Local Calls Only

Dreams

2009-11-04T02:53:21Z

My relationship with Emily was an interesting test case for Brent's interpersonal relationships. Beyond the obvious series of firsts that are embodied therein, I feel like it was the beginning of Brent coming out of his shell (and by Brent I mean the version of myself that I brought out of Blair and reconstituted into my being). Through that persona though I was able to deal with a lot of stuff from my past that I hadn't before. It was one of the first and only times that I ever really spoke about my father with another human being. So the series of conversations that were had naked in my bed in Gilbert were rather cathartic.

Since I heard of his death I've been having an odd series of dreams where she has played a costarring role, which are a bit disorienting when it comes time for waking up. These aren't the usual ex-girlfriend dreams either, with recounting old times or some form of wish fulfillment. I'm pretty sure that last night we went hiking and discussed the effects of logging on land reclamation. In fact, these dreams all consist of conversations about absolutely nothing. I'm not sure what it is that has made my unconscious feel like these are necessary, especially considering that I don't think that I had thought of her in over a year previously.

I spoke to Reed about this, and he of course was able to give me a rather pseudo-psychological theory that this is a defense mechanism and how I was generally too sensitive for my own good, which while probably an accurate account of events isn't necessarily useful for a better understanding and application of a solution. There were certainly good times, almost 9 months in fact, it seems odd that those would be categorized separate from all the wrenching times that would have gone along with them. The other problem with him being correct is that that would mean that my father was right when he said that college would be the happiest years of my life (something upon reflecting on them I refuse to believe to be true).

A corollary to this question, is the fact that it is Emily, and not say Rob or Reed or Ben or if my dreams require a female lead any of the women I've dated who I could in theory have a conversation with. What is it about my resting mind that makes me want to shift my unresolved conversations with my father to one of the people who I'm equally unlikely to have a conversation with. Why must I force myself to be my own little version of Sisyphus?

Apparently the best way to not think of an anniversary is a 10 mile run

2009-10-26T03:33:41Z

I'll keep this short, mainly because everyone tells me I have to be less nostalgic. Hell month is officially upon us, and besides an event which will have moved it ahead a few days seems to be much less painful than previous years.

Classes are going well, haven't gotten a grade lower than a B, which I guess means that I'm doing pretty well. Am heading up to Rochester to ring in the middle event of the month (I've decided to label it adorable that I have a series of holidays specific to me), so am looking forward to that a lot. All things considered I would say that things are going pretty well.

Well shit

2009-10-22T16:13:18Z

Hell Month came a few days early this year

Wake me in December

This weeks Haiku

2009-10-14T21:00:01Z

There's an Indian
She has forgot her panties
Brent sits behind her

The role of children in our society

2009-10-05T02:09:07Z

The impetus of this conversation came from a recent reaming by RHJ over my lack on civility, which I feel gives him free reign to criticize this work as he sees fit, in my defense I was a bit under the weather at the time. In his defense I have not been under the weather for the last 6 years, thus regardless of my ability to defend myself he was very much correct in his assertions of barbarism. I often question where I would have been if I had followed him to university and been mentally challenged for the last half decade. Which in part dovetails onto my next point.

By what mechanism do we force our children into the workforce, what possible reason exists to place the greatest minds of our generation into positions which add no value to the community. I understand why we place mentats into professional careers as early as we can, their use is similar to that of a calculator, and upon 22 years of study will likely have gleaned enough knowledge to be an effective member of the profession. In addition, the information curve in this field requires them to be involved as soon as possible since the fields evolution will likely be outpaced that of academia. Conversely, there is certainly an interest in getting those whose trades are less in the mental and more in the physical into the workforce as early as possible. In truth, once we have removed those practicing a trade and those who roll in the work force is that of a living calculator we are left with a surprisingly small, but not negligible, subset of the population. At the risk of offending my sizable Hindu audience, the closest real life representation of this would be of the Indian Brahmin caste, i.e. scholars, teachers (we shall in this piece ignore the roll of priests), so I shall restrict my views to set people were America to such an overtly defined caste system.

