Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Liver Journal's LiveJournal:

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Tuesday, August 11th, 2009
7:11 pm	fuck Anne's daughter died today.... leukemia... Sometimes bad things happen to good people, and sometimes they happen to eight year-olds. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, June 7th, 2009
2:09 pm	Time and time again Sometimes, it's hard to figure out exactly what one wants to write. I'm obsessed with the real world, which is why I so rarely touch it. I'm weak, jealous, possessive, menial, and prone to discounting feelings that I can't understand as over-exaggerating or non-existent. The truth is that I dated a girl for a while who was in love with another guy. They were good friends, but he wasn't terribly interested in her, on account of being much older and on account of being afraid of some of his own feelings. So, she found another boyfriend, who happened to be me. I figured that she was in love with this guy still, and I was right... we never really forget those we love, we just suppress the feeling and watch it diminish as best we can. But I got annoyed when they started literally sleeping together (as opposed to a figurative statement about sex) It made me feel like I was a substitute for a relationship that was desired and unattainable. She said she loved me, but I began to suspect more and more that she loved another more than she would ever love me. So, I asked her to leave him. I needed to know where I stood, if I was just a replacement for something unattainable or a real choice. She broke up with me, pretty much in a heartbeat, cried for short period and then moved on with a stunning rapidity. Leaving me gaping and thinking about the truth as best I could. And the truth is this: We both got into that relationship in order to get over other people , and we both had allot of trouble doing it anyway. But as where I expressed my feelings in a melancholy stalker-esque brooding, in which having little or no contact with the other person was of no difficulty and generally encouraged, she built an enduring friendship with her alleged ex-crush. And wanted her to tear that down, in order to prove that she was into the relationship she was in. And she wouldn't, and she wasn't really... our hearts were both elsewhere, and I was torn between being in a relationship in which I was sort of holding pattern designed to defer to another romance which might or might not materialize, and leaving someone who, I love. Well, it was hard fought, but now I know where I stand. But there's still allot to decide, she has to choose whether she wants to continue in a relationship knowing that I will always resent being a replacement. And I have to decide whether I want to be in that relationship, loving our love, but eternally calling it second-best. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, May 6th, 2009
11:21 pm	I meant to stop putting quotes up here and put up something of substance, but I'm pulling my last all nighter due to serious resource misallocation and I will have to be brief: Opening the capital account therefore drives a process of almost inevitable bankruptcy. With bad loans on the books, bad banks will borrow abroad to carry bad loans at home. Their borrowing creates a national hazard because, by definition, they cannot repay. The dynamic goes further, however. Good customers will leave bad banks because they can get better terms form new entrants. thus, bad banks will have reduced earnings on their loan portfolios and will pay more in funding costs. They will make more speculative loans and thus grow worse, and they will borrow at short maturities because that is the only money they can get. They will borrow unheged in foreign currency because they can go bankrupt only once, and unhedged borrowing seems the best way to avoid a slow death. Such borrowing does, indeed, avoid a lingering death, but by exchanging it for an unexpected quick demise. -Rudiger Dornbusch (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Sunday, May 3rd, 2009
3:34 pm	Excessive conviction is often a sign of insufficient thought, which in turn may be derived from a certain pig-headedness. -Greg Mankiw (Comment on this)
Saturday, April 25th, 2009
11:09 pm	As general rule, people, even the wicked, are much more naive and simple hearted than we suppose. (Comment on this)
Friday, April 24th, 2009
1:04 pm	And I emerge from underground I woke up this morning feeling pretty good. I've had something of an epiphany last night. I've changed again, and am happier than I've ever been. Maybe its just the beautiful weather that I'm hiding from in the economics lab, but suddenly I feel like... I can't every be unhappy again. As long as I value suffering, as long as I see that my suffering is beautiful, then it isn't really suffering. And as I walked along in the cafeteria, everything seemed good, even mediocrity. I gave christy permission to sleep with her ex-boyfriend. I might break up with her though... I keep on feeling like there are some intractable issues from our respective pasts that keep up coming up and leading us into these silly fights. I've been saying that for a while though, I don't