I DON'T KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS !!! (part 2)

      After putting that (over)thinking, reasoning part of my brain into a temporary shock coma, the compulsion to respond to that profile became irresistible (-ible, not -able? Really? huh...). I did so fully expecting no response. A response is not the goal...merely some sort of proof (for myself at least) that what I had read, had truly existed. I figured one good turn deserved another so I responded thusly, and without explanation:

[for those of you who have never seen Babylon 5, the part of Abbut was originally supposed to be played by Gilbert Gottfried so read his lines in that voice - Talia can sound like any woman speaking in a professional, business-like tone - and Kosh sounds like a wise-old sage who speaks slowly and arrogantly]
------------------------------------------

I DON'T KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS!!!

       This is an actual profile that I am still reading on OKcupid. I had to break for a moment. My brain is hurting and I have no idea if this is for real or what but holy shit!

ADDENDUM: This profile actually shut down the overthinking, insists-on-categorizing-everything part of my brain for a time. I may have actually reached a higher meditative plane...if only I had some question in need of answering - I may have found it! I may have to remember this entry whenever I am in need of a mind-cleanse :-)

My self-summary

graduated from college at the age of 12 with a double masters in molecular biology, specializing in the effects of phakopsora pachyrhizi on asian soybeans in non-indigenous continental U.S. + northern renaissance art history, but opted out of scientific endeavors or antiquarian commentary in order to open up a light bulb manufacturing company (mostly halogen) in india at 19. though after wearing lehenga cholis grew tediously uninspiring, seeing as i'd given up touring (classical pianist child prodigy) years before, sought out a PhD in neo-classical composition (particularly the ever popular silent symphonies for dogs) as well as opened up a culinary school for wayward vegan orphans.

pretty fucking dull. huh.

MORE POLITICAL CRAP...

      One thing I've wondered is how is it that anti-trust laws don't apply to political parties? Shouldn't the near monopolistic Democratic and Republican parties be broken up in order to both promote and foster competition amongst governing philosophies? Right now they're like the sanctioned cable monopolies almost every town and city in America has to deal with. The introduction of satellite TV and high-speed internet (where available) have helped erode this once powerful take-it-or-leave juggernaut but the fact is, your local cable television company still has a powerful share of the market. If you view political districts as markets, they too are sanctioned monopolies.

      Political districts are carefully designed so as to maximize the number of voters for a particular party thereby guaranteeing a seat to that party...the so-called "safe seats". This is why, despite record hatred of Congress, the incumbency rate is still ridiculously high...like 85%. In nearly fifty years, the incumbency rate has not fallen below 85%. That means only 3 out of every 20 seats actually changes hands every two years. And yet, Congress's approval rating is below 20%. Seems a bit out of whack, no? Except for some brief spikes, the approval rating for Congress trends in the 40-50% range and yet, in all that time, the incumbency rate has remained sky-high. I guess it's a case of "everyone else's Congressman sucks, but not mine" syndrome. I'm just left wondering how it is this has not come to the Supreme Court.

      AT&T was denied a merger with T-Mobile because it was felt that such a merger would remove a "significant competitive force" from the market. And this was an instance of four major carriers being reduced to three...really two since Sprint NexTel is considerably smaller than Verizon and AT&T.

      While yes, on paper, there are many political parties in the United States, there are really just two. It's been that way pretty much since the beginning. We don't really do the coalition thing here. But if having only three cellular services was deemed unacceptable by the Department of Justice, how is having only two choices of political parties good for competition on the ideological stage? Should they not be broken up? Maybe into at least three pieces each? I say that only because the Republicans seem to have three major factions: the fiscal conservatives, the religious conservatives, and the business faction. Democrats are what? The social liberals, the union/workers' faction, the non-Christian religious faction, etc.

       And if the parties cannot be broken up, how about the districting? How about each district be carefully drawn so as to be as close to 50% Democrat and 50% Republican as possible (or one-third Democrat, Republican, and Independent if that is more feasible). At least that way, the election could always go either way. I might actually vote if that were the case because I would feel enfranchised or at least like my vote mattered. Enfranchisement alone would seem reason enough to break up the parties or the districting (or both) under anti-trust laws. I guess all that remains is, are the political parties corporations?

