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Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it.

-Mark Twain, author and humorist (1835-1910)

I don’t remember running into her eight years ago, but maybe that’s because it was eight years ago. In the brief discussion we had we thought it must have been six or seven years ago, but since the last she knew I was happily engaged, it had to be before Fall of 1997. Most likely Winter or early Spring of 1997, if I was happy and genuinely believed I was going to be married at the time. She asked what happened, but I didn’t exactly want to try to get into it.

I’ve never been able to explain either story (there were two ‘real’ engagements in my history, and I don’t know which this would have been) in less than about twenty minutes. Not satisfactorily, anyway. Not in any way that is qualitatively better than “it didn’t work out”, which is what I said. It’s complicated.

I wonder what she remembers.

I’ll probably find out soon – she promised to call me, said we should hang out – but with the rapidly approaching holidays, things like this tend to be forgotten. If you’re reading this and you haven’t called, I genuinely do want you to call, and I would like to spend some time with you, even if I didn’t give that impression – I was a little off guard, a bit distracted/out-of-it.

She was my first real “girlfriend”. I wonder if she remembers that. Or that we dated for only four days before she dumped me in the middle of our first and last date. Then she didn’t talk to me for years because she thought I was angry at her for it; I wasn’t angry at her, just … disappointed? Confused? Whatever. That was a long time ago. I should probably go see if she is represented in Lost and Not Found, and if so, what I wrote. If she is in there, it’s probably a fictionalized version that fits the story better than reality could…

She was with someone … perhaps a “Steve”? It wasn’t clear to me what their relationship was, and that was part of why I didn’t say much. It’s hard for me to know what’s okay to say to people without knowing … something … about their lives. Her left-hand ring-finger had a ring on it, but a single band with three small stones of reasonably similar size, and his had no band. There is no real way to interpret that correctly, I think. So. Assume nothing. Say little. Don’t step on any toes.

She hugged me, twice, even though my own awkwardness made the second one a bit off. And she smells the same. At least, that’s what my mind is telling me. I know scent-memories can be intense and last a long time, so I tend to trust them, and she smells the same to me. The scent of her came off on me a bit when we hugged, though by now it’s fading fast, and I can’t stop breathing it in. It is a pleasant scent, a pleasant memory.

But I don’t know what she remembers of me. Or what’s happened in her life since 1993, really. For all I know she’s married and/or with kids, like most of my other old friends. Or if we’d get along anymore.

Though I expect we would. Even at 15 I had strong intuition about people, and the intervening years have only proven its accuracy, so if she’s the first person I ever felt strongly enough about to get over my shyness and “ask out” and if my sense about her at the time told me she was worth giving up years of conviction about avoiding dating, it probably wasn’t wrong about us getting along. So I hope she calls. So we can “catch up”, and maybe be friends again after all this time.

And just briefly, Heather, if you’re reading this, after the second engagement didn’t work out (remember, I don’t know which one you recall) I had one other real ‘girlfriend’ right after that, and I’ve been single since early 1998. Not exactly on purpose. And we can discuss it at length if you like, but when we ran into each other today I wasn’t sure whether it would be one of those run-ins I occassionaly have where they recognise me, act pleasant, and run off genuinely scared, or one where you were genuinely glad to see me and sincere about wanting to talk to me again, so… I didn’t want to get into it all without knowing.

And now I’ll go … wrap gifts or something. I have the next three days off work. Yay for Monday-Thursday, 4 tens! Three day weekends EVERY weekend!

ie: the list of things I’ll buy for myself in the new year when I’ve earnedenough money to cover the stuff I’m buying other people this week.

The Ultimate Matrix Collection*
A Hydrogen Rocket*
Sweaters
Felicity Season 2
(a copy of the thing what I ordered for Angela on the internets today)
A new mobile phone** (though really what I want is to switch from Verizon to Cingular)
iPod socks
did I mention sweaters?***
Naked Lunch Criterion DVD
Equilibrium DVD
Nintendo DS, and Warioware for DS and XX/XY and other games for it that I will like
Any bottle of properly aged single malt scotch whisky (I am starting a collection)

*covered in the prior post/list
**because the hinge on the one I’ve had for coming on two years just broke, and I suspect that the phone is not long for this world. Unfortunately, my father’s finagling of everyone’s Verizon contracts means that instead of ending at the start of April (ie: just over 3 months from now), my Verizon contract ends in the middle of October (ie: 10 months from now). Grrr… SO I’ll have to soon purchase a new Verizon-compatible phone and (barring my dad extending my contract again, or other serious life-changing events between now and then) a new Cingular-compatible phone next Fall. Did I mention Grr? Grr!
***Seriously, I want to switch from mock-turtlenecks to sweaters for general layered warmness in the cold weeks of the year, and I own all of … ZERO sweaters. Now… what sort of sweaters will look good on me is … perhaps a complex and difficult question to answer, and one I am not prepared to address in this forum, though I expect those of you know know me have some ideas.

