to move. So she slept on the couch. As my lady crept into bed at 6:30 this morning I woke up confused (not to mention a little sorry).

We’re not hitting a wall. We’re just grinding our gears. We’re ruffling our feathers. We’re harshing our buzz. I’m not worried; I’m frazzled, and so is she. Hella frazzled (yes, we live in Northern California; no, we don’t live in NorCal). We deseperately need a vacation from the busy lives we’ve chosen… and we’re getting one! Soon! Ironically enough that’s causing us to spin our wheels. I got off time from work, and then I was told I couldn’t. My lady was told she could park somewhere and then somehow she couldn’t, and her truck was towed . So she’s out $280. We come home tired then go out and do cool stuff and come back exhausted. And we’re planning a party, and soon, and before the vacation. It would be quite reasonable for a suburban, homebody, happy-to-eat-at-Chili’s sort of folk to call us insane.

I don’t want to be insane. I’d like to have awesome, intense, busy, produtive, happy sanity. Work in progress.

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Profound Round

My favorite shape: the circle. Circles are one of the most structurally sound shapes known to man. Circles are also intriguing as symbols of perfection, and their geometry can reveal much about nature’s design. Speaking personally, the only tattoo I want is a circle—exactingly proportioned in a thin black line, drawn on my right bicep, parallel to the collarbone. Let me lead you along on one of my imperfect circular journeys, starting one autumn evening last…

Where do you think all of this is leading?

  • get a new job

That’s right! I worry too much. And, although the job I got offered (the same job I start tomorrow) isn’t the best, isn’t ideal, in other words isn’t perfect, I’m quite tired of being spun about by different employers all around town and feeling like I’m running in… circles.

Incidentally—and I say this with no little amount of ironic, synchronistically-recognized cosmic amusement—the next Buzzed Bee is tomorrow evening.

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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.

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Glot Smartglot

Specialized Civilization (and Clowns)

Let me become suddenly, emphatically clear on something: the pervasive specialization of human skills frightens me. Our civilization is endangered. Empirical knowledge compels me to think we have a fascinating, frightening condition called “Whole-Picture Anemia.”

In academia, one can major in increasingly specific subjects. The still-infectious ideal of scientific reductionism makes believe we can split things into smaller and smaller units. Until what? Until they all fit together and we understand how the watch was made. Hey, organizing into more complex forms worked for single-celled organisms, right? I read Future Shock. I’m not so sure it’ll work for us.

Doctors are a great example. Allow me to give an awful example of this example. Say you’re a dermatologist, and discover an unusual skin condition. It seems your patient’s top layer of skin is eroding, producing a mottled pattern over their body. While it doesn’t seem like it’s getting worse (and there’s no apparent bodily irritation), it’s interfering with his work as a children’s party entertainer a.k.a. clown. Let’s call this patient “the Mystery Clown.” Now I’m not a doctor, and I hate clowns. Clowns are scary old men who play with children (most clowns). But—bound by the hippocratic—you’ll treat him anyways. While it could be a lot of things, the only thing that works is having him wear gloves at night. Big polka-dotted clown gloves, let’s say. Problem solved (freaky excema and clown-shame aside, right?). On to the next doctor, his shrink, to whom he reports that he can no longer sleep at night. Hormones? They’re ok. Personal life? Same. No increased stress on the job? Nope, still a clown. Well, here’s some nappy-time pills. That works.sorrk..wko..rkr.wrso….s.k.rokrwossss… What’s this? My fingers are stuck to the keyboard? Hmm, that’s unusual. Seems this whole time the Mystery Clown had been handling children his hands had gotten so perilously and annoyingly sticky that he had to remove the child-goo by unconsciously scraping his skin off in the dead of night. That is one devoted clown—he loves at his work; it’s all he knows. He’d never admit his disgust by washing away all the friendly child-smells. Whoa, Mr. Shrink, you totally should have caught that “reverse OCD” thing. That and all the makeup still caked on, too. And wouldn’t he smell? As I said, this is the worst great example written. Take that, House.

I’ve lost my point. Clowns are still very disconcerting for me. Ah yes… I’d like to express my dislike for the idea of becoming a liver cell by age 30. Wait—lemme try again. The prospect of human beings becoming separated by unbridgeable esoteric chasms of knowledge is an alarming one. It seems to me that this thing called “the internet” could just be serving as a prosthetic to bridge the great divide.

Homo sapiens grew up in tribal groups, divvying roles out to who could do them. And we thrived! But can we really take biology meant for groups of about 200 (maybe) and use it in societies of, say, 300 million plus? It worries me that it doesn’t seem to be anyone’s job to oversee “the Big Picture,” and invigorate this damned anemia. I guess what I’m saying is that I’d like to be something greater than the sum of my part.

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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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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?