I finally believe in god, one god. Mr god.

Love, games

My brother lamented to me when he first got married that there are few good two-person games. Most fun games are ideally suited for four players.

Risk and Monopoly especially are not made to be played with only two players, at least if these two players have to live and interact with each other once the game is finished. Both games involve the complete obliteration of the opponent while the other has everything. There is no near-winning in two-player Monopoly and Risk; the scales at the end are intentionally unbalanced.

There are some games, however, that are suitable, even enjoyable, for two players. Canasta, for instance, is a fantastic game for two. My favorite way to play is still with four players, but the two-player variation is enjoyable. Stratego is another good two-player game, and ofcourse Pass the pigs.

Happy Birthday to Irna, it's her 20th this year, I wish her all the best in her future undertakings.

Menacing Glare

Do click for a better view, but this was what I received recently from an concern friend. I do not know where to begin. You would think that would be written for me, but it isn't. I'm sure many of you would know now, because news travel fast, faster than the usual internet connection.

Like I mention before, in my older posts, I do loathe social networking sites. You know when you feel something, you will always relate it to a song and currently 'Mario's I don't wanna know' is on repeat in my head.

Holy Mike Ditka!

Okay, I am being lazy. Really lazy. I have all the time in the world to write, but I'm spending it playing Football Manager. And occasionally I go outside to play frisbee. But you get the point. I am useless. I can't even persuade anybody to give me a job. I'm employable. I'm fun to be around. Seriously. I am. Fuck you. I am. But nobody wants to pay me money to work for them. I'm sure there are some companies who would take me on, but I don't want to go back to being a rent-boy again, and I sure as hell ain't working in no McDonald's. Anyway, the point is that I need you snivelling rats to help me get back to writing.

So help me out, and comment some ideas

Wed

Someone voted no? Why?

Well it’s been a while since I updated this so I reckon it’s about time or should I begin ranting on Facebook? Or perhaps cease my ranting in general and merely moan in the direction of friends?
How convenient, just a day after promising the possibility of some kind of mild peril, I was in fact placed in such a situation. I realise that todays events we're particularly mild but no-one can deny that there was peril involved.

NYE

Coma

You know when your life relates to a song that your life is not authentic. Oh ye, floodgates. I just realized I will be the world's most loneliest person.

When I would refuse to eat my peas, when I thought my parents were displaying exceptional cruelty by taking me to a Thai restaurant, when I was forced to try hummus in my childhood and bought junk food to cover up the taste, whenever adults would tell me that my tastes would change and my palate develop. I thought the notion ridiculous. I was pretty sure this was the same from birth to adulthood. Well, it's true. Tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, onions, and yes, even hummus; all of these are among what often makes it on my plate. If young me could see current me and the things I like to eat, he would be disgusted at the betrayal.

At Christmas time, I think especially of the song "Little Drummer Boy." The first time I heard the song, I cried. It was so beautiful to me. A little boy, having nothing to offer the baby Jesus, plays him a song on his drum, the only means by which he can pay tribute to the Messiah. I think I recognized a kinship between me and the little drummer boy. Fifty cents or a bucks' worth of allowance doesn't buy a good present for a parent, let alone tribute worthy of the king of the universe. As a child, I think I understood these terms (I may just be reading adult reflections into my childhood). In any case, I loved hearing the song.

Now, I think it's kitsch. Overly sentimental, saccharine kitsch. If Thomas Kincade painted a song, it would be "Little Drummer Boy."

Damned

things in my room which piss me off

- The empty box of M&Ms in which I placed two discarded smarties bag earlier this week. It sits by my desk, marginally ajar, and every time I catch a glimpse of it out of the corner of my eye, I think it still has M&Ms in it. I get all excited, then discover very quickly that you have to be a total moron to mistake a rubbish for a M&Ms. The upshot is that I acquire a strong craving for chocolate.

Solution: write a reminder to buy more M&Ms when I next go shopping

- The perpetual absence of paper/notepad that makes it impossible for me to write any reminders to myself. I always dump it in the dining room. Which means that I would have to go all the way downstairs to make a note of whatever is on my mind, by which time I will almost definitely have forgotten what it was.

Solution: invest in a home tattoo parlour so I can scrawl important things on my body

- The lack of a bin. (I acknowledge that neither this, nor the paper-problem, really counts as a ‘thing in my room’, but in an abstract way, it is possible to argue that a notable absence can subsist, in a sense, so I’ll pretend to believe that, for the sake of preserving my integrity). I hate not having a bin. Emptied canned drinks and M&Ms boxes are strewn across my floor, half-filled with all the rubbish that I never want to see again. They look forlorn and abused. It depresses me.

