Familiarity and Creepiness

I have a tendency to approach people in one of two ways upon first meeting them:

A) With an unprecedented level of familiarity, as if I'm greeting an old friend rather than a stranger.
B) Quietly, guarded and damn near standoffish.

It's about fifty-fifty which approach I go with. Option A typically has good results, but also has a strong creep factor. As in, on occasion, the person I'm being introduced to immediately identifies me as a date rapist. Option B results in the impression that I'm either boring or sociopathic, which is great if I'm not feeling sociable.

In any case, Option A is typically my choice in one-on-one encounters or massive parties, while Option B is my choice for small gatherings. So maybe the ratio is closer to seventy-thirty in favor of Option A usage. Whatever. I'm babbling, and you're about to stop reading if you haven't already. Moving on.

Back in "the day" (before I was a recluse disdaining of human contact, and maintained a wardrobe that wasn't publicly shameful), Option A led to some awkward encounters with friends and girlfriends. Id est, I'd go to a party with someone, become the center of attention, and people at the party would ask, "Who's that (girl, dude, livestock, flora, fauna, etc.) who came with Dan?" People who had never before met me, who were friends of the person who brought me as a guest. Keep in mind, Option A is really nothing more than a defense mechanism--it's like disarming an enemy before they know they're an enemy.

I lost lots of friends and girlfriends (well, girls I was dating anyway) that way. By becoming the center of attention, stealing their thunder, whatever. Apparently, that kind of thing doesn't go over. A close friend of mine once stopped hanging out with me for two months because he felt like I was constantly throwing him into my shadow. A girl I was dating stopped talking to me for a week because we drove up to Chicago from Peoria (where I was living at the time) to meet some people she'd befriended on the internet. The whole drive up, I'm asking her what the hell am I supposed to do, how am I supposed to act, who are these people and why are we meeting them again...and then we get there and she introduces herself, I introduce myself, the others introduce themselves, and then silence. So, more out of boredom, I go nuclear with Option A, and before long I'm visiting with these people and m'lady's sitting quietly in the corner. Even when I turn to her to bring her in, she sits and shrugs at most. Then, during the silent car ride back to Peoria, there's a brief tirade about how I'm an attention whore.

I think, actually, that's how I developed Option B. The surly guy in the corner steals no thunder.

Ostensibly, I'm a conceited fuck. The proof is that I just wrote a blog about how once upon a time I was too popular. And I won't deny I'm an attention whore. However, the reality of it is that I was situationally popular. I was "Dan" in the moment, but "that guy" the next morning. And, let's not forget despite my convenient lack of focus on the issue, frequently the creep factor exceeded FDA guidelines for healthy intake.

I think my next post should be about all of the humiliating, degrading things I've done while trying to impress people. Like the time I pierced my ear with a toothpick, or, well, the list is pretty long. I've often confused "laughing with" and "laughing at," let's just settle on that point.

That ought to bring me down a notch. Good lord, this post is nonsense.

The insecure and defenseless

I'm lazy today, and, well, in general. I don't have much to say, other than very little brings as much joy to my heart as attacking the insecure and defenseless with laserbeam wit. It makes every day more enjoyable; it is the spoonful of sugar that helps life's castor oil go down.

In that vein, Mr. Parry Gripp delivers a joyful chorus to my heart as if sung by the Choir Invisible. I just can't help myself. In one fell swoop, insecure and defenseless are combined and fun is poked, and I can rest peacefully knowing I'm not alone in my need and desire for wanton cruelty. Bless Parry Gripp, and bless Nerf Herder.

Three A.M. and Cranky

Due to a certain unpleasant and uncomfortable illness this week, it's 3:30 a.m. and I cannot sleep. This is newsworthy because I say so. Am I rationalizing the newsworthiness of my blog? Screw that.

