October 3, 2003

Along Comes Patches

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I’m get­ting a sec­ond cat. Aaron’s par­ents are mov­ing, and his 14-year-old Patches needs a new home. Aaron bought Patches him­self, paid for his toys, food, lit­ter, shots, and declaw­ing with his own paper route money as a kid. I’ll be damned if his par­ents sim­ply give him away to the first home they find. Instead, Patches will be liv­ing with me here, and Aaron can come visit when­ever he wants. The main adjust­ment that needs to be done is the fre­quency with which I need to buy food and lit­ter. Patches used to be 25 pounds before he went on a diet, so I’m expect­ing either a very fat cat or a very flabby cat. Aaron has assured me that his stom­ach will drag on the ground for the rest of his life.

All I need now is my own sit­com. It’d be called “Emography” and fea­ture the adven­tures of an unem­ployed com­puter sci­en­tist liv­ing with his two cats, Teardrop and Raine, scar­ing away girls with his over-sensitivity.

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October 1, 2003

First

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I thought I knew what love was
until I pressed my lips to yours
and real­ized that I knew absolutely
noth­ing
of this con­tra­dic­tory feel­ing
a melt­ing fire inside my mouth
you matched with the deep­ness
of your breath

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September 30, 2003

Ass Kickin’ Fat Kid

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I’ve been a fre­quent reader of the Tool FAQ for a while now, even though it hasn’t been updated in more than two years. I remem­ber read­ing a long time ago about Maynard’s side projects and find­ing out about his fake band Titannica for the movie Run Ronnie Run. I had no idea what this was at the time, but have since been intro­duced to Mr. Show by Jackee and seen Run Ronnie Run. The fake band fea­tures Anthrax gui­tarist Scott Ian and Hole sub-drummer Samantha Maloney as well, and only has one song out called Ass Kickin’ Fat Kid. The song comes on dur­ing one of the best scenes in the movie, an overly pro­duced fight scene involv­ing a rather cor­pu­lent video game play­ing teenager.

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September 29, 2003

Why, Vera?

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I just fin­ished read­ing A Hero of Our Time again. It’s the book I’ve read the most in my life, and I’ve lost count of the num­ber of times I’ve gone straight from cover to cover through var­i­ous trans­la­tions. Every time I’ve read it for the last eight years, I’ve grown a lit­tle more. Certain parts that I may not have under­stood before become clear and relateable.

One par­tic­u­lar pas­sage struck me this time; Vera’s final let­ter to Pechorin.

For three hours now I have been sit­ting at the win­dow and await­ing your return…But you are alive, you can­not die! The car­riage is almost ready…Farewell, Farewell! I am lost — but what of it? If I could be cer­tain that you will always remem­ber me — I say noth­ing of lov­ing me, no — only remember…Goodbye! Someone is coming…I have to hide this letter…

I now fully under­stand Vera’s final wish, hav­ing since wished the same thing myself. Yet it’s some­thing I can­not explain, even when I myself share this feel­ing. Why this need to not be for­got­ten? Why does remem­ber­ing mean so much?

Is it the need to know that I am impor­tant to some­one, even if it was some ephemeral rela­tion­ship or some per­sonal mis­take? Is it so that I can believe that I was so spe­cial as to be unfor­get­table, an ego­tis­ti­cal or per­haps inse­cure shroud to fool myself? Is it to give my life mean­ing, a sort of pur­pose to know that I can indeli­bly change the lives of oth­ers? Or maybe it’s to know that the feel­ings I expe­ri­ence, how­ever bathetic or affected, mean some­thing to some­one. I usu­ally pride myself in being able to per­fectly under­stand the feel­ings I go through, but this idea has left me at a loss. I won­der if oth­ers have ever felt the same way. I remem­ber not under­stand­ing this desire in myself at the time, but believ­ing that I would eventually.

Now I’m not sure if I ever will.

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September 29, 2003

When Winter Begins

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The best weather of the year has finally arrived. The cool­ness of the autumn is in the air, along with the grey-washed skies that mark this time of year. The odi­ous sum­mer has left, and I can wear my turtle­necks and sweaters. Dolly can now resume her perch at my A/C free sill, and I can open up my win­dow to let the fresh­ness of the air inside. I miss the bril­liant white win­ter, but still find myself wish­ing that this weather would last forever.

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September 29, 2003

I Should Have Paid Attention In Class

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I should be catch­ing up on years of poor marks in French class right now. Since the gov­ern­ment tech­ni­cal sup­port spe­cial­ist jobs are all bilin­gual imper­a­tive, every­one is required to have BBC/BBC level reading/writing/oral skills in both English and French. The read­ing and writ­ing tests are this Thursday, run­ning at about an hour an a half each, et je ne suis pas prêt.

