codely chaotic

it's over at last

2009-12-22T20:07:00.000-08:00

Believe it or not, after that last post in Oct 08, I went through another year of this. He'd tell me he wanted me, that he had stopped trying and broke up with her but he wasn't quite ready yet, then he was ready but not yet unencumbered, etc.

I think I've been dating a pathological liar. He really does believe what he's saying at the time he says it. The operative phrase being 'at the time.' I don't know what he's been telling her. I don't know if the few steps forward he's taken really happened.

But it's over now. I was at the end of my rope and dangling there for a long time. Too long. We had one more boom-and-bust cycle, where he wants to see me, we have a great time together, we get close, then he backs off and tells me we can't see each other. I finally blew my top, he flipped out and said a bunch of simply crazy stuff.

No more friends and definitely never lovers. It's kind of sad. I thought I had a straightforward man with an amazingly positive attitude, seemingly clear of emotional problems, and it turns out he has more problems than most.

But if anyone gives a damn, which I rather doubt, I am still alive and actually feel a bit like I've finally left a nightmare. I can't believe I'm out, I'm fragile like a dove's egg. Part of me has gotten so used to it that I am surprised when I find myself using my brain the way I used to: it's as if 90% of my background processing had been devoted to this futile task, and now that CPU time has suddenly been freed up for real stuff.

Crazy.

long time coming

2008-10-12T17:52:00.000-07:00

No, I'm not dead. I've been through hell: keeping my sanity while a guy loves two women, has a hard time saying no, can't make up his mind, and can't keep his feelings about a woman to himself. Add into this mix one woman who is possessive to the point of mental illness (ex) and another woman who is hopeful to the point of being a doormat (me). Crossing my fingers, I think he's coming back to me. Things he's said to me make it reasonably certain.

It has been really, really (^1000) hard.

Good things have come out of it -- and I don't count the coming back as a good thing, because it has only partially happened. My attitude about life has changed a lot. I'm more positive and perhaps a bit kinder. I've been on an expedition for new friends (meetup.com is a pretty damn amazing thing) and have found some acquaintances and done stuff I didn't think would be all that great but turned out to be fun. My god, I'm having fun (what is this thing you call fun?).

It didn't kill me, and to my surprise, I think it has made me stronger.

is it all a game

2008-05-22T18:13:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I wonder exactly what is being accomplished when he tells me I should not wait for him. He says he wants me to protect myself emotionally: if I assume he is not going to be my lover, I cannot be hurt any more if he decides to stay with xgf. We have to go through this charade of consciously turning our faces from the idea of potential relationship. Yet it is almost certain he won't stay with her.

Why must we do this?

despair

2008-05-18T21:30:00.000-07:00

It's a good thing I wrote the previous entry. I was in a pretty bad state today about this. That last one gives a few drops of hope that we have a future together.

Today, I'm disturbed because I can now feel anger at him and dislike him. I can analyze all his bad qualities. For example, seeing me when the xgf has disallowed it is a weaselly quality that may bite me back in the future.

Ultimately, this is a good thing: better I see clearly now than 10 years down the road.

wonders never cease

2008-05-10T21:27:00.000-07:00

I believe he's starting to come around.

Despite the xgf's demands that we have only email contact, we phone anyway. And we had a very good time together today. Quite platonic, but the attraction is clearly still present: he sits close to me, touches me, kisses me goodbye (neck, of course, nothing so obviously intimate).

Recently I told him the sharp loneliness jags were pretty much over and though it would be nice to be able to phone and/or see, I could live without -- but I still wanted to be friends. I think that took a certain amount of pressure off him.

My ulterior motive, though, is to return the xgf to a state of confidence, belief that she has him completely. The more confidence she has, the less effort she'll put into trying to keep him. And thus the sooner he'll leave her.

I don't want to tell him I'm giving up on him, because even though that might make this happen faster, it's not true and not what either of us wants, and he might take me at my word. The most convincing lie is the one with the most truth in it.

In an interesting bit of conversation today, he admitted the possibility that the girlfriend in his future might not be her. This is a first.

nonprogress on the outside

2008-05-06T22:05:00.000-07:00

There's an advantage to having a mutual friend who possesses some judgment. That is a person who will tell you things that are important, but not tell you things that he feels you don't need to know or will just get your dander up.

I had tried to pin down the semib/f on how he feels about exgf and where he thinks it's going. He's said in various nonverbal ways that it simply isn't there for him. He feels no sense of renewal, no spark. Exgf seems happy and is treating him well, he says, but these words come out in a tone completely skeptical about how long this good treatment will last.

And yet his words are always It's too early to tell.

Mutual friend to semib/f: You're just going through the motions with [exgf]. You know it's going to fail.
Semib/f: Yes.

nonprogress

2008-05-03T20:19:00.000-07:00

A mutual friend is estimating it will take 1 to 2 months for him to realize that the ex is not going to work out.

The ex doesn't want me to see, talk, or email him. This, he agrees, is bullshit, but he wants to abide. He wants to feel clear of distraction so he can really see what the ex is about. So we email.

Twice so far I have had a day full of loneliness jags. The entire day I'm trying to find things to do so I won't think about him, and anytime I stop or finish what I'm doing, there I am thinking again. It's a strange sensation, akin to being stabbed; it's a sensation of weakness all over, but mostly in the gut.

I have no fucking idea how I'm going to survive 1 to 2 months of this.

sometimes

2008-04-27T09:07:00.000-07:00

I have full confidence he will leave her
and
sometimes
I am certain he is afraid of change and would rather remain comfortable and I will never see him again

crap

2008-04-24T19:46:00.000-07:00

He's going back to her for a trial period.

My self-worth ought not depend on his poor decisions.

I just don't understand what is so attractive about "history." That's what he says is his main motivation -- they've had so many years together, he owes it to (someone -- her? him?) to try.

There are so many things I want to say to him, warnings, predictions that I am pretty sure will happen. But he has to find this stuff out for himself. I can't tell him. There's nothing I can say or do that won't make me look bad in the process, and he won't understand/believe it anyway until it actually happens.

She was constantly fearing she would "never see him again," despite the fact that I encouraged him to keep his friendship with her. He told me many times she always fears the worst. But now that he's doing this, I know that I'm going to be the one who'll never see him again. Presently she feels threatened by me, so he is going to see me Saturday but after that won't. I predict she will always feel threatened. We can never get together one-on-one as platonic friends.

I'm sad.

