This Shit's Got to Stop Right the Fuck Now!

Birth control is a GOOD thing!

Over the last couple of weeks, Republicans have been driving me, and anyone else with a functioning vagina or penis, batshit fucking insane! I was content to mostly ignore this sudden rampage against women's access to birth control until someone I follow on Twitter referenced this article about New Hanover, NC county commissioners rejecting funds for local family planning services. Once this crap starts happening in my home state, I have to speak up.

Now, understand that I'm about to make my case in a perhaps inappropriate way, with details which you probably don't want to read, but I have to get this out into the open. I'm not sure exactly who Republicans think they are controlling, punishing, or otherwise dictating, but you would think that people who have fucked as many individuals who AREN'T their wives while still espousing "family values" would understand that women are made for more than just birthing babies! In fact, these despicable Randian Conservatives who "don't want to have to take care of" other people should love giving out free birth control on every street corner, as there would then be fewer people around to need taking care of.

Now, depending on the type of birth control, and to what amount a woman's insurance may or may not cover the birth control, a year's worth of birth control can cost as much as $1000 a year, not including the medical consultations required by the doctors who must act as gatekeepers for the birth control. If a woman is living on the edge, financially, this cost can be too much to bear. Even for a woman who is living a relatively comfortable middle-class life this expense can put a stress on her financial situation. The Conservative argument is that if they think they can't afford it then these women should keep their legs closed, as one of these brilliant luminaries recently suggested that women should use a Bayer aspirin as birth control by holding it between their knees!

Scottish Fiction

Shirley Manson makes me want to visit Scotland

I should probably be reading right now, instead of writing this post. However, this is ME we're talking about, and when in the history of ever have I actually done the things that I'm SUPPOSED to do in a timely fashion?

Thankfully, I received my financial aid money this morning. The timing couldn't have been better, as my bank account only had about $2.80 as of last night. Before heading to school this morning, I went online and got my bills caught up, which consumed around $700 of my money in a few minutes. By now, though, I'm rather accustomed to this twice yearly routine, as I always end up letting my bills fall by the wayside for a few months as I survive on a steady diet of macaroni and cheese until my next hit of economic prosperity arrives such that I might eat like a normal person until the end of the next semester.

Today's class load wasn't too bad, as I only had to deal with Great Works of Western Literature and my Behavioral Psych Lab. I also got to have lunch with my friend Johnnie, which was nice. We had the opportunity to trade stories about our hot professors. Apparently, we both got lucky this semester. My literature professor is hot in that academic sense I mentioned previously. She is likely in her early 40s, with long brown hair, and a slim physique. Usually, I don't prefer skinny women, as I've always liked boobs and butts. Unless a woman is literally "tits on a stick", as they say, thin ladies just don't have an abundance of things for my hands to play with. That said, Ex was thin, as a dancer, and I found things about her body that I enjoyed.

Time Management

Taking time for lunch outside

This semester is really testing me in ways I haven't been before.

I've posted in the past about my habit of procrastination. Often I find that I work better under the pressure that procrastinating provides. Over the last few weeks, however, that has not been the case, at all. With the homework needed to stay on top of my Intermediate French and Finite Math courses, the 10+ hours of research work for The Doctor each week, as well as the reading for Cognitive Psychology and Behavioral Research, I am really being asked to accomplish more in a limited amount of time that I am accustomed. For ten years at the radio station, I essentially had 10 hours of work to get done in 40 hours a week, with the remainder of my time spent being on alert in case something went horribly wrong.

The thing is, I really enjoy my downtime. I like being able to have time to read Internet forums, watch The Young Turks on YouTube, read political blogs, watch the occasional documentary on Netflix. While I find that keeping up with politics is stressful, it is stressful in a way that I find fun. Having to constantly do work to maintain my grades is stressful, but not in a way that I find especially fun. The problem is that there is a specific goal in mind with regard to the school work. I HAVE TO make good grades. I don't have to know that President Obama's ridiculous "jobs" plan consists of 56% tax cuts for corporations.

