Come back, DT!

I've never been one for major holidays. As someone who has spent pretty much his entire life trying to avoid being clumped into a specific type of person, and who doesn't really want to be associated with his entire race (or the stereotype of it), major holidays kind of feel like that to me. That doesn't really make sense. What I really mean is that I really, really like avoiding the norm. I don't want to be easily defined. I'd be a hipster if I did anything more than think like one. I'd be an engineer if I didn't do art. I'd be an artist if I wasn't in engineering school. I'd be a writer or a musician if I actually had the time or drive to focus on honing that (those) craft(s). I guess that kind of makes me a non-committal, endlessly distracted kind of person who's good at a few things but never great at anything. But I really don't want to be that either.

Anyway, that's not really the point.

I avoid major holidays because to me, it's just a day that everyone does the same thing together. If everyone else is doing it, I don't wanna. It's the same reason why I'll automatically disagree or find another side to any widely-held opinion (which, I admit, is mostly when my father tells me I should or shouldn't do something).

Everyone celebrated new year's tonight. I spent it in an elevator, tired and getting home from a trip out west. I knew about a few different happenings, but didn't act on any of them. I avoided facebook and twitter because I know what every single tweetpost is going to be about, for at least the next 18 hours. Instead, I played some music by myself and tried not to think of all my friends having fun somewhere in the company of their other, cooler, closer, more genuine friends.

In reality, I don't avoid holidays because I don't want to be associated with the endless number of people who all celebrate it. I avoid them because I've never been good at making or being friends, and any time a large group of people get together to do something just makes me feel left out. I've always felt like all my friends are better friends with someone else, and holidays do nothing to disprove that. Well, here's to another year.

One more, just for the road

I can only imagine what these interactions must have been like.

"Hey, is this where the orgy--"

"FOR THE FIFTH TIME, NO!"

I think it's a brilliant idea, personally, but I would've used a library computer.

You know when you need to get something off of your mind so you write it out somewhere and then things automatically feel better? Well, I do.

Here lies a placeholder for what was once a very personal yet somewhat fictionalized piece of experimental writing. The very act of capturing all my thoughts on paper (digital paper) was therapy enough. Thanks for listening and immediately forgetting all about it, DT.

Crisis over!

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(For the sake of the archives, I managed to find the original post using google's cache. Here you go guys, glad you enjoyed it.)

"Who's this idiot who looks like me and what did he do last night?"

Kensington. Friday night. Find a fedora and a ukelele because tonight's a costume party birthday and Jason Mraz is an easy costume. Just go with it.
Get to the house with friends, hey how's it going, I haven't seen you in forever, what's up man, happy birthday, I brought rum, I can't believe you set up an open bar in the basement, let's go get some drinks.
I'll have whatever you're having.
Hey how's it going.
I'll have whatever you think I'll like.
Hey how's it going. Yeah, hat and guitar. John Mayer, close enough.
Give me something I've never tried before. Make it up, why not.
You're a worker from Jurassic Park, that's an awesome costume.
Gin and tonic?
I almost wore my black cowboy hat and came as a bad-ass sheriff, we could have been costume soulmates! I like the cowgirl thing you're doing.
Gin and tonic.
Gin and tonic.
It's getting crowded isn't it, that's cool though.
You need to stop shooting that guy in the face with that dart gun. Oh it's fun? Alright, let me try.
Sorry man.
You're right, that was fun.
Someone told me to try a broken down golf cart. All you have is punch. Is that a star fruit? Awesome.
Wolverine! No I knew before I saw the claws, the sideburns and leather jacket did it. Nice.
Gin and tonic. Yeah, it's kind of manly, everything else you guys are making tastes like candy.
Hey.
She wants something that tastes like candy.
No, that's Jack Johnson. I sang "I'm Yours". Yeah, there you go. No it's a not a real ukelele, it's just a prop. The frets don't align properly. Well, you don't even have a costume.
What are you drinking? Why's it blue?

