Tears in Rain

The day eventually comes when you realize life is nothing more than the measurements of time between tears shed. The true despair in life is when the tears don't flow anymore. Then you realize nothing has made you happy enough to cry for its loss.

I'm Weird and I Like it

I call people Weird a decent amount. Most of the time, they take it as a mild insult, when in fact, I'm basically giving them the highest praise I have ever thought of. Weird to me means you are more different than most people in the world...more than one standard deviation away from the average person. And in the words of the immortal George Carlin, "Think about how stupid the average person is!" Weird, to me, means you are inherently interesting. Think about how boring the same thing is. Look at a row of black dots.



Which one drew your eye? The WEIRD one, that's which one. The WEIRD dot is specifically red because this post turned out to be about a couple of red-heads; one i know and one I'd like to.

I weed people out based on this WEIRD criteria. You might call it judging or persecution, but we all do it, we discern people who make us feel happy about ourselves and we call them our friends. One of my favorite, usually unconscious, tactics for this is saying something off the wall when I first meet someone. If they run with it, they are probably a kindred spirit. If they look at me like I have 4 heads...we probably aren't going to get along. Speaking of that, wouldn't it be really cool if I had 4 heads?!

I met one of my favorite people in the world that way. She's an energetic little Red-headed actress who used to live next door to me. I sat next to her on the bus one day and tried to think about what to say to her. Give me a break, I get nervous about what I say to stunningly beautiful women. My friend, who happened to be her roommate as well, happened to have left me a voicemail I hadn't checked yet, and, as I listened to it, a thought occurred to me. (since the roommate herself was, shall we say, WEIRD)

I turned to her as the voicemail ended and blinked twice and promptly asked her "Is your roommate on crack?!" She burst out into a laugh that, although hearing it for the first time, I automatically knew I would grow to absolutely love hearing (at one point, I likened it to a dying hyena and it stuck) and that this girl was a kindred spirit in this world.

The other red-head is someone I want to know. We frequent the same gym. Being that we are both very intense when we work out, we haven't really talked at all even though we have been there at the same time probably over 20 times. Which also leads me to another issue...

Headphones are the death of conversation; especially at the gym! How are we supposed to have simple human interaction (with anyone, not just the opposite sex) when everyone at the gym has headphones stuffed in their ears?! It's enough to drive you crazy.

Anyway, while we've traded smiles, said hello, traded all that non-distinct human interaction that has replaced small talk in our culture of iPhones, iPads, iPods, iPlanes, iPranks, iPizza, and iPeople. But after my shoulders and legs workout this morning, my roommate and I added what I like to call Nightmare Cardio to the routine, which is a nightmarish combination of timed running, timed pushups, and timed abs. It kills you. I could barely stand after it. I was hoping I saw her leaving, because if I had, I would have been able to say one of my patented weirdo lines I thought of this morning.

"Do you, by any chance, have a katana I could borrow?" After gauging her reaction, I would have explained that I wanted to kill myself, but I always told myself that if I committed suicide, I'd have to do it in a flashy way, so that people could make fun of me and have a laugh after I'm dead. I figure if someone can't take that kind of oddity and run with the joke, they probably won't enjoy my company and vice versa. Alas, I didn't see her as I left. But there's always next week. And when it comes to me, always another weird, rambling, nonsensical thought to verbalize.

Backwards and Forwards...Everything You Know is Wrong

I never really claim to know anything. This might sound weird to anyone who knows me, because I speak very confidently, even on topics that I am just conjecturing about. It makes people think I am absolutely sure of what I am saying. In reality, I just speak extemporaneously with a great deal of vigor. I get excited when I philosophize. In any case, I actively try to refrain from being absolutely sure of anything.

There is a great reason for this and it ties in to one of my favorite pastimes: Thinking about the things we absolutely "know" at this point in history as a human race and guessing which ones our descendents will laugh hysterically at us for believing in such an obvious falsehood. What is the current equivalent of our ancestors believing that the Earth was flat? How about the equivalent of our ancestors believing disease passed from person to person by smell?

That is the Forward example of that kind of philosophy. What I'm currently thinking about is how it applies Backward. It makes me think about history and what we "know" about what happened in our past. We take the stories we've heard in books as gospel, but in all honesty, there is no way that any of that actually happened.