All I can do is wait. And maybe date. I have to be patient. I know what the outcome will be, it's just hard not knowing how long it will take.

it just might be getting better

2008-04-09T22:24:00.000-07:00

We've come more or less to an understanding.

He felt guilty to think of me waiting for him to sort his feelings out. I said what I do with my time is my choice, not his, and his guilt is not my problem. We simply cannot look at each other without automatically thinking "potential relationship" -- those feelings are not going to go away. He can hardly ask me to turn my back on my feelings about him when he cannot do the same for his ex. Nor, he added, can he turn his back on his feelings for me.

We got together today so I could return a few items he'd left at my place. The talk about our feelings was calm and rational. We ended up having a pretty good time with nearly no tension and with just a little bit of flirting.

The key point for me was that he was pretty sure he couldn't restart a relationship with the ex. The vast difference between my calm and her hysteria makes me so much easier to get along with. He feels he needs to back off from both of us (something I'd suggested weeks ago when this first started coming down), chill out, and figure out what he wants and how he's going to achieve it. He needs to mourn his relationship with his ex, and he needs to work with her until she understands that he is choosing to back off for himself, not for me.

The proof is in the pudding, of course. What happens will happen. But I feel much better, more confident, which means I am willing to wait this out. I hope he feels better too. He may not be any more resolved but I think -- or at least I hope -- I've eased some of that guilt.

And [Max], thank you so very much. Your clearheadedness was sorely needed and you came through for me.

all I can say is

2008-04-08T21:40:00.001-07:00

Nice guys finish last.

You try to be strong, you try to be good to other people, and you just lose out. If you're hurt, people think you're strong enough to stand it, so they walk all over you.

You whine, act like a crazy person, and people try to take care of you and do what you want.

predictions for summer

2008-04-07T19:20:00.000-07:00

She will suggest they get married. He wanted to before, she didn't want to, but now she will want to.

They will. If he's smart, he won't, but I think they will.

It will not work. He'll find out their relationship is exactly the same as it ever was, with the petty nagging and the lack of sex. And it will be all the harder to get out of it since they are legally married.

This will all take about six months.

I'll be lonely, I will try to date, perhaps I will get a date, but none of it will be serious. There will probably be some desperate, frustrated sex that will lead nowhere and with luck I won't get any weird diseases. I'm very likeable but only on the surface, I'm too difficult for anyone to want a permanent relationship.

slightly drunken suicidal thoughts

2008-04-07T18:32:00.000-07:00

Cigarettes are for people who don't have the balls to get it over with. So I'm smoking.

There is no point in this.

I don't have a proper gun anyway. Just a .22 Marlin rifle, which hasn't been used in at least 12 years. I'd have to pull the trigger with my toe, which looks ridiculous, and most likely it would misfire anyway. I have a friend, Erik, who has put a gun to his head and come close to pulling. I like him a lot, but I honestly don't understand him, and if I don't understand him I don't understand how a person can commit suicide.

But I understand why I feel like this. It's the first real happiness I've had in longer than I can remember. It lasted a few months. Now it's gone.

No, I'm not going to kill myself over this. I've had worse pains, I think. There's someone else who I loved terribly but I know he'll never, ever return that love. I've gotten over this. It's just adding in the sense of getting older and everything seeming pointless and a despair that life will never be as good as I had it for these few months. I have talents that I don't have the ego to display for admiration. I am underappreciated at work -- this may be changing, but it's going to throw me into a situation where I don't know anything, and I'm going to be expected to prove myself capable there.

It would be just super easy to do it. Driving to the cigarette store I go down a frontage road with a 10-foot block wall which curves just a bit at the end of the segment. I found myself for a moment staring at it with my foot on the gas and wondering what would happen if I just left my foot there. The moment was pretty long. I had to brake hard.

If you're serious about committing suicide, you never tell anyone. You just do it.

I know nobody but my friend [Max] reads this blog. And he'll know what to do.

status: FUBAR

2008-04-07T15:00:00.000-07:00

We broke up.

He doesn't know what he wants. On the one hand he says he's sure he doesn't want to have a romantic relationship with her. On the other hand he says he loves her, that the fact that *we* got together spurred communication better than they've had in a decade, and that he wants to see what that leads to.

All this means I'm fucked, I feel used and that the happiness I thought, and he said, he felt with me means nothing compared to the comfort-zone relationship with her. And we can probably never get back together again without this hanging over.

I don't know where I am. I want to have a relationship and part of me says I can forgive all this. The prideful and spiteful part says don't do it.

what she wants

2008-04-01T18:00:00.001-07:00

The other day I was talking with a woman friend about this, and she said that the ex wants a brother. This does fit in with other things the ex has said as well as suiting the relationship they've had.

Normal people expect their brothers to find girlfriends and wives. There is something unnatural about the ex's behavior.

Zahtras understand.
...
No. Zathras not understand. But Zathras do! Zathras good at doings, not understandings.

an fyi

2008-03-31T21:19:00.000-07:00

I should mention that until the ex felt threatened, we had gotten very close. I'm pretty much in love, and he's pretty much in love with me. We've been in the discovery stage and we're surprisingly compatible, and have a lot of similarities. It is in many ways perfect, something that I never thought possible.

complications

2008-03-29T18:58:00.000-07:00

Well, the shoe did drop. He has an ex-girlfriend who he used to live with. They broke up (mutual decision) a couple years ago but remained friends. However, the ex doesn't feel they did, and to most appearances they didn't. They go places together, socially their friends treat them like a pair. They declare they are "just friends" and their friends just shrug.

Now that I'm in the picture she's jealous. Hysterical jealous. Like we go out and spend totally platonic time together, and she thinks we're sleeping together. Any time I spend with him is time taken away from her, and she won't take being #2 in his life. He would very much like to stay friends with her, and I don't mind, but she's trying to get back the relationship they had before, which is having a boyfriend who she doesn't have to spread her legs for.

After some frustrating weeks where he was wondering if he should go back to her, he seems to at least jelled that he won't. So far so good. It upsets him to see her so unhappy, and I can understand this. It's hard to turn your back on someone you loved for a very long time. He's trying hard to keep her calm, but the woman turns into a bloody volcano every time we see each other.

The histrionics are getting in the way of actually discussing what they will be to each other, what kind of time they'll spend together.

I don't know what to do about all this. I want to be supportive of him but I also want him to just stop trying, because she is not going to be reasonable now. In a few weeks or months, she might. Overall it would be less painful for him to back away and deal with this when she's found a way to live without him.

the operative word is "yet"

2008-01-11T21:38:00.000-08:00

In the past many weeks apparently we both threw flirty hints that were totally missed by the other. But eventually they collided, and so did we.