Of course, procrastinating wouldn't be as big of a problem for me if I would actually do all the things I need to do. As I put things off, the stack of things I need to do constantly gets bigger, increasing the pressure until I worry that I might explode. And the work for The Doctor is a particular beast for me, because I hate the feeling that I am letting someone else down. If I make a C in French it doesn't hurt me, emotionally, as much as knowing that I'm slowing someone else down or preventing them from accomplishing their tasks in an efficient manner. That's why I was never meant for customer service. I despise slowing other people down.

The Home Stretch

The Wolf Ears in Spring

With only a month left in the semester I feel like things are starting to come together, slowly but surely. Of course, I don't really have anything to base that on, considering that I am still waiting to find out what I made on my most recent tests in Biology, Psych Research Methods, and Ergonomics, and I am behind in my work in Accelerated French (bien sur!). And the fact that I am hoping to skirt by on the generous province of my professors' grade curves probably shouldn't be seen as positive evidence of personal progress! Nonetheless, I have made a few small steps in the forward direction. I was finally able to register for classes for Fall 2011, and I made first contact with one of the psych professors regarding PSY 499 work. I still have to fill out an application, so there is no guarantee that I will get accepted to the professor's lab, but my optimism (unfounded though it may be) is giving me a little bit of an emotional boost for the time being. At least getting a response back from a professor is better than the last month of silence I've had to endure!

The one letdown of the week, however, was learning that I will not be able to work in the tutorial center for the university. Apparently, they don't hire tutors for humanities, though nowhere on their website do they mention that fact! As a result, I went to a 30-minute information session only to learn that if I want to tutor I have to be proficient in math, physics, or chemistry! Maybe it is for the best, since they apparently do not give their tutors very many hours each week, and you have to actually pay to take the training course for tutoring. In other words, by the time you actually tutor you would probably only break even financially! The woman who ran the information session even indirectly admitted that fact when pressed about whether one has to pay for the training course. That is fucking brilliant! A part-time job that only manages to pay for itself! Wait until the Conservatives and Corporate Tycoons hear about this one! Fuck you Capitalism! Fuck you right in the face!

The Masks of Halloween Approach

I've never been one for dressing in costumes for Halloween. It probably wouldn't come as a surprise that I only recall trick or treating maybe four times as a kid. Unless I am in a play, in which case my job is to get into character as best I can, I just don't feel comfortable pretending to be something I am not.

Maybe if I attended more Halloween/costume parties I would feel differently, but then it could be a chicken or egg argument. It perplexes me as to how people choose the costumes they decide to wear. Apparently, alot of people keep an abundance of otherwise superfluous clothing in their homes for the sole purpose of assembling a costume once a year! I barely have enough clothing to keep myself covered for a week. And I wear that clothing until it's ragged and not even worthy for costume making.

This is probably a sexist observation, but it also seems as though women are more into dressing up for Halloween than men. I wonder if it has something to do with societal norms pushing women into a wider variety of roles in their daily lives. Women, after all, are expected to be mothers, businesswomen, therapists, chefs, and dirty whores on any given day! Men are only expected to be... present. I think it is no small leap that women are consequently better at dressing up for Halloween.

There is a little bit of irony to my lack of interest in wearing a costume when you consider that most of my life has been spent wishing I was someone or something else. Throughout my life I have, at various times, wished I were a woman, a time traveller, a teacher, a newspaper reporter, a radio DJ (at least I got around to doing that one for a little while!), a film director, an author, a wealthy entrepreneur, a restaurant owner, completely Caucasian, a cat, a penguin, a painter, a dance instructor, President of the United States, and God. I suppose I could cull together a costume related to some of those, but most would be hard for other people to decipher, and it seems that part of the point of the costumes is that they are immediately recognizable.