Amongst what passes for American intelligencia, there is a feeling of publish or die. While, and for the same reason as mentioned earlier, this is entirely acceptable (in fact to be applauded) in the truer sciences, the fact that it has bled over to the social sciences is something which should almost certainly be met with suspicion. I doubt that anyone with even the most basic understanding of how intellectual work takes place would challenge that the end result of this is simply a high quantity of inferior works. It has been argued that such a glut of subpar work is not something to be chided, that in an open marketplace of ideas the wheat will naturally be separated from the chaff. The problem with such an assumption is that it relies on the idea that that truth can easily and immediately be separated from falsehood, quite understandably the effects of adopting an incorrect theory of markets or an inefficient division of labour would be daunting at best. Perhaps most dangerous are the effects that this glut of information has on how we groom our teachers. I have personally seen individuals pursuing careers in education falter and fall short in the inception of their degrees as well as after they have achieved their certification. An improperly trained, as well as one who was successfully trained on incorrect methods, as the ability to ruin entire generations.

So what does this have to do with the youth of our country? In the words of the Bard, "Wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast." We are in effect seeing groups of 22 year olds who have just gone deeply into debt, scrambling for the job which will pay the money which will repay these debts. And thus they sacrifice the time required to digest these thoughts and interpret them. Instead they latch on to graduate teaching assistantships which in turn requires that they justify their existence through through journal articles (which given their lack of backing invariably concentrate on some aspect of the trivial, or instead only exist as a regurgitation of previous theories and works. At times this might move towards the clever, but never enters into the realm of being intelligent). This is of course not limited to those in academica, those who would identify themselves as authors, poets, philosopher, or even reconteurs (the highest level your humble writer can wish to achieve) are forced to prove their worth in the public square.

It is at this point in the argument where the systemic issue must be breached, whether the drivel coming out of our youth is not in some part related to the drivel coming out of those we view to be established and the heads of their field. Whether historians are not perhaps writing works identifying every member of the Rump Parliament because that is what those in their field are wanting to read. To this challenge I must concede that mine is the more normative claim that I don't care if their is a market for such things, that my demands that their work be useful comes from a higher realm than mere market forces.

(this shall be finished in the morning)

An open letter to everyone who was weirded out by my last few posts

2009-10-04T20:14:24Z

Sorry for scaring you. I am in fact doing fine and will return to my normal stoic self shortly

Answers very rarely give answers

2009-10-03T01:20:32Z

Reggie's mom called me today. I can really only imagine what it is she's going through; but that being said, she really knows enough to not expect comfort from me. There was a period of time where I would say that Gloria was like a mother to me, closer than my mother actually, but now in the absence of Reg she's just this woman I used to know.

I hate being heartless, I hate closing her off, but I really couldn't mentally engage her. I couldn't tell the old stories, I couldn't tell her about grade school about sleep overs of drinking songs and blacked out nights we don't remember. But I couldn't...or wouldn't. I tried to draw on that portion of my person, to bring out the emotions but I just came up empty. I didn't have the words that would bring back her son, instead all I had was the ability to show her that I was still living. That I didn't die with him. She had been reading his note wanted to hear me compliment his poetic roots, as if suicide becomes excusable if you are artistic. And I just couldn't humour her. I'd already read the note, fuck I was in that note, and it was trite then. I had drank my rum, I had cried into Diane's chest, all my feelings on the matter have ended. They're gone

I know what she's going through, when you were around Reg it was like the sun shines on you, and it's glorious. And then he leaves you and it's very, very cold. I can only imagine what that was like seeing from an adult's point of view. Having an entire lifetime be a subset of your life. To see your bloodline cut short like that for such a stupid reason. I think that that is why I couldn't comfort her, because I've been able to not think about it. Reg can be out of my mind because I have barely anything to remind me of him. His photo isn't sitting on my desk so to speak

Kicking ass and taking names

2009-10-01T16:49:30Z

Doing well in Micro...really excited about that. On the other hand that is really the only class out of 4 that I'm excited to go to. Now if only I had time to go to office hours and build rapport with the teacher

Either way, let's hope that this keeps going

WOW

2009-09-28T21:59:44Z

Had a rather surreal conversation today. Drop a line if you care and help me analyze it.