It's not love yet but it's really incredible like.

He's so comfortable to be around, and he makes me happy in such a pure and simple way it makes me wonder what it was about angsty guys that I found so attractive. He's so angst-free I have to ask myself when the shoe will drop, or should I just relax and assume there is no shoe.

If your kid claims a buying him a driving game will help him learn to drive

2007-12-26T01:34:00.000-08:00

Don’t believe it!

It’s Christmas and I’m off to see the folks. I’ve got the cruise control on, in no hurry, slow lane, no traffic. It’s a mellow day.

Driving games teach kids that all action happens in front of them because that’s where the monitor is. They don’t need to look anywhere else. No turning your head, no looking at the mirrors.
I’m in the slow lane and some kid in an old Bronco is on the onramp. It doesn’t occur to him to wonder what’s there when he merges. As he nears, he is just slightly ahead of me, but doesn’t have the balls or the sense to hit the gas and make it sure. Instead, he wimps out and slides in behind me.

They don’t teach kids physics
I’m a vector going at a constant speed. Because he’s first going too fast, he has to slow down. Once he’s behind me, he thinks I’m going too slow. If this was an overhead game he shouldn’t have any problem timing where he lands. But this is reality, and that’s too much for him.

They teach kids to be aggressive drivers
Naturally, he thinks that I’m supposed to be watching out for him, and yielding to his baby-Nazi superiority. He’s the one who’s merging. If he crashes into me, he’ll be more at fault because he’s supposed to be looking where he’s going.

Because he thinks I sped up to get in front of him, then slowed down, he’s pissed off. He honks a bunch to get my attention, then gives me the bird with a hand full of fat sausage fingers.

I don't give a fuck. But I notice he looks quite remarkably like a pig: possessing all these attributes that start with the letter P and instantly marks him a sheltered, video game-playing slug: pale, pink, plump, and pimply. This is why he’s pissed off: because he’ll never graduate from being a loser. Charmless, he doesn't get girls, so he's got testosterone poisoning from the buildup.

This is not my problem. It's Christmas.

pleased as punch

2007-11-01T21:25:00.000-07:00

We had a great dinner, shot about 4 games of pool, and, lubricated by beer and sake, talked easily and were much amused the whole evening. The implications of 'date' usually makes me a bit tense and stiff but today I was feeling loose, myself. Maybe because of the booze, maybe because we're semi-friends already. At the end, I got a good hug which included a peck on the neck. I respect a man who doesn't assume that dinner and booze equals sex.

And, to my great delight, he said we'd catch each other again. Sure, the proof is in the pudding, but I'm glad I didn't get the toe-stubbing, noncommittal sort of goodbye.

omfg, could it be a date

2007-10-27T21:56:00.001-07:00

This title makes me wonder how many blog entries start with "omg" or "omfg"...

I've known this guy a year or three. He's friendly, a little detached, a little wavery in opinion sometimes, but always honest. I know wavery and honest don't seem to go together on the surface, but put it this way, whatever opinion he has is sincerely felt. He may change his mind later, but at the time, he's not lying. He's no intellectual challenge, but he's a nice guy and I like him. He's not especially handsome, very American looking -- German descent I would guess -- but he's tall and wiry and dark-haired, all of which I do like.

So a week ago I asked him to come over and give me an estimate on some work I want done on my house. And he said sure and suggested we get dinner too, there's a place in my town that he wants to try.

Oh, the workings of my mind.

feminine/masculine

2007-10-27T21:34:00.000-07:00

I don't know what to think of myself sometimes. Largely I'm mentally male: I've worked in the computer industry (hard side) since the mid-eighties and never once felt concern or surprise that I was in a male-dominated field. (In fact, last year I was shocked to be told I was an inspiration to women getting into technology. Come on, this is the 21st century! I have never encountered a man who looked at me cross-eyed for being in a traditionally male job. Women are the ones who do that.) At work, I relate like a male, I don't discuss things that women like to discuss, like celebrities or clothes or knitting, and have little interest in these things. I go out hunting with [Max] once in a rare while and have no qualms about handling cute furry animals who are bloody and dead. I've got wide shoulders, narrow hips, and muscles, and my body language says male.

But when it comes to sex, romance, men in my life, the girl really comes out. And she's surprisingly old-fashioned/traditional. I think it's up to guys to do the asking out and make the concrete moves, and it's embarrassing to me if I have to do those things. As much as I've been told that men really need to be lammed on the head to realize a woman is interested in them, I find it hard to believe. Or I don't want to believe it. I've been told nuance is often beneath men's notice, but I figure if you touch a man more often than usual, smile at them more, sit beside or near them, they should pick up something. Should, of course, being the operative word.

Yep, I would love to have some guy fall for me. I'd be very surprised if it happens, but I'd love it.

a lapse in wordsmithiness

2007-09-19T22:12:00.000-07:00

[Max] likes Toto a lot, enough that he pushes CDs on me once in a while. But even he had to laugh and shake his head when he listened to this one. It's titled "Bottom of Your Soul." The title is already bad. For me it invokes the image of a plumber's butt, something I've seen all too recently. Excerpts plus commentary:

Have you ever seen the look in a hungry child's eyes
They can't eat money or promises
Money has this magical ability to transform into whatever you want. These days, charities prefer cash to goods.
Give them your smile and try holding out your hand
I imagine some skinny kid sinking his teeth into the guitarist's fleshy palm...

(of the Iraq war)
Why is it always the ones that we love
Are the ones that will never come home
Is he saying we don't love the ones who come back? Or that our love guarantees they'll get mowed down?

Always remember the voice in your head
That speaks to you when you're alone
And it comforts you
This is commonly known as a symptom of schizophrenia, which I wouldn't consider at all comforting.

The melody is good enough, but think, people, THINK about what you're saying. Preferably before you press a half million copies of your inanity.

bores

2007-09-12T19:49:00.000-07:00

Have you ever met someone who seems to unfailingly bore you? Unfailingly and seriously? I mean, your average boring person at least occasionally says something interesting; it takes real talent to make every conversation mind-numbing.

There’s this guy at work who gives the impression of the perpetual nerdy kid. He gets excited about racial integration in schools. This is the San Francisco Bay Area, for godsake, we’ve been mostly colorblind for decades. But integration is something no one could possibly object to, so he’s guaranteed agreement and approval.