Possible solution: n/a

- That god-damned spider. He hasn’t grown at all since I let him stay, and moth season is fast-approaching. He’s such a wank. I hate him.

Solution: make a human friend, then use him/her to kill all the moths and eat the spider

- The ever-growing pile of clothes that is wedged between the end of my bed and the wall. Most of the clothes are clean. Every day, I lift them from the floor on to my bed, in the vain hope that, by the time I want to go to sleep, I’ll have done something about them. Over the course of the day, the pile grows – sometimes by just a few items, other times with a whole wash-load of clean, dry garments. Sometimes, I try to tidy them away into a cupboard. With little success. I’m like Achilles trying to catch the tortoise: no matter how much headway I make into the mountainous heap, it will always grow a little bit more, forever keeping me from completing the job. Every night I shove the mound back off the edge of my bed, then lie back for an hour or so in order to think of a practical way of solving the problem.

Solution: wear all of my clothes each day

- The nocturnal woodpecker-ghost who lives in my wardrobe. When I rest my head to get some well-deserved and disturbingly weird dreams at the end of a long day, he wakes up and gets into action, tapping away like a madman. With all that racket going on, I stand no chance of getting to sleep. Grumpily, I slither out of bed, whack on the light, and seek out the source of the sound. Of course, the pecking stops when I get out of bed so, after a quick search, I optimistically return to the comfort of my duvet and shut my weary eyes.

And he starts again. Tap-tap-tap-tap-fucking-tap. The second time, I’m feeling pretty riled, so I stand around waiting for the sound to start again after I turn the light on. I can hear it faintly, but then it suddenly dies down again as the woodpecker becomes aware of my presence. So I turf out my entire wardrobe, taking care to put all the clothes in a neat pile at the end of my bed, but he’s nowhere to be seen. I fail to return the clothes to the wardrobe. Eventually, they join the stack.

The third time, I lie still for a while, trying to ascertain exactly where the sound is coming from. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that it is the god-damned wardrobe. It simply has to be.

I give it a few more minutes, just to be sure, but still the wardrobe remains the only candidate. Furious and bemused, I get up one last time, just to scour the now-empty wardrobe one last time, and still I find nothing. Exasperated, I collapse onto the mattress, flick the light-switch, and shove my fingers in to my ears in a show of resignation. It takes me a good hour, from that point, to get to sleep, as it is hard to get comfortable with your hands on either side of your head, it transpires.

Every god-damned night. Woodpeckers are rubbish, and ghosts are even more pointless and annoying than mosquitoes and my mum.Which begs the question: why? And why me?

Solution(s): learn witchcraft or kill self

The secret I have not told anyone before

I am now going to tell you a secret that I have never told anyone.

The train from Cambridge to London was delayed by twenty minutes, so I wandered off to the far end of the platform, where I could eat my burger in peace. Naturally, time flew, and before I knew it, the train was pulling up to the station.

In a rush, I grabbed my bags and walked briskly to join the small queue of people waiting to board the last carriage. I was the last person to alight the train, and as I entered the carriage, I realised that I was in the Quiet Zone, in which audio players are forbidden. I didn’t stand a chance of surviving the whole journey without any music, so I headed forward to make my way down the train. Sadly, there was no thoroughfare through the carriage as there were too many people in the aisles, sorting out their gear and casting magical spells prohibiting me from passing, probably. I made a hasty retreat and set my bags down by the train door, planning to wait patiently for the people to take their seats so I could walk through and into another carriage. Unfortunately, the longer I waited, the more awkward it would have felt to start walking through, and the longer they took to take their seats, the longer I had to wait. Sighing, I leaned my body against the wall and strained to hear How To Disappear Completely.

The compartment was very loud, and the music was barely audible over the top of all the noise, which ultimately negated the whole point of not sitting in the Quiet Zone, but by now it had become a matter of principle. There were still many spare seats in that carriage, but there was no way I was going to give in to their evil will and endure 50-odd minutes of purgatory in the company of weirdos and second-rate businessmen who can’t afford Bose headphones. After about half an hour of standing around, shifting my weight from my left foot to my right foot and back again to stave off leg-cramp, I saw the ticket inspector making his merry way through the Quiet Zone. I fumbled for my wallet and removed my ticket in eager anticipation of his imminent request to see it. He came through the door, and I smiled at him as I handed him my ticket. He said something to me.

“Sorry,” I replied, pointing at my ears: “Daft Punk.”

A stern look crossed his face, and he began to talk again. I already knew that this guy was going to be nothing but trouble, but I decided to humour the fascist jackass, so I removed my earphones and asked him, politely, to repeat himself.