The ties that bind

2009-09-26T03:26:54Z

What is it that causes us to check up on someone from our past?

I was talking to Eric recently, yes I am still in contact with him...while Joy refused to let me go to the wedding she still tolerates him calling to me, and he took great delight in telling me of where all of our mutual friends are at in their lives. While that is understandable on his end, he likely receives some joy being able to dispense knowledge that I lack, what I confuses me is whyＩcare about these people. I don't even remember a good deal of them, and of those who I do instantly remember I haven't thought about them since the last time that I spoke to Eric. What is it that makes me want to fill the holes in the story since I left them. Why do I think that if I know what they are doing now that will somehow recreate me as the personＩwas whenＩknew them?

Livejournal likely plays a role in this, a good portion of my friends list is made up of people I knew back at Blair, and I would be lying if I said I didn't read a percentage of the entries on that page. That though seems like a passive involvement, all I need to do is hit the button and everything is done for me. Thoughts? Opinions? Stories?

While on the topic of Eric, I'm finding that I have either forgotten how to properly tell my stories, I am telling them to a different crowd, or the enjoyment of these stories requires a good knowledge of who　I am as a person. Either way, my attempts at entertaining people with the New Orleans story, or the Eric Story, or the Tilt story have not worked out as well as　Ｉ　would hope.

I guess I'll just need new stories, or more time with old friends.

Analogy

2009-09-23T01:58:54Z

Talking about cheating with Marie is like talking about drinking with Gordo; they'll both listen and engage in intellectual debate, but regardless of what I throw down I'll never win them over to my point of view

Lines from this weekend

2009-09-22T19:58:58Z

I heard the following lines in the order that they were read spaced out about 30 minutes from each other:

"Hey Brent, any idea how to mix a drink?"

"Are you sure that there is alcohol in this?"

"Tell me a story"

If the cops didn't bust up the party I think I could have gotten people to the point where they're running around naked. Grad school might work for me. There are few parties that could handle rounds of my "Leap Into an Open Grave" (a drink I actually got off of an episode of Cheers).

Things people don't like

2009-09-15T05:30:39Z

Over the last few days I've had about 4 conversations that center around why people are my friend. Ｉ don't have an excellent explanatory variable but a lot of my conversation groupings tend to be nicely clustered, perhaps it is just my willing them into existence (or more likely, that I subtly push the conversation onto that topic.) And I've realized that people are more or less willing to accept any reason for why they are my friend as long as that reason does not also come with a statement regarding some internal weakness to fulfill their wishes.

While I've never been a fan of pop psychology (which is the only type of psychology I can ever hope to aspire to), I have none the less always found it a helpful consideration. Often it is too hard or nary impossible to understand how your mental structure is built and the need arises to have someone explain to you what you are thinking than having to discover it on your own. Reed was always very apt at knowing what was going on in my mind and putting it in small enough words that I was going to be able to understand.

Even now he was able to identify my need for a foil while I my work of what was missing was limited to the most ethereal plain of thought.

-to be continued

Stuff happens

2009-09-14T14:22:21Z

I think that this might qualify as a bad weekend. I'm sure that just about all the Thelions are in varying states of anger/aghast over the Annie Le situation. I just found out that they found the body yesterday. I think mentally I am still preferring to believe that what we're seeing is some giant conspiracy and that she is currently on some island with a latin lover, but I know that that is not true.

