FUN TIMES FORCIBLY OUTDOORS...

      I feel like I should've written about this very soon after it had happened if only for clarity of memory but alas, I did not (also, I seem to be WAY behind posting the very few things I still do write for this blog!)

     Some weeks back, I was asked to come over early on a Friday to babysit Best Friend's daughter and I did, because I love that child dearly. The day looked to be nice weather-wise as well as humidity-wise (and finally too...this Summer had been so brutal!) so we filled up the kiddie pool outside in case the child wanted to play in it (SPOILER ALERT: she totally did want to).

      I was given a list of things to do with her to keep her occupied and told what foods to offer her for lunch when the time came. All was well. The Child wanted to go outside before mommy left and so out we went and naturally, she wanted immediately in the pool so mommy got her bathing suit and into the pool she went!

      Shortly thereafter, mommy had to go and she left me in charge. I kept an eye on her in the pool and when she was done with that, she wanted to play on her swing set/slide. After clearing some ambitious cobwebs and changing her back into her dry clothes (which thankfully she also had outside), I pushed her on the swing for a long time because she just loves chilling on that thing. Not a care in the world, I suppose (although she does demand I push her higher and giggles every time she gets high enough for the chain to go slack and I say, "CHONK!!!" along with the noise that immediately follows)

      Eventually, though, the Child tells me she's hungry and I say, "Okay, let's go inside and get something to eat!" I try the sliding glass door...and it's locked. Mommy absent-mindedly locked the door on us! Undeterred, I took the Child with me around to the front door hoping against hope and, of course, it too had been locked.

     My phone was inside so I wouldn't be able to reach mommy but since this wasn't an emergency, I didn't immediately start going to neighbors' houses in an effort to get them to help us (thank goodness I got my best friend's phone number before I got a cellphone: I still know it by heart!). I leveled with the Child and told her that mommy had locked us out; that we couldn't go inside so we would have to wait for mommy to come home before we could eat.

      She seemed okay with this and I then took it upon myself to let the Child do whatever the fuck she wanted for however long she wanted (obviously nothing that would endanger her!) to keep her mind off the fact we weren't going to be going inside any time soon.

      Some of those things involved (because I'll never understand how a three year old thinks) gathering up the loose asphalt pebbles from her driveway and carrying them over to a planter to deposit them over and over again (repetition, thy name is every fucking child who has ever been :-) ). There's little shade in the front yard and neither of us were wearing sunscreen but whenever I suggested we go back into the backyard to be in shade, she would say flatly in that darling little voice of hers, "No." :-)

     It made me laugh when I'd go to sit on the porch in the shade and she'd get up from her place in the sun to walk over to me, holding out her hand and repeating to me something she probably saw happen in her daycare, "Smile! Don't be upset. Tell me what's wrong! It's going to be alright," like she was a therapist. It was so cute.

     Another was picking leaves off trees so that she could give one to each of her stuffed animal friends. I at least got to show her how to pluck leaves without tearing them (grab the leaf by its stem: the way she repeated "stem" makes me think I had taught her a new word). I also got to carry her for long lengths of time and every time I asked to put her down because my arm was getting tired she would say flatly in that darling little voice of hers, "No." :-)

     I showed her what it looked like over all the tall fences bordering her yard. We chased each other around. We did Spins (where I hold her sideways facing outwards and spin 720 degrees in one direction and then 720 degrees in the other direction so I don't get dizzy) until she tired of it. Then we did "Whee!" whereby I gently toss her up and catch her until I couldn't toss her anymore. We even managed to do a piggyback ride after I figured out how to get her on my shoulders without someone else's help. We chased after a ball together and "somehow" she would always beat me to it at the last dramatic moment. And sometimes she'd give me a break by playing in the pool again.

     Unfortunately I also didn't have my wallet so we couldn't go on an adventure to a local store to buy some food so we were stuck getting hungry together. But when she asked for milk, I had the idea to teach her the age-old rite of passage that is drinking from a garden hose and, to my joy, she loved it and then she played with the garden hose for a while watering various things and whenever I suggested we should turn off the hose so as not to waste water, she would say flatly in the darling little voice of hers, "No." because damn it, this girl was on a mission! What that mission was is anyone's guess and that guess would surely be wrong because who the hell understands the particular curiosities of a three year old? Not me, that's for sure. But it kept her occupied and distracted which was the point :-)

     Periodically she would whimper that she wanted her mommy to come home and one time when I said back, "I know, I wish mommy would come home too," meaning her mother obviously but the child misinterpreted me. She thought I was talking about my mother and incredulously replied, "Your mommy doesn't live here!"

     Some of the neighbor's kids were playing in their backyard. The Child wanted to see them so I held her up high and she shouted to them, "Hi neighbors!" and they didn't reply which, I admit, annoyed me. Who doesn't say hello to a three year old?!

      But after some more leaf gathering and her wanting her mommy, I noticed her yawning and asked if she wanted to lie down. To my surprise, the kid who never wants to nap anymore said yes. Thankfully, her parents have lawn furniture and one of those pieces was a love seat I then cleared leaf debris from and lay on with the child on my chest. I had to drape my legs over the arm rests and they immediately lost circulation. I asked the Child if she was okay and ever-so-cutely told me, "I'm comfortable," and then like a goddamned cat, fell immediately asleep. I am so jealous of her ability to do that!

      I don't know how long we laid there. I almost fell asleep myself before realizing I was supposed to be keeping watch! My neck wasn't doing so great but I was able to move it without waking her. I spent that 30-60 minutes watching the sun dapple through the leaves above and those same leaves sway in the breezes. I listened to bird calls and squirrel noises and the next door neighbor kids playing and then suddenly I felt my chest get very warm, then wet. The Child peed on me in her sleep!

     I woke her up and she did not like that. She wailed for several minutes before I was able to soothe her and then, by dumb luck, I saw movement in her house. Mommy had (finally) come home...and she had brought grandma with her too. The Child and I were both happy to finally get the fuck inside. I told mommy that she had locked us out; that we haven't eaten; and to give the Child whatever she wants (and she got her ravioli and crackers and juice and even cookies to eat for her late lunch) while I cleaned up.

     But I was proud of the Child. She handled this unexpected circumstance with a surprising maturity and poise. For my part, I got only mildly sunburned (somehow: I was expecting way worse) and the most mosquito bites I've gotten in many years. I'm sure I was a veritable buffet holding the child still on my chest in the shade :-)

     Needless to say, I will always be carrying my keys with me henceforth!

NO SENSE OF BELONGING...

     Lately I've been wondering if a belief in God (or Gods)...religion basically, is tied to one's sense of belonging. Like, did I lose my faith in God and slip into nihilism because I grew up feeling like an outsider to my family and schoolmates? If I had a sense of being included, would I have not skipped out on Confirmation in 7th grade? Would I have had friends? a girlfriend? the wherewithal to remain in college and see it through to graduation? connections? a decent job resulting from those connections?

     I don't know...

     But I think about two particular groups and their stereotyped behavior: Born-Again Christians and Atheists.

     Both groups are notorious for having overly enthusiastic participants eager to get others to join or to attack when their efforts are challenged.
     It seems to me that both those groups have only recently discovered a sense of belonging and in the one sense, it delights them to realize they are no longer alone but then I also think it makes them wish to confront those who had isolated them for so long. They want to know, once and for all, who their real friends are so they proselytize and it should come as no surprise that people who already belong to another group are not particularly interested in throwing all that away.

     And the resistance of others strengthens their bond with their new friends, making them spiral inward to ever tighter and stubborn orbits. Where once they felt judged, now they are able to judge others knowing they have a community willing to back them perhaps for the first time in their lives.

     And if there's any truth to that, it makes me feel even sadder that I never even found an Atheist group to feel like a part of. Talk about isolation! And in that isolation, I sunk to the even-lower level of nihilism: a belief in the utter purposeless of everything. It was the only thing left to rationalize my existence and its suckitude: life is not unfair, because fairness and unfairness are human constructs. No, life is a selfish attempt at perpetuation and the universe is indifferent to it all. Purpose is something we create, not something which is given. You are because you were born and you will die for the same reason. You will suffer the whole way through until you can bear the burdens of living and existence no longer...and my life's burdens are not offset by its joys.