Wake up on my friend's couch. Um.
I don't know what happened, what happened?
She's mad. I don't remember the last part of the night. What happened?
Vague response.
Shit.
"Get up, we have rehearsal in 20 minutes."
We don't talk on the walk there.

Rehearsal.
Dancing.
How are you feeling?
You alright?
You look like shit.
"How are you doing you had a big night." Apparently. "Yeah." Ugh. "It's okay, I've done worse." That's not reassuring. "...Yeah."

"4 of us walked you to her house. It was a challenge"
"She kept calling you an idiot."

"I thought you were going to die! Haha." Haha.

I think you told your best friend you loved her. And hit on her for the rest of the night. And then she had to take care of you instead of talking to the guy she really liked.
Shitshitshitshit.
Do I? I don't. I don't think so.
Thinkthinkthinkthinkthink.
I don't think I think of her that way. I think.
I can't remember any of this.
Shitshitshit.

"I helped you put on your shoes for half an hour, it was hilarious."

We should talk.
Wondering how to go about this.
Wondering if she's mad for interrupting her potential romance or for interrupting with my drunk notion of potential romance or for throwing up outside of her house at 3am.
Wondering if inebriation brings out honesty or bullshit.
Wondering if "I'm not interested in you but only because you're not interested in me" will be good enough.

A Return to the Wacky, Weird, Wild World

Because it has been a while since we highlighted a perhaps under-reported amazing news story,
I bring you this.


Can you imagine anything like this happening, to anybody, ever?

"We remember dear Bob...."

"I'm right here"

"I can almost hear him!"

"No, I'm actually right here!

"WHHUAUUAAA?!?"

Or, at the church:

Priest: If Anyone has any reason these two should not be wed, speak now, or forever hold your peace
Bob (bursting through the door): I'M ALIVE! STOP THE FUNERAL!
Priest: Glad to hear it, but the funeral is next door.

I Break For Inefficiency

HIYA, GUYS AND GALS. I'm at work.

It's 3:21 in the afternoon, and I am, for all intents and porpoises, still on my lunch break. I closed a few tickets this morning, and checked out some old printers (notably, one in Central Processing, entrance to which is predicated on the wearing of gown and hairnet)--but since going on lunch at noon, I've had nothing to do. It irks me 'cause I'm bored stupid, and it's a lovely day (but not very much, because those who know me know I know I could just leave if I really wanted to and face the consequences), but more than that I'm frustrated with the immorality of waste, and I'd like to write about that immorality here. (But not, I might add, without the appropriate sense of irony.)



A capitalist system of resource allocation is only possibly morally tenable if wealth follows the creation of happiness. In an ideal system a carpenter, selling a beautiful desk, is recompensed at market prices (which are understood, in aggregating automatically the preferences of all buyers and sellers, to be fair rates) for his efforts and time--precisely in proportion to the total contribution to societal happiness his desk represents. If the buyer was perfectly informed about how happy the desk would make him (as he is assumed to be), and the market price of the desk included the cost to the environment and to future generations of lumber harvesting, then this system would channel all wealth to the producers of value who make life, on balance, better. Only by creating happiness could you gain the entitlement to consume resources and enjoy (material) happiness of your own. As long as you don't believe in any hippie nonsense like inalienable rights, this works great.



If our carpenter claims his desk will last for 20 years with normal use, but in reality his workmanship is shoddy and it falls apart sooner than that, it will be sold at a price that represents the value to the buyer (assume he is a butcher) of the desk described, not the one actually sold. This has two effects: first, it enables the carpenter to steal value (happiness) from the butcher, because the (say) $100 premium the carpenter was willing to pay for alleged quality is produced by his butchering but creates happiness for the crooked carpenter and not himself; but by the same token the carpenter earns $100 of consuming power without creating any value, which means whatever he spends the $100 on (say, a stripper), the initial transaction will have contributed less to total social welfare than it could have. A better carpenter could have used the same resources to make a better desk, which would have given him the same $100 of happiness that the poorer one receives, but it also would have given the butcher $100 of value in the form of a good desk. The cheating carpenter deprives society of the chance to enjoy that extra value forever. Resources, in other words, can be wasted; all it takes is a little imperfect information.