really want to break up with her... I just feel like... And to speak from what I wrote last night. I was trying to drop myself into the perspective of the underground man (the paradoxolist). To see the similarities between my self and him, and so I put some things more harshly than perhaps... my relationship with ashley was not all about mutual inflicted suffering (although allot of that went down) when amy said she was thinking of killing herself, I was genuinely worried that she would... (she is one of the few interesting people here at wooster... people who's company I genuinely enjoy.) And so, everything there should be read with a grain of salt, because I was deliberately exaggerating certain feelings. But I think there are some valuable points about romanticizing negative emotions as to render them sterile. Sometimes, I feel like society frowns upon those who express strong feelings, while at the same time glorifying them (particularly through popular song). I mean, a good half of the songs out there lie in the realm of what ben folds would call "white-boy angst". But I think this stuff, this angst, shouldn't be shunned as harshly as it sometimes is, because it can lead one to a more meaningful life. (Comment on this)
Thursday, April 23rd, 2009
5:53 pm	ashley and others as viewed from underground I am a sick man, both morally and physically. I've been running a fever for the last few days, but that's hardly what's on my mind. I finished reading notes from underground, the novel is roughly a hundred pages, and it took me almost a month to read. It is a deeply personal novel, and throughout I cannot help but wonder how much Dostoevsky had in common with the main character, the opening monologue is so intensely real, so intensely well thought out... It could only have been written by someone who had firsthand knowledge. I guess satre described it as the beginnings of existentialist thought, and because ashley and M both like this philosophy, and because... I woke up at 8 this morning and jumped out of bed. I was feeling rough, like I have for the past week, and I sat in the hallway outside my room writing an email to ted and audrey declining free tickets to the Cleveland orchestra (a pretty damn good orchestra). Nominally this was because I was sick to the point that I can barely talk, and my voice sounds like a bin of marbles rolling and scraping against each other, but it was really because I was in one of those moods where I hate everything beautiful, and feel the need to avoid beautiful things as best I can (also, really it was because I didn't want to infect ted and audrey with this nasty-ass fever/cold). As I was sitting there suffering, which is what I do best, I saw ashley emerge from the room of one of her male "companions" here on campus. Normally, I'm dulled to this sort of thing, but perhaps because of my state, and it being so early in the morning that emotions are not restricted the way they are normally, I kind of jumped, and felt a pain in my breast not like much else. I said nothing, she said nothing, nobody says anything anymore. It's stupid and hypocritical for my to be jealous of these men, I walked away from that months ago, and for damn good reasons, but current music: you know. Things ended two weeks from a year ago today, I have a girlfriend, she (Ash) has several more endomorphic intellectual nerdboy variations on me, and by rights I shouldn't care. But I do, because it annoys me that she is happy... I feel like her happiness is a way of insulting me, it's banal and disgusting, like someone spitting in your face, Happy people disgust me, I'm jealous of their happiness. Four weeks ago, two horn players named Amy and Fram started dating, and they broke up last week. Amy said that she was feeling so down about it she thought about hanging herself in her room, and I thought "how beautifully she suffers" I was happy for the rest of the day, because I knew there was one person in this world capable of suffering beautifully. Ashley used to suffer beautifully, and that was so touching to me. I although I didn't understand it at the time, I was doing almost everything I could to evoke that suffering in her, so I could watch it and feel like my life had meaning. She could only tolerate so much of this, and she cut me out of her life, just like everyone else invariably will. Ashley was, however, a master of suffering, the way she'd spontaneously cry, or speak in riddle or act completely off the wall, or say things with such eloquence as to drop my jaw... all the time when were together validated me. When I'm with suffering people, I feel like a human being. Ashley and Aimee have allot in common, ethnically both half and asian half european, both seem to appreciate existentialism, both of them are talented poets, both of them have an ersatz spontaneity, both are notably successful polyamorists, but the critical difference is that with aimee, I feel real when she's happy, and with ashley, I feel real when she's in pain. In theory polyamorists should redeem my faith in humanity. In the age of the condom and genetic testing, your gf fucking another man doesn't mean you might be raising his kid. Thus, we should only be happy that our loved