     Nihilism is the Atheist's atheist. I don't know...that made sense before I wrote.

     I write this still never feeling like I've ever belonged. I never thought I had wanted all that much and it bothers me that I can't even have that...

DIDN'T QUIT WHILE I WAS AHEAD...

     Two Sundays ago I went gambling for the first time in my life. My cousin and his wife invited me to go to Atlantic City for the day. I took the night off work leading me to tell my coworkers that my gambling goal would be to win my lost wages. The trip down was disappointing in that it's very boring. I had no idea New Jersey has so many trees. The parkway is just an unbroken line of trees on one side and another unbroken line of trees on the other. It was only shortly before our destination that it opened up into what looked like salt marshes and a bay with electricity-generating giant windmills.

POWER DYNAMICS AND FLIRTING...

     I hate the lack of defined social etiquette when it comes to when it's okay and when it's not okay for men to flirt with women (and vice-versa). I say this somewhat ironically as I despise social conventions as unnecessarily restrictive but they have their purpose, especially in tense or otherwise in scenarios with too many variables. A defined social etiquette, or diplomacy if you will, helps take the edge off by allowing participants to follows established guidelines rather than risk accidental offense.

    I accept, however reluctantly as a coward, that it is generally accepted that men make the opening moves when attempting to woo women ("woo" is a terrible word, isn't it?) however, while it is also generally accepted that not all situations are appropriate for male-initiated flirting, there is no clear-cut set of rules establishing when and where such behavior is appropriate.

    I'm not sure I can define the scenarios mathematically but an obvious, all-too-cliché, example where it is perfectly acceptable to flirt is ye olde bar or a dance club. People, strangers, deliberately meeting up in a public place purveying in intoxication is the standard-bearer for male-initiated wooing via inviting female body language.
    I'm not actually one to believe that the men are ever in control here. I feel, like in nature, women are generally always the ones holding all the cards and just make it look like the men are the ones doing so.

    But I think it's also safe-to-say that people would agree that the supermarket or restaurant are not places where male-initiated flirting is acceptable. The difference being that the female cashier (and even customer) and waitress are not in positions of power like they are at a bar or club. They have to be nice to you. They can't get away. They can't tell you off. Etc.
    Yet, as anyone can attest, guys still shamelessly flirt with such women all the fucking time. Now I'm not saying it's wrong, in of itself, for such flirting to happen. I'm saying it's wrong when the man initiates flirting when the power-dynamic does not favor the woman.

     There is a way around this. If the female cashier, waitress, or customer initiates flirting with the guy, she is granting him permission to do so in a venue where his advances would otherwise (and should) be frowned upon. In this way, the power dynamic of the bar/club is preserved in places where it may not simply be assumed by the male.

     The trouble is, I don't see anything like this actually going on nor when I was in school (or from posts I read online) were we ever educated in such a manner of when are where flirting is appropriate. Feminist posts will occasionally broach this topic but I've only ever read complaints about creepy men, etc. taking advantage of the topsy-turvy power dynamic, not calls for social etiquette.

     Admittedly, this sucks for me as only very rarely has a female customer even kinda-sorta flirted with me. It sucks because some of my customers are very attractive and from the ones who do speak, sometimes immediately appealing too. But it only seems fair to apply.
     I think of sexual harassment videos and shit from school and work. They always told you what not to do, but never what to do leaving cautious folk like me without guidance.

     Additionally, I think of the rather unnatural world of online dating and how the power dynamic perhaps ought to play out there as well. I regularly read complaints about creepy guys or overly sexual guys bothering women on these sites, ruining the experience for everyone. Sites like Tinder which require a mutual match before contact may be made and Bumble which require girls to initiate contact with men might help somewhat but what of simply the overall etiquette? What should it be?

     My thoughts on this are that it's okay for men to initiate contact on sites like Plenty of Fish and OKCupid but that it is not okay for them to ask for the girl's phone number. I feel by asking for the phone number, the men are violating the power dynamic.
     Online dating isn't like real life dating as there is no face-to-face communication and all its attendant body language, eye contact, smells, etc. that both consciously and subconsciously go along with face-to-face meetings. As women will readily admit, they're kinda sussing the men out to determine if they are creeps, sexual perverts, or the ever classic, serial killers and they're denied this pass/fail opportunity when the man is demanding her private contact information before she is willing to give it.

      Unfortunately, like the cashier and waitress examples, there are no defined and socially accepted rules for these scenarios so they continue to go often violated by men, making dating that much harder for the rest of us. I wish there were a way to socially shun the power dynamic violating men, but as of now, there isn't and as of now, it's still very hard for me to get a date playing by rules that I've effectively made up and may ultimately be projecting an apparent lack of interest when nothing could be further from the truth.

      It makes me hate my life...

MISERY STREET...

     Sometimes I wonder if the reason I'm unhappy with working is not because I have to have a job in order to survive but that I'm largely constrained into having the same job in order to survive...

     I find that I get bored easily with both people and things. It is rare that I find a person or subject constantly interesting. I don't see why a job would be any different. Some people need constant novelty in their life experiences and I need constant novelty in my mental ones.

     The trouble is, while working multiple jobs is indeed possible, it would monumentally unwise to do so without a significant cash cushion as different jobs pay differently, if at all...and assuming you can even find one in a timely manner to begin with.

     I find I'm happiest when I am free to pursue my interests at will and without outside constraint on the speed and manner in which I tackle it. Life largely does not afford such opportunities to me, if it does at all. I'm so introverted that going to work counts as going out/socializing so my time off each day and on weekends is largely spent indoors not talking to anybody in order to simply recharge.
     And it's never quite enough. I only just start feeling recharged on the day I have to go back to work. I haven't quite gotten there yet but I suppose it's the mental equivalent of using duct tape to mend a broken pipe: serviceable, but hardly a true fix.
     It is only when I'm on vacation for an entire week that I actually have a few days (three, to be precise) where I'm fully recharged and more like myself again. I've been working so long at my place of employment that I have maxed out on my vacations. I get four weeks which means I get a total of twelve days a year where I feel like myself again. That's all I get. As you can imagine, I guard those days jealously.

     I remember when I first started doing my job that it was actually enjoyable. So long as I still had new things to learn and new routines to figure out, I didn't mind going. It also didn't feel like work. My time off was all I needed to recharge so I still got to feel like myself two days a week. As I maxed out in my experience though, it fell to only one day then only the aforementioned vacation days. My job ceased to challenge me but there was nowhere else I could go which would pay me enough to survive on, let alone live on.
    I was stuck. I've been stuck.

    It made me wonder though, if money wasn't an issue, would I be happier at work? I would be free to quit my job when either I've maxed out what it could teach me or if I were made to feel worthless as a human being...another thing I have to swallow, my need for dignity, because I am still in need of a reliable source of income to survive.

    But I think about that. What if I were free to satisfy my mind's desire for mental novelty? I could work anywhere that would take me for whatever they wished to pay me, if at all as I could just as easily do volunteer work at soup kitchens or animal shelters. Might I encounter new, constantly fascinating subjects that I could explore in great depth? Might I meet new, constantly interesting people to interact with...even love?

    I just hate knowing that I'll never know the answers to those questions...and that I only get four groups of three days to be myself a year. I just finished up my last three days for the year. I don't get to be myself again for another 4½ months. The time in-between vacations feels so long already...not that this weekend has done me any good.
    Four hours to go before I have to get ready to keep doing it all over again.

    No way out...

WANTING RESPECT MEANS YOU'VE GOT NOTHING WORTH HAVING...

     Last Monday, the superintendent came to the door to tell me he had switched my parking space again because he knows I don't have a car and someone else wanted my previous spot because it was closer to their apartment. Fine, whatever. However...

     He also told me that this new spot was still being used by someone else who didn't even rent here because we still have vacant apartments and the super told him he could use the space in the meantime (or some bullshit like that). This is what I get for being honest...