“I need to see your Young Persons’ Rail Card, please sir,” he said.

The bastard was obviously trying to catch me out. “Oh, of course – here you are,” I responded, in a snide manner.

He nodded when he saw it, then asked me: “You do know that there are loads of seats still free, right? You don’t have to stand here if you don’t want to. I’m sure you’d be more comfortable – why don’t you go find yourself a seat?”

I sighed melodramatically. “You wouldn’t understand.”
Clearly unwilling to just let me be, he quickly retorted, “Why don’t you explain to me, then?”
Oh sure, you’d love that, wouldn’t you? You reactionary tit, I thought to myself. “Oh sure, you’d love that, wouldn’t you? You reactionary tit,” I said out loud.

He looked taken aback. “I’m sorry, sir?”

“Damn straight you are.”

“What?” He looked angry. I was certain that he was about ready to have me chucked off the train and fined, so my mind raced to find a way to squirm out of this situation. I know, I thought, I’ll pretend to be foreign, and I’ll just blame the language barrier. The plan was ingenious.
“Je m’excuse, my anglais is not so good.” I stuttered, in a perfect french accent.

He looked suspicious. Worse, he started to spout a bunch of incomprehensible jargon in my direction. Suddenly, it clicked, he was a french-speaker. Of all the shitty luck, this guy was clearly out to get me, and would stop at nothing to see me crash and burn. I really hated him.

The way I saw it, I had two options. I could either admit that I lied about being French( well kinda) , apologise to him, and take a seat in that vile Quiet Zone, or I could try and get out of it by faking my own death.

I really don’t fucking like Quiet Zones, so I let out a gasp and clutched my breast, breathing a melodramatic “Mon Coeur, mon Coeur, it hurts.” I let my knees buckle and I collapsed to the floor, trying to make it look like my body was having spasms. Lying there, I struggled to remember why on earth I had ever thought that this would be a good idea. I presumed that I had probably hoped that me dying would have made him feel uncomfortable so he would leave and go and pester some other passenger, but this racist zealot just wasn’t going to leave me alone, and I knew it.

Now, only one choice remained. Insulting a ticket inspector, lying about your nationality and trying to fake your own death in order to make him go away are exactly the kinds of things for which those Nazist train officials would fine me, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to pay no god-damned fine. So I killed him by whacking him with a copy of War and Peace, then I stowed his body in the toilet, which I duly guarded until the train reached my stop. I disembarked the train, when it reached the station, with a victorious smile on my face, and a bloodied hardback in my hand. It was another good day. Absolutely everything in this blog entry, except for this sentence, is completely true.

:)

Guide to being depressed

I read somewhere, though I can’t remember where, that a startlingly high proportion of bipolar-disorder-sufferers would not want to be cured of their illness, were there a cure available. Whether or not this is actually true, the fact remains that people love being depressed – it’s a form of self-indulgence that, for some reason, makes people want to empathize with you. It’s like having your cake and eating it. It is also a fact that people are fascinated by depressed people. Life is all about being popular. Nothing else matters. If you’re unpopular, your only hopes of salvation are to either create an army of loyal robot-friends, or become depressed. Every tortured soul longs to have bipolar disorder, but if you are one of the unfortunate people who does not bask in the odious self-importance, self-obsession and self-pity of clinical manic-depression, then you are going to need to look into regular depression as a means of justifying your inability to deal with any problem in a mature manner. Because I am such a god-damned nice guy, I’ve decided to take the liberty of writing a guide for you boring, socially-inept morons who wish to be dealt a new hand in the game of life. You can thank me with cash.

1) Develop a vice. Womanising; heroin; alcoholism; untrustworthiness; insomnia; seemingly-insurmountable existential angst; self-harm; gambling; psychotic urges: befriend one, or more, of these devious fellows, immerse yourself in it, then overcome it. It is very important to conquer your vice – to some degree at least – because most people are total wankers when they are snared in the clutches of a destructive habit, and the self-righteousness that comes with defeating a serious problem makes you appear confident, strong, and intelligent, even when you’re still a shell of a human being on the inside. It is also important, if you plan on choosing more than one vice, to opt for problems which complement one another. Psychotic urges combined with a heroin addiction, for example, is not a winning combination. Seemingly-insurmountable existential angst and alcoholism, on the other hand, join together to form a potent aphrodisiac. Throw in an interest in writing pretentious poetry, and you’ve got yourself a winning ticket in the popularity lottery. There is no rigid formula to ascertain which combination will work and which won’t, but it’s kind of like feng shui – you just know when you’ve got it right.

