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.

On mother-hens

AHHHHH SCHOOL'S ALMOST HERE!

And I nearly put a period after the exclamation point. I'm going to fail English so badly. 

But who cares? It's senior year! This is the year we get to be free and wild and crazy and who am I kidding, I personally plan on being exactly as stodgy as always. I can't help it. 

I actually think it's a reaction brought on by the people around me, because I know I've done some stupid, ridiculous, immature, and crazy shit before in the name of having fun. I mean, I'm perfectly capable of being a mindless, risk-taking individual (really). But it seems like there's a pattern. 

When I'm around people who are acting in the above manner, and I feel like nobody is being rational, I turn into a major mother hen. You all should know this--no doubt you have fallen victim once or twice. And it seems like it really only happens with groups, or with people who I feel some responsibility for. 

Obviously, my crazy hoo-haa-ing badass friend never provokes this reaction. And I get weirder the more quiet my companions are. Dubs has probably suffered from this before. Anyways, it is something to ponder about, and as I've spent shitloads of time in the past three days on airplanes, I have had a lot of time to ponder. I've also come to the realization that no airport codes make any sense. Except for ours. But, for example, SFO? Does that stand for San FranciscO? And apparently, there's an X in Los Angeles. Or X now stands for international, as well as christ (X-mas), which the really radical Christians probably see as a sign. 

Wow, digression!

Back to being a mother hen for a minute--it's for this reason that I'm really hoping I fall in with a nerdy, quiet group of friends in college. I'd worry too much about any wild partiers. 

On the new year

Well, a lot has happened since I last posted. Some of it's been good, some of it's been bad, some of it has just been plain strange. But most importantly, I may have finally gotten it through my head that I'm going to be a senior this year. Not next year. This year. I'm wildly unprepared, but you know what?

I figure that after the initial panic has passed, I will take this year just as I have taken every other year--with a liberal dose of nerdiness and an even more plentiful dose of slacking. And I'm guessing that regardless of what happens with colleges, I'll be happy at the end of this first doom-filled semester. I mean, the absolute worst that can happen is I'll go to BCC and will just transfer out after my first year, and even that seems....unlikely. And the best that can happen is that I'll get into an awesome school in a nice warm location *coughCaliforniacough*.

And really--why fuss? It's undergrad. IT DOESN'T EVEN MATTER.

So with this new permission from myself, I have begun to play REALLY STUPID GAMES. Games like Nobby Nuss (which is about a badly animated squirrel trying to collect nuts and flowers and avoid bugs...because apparently bugs kill squirrels). And, of course, games like Gunny Bunny (which is about a badly animated bunny with machine guns taking out badly animated mice, also with machine guns). Gunny Bunny is my favorite. There is no plot, there is no purpose, and there is no game more fun.

You should all check it out.

p.s. Zombies.

On having too many noobs to function

Which is exactly the problem with my volunteer job. Pretty much all the really experienced people left, and we have instead a bunch of 12-13 year olds who are, while well-meaning, utterly useless.

Today, one of the girls walked a pony down having not secured his saddle properly. By the time they'd gotten to the arena, the saddle was literally hanging sideways off the pony. For those of you who don't know much about horses, let me tell you why this is a BAD DEAL. Even without a kid in the saddle. Horses are preyed on by animals that attack by jumping on a) their backs/necks and b) their bellies. A horse that is not ridiculously brave and well-trained will FLIP A SHIT if their saddle rolls, and let me tell you that even a little 900 pound pony can and will break fences and heads if it gets scared enough.

Luckily, this pony is not only brave but has also been around long enough that he has faced everything from bears to Blue Angels. He was perfectly calm, but it exemplifies just how clueless these volunteers are. Basic rule of riding: check your saddle before you go anywhere.

And honestly, I did feel a little bad at her (the farm's director was there, and she's about six feet tall and can be REALLY SCARY when she gets mad), but for all the stupid things I did as a green volunteer, I never did anything quite that stupid or that dangerous. But, more importantly, she would never have touched a horse without someone supervising if we hadn't been so short on trained help.

Which is what we really need. I, entirely on my own, am more efficient at setting up for pony camp than six new volunteers. I pretty much set up the past two days because I'd gotten there early--today, I was running a little later than usual, and the whole thing was chaos. And they'd gotten less done, to boot. None of them know what needs to be done, so they mill around getting in the way, and none of them will ASK what needs to be done. Which, you know, is the whole point of volunteering--VOLUNTEER TO DO SOMETHING EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE. IT WON'T KILL YOU.

What else would be nice would be if they could ask for help when they need it, rather than trying to do things on their own to show off and then screwing things up. I know they all want to look good so that they can start handling horses, but the reason they aren't working with the horses is because THEY'RE NOT CAPABLE YET. Honestly, I don't even mind babying them a bit, rather than having to save them when they've already messed up. One of the two boy volunteers actually asked me for help today, because he didn't feel comfortable catching a really big horse who's not used for camp. And so yeah, I caught his horse and the one I was supposed to get myself, but it wasn't like I was complaining about him not doing his own work. I was there to support him in the first place, and it'd be nice if some of the other volunteers got that through their heads. We're not trying to upstage them. We're trying to HELP.

Obviously this is a subject about which I could go on and on. But I'll stop. After all, they're probably all going through puberty (ick). I should cut them some slack.

On gamer nerdery

Recently, I've been playing on the PS2 a lot more than usual. And it turns out that like many other excessively nerdy people, I am an obsessive gamer. It's not that I really, really like to win, or that I like to strategize so that I will always win (both of which I do).

It's more that when I have a goal in mind, I will BORE MYSELF TO TEARS SO I CAN ACCOMPLISH IT.

For example, I wanted to get my black mage to her next spell, which required a fair amount of leveling up. I wanted the spell prior to the next boss battle, so I had to stay in one monster-heavy area. And I wanted to be able to heal without having to waste potions or MP so I could just level up in one session of gaming.

I should have realized this was a bad idea.

I wound up running my party in circles around a save point, waiting to get attacked and then hacking through the same type of monsters OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN.

It took me hours.

The worst part is, I'm now going really fast through this game because of my newfound obsession. And this is a problem because the game, in a way that makes me want to beat my head against a wall, inevitably ends with the player's character DYING.

So basically the whole point is you work your ass off for hours and hours (22 and counting), keeping your character alive through copious applications of Cure and Life, and WHEN YOU FINALLY BEAT THE GAME OOPS TOO LATE HE'S DEAD.

It's sad, to be sure, but more than that it's ridiculously frustrating. Isn't the purpose of every RPG ever created to defeat the bad guys, save the world, and not die while you're doing it? I wouldn't even mind if it was another one of the party's playable characters, but no. It's the main character, and not only does he die, it turns out he never really existed.

How's that for a tragic ending?