     When I moved here, the lease states we each get an assigned parking space. I filled out the parking space form and indicated (truthfully) that I did not have a car. What I saw my parking space as was both a place I could use to set up my telescope if I wanted to do some late-night observing and as a place I could offer to family and friends (and God-willing, girlfriends). In fact, it seemed to be the only kinda-sorta perk I could offer a girl willing to look past my inability to drive while she dates me: hey, I've got a place for you to park...

     I should've just lied when signing my initial lease and claimed my Best Friend's car to be my own for my space. No one would have checked up on it to verify that I had a license or registration for the vehicle...maybe I would have saved myself these frustrations and disrespect...

     This is also what I get for being nice. It's always a punishment. Sure, I could make a point and have the guy who's (still) parking there towed. But what will that accomplish? The truth is, I rarely do need the spot and there are common areas I can use to set up my telescope if I really insist on using it. Towing anyone who parks there would only make me out as a bad guy regardless of how (technically) in the right I would be to do so.
     It makes me think of when poor folks kill one and other over respect. Respect is pretty much the least valuable thing a person can have. If you've reached a point in your life when you find yourself desiring respect from people, it's a sure sign that you've got nothing else going for you. A person who's got a nice job, a spouse who loves them, children to take care of, a decent house, savings, and so on...that person could give less than a shit about getting respect or even having it because they already have so much more worth having.

     And here I am, entertaining tow fantasies; seething over my honesty getting me abused once again. Have I really reached a point in my life where I have so little?

TO CONTINUE...

     Gandalf's description of how the One Ring grants its bearer immortality feels like such an apt description for much else in life.

Like the other Great Rings of Power, [the One Ring] would extend the lifespan of its owner indefinitely, but that person...would not grow or obtain more life, but would merely continue, until every minute was an unbearable weariness.

     The more I read about Tolkien's mythology, the more I find it such a remarkable way of looking at things. Although we are not Valar nor Maiar, I find the idea that we have within us a native strength (or power) which can be spent to our fortune or peril an interesting one.
     The great evil ones, Melkor and Sauron, spent their spirits in envy and hate in their respective attempts to dominate the very matter of Earth and its inhabitants, growing weaker over time. Once mighty and seemingly invincible, they would, over time, lose their ability to shapeshift, no longer be able to create new things to use against the existing order (instead being able to only make parodies and corruptions of works already made), and take on wounds which would no longer heal.
     The great maia, Sauron, would impart much of his remaining native strength into the One Ring so that it would be able to dominate the other nineteen rings of power. When he wore it, the One Ring made him even stronger than before but should the ring be destroyed, it would take with it that native strength Sauron had poured into it so there was a risk involved for any spirit who wished to go against the natural order of things.

     It makes me think of how we live our lives and the values and desires we place in things and in people. I feel like I have invested much of my native strength in the wrong girls and it has left me considerably weaker for my troubles. The last time I felt my native strength increasing was when I was in college back in late 1998/early 1999...but mostly in 1998.
     I had met many new friends (even girls who found me desirable) and for perhaps the only time in my life, had a near-daily exposure to love and acceptance. I felt a part of something bigger than me for the only time in my life.  If I were somehow able to quantify my native strength and add up the percentages of it placed into other people and things and that which is still left in me, the number would be greater than 100% mostly for that time but also for times in my past like it (such as when I started getting to know my Best Friend and other friends both remaining and lost in my life).
     My last happy New Year was the changeover from 1999 to 2000. So far, the 21st century has held little to no happiness for me and as I now find myself well into it. I am also less than ten years away from the pivot point whereby I become a 21st century man (that is, soon I will have existed longer in the 21st century than I did in the 20th...another of my weird thoughts/realizations).

     But I know I squandered a large part of myself in the First One. It felt only natural and I did so out of ignorance. While foolish in retrospect, how was I to know at the time she wasn't "the one"? First love is foolish love much as is all young love. Still...I miss her and the nervous energy she imparted on me that I was then able to transform into creative and artistic pursuits like drawing, poetry, and most proudly, a constructed language.
     The First One would come to be known to me as a personification of idealization. She is what attraction means to me and what it means to be in love. All those who have followed (and even those who preceded) are compared to her, being either greater or lesser. In a mythological sense, she would be the physical manifestation of a god, specifically of Aphrodite. In a different and more modern sense I would describe her as a "genetic attraction", which was most definitely eugenic in nature as I recall myself, even as a young teenager, wanting to merge my DNA with her own as if our respective DNAs would result in a more superior human than she already was. That's a strange thought I admit and to this day, while I would most certainly prefer to do so the, uh..."natural" or "fun" way, I would be happy to have her accept my DNA via artificial insemination just to bring about that genetic fulfillment.

     Smaller parts of me would be invested in nearly a dozen other girls and more still in lost friends, but the next great investment was in Digby, the source of many downer posts in this blog. I saw in her a salvation of sorts. She appeared to me as the actual "one" I had been spending my life looking for (and this time a human right from the start rather than the fleshy goddess that was the First One) as I now had many more years of experience and working knowledge of who I am and what I had wanted. I felt able to see our compatibility but ultimately, I had deceived myself...
     Don't get me wrong. I still believe with all my heart that Digby is right for me. It's just...what I never considered and what would thus be my downfall, was that it never occurred to me just how cruel nature is when it comes to love. I made the mistake of believing, because I had never properly had it contradicted prior, that compatibility is more of a scalar than what it truly is, a vector.
      You see, compatibility has a direction to it: it's not a universal number or quality. Digby is good enough (maybe even ideally so)...but only for me. But I am not perfect for her. It seems an impossible thought but it's sadly so very true.
      For the longest time I went through life believing that if you found a person you were compatible with that it was only natural that they too would be compatible with you. It might take some convincing, but I truly believed compatibility was like an equation. In this case, different sets of numbers that added up to the same result (a simplified example being 4+5 = 108÷12 ...seemingly different in all ways but nevertheless, their underlying nature, that they are both manifestations of 9, is the same). But no, compatibility is not a simple equation...it is a vector. The direction compatibility moves in matters (like how whether a targeted item in a supermarket will appear on the left side or right side of an aisle depends on the direction you enter said aisle) and resultant vectors cannot be found simply by adding two (or more) vectors together.
     The maddening result of all this grief is the knowledge that you can be great for someone but that you, in turn, are not necessarily great for them. It is a seeming defiance of logic but it is most assuredly true and a depressing truth at that. Perhaps if I had learned that lesson at an earlier age...

     Digby would become the personification of desire in many, if not all, of its manifestations and especially representative of my desire to do right by and for a woman; to be her one and only; to be the father, and properly so, to her children; to give of myself that she and my progeny might experience a life most fitting for them. Digby was truly a dream given form...
     Now if only I might find that (as of yet unknown) Third One who is this time as compatible with me as I am with her.

     However, to get back to my opening statements, I feel I have been living a life without purpose and I have been living this way largely for the last three to seven years depending on your reckoning and arguably I have been this way since finding the First One back in 1992 as fulfillment is not something that would ever be known to me.
     Much of my native strength has been spent. It has left me feeling weak and my spirit fragile. It takes so much time now to find even the smallest amount of will to make a move and such strength is all too easily spent resulting in months of recovery from even the slightest of setbacks...time I really don't have anymore as my youth has been gone for some time now.
     For the time being, I find myself bound spiritually to my Best Friend but she is not enough. She is like family and family does not represent the future nor does family represent change, whether the family we're born into or the family we choose. Love must ultimately manifest either literally in the form of children or spiritually in the form of a legacy which will outlive our physical forms. Our genes demand from us immortality. For me personally, that satisfaction requires a yin for my yang to be the means, undeniably female, for manifesting that immortality. But I have been denied such satisfaction...
     And I feel that's what living with purposelessness is: it is merely survival, not life. The food I eat, the water I drink, and the air I breathe extend my life but mere acts of survival do not grow or obtain for me more life. They permit me only to continue and every day the burden of continuing makes me feel heavier and that heaviness is most certainly wearisome. It is not yet unbearable and while I have no intention of "doing" anything about it, it does leave me wondering just how much more my body can handle before it decides it has had enough or will I find my continuance, my merely surviving, to be corrupting like that of Sméagol as he became Gollum under the One Ring's influence and living on only as a shadow of my former, once hopeful, self,

     ...a living mockery of a man...