2) Depression makes you appear more interesting and, so long as you can acquire the label ‘self-destructive’ without actually destroying yourself, you are going to become popular. I have no idea why. Even if you do destroy yourself, you’ll still amass a following of teeny, wannabe-depressives, but dying young is severely overrated, so I’d recommend avoiding that. /completely irrelevant and cringe-inducing quote alert/ “dream as if you’ll live forever, live as if you’ll die today.” This transition from ‘loser with good health and a secure career ahead of him’ to ‘damaged pottery that inexplicably finds itself in high demand at auction’ can be somewhat confusing, and it is crucial not to let it get to your head. Keep yourself in check by developing an inferiority complex and regularly banging your head against walls.

3) Prepare yourself – being depressed is not all plain-sailing. Recent studies have shown that very few people are aware of the dietary requirements of wallowing in a state of angst-ridden inertia. Eating disorders are not kosher, but occasionally skipping meals because you’re too upset to eat is an absolute must for all wannabes. You must also take great care not to eat a proper meal more than twice a week – from now on, jacket potatoes and baked beans are the manna and quail in your lonely desert. (Which reminds me, dessert is well and truly off the menu – only real winners eat more than one course. You are not a real winner, otherwise you wouldn’t have needed to get depressed in the first place. You’ll get over it.) This is not easy to deal with, and you will have to quickly grow accustomed to the intrusive sound of your stomach rumbling at inopportune moments if you want to succeed. Moreover, there are certain food groups which are entirely inedible to people with depression. Anything that has been stored in a jar, for example, will now be poisonous to you. Fortunately, the government has intervened to force companies who provide food in jars to label the lid with a warning (or ‘safety button’, if you want the technical term): “Reject if depressed.” This should help keep you safe from a potentially fatal surprise.

4) Ditching those loser-friends who stood by you through thick-and-thin is essential, but be sure to hold on to any friends who are well-connected to attractive people – you can’t do it all on your own, so you have to pick the right people to use as social leg-ups to get you to the promised land of admiration and empathy. Networking is definitely not cool, so you have to be as subtle as possible in your approach. Frequently harping on about how much you hate people and how little you want to socialise has been scientifically proven to be a very effective means of blinding people to your social leeching, but take care to avoid coming across as a whinging hermit, or nobody will want anything to do with you. Fail, and you’ll have to start all over again at number 1, or else risk an awful life of contentment and productivity. Scared? You should be, you loser.

5) Invest in a tube of superglue in order to stick the tip of your tongue to the inside of one of your cheeks. Nobody likes happy-clappy born-again tossers. The smug bastards. Being embittered is crucial, and what better way to express it than with intellectual sarcasm? Irony and satire are your new weapons of choice, and if you don’t learn quickly how to use them, you’re absolutely fucked. If you aren’t witty or intelligent enough to work out how to do it yourself, then you need to drag your sorry ass to the couch in your living room and watch a whole weeks’ worth of sitcoms, then spend the rest of your life surreptitiously quoting and emulating them. You may not like the prospect of sacrificing your identity and selling out, but everyone else wants you to do it, and they’re all better people than you, therefore your views on morality are lame, and you must discard them accordingly.

6) Although any wannabe-depressive needs to own a blog, or some other form of public space in which to shamelessly seek attention, always keep in mind that it is a cardinal sin to post an entry on a Saturday night.

Ma-na-ma

The conversation is just a vessel for me to verbalise my own thoughts, not to share. Other people’s existential horror means nothing to me. It’s just a story, something to agree with and understand on an intellectual level. The only horror that really matters is my own.

Most people tend to brush death off with tired and ignorant cliches, I sometime stumble upon the chance to converse with another terrified human. And it happens all over again.

Mail Me

Since Aaron and his girlfriend moved into his apartment nearly a year ago, it has almost felt like there were three of them. There is always some evidence of the third tenant lying around, normally in the recycling pile. His name is Gavin.

Gavin does not forward his mail.

Gavin also has not changed his address with companies who may be trying to reach him, companies whom he may also have worked for. He doesn't get his magazines. He will miss his next dentist appointment. His investments may be flourishing or floundering, but he doesn't know. He will not be able to transfer his balances at 0% interest. Instead, his mail keeps filling the mail bin. It's true that Gavin has more friends than the Schindlers, and judging by his mail, it's easy to see why.

