Monthly Archives: March 2003

Vs.

I remem­ber watch­ing Seinfeld, and not being able to stand Kramer. He seemed to ruin so much of what his friends were doing, like hir­ing cig­ar rollers to roll crêpes, only to have them explode in the faces of cus­tomers, some­how caus­ing George’s girl­friend to break up with him.

It always made me won­der why Jerry would nev­er break off his friend­ship with him, why Jerry would always put up with some­one who nev­er seemed to give as much plea­sure as the amount of strife he cre­at­ed.

I find the sit­u­a­tion to be so com­mon. I sup­pose that I’m con­stant­ly re-eval­u­at­ing my rela­tion­ships, and that as soon as a lim­it is reached, I have no inter­est in con­tin­u­ing the rela­tion­ship. It’s prob­a­bly the rea­son why I get over my break-ups so quick­ly, if not the idea of the sit­u­a­tion, than the com­fort. The fact that I’ve always been the breaker prob­a­bly helps too.

I spoke with Aaron about it, and he explained to me very well that to Jerry, the friend­ship was worth it. I now under­stand that peo­ple see their friend­ships in a dif­fer­ent man­ner, and that what I would­n’t put up with may just be a sim­ple mat­ter to oth­ers.

Sometimes I wish that I did­n’t see every­thing so day-to-day. However, by con­stant­ly re-eval­u­at­ing my rela­tion­ships, I not only clear­ly see the prob­lems with bad ones, but I am able to appre­ci­ate the ones that are good as well.

An idea that has become com­mon in my beliefs is that I should live as a demand­ing per­son, but I should give as much as I get. Perhaps that’s why I stop being friends with cer­tain peo­ple, where­as oth­ers I would die for. I would pre­fer to live with a few close friends, as opposed to a pletho­ra of acquain­tances. Sometimes it still con­fus­es me though, how peo­ple can put up with what I can only see as a ter­ri­ble flaw.

There’s a fine line between know­ing when to be self­ish, and know­ing when to be kind to oth­ers, even if kind­ness means sac­ri­fice.

Haircut

Come on in! We’re OPEN.

Yes.

I hate com­ing here only to find out that he’s closed. I can nev­er remem­ber if it’s Tuesdays or Wednesdays. I bet­ter ask him that. Maybe I should ask him for his card like the one Iain got.

I hope that no one’s in there already. I hope I’m the first one and there’s no wait­ing. Otherwise, what’s the point of com­ing here so ear­ly.

Damn. Two peo­ple. Close the door gen­tly to announce your pres­ence. Maybe I should ask Joe if he has any red­head hair­style posters he does­n’t need. I’m too embar­rased with these oth­er peo­ple in the shop.

The Sun. Front page, a woman just wants her son back. How did he die? Fell out of a 10-storey win­dow. Goddam tabloid press. Why did he fall out? By acci­dent. Boring. Teacher on tri­al for sex­u­al rela­tions with 15-year-old girl. What hap­pened? Mother sus­pect­ed teacher after daugh­ter was spend­ing an inor­di­nate amount of time with him after school. Mother caught daugh­ter wear­ing teach­ers sweater one day. My God.

The old peo­ple in here are too friend­ly. It’s almost as if every­one they know has died, and they’re con­stant­ly look­ing for new friends. Old peo­ple must have a con­nec­tion like that. Their friends must be dying out on them all the time.

Life. The third most want­ed Al-Qaida leader cap­tured. CIA spe­cial oper­a­tions group res­ur­rect­ed, page 12. Are all their cov­er sto­ries on page 12? CIA oper­a­tive on the job, rid­ing a horse in the desert. Same man inter­ro­gat­ing cap­tured American Al-Qaida. Same man was killed a few months lat­er in an upris­ing. How? Customer is done, but I want to read this arti­cle.

Joe greets me as friend. He’s in a good mood today. I won­der why he’s so loqua­cious. Sorry Joe, I don’t feel like talk­ing today. I sup­pose he knows so much about his­to­ry because he’s a bar­ber, and peo­ple always have inter­est­ing sto­ries to tell. I hope he does­n’t argue with the woman today; my hair­cut nev­er seems to sur­vive one of his argu­ments. Please don’t talk to her, Joe. Just con­cen­trate.