THE SEEKER MUST NOW BE SOUGHT...

     Last month I destroyed my dating site profiles. I'm giving up. Whether for the time-being or for good remains to be seen. I'm tired of the routine. It's a lot of wasted time and effort for practically no results. I'll admit I'm already feeling a little better since I'm able to devote what little energy I can self-generate to other tasks, even some old-school stuff like listening (and sometimes singing along) to music. In that sense it's been fun. Maybe I can finally tackle some projects I've let wither on the vine like my language. Hell, I'm already writing more entries to the stupid blog than I have for quite a while. Let's see where it goes...

     I'll take from the experience what I got out of it. I got a taste of normalcy from Winwood. I got to have the title of boyfriend from Costello. And even afterward I managed to get a date (albeit only one) from a girl I asked out in real life. In a sense I've accomplished several major lifetime goals (albeit very late in life). The only thing I've never managed to do was get to date one of my crushes. There hasn't been another one since Number Twelve, which evaporated quickly and there hasn't been a strong, lingering one since Digby and I first started crushing on her over seven years ago. It makes me think my heart is out of it. It's had enough...I've had enough.

     Strangely I'm not sad about it. If something happens, I'll let it happen but I'm not seeking it. I should focus what's left of my life on things I enjoy and might enjoy doing. I certainly need something. The sad truth is I can't say for certain that I have anything to look forward to after the New Horizons spacecraft passes Pluto next year in July (and to a lesser extent, the Dawn spacecraft will also be put into orbit around the largest main belt asteroid Ceres that year too). I still look forward to The Simpsons but I don't know how much longer that show has. I don't think this season is the last because the media would be all over that. It might be next season. We'll see.

      I need something to grab on to but nothing's been coming my way. This all sounds way sadder than I mean it. It's just nice to have things to look forward to...

URINSOMNIA...

     Does the body know it's asleep? I had another pee dream last night and I find it weird that my dreams have to resort to symbolism like a sense of urgency, displays of flowing water, loss of control (like becoming suddenly clumsy or in a recent dream, cars riding the sidewalk keeping me from walking safely and confidently), etc. to get the point across that I need to wake up and empty my bladder.

     I found myself wondering, why doesn't some character in the dream just say flat out, "Vachon, you need to wake up so I can pee."? Or even more simply, why don't I just wake up? Why is it like I'm in a wussified Nightmare on Elm Street movie rather than something more simple?

     Thankfully I've never had an accident though I know it's come close, even in adulthood. I've actually urinated in my dreams and woke up ever-so-thankful that it was "just a dream".

     Seriously though, why can't we just wake up when we have to pee? I don't think the language center of the brain is shut down because I have dreams with speech in them. Does the sense of self shut down during sleep? I don't think so because I know it's me when I'm dreaming. I never feel outside of myself.
      The only thing I've noticed about dreams, aside from their inherent weirdness and internal inconsistencies, is that dreams only seem to work so long as I'm not concentrating on details. It's like dreams are great whooshes of generalities but I have memories of waking up from several dreams because I got suspicious and simply wouldn't just "go with it".

     I remember many years ago having a dream with the First One. Already curious that she would be visiting me at my father's house, I couldn't help but try and focus on her face because something about it wasn't quite right. It doesn't help that I can't remember faces that well at all so in my dream she may have had, for all I know, a mannequin face...featureless. I kept focusing on that detail; I wanted to see. My insistence on detail I think activated some part of my brain that was necessary for consciousness as I would wake up soon after.

     I don't know. I mean, c'mon! Just wake up. I gotta pee!!!

WORKPLACE COMMENTARY...

      My coworker commented the other night that she must have killed someone in a past life in order to explain her luck and predicaments in this life.

      I replied that I must've organized the massacre of a village to explain mine. Not leaving well enough alone, as well as the laugh I got from my friends, I added that I probably had the pregnant women of that village brought forth and ordered my men to cut the babies from their wombs and shown to their respective mothers before having them [the mothers] decapitated.

      It got quiet for a moment; a silence I broke with me saying, "I make statements like that and wonder why girls don't want to talk to me."

      I swear I'm harmless, haha.

WEARINESS...

     I'm weary.

     There's a certain heaviness that comes with knowing your suffering is pointless.

     Now, I want to be clear. I'm not suffering in any physical sense. My body, its organs and limbs, are doing quite well for themselves. I've managed to take good care of myself and avoid catastrophe. But my mind...my mind is weary. I don't want to do this anymore...this purposeless of being...this monotony.

     I don't like working for a living. It sucks. I never wanted my life to be defined by how I earned money. I didn't want my life defined by my job but my job most certainly defines my life. I work overnights and I've worked overnights since 2001. I thus keep odd hours and on top of that my job requires me to work weekends...all of them. My job pays me enough to survive but not enough to live. To make ends meet I cannot drive. I can't afford the car payments, the car insurance, and gas & miscellaneous expenses associated with car ownership. You can imagine how difficult this makes it to meet girls. How difficult you (didn't) ask? I went on my first date when I was 33 years old. My job is not responsible for all of that...but it is responsible for enough.

     Maybe things will get better... - something I've said for many years, but - ...I'm starting to see a girl at a time every now and again. There's definite improvement over the nearly 20 years of nothing. It's heartening to find girls who will give me a chance despite knowing the difficulties I enter in on...even if the majority of them have been one-date-wonders. Still...I'm weary.

     I don't want to work anymore. Not just my current job but any job. I wish I could just stop but the bills won't stop just because I want to. It's frustrating but it's a frustration I feel I could endure if I only had a reason to endure it. I'm not enough. My selfish will to live means less and less to me each day. The only official thing I have to look forward to is New Horizons reaching Pluto in July 2015. I do want to see what this world looks like after all these years. That date is fast approaching and then what?

    I feel like if I had a girlfriend or a wife (as I have wanted one since I was 24) and/or a child to raise, I feel I could muster the requisite strength to endure the monotony, to endure the purposeless because I would thus have a purpose. My suffering...my anguish?...it could be rationalized.

    I don't like having these fantasies but I will admit one of my darker ones today. Maybe doing so semi-publicly will prove cathartic. I'm not an immediate suicide risk and the reason for that is simple: I've been diligent in saving my money for old age though I've been able to save far less since moving out. The inheritance I received from my father was, in the beginning, less than a third of my net worth. Now it is possibly over half thanks to a rising stock market. Still, it's blood money so I don't want to spend any of it except in my old age. Killing myself would mean leaving all that money behind unused.

      What a waste...

      What I daydream about when I'm weary is cashing out my IRAs and summing it up with my savings to see what I've got. I keep detailed financial records so I know how much my life costs. Presently, it's just under $20,000 a year. I think my financial happiness would peak at around $30,000 a year take-home pay (I really could give less than a fuck about gross pay...if I don't see it, I didn't earn it so stop using my gross as a basis for aid calculation). I could be happy on the $20,000 if my rent were halved but that won't happen unless I get a girl to move in with me and just getting a girlfriend has proven ridiculously difficult.

      But that would be nice...a girlfriend who loves me enough and whom I love enough to want to live together and pool expenses in preparation for marriage. That'd be the best thing that could happen to me both as a human being and financially...someone to share the burden-of-living with. Hell, at this point I would take a fucking cat but my apartment strictly forbids pet ownership and there isn't another affordable complex within walking distance of work...additional sorrow...

      My net worth is around $200,000. I don't know what the tax penalty would be if I cashed out all the IRAs I have but even if it was half, and I highly doubt that, I'd still have a minimum of five years worth of money...and if interest rates would ever rise, up to seven.