I'm going to, in the classic style of the Internets, make a list of things that are currently pissing me off, in the hopes that it will calm me down and help me sleep. In no particular order other than stream of consciousness:

1) The currently touring Smashing Pumpkins: dude, if when I'm 41 years old, you catch me strutting around a stage wearing a pleather apron and singing songs about my teenage pain and really feeling it, someone should just beat me until I'm dead. Honestly. Not that I'm advocating beating Billy Corgan. I'm not. I just...dude, you're incredibly wealthy, incredibly famous, and pretty damned talented. Mayhaps you get over life's foibles. If not for your own good, then for mine, because Mellon Collie is one of precious few double albums worth a damn, and now when I listen to it, I think of a pathetic man-child crying into a microphone about how tough adolescence is.

2) MRSA: lame. Absolutely lame. I shake my fist at nature.

3) Economics: wouldn't it be cool if even one economic philosophy was true/concrete and absolute? Just one?

4) I'm fat: just pisses me off, that's all.

5) Bam Margera: Actually, he doesn't piss me off all that much. But why the hell does he always talk like he's got a cigar in his mouth or he bit his tongue really badly? Does he have some kind of brain damage or something? I don't get it. Maybe I'm being incredibly insensitive. Whatever.

Bah. That's all I've got. It's four in the morning and I've get better things to do. Like read Trivial Pursuit cards.

In the words of Hiro the Hero, I Did It!

With a final count of 50,231. F'n a.

Art College Girl

Every morning, I take the Metra train into the city for work. There's a community of regulars on the train...nobody ever speaks, but there are plenty of nods and smiles. We recognize each other, and are comfortably friendly while maintaining anonymity. There's me, Oddly-shaped-head guy, Baby Man, Bald Cary Grant, Stupid Lady, and Art College Girl.

Art College Girl typically sits in front of me upstairs on the train. Like any (presumably) eighteen or nineteen year old girl, she's bubbly and cute. She's one of few women I haven't automatically had impure thoughts about, because, well, I'm certifiably old, she is not, and sometimes you just want to preserve an image of innocence about a person. Normally, I'm a complete pervert, as you all should know. But not with Art College Girl; I just get on the train, sit down, flash a smile and wave when she walks past, and go to sleep listening to my iPod.

So this morning, I get on the train one stop south of my normal station, because I parked at my parents' house for a whole host of reasons. My usual seat is unoccupied, possibly out of everyone else's respect for routine. I sit down, pop in my ear buds, and boom, out like a light as soon as Three Little Birds hits my timpanae.

When the train pulls into Union Station, everyone starts getting up and queuing to get off the train as fast as possible, but per normal, I wait until the train has stopped moving because I'm a clumsy fat ass and know better. Art College Girl gets up, gathers her things, turns around, sees me and smiles as she walks past. I turn my head back towards the window and close my eyes for thirty seconds more sleep, and suddenly someone's patting me on the chest. I turn and look back, and it's Art College Girl.

She looks down at me, and strokes her chin, asks me, "Did you shave?" I had shaved, because two nights ago I ate soup, and had a moment of pure fatigue at having to shampoo my face every time I imbibed any spoon-ladeled liquid. For the first time in years, my face is completely shorn of whiskers. I nodded, "Yeah," and she smiled an eighteen-year-old smile, patted me on the shoulder and said, "You look good," with an approving nod. "Thanks," I said, mostly stunned at the first and potentially last conversation I'll ever have with this person.

So, the up and down of it, thank you Art College Girl, for giving an old dude something to feel good about first thing on a Friday morning. It was a sweet thing to do. And no, I'm totally not sexing you up in my mind now, and won't be. Sorry if that disappoints my readers.

National Novel Writing Month

This is why I haven't been posting, and have kinda dropped off the face of the earth:

Apparently, I'm tough when it comes to fighting 5 year olds

30

Hope and Change

One of my coworkers made a comment yesterday that stuck with me. It actually brought something up that became so pervasive in (nearly) eight years’ time that it rarely occurred to me; something that changed so thoroughly since 2001 that it’s transparent anymore (or at least was transparent until Tuesday). What he said was this: “Yes, there are a lot of conservative Americans. Possibly a majority. But the bigger factor was fear. People have been afraid of the government, and they had an opportunity reverse that,” and though it’s a simple point, it is very true. As a society, we shifted from apathy—especially our generation (X or Y, depending)—directly into fear. At first, we feared the terrorists. The Bush administration used that fear to great effect, manipulating it to consolidate power and justify imperialism. They’ve used fear virtually every day for the past 2700 or so days (since September 12, 2001), to “protect” our freedoms by systematically taking them away. Fear has been used to distract the people in this country from the macabre realities of the administration’s aims and actions.