RAINING LIKE, WELL...Y'KNOW

      Fairly dumb, but I think one of the reasons I like cats more than dogs is because I know what a cat fucking looks like. I know breeders have turned up some pretty strange-looking cats but the fact is, you really don't see them. The cats that turn up in shelters and which are showcased on TV tend to all be the same size and build. Their fur colors and patterns are a bit random, but it still looks like a fucking cat. They come in basically two varieties - shorthair and longhair - and I rarely see the longhairs. But they all have the same faces and eyes and approximate weight range.

      Quick! Picture a dog. If you were coming for a visit and I told you that I had a dog, until you've seen it, you will have no idea if it is a small yip-yip dog or a gigantic mastiff and anything in-between. You won't know anything about its temperament; its level of energy; etc. Dogs are mysteries. I thought cartoons might be of some help but even they depict breeds. As far as I know, there's no such thing as a generic dog. Dingos maybe? But what do dogs look like if they are free to breed? What is the standard dog build and size? Even people don't come in as many shapes and sizes as dogs do. I can't picture a dog in my head and I've seen several in my life. I draw a blank. I have no expectation of a dog whereas I have one for a cat.

      Even something like "generic dog", the Google results can't settle on an answer. I see a German shepherd, a beagle, and a golden retriever...and that's just dog breeds I very easily recognize. "Mutt" is all over the place too. But "generic cat" turns up pretty much the same basic body plan in all the image results.

      If I had a point to this entry, I have since lost it. Enjoy your fragment...

FAME HYPOTHESIS

      A quick thing I've been meaning to write about for some time now, the Fame Hypothesis. What is it? Simply put, it's this idea I had which was inspired by Kim Kardashian and a co-worker's comment on her frequent magazine cover appearances. He wondered aloud if it was now illegal for a month to go by without her appearing on at least one magazine cover.

      The Fame Hypothesis is a mathematical expression that states that one's fame is inversely proportional to the amount of reminders needed to keep one famous (that is, in the public's mind). Some people are very famous: Paul McCartney, Lucille Ball, and Neil Armstrong for instance. Some people are not: Kim Kardashian, The Situation, and Colleen Haskell (if you said, "Who?" upon reading this...thank you for illustrating my point)

      The basic difference between the two is this: if Paul McCartney stepped out of the limelight and effectively disappeared much as Neil Armstrong has, he would still be remembered and revered for his work in The Beatles just as anyone, even people who hadn't even been born when it happened, know that Neil Armstrong was the first man to walk on the Moon. Neil Armstrong is a notorious recluse and still, over forty years after the fact remains supremely famous for that one act and he will be forever enshrined in public memory like Christopher Columbus and Napoléon long after he has died. There are just some people who are just that famous.

       If you didn't have magazines constantly reminding you of the existence of Kim Kardashian, how quickly do you think you would forget her? Her fame, like plutonium, is unstable and without constant reinforcement, would be lost to the ages. People being born now will not know who the fuck Kim Kardashian is when they are old enough to ask that question...if they ask that question. The Jersey Shore will merely be a destination to them and Paris Hilton will sound like a hotel in Paris, France.

       As far as I am concerned, the more frequent the reminders needed, the more unstable your fame is. Whatever true fame is, it is doled out infrequently and certainly not repetitively (Quick! Who was the third man to have walked on the Moon?). I suppose the same applies to people in general: the more one needs to be reminded of you, the less famous (i.e. important) to them you are...

______________________________________
The answer is Charles "Pete" Conrad

SINGLE SEX EDUCATION IS STUPID, BUT THIS MIGHT NOT BE...

       The New York Times ran an article on single sex education again recently in which the idea of educating boys and girls in separate classes was declared ineffective and even detrimental in the long run. I'll admit I used to be an advocate of this type of education. It made sense to me as I felt that boys and girls learned differently and that those learning styles ought to be taken into account when educating our nation's youth. But over the years, I would have sporadic arguments with friends on this topic and through these discussions, I have been made to see that my initial thoughts on the subject were ultimately baseless. I still favor segregated education, but no longer on the basis of sex, but on the basis of learning styles.