Most of the time people just dress in archetypes. The typical costumes seem to be monsters (vampires, zombies), movie characters (Harry Potter, Obi-Wan Kenobi), Super Heroes (Superman, Wonder Woman), or famous people in the news (Britney Spears, Sarah Palin). The problem with all of these is you need imagination and skill with makeup, or money for a pre-made, probably ill-fitting, outfit.

Now that I think of it, there is one component to the phenomenon of dressing up that probably compels people more than all others, and somehow makes the time/expense seem worth it. The sense of escapism, even for a brief time, is a thrill with which people have always had a preoccupation. There is probably something of great intrinsic value which comes from shedding the bonds of reality and dressing up as a naughty nurse or Captain Kirk if only for one night. As soon as I can figure out how to dress up as God, I'll work on discovering what that something is, exactly.

Have fun and keep living life... or some approximation thereof.

Refl-Ex-ions of the Past

I saw Ex again this afternoon. She was walking down Oberlin toward Hillsborough Street, near the NC State Bell Tower. This time it was unmistakably her, which can only mean that she's back in school, probably working on a Master's Degree of some sort. I was tempted to pull over and offer her a ride, but I thought better of it.

For the next few hours I actually found myself fantasizing about a potential chance meeting in some eatery along Hillsborough and what the conversation would be about. Permutation after permutation wound their way throughout my mind like a boa constrictor until the life was drained from me.

I had almost begun to forget about her. The thrice daily prayers for her return to my life to no God in particular had dwindled to perhaps a once a week afterthought, and I was actively weighing options for looking for a new face to fill the loneliness. Then, almost as if by clockwork, Ex walks back into my view to remind me that she's still alive.

Don't get me wrong. I don't want her to NOT be alive, I just don't want to be reminded that she's alive and not with me! Or, perhaps more to the point, I don't want to be reminded that she's still with HIM, the guy she left me for.

It's really hard for me to get away from the sense that I was cheated out of something. I was, after all. But, after all this time (it will be three years the first week in June) what do I think Ex could possibly do to rectify my loss? I mean, she did give me almost a year of her life. But her cheating on me took almost three years away. The problem, of course, is that she can't give me back those years... I took them away from myself. I'm the one who allowed me to become saturated in a thick sauce of sadness and regret. And it was me who allowed myself to subconsciously place Ex in the familiar role of a mother who shouldn't have been my lover and who left me before I was ready.

The anger and misplaced jealousy that have kept me tethered to Ex for the last three years is the same anger and jealousy I experienced as a child, years before I realistically should have. The real tragedy here is that it is the debt of my mother which I have been waiting for Ex, and numerous others before her, to repay. It is a debt that has taken far more from me than Ex ever could. And, unfortunately, it is a debt that no one can ever repay.

So, I suppose if fate were to one day make that chance meeting with Ex occur in real life, rather than waiting for her to apologize to me for any supposed misdeeds, it might be in order for me to offer up my own apology to her. After all, no one should be made to pay for a crime they didn't commit.

Keep living life... or some approximation thereof.

Toppling the Pins

A few weeks after I began bowling with Chris and his friends, Joe began bringing along a friend of his named Elizabeth. It should be noted that Joe is not dating Elizabeth, nor will he every get a chance to date her. That said, he is as protective of her as though he were pounding her nightly and twice on Saturday!

Elizabeth is a 22 year old, petite, sandy haired girl with glasses, a cute ass, small perky breasts which she plans to enlarge over the summer, and a thick nasally back country accent that makes you want to stuff a ball gag in her mouth to save your ears from the shrill. And, in case you were wondering, sure, I'd like to have sex with her.

You may already be seeing where this is headed, but let me add that Elizabeth is also into law enforcement, guns, country music, trucks, and really shitty action movies. Translation: She's likely a hard core conservative. And, while I did have a one-night stand with a conservative once, I have no desire to have a romantic relationship with anyone who can't appreciate Barack Obama for the delicious ebony god-among-men that he truly is!