Like a lot of guys who don’t know much about technology, he sees himself as a power user and has to have the bleeding-edge stuff. Real techs know new stuff is full of bugs; problems haven’t been solved yet and answers not yet disseminated. And like a lot of insecure guys he wants to come across as an authority on anything, regardless of actual knowledge.

I’m sitting in the lunchroom eating a Chinese takeaway lunch plate: chow mein, green beans, chicken. It’s not good food, but it’s edible and filling. He asks me where it came from, and we launch into this conversation about Korean food. First he claims that if they don’t have firepits it isn’t any good. Then he tells me I have to try this one restaurant. I’m thinking, white boy, what Koreans consider good is worlds away from what you consider good. Then he goes into list mode: naming all the dishes to prove his knowledge. I think he was hoping to name something I didn’t know, make me ask “What’s that?” so he could feel like a real insider. Instead I just nodded, said yeah yeah. There’s simply no way he can out-Korean a Korean, but still he tries.

He pulled a similar stunt a couple weeks ago over my drawing tablet. I said it wasn’t a big deal, it was a good tablet and I liked it. He had to show off his cool slick tablet that lets him draw directly on the screen. It's nice but not something I find particularly useful or would go all gaga about. But once he’d established (in his mind at least) that his was superior technology, he could let it go.

Both these conversations went on a lot longer than I wanted them to. It's like he just can't resist opening his mouth and letting the gomi fall out.

I just don’t understand this behavior at all. I’m sure he knows plenty in his field of specialization, why is this not good enough? Why does he feel compelled to belittle other people’s knowledge by (trying to) assert his authority about things he knows nothing about? If he thinks I'm going to stroke his little ego to make it get bigger, man oh man, he's come to the wrong place.

politrix

2007-09-01T22:11:00.000-07:00

I'm mostly pro-Edwards, but [Max] is all for Obama. I'm disturbed by the "not black enough" question. Obama's dad is from Kenya, his mom is white. Plenty of "real" African-Americans are descended from Kenyans and have white parentage mixed in. The only distinction the "not black enough" contingency has is that Obama's ancestors missed out on being slaves.

Slavery is often cited as a major reason that blacks are poor, underprivileged, and/or undereducated. It's considered a bad thing, an awful part of American history that African-Americans say they struggle to overcome. But now it's being used to claim that Obama can't represent them. Somehow slavery been altered into a point of pride.

I don't see how a white male could possibly represent them any better. And I think Obama's intelligent enough that he could do positive things for African-Americans without possessing the visceral sense of personal blackness, and in fact his record indicates he has done. I'll bet good money that Obama has received his share of modern prejudice, such as driving while black.

Or is it something else, such as being solidly middle class? Graduating from Columbia and Harvard? Is this something African-Americans think is out of their reach, and why is that? Why do African-Americans have such a well-developed subculture that negates education and honest labor?

This is why Obama's going to lose. Not because of prejudice from whites, but from blacks. Ironic.

yes :)

2007-08-05T15:21:00.000-07:00

My phone has been mercifully silent.

That is, I hope, exactly the kind of "get lost" a guy would want to hear if he had to. No digging for compliments disguised as reasons why he pursued, no digs disguised as reasons that tell him he was a fool for trying. No admissions of being flattered that say yes when the message is already established as no. I think guys are trained not to show it, but inside they're just as sensitive as women, and the onus is on them to take the risks. The less said, the better.

we'll see.

2007-08-03T23:24:00.000-07:00

Me: Um listen, it occurred to me that you've been calling me a heckuvalot more in the past 2 weeks than like ever... so... are you, is there, um, are you intending anything more than friendship here? I just want to get it straight in my mind here.

Him: Mmmm I don't think so. I think we're friends < blah blah blah >

Me: Good. < switches immediately to another subject >

I hope that worked. Tomorrow I'll know for sure. Pray my phone breaks or something.

I'm complimented but cringing now

2007-07-22T16:53:00.000-07:00

I'll be honest: I don't get a whole lot of dates. I think I'm a reasonably nice person, yes I'm an angry person too but I largely keep that to myself (annoyed blog posts aside). I have a cynical sense of humor. I don't have much social life, maybe a few people I count as friends. The package is medium quality, but at least my waist is visibly smaller than my hips. I'm a straight shooter, perhaps too straight for guys who want feminine women. I've been mistaken to be a man a few times, and assumed to be a lesbian a few times because I don't have a feminine manner.

So... when a chick who hardly ever gets male interest starts getting attention from someone she would never want, what does she do?

We've been acquainted for several years but we've only talked a few times in that period. His looks aren't bad, he's not mean or hard, but he's neither educated nor bright, nor interesting enough to make up for those lacks. He's okay to be around to talk about light stuff, but overall, he's a bore. We're not polar opposites regarding what we want out of life, but we're definitely in different countries if not continents.

He was over in my part of town last week, so he came by and we chatted for a few hours. Now he's called me about six times in the past two days, wanting to hang out again. (That must make a world speed record for making me dread the phone.) I think this is happening now because he had a girlfriend, but they broke up. I don't know when, but I know that asking how long ago is an indicator of interest, which I'm avoiding like the plague. It's irrelevant, anyway.

Like I said, I'm never deliberately mean to people, so I'm trying to figure out a polite way of saying "Not in a million years, and not for a one-night stand either."

a week late but maybe enduring

2007-04-29T12:09:00.000-07:00

Now, a least a week after this crazy Korean kid shot up his school and the news has moved on to Paul Wolfowitz's fighting corruption by giving his girlfriend a $200K/yr job, I'm thinking about the Korean, and he gives me the heebies.

[Max] and I have both been told to go back to China, we've both had our problems figuring out where we belong in American society, we've both been treated as second-class citizens on occasion.

But I still don't think he gets it. He's kinda sorta half wannabe Chinese, and a guy, with a lovely girlfriend, and right now he doesn't have the time to be angry. I'm Korean, and a chick, and ridiculously angry about everything. About being female, about having old-country parents, about looking male enough to be assumed to be either a dyke or not worth pursuing, about guys who are intimidated by a woman who refuses to play the catch-a-man game (being a girly-girl, playing dumb, telling the guy how big/strong/smart he is, not having opinions, etc.) Not that I'm about to stock up on firearms, much less use them, but I know some of the factors that made Cho insane. They are in fact a bit too familiar for comfort.