      That's some fantasy. Five years of freedom. The only problem is when the money would run out I know I would not have the courage to kill myself at the end. I'd be a coward and run...or desperately get a job to keep alive, however miserably...but those five years...they could be good ones. Five years to do whatever the fuck I want. I'd be like one of those Inca sacrifices (except they only got one year...I'd get five).

      It bothers me because usually I can talk myself out of these fantasies within a few hours. I'm usually just cranky. But this one has lasted a full week and as far as I know will continue tomorrow. I blame my job and by extension myself for not getting out of it while I still could. Almost thirteen years I've put in there. What pisses me off is how the words don't match the deeds. For my entire tenure there I've been told what a good and dutiful employee I've been. I've been given numerous awards in recognition of that. What have I wanted in return? Full time. That's it. Full time. I've been bidding for ten years and still have not gotten it. In fact, in all my years there I have not known anyone to have gotten full time. How shitty of the store. The store doesn't give full time...that's basically what I'm told...yet they have to present bid sheets every six months (which they make a pain in the ass to get). It feels so fraudulent. If they don't give full time and only offer it to satisfy some union demand...it just feels wrong. Like holding a contest but never declaring a winner.

     Additionally, despite my glowing reviews, I have been given a pay cut. For the past year I've consistently had about 2 hours cut from my schedule each week. It's not even something I can bump for. It's a very calculated move on my employer's part and it's costing me about $1000 in lost income over the course of a year. My income has been stagnant or falling since 2008. I don't feel like a valued employee...I feel like an unwanted expense.
 
     Word-deed mismatch. I would cry out that I feel like I've earned a little respect from the store but then I feel like I would be met with the same words Lyta Alexander got when confronting Ulkesh over the same idea..."Respect...from whom?"
 
     Hell, I'd even settle for "full-time lite". I'm old school. A full time job to me is a 40 hour workweek. Sundays are paid at time-and-a-half and Sundays are separate from regular pay. The rule for part time is less than 29 non-Sunday hours a week (5 weeks or more above 29 equals automatic full time but my store is just as diligent about preventing that as they are at denying full time status to begin with). But anyway, it's workable within the system. 28 non-Sunday hours plus 8 Sunday hours straightens out to 40 hours of pay. Full time with the status of part-time...but I can't even get that. My historical average was 27.5 + 7.5 which, quite frankly is close enough but nowadays it has been averaging 26.75 + 6.75 which hurts, albeit slowly. It's like death from a thousand small cuts. My budget is already tight as is. I already endure a cold apartment in the Winter (I keep it at 60 degrees and dress warmly...I only turn it up to 72 degrees when I know I'm having company. I have not had company in over a month) and a hot apartment in the Summer (I only turn the air conditioner on when my apartment's temperature rises above 90 degrees and I'm off work or when I have company [see Winter]. In the meantime I sweat it out sitting around in my underwear) so I've already squeezed what savings I can from my electric bill. The only room left for cuts is cable and food.

    I know cable seems like an obvious luxury to eliminate and while I have no problem with that conceptually, I am trying to date girls. It's already bad enough that I work weekends, overnights, and can't drive. Must I be without entertainment capabilities as well? How much poverty must I ask a potential girlfriend to endure? But it will go if it gets difficult since I'm already stretched thin enough as is.

     I'm sure I'll get over this but it's been a hard week. It's all psychological...it's always been psychological. I've been blessed with a healthy body but cursed with a poisoned mind...

     I don't think my problems are as big as I imagine them to be. I can't imagine there aren't throngs of people who'd happily trade their problems for mine. I hate that I even consider that. I want to be selfish at times. I want it to be about me sometimes. Stupid brain...

     I wish I were less lonely. I've never been truly alone before. There's always been someone living with me even if we largely ignored one and other. It's been just me for 2½ years now. It's soul-crushing. Someone to pass the time with...someone I could hold and who would hold me...that would be nice. It would be nice to have some of the voids in my soul filled with joy and comfort. Definitely nice...

THE PANIC OF HAPPINESS...

     I was rereading (after having been reminded of it) this Cracked article by John Cheese on the "5 Stupidest Habits You Develop Growing Up Poor" and the thought just occurred to me...I want to spend any and all happiness I acquire right goddamned now!

     In the article Mr. Cheese says:

When a windfall check is dropped in your lap, you don't know how to handle it. Instead of thinking, "This will cover our rent and bills for half a year," you immediately jump to all the things you've been meaning to get, but couldn't afford on your regular income. If you don't buy it right now, you know that the money will slowly bleed away to everyday life over the course of the next few months, leaving you with nothing to show for it. Don't misunderstand me here, it's never a "greed" thing. It's a panic thing. "We have to spend this before it disappears."

     I think that's how I've come to look at my happiness too. I'm usually feeling anywhere from neutral to lonely so when a windfall opportunity for happiness gets dropped on my figurative lap, I feel the same way about it. I don't want to ration it or save it for the future because even though I know that would be a good idea and that I will surely need this happiness then, I'm afraid it will be bled out by my life's everyday circumstances before I ever get a chance to properly experience it.

     What ends up happening is my normally patient self gets overwhelmed by this desire to spend my happiness right fucking now and that usually results in that opportunity being squandered. It sucks and I really don't know how to not do that.

      I've been fortunate these past two weeks. I've met a girl at work - a customer of mine. We've been talking. We've even met up already. I want to see her, like, all the time. I want to rush through the opening stages of this potential relationship to get to the middle part already: I want the foundation already laid. That part where we already know we like each other and already know we want to be together...that part where we're building on that foundation.

       I hate being this impatient and wanting to move things along even more rapidly than I am comfortable with. I hate what it reveals about me and what it suggests about me. But I also don't want to fuck it up, so I'm being patient...

'TIL DEATH DO US PART...

     Someone I am trying to get to know had this to say recently when someone close to her died: "I am convinced that when someone you are close to dies, a part of that person then becomes a part of you."

     It makes me think she and I have fundamentally different ways of looking at the world. Another example before commenting on the original point was when she said she loved performing on stage because it was only in front of so many people that she felt she could finally be herself.
     I responded that I had felt oppositely; that one could only truly be themselves when alone. The very existence of another person causes you necessarily to react to that person and that reaction causes you to filter your thoughts and actions. The more people you are around, the more generic (in a sense) you become (and thus, less like yourself).
     She found my explanation rational even if she herself did not subscribe to the notion. It makes me feel she would respond similarly to my thoughts on the death of a person close to you.

     I wrote long ago about the death of someone I had barely known and how acutely I had felt it simply because her presence in my life was so limited. I had never written about how the death of someone I knew on far greater levels affects me and my perceptions of that kind of death.

     So no, I don't feel that when someone you are close to dies that they become a part of you. I feel instead like a part of me is lost...like my soul (my sense of self, my memories/experiences, etc.) has had a piece of itself forcibly removed leaving behind this sucking void, however tiny, which can never be refilled because there will never again be a piece exactly like the one taken to fill in what has been lost. Sure (to stick with the analogy), it could be covered either entirely or partially obstructed, but never completely. There will always be some kind of gap...some kind of hissing sound. Perhaps we die, if not felled by sickness or injury, when simply too much of ourselves has been lost and we surrender to despair.

     You might say I have a Tolkien-esque view of the human soul or perhaps a variation on that idea. For me, so long as a person is alive, their soul - their essence of being if you will - is an abstraction. It permeates all those things around them and all the lives they touch while alive. I guess you could say life is not so much defined by its presence, but by its absence. Life is nebulous. It is temporary. It is a chaos. It is a possibility.
     But death...death is far from abstract. It is concrete. It is a returning to the lifelessness whence you came. Existence is ultimately a loan and a loan which will be repaid.

     It is through death that the flow of existence is suddenly crystallized. Now that this individual has left this world, it puts an end to how they might have further influenced it. In some cases, like with painters, it's easy to see the crystallization. Their souls are crystallized in the paintings they have left behind and should a painting of theirs be lost, what remains of their existence is diminished and can never be replaced. For others, the objects remaining can be comparatively simple or even non-sequitur like.
    
