October 20, 2003

Oh god.
I open this up, and the first thing I see is a link to a node about Trogdor the Burninator.

**shudder**

I wonder... if I leave my laptop on my pillow for long enough, will my pillow set on fire? If it wasn't such an expensive laptop that didn't quite belong to me, I might be tempted to try.
Well.. being already tempted.. maybe I would just go ahead and do something dumb.

"I don't like her.. she kicked me in the face!"

My thoughts are all over the place tonight. This morning. Whatever. Doesn't matter. Time is an illusion.
My pillow is very hot.
I put something under my computer in hopes of stopping the heat from leaking through. It's the cover of an old vinyl binder that I took apart after the binder rings broke.
I hate when they break. It's annoying.

Especially after you play soccer with your binder.

Five-Stars do last a long time. Mine's going on five years.
The cover, that is.
The nice plastic-coated-in-fabric cover.
The interior I've had to replace every semester, I believe.

Ughhhh. Hhhhhhh. Hhhhhh.
Hahahahaha.
That's such a funny sound. Hhhhhh.

I've come to decide that it's time I installed a kitty flap in my bedroom door. Cats are never satisfied unless they can go in and out, in and out, in and out of rooms as they please. As soon as you close a door, they want in that room.
Right away.
No consideration, no patience, just "LET ME IN NOW." No reasons.
Weird cat. Don't look at me like that.
Oh. She's purring. And kneading my foot. I like you kitty but you're very strange.

Two o'clock is a funny time. Anything can happen, you know. Because you're in that state of not-quite-awake-not-quite-asleep... if an alien crashes through your bedroom wall, you're not going to do much other than say, "Oh," and hope they don't steal your cookies.

Aliens stole my damn almond cookies. There were none in the A&P last night when we went scavenging for munchies.
My mom rules.

so anyway, here I am, sitting on my bed, when this weird green light starts coming through the window. I am minding my own business and talking to my blanket when this person pushes rudely though my window. It's a very long person, and it takes a few minutes for him to get in. And you know, he didn't even bother to say hello, just poked me with a colourful spear and demanded to know if I had any banana fuel in stock.
Well, of course I say no, because I am flustered at being poked with a spear in the middle of a very interesting conversation about entropy with my faux-fur blanket.
It's really very rude, interrupting like that. I tell him so, and he starts to cry. Apparently no one baked him any brownies before he left for school, and now that he's out of fuel he doesn't know what to do.
So, away we go to the kitchen, where we immediately begin whipping up some banana fuel for the poor youngster. While we're stirring the pot with a wooden spoon, my cat jumps up on the counter and steals the banana peels to make coffee. She's quite the caffeine addict, and soon she's chasing flies on the ceiling while we pour the whole mix into an old Pepsi can.
This long boy - who has become very polite over the last hour or so - thanks us and walks up the wall to go home. We stand on the living room couch to wish him goodbye. As it's been a very eventful evening, I curl up with a book and a nice warm cup of banana-peel coffee to calm my nerves.
I suppose I'll never know how that conversation about entropy would have turned out. If only that boy had knocked on the window before blowing it to smithereens. Some people just don't teach their children proper ettiquette like they used to. It's a damn shame.

Have you ever tried your darnedest to have a relationship with someone, but then finally gave up because talking to them was like throwing bricks at a stone wall? That's what happened to me today. On Friday, I found a message in my Friendster account that said:

you are so cute and you seem like a cool guy

So two days and a couple of AIM sessions later, we decided to meet up by the turd rock in Turlington. I had high hopes. I had a late-night session with my wingman over hot Denny's breakfasts, and I stayed half-awake all night listening to jazz, because there was just something right about it all. Then I actually met her... and nothing happened. No sparks, no energy. Not even a date: all she wanted to do was sit and talk, and she didn't even do that well.

I would guess that many noders have the same problem in relationships. We relish thought and discourse and (often) intellectual pedantry with souls we can't even see, but how many of us can translate that into interactions with real, meaty people?

---

The last time I had a "real" relationship, the kind where I was all over her and she was all over me, was an eternity ago. December 31, 1999, to be exact... almost four years now. They've been some incredibly short years, too. I spent my last year of high school oversleeping and waiting for college, and I've spent most of college oversleeping and waiting for graduation. So now, here I am, putting together my application for law school, and I'm nowhere near where I wanted to be.

There's no progress for me, in other words. Even though my life keeps changing, and my lifestyle keeps getting better and better, I ultimately never go anywhere. That's probably why I go around noding Japanese railway lines when I'm bored. E2 used to be an outlet for me to study and rant; now, it's just a place for me to live independently of the increasingly mundane real world around me.

Is that bad? Probably. I do well in the real world. I don't like the real world, though. That's probably why I dislike my chosen field, political science: it's the study of a real world that sucks.

---

E2 reflects reality, and it's "real" in its own way, but it's still ultimately a repository of shared fantasies and viewpoints. Maybe that's why I prefer it to reality: it's more alive. Everything appears in black and white, and the next stage is only a mouse click away. For me, the next stage is thousands of miles away, across thousands of miles of wasteland. At least the wasteland has ethernet.

Life still isn't back to normal. Master spends hours at the hospital with his mom. She's doing 'as expected' still but she's a grumpy patient and Master doesn't let me go along to visit her anymore because she says I don't belong there. Where else should I be but one step behind him? She demands that he's there for all of visiting hours everyday and he obeys.