The good thing is that I know how to blow off steam, and I've gotten past the pressure-cooker age of young adulthood, with all its tests both academic and social. I have a helluva good job and no one gives me shit except for my parents. Which is why I live far, far away from them. XD

yes, an accountant

2007-04-20T11:39:00.000-07:00

I'm turning over a new leaf. I'm not going to be mad at my family anymore. I'm going to make fun of everyone else. (Yeah, new leaf she says, RIGHT)

I had some buttermilk left over from cooking something else a few days ago, so yesterday I thought I'd Google a way to use it up.

Quarter-second word association:
buttermilk
pancakes

Right? Sounds great to me!

This one landed at the top 20 results out of about five trillion pancake recipes. It had sour cream, which sounded kind of interesting. But the page itself is entertainment enough. First, this guy goes and specifies brands for all the ingredients except eggs (though I can imagine him recommending Leghorns or something) and baking powder (which is strange because baking powder is something bakers often DO specify.) It's as if he thinks the brand has special powers that make it superior .... he should really ask these companies for money for endorsement.

Then he specifies the tools. A stainless steel spatula, mind you. If you are the sad owner of a blue-collar plastic spatula and wanna use this recipe, you better go down to Target and get yourself a stainless steel one or the recipe WILL NOT WORK. The pancakes will fold over when you try to flip them. And if you only own a fry pan, get an 18 inch griddle while you're there. Not 19 or 17 or 20, 18.

He goes against convention and insists the batter have no lumps. And he does this weird thing of making meringue and folding it in, instead of having the baking powder do the job. I think that must be to counteract the weight of the sour cream which, unfortunately, cannot be tasted.

NOTE: If you do happen to try his recipe, don't include the vanilla. It makes the pancakes taste all weird and wrong.

Anyway, he includes photos of his kids enjoying the pancakes. Of course, this is because he's made pancakes for them every weekend for the past 20 years and ends every breakfast with, "Your dad makes the best pancakes in the world. Doesn't he?" and they cannot leave the table until they give him a big smile and say "Yes of course daddy we love your pancakes." He takes a picture, every weekend both Saturday and Sunday, and then they can go off and play. By now, of course, the Stockholm Syndrome has been the norm for a long time now.

At the bottom he lists IHOP and Waffle House recipes for comparison.

For a living this guy apparently researches and recommends accounting software packages. It's mind-boggling how the pancake page is so completely consistent with this mindset.

back again

2006-11-24T15:55:00.000-08:00

JFC it has been nine months since I posted something here. Wow. Wayelll... that guy and I broke up, (doomed from the start), and I don't hang out in that group any more (expected response), and of course I'm no longer sick (physically heh), which covers the last 3 posts. I saw the parental units for the stuff-self holiday and got the usual dose of 'you're not married what's wrong with you put on some makeup and look nice' crap. Screw that. I'm not into making them happy anymore, they know that. They just don't want to stop trying to make themselves happy. I suppose they're entitled... it just won't involve me doing it for them.

And another Christmas buy-shit-for-everyone, spend hours with people you can normally stand for about 15 minutes, sleep on the couch 'cause all the family is home and no one sleeps like normal human beings anymore anyway. Be bored and sullen because no one is doing anything intellectually interesting, and get poked by mom for being bored and sullen. Old folks are the pits because they're in a rut... and selfish... and their lives revolve around living a few more lousy years... someone shoot me quick if I ever get into that state.

I'm ranting. Yeah, obviously I hate holidays and having to be with family. I wish I could be in Hokkaido or Petersburg or somesuch neat and snowy place where I can't speak a word of the language and be helped by friendly locals... where Christmas actually means goodwill rather than sale-mongering... but the world will come to an end if the sole child of my parents doesn't consider being with them the most important thing in the world.

I need to fucking get married, which will release me from my old-country parents... problem is there's no one I want to get married to... maybe when I'm fifty I'll be ready, but the other choice is putting up with 15 more years of parental annoyance. Damn being the sole child of old-country parents and being female... it's nothing but guilt, irritation and angst.

I lead a boring life

2006-02-07T21:00:00.000-08:00

Work. Sleep. Repeat. Oh, yeah, and eat.

Presently sort-of dating A. He's dishy, wacky, and I think he'll get on my nerves after a while. But he's also very sweet, and good-looking in an ordinary kind of way. I used to be very picky about what I considered attractive, but I'm getting more catholic as time goes on.

wonders of the (post)modern world

2005-12-30T12:55:00.000-08:00

I'm a member of a group that is by definition for women in a particular sport generally dominated by men. Men are welcome in the group, and there are about 5, of which only 2 have been recently active in the group. A few days ago I posted, "Have you experienced sexism in this sport? [Men need not reply :) ]"

I got blasted both ends up the middle for this. I was told:

it was insulting of me to exclude men
I am not a "thinking person"
I hate men
I think men's opinions are not worthwhile
I enjoy being treated badly by men (!?)

I'm completely amazed and not a little disgusted. Where does this come from?

This is political correctness taken to destructive extremes. The attackers seem to want to deny that sexism exists at all. (Don't ask, don't tell?) Belittling the question has the effect of stifling any earnest responses to it.

being sick isn't that bad

2005-12-28T01:21:00.001-08:00

I don't know if it's the physiology of aging, or whether bugs have gotten tougher in the last ten years, but being sick this long is unusual for me. I'm finally mostly back to life after 10 days of feeling generally icky, 6 of them involving sinus enteritis from hell. I had constant stinging rain in there and required unclogging about 20 times a day. Antihistamines didn't do the trick either. I inherited faulty sinus plumbing from my father though in all honesty having his boxy rear end is worse, being permanent.

Everyone dislikes being sick, I'm sure, but I actually resent it like personal insult. Being sick makes me immediately want to do strenuous chores that I'm usually willing put off for another day. Things like scrubbing the bathroom tiles or trimming the trees. If it didn't require getting out to the hardware store, I would want to repaint a room. After 15 years of making myself sicker with this stupidity I've finally realized I will get well faster if I chain myself to the bed and take drugs with warning labels about drowsiness and against operating machinery. However, that realization is intellectual, not visceral, so the practice is harder than the preaching.

I did get better just long enough to have no excuses against visiting my parents, and the day I left I got worse again. Stress, naturally, and not just the stress of being with them but also the holiday visiting, and the required cheer that accompanies it.

However, I should really count my blessings. An old couple of my acquaintance is having the month from hell. He's been confined to a wheelchair since he was a young man and she has needed at least two canes most of her life. At the beginning of this month he was scheduled for an operation. As they were transferring him from chair to table, they dropped him, breaking his leg. The attending doctor thought the leg wasn't broken and sent him home. After a day or two of pain he got his regular doctor who confirmed the break and immediately put him in a cast.