The way I think about it is simple: with the advent of the internet, we have a ridiculous amount of angles and media of events that happen live...and yet, we still can't figure out what actually happened! If you talk to five different people, that were all present at the event, then watched video coverage of the event, followed by 2 hours of analysis by experts and viewers' reactions...then asked them to recount what happened, guess how many variations of that simple event you would get.

Now picture 200 years ago, and history being written. Just try and tell me that what they wrote was anywhere near what actually happened. It makes me wonder what actually happened, and some of the funniest things I've ever thought of have been alternative realities to historically famous events.

A Battle with Nature

As I workout in the gym, I realize that there are machines that just don't let men win. It makes me understand the concept of "Curves" the gym only for women so that they don't feel like they are being stared at while working out. The worst part of it is when it is not an isolated incident either. I go to the gym at the same time every single weekday morning, so I see the exact same people every day. I don't want to be a creep; I try not to look. I generally succeed in this venture, I'm there to work out, not make women feel uncomfortable. But sometimes, the situation just isn't gonna let men win. As evidenced by the situation I found myself in as I ranted to my friend on the way back from the gym one morning.

"I try not to look! But man, when I finish the mason twists on the inclined bench, my eyes are pretty much rolling around inside my head and I walk (see: stagger) around to recover before the next set. My eyes fly around the gym in exhaustion. When they come across a girl that is doing certain exercises, they just naturally stop."

"C'mon! I'm trying not to look, but that is simply a war against nature! And man, a battle against nature is simply one I'm not going to win!"

Patience

There is an idea in this country that everything has to happen "Now".

"He who hesitates is lost."
"We are a puny folk. Avarice, hesitation and following are our diseases."
"Audacity augments courage; hesitation fear."
"On the plains of hesitation bleach the bones of countless millions, who, at the dawn of decision, sat down to wait, and waiting died."

Hesitation on the dawn of decision is never a good thing, but the lack of patience is quite another. The culture of humanity is speeding along on a runaway track of perpetual motion. Standing still is abhorred. If you aren't going forward, you are going backward. There is no time to just stop and appreciate anything.

There are ups and downs in life. The biggest thing is that there is nothing wrong with having a "flaccid moment in your personal history" as my favorite author outside of Joyce put it. It's a struggle especially if there were much more exciting parts of your life, to let things slow down around you.

Humans and Elitism

I think everyone needs to feel some sense of superiority over other human beings. In most ways, this manifests as a need to see the inferiority of others somehow. Putting others in an inferior position is something else entirely and shouldn't be tolerated. But I'm talking about observing people in inferior situations to remind us that we all are lowly human beings and no one is a perfect celestial being.

My outlet is reading sports forums. They annoy me to no end, but I get endless entertainment out of how stupid people can be. I have known people who are obsessed with celebrity gossip for just the same reason. Others compare themselves to everyone they see on the street. Others compare themselves to everyone they work with. Who knows what other options there are? I'd go so far as to say that everyone has some method of looking down their nose at someone just to pick themselves up a bit. The human ego seems to need it every once in a while.

I've toyed with posting in the forums themselves, but I tend to be too verbose and I always have the feeling I used to have when I tried to briefly join a debate club in my youth: argumentation with strict rules based on the media used is never about the content but about the method. Argument obfuscation rules the day rather than logic. So I've gone back to simply reading them. Even though I get astounded and frustrated at most of the content, I still get enjoyment out of the stupidity of the majority of people posting. I understand it is simply because I feel superior to stupid people writing meaningless forum posts. There might have been a time I felt guilty about that, but I simply accept it now as part of my humanity. It also helps me accept it when I see it in others as well.

Rusty Faucet: Part III

He reaches below his chair and feels for his pipe. He pulls the ancient-looking bowl from its hiding place and holds it in his lap. He turns it over in his hands, slowly inspecting its curves and crannies. He draws his fingers along the myriad of bumps and digs time has carved into the mahogany-colored wood As always, his gnarled knuckle finds its way to the only artificially made nooks for the finale of its tour. Niall’s eyes wince close as the wrinkled pad crosses over the inscribed lines. His bottom lip drops ever so slightly and quivers once before he opens his eyes and quickly reaches for his pouch of tobacco.

Niall methodically rocks back and forth as he packs the pipe full of dried tobacco leaf. He coughs twice before lighting the leaf with a long, wooden match. The tobacco draws a clear line of aromatic smoke and dances into the misty morning air.