I think that I follow a rather linear relationship between stimuli and response. Death of a friend makes me withdrawn, death of strangers makes me horny. VT was obviously a rather mixed bag. This probably isn't the healthiest of situations, but it is nice when looking back and figuring out what happens. Know thyself and what not.

If anyone wants to talk about what is happening and how they're feeling drop a line. My phone is currently broken, so AIM or email might be the best shot. Also, if you have Jon's contact info I'd love to send a card.

The plusses and minuses of the day

2009-09-08T22:19:39Z

Positive: all my courses seem like they will be entertaining to say the least
Negative: Today I woke up at 7 and wasn't able to motivate myself out of bed until like 8 and then didn't leave the shower until quarter of nine
Plus: I think I'm going to stop drinking
Negative: I think I'm going to have to stop drinking
Plus: I am talking to a good deal of people who have similar interests than myself
Negative: Remember how I used to say that I wasn't sure that I could be friends with a clone of myself?
Plus: I've been cooking a lot more
Negative: Turns out that I'm a pretty bad chef, and now that my crockpot lid is broken probably won't be happening too much anymore.

I'm also not entirely sure how I'm going to go about being social as well as getting all my work done...that is something that is going to have to be mulled over in great detail

First week of Grad School

2009-09-04T17:09:27Z

I think the most striking thing that I am coming away from after my first week at Gtown is that I need to move. Barring jumping the turnstyles, this 6 dollars a day stuf is going to get very annoying over time, however, that is going to mean that I have to quit APHL, which I am also not willing to do (what with that providing me the major cash source which I use to live).

Other than that it is more or less typical, the people seem acceptable. A couple outliers of people who are completely socially inept, or much better than I am. I think that I am going to return to my high school method of networking rather than continuing my college one (the reason for that being that I still consider myself much closer to the Mountain than anyone who I met at college with a few exception). Thus I'm concentrating on the internationals, they seem to be a population under appreciated and thus likely to provide a high ration of payout to effort.

Shifting gears, I had dinner this week with Shnutler and Berdine and Mrs. Berdine and it was an fine enough dinner, but think this was the nail in the coffin for counting that group as "friends." Beyond just the obvious nature of us having very little in common and their refusing to be dynamic individuals, I feel a particular element of the problem is that I just don't understand our relationship any more. Are these people who I can call if I need a ride at midnight out of the city (which incidentally happened last night and I ended up calling someone I had only met twice), are these people who I can confide in, are these people who I will invite me over to their house for a party and not get angry if I shag a guest in their bathroom? There also seems to be a weird issue of any time I mention that I might be interesed in someone romatically it is perceived as a person afront to on of them. I think I'm just going to pull back and allow them to decide their group for themselves.

Classwise I have no idea what is going on. They all seem reasonable enough, but having only gone to them once it is hard to establish an actual opinion on the matter. More on that matter later

Grad School: Day 0

2009-09-02T03:32:18Z

So tomorrow I have to wake up at 6 so I can get to the office by 7. At 12 I plan to head to the Metro and so I can get to my first graduate class, PPOL 508 (Quant 1) at 1 15 in the afternoon.

I have to say that I am rather excited; despite the fact that graduate school has been a bit watered down, I feel like this chapter of my life will mean something. Truly as an aside, I think that I am the only one of my friends (with the exception of Hamilton) who has actually achieved something by attending an institution of higher learning. I'm excited to be back in academia. Excited to have classes and examinations and be able to assert my intelligence.