Gavin is what you'd call a man's man (or, in the subculture, "wild at heart"). Or he at least wants to be. Gavin, is almost a self-parody, exhibiting the qualities of the stereotype to such a degree that you wonder if his life is genuine. He receives muscle magazines and motorcycle magazines. Hunting magazines also started making an appearance, as did water sports magazines. Today he received a cigar magazine, one that arrives with less frequency than his other hobby manifestations. We get a picture of Gavin, the Harley handler, the Deerslayer, the jack of all trades who is everything to everyone. It almost makes us look cooler because of our association, albeit in mail only, with Gavin.

I wonder what people would say about me if they saw the kind of mail I receive. Then again, I don't receive mail.

My Secret

The Secret by Rhonda Byrne, is one of those books that came out of nowhere and became a self help sensation. Rhonda Byrne has made appearances everywhere from Oprah to signings at local bookstores to promote her little book of wisdom. I decided to check the book out and let me tell you, it has got to be one of the most shallow, self serving, pretentious, ego-maniacal books ever written.

The book is more or less about the "law of attraction", which is the belief that if you think positive thoughts good things will happen to you and if you think negatively, bad things happen to you. This book really tries to sell the law of attraction as an actual law of nature. Now I confess thinking positively will generally give you better results than thinking negatively, after all if you think you will fail chances are you really aren't giving it your all. This book however says that thinking positively is like a genie in a bottle where if you wish it and think positively enough you will get what you want. No work involved, just think positive and everything will fall into place! Hey it's a law of nature after all. So if I think positively enough I can fly just like Superman.

This book is littered with quotes from various other self help gurus which basically say how wonderful and amazing the Secret is. The quotes don't really don't say how wonderful a person you are. They also try and convince you how renown historical figures have used the secret for positive results, such as Einstein or Beethoven. Yes I'm sure Einstein must have been thinking positively that they wouldn't use his research to create an atomic bomb.

Rhonda Byrne even tries to rationalize disasters and tragedies. Here's a direct quote from her book.

"Often when people first hear this part of the Secret they recall events in history where masses of lives were lost, and they find it incomprehensible that so many people could have attracted themselves to the event. By the law of attraction, they had to be on the same frequency as the event. It doesn’t mean they necessarily thought of that exact event, but the frequency of their thoughts matched the frequency of the event. If people believe they can be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and they have no control over outside circumstances, those thoughts of fear, separation, and powerlessness, if persistent, can attract them into being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

If only those those Jewish people in Nazi Germany would have thought a little more positively perhaps the holocaust never would have happened. Rhonda Byrne is a LOON.

Another thing about the secret is how insane some of her theories are, such as her thoughts on weight gain.

"Food is not responsible for putting on weight. It is your thought that food is responsible for putting on weight that actually has food put on weight."

"Food cannot cause you to put on weight, unless you think it can."

I guess I can gorge myself on 300 cupcakes since it won't be the calories, it was just me thinking wrong way. Speaking of weight gain Rhonda Byrne also teaches us valuable lessons on how to better ostracize people who aren't of an ideal weight.

"Make it your intention to look for, admire, and inwardly praise people with your idea of perfect-weight bodies. Seek them out and as you admire them and feel the feelings of that-you are summoning it to you. If you see people who are overweight, do not observe them, but immediately switch your mind to the picture of you in your perfect body and feel it."

Yes instead of judging people on their own merits or personalities we should just go with their outward appearance.

I absolutely loathe this book and how anyone can see any kind of positive message in it is beyond my comprehension.

Facebook

Being derogatory towards Facebook is a lot like breathing, in the sense that everybody does it, but nobody does it as well as I do. And I hate the vast majority of people who do it.

Most Facebook whingers are the self-professed "random" or "totally mental" types who actually love Facebook with a passion, but want to look like they are so completely bonkers that they can't control their own actions.

I am yet to figure out precisely why people think that "randomness" is funny. Surrealism can be funny. I use it a lot. I am really funny. Surrealism is a lot like whinging about Facebook and breathing and shark-wrestling, in the sense that everybody does it, but nobody does it as well as I do.

I like certain elements of Facebook. It is useful for contacting groups of people in one go - for example, to invite them to a party, or to discuss housing arrangements, or arrange a terrorist attack, or whatever I do. It's funny how people regard a visit to an unfamiliar webpage as a journey. An undertaking that requires a concerted effort. It's no problem to browse Facebook aimlessly for hours on end, but by God, to redirect your browser to another webpage, well, that would involve expending a considerable amount of extra energy, both mental and physical.

So I am left with no choice but to update Facebook regularly, since I am too vain to pass up the opportunity for people to say stuff like "you are such a great writer that I am going to burn every other book in the world," or "I would jump on it in a flash, you rippling manstud," to me.

The way I see it, Facebook has only one more use than this. And it is really rather an important one.

