Jack: What kind of movies do you prefer, the ones with the sad endings or the happy ones?

Claire: The sad ones definitely. I like movies that make me cry.

Jack: Then you’re with the right guy.

Jack is the leading man. Such screen time is only reserved for protagonists, though anti-hero’s fit this mould too. You want to root for him, to discover that in the end he’s smart enough to give up the criminal life, to stay out of trouble, to truly appreciate the one who loves him. That’s what Claire is banking on too.

She wants to fulfill the dream that she’ll get the bad boy, and she’ll be the one for whom he gives up his criminal life. A story that’s been told time and time again, in life and on the screen. But he won’t, and that makes her want him even more.

Through their relationship, you have a hard time believing that anyone would be so self-destructive to fall for a guy like this, the way you don’t believe a professional assassin would suddenly develop a conscience when discovering that his mark is a 12-year-old girl. But this is Hollywood, and we’re lead to believe that anything is possible.

And as he cleans Claire’s blood off his bedroom floor, you realize that it’s harder to believe he was able to fill a bucket of water from the faucet when he just got out on parole and his utility bills have been unpaid for over a year, than a girl falling in love with someone so bad for her. After all, life has not proven otherwise.

This quietly fills you with bitterness.

Some people are hurt by the things I say here. But I make no judgment; I only speak the truth, supported by the facts. So if someone is a stalker who blames her problems on the object of her attentions, or treats her son like a trained animal, or decides to charge friends and roommates for rides to the grocery store, and I document it here, I’m not the one who’s embarrassing them. They do that enough for themselves.

It’s like a documentary about the Holocaust. The filmmakers don’t need to offer an opinion that condemns it. The footage and testimonials speak for themselves.

Sometimes, the people who don’t like what I have to say are so delusional that they supply their own realities, perhaps because they don’t want to be at fault.

They don’t realize it’s the truth that hurts, not me.

I almost walked out of Tai Chi class the other night.

Someone asked me if I was going to “pass out again”, because I got light-headed the class before and had to leave early, most likely due to a side-effect of the new medication I’m on, though I was far from passing out.

I was flat-out offended, and began experiencing what my therapist explained are “automatic thoughts” — irrational thoughts that affect mood negatively. I had to step back from the situation, put the words out of my head, and calm myself down. If not, I would have overreacted, and probably regretted it. But I couldn’t figure out why I was so upset. After all, I’m far from one who gets offended easily.

Was I being publicly emasculated? Was I being judged without consideration of all the facts? Was my commitment to attend practice after not eating for two days being belittled? Was it the tone? Was it because I couldn’t speak back and defend myself, for fear of polluting the sanctity of the class¹ with my personal politics? Probably a bit of each.

I tend to have similarly bad reactions to people being surprised that I don’t know something. It feels like I’m being judged, as if they presume to know who I am. Even though it’s supposed to be a compliment, it’s a back-handed one, like saying “I thought you were smarter than that”. John used to be especially guilty of this², but he successfully corrected the behaviour years ago. It took a psychologist to point it out to him, and adverse reactions from several people, including me.

I know I’ve already come a long way. I’m not so sensitive about my weight (for a guy) any more. I stopped caring what people think when I know the truth. But this incident made me realize that I still harbor a sensitivity to certain things. I still have some growing up to do. Still have to realize that people say things without thinking, or don’t mean what they say, or that I may even take innocuous things the wrong way. Even though I feel that I had a right to be offended, I still don’t want to be.

And the fact that I was offended just makes me more upset.

1. I approach my work with the same kind of reservation and detachment to remain professional. After all, these are situations in which we can’t choose the people we work with, so there’s nothing to do but accept and any unpleasantness. [↑]
2. And quite self-aware of it. As a person oblivious to pop-culture, he loved to hold it over people when he knew something they didn’t. [↑]

The checkout clerks (girls mostly) at my grocery store have a strange habit of not acknowledging the next customer until the current one has paid. So there’s often a point where the current customer has passed the cash register to put their groceries in a cart, and they’re just waiting for their credit card to go through.

I end up standing right in front of the clerk, who won’t say anything, even though you know they see you out of their peripheral vision. They only say hello as soon as the previous customer has been rung through. Like they’re computers who can’t handle more than one task per person at a time.

It’s quite awkward.

After going through therapy, I’ve started to recognize complexes and issues in other people.

Some put their hope in someone, then hurt them. Some only fall in love with people they can’t have, and as soon as interest is reciprocated, they lose the attraction. Strong signs of emotional deprivation, stemming from traumatic relationships. (Unfortunately, I’ve been the cause on more than one occasion, and it was my own issues that lead to this destructive behaviour where I didn’t treat a heart as delicately as I should have.)

