Monthly Archives: October 2003

I Think She's Cute

I find that I’ve become more attract­ed to uncon­ven­tion­al beau­ty late­ly. Well, that’s not to say that my past propen­si­ties have been com­plete­ly tra­di­tion­al. Aaron thinks that my whole speech imped­i­ment thing is just me try­ing to be a unique per­son. I’m not real­ly insult­ed by this (even though I’d nor­mal­ly be, espe­cial­ly since I have a great respect for Aaron’s opin­ions) sim­ply because I think that if he had any…inter­est­ing tastes, he’d under­stand.

I once had a dis­cus­sion with Trolley about the fact that almost any type of fetish made sense to me — hair, loli­con, necrophil­ia, rape, scat­ol­ogy, plucked chick­ens — except for foot fetish­es. I mean, most of these all have very deep-root­ed psy­cho­log­i­cal jus­ti­fi­ca­tions. Sex with ani­mals, for exam­ple, may turn some­one on due to feel­ings of dom­i­nance over an ani­mal, or a belief that they are mak­ing some­thing feel bliss­ful plea­sure (per­haps as a com­pen­sa­tion for inse­cu­ri­ty in being able to plea­sure some­one). Most any sort of fan­ta­sy can be rel­a­tive­ly eas­i­ly jus­ti­fied.

Aaron and I were even able to find a jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for bad teeth fetish­es, which is an inter­est­ing idea since I know so many peo­ple who can’t stand crooked teeth. He knows peo­ple who only date oth­ers who are “less attrac­tive” than them, and we take this as a sign that these peo­ple may be inse­cure about their looks, and are turned on when viewed as the more attrac­tive per­son in the cou­ple. Of course, this can be relat­ed to any sort of “flaw” that may be found in some­one.

I once knew a girl who was turned on by guys using cal­cu­la­tors, and I can eas­i­ly relate this to my “girls wear­ing glass­es” pro­cliv­i­ty, inso­far as being extreme­ly attract­ed to intel­li­gence, both being a sort of phys­i­cal (albeit pos­si­bly soci­etal) man­i­fes­ta­tion of an intan­gi­ble thing.

Feet, how­ev­er, I can only jus­ti­fy when relat­ed to the trib­al tra­di­tion of feet-fore­head touch­ing. Subordination is rep­re­sent­ed in the younger peo­ple touch­ing the feet of the elders with their fore­heads. Perhaps some­one may be attract­ed to the fact that they are brought to the lev­el of the toe suck­ing, sim­i­lar to the idea of dom­i­nance. It’s hard for me to even see foot fetish­es on a basic phys­i­cal lev­el, which is eas­i­ly done for breasts or waists, etc. unless one con­sid­ers the impact of soci­ety on what peo­ple find attrac­tive.

I can just see all the hits I’m going to get from inter­est­ing search strings now.

Most of my propen­si­ties can be eas­i­ly explained, although I get var­i­ous odd reac­tions when peo­ple find out, and most are either laugh­ing too hard or too weird­ed out to allow an expla­na­tion. Speech imped­i­ments are some­thing I just can’t seem to jus­ti­fy, although such an inef­fa­ble thing has allowed me to more eas­i­ly accept the quirks of oth­er peo­ples tastes.

So there’s this girl who works at Folio and she wears glass­es and turtle­necks and is there when­ev­er I buy some­thing and I doubt oth­er guys would find her as attrac­tive as I do.

The Difference of 2mm

I tried play­ing Pat with a 38mm ball today, and had a hard time keep­ing it on the table. The ITTF only sup­ports the use of the 40mm now, which is the only size the club uses, so I was­n’t used to the light­ness of the 38. Basically I had to play con­ser­v­a­tive­ly the entire time, which is fair­ly frus­trat­ing when the best part of my game is smash­ing and counter-dri­ving. After an hour, sweat start­ed to sting my eyes, and I had a hard time keep­ing track of the ball. On a good note, my back­hand loop is get­ting much bet­ter, even though fatigue has a heavy affect on the con­sis­ten­cy.

The Nihilistic Adventures of BB

I final­ly got my sto­ry fin­ished and post­ed on BitterBuffalo.com. It’s a fic­tion­al­ized account of how Mikhail Lermontov may have died, a buf­fa­lo his only intel­lec­tu­al friend. I actu­al­ly tried three times; the first two attempts were just a tad too seri­ous, so I threw them out. I tried to get all the themes of Russian roman­tic lit­er­a­ture in there, such as nihilism, fatal­ism, and rev­o­lu­tion, but did­n’t write too much for fear of bor­ing the read­er.

The Greatest Balance

When I went home a few months ago, I found a copy Soul Mountain at Chapters, which I had been look­ing for, ever since I found out about it. I’ve been read­ing as much as I can late­ly, when­ev­er I have the time and the ener­gy to con­cen­trate on what Gao Xingjian is try­ing to nar­rate to me.

The thing that makes the auto­bi­og­ra­phy inter­est­ing so far is that Xingjian was incor­rect­ly diag­nosed with fatal lung can­cer, and after prop­er review, had been giv­en a sec­ond chance on life. His out­look changes, and he begins to see every­thing around him very dif­fer­ent­ly.

I’ve late­ly felt that, although I’ve nev­er been threat­ened with any life-alter­ing inci­dents, I’ve begun to see things dif­fer­ent­ly as well. It’s as if I have noth­ing and every­thing to live for. That there would be no dif­fer­ence between dying tomor­row or in eight decades. It’s almost as if I’ve had my fair share of expe­ri­ences, each one as impor­tant as the oth­er in shap­ing who I am, good or bad, and that this is already suf­fi­cient for me to be sat­is­fied with my life. Perhaps I feel this is true when I com­pare the amount that I’ve already learned with the infi­nite amount that is impos­si­ble to learn. After all, what is the pur­pose of life any­way? For me, it is to con­tin­u­al­ly shape myself into a bet­ter per­son, whether it’s intel­li­gence, or a bet­ter appre­ci­a­tion of music, or dex­ter­i­ty, or any­thing. And since there is no absolute goal I have to reach (or can reach), there is no way for me to fail, and death hence­forth becomes mean­ing­less.

When I tried to explain this to some­one, he got con­fused, and thought that I was telling him about how I had expe­ri­enced all there is to expe­ri­ence already. This could­n’t be fur­ther from the truth. There are a pletho­ra of things I haven’t done, that I haven’t been through, and when­ev­er I’m giv­en the chance to actu­al­ly expe­ri­ence one of these things, I feel as if I’ve gained more out of life.

Instead of see­ing the act of liv­ing as cross­ing out items on a life-long “to do” list, I see it as writ­ing down items on a “have done” list.

The great­est dis­tinc­tion for me between these two world­views is that I can take my time in doing what I want, instead of feel­ing rushed to accom­plish as much as I can before I die. Seeing life this way has cer­tain­ly allowed me to be a much more relaxed, flex­i­ble, easy-going per­son, unin­hib­it­ed by the fear of death. The good thing about this is that I did­n’t have to fool myself into this view, sim­ply because I was unsat­is­fied with my life. Somehow, this mind­set shaped itself in my brain, and even­tu­al­ly man­i­fest­ed itself through my ever-con­tin­u­ing matu­ri­ty.

It has made life mean­ing­ful and mean­ing­less at the same time.