ones are doing things, even with other people, that make them happier. But with my anti-relationship with ashley, we were both doing things to make the other suffer. Even though we didn't know it, I like to think that she was doing the same thing I was doing to her. She felt that I was another soul capable of suffering beautifully, lonely... weeping over a piano or laying drunk in a stairwell. I like to think that we both understood the beauty of pain, and voluntarily partook in this emotional masochism in order to remind ourselves that we can touch another human being, and provide them the capacity to care. When I met ashley, I was a hedonist, and she was a romantic. Now, she is a hedonist, and I'm a romantic (in my own perverse way). "What's the difference?" you ask, well a romantic values beauty, and understands that suffering can sometimes be beautiful, where as a hedonist rejects all suffering and values only pleasure. But as drug induced Nick Thomas likes to say, a hedonist who does not find pleasure compounds his suffering by its absence, because his life lacks meaning without pleasure. A romantic values his suffering, and so when he suffers, he smiles also. Did you watch that banal, over-wrought, video? I love it. I didn't always, but now I see what it plays out. That return to the 1920's, when in europe morals decayed away, and the great arguments came between those who valued pleasure, and those who valued romance. The protagonist bathes in his jealousy, cherishes it, spits on it, cries sees when he sees the girl, and proclaims his suffering to be destiny. Isn't it beautiful? Make yourself look again, how he sits and acts, how he sings and doubts. Try to see it as I see it, the beauty of pain... and for one moment join me in the underground, become a romantic as I have become. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, April 1st, 2009
12:54 pm	memme time ( Music mix, again ) (Comment on this)
Tuesday, March 31st, 2009
7:41 pm	What a peace of work is man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like and angel, in apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the World, the paragon of animals... and yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me... . I spent a reasonable amount of time yesterday telling people they shouldn't do things. I think that my advice is the right advice, but if it just had the effect of transforming people into me, I could hardly call it worthwhile. I have no initiative, and that might just stem from the fact that I am very good at seeing the reasons not to do something, and not very good at justifying actions. I'm a loser, and I've known that for a long time now. I have almost no idea what I want to do next year. I've been thinking of trying to apply to fellowship programs to become a math teacher (a sort of teach/study towards a masters of education type deal) , but most of the deadlines for those have passed, although the programs I was looking at accept applications for another few weeks, they usually require you to take the praxis, or equivalent, by sometime last month. Still, I might, apply next year, in the meanwhile, it's back to living with my parents and growing out my neck-beard. Edit: Taken from the faq section of this website Q: Are there any ethical issues about cloning? A: No. (Comment on this)
Monday, March 23rd, 2009
10:53 pm	Ashley is now going out with 2 or 3 different guys at the same time, I'm not sure exactly what to make of this, except to say that life sometimes is strange. I left her in the first place so she could have a stable relationship with her boyfriend, it's kind of weird now to think that she's going down the polyamory route... It kind of annoys me really, because I gave her up because everyone told me I was an idiot for thinking that that sort of thing could actually work. Once again, everyone was wrong, and I was right, but nobody pats me on the back and says as much, nobody offers their congratulations, or consolation, seeing as how badly things had turned out for me on that front. And I find myself alone once again, I wish people could see that I know them, care about them, far more than the vast majority of their friends, enemies, loved ones, etc... My little rational models of human behavior can see so much more of the world, and yet people of the CG group who I put so much time and effort into understanding avoid me, like I'm some sort of evil phantom. I guess I avoid them too, people spend allot of time showing they don't care, and we're afraid those we do care about sometimes. Speaking of people I care about, spending time in arizona with christy was allot of fun, but I wasn't very open about things while I was there. Part of it was that we weren't alone very often, except when I was in her room, and when I was there my mind was usually on other things that didn't involve language. I found out about these other two guys over band tour, and that whole dynamic was preoccupying me for much of my visit to arizona, which left me emotionally drained, but unwilling to talk about this with christy, because, I felt like I wanted to spend that time focusing in on and talking about her. But the point is we didn't have as many heart to hearts as I would