That's me, now, sitting at my (shoddy, laminate pressboard) desk. My time is the wood, and the value it's supposed to create doesn't actually exist, because there's no work for me to do. (Many summer positions in non-regional industries, I'm given to understand, have this problem; since the full-time staff can handle the workload during the winter, when there's actually more to do, my job doesn't actually need to exist. And the bureaucracy is afraid to reclaim the budget for it, because no one outside of IT has any idea how it works or how much it costs.) I'm being paid to waste time--and in doing so I am not only poaching value from the public and the hospital's donors; what's more, the time I'm wasting is losing forever the chance to ever be of any value to anyone, one second at a time. It's both stupid and wrong.

Also I'm flippin' bored.

7am inspiration

every morning, i start my day with a great, fantastic, life-changing idea.

"i can make my life so much better if i just..."

every morning that thought ends differently.

usually, it becomes some sort of romantic gesture: "... asked her out," "... sent her flowers," "... called her," “…talked to her,” “…told her i have a huge embarrassing 12-year old crush on her,” (ie. a crush a 12-year old would have, not a crush that has lasted 12 years), etc.

occasionally, it becomes about aiming my life in a different direction: “…studied art” “…studied design” “…played music for real” “…made movies” “… lived in london for a year” "...wrote a play", and so on.

whereas it’s easier to brush off the latter category as just whimsical thinking outside the realm of possibility or practicality, the girl-related thoughts seem at least… plausible.

either way, the outcome is always the same:

by the time i finish breakfast, the idea will be a vague curiousity. by noon, it will have become an impossibility. once night comes around, the same thought will have seemed so crazy that nighttime-me will have reprimanded morning-me for ever thinking it at all.

(i’m omitting super late-night daydreaming here; nothing good happens after 2am, kids)

here's the problem:

is it the idea itself that was crazy and wrong to begin with, and it just took me the whole day to realize it?

or, is it that the idea is apt (and that it could indeed make my life “so much better”), but it only seems possible when one foot is still in the dream world?

Adventures in a Foreign Land

Yesterday, I went to a Portuguese chicken take-out joint. All signs were either in French or in Portuguese.

There was a long line, and the servers were clearly in a rush. When it was my turn to order, I ordered in English. Mistake.

The old chicken-servin' lady gave me a swat on the arm with a paper bag and walked away.

Friend: "Did... did she just hit you because you ordered in English?"
Me: "No way."

The old chicken-servin' lady returned, and I asked her - in French - why she hit me. Instant smile on her face, and a completely new demeanor. She told me she did it because she liked me; I'm not so sure.

Que Dieu te bénisse, Montréal.

My Essay is Going Well

The Grapes of Wrath is really about capitalism being doomed, a dead-end, fundamentally disequilibriated, unsustainable. And, like, as a typical upper-class white pinko jerk, Steinbeck is happy to imply that the only solution is revolution and some kind of pre-modern, Jeffersonian egalitarian mixed-farming subsistence crap where I guess we get rid of all “superfluous” ownership and everyone lives like Indians in harmony with the land, worms, and illiteracy, like the Joads did in the good ole days... except I'm thinking he's throwing the baby out with the bathwater on this—where by “baby” i mean “civilization” and by “bathwater” i mean theoretically correctable market failures and abuses, not fundamental flaws in the structure of capitalist organization.

Professional Crastinator.

I have a paper due tomorrow at 1:30, for which I still have 6+ pages to write. I have an exam on Thursday that I'm going to struggle with, and another exam the following morning.

Instead of working on my essay tonight or studying, I went to a Neil Young concert.

Procrastination? Maybe not, maybe it was just a good time.

If not, there's always this.

Enjoy.