Next, two of her older relatives died within 36 hours of each other. Their trust intended her to inherit some property. It just so happened that the trust had been handled by a lawyer who had been convicted last year of embezzling from trusts. Fortunately she had recently examined the trust and discovered that yes, the lawyer had put himself down as third in line for the inheritance. She managed to have it changed just in time.

But wait, there's more! Another relative who's presently living in the inherited house has inherited the contents, but wants to delay selling the contents since buyers are likely to be tapped out from Christmas and less willing to pay a better price. However, the lady wants to sell the house now because they need the money. (They have little income and I have no doubt that people with lifelong afflictions are not well served by their health insurance.) So she has to go through the unpleasant process of evicting said relative.

And December isn't even over yet. Yep, I should really count my blessings. I would not wish a month like that on my worst enemy.

technique

2005-12-21T21:52:00.000-08:00

M asked me to write a little piece on how I draw photorealistically. Which I could be very simple about and say 'draw a picture then tweak it to death' – or I could get very detailed and describe every function I use in Jasc Paintshop. As I am slowly mending from five days of hacking and precipitation, I'll try to take a medium road.

I use good paper whenever I think it might turn into something serious. Good paper to me means Arches 90# cold press, smooth surface. This is watercolor paper but it can absorb all the lead you throw at it, and it's durable enough to handle a lot of erasing. My next choice is Strathmore Drawing, smooth again natch, and quite a lot cheaper.

Of course, you have to know how to render a head correctly. There's no point in wasting $3/sheet if you can only do stick figures, so get some Burne Hogarth books and read this again in a couple years. I lay out approximately where everything is supposed to go, choose the lighting direction, and start shading skin surfaces with a fat soft pencil and a stump. (If you look at my avatar hand, to the left is a lead holder and to the right is the stump.) I use a Mars-Staedtler plastic eraser for serious errors and india rubber for bringing up highlights.

When the depths are where I want them, I lay in features: eyes, nostrils, lips, ears, wrinkles. I use a Pentel .3 sliding sleeve with a B lead (middle item in the hand. Over the years I have collected quite a few tools, but honestly, these are the only ones I use.) Pentel doesn't make this one any longer, and I have searched 8 years and counting for a decent substitute. First, it's already hard to find a pencil that takes a .3mm lead. Second, there are hardly any sliding sleeves out there. Staedtler makes a .3 sliding sleeve, but the sleeve isn't long enough, and it has a metal flange around the sleeve that gets in the way. I used to have 4 Pentels, one broke, and hopefully the remaining 3 will last me for the rest of my life. They are all 20 years old already.

At this point I have a nice, somewhat realistic but still obviously drawn face. I scan that at 300 to 600 dpi and put it into Paint Shop. There's a huge amount of cleanup to remove the white background behind the head, especially in the hair. I choose a background photo, convert that to black and white and put it in a layer behind the head.

Now there's a lot of tonal adjusting to be done to the head, it needs to get completely darker, scarily darker, in order to match with the background. It also needs all pencil marks smoothed out without removing texture, tone or any edges that should stay sharp. I use smooth, soften and push to great excess. This part takes at least the same amount of time as drawing the original, as much as 3 or 4 times longer even. I may have to make serious shading adjustments to compensate for the background's lighting, shift eyes and mouths slightly. This is one of the best things about computers, being able to move work rather than erasing and redrawing.

If there are any jaggies between the head and the background, smooth them out, blend them into the background. A realistic background will actually make the face look more realistic – interesting, isn't it. And of course, it all looks better when shrunk down small, which removes sketchy marks and little errors.

adding boredom to a cold

2005-12-21T21:45:00.000-08:00

Feeling very lazy right now... reading a POS called the Amber Room. Read the Thriller Plotline for Dummies and you more or less have it, except the author increased the sex by a factor of ten and distributed it evenly among all bad characters. You have a creepy German male assassin who gets turned on by killing, a less creepy Russian female assassin who is mostly banal about it, but being a woman, she won't kill a child. You have an industrialist's daughter, an overmonied, oversexed Greek who's screwing the German assassin, her father's employee. You have a Czech billionaire controlling the Russian, who loves him like a daughter. The creepies have neither history nor conflict. They are flatter than used socks.

The good guys are a pair of remarkably trusting legal eagles – the woman a judge, the man a lawyer. They're divorced from each other, and despite the fame and riches that come from these jobs, neither seems to have had even considered someone new, because they still secretly love each other. Apparently, she divorced him because he was too routine for her, which is a pretty lame one. Can we see reconciliation coming from 10,000 miles away? We know a happy ending is in the works by page 60. Interestingly, they are devoid of romantic encounters with each other till the end. They always get interrupted by assassins creeping up on them.

In a nutshell, the plot: Industrialist and Billionaire are looking for a set of carved amber wall panels. There's a lot of mishmosh about how Hitler and Goering competed to find it, and how the panels were repeatedly moved and hidden, crossing back and forth between Russia and the Austro-Hungarian empire. Industrialist and Billionaire are two members of a club of billionaires who get entertainment from sending their personal assassins out to steal art treasures.

Judgie's father and a friend of his are the last people living to have known much about the amber room. By remarkable coincidence, while trying to locate it, Lawyer's parents were killed by the Russian assassin years ago. German assassin kills Judgie's pretty trusting father, but everyone thinks it was an accident. Contrary to her father's wishes and all good sense, Judgie dashes off to Germany to try to locate dad's friend, though her intent is unclear. The ex follows, but not before he's blathered everything he knows to the Russian assassin.

They all end up chasing each other through the Czech Republic and Germany... the German thinking about screwing Judgie at least once every six pages... joining up with a professional adventurer who's filming his journey to find the amber panels... finding out the Czech billionaire had them all along... well, everyone dies except the good guys and the adventurer. Both assassins, the Greek industrialist and his daughter, and the Czech billionaire all get blown up, shot, and shot.

So why did I waste four hours when I could have been sleeping? I'm not really sure. Admittedly, it wasn't so bad to make me skip large sections. It was brain-free airport reading, though not as insultingly repetitive as the Da Vinci Code. There is some bits of history in it, nothing surprising.

christmas procrastination

2005-12-20T20:13:00.000-08:00

Oh, we all suffer from this one a bit, unless you're one of those critters who simply loooove Christmas. Me, I don't have the flu, but a severe head cold, the kind that starts by scouring your sinuses, stomps down your throat, kicking at the sides as it goes down, and uses crampons to hike down into your lungs. By the end, you're hacking out puce infection blobs, which is where I'm at right now. This has kept me from my last-minute shopping and, indeed, the last three days at work as well.