have liked. I met this ex boyfriend that she's (sic, literally) sleeping with. He seems like an alright guy, one of those emotional relationship things, which doesn't really have a physical component, because he's more interested in the emotional connection. She's pretty clearly still in love with him, judging by her actions when he's around, and he wants me to like him, but I can't figure anything else out about his personality. I feel like, with the whole sleeping with him dynamic, I need christy to do something which show's that she is still strongly interested in the relationship. I asked her not to speak with this guy for a week, but she couldn't do it, which says she is still pretty much in love with him. Part of me thinks that if she can't avoid talking to a guy for a week for me, maybe I ought to break up with her, (this is a trivial, and silly request, but if she can't do that, what about the stuff that matters, you know?), but I don't want to break up with her right now, or anytime soon really... Well, anyway, just a few drunken thoughts. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, March 6th, 2009
6:33 pm	I lost my music for orchestra right before the concert yesterday, leading to me improvising/playing from memory my entire part. Needless to say, I sucked. On that basis, I decided to resign my chair, as it were. I'm thinking that Lindberg will drop taylor in my place for the last concert. She seems interested, and I'd be down with that since I"m not a huge gershwin guy anyway. In the future, my plan is to memorize all of my music for every ensemble I'm in. Since I might not be in any ensembles in the future, this might not be a difficult plan to execute. Still, I"m pretty disappointed with myself. Apparently christy has been sleeping (in the literal, not synonymic , sense) with her ex-boyfriend. I had mixed feelings about this, because from that I kind of got the vibe that she wasn't that in to our relationship. Since the reasoning here is kind of obtuse, I guess I felt like sleeping with there ex is not something that people who are really into other people do all that often. I talked to Christy about it for a while, and I guess she felt like it was alright because I wasn't offering that much in terms of long term commitment anyway. I'm not terribly jealous, it's just like... if she's not that into it, and I'm not that into it, and we're both going to be 2000 miles apart for most of the time while we're dating, then what am I doing in a relationship with her. She's been very sweet, and offered to fly me out to arizona next week, which is an offer I'm taking her up on. I feel like I should recap her on at least some of the costs, but I really don't have money for that kind of a journey on hand. Once I'm there, I guess I'll talk things over some more, meet her ex, and figure out which direction I want our relationship to go in. I got one hour of sleep last night due to I.S. last night: however, I'm done with my draft. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, February 16th, 2009
12:02 am	I spend allot of time feeling sad, sometimes I see the world is beautiful, but that thought always leads me to sadness. Aimee left the internet, that makes me sad, because she was one of the best things on the internet. I looked forward to hearing her insane comments the same way one looks forward to reading a webcomic. But since she's gone, I'm appropriating the name "liverjournal". (Comment on this)
Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009
3:33 pm	Killing yourself over Ashley Bain is almost as stupid as it sounds. As I look back on my life, I will always marvel that that was what I almost did. Of course, as usual, I defend the idea of feeling intense emotions as necessary for any real artistic spirit. (I would rather feel a range of emotions than feel nothing), I cannot help but think that music, more than anything else, has the power to drive one to insanity. I don't know, sometimes, whether I'm reaching for something which is eternally beyond my grasp, a set of feelings which I imagine others to have, but never feel myself or if I feel these same things, and simply express them in a way atypical. Evidence would suggest the second option, that I am human but do not know how to behave in any normal way. Sometimes, though, I ere too much on the side of caution and find myself alone. I am either too boring or too random for most people, who most of all value consistency, and therefore never really know me, or rather I might say that there are only a few who do. Those of have been my friends and acquaintances since time Immemorial. I am frustrated that people do not try and understand me, maybe they do, and there exists no reason for effort (but I sincerely doubt this). I am not always an interesting person, I do however, from time to time do interesting things. But really, I behave as though I am the sort of person that only I would be interested in, and don't bother to conform to the expectations of others with regard to human behavior. I don't really try to understand others either, so I probably have no right to complain on this subject. It is possible that I am beyond comprehension, and I have made such claims in the past