      Through arguments with friends, it came to our collective attention that there existed a root difference in the styles of learning: competitive versus cooperative. It was merely sexism that asserted boys were competitive and girls, cooperative in their respective learning styles. Now while this assertion may have some factual basis in that perhaps more than 50% of all boys are competitive learners and more than 50% of all girls are cooperative learners, it fails to account for the rest and punishing their minds on the basis of a chromosome was deemed unfair.

       I'm not sure how best to go about this, but since schools are divided traditionally into elementary, middle, and high, they might be sorted out in the middle of the educational years. I was thinking that everyone is taught together in elementary school and teachers would be additionally charged with noting which students showed strengths in each of the learning styles in each of their subjects. When they've graduated to middle school, they would be separated in accordance to their styles. These students would not be put in different buildings...I would never want that and no student would necessarily be in all of one type of learning style class either. I personally might have fared better in competitive environments for subjects I showed aptitude with (the sciences and history) and cooperative environments in those subjects which I was weaker (mathematics and literature). High school would also continue in this vein, but I was also thinking a mission of middle schools would be for teachers to identify subject strengths in their students so that their high school education would focus more heavily on those elements (while still providing for a decent liberal arts education).

      If only 30% of all students go on to graduate from college then a high school education must be sufficient to prepare the remaining 70% of those students for the workforce (minus that percentage, whatever it is, that move on to vocational schools). But that is another topic. Let me avoid rambling for once :-)

      One point of this segregated education is that I still want the students to co-mingle. I'm guessing lunchtime and recess (and maybe gym class too since both cooperation and competitiveness are necessary to succeed in sports) would be opportune times. It's bad enough that the social classes tend to no longer mix at any level, I would not want student bodies to suffer that fate as well.

      I would think such a separation of learning styles would prove advantageous to both types allowing the competitive types not to feel suppressed by the system and for the cooperative types not to feel stressed or left behind. Both styles of learning are of benefit to society and I'm sure you can imagine times when competitiveness is best and other times when cooperation is the ideal skill set to possess. That is all...

LINE OF THE DAY, part XIX

From ACockCalledChanticleer in the comments section of this article on Gawker:

(quoting from the article - bold added by commenter) He dropped out of school. He doesn't have any qualifications and it seemed like he wanted to stop me from getting a degree."

She first met Webber when they were at primary school.

"Throughout the whole relationship, he was a bit controlling and possessive really. If I didn't go to see him the moment I had some free time, he would start complaining

You have an internal compass. Use common sense. I didn't and it damn near cost me a childhood dream.

Ladies, if a man's educational/professional achievements are less than yours, simply make note of it and pay attention to how he responds to your ambition.

If he is ANYTHING but your biggest cheerleader when you want to pursue a higher goal dump his insecure fucking ass stat!

It doesn't start out with stalking. It will creep on you slowly. Don't make excuses for him. Good men want what's best for you, not what's convenient for them.

Later, the commenter added in response to other comments:

Women should never sacrifice significant earning potential for another's needs*. Any guy that wants to slow you down, wants to control you to the point of dependency. The easiest way to do this is by minimizing your success of feeding yourself and providing your own shelter. Any guy that wants to increase your dependence on him is setting the stage for other methods of mistreatment.

[*I realize that there are many SAHMs ["stay at home mom" is my best guess]. Please don't take this as a putdown. This is about subtle, long-lasting coercion not a conscious decision. We all make what we think are the best choices. Either way, there are risks.] 

      I admit when reading this article, I was originally feeling another round of "what the fuck is so wrong with me that women will not date me?" coming on because here is another case of a woman dating an abusive man and here I am without a police record, with a steady (though not prestigious) job, no debt, blah blah blah. And then I read this comment and it got me thinking...am I that guy?

      My professional achievements can only be generously described as "minimal" and my ambitions amount to living a quiet, fairly predictable life of leisure. One of the questions on OKcupid asked me if it was possible for someone to have too much ambition to which I answered "YES". One of the big things that attracts me to Bronx, for instance, is that she lives a simple life which she is content with. But am I that guy depicted in the comment? Am I an anchor meant to bring stability to the life of another or am I simply trying to weigh one down to keep them from getting away? If I seek only those who are not ambitious themselves, does that absolve me? If I am neutral toward another's ambitions, but not encouraging...is that the same as active discouragement? I don't feel so good right now...