ECT/electric chair, we shock who we can't save

2009-08-21T21:25:20Z

Lately I’ve taken to visiting a local homeless shelter in DC. Since leaving St. Joe’s I’ve really missed hanging out with the homeless. I miss hearing about their lives, talking to them about their problems, breaking bread with them. What separates my current experience from the one I had back in Rochester is that I’ve been much more candid these days with discussing addiction with them. What makes them drink, what keeps them drinking, so on so forth. For anyone who has ever read the Little Prince, the answer given there is actually pretty close to the general consensus. A lot of people drink to forget, and one of the main things they’re trying to forget is all the shit that happens when they drink.
Maybe it is just me, but I can never look at the face of a person struggling with addiction and not see myself. The only thing that really separates me (and I would think all of us) from those showing up at the shelters is a difference of experiences. One of the guys I was talking to this week was named Spider, a kid a little younger than me who had moved from recreational pot and alcohol to painkillers after his marriage fell apart. And when I was looking at a picture of his kid, I was just thinking there buy by the grace of G*d go I. How easily could it have been for me to be in his place if I had gotten my girlfriend pregnant at 19 (conceivable, I was a dumb sexually active kid at that age that refused to wear condoms). So in light of that how can I have contempt for their condition?
Sometimes after the doors close I talk to the volunteers, and while we chat about what is to be done someone invariably starts talking about enabling: wondering how they can save these people. I’ve heard a lot of bullshit spewed, claiming that places like this might be doing more harm than good, that we’re making it too easy for them. What I heard most recently was that aggressive psychological treatments were required. That through shock therapy we could cure people of their addictions, and that the other option would be just incarcerating them until they got clean.
Looking back maybe I should have set them straight, shown them how their views were untenable, but I didn’t. And the reason is that you can’t cure everyone of stupid beliefs, the same way you can’t cure everyone who looks for happiness at the bottom of a bottle. If people don’t want to change they won’t. And all you can do is be there during the middle periods and listen to their stories and be their friend.

Brent: Devil’s Advocate

2009-08-19T23:31:30Z

Last year (it might have been the year before, 08/09 kind of blended together in my mind) my friends started thinking up what Bizarro members of our group would be; that is to say, what element of our personalities would have to be different in order so that they would be a completely different person. An example of this being that Bizzaro Diane is a lesbian, and Bizzaro Dave is interesting: were these things true, via a domino effect almost every other aspect of their persona would be different. When the time came to assign me a Bizarro personality for me there was a long pause up until I suggested "Bizzaro Brent is moral?" This was greeted with general acceptance as the answer that was on the tip of everyone's tongue.

This is hardly an isolated incident, I think that the majority of my social circle feels me to be a liar and a cheat; however, whenever I ask them to name an instance where they have caught me in a lie they are dumbstruck. It seems that I am caught in a trap where Brent simply comes with the connotation of being immoral. This isn't the worst thing, it allows me to suggest that my friends pursue relationships with a married woman or cheat on their boyfriend with a cute British boy, and in turn I am the person that people come to when they are faced with the opportunity to make be unscrupulous. Thus there is a feedback loop where my perception just gets more and more extreme.

The question then becomes, do I care? My first instinct is to say, “No;” however, that isn’t exactly true. When the perception exists that I am dishonest, my ability to influence the decisions of those around me are severely nerfed. Thus now that I’m in a new location with a new population to draw from I’m being reminded that I am quite persuasive. Much like how once I got to UofR I realized that I was actually charming in a way that women responded to, I’m finding here that I can return to an alpha male persona in DC.
But what has been learned, how can this state be maintained. Do I just completely avoid the options of depravity? With the whole Catholic thing that is highly possible, and while I would surely miss telling the New Orleans story or just about any story that came from my time in Utah, perhaps that is an acceptable loss.

Thoughts?

Visiting Funerals

2009-08-18T23:43:13Z

During my time at the UofR I was lucky enough to see 3 weddings take place. The first one was while I was staying with Benjamin and happened to see the beginnings of milling around the chapel. The first thing that came into my mind here was that Benjamin and I should throw on suits and watch this, he however saw it as life imitating art a la Wedding Crashers and refused to join me. His negativity lead to my negativity and I think we ended up reading leasticoulddo and generally wotsing. The second one I was riding bikes with Evan and was much too sweaty for an impromptu formal occasion. However, the third time, that was when fate struck.