to many of my lovers, (who would say that there are moments when they do not know me). I failed, people in the group of antagonists still won't talk to me, in spite of my insistence to the contrary. This is the same as killing someone in my mind, an equivalence that is lost on most people. So I offered them the chance kill me, to see if it would further things. The result was further friction within the antagonists and between me and the antagonists, and the somewhat unsurprising discovery that most of them don't conceptualize death in the same way that I do. One of them offered to meet with me, and then didn't show up. Sometimes I think I should kill them back, you know metaphorically speaking, but it's a futile gesture since I am already dead... and it's not in my nature. My nature is to seek compromise, and to fully withdrawl from someone's life is more difficult in a small school than one would think, I'd have to give up many things that I love. Most notably this would involve quitting my job as a grader, which would be an inconvenience of sorts, since I grade one of their number for multivariate calculus. This guy's a bastard who has every intention of killing me, I hate him the most, as it would happen, much more than the others, which makes grading his homework more difficult, although my work is always just. Other's don't seem to see this aspect of his character, which makes my hatred all the more vehement, but since it's only been expressed towards me, I don't find this surprising. I was bullied in elementary school, and to some extent I'm being bullied in college, although it takes a different from. But when I was young I always found a way to make peace with my enemies, and many of them became my friends. It saddens me that this should not be so now. It is well commented upon that people lose integrity as they age, but I cannot say that I did not try, thus the unwillingness exists with the other party. It seems to me that people are bastards the world over, but those who won't be bothered to talk are the worst. Current other music: this is creepy but great Current Music: the eighties (Comment on this)
Friday, January 30th, 2009
9:14 pm	Sometimes I feel like I'm dead already. I have to keep going though, see this through some how. I've let go of all my desires, and once I did that, I found I had no will to finish my I.S. all I really wanted to do was music, something that I wasn't very good at either doing or organizing. I want to be a composer, I feel like I have good ideas floating around in my head, but I can't find the will to actualize those ideas. I can't be a one man show either. I've tried, but I'm not good enough to both play the piano and sing at the same time. I have to do them separately, and I feel like with time and music I could write stuff for a band to play, but I need to get a band together to do it first. I'm going to try, although it will probably be a disaster, that's fine. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, January 28th, 2009
9:30 am	What if Merlin put the sword in the stone, intending that no-one could pull it out, and when Arthur did he just went with things as best he could? A zen master once told me that sympathy was just as destructive a force as hatred. I spent much of my life trying to prove her wrong, but increasingly it becomes clear to me that she was right. That is all. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, January 15th, 2009
4:50 pm	I'm hungry. I'll use that as a starting point. It seems I can never find anything worth eating in the cafeteria, except grilled cheese sandwitches and spaghetti. Sometimes I think about giving up the whole vegetarian thing while I'm here simply so I won't be hungary all the time. I sometimes suspect that I have a naturally small stomach, as I feel full easily, and yet always feel hungary again after four or five hours. I sense, that in my own internal cycle, I'm best having four meals a day, instead of the two that I usually consume. The college student diet is essentially: Lunch, Dinner, 'Midnight-eating'. And lately my tendency is towards that model. I don't wake up early enough to eat breakfast, but I"m not sure that I'd want to if I did anyhow. I'm going back to the first meal-plan for the sake of variety, so that I eat breakfast in the cafeteria, although I'm not sure that this is a good idea, as now I am accustomed to not eating breakfast, if possible, or just grabbing food from the snack bar (off the flex-dollar system) and eating it throughout my morning lectures. I should probably just start eating two dinners, one at 5:00 and one at 7:30, but even this is inconvenient, as the periods are not quite far enough apart. I sometimes don't feel human, other times I do. I think, that actually how human I feel depends on my abilities to interact with other people. To find common interests and the like, as if my validation process is really just comparing myself to others, in order to "match shapes" essentially. A square looks like other squares, a human looks like other people. My international finance class has 2 (3?) people in it. Today there was just two. The professor isn't very good, but the subject matter is fascinating, so I intend to keep up in the course, as basically all we seem to do is read articles about trade theory. More on this later, I basically spend most of the time fantasizing about having sex with the asian student in the class, and then make up crass answers when called upon. The professor seems to think that I have an intimate knowledge of the global financial system, and would, for example, know about things like whether Argentina had a currency crisis in the last 20 years (I think it has, but am too lazy to check). I had more thoughts, but I'll continue them later. (Comment on this)
