Monthly Archives: October 2002

No Redheads In Victoria Secret

It’s 12:06 am, and I’m very drowsy. Usually, I’ll go to sleep so I can get some work done in the morn­ing, but for some rea­son, I feel like talk­ing. And as I have no one to talk to, I’ll have to make due with writ­ing. I actu­al­ly wrote an entry ear­li­er today, and two entries in one day is quite rare. It always seems to be the night, when I’m rest­less, that my loquaci­ty is uncon­trol­lable.

The Christmas Victoria Secret cat­a­logue came in this week, cour­tesy of the pre­vi­ous res­i­dent, and there isn’t a sin­gle red­head in the issue. I’m very dis­ap­point­ed.

Unwanted Balance

I went to the Black Tomato yes­ter­day, which was a small restau­rant with a decent atmos­phere (though I think it would have been bet­ter at night), which served jazz along with your meals. You could pur­chase jazz albums from the side of the restau­rants, and numer­ous por­traits of jazz greats were hung near the top of the walls. The meals were pret­ty pricey; the sand­wich­es cost over 10 dol­lars, and the 7oz. filet mignon was $24.95. I was real­ly con­sid­er­ing the filet mignon since I so rarely get a chance to go out and eat at a nice restau­rant, but I decid­ed that I had noth­ing to cel­e­brate. I went with a flank sand­wich, which had thin­ly cut strips of mar­i­nat­ed steak with sauteed onions, and melt­ed cheese, baked on French bread. The put a sort of sweet mus­tard with it, that gave it a spicy, juicy taste, which was excel­lent. I had to get a pint of Strongbow, since they did­n’t have Double Diamond. In total it cost me about $20.00.

It was com­i­cal to see what kind of man­ners peo­ple brought to the table. You could tell who was an exec­u­tive by the way they broke their bread, or you could tell who was a admin­is­tra­tive assis­tant by the way they cleaned their teeth with their tongue. I won­dered if their man­ners were a result of their pro­fes­sion, or their upbring­ing.

Continue read­ing “Unwanted Balance”…

Switching To Humans, Mid-Term Results, And Residual Emotions

I think I’ll be switch­ing my race to Humans, which is quite a big deci­sion. I’ve nev­er been good with micro­man­age­ment, espe­cial­ly in Starcraft. It’s like some­thing I was­n’t raised with, so I can’t get bet­ter at it, the way you see old­er peo­ple hit a lim­it in their two word-per-minute typ­ing speed. In Starcraft I think I hit a lim­it where I just could­n’t get any bet­ter, which com­plete­ly sucked, because I was­n’t that good any­way. I think that by prac­tic­ing with Humans, I’ll be bet­ter at learn­ing how to micro­man­age. I’ve been sucked back in by Warcraft 3. It’s hard for me to imag­ine jug­gling a top 10 rank on the lad­der, and hav­ing a girl­friend at the same time.

Somehow I got 94.5% on a mid-term (even though the aver­age was about 90%). It makes up for oth­er mid-terms I sup­pose, since I believe that I failed two of them. I’ll be able to defer the marks, how­ev­er, for my Networking and Communications mid-term, to my final exam. That makes my assign­ments worth a pid­dly 15%, and my final a mon­strous 85% of my final mark. Yay, I guess.

Something made me sad the oth­er day, which has­n’t hap­pened in a while. I seem to usu­al­ly keep a very lev­el set of emo­tions nowa­days. It’s odd, because when I start­ed dat­ing Christie, things seemed to look bet­ter, and when we broke up, they seemed to still look bet­ter. I’m not real­ly sure why. It’s like Christie helped me expe­ri­ence things that were good, so now I have those thoughts in my head.