I also notice that Amazon seems to be running awfully slow today, so I'm probably not alone. Just for grins and giggles, I took a look at my Gold Box. This is usually nonsense I would never buy anyway, but I was pretty amused to see them offer me a few bucks off a box of Prilosec OTC, for those unfortunates with heartburn -- oops, sorry, we call it acid reflux disease these days. Next offer after that is a pizza cutter. I wonder if they would give you an extra discount if you buy both?

those kennedy boys

2005-12-08T19:47:00.000-08:00

No one's going to understand this unless they know that "rehab" and "rehabber" is short for someone who works with injured wildlife.

Friend's mom: "I heard that Robert Kennedy is a falconer."
Me: "Really."
Friend's mom: "Yes, on TV I saw a picture of him wearing one of those big gloves, and he had a hawk on it."
Friend: "Maybe he's into rehab."
Me: "Well, he is a Kennedy."
That just fell out of my mouth without thought... sent my friend's sister into hysterics. It makes me happy to make people laugh.

you get the face you deserve

2005-12-08T19:43:00.000-08:00

    The new lady looks like an overgrown, slightly dull eight year old: plump, a slightly protruding lower lip, colorless eyes surrounded by fatty folds and retreating behind glasses, and an amazingly boring haircut to match it all. Startlingly rude, ruddy streaks one often sees on the cheeks of fair-skinned children. Not outright ugly, just unremarkable. I can't even recall her face right now except for the eyes. In short they hired Velma [from Scooby Doo], but without the intelligence and sparkling wit. Already she's trying to limit her duties, telling me she's not responsible for x and y so I should ask someone else. When the rolling phone rings she ignores it a while then says, "Oh! is that for me?" By the time her hand has extended out to pick it up it's rolled to someone else. Oh, la, silly me.

    Trouble brewing.

    I believe everyone can and should try to excel at their job. Anyone who's new, from management on down, should bust their butt to a) learn what everyone else does and b) offer to get involved if they are not otherwise occupied. Cross-training, not necessarily in task but at least in terms of awareness, is important.
    I'll admit, I'm being a hypocrite. I don't offer to help her or the other ladies when I have a lull. But if they ask, I'm immediately and completely at their disposal. Their problems usually only take a few minutes, and I have no problems interrupting my usually lengthier projects even if I end up staying a little late to finish. (I try to always finish, or at least get to a certain stage of completion, before I turn off my computer for the day, even if it takes an hour or two past the clock. Otherwise I'll feel like something's hanging over my head.)
    I'm not a believer in petting the wounded. You got a problem, I'll fix it and tell you how to prevent it in the future, but I won't spend a drop of energy telling you the problem is not your fault or reassuring you that you're not stupid.

    Despite the way I started this, I didn't make this judgement based on her looks but on her behavior. I think that over time people do get the face they deserve, or the face that suits them. An intelligent person can have a dumb-looking face (I do, especially when I'm tired) but generally intelligence translates into expressiveness. A funny remark followed by looking for signs of understanding the joke, a dry skeptical look, even a roll of the eyes transforms, shows there's something going on inside the skull.

cross-post

2005-12-07T21:47:00.000-08:00

here

cute guy at work

2005-12-04T16:49:00.000-08:00

Interpersonal relations are a lot easier with someone easy on the eyes. I don't expect anything to happen in a million years, but that's a pretty good argument for believing in reincarnation, eh?

no gobble love

2005-11-27T13:31:00.000-08:00

   Wooo... family... what a concept. I'd rather sit back with a beer and watch football than help the momster in the kitchen, but as Dutiful Daughter number 1 of 1, I'd better get my butt in there. And I am so uninterested in football that I think Joe Montana's still playing instead of doing car commercials. Dad's home office doing "work," aka hiding. He knows better than to get in her way on this day. There's the turkey that ate Manhattan, a potato mountain, sperries (my fave veggie, good, good), corn, dinner rolls, and two kinds of pie from Marie Callender's. Admittedly, she does cook turkey well, because if you don't turn it over as she does, the front half turns into the Cliffs of Dover while the back remains hot lava. But I'd explode if I was Dutiful and ate everything moms told me to, but she's won gold medals six years running in the guilt triathlon (food, career, and boyfriends). If Lance Armstrong peddled guilt instead of pedaling bikes, he'd be kilometers behind her. "Honey. Don't you like the X?"
   "It's great."
   "Take some more, then."
   "Aw, no, I've had enough."
   "It's good. Come on."
   (Repeat the above 2 in various forms about fifteen times.)
   "Arrrrrr...." SFX: kploomsplat.
   I wish I had some siblings so the 1,843,576 calories could be distributed, but it's just dad and me. He's good at getting his "stuffed" declaration in early and for some reason mom doesn't argue too much. Two hours later, he'll come back and nibble down a second dinner without risking the guilt invocation.

   It all reminds me that I can pick my friends. This is not to say I don't love my parents. After all, without them, I wouldn't be here gracing the earth with my presence. And they were pretty good parents in their way when I was a kid: thrifty and thus well off, no addictions, decent sorts, read to me, fed me, clothed me, sent me to university. The trouble is that I will remain a kid until I get married. They think they can boss me around and assume that my free time is theirs on demand because I'm not busy devoting it to a husband. Without that kind of adult credentials I have no adult credence. They worry that I'm foolish with my money (I'm not). They don't realize my salary is roughly twice that of my father's. Anything I say or do, they don't take it seriously. They think my gender makes me vulnerable (in all aspects) to strange men, even though they know I've taken kendo and a little jiujitsu. I also have the biggest bullshit detector this side of Japan. It's very strange, but maybe just old-country or something.
   So I've stopped trying to give my opinion on matters, give them the old nod, and go do what I wanna. Makes like a lot easier.

   I'll be repeating this at Christmas, so I won't bother duplicating this post then.

plotlines for dummies

2005-11-22T21:41:00.000-08:00

by fallinghawks and cy'

Thriller:
Protagonist is a cop/ex-cop/lawyer/stockbroker/scientist/doctor who, in the course of carrying out his usual business, discovers corruption in the police/political structure/law firm/brokerage/laboratory/hospital. Protagonist knows many intelligent, resourceful friends who will spend lots of time researching Corrupted Forces for no or low charge, simply out of friendship for Protagonist. To explain the technical aspects to the reader, Protagonist may request information from these friends that he/she, as a professional, ought to know already. Protagonist may be stunningly unaware of his/her social environment. If female, Protagonist stands a 99.92% chance of hearing a sexist remark.