Thursday, January 1st, 2009
11:02 pm	fuck you very much serotonin After I spend a while talking to people, I feel inexplicably dirty on the inside, but I feel even worse after I spend a while hanging around people and not talking to them. Most people complain that there's not enough angst in society right now, but increasingly my thought is that there isn't nearly enough. I want to say I don't care about people's lives very much, this is not true, but I don't care for story telling of the form "I saw this", "I did this" "I lived this way". The new years party was awesome for about 3 hours. Those were the three hours where matt lachance was there, confirming, in my mind, my theory about group social dynamics. Ted want's me to go out drinking, but I don't have the energy to go. I'm not tired, I'm not alcohol adverse, I just don't want to talk to anyone right now. My thoughts are fairly scattered. I want to hug people, that was the only part I liked, When I tried to get people to have a hug fight. I should organize one some time. Sorry, all right... I used to have friends. Now everyone seems hollow, and I was trying to think of the games we once played, but then I realized that those games weren't actually that fun, and were often just excuses to say the word "penis". Truthfully, I only want to hear one script: 1. My life sucks, I loved these people, and they loved me, but fate threw us apart. 2. Let's have a hug fight. 3. Let's strip naked and swim in the river. 4. Let's light stuff on fire. 5. Let's watch all of hamlet while sleep deprived. 6. Let's say goodbye until the new years brings us together once again. That would be a party. And there was some of 2 with the dance (to swan lake with a bodhran), But I can't open enough to be 1, not audacious enough to suggest 3. Not spontaneous enough for 4. Not charismatic enough for 5. And 6, people dissipate and leave me alone, and I don't care that their gone, because their just the same as me only with different experiences. What happened to the me that wasn't lame. I'm worried that it's all serotonin shit with new relationships and christy, at which point it will wear off in a month or so, but maybe I'm just growing up. I don't want to go back to wooster, I don't want to leave ann arbor again. To any that might read this, here are the things I should have said. Aimee: Excellent work, I'm sorry I wouldn't buy you booze to escape the social awkwardnesses of Laura's party, but really I had faith that you could make things work for you. Matt: You're really excellent, and you know that, that's probably why your depressed, your problems are my own on a higher level, but I see why you left, but all you have to do is start afresh. You'll go a long, long ways, if you keep that in mind. Nick: You're the perfect host, the difficulty lies in finding the perfect people do go along with you. Also, as you anticipated, in planning activities for people to do, which is essential in a non-alcoholic party. I guess we should have had sledding, oh well. Matt +Rebbecca: You've been coupled enough that I can treat you as a unit, despite being clearly different people. I think you have feelings though, secretly, and I want to know what they are. YOU ARE NOT ROBOTS, yet. Kevin: Hanging out and talking is an art/sport which you positively dominate, but you need a worthy opponent. This will always be a challenge for you. Hallie: Yeah, glad you came, sad you missed the bulk of the fora. Simon: You're pretty excellent, It's weird, but I feel like you, while not having much individual flavor, are somehow essential to any good party, Molly: Be careful not to care, But sometimes you must ask questions, not just answer them. Christy: You're fun to make out with, but sometimes you say things that are not neccessary and sometimes you say things that are not necessary enough. Sheila: You're pretty excellent, I probably won't see you again, and never did to begin with. Alex: You're pretty strange, people don't understand you, but the problem isn't that you're strange, so much as you expect people to see the things you see, when they're really invisible thoughts picked up only by you. You sometimes think speaking isn't necessary at all, and so when you do your explaining, it comes out in punchlines that no-one laughs at, because they can't see that the only joke you care about is reality. Goodnight moon goodnight loon. Current Mood: chartreuse Current Music: Ben Folds- Fred Jones pt. 2 (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, December 27th, 2008