Lachrymology

I saw a Mary J. Blige video the oth­er day called No More Drama. I did­n’t real­ly enjoy the song, and thought she looked bet­ter in oth­er videos. Something she said was quite inter­est­ing, how­ev­er. The lyrics go:

No more tears (no more tears, I’m tired of cryin every night)
No more fears (no more fears, I real­ly don’t wan­na cry)
No dra­ma (no more dra­ma in my life)
I don’t ever wan­na hurt again

I thought about the idea of nev­er cry­ing again. It’s some­thing that just seems so unavoid­able, yet so nec­es­sary. I won­dered why any­one would nev­er want to cry again. After all, the only way you can feel hap­pi­ness is by feel­ing its oppo­site.

There is a sci­ence of cry­ing, called lachry­mol­o­gy, but the resources on this are very scant. The only use­ful source on this sci­ence is the band Tool, which, coin­ci­den­tal­ly, is my favorite band. They say that a study has been done and a book on it pub­lished, although any attempts to find such a book have proven fruit­less. Their name is short for tool­shed; when they cre­at­ed the band, they want­ed their music to be a tool­shed for lachry­mol­o­gy.

There are chem­i­cal side-effects of cry­ing, of course. When one cries, chem­i­cals are released which heal the body, allow­ing for much stress to be relieved, not only men­tal­ly, but phys­i­cal­ly as well. It’s not this chem­i­cal process that I’m inter­est­ed in, it’s the very notion of going through life with­out cry­ing that I’m still try­ing to com­pre­hend.

Crying seems so impor­tant, as one goes through many men­tal changes. So many aspects of my men­tal­i­ty have been changed by things that have made me cry. I have learned so much from these things. Some of my best artis­tic endeav­ors were a result of pain in some way.

Does one need to suf­fer to cre­ate? I believe this is true for many peo­ple, includ­ing myself, though not for every­one. After all, some joy­ous works of art come from artis­tic eupho­ria.

Crying can be so beau­ti­ful, and so pro­duc­tive, and so ben­e­fi­cial. Pain can be all of these things as well, some­thing which Tool dis­cuss­es in many of their songs, though not as much, I believe, in their lat­est album.

So why would any­one pos­si­bly want to nev­er feel pain again, to cry again? Why would any­one want to end the world of hunger? Without hunger, we would­n’t be able to appre­ci­ate how good that plain baguette tastes. Without pain, one would become bor­ing, drably, some­thing that I have feared for quite a while.

Everyone needs pain in some way. By avoid­ing pain, we become one-dimen­sion­al, shal­low beings.

We need it to cre­ate, to tru­ly feel. Even if one is not an artist, it takes a cer­tain amount of pain to real­ly enjoy life.

And for this I am thank­ful.

Getting Things In Order

I just fin­ished the bulk of my mid-terms, though prob­a­bly not unscathed. I hope that I can pass all of them, but I believe that I only passed one or two so far. I only have one left to go, but it should be much sim­pler, as I have the week-end to study for it. I believe that the prob­lem this time was the fact that the three hard­est mid-terms were bunched togeth­er in three con­sec­u­tive days. That, and the fact that I should pay atten­tion in class instead of try­ing to res­cue Baby Mario from Baby Bowser. Quite the excuse.

I get to go out for lunch tomor­row at a place called The Black Tomato, as a co-work­er is mov­ing to a dif­fer­ent divi­sion office in anoth­er city, and the work­ers here want to say good­bye. This means that I should be able to get an extra half-hour off work, and hope­ful­ly I can get drunk before con­tin­u­ing for the rest of the work day. I’ve only actu­al­ly been ine­bri­at­ed at work twice before, both times from a drink­ing lunch as well. I hope they have Strongbow or Double Diamond on tap.

Louise asked me today how I can walk with my pants so bag­gy. I told her that walk­ing was easy, because it feels like you’re not walk­ing with pants on at all, which, I imag­ine, is a good thing.

I felt unkempt for most of the week, until today, after I was final­ly able to get a hair­cut, wash my dish­es, clean my room, and just gen­er­al­ly get things in order.