     A person lives on in our memories until we too pass on, further taking from this world what little of them still remains.

     At least, that's how I see things...

The crystallization of a soul, fixing itself in those people and things which it had touched and created...or the shattering of the Shikon Jewel by Kagome in episode 2 of Inuyasha, I'm not sure which ;-)

CONFIDENCE IS BORN OF CHARITY...

     One of the commonest forms of advice anyone (but especially males) will receive for dating will be the stressing of the necessity of expressing confidence. And personally, I get that. I see how that works because like anyone else, I'm impressed by confidence when it is witnessed in others be it for dating, in the arts, standing up for oneself, etc. Confidence is certainly wonderful to be around and influenced by. It is indeed.

      However, where does confidence come from? As I've often stated in the dating game, how am I supposed to be confident around women when women (up until June 24th, 2012 anyway) have always refused to go out with me? I would say confidence comes from victory and without victory, there can be no confidence. And while a date is more an endgame thing, smaller victories exist too leading up to that. Victories like girls you're actually attracted to smiling when you talk to them or those same girls giving you their phone numbers. Victories like girls actually competing for your attention. That, in particular, is a wonderful experience that I personally have only witnessed happening to other men...men who would also be getting the attention of the girls I have liked over the years. O jealousy!

      But it got me thinking. What gets the confidence ball rolling? Some people possess it in spades whereas others, like me, desperately scrape the bottom of my psychology's leaky bucket looking for anything I can use because confidence has long since ceased to be available to me in useful amounts. I feel like the lead Prawn in District 9 patiently trying to distill fuel from scraps of their machinery to power their idle mothership. Here I'm combing through scraps of life experiences hoping to distill enough confidence to take a chance on someone and that the effort won't be wasted because I know it will be a long time before I've distilled enough to try again and in the meantime, I'll've only gotten older.

      But still, where does it start? What is the basis of confidence? And then it hit me...childhood. But more specifically our parents. Our first experiences of confidence were acts of charity by our parents. Do you remember making drawings or picking flowers or singing songs for your mom and/or dad? Maybe you got good grades on your report card... Or at least do you remember watching other kids do the same when you were older? What is the parents' reaction to their child's decidedly crude drawing, hackneyed jokes, presentation of common wildflowers, or off-key singing? It was "beautiful", wasn't it? Much praise was given, was it not? And it was an act of charity on the part of the parents because there is no way in hell I can accept that any parent, no matter how enthralled they are with their own genetic progeny, actually believes that the drawing was beautiful or that the joke was funny or that the flowers were well presented/selected or that the singing was great. We've seen art done by masters; heard songs composed  by The Beatles; seen the brightest, most colorful bouquets; witnessed unparalleled intelligence from scientists and philosophers; and we've all listened to some damn fine comedians over the years too.

      These parents are bullshitting their children, but for a good reason. Harsh criticism early on will destroy their desire to create and stand out. The charitable confidence given to them in the beginning encourages them to continue because yes, having an audience matters.
      I've tried to tell myself over the years that the approval of others isn't necessary and to a certain extent that is true because I worked on my language for a good eight years without anyone cheering me on to do so. But to a further extent, it is also a lie. I would argue that the energy/inspiration necessary to create this language derived from my crush on The First One, from learning how other languages worked, and perhaps additionally from whatever well of prior confidence in my abilities I had had from earlier periods in my life when crude gestures/attempts could still garner praise. But then, that language has lain largely dormant for over ten years now. Imagine how much closer to completion it would be today if I had someone (or several someones) supporting me in my quest either through praise, encouragement, or even simple curiosity on their part?

       Eventually these kids will go to school and have friends who will not give them praise just because. Suddenly they will find themselves challenged to earn their praise. Here, those children who have had much charitable confidence put in their psychological buckets will find themselves able to weather these storms. They will get better at drawing; better at writing; better at singing; better at joke telling; better at their particular sport; better at school; etc. and earn praise that way. They will turn their charitable confidence into plain old confidence and with that confidence, they will get the girls they like because they will be projecting the air girls find attractive.
       As for everyone else, barring acts of charity anew, we are lost. As for dating, Winwood was the one who charitably donated confidence to me that girls might actually want to date me. I fear over a year later that it has worn off. I'm tired and finding myself not wishing to try anymore. I feel myself missing my time to work on my own shit again. I feel myself wanting to pull back. I wonder if I should? But then I realize I'm fast staring down the barrel of middle age and if I truly do not wish to die alone, I cannot stop...

      Confidence may be born of charity, but it is sustained by skill and damn it, I need skills...

STARTED WITH THE INTENT OF BEING AN ASSHOLE...ENDED UP CONTEMPLATIVE

     I've got myself reading comments on a post related to autism. I tell you, if you've ever needed help understanding what denial is and/or looked like, read a forum for parents of children with autism.

     Right away you're assaulted with corruptions of the English language: "My son is not autistic, he HAS autism..." said one mother who clearly doesn't understand that many nouns have adjectival forms and that the -ic suffix does in fact mean "having, showing, or affected by" among its several related definitions.
      Another mother put it this way, "I think a better way to say this is that you have autism. If you say you are autistic that means thats is [sic] all you are" - I find posts like this somewhat ironic as it seems parents with autistic kids make sure you know this fact, even if you didn't ask. It's like the old joke about "How can you tell if someone is a vegetarian? Don't worry, they'll tell you." And God forbid you're not 100% completely on their side of thinking. Oh, the hell that will rain down upon you. They're perfect little angels who, unlike typical children, need excessively costly care and limitless attention from one-on-one aides devoted to their "special needs", another term that bugs the shit out of me for being too vague and ultimately dishonest. These parents go way the fuck out of their way to delude themselves into thinking these kids can be just like typical kids; that all we need to do is understand they're just different. Different being a hell of a loaded word. Yes, autistics come with a range of misbehaviors. My Best Friend worked with them so I've got the stories ranging from ones who are otherwise alright except in certain circumstances - meaning they're fairly trainable - to ones which are so lost that they can't even speak at eight years old, still wear diapers, and have no clue whatsoever just how strong they are.

      As far as I can tell, there's no cure for autism and the cure, if one can be found, will likely be like those for cancer, a range of remedies. Or no cure will be found because a prenatal test will finally be developed to detect the gene or genes responsible for autism and their prevalence in the population, like that of Down Syndrome, will drop precipitously. I'm suspecting the latter will be what ultimately happens.
      More denial here: "I also agree with others who've pointed out that this is not an autistic child, but a child with autism. This is an important distinction in advocacy efforts to educate the public and educators that our children are not broken, not defective and not defined by their diagnosis." --- If they are not broken, defective, or otherwise defined by their diagnosis, then why all the advocacy? I feel like they want it both ways. They're not defective, but they need special-this and special-that. They're not defined by their diagnosis until the school refuses to treat them any different than a typical student in which case these children have special needs which must be addressed by the school system. Huh? That's like saying a blind person isn't defined by their diagnosis. Yeah, they pretty much are and compared to sighted people, their eyes/optic nerves are quite defective indeed, even broken. Yet analogizing this woman's sentences, she would likely claim that a person who's blind is no different from you and me but he needs special books printed in braille and seeing-eye dogs when out in public, but no different. Nope, not at all.

      They of course despise the adjective normal and will be quick to scold you for using the term because they feel this stigmatizes their autistic children as abnormal. They'll use the word "typical" or "regular" (and yes, the words will often appear enclosed within begrudging quotation marks) instead for describing children exhibiting expected behaviors not that I understand how the logical following that your autistic child is "atypical" or "irregular" is any less stigmatizing but whatever. "Some children's needs can't be met in a 'typical' classroom. That is why we have special education classes and teachers."