LINE OF THE DAY, part XVIII

From Mehvolutionist (I love the screennames people come up with - makes me wish I were creative) in this Gawker article:

The reasons I'd like to think I'd be against the death penalty if someone I love was murdered (besides the possibility of innocence):

If there's an afterlife, and it's forgiveness and heaven for everyone: Why give this guy an advance ticket? Make him live in a cement box 'till he croaks on his own.

If there's an afterlife, and murderers go to hell: If that's where he's going anyway, I wouldn't mind if he spends four or five decades in a cement box beforehand.

If there's no afterlife: Lights out sounds kind of peaceful. Way more pleasant than living in a cement box, anyway. Cement box for him! 

To which MizJenkins (who also is a starred commenter - what does it take to get a star on this site?!!) replied:  Interesting, you're anti death penalty because essentially it's not sadistic enough for you? 

Though you did not ask, I tend to be pro-death penalty because I believe at some point we have a responsibility as a society to remove members from it who will not and cannot participate lawfully. Forgiveness is a wonderful thing, don't get me wrong, but at some point, enough must be enough. I would also expand the death penalty for financial crimes which result in the ruin of many lives, sometimes thousands of lives, like what happened with Enron and with Bernie Madoff because, in my opinion, they've done just as much damage as a murderer does to the family who grieves over the victim. Just because they continue to live does not mean they have not done grievous harm to them.


But I also am somewhat receptive to the idea of using the death penalty in place of long prison sentences too. Nowadays, things change very quickly and there are all sorts of barriers to returning to being an upstanding citizen. If prisons aren't also about rehabilitation, why do they exist? Whatever happened to "having paid your debt to society"? Why should a person who's served time have to mention that on an employment application? They were released...they were legally forgiven, no? If you believe the person is still a criminal at heart, why were they released? That's why I'm against shit like Megan's Law. I don't support child molesters in any way (in fact I would probably argue they be put to death), but if they've served their time, what's with the scarlet letter? If you believe they're still a danger to children, why were they let out in the first place? A prison sentence probably shouldn't be longer than seven years in these modern times. After that, I think you really have to consider what you expect to get out of a longer incarceration. Or maybe prison (in terms of punishment) should be no longer than two years and the penitentiary part (the rehabilitation into society) can be indefinite or maximized in the sense of if you don't "graduate" back to full citizenship within (for the sake of argument) seven years, you will be put to death because you have deemed yourself unworthy of society as per our modern definitions of what is proper civil behavior.


Okay, I'm rambling...

LINE OF THE DAY, part XVII

From Tragic Apostrophe in this Gawker article:

I think Dan Savage summed up my feelings on all this best:

In the midst of the shitstorm over Michele Bachmann's comments about the HPV vaccine—her false statements, a.k.a "lies"—let's pause to remember why religious conservatives like Bachmann hate the HPV vaccine so much.

HPV is one of the most common sexually transmitted infections. HPV is easily transmitted by skin-to-skin contact; condoms provide some protection, but not much. Most people who have been exposed to the human papilloma virus don't know they've been exposed. Most are asymptomatic. An asymptomatic person can still pass the virus on. A small percentage of women who have HPV go on to develop cervical cancer and some of those women wind up dead. Religious conservatives loved the HPV virus because it killed women. Here was a potentially fatal STI that condoms couldn't protect you from. Abstinence educators pointed to HPV and jumped up and down—they loved to overstate HPV's seriousness and its deadliness—in their efforts to scare kids into saving themselves for marriage. And they fought the introduction of the HPV vaccine tooth-and-nail because vaccinating women against HPV would "undermine" the abstinence message. Given a choice between your wife, daughter, sister, or mom dying of cervical cancer or no longer being to scream "HPV IS GOING TO KILL YOU!" at classrooms full of terrified teenagers, socially conservative abstinence "educators" preferred the former.

Bachmann and her ilk believe that woman who have sex—along with men who fail to purchase health insurance—deserve to die horrible deaths. That's why they hate the HPV vaccine, that's why they fought its introduction, that's why they tell lies about it now. Because they want women to die.

