On being social (or not)

I would not mind the coming of the apocalypse so long as I had a giant flying robot friend. Presumably, with the help of Gigantor or Optimus Prime, I'd be able to save what I cared about.

On a more serious note, it bothers me how willing people are to be peer-pressured into doing something. I'm not saying I haven't done this (I have, and many times), but it's a distressing tendency anyways. On the other hand, it's not like the alternative is much better. I know people say "Your real friends won't care, and you should ignore everybody else", but it's sort of miserable to live that way. I would know. I tend to spend time almost exclusively with my "real friends", and I feel awkward with anyone else. Which makes a lot of things really uncomfortable--I'm just plain awful at being sociable. People who I don't know very well avoid me because I make them uncomfortable in turn.

And the weird part about all this is that I'd like to think I'm pretty good at reading people(admittedly, I can be oblivious about some things-- mostly romantic interest between two people). I'm good at analyzing why people do what they do. So it follows that I should be able to figure out why I'm making people uncomfortable and then remedy that.

Sadly, that would require me to talk to people I don't know. Eek.

I'd rather live in my own little world--I don't mind interacting with masses of people, but I much prefer to be alone. You actually learn a lot about yourself that way, and you get to do some good thinking. For example, I've started working out a formula for the sort of movies I can't get over my love for. It's not precise yet, but it's pretty cool to see what I like and what I don't like in particular--rather than just saying, "Oh, these are my favorite movies because they're awesome." It turns out there are more than a few common factors.

Also, this way I can save myself from the embarassment of giggling at random intervals in front of other people. And I get to read, and listen to music, and read some more. I've actually read some amazing things online (also a lot of crap, but it's a price worth paying). So you all should take my advice: BE A HERMIT. IT ROCKS.

On pants and other things

Once again, dear readers (and the senior retreat was very enlightening--it turns out there are more than two of you!), I have failed to post.

So let's talk about pants. In particular, red pants (red pants, blue pants, one pants, two pants).

Now I personally have nothing against the color red. But. But. As I'm sure everyone knows, denim fades. Dyed denim is no exception. So if you have red jeans and you wash them...won't they eventually turn blotchy pink, a la calamine lotion on chicken-poxed-skin?

Just a thought.

Also, there are some phrases that should never be taken literally. Like "scared shitless". I'm sure it could happen--if, say, you woke up one morning and you were dangling upside down over a pit of toothed giant slugs by your shoelaces, it would be pretty much forgiveable. But otherwise? It better just be a figure of speech, because ew.

Speaking of ew: starving people. Not like people starving people, but more like people reaching the point of starvation on their own. I understand why people suffer from eating disorders, but the truth is that if you watch those ridiculous beauty pageants on TV, the contestants are often appallingly thin. Not, oh wow, she's got great abs and no visible body fat. More like, oh look, I can count ALL OF HER RIBS. And clearly, many have had...enhancements. When you lose weight, I'm pretty sure that the fat from your chest area goes too.

But enough on that topic, because it's kind of making me want to brain-vomit.

Let's talk for a minute about how glad I am to not feel all cotton-stuffed. Granted, my sinuses are still filled with unmentionable fluids, but at least my head doesn't feel all funny. I mean, honestly. There's a point at which the sane person just says screw it, I'm going back to bed to sleep it off. If I'd had any modicum of sense, I'd have done the same. I just have this weird compulsion to work through illnesses. I'm guessing it's because I get sick ALL THE TIME. If I didn't go to school every time I caught a cold, I would quite possibly miss enough school to not graduate. Which would suck. Because I really don't want to graduate with this year's juniors. They are crazy and scare me.

On sci-fi and religion

I am feeling spiritual. Like, "Praise the Maker!" kind of spiritual.

Translation: I am feeling nerdy like whoa, and wish to ponder sci-fi for a minute.

See, if you're really, really nerdy, you'd understand when I explained how I was referencing two different sci-fi gods in that one quote. But you'd would have had to have read Dune and seen Episode IV recently.

But I digress. I was vaguely sort of interested in mumbling (virtually) about religions in sci-fi, and why they can't just, you know, offer peace and hope and shit. Instead, they've got to be half religion and half granter-of-mystical-power. I mean, belief in the Force is practically like believing in a high power, except no God that we've managed to come up with lets us choke people with our minds.

In the same way, the Bene Gesserit sisterhood is very much like a cult religion, but once again they're somehow granted mind-control power and also the ability to change their baby's sex in the womb. Or something. How else would one have the ability to choose which gender their child is? Sperm manipulation?

And the Fremen all but worship the giant sandworms, who bestow upon them the good drugs and hallucinogenic water that lets certain people gain the knowledge of all those other special people who came before them and drank successfully from the magical toxic water.

On the other hand, there's Star Trek, in which technology is the religion. Never mind about those backwater aliens. For those on the Enterprise, there appears to be very little belief in a higher power. I'm sure there's an interesting conclusion to be drawn from all this, but I'm not interested in drawing it. I just felt the need to post.

So I did. Obviously.