Unfortunately (isn't there always an "unfortunately" in my stories?), because she's cute and conservative, I enjoy doing little things (flicking her ponytail or making lewd comments) to annoy her. Think of it like the boy in third grade who picks on the girl he has a crush on. Sure, its immature and stupid, but then so was voting for the McCain/Palin ticket! Here's where the problem developed: Rather than coming to me and telling me to stop, Elizabeth decided to complain to Joe and Chris. Of course, for Chris' part he couldn't care less but it creates a situation of divided loyalties. To make things easier for Chris, I agreed to sit out on bowling next week and let things cool down a bit.

I don't understand why I get so much joy out of antagonizing people. It isn't as though it serves a functional purpose; invariably it alienates me from people I enjoy being around. And it isn't like I can't be friends with people I disagree with. Some of the people I like the most are people who never cease to annoy me!

Sometimes I think of what I do as an initiation rite. The people I call friends are the ones who went through the antagonism and chose to stick around in spite of it. They are people I can respect because they have proven that they aren't two-dimensional and they don't see me as two-dimensional. For me to consider you a friend means you've successfully entered a pretty exclusive club.

Still... Club enrollment is down these days. Perhaps I should consider lowering the entrance requirements a little bit.

Have fun, and keep living life... Or some approximation thereof.

The Doctor is In

I couldn't decide between a picture of Doctor Who, or the Doctor from Star Trek: Voyager for this post. Oh well...

In my first post I encouraged anyone who wanted advice from a wannabe therapist psych major to leave comments and I'd try to give responses in my posts. Well, no one took me up on the offer. But, that's okay because I just found my first client. Unfortunately, it's Chris!

We met in my office, a booth in the non-smoking section of Waffle House. It should be noted that Chris is your typical libido driven, non-smoking, non-drinking, 19 year old male with too many opportunities for sex and not enough self-esteem to fully succeed at being a player. The thing is, Chris second guesses his every move with women but then doesn't like, or take, the advice that people give him when he comes calling for help. Much of the time, it seems, he'd be so much better off if he'd actually listen to what other people have to say.

I guess the truth is that Chris doesn't really want advice. Chris wants validation. He wants someone to tell him that he is doing the right thing and that his relationship problems are the fault of the women he dates. I'll grant that the girls he dates aren't exactly the cream of the crop, but, ultimately, he chose them, and he chose to set up situations where they could abuse his boundaries, or lack thereof.

You see, Chris falls repeatedly into the trap that so many young men, myself included, set for themselves and the women they date. Namely, Chris spends exorbitant sums of money on women believing that he is doing it to "treat them like princesses." By the way, guys REALLY do believe this when they're young and stupid. The problem is, of course, that women think the money comes with a price. It does... but not the one they think. Guys, on a deep subconscious level, think that if they spend money it will make women love them. If they spend more money, women will love them even more. Often, it takes years for us to learn that this doesn't actually work. Typically, we don't learn the lesson until after it costs us the one girl we loved the most. That's how I had to learn it, anyway.

I want Chris to learn before it's too late, but I know that he won't. He can't. He has to really hurt in order to learn, and he doesn't know what real hurt feels like, yet. He still lives with his parents and they still bank roll him to a great extent. That's another thing about the lesson, you have to lose YOUR money AND your girl to truly learn it.

Truth be told, while I don't mind doling out free advice to my friends, I don't want to become his therapist, as I've already discussed that I used to use my counselling skills as a tradeable commodity in relationships. Instead, I want Chris to be my friend because he wants to be my friend, and not because he can use me for free therapy. Perhaps now would be a good time for me to practice establishing my own healthy relationship boundaries. Maybe by learning how to keep a friend from taking advantage of me (or, more honestly, enabling them to take advantage of me) I can learn how to be a better--ie., healthier--boyfriend to the next woman I fall in love with.

Have fun and keep living life... And wish us luck!