Most people aren’t aware of their issues, but I’m always baffled by the ones who are aware and still don’t do anything about it. They repeatedly make the same mistakes over and over again.

I’ve always believed that self-improvement is the highest form of living, and I’ve been able to work through my own baggage, so I refuse to accept those who don’t work through their own.

• Everyone — and I mean everyone — between the ages of 25 and 30 used to watch The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air
• The token Asian guy has a fraternal connection with the other token Asian guy in every clique
• Fire has the ability to bring out people’s primal natures, and make them throw their hands in the air and wave them like they just don’t care (or some reasonable facsimile thereof)
• Some people think they’re never too old to get hooched up for a Saturday night
• A good DJ can make you feel like you never left high-school
• Even at 27, I still look like I’m 18, according to the bouncer who carded me

I can gather all the news I need on the weather report.
Hey, I’ve got nothing to do today but smile.
Da-n-da-da-n-da-da-n-da-da and here I am
The only living boy in New York

Half of the time we’re gone but we don’t know where,
And we don’t know here.

—Simon and Garfunkle, The Only Living Boy in New York

Every day, we get caught up in our lives.

We adopt pets to give us a sense of family. We eat breakfast at work or in the car to save ourselves time so we can work some more. We scorn those who express emotion, we avoid eye contact with strangers on the street.

Everything we do — the food we eat, the movies we watch, the home team we cheer for, our coffee shop romances — they’re just trying to fill that hole, that gap that’s missing, the only way we feel alive.

We don’t slow down, we don’t figure things out. We don’t reflect and appreciate what we have.

Like strawberry cheesecake ice cream with a thick graham cracker swirl. Like the serenity of the snow that falls around us, when heaven decides to bless the earth.

Life gets in the way of living.

And now I realize just how guilty I’ve been of this. I’ve been looking for love, but never recognized it when I found it. All I ever wanted to do was lie in bed, look into your eyes, and go through my favourite albums with you. But I never did. And now I wonder. Why can’t we just live? We can’t we just love?

Sometimes you have to stop. You can’t capture everything. You need to throw yourself in.

A thousand kisses deep.

If a woman sleeps alone, it puts a shame on all men. God has a very big heart but there is one sin he will not forgive: if a woman calls a man to her bed and he will not go.

—Zorba the Greek

There exists a spot on every woman that needs to be kissed.

It can be as innocuous as the curl of the lip, the web of the hand, or a mark on a landscape of skin.

It’s the responsibility of a man to find this spot. Not as a service to the woman — sometimes she isn’t even aware of such a spot — but as a service to the creator of such things.

Been having an insane argument with a person on Flickr over a “racist” picture of me and Bronwen.

Are people really this asinine? I really don’t want to believe it, but it’s kinda hard when they repeatedly go beyond all sense of logic.

There goes my faith in humanity.

Please, please, please, let this be a joke.

She hugged me yesterday. I thought I was over her, but maybe I’m still smitten. Physical contact does funny things to the mind.

I don’t understand why girls are so into hugging. Often, I’ll go for a handshake, and as if it doesn’t take, they’ll lean in to hug afterward. A girl once asked if she could hug me after I explained to her my procedure for checking a cat before adoption. Figure that one out.

The funny thing is that most girls aren’t very good huggers. They give limp hugs — more of a pressing of the arms to the body — and it bugs the crap out of me. It’s like getting a soft handshake, also referred to as the “limp noodle“.

Bronwen’s an exception. I always give and get a bear hug from her when I see her and when she leaves. Sometimes we fight for arm positioning, because we both prefer to have the arms lower than the other. I like to have my arms around a girls’ waist, whereas she likes to have her arms surrounded, so she feels protected.

The two Louise’s are/were also good at hugging. Nice and firm, without being too clingy. Maybe it’s a Louise thing.

It just makes me wonder; if girls are so into hugging, why aren’t they better at it?

You interpret my heart, my nature, as you wish to believe it.

— Onegin

People see what they want to see.

As I touched on a while back, some of it comes from insecurity. Other times, from a fallacy of projection as some people ignorantly, and megalomaniacally, believe that everyone must think and act as they do. There are a few other cases that don’t fit into either of these categories though.

An example: I once offered a guest in my house some yogurt. The first thing he asked was, “Is it going bad?”. He didn’t believe I would have given it to him otherwise. It was a perfect reflection of his deadbeat friends who expected you to eat before coming to a party, and he had never known any other type of people. A more extreme example is if you offered to feed someone at your house and they got insulted because they thought you were implying that they couldn’t afford to feed themselves. Some people see things that aren’t there. It’s an amazing subconscious sign of their characters.

