The Silent Treatment

About four weeks ago, a friend of mine was (at least in my opinion) really rude to me on AIM over a silly debate we were having, and did the online equivalent of "storming off", saying "bye" and then abruptly logging off. I was ticked off at the time, so I put her on invisible/block and when I ran into her at school the next day, when she mustered a very weak "hey...", I just ignored her, as unless the first words out of her mouth were "I'm sorry", since she cut off the conversation, she's the one who has to take responsibility for restarting it. I've run into her maybe twice since then, and ignore her weak salutations. I realize it's a power play on my part, but I do want her taking responsibility here.

I was convinced that things were going to get patched up much faster than this, and things have escalated to the point that when I ran into her in a group at a party tonight, I made a point of saying hello to everyone except her, a behavior I typically only reserve for the stupid cunt. Only this time I feel sort of rueful/remorseful about it. I suppose it's another one of those tit-for-tat equilibria, where I feel that she's responsible for causing this mess in the first place and not apologizing on her own, but I'm probably being overly stubborn and combative, and I could try to be the "bigger person" and fix things up.

Yet, my gut tells me to dig my heels in in the interests of self-respect and all that. Of course, I now wonder if I'm more of a vindictive and/or stubborn person than I am a "good" one...

A tightrope that cannot be walked?

Recent discouraging events have rendered me a bit lonely (this is not to imply that I've lived like a hermit or have had nothing to do, I just haven't had any contact with anybody I like at a non-superficial level for a while), so I emailed a (female) friend of mine to get together, because we have a really good relationship, and I really want us to be friends. She's always fun to be around, and I think we do a good job of brightening each other's days. Of course, I'm pretty sure she wants more out of me than just a friendship (she responded pretty much immediately with "Wow, I'm so glad you wrote me!", etc.), which is a sentiment I don't think I can reciprocate at this point, if ever. My egalitarian views posit that two people of the opposite sex should be able to interact and enjoy each other's company without sexual tension, and that the lack of romantic interest should be irrelevant to the friendship, and who each person is. While I'm really happy to be seeing her on Tuesday, I'm feeling a bit guilty because everything I suggest that we do (walk/dinner/movie) sounds so "date-like", and I think I might be setting her up for disappointment (and if I do disappoint her, I hope she'll forgive me and still be my friend).

On the other hand, having this looming quasi-relationship is good motivation for me to find someone else that meets my picky standards in a hurry, before I get desperate and date this one, even though my brain, ego and principles tell me it's a bad idea...

Really Stupid Thought of the Day

"Is my iPod heavier (even by just a little bit) once I've filled it up with songs?"

Worse than Professional Boxing

Wow. This whole Landis-LeMond scenario transcends fucked-up-ness.

Anticipation is better than...?

In a hell-freezes-over-esque development, I am slated to have something of a date tomorrow. I don't know her all that well, but our chance encounters around campus over the past six months have always gone well, and my intuition has screamed to me that this one is worth pursuing (or was it just screaming that I'm desperate?). Since she was out of town since I had the good fortune of running into her, and locating the gumption to suggest we get coffee someday, I've been anticipating tomorrow for over a week. Frankly, it's been a pretty good week, as I resolved to start taking better care of myself and just the notion that there might be hope for me in the romance department was sufficient to really buoy me emotionally. Hope alone is really awesome and precious to me (after having none for so long), I'm slightly terrified of what will happen if things don't go well tomorrow. Hope alone was something powerful and tangible to me, and I don't want to lose it. I think I'm a strong person, but screwing this up might mangle my achilles heel. Of course, I hope it doesn't come to that, but I also find it a bit disconcerting that a small date-esque meeting has the power to do this to me. Shouldn't I be stronger, or at least have the ability to generate this sort of scenario more than once every 1.5 years or so?

Regardless, I bought a really cool new shirt for the occasion. I hope the rest of me lives up to her, and my cool new shirt!

Gasping for everything

So, while stepping out of the shower the other day, I realized that my penchant for junk food and for taking the bus over walking to work has rendered my appearance rather akin to the Stay Puft Marshmallow man. For a variety of reasons, I've decided that I have to do something about it, so I started jogging (and soon, I'll start lifting weights too). This is the part of the rationality trap where despite being horribly incompetent and not doing all that much, physical activity is agonizing wile undertaking, and then painful afterwards. It's kind of fun to feel all sore and cozy in my easy chair at night, and feel like I'm accomplishing something with my body. However, I hope I can keep this up, and lose my penchant for getting Twix bars and half-moon cookies throughout the day. The positive thing about the pain is that it increases the perceived costs of taking in those fat-laden calories, which thus makes resisting them more easily...