It serves as a comprehensive directory of every single person on my "to kill before I hit twenty-three" list. A sort of checklist, if you will. Moreover, it also gives those people the perfect platform to justify my desire to terminate them.

Do you have multiple "Applications" on your profile? Then I am going to kill you.

You fill out chain-mail notes about the films you have watched?
Or a questionnaire about your sexual deviance?
Or your personality type? Or character? Or level of "randomness"?
You spit pop-philosophy and your friends think you're deep?
Then you're fucked.

You have a Facebook pet? Uh-oh.

You join groups that represent your ideologies and self-congratulate with all the other bastards on the wall, insulting opponents and slowly indoctrinating yourself with reactionary propaganda, failing at any point to examine counter-arguments?

You support really important Facebook-related causes such as the "how dare they charge us to send gifts those horrid capitalist bastards it should be free" group and add the "free-gift" application as an expression of your passionate support for civil liberties?

You think that "I hate you reactionary cunts, I am embarrassed to belong to the same species as you," does not suffice as a valid argument against you?

You'd best start writing a will.

You poke people? You're dead
You have the Graffiti wall? You're dead
You have the "X me" application? Why do you want me to kill you?
You have the Superpoke Application? That's kosher. I don't mind that.

You list every band you've ever heard of in your "favourite music" list to show off how hip you are? I hate you more than all of these subgroups. Having heard of a band is not something to be proud of.

Why would you think it was? Knowing obscure bands isn't an achievement.

Stop it. Please, stop it. Bang bang.

You list "random" quotes that you and your friends made on drunken nights out? Try: "Oh fuck, he has a knife, the psychotic bastard has a kn-AAAARRRRGHHH."You list movies and books you don't really like but that you think make you look more intelligent? You really love War and Peace? I'm not saying you shouldn't. Just that you don't.

You think Ayn Rand is a genius? There's no hope for you.

Endostory.

Rook

Bleary-eyed, the fan is buzzing over the soft piano tone that rings around the hall. Deep in thought, our protagonist is split between the decision of keeping the water running and calling it a 36-hour day sometime during the mid-afternoon, or falling asleep in a couple hours until the mid-afternoon. I look hipsterish enough [hipster = the pinnacle of douche-baggery]. A long-overdue trip to easy street records is in order. I like to think that I have my head screwed on straight, but I am capable of being vaguely self-destructive. I didn't get to sleep until about 4am, because not only was I sort of freaking out over something, I was proud of myself for keeping cool about for the past few days, but because I think I may have developed a slight dependency on her, although I’ve scaled down my dosages significantly.

Rook is one of the card games that my family played. While other families were playing the less-fun, easier, and generally worse Euchre, we were bidding, taking the nest, and sneaking the ill-omened rook card in for the greatest effect (because the rook card is, of course, the highest valued and least powerfuly trump). When discussing card games, I describe Euchre as wannabe Rook.

The worst in my grandma comes out when we play Rook. Rook turns my grandma, normally a sweet, harmless woman, into a vengeful, out-for-blood card shark. Once when I trumped her trick, she called me a louse, a remark that still burns to this day. And despite her being older, her mind is still sharp enough to consistently set her brash young grandson even when his bids are modest. Sigh.

Anyway, why talk about Rook? Because it has some of the best marketing copy ever. Seriously. I wish I could write like this (as you read, read with a raspy, dramatic voice):

"A Blaze of Lightning. A wind turned cold. Beware the power of the Rook. The eerie black bird can make all the difference. Four players (options for two, three, five, or six). Partner or not. You bid. You name trump. You take tricks (when you're lucky or smart). But beware the wild ROOK! When he lands, anything can change.

"A classic game. Easier than bridge. More challenging than Hearts. Custom-designed cards. Gorgeous. Perfect for a dark, stormy night. Bring home the ROOK card game and find out."

喜爱

Love, Inexorably

Why is it so hard to love and be loved?

I may be a bit all over the map. I'll try to stay on track, but if I don't, please forgive me; I really do try to have a destination sometimes.

I liked Spiderman 3... for the most part. It was not nearly as good as Spiderman 2 and not as good as Spiderman 1, but it was decent enough for a superhero movie. But right now my goal is not to examine its good and bad points. Rather, there was a strong theme throughout the movie, and this is it: love is strong enough. No, this is not some cheesy passionate love story about one man fighting his way through an impossible battle in order to rejoin his beloved. Rather, it is the force of a God-like love reaching to the unlovable and bridging the chasms that false loves create. At the end of the movie, when Spiderman forgives Sandman, you could cut the tension at my screening with a chainsaw (and the noise of said chainsaw would have been a welcome distraction).