I for­got to tell him to cut it a lit­tle bit short­er. It’s half-way done though, so I should­n’t say any­thing now. Maybe he’ll do it any­way, because he rememe­bered how I liked it last time. I hope he does­n’t try to style my hair with the dry­er. I wore a hat in here, and I’ll wear it back out again, but I’ll put it on when he can’t see me from inside the shop. I won­der if he’d be insult­ed if he saw me put the hat on right after.

The brush. The mir­ror. The hair in the back isn’t short enough. Fuck. There’s still colour in the back at the crown. Fuck. It looks stu­pid.

There’s no one in the shop. The woman is dis­tract­ed at the oth­er end. Maybe I should ask him now. I should ask him now.

“Where do you get your posters, Joe? Do you get any red­head ones?”

Yes.

I won­der if the woman heard me. He does­n’t have any now, but he’ll keep an eye out for me. I’m so grate­ful. I hope he’ll remem­ber. I think bar­bers are sup­posed to have good mem­o­ries. Maybe I should have stressed that any red­head poster would be fine. Maybe I should have told him to get me as many as he could. I won­der if he won­ders what I want one for. Shit, I should have told him to get me any that he could find.

I know I have a twen­ty. Why did­n’t I ask for change this time? I hope he remem­bers how much I tip him and just gives me change tak­ing the tip into account. Thanks, Joe.

You do remem­ber.

Serenity

I’ve come to under­stand the mind­sets of a few dif­fer­ent types of peo­ple when it comes to per­son­al prob­lems. Most peo­ple I know will sim­ply deal with any prob­lems, instead of fight­ing them head on. I find that I try to do the same thing some­times, but I tend to come out a lit­tle worse for wear. Most have prob­a­bly gained more seren­i­ty, some­thing that I’m still learn­ing to con­trol.

Yet when most peo­ple are deal­ing with their issues in a pas­sive man­ner, the meth­ods become even more diverse. Justification seems to be a very com­mon method, but many jus­ti­fy in dif­fer­ent ways.

Some that I know believe that life is sim­ply full of dis­ap­point­ments (a few Buddhist can­di­dates, I’m sure) and that any bad things that come their way should sim­ply be under­stood. They don’t get angry or upset, and they seem to come out on top of things in the end. Others try to ignore the prob­lems, since think­ing about them will only make things worse. Some that I know even use such bad sit­u­a­tions to their advan­tage by exag­ger­at­ing them for some cheap atten­tion. I even know oth­ers who are able to feel bet­ter by com­par­ing them­selves to oth­ers.

Some will sim­ply get depressed.

I find that I gen­er­al­ly fall in either the for­mer or the lat­ter cat­e­gories. I would hope so at least, since I’ve been in the lat­ter for a great part of my life. I’ve been able to deal with things a lit­tle bit bet­ter now, for about three years. I sup­pose that it’s some­thing that Rob was able to teach me, but prob­a­bly also due to the fact that I’ve had a good last three years. I’ve been able to see the oth­er side of life that so many oth­ers seem to be able to expe­ri­ence. I feel like I’ve only got­ten a taste, and that I should try to expe­ri­ence it again.

But God still owes me some seren­i­ty.

White Cheddar KD, Game Addiction, Etc.

I had some white ched­dar KD for din­ner tonight. I have to admit that it tastes bet­ter than reg­u­lar KD. It seems to have a “high­er class” cheap taste.

Blizzard has me addict­ed yet again. At least Dina is addict­ed too. And Trolley some­how made the FT beta, which is amaz­ing. I feel like I get to say, “I know a guy who made the beta!” When I tell peo­ple they look at me fun­ny.

I almost com­plet­ed my graph­ics assign­ment. The only thing that’s miss­ing is the object motion along the con­vey­or belt, and some pol­ish­ing of the col­li­sion detec­tion. I don’t think I’m going to be able to get per­fect col­li­sion detec­tion done, but I doubt that I’ll lose too many marks for that. I think I’ll just leave it the way it is, since I should be work­ing on oth­er projects, and I need to pri­or­i­tize.

Mel is hav­ing a birth­day par­ty on Saturday at the Honest Lawyer, and I’m look­ing for­ward to going.