This is all so ridiculous, we empirically know that the HPV vaccinations are safe and they will save lives, the fact is you don't like it because you think it will cause people to have more sex outside of marriage, which is your stupid opinion, not a valid reason to not prevent cancer.


________________________________


For an honorable mention, we have from snacktastic (cleaned up by Zedonk!): "If I can't have hope, give me vengeance" (possibly available in T-shirt form from CafePress)

THIS IS WHY THE DEMOCRATS LOSE...

      I want to make it clear that I hate the Republican Party, but I really fucking hate the Democratic Party. Do they have any fight left in them whatsoever? The nimrods in genuine leadership positions for the GOP have been lobbing underhand pitches the Democrats for some time now and not a single swing on their part. The amount of shame and scorning for their hypocritical stances, anti-science views, and downright Orwellian propaganda (job-creators anyone?) the Democrats ought to be heaping upon the GOP is downright enormous and yet, the jackass-symboled party remains cowered and silent. What the fuck?

      You have the obvious shit like the GOP's sudden turn on fiscal conservativism. NOW debts are a problem? Where the fuck were these assholes during the Bush administration? They seemed to be in place for the last years of the Clinton one, y'know...when the country was generating surpluses for the first time in my life but for Bush? Let's see, you had tax cuts made during a(n undeclared) war - something has NEVER been done in the history of the world - to which another (undeclared) war would be added, huge increases to the military budget, a medicare drug benefit bill, among others...all paid for on borrowed money creating huge annual deficits. But that didn't matter because Vice President Cheney declared that "deficits don't matter."

      The biggest hypocrisy is, in my opinion, the party's sheer lack of compassion. Look, I haven't read the Bible cover-to-cover so it's possible I've missed something. However, I'm fairly sure that Jesus was much more likely to support tending to the impoverished, the malnourished, and the sick than to be insuring that the wealthy pay the least amount of taxes possible and making sure that we project overwhelming military authority across the globe rather than overwhelming moral and ethical authority (If you've ever wondered how far we've fallen, check this out. Imagine that ever happening today). Yet the party which has somehow secured itself as the Party of God manages to do exactly none of the things that even an eighth-way decent Christian would do. And do the Democrats effectively call them out on their bullshit? No. And a resounding No at that.

      Their anti-science stances are also legendary. Never mind that the power the United States was able to gain over the past century had EVERYTHING to do with education, especially science education; never mind all our advances in medical technology and improvements in the quality of life; never mind all our military advances too; none of it matters. Let our education and educational infrastructure crumble until we become a has-been on the world stage because you're afraid of evolution, unions, sex, and having your religion become marginalized.

       But what has one of the many medical fronts we have "declared war on" been in the past fifty years or so? That would be cancer. There's been a "War on Cancer" for some time now. It's hardly won, but a cure has been recently found for cervical cancer and it comes in the form of a three-shot vaccine for the human papillomavirus (HPV). Thousands of women die from this cancer every year and a cure has been found, but Governor Rick Perry and Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (and I would bet good money a large share of the Republican Party) are opposed to mandating this vaccine which, to be most effective, must be given to girls before they become sexually active. Any given girl has a 1 in 2 chance of contracting this virus over her sexual lifetime...that's not statistically insignificant...and the virus will ultimately kill about 4000 of those women annually. We've found a cure for a cancer and the GOP does not want you to have it.

       It is fair to say that they are not advocating this vaccine (or others) go away, just that you shouldn't be "forced" to get them. Never mind the excellent safety records of ALL vaccines and the literally tens of millions of lives saved by them and that even 1-2% of the population being unvaccinated is enough to negate the benefits of vaccination overall. No, false information about them gets spread like they cause autism (disproven) or retardation or simply making vaccines sound conspiratorial by calling them "government injections." Aside from the fact that I have no idea how these assholes (and others like Jenny McCarthy) don't get sued for libel/slander by vaccine makers for spreading false claims and dangerous misinformation about their products, I can't help but wonder...where the fuck are the Democrats in all this? Whatever happened to fighting fire with fire?