If only I could be this enamored with everyone I meet....

While I was walking around the neighborhood, waiting for my laundry to finish, I met an eleven-week old Chocolate Labrador puppy. He was so cute that it was jarring to see him as my eyes wandered aimlessly around half-braindead as I was going on my walk. The puppy was teething, so he was chewing on a stick while happily rolling around in the fresh spring grass. He let and his owner let me pet him, and then a whiny Pug came by, and started to cower when the Lab happily pounced on him with his disproportionately big paws.

Anyhow, now I really want a Chocolate Labrador puppy, although like is the case with kids, as much as I'm sure I'd love them, I'm not sure I want them 24/7/365. I'm still scared of big commitments like that. Further, I figure that buying a purebreed is decadent and bourgeois. There are lots of mutts out there in the world that are beautiful as well, and aren't being bred for profit, and are facing euthanasia. Further, mutts are less likely to come with expensive hip surgery bills. Despite all this, I still want a Chocolate Lab now! What is it with me and being unable to resist chocolate, whether it's located in a vending machine, or in the breed of a dog?

More Disconcerting Adventures with Demography and Marketing

Being someone who watches more than his share of ESPN nightly, I've noticed that seemingly second commercial has to do with dating, hair loss or weight loss. These are presumably things that the mostly male population watching ESPN is in urgent need of dealing with. In particular, those Nutri-System commercials with Dan Marino totally crack me up in particular (Sean Salisbury claiming that "chicks dig him"? How dumb do marketers think straight males are?).

It's funny that if these products and services succeed in getting pathetic single men "back in the game", they won't be watching ESPN (particularly on times like Friday and Saturday night) anymore, thus harming ratings. If they work (and that's a big if), ESPN is allowing a trojan horse of sorts to infiltrate it, and possibly take away their most valued clientele.

A random pet peeve

I hate it when you're walking outside, and you're trailing someone smoking a cigarette from anywhere from one to a hundred feet ahead of you, and you can taste and feel the second-hand smoke ravaging your lungs. You either have to run ahead of them, or freeze and wait for them to be at least the length of a football field away. I loathe smoking, and think these people who pollute my air and lungs in my personal space should get the death penalty for it. In a way, they do, but it's a rather delayed death...

Oh, and in an unrelated note, if only all cable access shows turned out to be this hilarious.

The Third Barrel

So, I can't sleep right now, most likely due to the Twix bars I consumed at dinner time tonight (it's unfair that something can something be so good at the time, yet be so bad on a longer time horizon), which got my mind racing about a life lesson I kind of learned playing poker last week.

I was playing my usual tight-conservative style, before picking up JTo in the BB, a few callers enter the pot, and I check, bringing a Q86 rainbow flop, leaving me with a gutshot (any nine that comes on subsequent streets improves my hand to a straight, which likely would win), but not much else, thus rendering my hand fairly weak (I'd guesstimate a 7-to-1 underdog to win at showdown). I check, and then the final caller who was the huge chip leader at the time stabs at the pot with a modest bet. I decide that he's trying to steal the pot (betting with nothing) and then put in a stiff raise and everyone folds (check-raising is usually a fearsome sign of strength in no-limit hold'em), but the initial caller fearlessly calls.

Now, being a conservative-type person in some ways (especially monetary ones), I'm usually inclined to give up in the face of a player unwilling to fold to a stiff check-raise, yet when the turn came a meaningless 3, I had this weird out-of-body experience. I decided I wasn't going to give up and I fired the second barrel, another stiff bet into the pot, which garnered an immediate call much to my chagrin.

Realizing that I've already bet about 60% of my stack in a hand where I had absolutely nothing, undoing the past two hours of careful, disciplined play, I'm in slight shock as the river is an ace. While my mind is stunned that I played so out of my character and best judgment, I also realize that the ace is a good card for me, in that it might scare my opponent into folding. Further, I'm kind of too puzzled by my behavior to be nervous or stop now. So, I fire the third barrel and push in the rest of my chips with jack-high, and much to my amazement, my opponent folds a paired queen, despite the fact that he was getting about 3-to-1 pot odds to make the call on the river, and had a very healthy chip-stack.