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September 28, 2003

Is There Someone Like Me?

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Someone got here by search­ing for “one­gin and pechorin”, and I must meet this person.

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September 25, 2003

The Experience of the First Classification

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People in rela­tion­ships can be divided into two cat­e­gories; those who love the self and those who love the other. Every rela­tion­ship is dif­fer­ent, not just in the sense of a dif­fer­ent pair of peo­ple, but also in the idea of the same per­son with a dif­fer­ent girl­friend or boyfriend. Although some­one may be of a cer­tain cat­e­gory through one rela­tion­ship, they may fall into the other cat­e­gory in another. Even cross­ing cat­e­gories through the same rela­tion­ship is pos­si­ble, depend­ing on the dynamic of a couple.

The lovers of the self care about the other per­son, but only inso­faras their own vested inter­ests are con­cerned. When the desire of this type of lover begins to out­grow what the rela­tion­ship can offer, the bond weak­ens and often breaks. The main con­cern of this type is what they are get­ting out of the relationship.

The lovers of the other are lovers in the clas­si­cal sense of the word. These are the peo­ple with an hon­est love, the ones who care most about whether or not the other per­son is happy. This type of lover is the one least will­ing to break a rela­tion­ship, the one who is more will­ing to sac­ri­fice or compromise.

Relationships are based on match­ings of these two types. A rela­tion­ship between two lovers of the self will last as long as there is no con­flict involved. Once a dis­agree­ment is reached, nei­ther party cares enough to make the rela­tion­ship work. On the other hand, a rela­tion­ship between two lovers of the other is the ideal match, and gen­er­ally the longest last­ing. Both peo­ple are com­mit­ted and will­ing to work out any prob­lems that may arise. Usually, the only break in the rela­tion­ship may be from base con­flicts (dis­agree­ment on issues which are too basic to work out or com­pro­mise about, such as adoption).

The most com­mon type of match, how­ever, is with one lover of the self and one lover of the other. At the end of such a rela­tion­ship one is left unaf­fected while the other is broken-hearted, and the end of such a thing, in my expe­ri­ence, is inevitable. In cases like this, I’ve found myself on both sides of the coin.

And regret­ting noth­ing of either.

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September 24, 2003

A New CD, And A New Movie

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I bought the new Hawksley Workman album today. Jonathan gave me a mini-CD of the first sin­gle, Anger as Beauty, and I was hooked to the unre­strained expres­sive­ness of his voice. I’m gen­er­ally not a fan of this type of music, but some­thing about it has struck a chord with me.

I caught Anything Else at the World Exchange today. I went by myself, since no one I knew was inter­ested in see­ing it, and I didn’t think it would be appro­pri­ate to see such a movie with any­one else any­way. Going to the movies alone gen­er­ally makes me feel awk­ward. I usu­ally adapt the sense of humour I share with John when I’m by myself, which is of the “ludi­crous” vari­ety. For some rea­son, exag­ger­ately bad sit­u­a­tions can always make us roll on the floor in laugh­ter, such as LL Cool J’s walk through chest-high shark-infested water to find his par­rot in Deep Blue Sea, or Tom Cruise’s blind­folded search for sus­te­nance in a fridge filled with rot­ten food in Minority Report. The more fucked the char­ac­ters seem in a scene, the fun­nier it is. Unfortunately, not many peo­ple share this sense of humour, and I’ll be the only one laugh­ing in the the­atre. My muf­fled voice some­times pierces the silence around me as my embar­ras­ment about the inabli­tiy to con­trol my laugh­ter grows. At least with John there, I don’t feel so awk­ward about laugh­ing at such things, even if we’re the only ones laugh­ing. Anything Else, a movie full of painfully bad sit­u­a­tions, had me cachin­nat­ing uncon­trol­lably in a the­atre full of silent watchers.

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September 23, 2003

Best LAN Ever

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I feel mostly recov­ered today after the gam­ing marathon Nick and I hosted over the weekend.It started Friday after­noon and ended on Monday morn­ing, with a few sleep breaks and food/Family Guy/Mr. Show breaks in between. Trolley and Wheaties lugged their com­put­ers over, includ­ing a spare mon­i­tor for Aaron. Jacques brought his entire setup by cab, that’s how hard­core he is.

We were able to play same Quake 3 and Serious Sam 2, but the bulk of our time was spent on try­ing to com­plete Diablo 2 with new char­ac­ters. We man­aged to get to the end of Act III, but the week­end ran out. At one point, we found our­selves sur­rounded at a vital way­point, and started doing drag­ging runs to fight smaller groups of monsters.

All in all, the best LAN ever.