      I don't like Republican tactics. I don't like their Orwellian treatment of language and how it seems they're taking orders from unseen leaders (take the time to notice how quickly every Republican and their supporters - most notoriously Fox News and the Wall St. Journal will all be using the same words, phrases, and jingoisms whenever a new one emerges. It's like they got memos). Notice how there are no wealthy or rich people in this country anymore, they're "job creators." And they get to continue to be called "job creators" unchallenged because the Democratic party seemed pathologically incapable of pointing out how there are fewer jobs now than there were in 2001 (y'know, before the Bush tax cuts to the wealthy which were supposed to create jobs and how tax cuts now are supposed to be spurring the same thing, but clearly aren't). This goes back a while now considering that the word "liberal" is now a curseword in politics and conservativism is somehow a badge of honor. In a country founded on innovation, both scientific and entrepreneurial, being conservative (in the political sense of going back to the "good old days" and not the dictionary sense of preserving of the status quo and resistant to change) is like being proud of your ignorance rather than ashamed. Now that I think about it, the difference between conservativism (in the dictionary sense) and Republican conservativism seems exactly analogous to Chris Rock's famous "Black People versus Niggaz" bit from "Bring the Pain" back in 1996. (Nothing makes a Republican happier than not knowing the answer to your question... ;-) )

Actual U.S. half-disme pattern. Look at the legend: "Lib(erty) ∙ Par(ent) of Science & Industry"

      But what I'm getting at here is where are the attack ads? And by that I mean the attack ads of the caliber I've come to expect from the Republican Party. Y'know, the ones with blatant exaggerations and out-of-context quotations? The ones which make spurious connections that will cause anyone who's not used to thinking critically to accept unquestioningly? Where're the black&white ads with ominous music making claims (rather than cautiously insinuating) that Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann want to withhold a cure for cancer; that these people would rather your daughter die of cancer because preventing it offends them? It makes me want to rip what's left of my hair out. It's way too easy to attack these assholes and attack them viciously on any number of issues and yet...conspicuous silence. Even just the fact that like 99% of Republican voters are actually voting against their self-interests. Republican districts are overwhelmingly dependent on government assistance and yet are the same districts who rail against government in their lives. Those same districts benefit heavily from tax allocation (that is, they receive more money from the government than they pay in taxes) yet decry socialism. It's insane.

      The party's supposed to be religious yet no one expects corporations to behave morally and ethically. Shouldn't a company where the officers rake in a shitload of money while simultaneously laying off workers or offshoring them to another country be shamed rather than praised? Shouldn't at least a tithing of the bonuses CEOs make be spread amongst the workers that made it possible? What about the lack of charity? The highest ranking members aren't expected to sacrifice in order to make sure their most vulnerable employees can keep their jobs? When did stockholders become more important than the people in the company? (Oh, right...) But still, the Party of Jesus remains silent on what should be a very big issue.

       Ugh... I'm done for now. Too annoyed to go on...

ADDENDUM: Here's an example of how Democrats should fight. They may not win right away using this kind of strategy, but if they keep up with this drumbeat, they will shine...

PRISMATIC THINKING

      The normally white light of my thoughts during periods of self-reflection is often broken down to reveal the colors within. I like to think of my thoughts as the combination of three aspects: my Body, my Heart, and my Mind and this triangle is made tetrahedronal with the addition of the Voice.

      Now, before you go thinking me crazy, I know all of what I'm about to say is just my brain. I just find it easier to understand myself and motivations when considering my actions as though manifested from the result of a compromise between the three aspects and their ultimate expression.

      I think of my Body as my physical reaction to things, especially the involuntary public ones like blushing, disgust, terror, genuine smiles, and flop sweat and equally involuntary private ones like hunger, low-intensity pain, and attraction (I'm sure you can think of many others).  While I have voluntary control over my movements and such, I have no such control over these kinds of reactions. They're about as natural as they come and since these reactions are worn on my sleeve, I tend to not like my Body so much being the secretive, cryptic man I am. I consider no wonder that I don't like looking at people directly when talking with them, preferring instead to do so over the phone or through IM chats where I can better hide my Body from others. I'm not ashamed of my body, I just wish I had more control over it. I don't like revealing "the truth" so readily and the Body is a ready betrayer of such truths.