I'm begining to feel neglected. I have enough self-discipline not to whine or outright complain but the one time I mentioned the lack of attention and requested a bit more of his time, all I got was a mild punishment and a firm suggestion to develop more patience. I'm not always the center of his attention but he's usually there for me; now he's not. I hope things get back to normal soon.

This weekend I attended at White Trash Prom party. Though the costumes and outfits were not lacking in humor, there is something slightly disturbing about rich people (I am in no way rich, and this was the family of a friend who had the party) dressing as "white trash." I felt sort of uneasy as I put on my Dale Earnhardt cap and spread blue eye-shadow over my eyelids.

Basically the entire party was making fun of people less fortunate than the people throwing the party in a nice part of town with their Jaguar and Escalade parked out front. Is that not evil? I seemed to be the only person that had a problem with it. Yes, it is hypocritical of me to go and dress up with the rest, but I went as a favor to a friend and there was free beer there (Maybe that makes me white trash?).

But I will admit that not everyone that I consider white trash is poor and unfortunate. For example: There were a few dead-on outfits that would define my view of white trash. There was a woman well into her forties wearing a mini-skirt about 3 sizes too small, big hair and an age-inappropriate shirt. The woman said the entire outfit was her 15-year-old daughters. Another man was dressed as Bill Clinton. I think that was a perfect portrayal of white trash.

The Confederate flag was also a guest at this party. That is something that I just don't get. I am from the South. I have southern pride and all and I get pissed off when people label us as stupid, dirt-eating, barefoot inbreeds. That is why I don't understand why someone would sport a flag that puts the south back in that bad era that people don't like to talk about. The issue of slavery is the only thing that makes me ashamed to be a southerner and thats I why I don't understand why people want to bring up old shit and wave the confederate flag. But hey, to each his own. I won't protest to make it come down or to make schools change their mascot or symbol, I just won't wear it. However, this may sound horrible to some of you, but it does make me slightly happy to see the confederate flag worn as a costume of white trash. Bring on the hate mail.

I have also found that the line between 80's flash back and white trash is a thin one. Then I thought to myself, "Maybe these people are just stuck in 1983? Does that make them white trash?"

I will obviously never get a set definition of the degrading term "white trash." And it certainly makes me an asshole to even be thinking about this. But I had to share.

When I was little, I was a hoaxer. I'd pluck a hair or two from my scalp, attach it to a pencil or tiny Lego brick, and then tie or tape the other end to my finger. Instant levitation! I don't think I fooled anyone, except maybe my younger sister, and even she figured it out after a few seconds. I made my own marked decks of Zener cards out of navy blue construction paper; these actually wowed my fifth-grade classmates for about five minutes.

Probability is a funny thing. When I quit hoaxing everyone and decided to investigate this stuff for real, I practiced guessing the suits of playing cards. I'd pick twenty-five at random and go through the pile, writing down what I thought was the suit of each. Then I'd check my results. It seemed sometimes that I was eerily accurate, and other times that I'd hardly gotten any right. There was one time when my brother was holding up cards for me and I guessed thirteen suits in a row correctly. I was elated when this happened, despite the fact that there was certainly nothing supernatural about it; I just got lucky.

I'm a mundane. Completely, utterly, totally non-magical. I don't see angels in the clouds or Mother Teresa in a cinnamon bun. There are no invisible hands guiding me along the proper path. There is no gentle voice urging me to make this or that decision. I don't even get hunches, usually. And when I do they are generally wrong. My dreams tell me nothing but what I already suspect about my character.

Have I made my point?

Patterns, patterns everywhere. Like that Amy Lowell poem that still chills me.

I shall go
Up and down
In my gown.
Gorgeously arrayed,
Boned and stayed.
And the softness of my body will be guarded from embrace
By each button, hook, and lace.
For the man who should loose me is dead,
Fighting with the Duke in Flanders,
In a pattern called a war.
Christ! What are patterns for?

Clothing and restraint and the repetition of pacing, whether with anticipation or distress. Conflict. Sunlight through leaves. Blood, systems, circulation. Patterns define us and frustrate us and tear us apart. Cause and effect. I will not dissect Ms. Lowell's poem but I will read its ending verse over and over and soon it will stick in my head. Another pattern, more neurons called out for duty so that they might know purpose. Words penned by the long-dead can still evoke prickles in my skin, make my whole body feel pulled tight in some direction outside known dimensions. THAT is what patterns are for.

I roll dice, I call out my guesses as to what the numbers are going to be. Sometimes I'm right, and though I know it's just random chance, I'm always pleased when this happens. For despite my earth-stuck, stodgy, militant skepticism, I'm not immune to the draw of magic, or the suggestion of magic. There's this crazy little kid inside me, her eyes always wide and amazed. She's so magical she can barely stand it, and when something happens that clicks with her faerie-glitter mindset, some of her excitement leaks out and into my veins. Silver delight, songs from somewhere you'll never go.

How did he do it? The enormity of his crime against me consumed my thoughts all thoughout the first part of my shift. The red cape was there last time I went to the Exchange. Suddenly, it was not.

moloch752 revealed the diabolically masterful plan when he stopped by my station during fifth gong. moloch17, having more octagons at his disposal and knowing how much I yearned for the cape, simply took the elevator to the Exchange during one of his shift breaks and purchased it before I could.

To distract myself, I plot his death.

I learn that I am no good at plots. They all devolve into my sneaking in to his station with a large rock and hitting him with it.

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