10:12 pm	I really should post an entry, I don't exactly know where to start. The day after I made may my rather long post on love and my own loneliness, A girl asked me out. That's not exactly what happened, I guess she asked me to kiss her, although that's not quite what happened either. Maybe I should say what happened precisely, because it was kind of cute. I was half-jokingly suggesting that I would try to manipulate her into making out with one of my friends (nick davenport) to test certain contract theory based theories of romance (as previously expounded upon), she replied that she wasn't down with the idea of being manipulated into making out with people but then added "I wouldn't mind it if you manipulated me into making out with, say, you". I responded by doing something that was needlessly cruel, I kissed her, took my bike out of her van, and walked in-side. That was the plan anyway, but remembering that I left helmet in her car, I went up and told her I would call her later to talk about things. Later, when I realized that she would probably be freaking out about this, I made the second post here, which I thought would be re-assuring to her for reasons that are unclear to me at this point (in the meanwhile, I was trying to find her phone-number so I could call her and talk about things would go). In essence, I got really nervous that she was feeling very nervous, but instead she was fine until I said I wasn't... so much for predicting people. Things are going pretty well at this stage. I like her, she's pretty cute, and with a few modifications could be really cute. She also seems to be fairly intelligent, with a proclivity for and interest in abstract argument. Weirdly, she doesn't come across this way at first blush, probably because she tends to giggle and smile allot in conversation. (At some point I intend to write a pamphlet on how to make others think you're intelligent, the first rule will be never, ever, seem happy; intelligent people are not happy.) At first I was hesitant to commit to a relationship beyond the month while I was in town. I made it seem like I was afraid of developing a permanent distance relationship and I wouldn't know where I would be after I graduated. I was lying, I haven't been afraid of distance in the past, and I'm not now. I had two reasons for not committing, one of which was that I still hadn't figured out what my feelings toward her were. The second, less obvious reason, was that I could seriously forsee the possibility of suicide once I returned to wooster, although this possibility was small, say under 3%. Since we've started going out, I haven't had a single depressive episode, and I think the probability is closer to 0% now. Much as with ashley, I didn't want her to develop an emotional connection with a depressive, but at the same time was hesitant to push her away, when her presence was instrumental in lessening the severity and frequency of my depressive episodes. I now know how I feel about her, I like her very much, and hope this continues for some time to come. Christy, I hope you can forgive me for lying to you earlier, and for saying this here instead of when we were together yesterday, it was what was on my mind, and you were right to ask, but I found it a thousandfold easier to kiss you than to admit that I had deceived you on this count... my apologies, Current Music: the poet and the pendulum (Comment on this)
Monday, December 15th, 2008
6:51 pm	I calmly walked inside, smiling as is usual, and promptly freaked out. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
12:35 am	love, is at best a strange endeavor. I'm pretty stoned right now, but not the good kind of stoned. Brain-dead is a more accurate term, it's the way my family describes it. Since I got home on friday I've probably played at least 26 hours of civilization II, and an additional 5 hours of Master of Orion, the result is that I feel sleepy, and all my reflexes and thoughts are dulled down. I should drink some chartreuse or something until I feel more in the zone for a post, but that would probably keep me up longer than I would like to be. I'm unable to really describe all the things that are on my mind, many of them are vaguely complicated. I watched an episode of voyager where janeway makes out with a hologram. My roommate hooked up with this really hot girl, who he subsequently decided was too crazy to keeping up a relationship with. I'm not really sure what hot women find attractive in him, he must be charismatic, but I can't quite see it. Then again, most people who others describe as charismatic seem boring to me. Nick and Aimee broke up, but not really, but actually they did. I should handle each of these things in different paragraphs. The episode where janeway makes out with a hologram was one of those "lets have a character development episode that claims to have purpose by having a vague philosophical undercurrent with the holodeck". Most holodeck episodes vehicles for exploring questions of "what is real?" This one focused on the question, "when is love real?" The moral, in this case, was that love was real because it took place between relatively immutable people. Although real lovers frequently try to change each other, love is needed because this is difficult, and so one cannot feel real love to a hologram, because you can change it