      The Heart is the source of involuntary passionate/active (hot, often reactionary) emotions and the Mind is the source of willed logical/passive (cold, often strategic) ones. Whereas the Heart may become enraged and want to act on it now (and the Body might shake with anger and surge with adrenaline and testosterone), the Mind would be more concerned with revenge and wait for a good opportunity to strike. The Heart is spontaneous/intuitive whereas the Mind is deliberate/observant. I also view the Heart as having a more selfless sensibility and the Mind as being more inherently selfish. And by that I mean that even though the desires of the Heart would be validly considered to be just as selfish as the desires of the Mind, the Heart's impulsiveness gives the feelings more of an air of altruism. The desires of the Heart spring from the gut, not from thought. You get combined emotions too with one of the two halves tending to be dominant. Cyber-Stalking, for example, is a deliberate action coupled with a(n unhealthy) passion. The Mind-dominant dual emotion poisons the Heart and vice-versa (like guilt which is a Heart-dominant emotion that poisons the Mind). There are mutually beneficial dual emotions too no doubt, but since I tend to focus on the negative, I'm having trouble thinking of any at the moment.

      Of the three, I find the strongest in me to be my Mind and that doesn't make me feel good about myself. Of the three groups, only the Mind can speak English (or whatever language(s) you speak) whereas the Heart can only understand it. This ability to speak makes the Mind, in my opinion, the source of selfishness and evil. And for the sake of this article, "evil" means thoughts whose realization would make me the sole benefactor or the only one considered for satisfaction. For example, I would consider an increased interest in a girl because she has problems which can be exploited to be evil thoughts since I would be viewing her as tool or means to an end which benefits myself rather than as a human being deserving of kindness and compassion. My Mind doesn't view people as people, but more like numbers and equations which can be manipulated to some end. My Heart sees people. My Mind sees you and thinks, "Who are you?" whereas my Heart asks, "What do you want?" and my Body concerning itself with neither.

      I am glad to have the friends I have because the vast majority of them I believe are Heart-dominant. They keep me human or at least feeling more human. It feels more natural to be dominated by the Heart and have it supplemented with the Mind.

      The Heart and Mind are ultimately expressed by the Voice. Whereas the Body cannot lie, the Voice is able to do so. That's not to say the Voice is a liar, only that it can lie. The Voice is your actual spoken voice, which unlike the Body, is voluntary. The Voice is how you choose to express the turmoil between your Heart and Mind. The Voice makes the choice.

      I feel my Mind was primarily attracted to Digby, and because of the way it went down and ultimately ended, I find that I hate her while remaining strongly attracted to her. This poisons my Heart's remaining desire for her leaving me in strong depressive states when exposed to her.

       I'm so tired now. I'll post and (possibly) elaborate later...

SIMPLE UPDATE

       I'm talking to my Best Friend again. Her grandmother did pass from this world, I attended as I said I would, and we have been in contact ever since.

        While the Ukrainian had a valid excuse not to attend (I was supposed to go with her, but instead had to take a taxi last minute), I must admit that I'm annoyed that none of Best Friend's friends showed up at the wake/funeral, even for a few minutes, as a show of support for her. I saw her apartment for the first time too. Very spacious, and my old cat remembered me too :-)

BRAVADO

      It seems yesterday, there was supposed to be a terrorist attack, car-bomb style, in New York City yesterday on the tenth anniversary of the Trade Center attacks. (read article here) It didn't happen. Whether this was the result of bad information, the planners getting spooked by the newspapers/heightened security, or that it was actually foiled and information about it will surface eventually, at this time, remains unknown. But it got me thinking, and thinking in ways I often do...

      Shouldn't we be mocking al Qaeda at this point? I mean, they've been reduced to car bombs? What happened to the grand, ostentatious displays? Each attack by this group escalated in both size and daring. You had the first bombing of the Trade Center with simple truck bombs (which were supposed to topple the one tower into the other), the U.S. embassy bombing in Kenya, the brazen attack on the U.S.S. Cole battleship, and finally culminating in the, and yes I will say it, impressive nearly simultaneous hijackings of four jet airliners turned guided missiles on the Pentagon, World Trade Center, and (presumably) the Capitol Building. You can't go back now...that's weakness, not to mention a blow to pride. Car bombs are hack for this group and to use them at all would only reveal their inability to carry out the kinds of attacks they've made a name for themselves with. It's laughable that they even considered stooping to such a level.