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September 19, 2003

Janus

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Sometimes I see the same movie twice with a large gap of time between view­ings, and I under­stand the char­ac­ters, thoughts, emo­tions, and actions very dif­fer­ently each time.

A few days ago, I came to the real­iza­tion that I’ve been a dif­fer­ent per­son in every rela­tion­ship through my eight year dat­ing period. Not all of me has changed, but there are a few aspects which I believe would be impor­tant in such a bond.

I’ve gained more matu­rity and more con­fi­dence. I’ve gained a fair amount of intel­li­gence (though I still feel like I have infi­nitely more to learn). I’ve changed career goals, rela­tion­ship goals, and hap­pi­ness goals. I’m more out­go­ing, more tol­er­ant, more secure, less pre­ten­tious (I hope), less arro­gant, and less igno­rant. I’ve changed my opin­ions on chil­dren, abor­tion, and reli­gion. I’ve even changed my actions based on these shift­ing beliefs.

Although I view most of these changes as being good things, they may put strain on a rela­tion­ship nonethe­less. After all, change is change, and unless a rela­tion­ship is strong and flex­i­ble enough, it can­not endure such stress. It’s a lit­tle scary to think that I may be bring­ing extra strain into a rela­tion­ship, sim­ply by being myself.

At one point in my inex­pe­ri­enced youth, after hav­ing changed a fair deal already, I believed that I wouldn’t change any more. Now I real­ize how stu­pidly obliv­i­ous a com­ment that was, and am of the belief that I’ll never stop changing.

The most impor­tant thing to keep in mind through all of this is whether the change is for the bet­ter, and as Tom has helped me real­ize, rela­tion­ships (friend­ships or oth­er­wise) should form around this idea.

Whether or not a rela­tion­ship will work out in the end is not based on one per­son, but the foun­da­tion and dynamic of two people.

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September 18, 2003

He Remembered

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After six months, Joe remem­bered my request for a red­head poster. It’s a Joico prod­uct place­ment for color endurance styling, fea­tur­ing a blue-eyed model with a rather frumpy, bangy hair­style. Even though I’ve since lost the zeal in my six-year red­head propen­sity, I still love this poster. I offered to give Joe some­thing for it, but he was too nice to accept.

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September 17, 2003

Retail Therapy, Halloween Costumes, Etc.

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Another exhaust­ing day. It feels good to be tired again, to feel like my eyes are made of lead when I lie down. Most of the sum­mer was stay­ing at home, barely mov­ing, feel­ing restless.

Aaron and I went to the Unicentre to do some table ten­nis, and some cocky prick was mouthing off (rather loudly) to his friends about how he so eas­ily beat them all twice. When Aaron heard enough he sug­gested a part­ner swap, just so I’d shut him up. I man­aged to beat the guy 21–3 (pre-2001 ITTF rules) and he promptly had to go.

I cracked and bought F-Zero GX and sea­sons one and two of Mr. Show on DVD. I must be crazy depressed.

A Halloween party is loom­ing on the hori­zon, and Aaron and I are look­ing for cos­tume ideas. If we can find enough good uni­forms, we’ll be going as Super Troopers, hope­fully with the both of us along with Trolley, Wheaties, and Nick. Other ideas were going as Bob and David, or as a white guy and a Chinese guy.

Speaking of Super Troopers, while Nick was swap­ping his burner at Future Shop with Stacey, Aaron and I went around the store pulling off the repeater, see­ing how long we could go before the sales­men fig­ured it out or got pissed off. We ended up being the ones pissed off though, astounded by how igno­rant the sales­men were and even­tu­ally we’d both ditch the same sales­man with looks of dis­be­lief on our faces, one after the other.

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September 17, 2003

Spiral

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A few fac­tors have helped make things eas­ier in the last lit­tle while, but per­haps the most sig­nif­i­cant is the real­iza­tion that almost noth­ing around me has changed. That all cere­bral influ­ences have remained fairly sta­tic in activity.

And I think to myself, “How could I have been so stu­pid? How did I not come to this real­iza­tion sooner?”

And hav­ing lived a lit­tle more, loved a lot more, every­thing seems brighter.

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September 16, 2003

BT On Campus

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I was walk­ing back through the cam­pus today, a crush of stu­dents milling around me, while lis­ten­ing to the new Billy Talent. Ben Kowalewicz’s shrill vocals matched every­thing I saw, from the arro­gant walk of that perky girl to the indif­fer­ent look on the face of that Chinese guy.

I’m sink­ing, I’m twisted
I’m broke and you can’t fix it
Don’t make me, cause I’ll do it
Red blood and then we’ll all go

I wished, if only for a moment, that I could pump this music through the crowds, to make every­one lis­ten and move with me.

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