The way some girls interpret things is also an interesting phenomenon. Some of them think a guy who’s talking to them must be hitting on them so they drop the b-bomb in random points of conversation, just to warn you they have a boyfriend. Some girls think you’re gay because you don’t make any advances towards them. Some girls think you’re torn up, depressed because they declined your advances, and end up making a bigger deal about it than you do. I want nothing more than to tell these girls to get over themselves, but I bite my tongue because they end up embarrassing themselves more than I could ever do myself.

There are also times when a person is so pig-headed and stubborn that they see everything through a filter, interpreting your actions in some crazy way, and believe you’re at fault because they subconsciously refuse to see their own mistakes.

The old me would have been insulted when someone assumes I’m a certain way. Nothing would anger me more than someone presuming to know how I feel or what I’m like, and I used to care desperately what they thought, even if I knew I was just misunderstood. It’s an interesting feeling to be passed that now¹.

I’ve learned never to take responsibility for other peoples’ interpretations. Only take responsibility for your intent. You learn a lot about a person from the way they interpret things and from the way they see the world.

With the truth in your heart, it doesn’t matter what anyone thinks.

With the truth on your side, nothing can go wrong.

1. It’s actually been quiet a few months since I wrote this entry. I didn’t post it at first because I wanted to be absolutely sure that it wasn’t a fickle feeling, and that my strength was firm. Reading back on it now, it seems more relevant than ever. [↑]

Knowing where the trap is — that’s the first step in evading it. This is like single combat, Son, only on a larger scale — a feint within a feint within a feint…seemingly without end. The task is to unravel it.

—Duke Leto Atreides, Dune

A feint can be used as a test, to gather information, or a trap, to get someone to do what you want them to do, or both.

The most important part to understand is that the opponent is inherently involved in the situation. You can only gain advantage from a feint depending on the way he or she (re)acts.

A savvy person will react with exactly the right amount of effort, especially important because a feint is only a mock attack. In Tai Chi terms, they balance an opponent’s yin (expansion) with yang (compression), and vice-versa¹. In Taoist terms, they act like a mirror, reflecting only that which is in front of them, nothing more and nothing less. With a savvy person, the feint fails, and nothing is gained.

An ignorant person will fall for the trick. They overreact and unbalance themselves², exposing their vulnerabilities. Without understanding true intention, without seeing the big picture, they get played like a sucker.

And the more they react, the more ridiculous they look.

1. Hence the emphasis placed on sticking and yielding; a physical connection is needed to know where the center of an opponent is at all times [↑]
2. In Tai Chi terms, this is considered overextending or collapsing the structure of the body or limbs [↑]

I just found a staple — a used, bent staple — in my loose leaf Mao Feng tea from Nihao Tea House. I don’t know if I can trust Nihao anymore, which is unfortunate, as it’s the only tea house in the vicinity.

The girl who works there is somewhat of an anomaly; a Canadian-born Chinese, I’d say only a few years younger than me, wearing a Mickey Mouse shirt. My generation of CBCs usually adapt to the Canadian way of life, eschewing the cutesy culture of Hello Kitty, designer stationary, and stuffed car ornaments. An impostor, by banana¹ standards, like a rogue staple among some tea leaves.

1. yellow on the outside, hollow on the inside [↑]

I decided to privatize the profiles in my “Old Boys of ‘99″ series from now on. Much like this blog, the series was meant to be a sort of memoir, a way for me to reminisce about the past. A low-key deal.

One of my fellow Old Boys found out, and it appears that word-of-mouth is spreading like wild-fire. Visits have increased considerably as links are being e-mailed back and forth.

I never thought that I made any kind of impression on anyone at Upper Canada College, or that anyone I went to school with would actually care to see what I wrote. Evidence of this fact is that I only keep in touch with two people from those days in high-school.

This is a first for me. There were a few times that I considered password protecting my posts, simply because I thought certain things would be too embarrassing to admit or talk about, but I’ve always forced myself to be honest and open.

This series, on the other hand, is where I’m honest about other people. Some of them took offense to what they read in one entry. They lashed out at me, because they didn’t like what was being said.

They’d rather live in denial, or stay oblivious about what other people think of them, and can only cover it up with anger. I’ve made the decision that it’s best for them not to know.

Those who know me well will know the password. Those who don’t may apply.

The Old Boys of ‘99 Series

1. Introduction
2. Another Perspective
3. Seeto and Bunston
4. Mungovan and King
5. Providing Ignorance as Bliss
6. My Perspective