Snow Days

Snow. We don't get much snow in Raleigh, these days. Usually, we get a light dusting that doesn't do much but give us an excuse to close down the city for a day and sleep in for a morning. Today we got about 2-4 inches of snow. School was cancelled, and will be tomorrow as well. That's fine for me. I wasn't really ready to go to school Wednesday, anyway. I have a stupid "reading log" due in Brit Lit I that I'm not looking forward to doing. We're still stuck on Beowulf, of which I have a 2-5 page paper due Friday. I've only gotten the critical review that I need as a source for the paper, but I haven't begun to write it, yet.

Thanks to the snow, my lunch date with Ashley had to be postponed. I sent her a text message to that effect, and I even tried to call her later in the day, but I never got a response. I'm not too bothered, really. She knows how to contact me if she decides she's interested in rescheduling. Still, it would have been nice to actually go out in public with a member of the opposite sex. I haven't done it in awhile. Of course, I expect a date with Ashley to go about as well as did my last date with a girl about six or eight months ago. She was Japanese, and soon to be going back home to pursue a job. She'd been here for several years working for the National Institute of Health. Don't ask me WHAT she was doing for the NIH, I could barely read the titles of some of the papers she had published while working there, much less understanding what the hell it was she was actually researching. I think it was something to do with immunology. At any rate, we'd been going out as friends, and I wanted to upgrade a little before she went back to Japan. I blew over $100 on dinner and a rock show (we went to see Mike Doughty, which I enjoyed quite a bit, actually) which went over with her about as well as a request for more ice in your sweet tea while sitting on the barge of the Titanic!

Since I didn't have anything better to do, I spent the day trying to do a little homework. I read a chapter in my Environmental Geology book and took a chapter quiz online that I made an A on! I visited my Philosophy Professor's Course Blog and posted a few thoughts in lieu of our in-class discussion period. I also watched the Inauguration of Barack Obama online for several hours and felt a great sense of warmth and satisfaction at being able to witness the swearing in of the first black President of the United States. As I've mentioned before, I've been a backer of Obama since his 2004 speech at the DNC, and I can honestly say that I've never felt prouder of my country, and my political party, for finally getting something right for a change. We've done alot of good in the history of the world, but it seems like it's been a while.

In other news, I've finally been seduced into joining Facebook! I won't post my page here, but if you want to Friend me just leave a comment and I'll send you a link, or look you up and Friend you there. The reason I finally broke down was because I had an invite Sunday night when I got home from the dance from a woman named Laura whom I haven't seen since the New Year's Eve Black and White Swing Ball from 2007-08. Laura is an attractive 41 year old who is currently in grad school trying to go into the same field as I. We've talked several times in the past and seem to have many things in common. In the not-so-off chance that she may read this (since I have a link to the blog from my Facebook page), I probably shouldn't admit this but, in keeping with my sense of honesty up to now, I've long had a bit of a crush on Laura. I've considered asking her out on a few occasions, but never managed to do it since I figured she probably wasn't all that interested in dating a younger guy, and why stir up the pot if I didn't have to. I did manage to kiss her once at the New Year's Eve Ball, but not at midnight. Come to think of it, I've NEVER actually kissed anyone at midnight on a New Year's Eve. Nonetheless, I did enjoy the kiss.

Oh well, such is life.

Have fun, and keep living life... and get back to work, you slacker!

The Twists of Fate and Women

Life seems to take some really odd turns at times. I have a lunch date this Tuesday, January 20th, to eat pizza with a 20 year old girl named Ashley.

I'll let that sink in for a moment.

Yep, I have a date. Ashley is cute, but she smokes and she's had a bit of a wild life in her short time on Earth. I asked her out tonight at the Elk's Lodge while I was swing dancing. Her mother is one of the regulars at the dance. Truth be told, I'm attracted to her mother, too. And her mother is actually closer to my age than Ashley is. But, her mother is already dating someone and, even if she wasn't, she is unlikely to be interested in dating a guy who is in college. I'm pretty sure that my interest in Ashley is purely sexual, which isn't a good reason to ask someone out. It's especially not a good reason when there hasn't been much reciprocal sexual interest expressed.