Plain and simple, the act of forgiveness made people uncomfortable. "Wait, wasn't that guy just the size of a city block? Didn't he kill your uncle? Didn't he try to kill you? He deserves to die." And, granted, the rules in superhero movies hold unswervingly that he should've died (the exception here is in the Batman movies; in those, they just lock them up in an Asylum [because Gotham doesn't really have a prison, anyway]).

But Spiderman lets him escape. Spiderman gives him the opportunity for grace, and Sandman takes it. The love and forgiveness in this movie are not perfect. As my friend pointed out, no one in the movie ever apologizes for their actions; they just assume that everything is taken care of, and we as viewers are to assume the same. (This sort of thinking seems to support the love quote that drives me so crazy, "Love means never having to say you're sorry."

This is one of the most ridiculous love aphorisms I've heard, as love often means saying you're sorry more, and sometimes even when you are not at fault. :/



The great question that has never been answered, and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is "What does a woman want?" - Sigmund Freud

Pantsoffski

I should choose the right pair of pants.

You see, wearing the right pair of pants is an integral part of comfort, especially when traveling to a new place. I can't control weather conditions, or social conditions, or a number of other factors. But I can control which pants I wear. I have always been against sweatpants because of their promiscuity. Also, for some reason, I have this conviction that no one should be that comfortable in public--the comfort afforded by sweatpants, pajama pants or mesh shorts. I practice the same policy. So, keeping this in mind, I chose the perfect pair of pants: a brownish pair of cargo pants, thin and loose enough to be comfortable, but stiff and fitting enough to be acceptable on-the-town wear. The problem: a few small holes around the cargo pockets, exposing the larger pocket at my side.

When I was seated, I looked down at my pants and saw the hole on the cargo pocket glaring back at me. "Mik," I asked, "do you think these pants are too promiscuous?" He gave me one of those priceless Mik looks that made me feel stupid. "What do you mean?" he asked in his exasperated tone. "I mean this hole. If my pocket moves out of the way, you can see my boxers." "No, it's fine." "Ok."

So later, Jack came over because we were all going out to lunch before cs-ing. When we were leaving the house, Jack followed me out the door and said, "Hey man, uh, I can see your underwear." I said, "It's just a little hole. Mik said it wasn't a big deal," appealing to Mik's perceptive authority and offering the cargo pocket hole as evidence.

"No, man, I can see your underwear. You have a big hole in the back of your pants."

Sure enough, there was no seam holding my pants together. I felt back there. Aside from the feel of a different fabric, I could instinctively feel the blue heart-patterned peering from behind the incomplete brown shroud. I was embarrassed, and the prevailing sound (above my groans) was that of laughter. I changed my pants, but the damage was already done.

Regardless of how I tried to avoid it, I was Mr. Promiscuous Pants that day. But it's always this way: I always try to plan things down to the last contingency, but it never works. Instead of trusting God to provide for me, I decide to micromanage. And once again, in my efforts to avoid discomfort and embarrassment, I only end up more uncomfortable and embarrassed.

Oh well..

Tux Tux

I'm just going to come out and say it: I hate getting fitted for tuxedos. There are several things I hate about the experience.

Let me enumerate.
I hate the idea of getting fitted for a tux because it represents the flushing of money down the toilet--and lots of it, too. I am, essentially, paying alot to look pretty for a day (a feat which, regardless of the clothes,is easy ;p), after which time, I will have to return the clothes with nothing to show for the money except someone else's function's pictures. My mother suggested that, for as many function's as I've been in, I should just buy a new tuxedo. But the problem with that is a wedding is a girl's special day, and everything has to be just so. A guy showing up in his own tuxedo messes with the feminine order and sets off all sorts of alarms in the female mind, which is, at this point, thinking that the deviant groomsman will stick out like a sore thumb and ruin the whole day. She'll think of her wedding pictures and the off-color tux that will cause all future generations of her family to say, "Why is the negative always smudged over that guy?" I would become a figure of ridicule and also an object lesson. "You budge an inch, *insert person's name*, and look what will happen to your wedding. You'll end up with someone like that guy showing up and stealing the holiness out of the whole occasion." Also, at this point, I'm at the tail end of my matrimonial dealings; to buy a tux at this point would no longer be practical.