I had just picked up my suit from Evan's house because he was tired of seeing it there, when I saw a limo driving into campus. I was able to scramble into the cloths and get in before the last of the invited guests made their appearance. I also had the good luck of following in an older couple, thus allowing anyone who saw me to just assume that I was their son. During the ceremony I was struck by two things, how boring has your life had to have been for the University of Rochester to be the place where you would want to get married, and bridesmaids dresser are much too ugly for it to be accidental. I elected not to follow the cavalcade of cars to the reception; partially because I couldn't work out how to get around the lack of a place setting for me, but also because the whole even was emotionally draining enough that I wanted to go home and take a long shower.

It was only in the coming weeks where I really to stock of the whole occasion. I came to realize that I genuinely like other people's parties. I like hearing someone's brother read scripture, I like watching a mother cry as her daughter gets married, I like drafting back stories for who everyone is, what brought them up to this point and where they go from there (it is a terrible shame that divorces don't get announced in the newspaper the same way engagements do, then I'd have some ability to confirm my predictions). Since that point in time I've had the good fortune to stumble into a a few birthday parties (a couple of which happened at the Elmwood and resulted in a couple free shots) and I like those too. Since then I've just started watching people whenever I see them: the middle aged man scarfing down a cheeseburger on his lunch break, the homeless guy peeing in a bag in an alley, or the teenages smoking on the jungle gym next to my apartment. One of the only common emotions that I haven't witnessed in the last half decade is grief and mourning. I've come close, I've been been to funerals before, but never as a fly on the wall. I'm not entirely sure how I would go about doing it.

You think that it would be easy to just show up uninvited at a funeral, and I guess to some account it probably is. Just make up some believable back story and your in; the only person who could really disprove your claim isn't really talking to people anymore. But the few funerals I've been to have usually been pretty reserved, some crying and such but no one really opening up and bearing their souls. That type of stuff happens in private, amongst the friends and relatives.

What is your guys experience with mourning?

Time spent with Rochester people

2009-08-17T16:52:25Z

What does it mean to be a friend of a person? Am I friends with all people with whom I am friendly? Facebook would indicate that What does it mean to be a friend of a person? Am I friends with all people with whom I am friendly? Facebook would indicate that I have 246 friends (22 with livejournals that I read), but strangely these numbers don’t seem terribly reflective of the true nature of the issue. What is it that calls us to constantly know what is happening in a given person’s life? Is this just another symptom of modernity that we simply collect people now, that once an individual enters your life they never leave it? And beyond that, if everyone I know is our friend, thus watering down its meaning entirely, do any of us have any real friends? It seems to me that for the most part with groups of people that I knew in my youth and keep in touch with via electronic means, they are forever cemented as the person they were when we last met. And the same goes for me. There is no emotional growth, no maturing, only stagnation. These are rather unsettling issues.

What really brings this issue to light is the impending arrival of Ben and Grace to the DC area. I fluctuate between thinking that this is going to be a good thing, that we’ll have dinner parties and go to ballgames and such, and realizing that that is almost certainly not going to happen and what little interaction we have will be a strained attempt at rekindling a relationship with people who don’t exist anymore.

Bacchus hath drowned more men than Neptune

2009-08-16T18:30:13Z

The original article that stood here was a long diatribe on personal responsibility, but I wasn't terribly happy with it, and it really only applied to peoples use of alcohol and tobacco so I decided to just entirely scrap it, thought the subject shall remain the same, if only because I think that the line is poinant regardless of anything else.