So, I showed the bluff, which was a lot of fun (well, not quite as fun as bluffing one of the poker dorks) not to rankle my opponent, but because everybody was so surprised that I had the guts to play like that and it contributed to everyone's entertainment for the night. I ended up winning the tournament (which luck of course played a substantial part in), but it wasn't until last night when I realized how profound that three-barrel bluff was. Although my behavior was like an out of body experience, and I still can't understand what willed me to play in such a manner and why, I also learned that doing something out of my character and narrow rationality worked. Further, my initial action and premise was totally wrong, as I only check-raised because I thought my opponent was stealing (in fact, the opposite was true - he had top pair!), yet it worked out very well in the end.

The moral of the story is that doing something different, stupid and/or risky might just be for the best if you stick with it. One might find rewards and dimensions of your personality that you didn't know existed. Yes, I'm talking vaguely because I'm not sure how I'm going to enact these principles in my "real life" next. I'm working on it, though...

Kids are funnier than adults

At poker night tonight, my friend regaled me with a recent tale of his very adorable mature five-year-old, who is a quintissential first-born in that she already savors responsibility and maturity. After being taught how to make music by blowing into a beer bottle, being bored by the cartoons that was being used to babysit the children at the "grown-ups party", she began to stroll around and tell the adults proudly "look at me! I'm sixteen [an very old "grown-up" age to her] and drinking beer!"

Her two-year-old little sister then chimed in excitedly, "me too!!!"

Their parents were amused, but surprised that they were having to deal with this issue so soon...

A Strange Demographic

In a campus parking lot today, I noticed a peachy-fluorescent orange Subaru pickup truck with grey accents. I have no clue what type of a person would buy such a thing. I'm not a marketing genius, but I do know that most American pickup truck buyers don't opt for foreign-made trucks in such absurdly sissy colors.

My New Best Friend?

A friend of mine was kind enough to overlook the most recent draft of a paper that's gone through the review process a few times, and gave me very positive feedback (which I think was sincere, as I think he would have protected me if I had written garbage), and said "You were writing really clearly at the end. I can tell you were pissed off at those reviewers and wanted to shove it down their throats." I'm not sure if "pissed off" is the right word, but I did feel "frantically antagonistic" towards the sentiment that the article might not be published and my sunk cost would be wasted just because of a prickly (and in my opinion, unfair) reviewer.

In a somewhat related development, a couple of colleagues have started acting slightly frosty towards me lately, which is strange, given that I always had a good rapport with them before and used to have great relationships with them both. As I was hoping to access a pittance of social capital via one of them, I figured I'd check to see if things were okay before asking. I did some discreet digging and found out that they're closing ranks in their feminine passive-aggressive manner around the infamous stupid cunt that is the one person on Earth I harbor negative sentiments towards. The whole thing upset me because I basically act like Ned Flanders (well, a less religious and more introverted one) around everybody and go out of my way to be polite and respectful of everyone (I'm a first-born, I want everybody to like me!) and in the one situation that I choose to stick up for myself, I take flak for it (while the stupid cunt gets protected despite being selfish and vapid, even by the admission of the two women being frosty to me).

Anyhow, I am somewhat angry about this, both because I think it's unfair, and I can't fathom how these women can actually believe I'm a bad person all of a sudden. However, it's a good anger, because it's localized and not all that intense. Thus, it is perfect for sublimating into more productive and happy endeavors. Tomorrow, I begin taking it out on my ideas and writing. I have a hunch this will fuel some productive and innovative thinking. The happy-go-lucky-lefty-collectivist sociologist has now been joined by the ruthless, competitive beast that lurks within me. I'll see how long the beast wants to come out and play.

OMG!!!

The simulcast of the women's NCAA basketball championship on ESPN2 is the weirdest thing I've seen on TV in ages. While you get the "traditional" coverage on ESPN, ESPN2 has a screen split six different ways (in addition to a score-ticker). One screen covers about 55% of the screen and gives you the typical camera angle for a sporting event. Meanwhile, four screens which are about 10% fo the screen each remain fixated on the coaches for each team, and the star player on each team. The remaining space goes alternates between showing statistics and instant replays. Accordingly, the viewer is bombarded with six moving screens at once, usually containing different stimuli. Perhaps I'm a bit set in my ways, and I'm too old to be a part of the ADD-ridden technology-obsessed Millennial generation, but I can't help but to think this is another one of those instances where something innovative isn't necessarily a good idea (also see: those silly glowing pucks FOX came up with for the NHL in the 1990s).

Cuteness Overload.

...If it wasn't for the fact that they grow to be over 2,000 pounds and summers would probably be brutal, polar bears would be an excellent candidate for a new species to domesticate!