I also don't like getting fitted for tuxes for the same reason I don't like going shoe shopping: it is a visible reminder that, in the clothing realm, I fall into the category of freak. The people at Ermenegildo Zegna didn't know what to do with me. "Oh, you're so tall!" they said as they bustled around me, perspiring, muttering under their breath, "What are we going to do with you?" Well, they had me try on several different things--all of which, mind you, only brought out the freakish qualities of my appearance and made me feel like the things woven into my genetic code were the result of years and years of obstinacy, all the consequence of foresight in my looking forward to making their lives a living hell the moment I walked into their store. "That's too short; we need something longer." So they fetch something longer and I looked like a twelve-year-old boy in his father's closet. The women then bicker about how to hide my unsightliness. One of them says, "I'm glad I wore my high heels today!" They poke and press and order me around, taking measurements and then taking them again, making me feel like freight to be shipped rather than a human to be dressed.

With every flick of the pen as they write my measurements, I feel judged and evaluated solely on that basis, as my data will be transferred to their store's mainframe supercomputer where I am nothing more than another set of zeros and ones (except zeros and ones with larger proportions than the others).

I'm Glad That I'm Not Alone

I refer to my tendency to be disoriented in shopping environments. I was at the grocery store on tuesday night to refuel for dota, when I remembered that we were out of chocolates. I couldn't find the row for a while, but when I arrived, I saw several older men, just as disoriented as I was, meandering up and down the food storage aisle as if they were condemned to purgatory. The only way to atone for their sins would be to find the items they were looking for, a happy ending that did not seem on the horizon. No one was happy to be there. We were all drones, awaiting commands from the queen bee. Unfortunately, the source of the queen's commands is also what is causing so many bees to drop dead around the world. This only complicates things, as you can imagine. I joined in the dance and snatched some brand of chocolates, only to be disgusted at their price. I decided it would be more economical to buy cookies.

An experiment

I remember an experiment I tried years ago. It started in high school as an eccentricity and carried over into my first years in uni. Here was the deal:

People shook hands with me all the time, even when a handshake wasn't merited. It seemed like the handshake was an awkward space filler in conversation. The value of the handshake was at an all-time low. So my idea was, when someone tried to shake hands with me and a hearty handshake was not warranted, I would shake their hand with only two fingers. Each person with whom I shook hands in this way immediately knew that something was awry. I unapologetically offered a simple explanation: "The value of the handshake has gone down, and I am going to bring it back." Weird looks. Avoidance. But the point was made.

Over time, people just seemed to accept this quirk. I broke the experiment sometimes as necessary (for instance, job interviews and other venues where such treatment would be seen as disrespectful ["When in Rome..."]) or to demarcate special occasions: birthdays, weddings, funerals. But I stuck to my guns for the most part. And Truth (note the capital T) won out. One arbitrary day, I decided the experiment was over. I shook hands normally, and people noticed. In fact, to this day, I still sometimes receive comments like, "Wow! A real handshake!" (Granted, not as often as at first.) I'd like to take this response as a sign of success.
Why do I say this now?

There is a new--or, at least, unresolved--evil in our world: Gratuitous use of the exclamation point. (This post is not addressed against the occasional exclamation point user; please do not take this personally [unless, of course, you use exclamation points needlessly and this applies directly to you; in that case, please remove the 1 key from your keyboard and start using Roman numerals].) This evil is perpetuated by online communications, mostly, or by overenthusiastic people. I don't care who you are--life is not so exciting that every sentence merits an exclamation point.

However, even one exclamation point ending every sentence is not my main grievance. What has come about in our culture is the need to multiply exclamation points, making one exclamation point lose its purpose (to add special emphasis to a thought). An analogy will serve us well here: Years ago, on my Christmas lists, I used a star method to evaluate the want-level for certain items. A lego set might receive five stars, whereas the clothes my mother made me put on the list would receive one. Regardless, by using multiple stars on each item, all the stars lost their value, and I often wound up receiving sweaters (the bane of a young boy wanting to be "cool," especially when all his friends were getting Lego pirate ships and stuff).

A similar thing is happening with exclamation points: It is no longer enough to end a sentence with one exclamation point to show excitement. One exclamation point is viewed as humdrum. It elicits the response, "Oh, that bad, huh?" rather than, "I'm so happy for you^" With more and more exclamation points being necessary to show enthusiasm, I think we all can see where this is leading. Full pages eventually will be exclamation points following a single sentence, just so the reader is assured that the writer is, in fact, happy.

Therefore, I propose to no longer use an exclamation point unless it is merited. However, as this will make me appear cold (and I'm not), I propose to substitute the exclamation point of politeness (e.g., "Hello!" or "Have a great day!") with a new character: ^ (e.g., "Hello^" or "Have a nice day^"). Perhaps in this small way, I can undo the seemingly irreparable damage to our language.

Have a great day^ Use exclamation points responsibly!*