In the course of research, Protagonist encounters one eligible person of the opposite gender, with "Love Interest" stamped prominently on his/her forehead. Love Interest, if encountered randomly, will just so happen to have some special knowledge about, or a bad experience with Corrupted Forces. At the peak of exhaustion from defending him/herself from powerful and evil forces, Protagonist will have a cathartic sexual encounter with Love Interest about 70% of the way through the book, when the action is flagging.

Protagonist can never fully involve the police in his/her investigation. Reasons range from already being in trouble due to previous aberrant behavior, to not having credence, to being threatened by CF.

Protagonist is the only one with the mental horsepower to assemble the facts. He/she may also possess his/her own crucial piece of knowledge that will bring down the Corrupted Forces. Protagonist sets up a trap to prove guilt, but will continuously express uncertainty in the likelihood of success. Nonetheless, the trap will catch Corrupted Forces. CF may be arrested and charged with crimes, or may be shot by Protagonist in self-defense.

Historical fiction:
Protagonist is an ordinary fellow of below-average intelligence, presented with a mystery. He takes his questions to a multitude of friends, who explain the historical context to enlighten the reader in the process of giving Protagonist leads. These leads bring Protagonist to various unsavoury neighbourhoods to negotiate with unsavoury characters. Colourful descriptions of vomiting sailors, brassy whores, and destitute, enslaved children are essential.
One (and only one) of these acquaintances is an eligible female, with "Love Interest" stamped prominently on her forehead. There is an 80 percent chance that Love Interest will result in romance and marriage, but this will remain unresolved until the end of the book.
Protagonist will meet and speak with one famous historical character.
The mystery is resolved with the assistance of Love Interest and friends.

Romance (classic):
Protagonist is struggling (check any below)
__ financially
__ emotionally
__ work-politically

Protagonist meets several eligible men, but only one is clearly THE ONE. The rest are all cads, and if it must be proved, each is eliminated swiftly. However, The One is
__ poor (check "a" below)
__ oppressed (check "b" below)
__ married (check "c" below)

After several chance meetings, leading to dates involving smoky looks and mental swoons over inadvertent physical contact, which leads to mental struggle over (a) financial (b) political c) marital security, Protagonist decides The One is The One after all.

If married = .t., The One's wife
__ sickens and dies
__ divorces
freeing up The One for full-fledged romance and The Kiss. If The One is poor, it will turn out that he is actually a lordling who owns an estate and a winter palace.

Romance (modern):
Protagonist is sexually assaulted more-or-less immediately by The One, whose lust-at-first-sight for Protagonist is too great to be borne without action. Protagonist spends the rest of the book in love-hate, attempting to tame The One using various methods, eventually succeeding. If The One is poor, it will turn out that he is actually a scion who owns 10 estates and a few tropical islands.

Horror:
Protagonist is new to town and moves into a house with History, and encounters various hints of strange behavior within the first forty pages of the book. He/she will meet several locals who will fill in the context and give shape to the Bad Thing. One (and only one) of these locals will be an eligible person of opposite gender, with "Love Interest" stamped prominently on his/her forehead. At the peak of exhaustion from defending him/herself from evil, Protagonist will have a cathartic sexual encounter with Love Interest about 70% of the way through the book, when the action is flagging. Protagonist will defeat Bad Thing with knowledge gained mostly from locals, but it is essential that Protagonist has some special connection to spiritual forces that will help defeat Bad Thing.

Cyberpunk:
Protagonist is a disenchanted male engaging in lots of illegal activities in a dystopian megalopolis with a prominent emphasis on biomodification. Unlike his peers, he has no overwhelming vices. He is presented with a mystery or a threat. In the course of getting to the bottom of this, he will encounter approximately 8 diverse strangers who will spend lots of time and resources assisting Protagonist for no reason at all. At least one of these strangers is a token ethnic, either a spliff-laden Rastafarian or sword-laden Japanese; the majority will be white, despite all indications of whites being a minority. One of these strangers is a woman whom Protagonist has a 1.78% chance of having any kind of sex with because she is a tough bitch and way smarter than Protagonist. The strangers and Protagonist, now all comrades (in dystopia there are no such things as 'friends'), sneak into Bad Megacorp Responsible for Problem. With a combination of heavy firepower and technological wizardry, they defeat Bad Megacorp. At least two comradeswill die in the process.

what to expect

2005-11-21T21:53:00.000-08:00

Well, now I have blog-o-space and here you are. It was set up by my friend M, whom I will keep as an initial because of his compulsive protection of the guilty, the innocent and everyone in between. He's just crazy about anonymity except when he thinks it would be a compliment to name someone, which is what he did to me on his blog. I have no idea why he did that irritating thing, but I think he was trying to make up for it by setting up this thing.

Unlike him I'm not trying to be a writer. Style doesn't interest me. I will happily tell you all about my dreams, I have no compunctions about writing about people who annoy me or personal things. I intend to make (according to M) the most boring blog in the universe. If there was a prize for most boring blog I want to win it.

I don't expect to write a whole lot here.

About me

2005-11-21T21:52:00.000-08:00

I'm of mixed race descent like M (which may be why we get along so well), but I'm half Korean and half melted American white. I don't get along with my parents and they're more or less happy to have not much to do with me because I never listen to them and expect to die an old mad. Maid.

I'm a network all hats for a midsize bank, with 25% hacker blood. I've been messing with computers since I was twelve and been on the internet for 2 decades, so watch out :) OK, so I'm exaggerating. Still, if it's computery, I can make it work or will kill myself trying, and have died only twice so far. I hate Windoze and love Linux and all manners of open source software.

I draw pictures rather well, but I'm against calling myself an artist because there are hordes of talentless who slap paint around, deliberately make things ugly, show no ability, and still call themselves artists. That makes me a classicist or maybe just an elitist. When someone asks if I'm an artist, however, I say yes because most people don't make that distinction.

One of my favorite things to do is follow M around when he's flying his birds. Gets me out of the house and breathing that strange stuff called fresh air, which I think smells funny. M is probably my best friend anywhere, with the possible exception of any boyfriends I have at the moment.

Nothing I say is to be believed. :D