Ashley wasn't the only girl I wanted to ask out tonight. There is a girl named Joanna who has recently started showing up at the dance whom I'd like to ask out. In fact, when I showed up at the dance tonight I actually intended to ask Joanna to lunch tomorrow, since I figured she wouldn't have to work on Martin Luther King Day. Joanna is probably around 30 years old and doesn't smoke or drink or anything like that, at least not that I'm aware. However, Joanna is apparently somewhat religious, which gives me some pause. I'm not particularly religious despite having grown up as a Presbyterian. You see, I went to a Presbyterian college after high school that pretty much cured me of religion. Ex was religious, but she was a Conservative Jew. I've long been attracted to Jewish girls (I like them even before I find out they're Jewish!) but somehow I wasn't ever bothered by their faith. It wasn't until Ex used her faith, or rather my lack of it, as an excuse for why we would never get married that I began to shy away from the idea of dating a woman who has a particular religious belief.

Joanna seems like a nice girl, and by spending most of the night talking to Ashley I've probably ruined my chance (assuming I had one) with her. The sad thing is I even spent a few minutes tonight toying with the idea of trying to date both girls at the same time, as though I somehow had the money and social wherewithal to maintain such a feat. Didn't I learn from that mistake in high school? I am so not good with women.

Have fun, and keep living life... But try to dance with one partner at a time!

Back in the Saddle Again

The semester is almost over. Final exams begin Thursday, with my last happening Monday the 15th. Actually, the Monday exam is just final presesntations for my HUM 220 class. I'm going to swing dance with a girl named Amanda who is in the class with me. I've known Amanda for a few years through swing dancing, although she dances West Coast while I prefer East Coast. I've long been attracted to Amanda, but there's a half dozen reasons that I'd never ask her out, not including the fact that she's never expressed any sexual interest in me whatsoever.

Truth be told, I'm not very good when it comes to asking women out on dates. Actually, I'm not great at reading social signals, in general, which leads to me being rather ineffective when talking to women. As a result, I don't date much. It's not unusual for me to go five years between girlfriends. I just don't think to ask women out very often since the reward vs. attempt ratio is so low. But, lately, I've been really looking for someone to ask out on a date (looking, not asking, being the operative word).

When I met Ex, I didn't ask her out the first time we met; we met at a laundromat. I might never have seen her again. If it hadn't been for some luck, and me going back to the laundromat at the exact same time on the exact same day of the week for the next MONTH, I would have never been able to ask her out. We dated for almost a year. Ex claimed that she liked the fact that I waited until our second encounter to ask her out, but I still think it was a stupid thing to do.

And yet I continue to do it! I hate asking women out on a first meeting. It just seems too aggressive. And I'd like to know a girl a little bit before I ask them to spend time with me. Apparently, the accepted custom nowadays is that you ask a girl out for coffee or, at the most, lunch. But I'd like to sweep a girl off her feet, not interview her to help me run a non-profit organization!

Perhaps I'm setting my personal standards too high. After all, with my financial situation I can't afford to sweep anyone off their feet. Although, if the economy continues to decline, sweeping a girl off her feet will only require buying her dinner items which AREN'T on the Dollar Menu!

My friend, Osterberg, is of the mind that a first date should always be a sedate affair because you don't want to set the bar too high in the beginning of a relationship. Perhaps he's right, although I always put more pressure on myself to maintain the bar than any girl I've ever dated has. And the relationships, like my relationship with Ex, likely suffered as a result of establishing some high expectation that I could never fulfill to my own satisfaction.

I think I'm starting to see why I needed to get the lightsaber!

Have fun, and keep living life... or some approximation thereof.