at will. But if you deny yourself access to it's personality sub-routines, then it's fine to love a hologram, because they become real. I totally would like to hook up with someone like that, but it's one of those things that will probably not happen, because, well, I can't even conceive of how to begin doing something like that. Watching that whole thing develop was interesting, because it was reminiscent of what happened with ashley last year. He figures out, through her friends, that a girl he's attracted to is really attracted to him, and torn between going after him, and remaining faithful to a distance relationship. His solution was to force a result in order to figure out where she stood on things. But here our histories diverge considerably. Before something can happen, her relationship with her boyfriend is terminated, (it isn't clear who ends it). Later, he is able to make a move, and they have random, assumably, hot sex. Then he goes out and wanders around and talks with her, and when I talk to him the next day, he's decided that he doesn't want to try and make a thing of this because she's crazy, but won't get into specifics as to how (not to say I pressed him, I was distracted with packing at this point). Fuck it, I'm having a drop of chartreuse. (for those of you who don't know, chartreuse is my favorite green 110 proof liquor). That's better, anyway, I'm being angsty because I don't have winning ways with the women. In fact, I tend to have foot-in-the-mouth ways with the women. Perhaps, I felt annoyed because it highlights my own sense of sexual inadequacy, which is why I've been playing civ II for the better part of the last few days. Although I'm a l from being a male model, I'm not terrible to behold. I'm not obese, I have a full head of hair, I even have a pretty functional six-pack on good months (which this one is not). I work out regularly, I'm intelligent, musical, and trained in economics, which has the highest earning potential of any undergraduate degree offered at wooster. On the other hand, I'm slightly hunchbacked, with protruding eyes and an overlarge mouth, I'm depressed allot, and would rather talk about math problems than things most women are interested in, there could be other things I don't know about, do I have a speaking disorder? it's conceivable that I do, and nobody would tell me this because they'd assume I'd know. Lately, my conversational skills have been sucking. Well, that's enough of that for right now, Nick and Aimee. I needed to talk about this last week, while it was still fresh in my mind, now I'm too far removed to give a good analysis. Aimee does not feel strongly attracted to nick right now. Her main reason for thinking this is that her homosexual side has become dominant, and she no longer has strong heterosexual feelings. However, she also has a weird celebrity crush on philip seymour hoffman, who, last I checked, was a man. So, that hypothesis, by her own admission, has poor explanatory power. Her better hypothesis as to the source of these feelings is that she is re-casting her self in a role for which is inherently more masculine, and which is not a role that nick can play opposite of. How do you play opposite something like that. I don't know what's going on here, Both aimee and nick seem to say that aimee has been pushing nick to pick up "a bit on the side" or someone else to be involved in at grinell/(or now) wesleyan. The part of me that's trained in economics and is driven to look at everything in terms of contract theory says that aimee is subconsciously testing nick's worth by seeing if he can pick another girlfriend if allowed to do so. Unfortunately, this is not in Nick's nature at all, so the logical result should be this semi-but-not-really-a-relationship in which Nick is given some degree of romantic freedom and Aimee watches the result of his efforts, if he actually gets around to making any, which given nick's way of proceeding is unlikely. But usually when I try to apply contract theory to romance, I fall flat on my face. And so, I wouldn't put much stock in that analysis. Given aimee's openness about her personality, what's more likely is what she said at the time. That she still felt a strong emotional attachment to nick, but for reasons she didn't understand, no longer felt a physical attraction, and was hoping that he might smoothly transition into dating someone else at Wesleyan. Sometimes people stop liking other people, and questions of why become rather difficult to answer. Shoshi stopped being attracted to me (maybe had to do with me no longer being an emotional support), I stopped being attracted to hallie (maybe had to do with hallie demanding more of my time than I could give), erica stopped being interested in ted (I have no idea why this is true, so many women I know are attracted to ted, maybe has to do with her radically changing her life emphasis and dumping older elements from her days as a nerdy mathematician), and Aimee lost interest in Nick (probably because nick wouldn't have good stage chemistry with the person she wants to become). This is pretty long, clearly I don't have any answers. Goodnight. Also, there's going to be a party. (1 Comment |Comment on this)