For example, a point of pride in the history of the United States—that this is the land of opportunity, anyone can come here to make a better life—has been perverted by fear mongering against the defenseless target of immigrants. “Illegal” and “Immigrant” are now synonymous, and the people who have come here with hopes and dreams and ambitions, people who with their work not only improve themselves but improve the United States through their contributions, are attacked in words and in actions. Yes, we have to acknowledge that illegal immigration exists and is a problem, but we need not fear it. We have been browbeaten to fear everything that is not “American,” and to fear is to loathe. Furthermore, “American” has been defined as conservative jingoism and evangelical capitalism—make no mistake, not evangelical democracy.

Perhaps I’m being mawkish, but the beauty I see in the election of Barack Obama is that he did not run on a platform of anger or resentment, or revolution. He ran on two words—“Hope” and “Change.” People voted, in record numbers, for hope and change. The overwhelming, transparent fear that gripped Americans was broken by such simple, peaceful concepts. It seems precious and even trite, almost a fairy tale ending.

Will Barack Obama catalyze change in the way the American majority has demanded it? In one way, he already has. Something huge and completely unprecedented happened on Tuesday; someone of color, of the minority, was elected by the majority. This has not happened anywhere else in the modern western world, and is a testament that the United States is as dynamic as it can be static, as progressive as it can be conservative, as compassionate as it is individualistic. The real fairy tale is if he continues, and if unity prevails as a result. He has the potential to be the impetus; it is the people who will become the change. God willing, to borrow from Obama’s campaign, yes we can.

Baghdad

George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Tommy Franks, Dick Cheney, and whomever else you'd like to name invaded Iraq and Bombed Baghdad with the intent of creating a "Shock and Awe" scenario to bring Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard to their knees. In response to the shock and awe, the world shrugged.

Real shock and awe occurred last night, without a single bomb dropped or bullet fired. The United States of America elected Barack Obama, and the rest of the world has paused. Perhaps Americans are no longer afraid of their government. Perhaps we're no longer unwilling and unable to emulate the "United" portion of the States of America.

Shock and awe. For now, at least, our country, the world, is in shock and awe. That is an achievement.

Like Napoleon, short and angry

Taxes? Really? Your big issue is taxes, America? You're upset that you may have to pay more taxes? That's your big issue in this election, is it?

Nevermind that we're fighting two foreign wars with no end in sight (and please point out to me any other time in U.S. history that taxes were lowered in time of war), our economy is at a holding point just north of the vortex in the toilet bowl, our health care system is broken, all of our futures are mortgaged to the national debt, and the past seven and a half years have seen the admitted and implicit abrogation of constitutional civil rights (i.e. phone taps, limitation of due process...). More important is that you don't want your taxes to go up.

Taxes. Seriously. All you patriots, Americans, don't want to pay more taxes. Don't want to drop one more single penny towards supporting the troops you send to fight the wars, or to cover their medical bills when they come home torn and broken. Not a thin dime to help the government (which is supposed to be of the people, by the people, and for the people...we've always had a problem recognizing the responsibilities in the "of" and "by" portions, haven't we) work towards doing anything close to maintenance on the broken economy. Or a few fins towards guiding health care toward stability and sustainability. And, indeed, lets ignore the issue of the national debt completely, because it's downright un-American to not be in debt, right?

Nope, no sir. Not one more dollar out of your pockets. Because American Patriotism is actually just Rugged Individualism--stay the fuck outta my way, I'll take care of me and you take care of you. Funny thing is, that's not how reality works. True patriots are willing to stand together, to support one another until everyone is standing on their feet, and if need be, eat a shit sandwich or two for the good of the country, their countrymen, and society in general.

To paraphrase myself from a previous entry, because I'm just the kind of arrogant prick who does that sort of thing, we can stand united as a country to find a way to fix our problems, which are legion, or continue down the rugged individualist path towards collapse and failure.

And we can bicker about taxes. Like assholes.