      Another common thread I take from these discussions are that these kids with autism are "not my (the parents') problem: they're your problem and you have to pay for it!" I find frequent appeals to government laws like IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) and threats to sue in open court. Never mind that I have no idea where this money is supposed to come should the parents win their cases no matter how meritorious the filing.
      I also see many references to all children having a right to an education. Again, it's not my problem, it's yours. Yes, but what rarely goes addressed is what to do if they are uneducatable? One commenter wrote the following:

What's the answer? I love how people bitch about education, but there are no solutions offered. Serious questions: 1) Is it fair to put special needs kids in a school with other kids? 2) Is it right for a teacher to spend 90% of their time on 10% of the kids? 3) Would there be objection to segmenting schools to where kids were sent to teachers who are equipped to teach different levels of learning? 4) Autism comes in many forms. If a child is non-verbal, yet superior at electronic learning, and another autistic child lashes out (Aspergers), would you put them in the same class due to Autism?

He followed up in response to another commenter who said that we (teachers) have to try to reach them all...

I agree that you try to reach them all, but at what point do you realize you can't? Being a little selfish here, but why should my child be told to read the book while you spend your time with the children who need the special attention? If it truly is an equal education, why is it that kids who take time from the rest of the class consistently [are] not removed and better place in classes with teachers who are better equipped to teach special needs children? If it is the social aspect that we are trying to give these kids, isn't that what recess, lunch, electives are for?

     He was treated well though such comments can often lead to flame wars.

      I know there are no simple solutions to this problem that's not a problem until you decide it's not a problem because then it most assuredly is. Personally, I'm an advocate for euthanasia for anyone who cannot be made to independently and lawfully participate in society. It seems the only humane thing to do. Yeah, I know it's not their fault they turned out this way. I also really don't believe George wanted to kill Lenny. From a resources point of view, it seems so entirely wasteful. All this investment with zero potential for positive overall returns. For every successfully trained autistic who makes the covers of magazines and gets interviewed on television for the public to praise, how many spend their lives in institutions in abysmal conditions just because we can't bring ourselves to give them an injection of euthasol (assuming it works the same on humans)? What is the success rate of education and training of individuals with autism? Does it even approach that of high school graduation rates or are they marvels of wasteful inefficiency? What is the cost/benefit analysis? I know from a parental point of view, their child is of course perfectly precious but what do the numbers say? I suppose for my own curiosity's sake, what is the cost/benefit analysis of the average human? I might be unpleasantly surprised to know the results.

      I hate these entries because they never go anywhere...

SPENDING TIME

More and more coins are nothing but reminders that I'm getting old. 2010 was the first year of these new Shield Cents. I still remember getting my first one and where I lived and what I was doing at the time.

Now I'm like, "Shit! There's four of you already?!!"

Time marches on indeed...

ADDENDUM: On a side note, I've been a carrying a 2010 cent with me since I first got one three years ago letting it "circulate" with a bunch of other change as I walk and go about my day. Since cents haven't really circulated in over fifty years (Have you ever seen a worn-out Lincoln Memorial Cent? A coin which honestly circulates will only last about 40 years in circulation before getting worn nearly flat and unidentifiable), I knew I would never see a worn-out Shield Cent. I'm not even sure if a worn-out Shield Cent will be possible either since the copper plating is micro-thin and zinc corrodes rapidly when exposed to moist air. So far the copper layer has held but I've seen my share of corroded "Zincolns" (1982 to present) at work. It remains to be seen.

almost exactly three years worth of wear

I have other coins I'm carrying that I also feel I'll never see worn-down versions of but this is the only one I can remember definitely when I started. It's a long-term patience project. If I can figure out how to light a coin properly, I'll consider sharing the current conditions of this project in progress. All in all it reminds me of the rock tumbler my Brother and I had as kids. I remember Dad remarking how it was a great thing to have because we would only see him every other weekend at the time and since the rocks had to tumble for days on end, they could get smoothed and polished while we were away. He figured (and almost certainly correctly) that we as kids would be too impatient for this at home with Mom; that we'd stop it and check it too often. Now I "tumble" these coins in my change purse as I walk around to, fro, and at work for several miles each day.

YOUR FAULT OR MY FAULT OR A BIT OF BOTH?

     Is it still considered cyberstalking if you're only passively using the internet to keep an occasional eye on someone? I don't know. Usually when I hear the term I associate it with attempts to crack passwords or creating sock-puppet accounts to surreptitiously follow a person on social networking sites...shit like that.

     But what is it when it's passively done? Y'know, like with no attempts to communicate or harass? Like the girl I had a crush on in high school. We went to the same school...even had some of the same classes, so of course I saw her most days of any given week and would pay attention to her and get to know things about her through observation and overhearing things about her and on rare occasion by her. But I wouldn't bother her. I wasn't trying to use her friends to get to her. Okay, I did steal a picture of her once and followed her home this one time.
      Now I know that sounds bad, especially the latter one, but both were done opportunistically. In the latter case, it's not like I was waiting for her to leave at school and following a safe distance behind (or ahead as was my case). If I had done that, then yes...total psycho-stalker creep. The reality was that I just happened to notice she was walking about a block behind me. I ended up going out of my way, curious to where she was gonna turn. But it was just that one day and time. I even found out totally by chance later on, that that wasn't even where she lived. I dunno, maybe she was babysitting there or something. No, a mutual friend was bringing us home one day (school project...different story) and dropped her off first. So now I knew where she lived...but not because I had TRIED. And I didn't do anything about it. It became something I just knew.

      Anyways, my point is that. Because the internet is the thing these days. What if your cyberstalking is exclusively a passive activity? That is, you're just taking advantage of the person's lax security settings like you're a friend of a friend on Facebook and all the settings on the photos are viewable by "Friends of Friends" or they have a public Twitter feed or a public Instagram/Photobucket/Flickr account? Does that count or is that more like the equivalent of finding a phone number and address in an old phone book?
      Is searching on Google or Bing an e-mail address considered stalking or is that again, like looking someone up in a phone book?

      I feel like these attempts at justification answer my own question and that is, "Of course they are!...but I understand." What compels me to look in the first place? It's that feeling alone which poisons the activity no matter how benign. But still...it feels different. It's more like gathering intelligence and again, it's all passive. It's not like I'm using keyloggers or surreptitiously photographing at a distance or harassing their family/friends/coworkers so what exactly is IT that I am speaking of?
       A slightly different scenario. A girl shared several nude photos of herself with me a couple of years back all linked to a Photobucket account. The folder those pictures were in was marked private. However, the files were either unchanged default names (like IMG_0014 - put that in a Google Image Search and see what comes up! For additional fun, put MVI_00## in a YouTube search and see what comes up) or simple words like "pink", "me", or "silly". Now, you can't see the album, but if you have a direct link you can see the picture so on some bored nights I would try and guess file names and would occasionally succeed. Now that is tougher to justify. In fact, I can't. I think that actually counts as cyberstalking as I was taking advantage of a site vulnerability (since corrected by Photobucket...unfortunately) and not lax security protocol on the part of the user. I remember MySpace having a few exploits as well though the picture ones were fixed (unfortunately) before I ever got an account.
      Facebook offers a questionable example. Back in 2009 I believe, they changed their security settings and defaulted everything on everyone's profile to "Friends of Friends" unless you changed it. I was still reading Gawker at the time and was immediately aware of it and fixed my settings immediately. Not everyone did, including one of my crushes. She eventually did fix it but only after Facebook made it much easier to do so (I'm gonna take it she's not very computer savvy). Its current privacy screw-over is that all cover photos and all new profile photos are Public by default. You can change the profile picture setting, but not the cover photo. She hasn't noticed this...yet. But is that a site vulnerability issue making it thus cyberstalking or is that a user issue making her responsibility and thus I am merely seeing what anyone is allowed to see?

     It's such a confusing thing...

The first six unfiltered Bing Image Search results for IMG_0014:

IMG_0014 collage

MVI_0014 on YouTube

MORE EVIDENCE I DON'T GET OUT OFTEN...

     I went out with The Security Guard and his (our?) friend last night. After a meal at TGIFridays, we went to two Go-Go lounges. The first one was a den of sadness which felt a lot like the one I was taken to last year, possibly two years ago (time's slipping through my fingers at an ever-increasing rate). The second one, however, was much different. The girls there, dare I say, seemed happy to be there or at least didn't come across like they wished their lives had taken different paths.