Disclaimer: This is not intended to be an all-inclusive list, but a basic list of the things that can be bought with money that I would like to have that I can think of right now. Not gonna die without these things (except maybe sweaters, but only if I lose all other warm clothes), these are not needs. These are also not the things that come first to mind when I think about what I want; those are usually things like ‘love’ and ‘peace throughout existence and everlasting good will between all sapient beings’ and ‘to get this book done’ and ‘to get some paintings done’ and things like that that you can’t exactly buy in a store and wrap up and put under a tree. That I know of. So. There you go. More updates to follow, possibly for weeks after “Christmas List” becomes moot.

I have managed to find something in this world that actually offends me.

Twice in two weeks I felt this feeling, and both times when I tried to determine the words to describe it I found I was offended.  And since I don’t remember ever really getting “offended” I tried to determine each time what it was that had upset me.  And each time it basically came down to the same thing.

What offends me, the only thing so far that I am aware of, is when people’s unreasonable, irrational beliefs have (or could result in) an active, negative impact on other people’s lives.  Especially where people’s beliefs are irrational in non-universal ways that unreasonably effect some people and do not effect others.

ie: people who believe that if person A does thing X he deserves result Y, but if person B does the exact same thing X, they deserve a more punitive result 10 times Y, or if the original Y was not punitive, then Y plus 10 times Z (where Z is a reasonable punitive result).

I don’t get it.

Where do people get these positions?  How can they be this way?  How do they justify it in their own minds and hearts?

It really upsets me.  The idea of it – it doesn’t seem to be the action, the punitive result, as much as the idea that people can actually believe/think this way – genuinely offends me.  And causes me unbelievable stress.

I wonder if it is because in this society, in this social structure, people’s irrational beliefs could be used against me personally and there is nothing that I could do about it.  The people in power could be these irrational people.  If it came to a jury trial about something I was involved in, people’s unreasonable, irrational, insane ability to believe these sorts of things could result in my own experiencing an unreasonable result.  If it came to a meeting with my managers, who knows if they would be fair or not, if something I had done to which a reasonable reaction would be one thing and this strange, inflated reaction could be termination or worse?  And if this irrational behaviour cannot be countered, on any rational footing?

Then no matter what my behaviour is, I cannot expect a reasonable response. 

I mean, maybe I’ll get a reasonable response, and maybe I won’t get any response, and maybe I’ll get a completely out-of-whack response.

So that’s the selfish part of it.  But interestingly, both times in the last two weeks that I have been offended by the idea of this level of injustice, by this nature of irrationality, it has been with regard to general social justice.  With regard to the fairness of how people I either have never met (and will never meet) or people whose lives I have no share or stake in would be effected by beliefs like this.  And in at least one of the cases, the particular irrational beliefs I was reacting to could not have any real impact on the actual result for the unreasonably treated party.

So what am I getting offended about?

Why was I so stressed out about something like this, something totally out of my hands and with no real impact on me or my life, that I was eating antacids, wishing for Pepto Bismol to drink?  Blood pressure rising, stomich churning, and this awful offended feeling that I basically never experience.  I don’t think I really understand it.  Do you?

I apologize for the discongruence, but not all areas of Modern Evil have been updated yet, and I will not be able to update them until … later. I was working on it last night, and then about 10 minutes after midnight, Cox decided I didn’t need internet access anymore. Instead of fighting with it, I decided to try to sleep a bit – that didn’t exactly work out well, but … whatever, I eventually got to sleep. And I certainly won’t have time to update the dozen-plus sections that have not yet been updated this morning before work. And I can’t access my own website FROM work to update them. And after work I’m going to Willow House to meet with my new fellow novelists, and won’t be home until very late.

Perhaps I should take my laptop; I can work on it from Willow House probably without losing my ability to have a normal conversation. That seems reasonable. Means more time spent getting ready to go, I guess, but I should be able to get out of here on time anyway. SO.

Flowers.

Also, the main page only queries the underlying RSS files every 10 minutes, saving bandwidth and server resources, so … yeah. If you were to, say, post something – Hah! Like anyone but me posts! – its flower might not appear on the front page for up to 10 minutes. But this is a good thing.

Anyway, so … yeah. Some of the pages have been updated, and some have not. Comics have not, for example, been updated. Reviews, Prose, and Poetry have. The BitPass page has. The Cafepress store hasn’t. And I haven’t finished working on fonts and text colors yet – your feedback is welcome on that stuff. And now, to go make lunch, get my stuff together (including my laptop), and go to work. Later.