This weekend was rather enjoyable, spent sitting on the beach smoking a pipe and looking at scantily clad people (which then turned to a conversation with the man dating my aunt about how 20-somethings of this generation are much flabbier than those of his)

Tabacco a plenty

2009-08-12T23:39:22Z

One of the most amusing things about my college experience was my friends descent into drunkenness. This was by one part amusing because a drunk friend is a fun friend (that it up until Evan throws up in the bathroom and the whole place smells like pickles), but even more so because these were the people who belittled my drinking when we all first arrived at college. I still fondly look back at those days wandering the campus with my plastic cup filled with Jagermeister, these memories are given particular joy now when I superimpose judging faces with drunken faces a couple years later. Quite ironically, were it not for Andrew and his squirreled away bottled of Ouzo I question if I could have handled freshman year socially. But that is neither here nor there, the point of this article is my recent paradigm shift, from that of student to adult.

Despite the whole being a wage earner last year, with the prevalence of individuals (Evan, Diane, Bucky, Taryn, to lesser extents Dave, Zach and Glen) still very much in a collegiate mentality I effectively lived my senior year through them. Contrasting that with my current situation and I'm right back in Freshman year, only now I'm the only one going through it. None of the people at my office really drink (well one might, but I haven't quite bonded with him), nor do they smoke. As best as I can tell those immediately around me engage in no vice, which when also in the absence of valour leads to terribly boring individuals. I had lunch with a girl from my office (a lunch which might have been mistaken for a date, she didn't order anything and seems to have simply wanted to enjoy my company (a wish suspect in itself...more on that later mayhaps) and it was a rather depressing thing. What percentage of our generation lists TV as one of their interests? What percentage refuses culture or service. What percentage engage in lives not lived? These are the questions of the day.

That being said I am not innocent of these same crimes On a beautiful day I am inside faux pontificating on the state of those around me. I am not reading, or reciting poetry under a cherry tree,　Ｉ'm crouched in front of my Eee PC looking for dressers on craigslist, and yelling into an darkened room assuming that someone will hear my ramblings and take them to heart. This is what the modern day hermit has become, techno savy and alone in a room full of people.

But our modern age has some advantages. I was recently able to buy a dead man's pipes online at a very reasonable price and find a meetup group where I can play boardgames with middle aged men on the weekends. That is certainly worth something.

August update

2009-08-08T16:39:33Z

You ivory tower intellectuals must not lose touch with the world of industrial growth and hard currency. It is all very well and good to pursue these high-minded scientific theories, but research grants are expensive and you must justify your existence by providing not only knowledge, but concrete and profitable applications as well.

CEO Nwabudike Morgan
"The Ethics of Greed"

I think the largest problem with my impending reentry into the world of academia is that I didn't much like it the first time around. I'll go to the happy hours and sit around talking to people and realize that not only do I have nothing to say to them, but I don't even particularly enjoy their company. What is it about our modern age which makes people incapable of being civil? My first thoughts would be that we have too high a degree of selection of our stimuli that we don't have to experience anything we find distasteful. I suspect that as a result of this capacity, people have lost the ability to forge new relationships based on any facet but the most superficial. This is likely further exacerbated by ability to never have to leave our previous acquaintances behind (a la Livejournal). The eventual end of this I think will be an entire class of people who live in cave like strata befriending television characters and bots on WOW.

I need to start building a budget and deciding if it makes sense for me to continue living like 30 metro stops from school. In theory I should buy quicken or at lease a spreadsheet listing all my monthly expenses, but I like to continue operating under the assumption that in time I'll have a secretary who can just handle all that stuff for me. On a similar note work is going well, I think that there is something about wearing a tie and being able to mentally divest myself at 5 o'clock at appeals to me. I face a similar problem that while I know everyone's names and we joke around I wouldn't count any of them as really friends. Plus my frugal nature means that I end up either eating homemade granola (or some other similar lunch) at my desk rather than going out and being social. That might be the one advantage of grad school is that the requirements there will mean talking to people and having the illusion of community.

commigreensmurf @ 2008-12-24T22:05:00

2008-12-25T19:29:46Z

December 24th, Ten P.M. Eastern Standard Time, I can't believe a year went by so fast. Time to see what we have time to see