There are a few things I want to with this page, like add a fea­ture that will sep­a­rate archives into dif­fer­ent pages, if it finds more than 100 results from a data­base query. I sup­pose I’ll find the time some­where.

I got my mouse in the mail today. It has stiffer but­tons and a stiffer scroll wheel, but every­thing is more respon­sive. I don’t like the fact that a part of the design isn’t flush with the rest of the mouse, so my pinky will catch on it. I’m not sure if that’s part of the design, or just some­thing that hap­pened to mine. The back thumb but­ton is also a bit too small and sunken when pressed. The pre­ci­sion of the mouse is dead on though, even with extreme­ly fast motions. I can now retire my old mouse. I should have giv­en him a name.

I don’t know how Trolley seems to drink every night. Some weeks I wish that I had noth­ing but alco­hol con­sump­tion, but my con­science always pre­vents me. I guess the idea that it’s cost­ly and not-so-dele­te­ri­ous real­ly pre­vents me from tak­ing shots as dessert. Yet Wheaties just tells me, “drink for fear of being upset do to lack of rea­son to drink. this way, you can drink before you get upset, real­iz­ing there real­ly isnt a need to drink, and you’ll be a peace­ful alco­holist — bet­ter than a ragin one.. hon­est­ly, its for your own good”. I think I’ll heed some of his advice.

Why Assume Evil?

I read an arti­cle about a giant snow penis being erect­ed and the con­tro­ver­sy it cre­at­ed. The arti­cle dis­cussed the way the entire joke was tak­en by some of the women on cam­pus. Some of the female groups felt that “such a dis­play is demean­ing to women”, and that “women do not need to be remind­ed of the pow­er of the sym­bol of the male gen­i­talia.”

Although I agree that such a pub­lic dis­play is inap­pro­pri­ate, I com­plete­ly dis­agree with the rea­sons these women put forth. I’m will­ing to bet that the males who erect­ed the sculp­ture were not think­ing, “Hey, let’s cre­ate a huge dis­play of male gen­i­talia so that women know that their place in the world is below men”, but rather, “I’m bored. What can we do?” As one of the builders said, “We built it for fun”. I don’t believe that the motives behind such an act are sex­ist. Sometimes peo­ple just do stu­pid things.

I find that this has been a great trend in cer­tain groups of think­ing, such as part of the fem­i­nist move­ment. Sometimes mem­bers take things the wrong way. For exam­ple, I know of peo­ple who com­plain about com­mer­cials for house­hold clean­ing prod­ucts, and state that it’s sex­ist to have a woman being the token spokesper­son. They believe that the cre­ators of the ad have the mind­set that the main duty of a woman are the house­hold chores. When I see the com­mer­cial, I ask why a male isn’t the spokesper­son, why they show a male as being infe­ri­or to a female in doing the house­hold chores. And since both sides see things in an oppo­site man­ner, I decid­ed to ignore it com­plete­ly.

After all, we take offence to how we see things, not to how they are.

The idea of women being remind­ed of the pow­er of the male gen­i­talia is an exam­ple of this. In the world, there are many, many phal­lic sym­bols. Take almost every type gun as an exam­ple. This can even be broad­ened to just about every pro­jec­tile weapon. Sure, these things are reminders of the penis; they look the same, they serve a sim­i­lar pur­pose, even the actions are the same. But not every sin­gle fuck­ing object that holds a point is a phal­lic sym­bol. I don’t look at the Washington Monument and say, “Oh yeah, I have a penis. Aren’t penis­es great and supe­ri­or in every way to vagi­nas?”

There seems to be a great over­sen­si­tiv­i­ty still lurk­ing from the PC move­ment that swept Canada in the 90’s. Things are tak­en the wrong way many times, when there was no inten­tion of insult­ing any­one offend­ing any group. I wish peo­ple would­n’t place so much mean­ing in what oth­ers do, espe­cial­ly when the world is so full of sequa­cious peo­ple. Then again, the blind do lead the blind.

The only way I would be able to place some blame on the erec­tors ::ahem:: of the stat­ue would be if there was some sort of sub­con­scious sex­ist mind­set that they had. This means that the cre­ation of the snow stat­ue was not a con­scious deci­sion to men­ace the women on cam­pus, but rather a sub­con­scious exten­sion of their sex­ist ideas.

But some­how I doubt that.