      Blame bin Laden if you will. The trouble with the 9/11 attacks is that they were so amazingly amazing that they're difficult to follow-up on in terms of scale. I'm not saying car bombs don't represent serious threats to lives and property, but my, how far you've fallen al Qaeda...

SO IT'S COME TO THIS...

      A little over a month ago, I signed up for an online dating service. Being the tentative type I am, I went with the freebie site OKCupid. I will probably join another soon so as not to have all my eggs in one basket.

      For the first two weeks, I decided on a passive approach. I wanted to know if I were desirable at all. I received three messages from three different women out the blue. The first one I messaged back and forth with for several messages until she stopped, and she stopped just after suggesting we meet up and I agreed. She seemed nice and was attractive, but she wasn't catching the attention of my mind but I was happy that it was progressing, at least for a little while.

     The second one had an amazing profile from my mind's standpoint, but not my heart nor my body. She seemed eager to meet me for the same reasons, figuring right from the start that we share values, but have very different lifestyles and career trajectories. Despite that, she thought we should meet anyway to see if we could stand each other as people. I liked her bluntness, but I couldn't see an attraction forming: she felt like she'd be a friend only. Still she suggested we meet and when I agreed and tried to set something up, I would get no further responses.

      The final one before I started initiating contact myself seemed by far the most promising. She got my attention in a way I liked and we messaged back and forth every day for almost two weeks before I got a phone number. Everything she would say would be the "correct answer" as far as I was concerned. She was resonating positively with me. After our phone call, which seemed to go well - I didn't detect anything that would suggest otherwise - I even dared to entertain the thought that I would have to live down my recalcitrance about not doing the online dating thing sooner. During the phone call, she mentioned having interviews for jobs the next day. I texted her that day about it and got no response. Several days later, I got an apology which I accepted in stride. I called again next Monday and left a message. She never returned my call so at this point, my best hope from this site had vanished.

      Since I hadn't received any new messages from new women over this two week span, I started initiating contact myself. I have yet to receive a single response from any girl I've initiated contact with. So that's not helping one bit. I have gotten responses from girls who have "chosen me" and they have all petered out fairly quickly. I'm still waiting on two responses that I don't think I'll ever get. I've since gotten a couple of random messages but nothing from anyone I could even desperately give a chance to. I just don't like what I read.

      I spent a lot of time answering a lot of questions and then realized I should probably do a "less is more" approach to everything. I only answered 100 questions (instead of like the 400+ I had done previously) and only answered ones whose answers were clear (required no explanations) and mattered to me. I don't know if it's helping, but it seems better than offering my two cents on things that ultimately don't matter to me.

      So far, despite getting some welcome attention, my fears of going online before securing a date in real life at least once are being validated. I've had two girls call me cute unsolicited so I feel marginally better about that aspect of my self-doubts, but I still feel no better about my overall desirability. Out of the15 total sent messages, I've gotten exactly 3 responses...all of which appear to have ended. And all 3 of those indicated their interest in me first by "choosing me" (giving me 4 or 5 stars) so I'm 0 for 12 with my own attempts to get things moving. I have yet to receive any reciprocal interest from girls whom I have given 4 or 5 stars to. I've given out 4 or 5 stars to 35 women and 2 of those were to girls who had messaged me first. Not a single girl has ever messaged me after receiving a 4 or 5 star rating from me (though one did message me back...once) which I consider the online equivalent of invitational body language.

       What's bugging me about this experience thus far besides the obvious lack of both initial and sustained interest is that now I have numbers. Whereas before I merely perceived my undesirability, I can now demonstrate just how undesirable I am mathematically. If something doesn't happen soon, the joy from the kind of attention I'm getting now - I receive at least ten unique visitors daily (multiply that by almost 40, take that divisor and dividend of 6 total messages out the blue, and you get a very low percentage*) - will surely fade and turn to bitterness. I may be in a bad place soon... Well, while writing this, I have been chosen by another woman. Let me go check her out and message her since I would like to believe I have a better chance of a response.

       I'll get into more detail about this in later entries...

______________________________________
* (dividend) ÷ (divisor) = (quotient)

FYI:
(addend) + (addend) = (sum)
(minuend) - (subtrahend) = (difference)
(factor) x (factor) = (product)