     What made this experience different is the girls would actually sit down and talk to the patrons. Now, I'm not stupid: I know they're looking to get lap dances which pay considerably better ($20) than the dollar bill alms received after they "perform" onstage. I use the term loosely because trust me, whatever you've seen on television does not happen in these places...girls are not energetically and/or acrobatically dancing on the stage nor are their moves particularly sophisticated (though one girl danced rather seductively). I imagine there are upscale places where the television experience happens but not here.

     But I will tell you this...it's nice that they do that [talk to the patrons]. For a guy like me not used to receiving any attention at all from girls, let alone very pretty ones (another difference between this latter lounge and the first one...the girls were much prettier at this establishment). Even while fully aware they're ultimately soliciting for a lap dance, they will spend a few minutes with you. During that time you get some conversation, eye-contact, and even some flirtatious touching (patrons can't touch the dancers, but the dancers can touch you within reason). I'll even add patience because, for those of you who know me, I'm not exactly the life of any party in any given social situation so that too has an added bonus that my shitty initial talking points don't immediately lead to failure.

     I see its value for guys like me. It has the potential to be confidence boosting which anyone knows I need. I'm smart/cynical enough not to believe that these girls actually like me or are attracted to me so it's not possible for them to take advantage of me. However, I realize they're providing a service even if it's not the one they had intended and make sure they're paid even when I decline the lap dance. And like with a good server in a restaurant, if you get better service, they get better tips and my friend, The Security Guard, has done work in these kinds of clubs for years so he's able to teach me the proper etiquette.

     Unlike my prior three experiences in these clubs, I did this time, accept an invitation for a lap dance. I wasn't planning on it but I allowed peer pressure to overcome my normal cowardly resistance and quite frankly, this girl was sexy as hell.
      That was a very different experience for me. I'm not sure what to make of it. It's sexy as hell, or at least she made it such but considering it takes me about two hours (after taxes) to make $20, it's not something I could ever do with any sense of frequency. But she made my first lap-dance experience worthwhile and gave me a little bit extra, possibly a lot extra (even if I thought my experience was typical, her rapid recoiling from what she was doing when another girl passed in the background to go into the dressing room would let anyone know some rules were being violated). As such, I was sure to tip her on top of the cost of the dance.

     It is amazing how creepy some guys are in these places. In the first lounge of the evening, the discomfort on some of the dancer's faces as they put up with the antics of a drunken patron was palpable. It must suck for the dancers because those patrons end up paying more so they have to put up with it if they expect to pay back the house and make money for the evening. Negative feedback loops. I can't do that. I see no reason to treat a girl differently (in the negative sense) just because she's a go-go dancer.
     And no, I'm not trying to play some asshole nice-guy shtick. These girls would see through that as easily as I see through their flirtatious soliciting. I just feel these girls deserve the same respect one would give a waitress. They are not my playthings and I refuse to talk to them like they owe me their time.

     I wonder if I should return to this establishment? It's not like it's prohibitively far from my home. I couldn't afford to go more than once a month, but I can't help but wonder if repeating these experiences would help me with my confidence issues? Also, I've gone enough times now with experienced patrons to have learned how to properly treat/tip the bartender, staff, and dancers. As a final point I would say just because you know the attention you're getting is not genuine doesn't mean it doesn't evoke the same responses and offer the same benefits that genuine attention does, right? It might confer the same benefits that military training does. Simulated combat is certainly not real combat, but it still prepares the mind and body for the real thing.

CERTAINLY NEW YEAR SO, UH...FEWER POSTS?

     Have I given up on posting to this blog, even semi-regularly? It's starting to look that way. I suppose I'll still update from time-to-time. It's not for a lack of things to write about though it certainly helped when I had a running theme like the "I Actually Like This Shit" music video series. Knowing I'd be back week after week until I had finished certainly kept this blog on my mind. Oh well...

      So what has the New Year brought already so soon into its tenure?

      I broke up with Costello on December 1st. The relationship just wasn't working in my opinion: I couldn't see any future in it. Costello, for some time, had begun feeling more like a friend to me than a girlfriend. She liked me more than I liked her and nothing I could do could close that gap, a gap which grew only wider as time went on. When she strongly hinted that she was feeling the "L-word" for me, I had to metaphorically slit her throat. I didn't like doing it, but it had to be done. I felt it would be cruel to string her along and for over a month by that point, I was already doubting our future. I offered her friendship and the offer, while genuine, was certainly something she wanted nothing to do with advising me to pretend like she never existed. Costello then applied the scorched earth tactic to all our digital connections. She had wanted me to take a picture of us for some time but we never got around to it, and it certainly wasn't from a lack of opportunities either. Now I have none, except for one with her coat appearing partially in the background. My first relationship is over; about 3½ months worth of one. Back to the drawing board...
     But then, as if seemingly by magic I have already become entranced by an unusually pretty customer of mine whom I had been seeing on a seemingly weekly basis. I had started noticing her before the break-up, but did nothing. She has this mesmerizing smile, you see. When I saw her again in December, I was (in my opinion as a shy man) crowded by my workplace friends who were encouraging me to ask her for her number but lurking far too close for my comfort (a range which can go from just a couple of feet to a seemingly infinite distance depending on just how much I am exposing my vulnerable side). Normally this is a non-starter: I never hit on my customers as a general rule. It's probably good etiquette though I'm sure my usual low self-esteem certainly had a hand in it.
     But this customer, this girl...she got me noticing her and believe me, that's certainly no small feat. I rarely pick up on clues so if I were feeling anything at all, she must be practically beaming them in my direction. After the "crowding incident" on December 17th, I decided that next time I would see her, I would at least get her name. Up until this point, she had been showing up once a week, usually on Thursday. However I would not see her again until just yesterday near the end of my shift. Again, she saw me and rather than go to a shorter line, she waited on mine. I got her name this time but pussed out on asking if she were seeing anyone. My rationalization is that I had wanted that shift to end on a positive note (shouldn't ask too many questions...mustn't get greedy!). She had dried paint on her hands and hair. I can only hope whatever she was painting was just for her and not for a place she's sharing with an as-of-now-unknown partner.
     I like how I work myself up for something that is entirely based on physical attraction at this point. And yes (and I say so surprisingly), I have no doubts that she is attracted to me as well. I hope to see her again soon and not another month from now. It'd be nice to start the new year off so right. It would certainly be a nice change of pace.

     On the numismatic front, I still have not found the 2009-D Northern Mariana Islands quarter...now three years after its release.
      The mintages on the last two 2012 ATB quarters certainly rose significantly suggesting that the Statehood Quarter glut has passed. It was a shame too as when looking at the first three designs, 2012 was on track to have the lowest total mintage of possibly any year since clad quarter production began in 1965. But alas, it was not to be and I had certainly been looking forward to that. The fourth design, the Hawai'i Volcanoes, its mintage exceeded the mintages of that year's three prior designs combined and the final design of 2012, the Denali National Park, exceeded the mintages of all four prior 2012 designs. The total mintage for 2012 did not exceed the quarter mintages from 2009, but it certainly got close. I suspect 2013's mintages will be significantly higher still.
     As of now, the 2012 Acadia National Park quarter from the Denver mint, has the lowest mintage in the entire America the Beautiful series at 21.606 million pieces and the Chaco Culture National Historical Park quarter, also from 2012, has the lowest mintage for a single design at 22 million per mint. I guess that makes them the "keys" even though we all know many thousands of pristine examples have already been set aside by collectors so don't get your hopes up because examples from circulation will certainly never be worth more than 25¢.
     So far, the first three years' worth of ATB quarter mintages have totaled less than the mintages of the first two State Quarters. Using that series as a marker, the ATB quarters are still eating up Pennsylvania's mintage. If the rising mintages hold, then 2013 will certainly surpass New Jersey and possibly Georgia. The mintages only surpassed Delaware's, the first State Quarter, with the first 2012 design, El Yunque National Forest...11 designs in.

     Okay, I'm done blabbing for now...