Salatious Stories

I've read An Abundance of Katherines and Paper Towns since last time. In fact, I just finished Paper Towns. I think I may have liked it best, but I haven't had that much time to reflect on it and I'm definitely prone to recentism. Of course, Looking for Alaska fucked me up so much that I had a very hard time falling asleep the night I finished reading it*. I'm not entirely immune from sleepless nights, but it was an odd one. I had to keep reminding myself that Alaska Young isn't real.

My claim to fame in boy-girl relations was 2nd grade. I had two girlfriends and I recall briefly having them simultaneously. After reading An Abundance of Katherines, I realized that I have no recollection of who dumped who to end those relationships. I can only infer from my recollection of them and that time. I think Carrie Icannotrememberherlastname, who liked to kiss me on the cheek, but I wouldn't let her kiss me on the lips and who I had a fake wedding with, dumped me. I'm pretty sure I dumped Kayla Forsberg. I remember being a dick to her.

I had a girlfriend for about fifteen minutes in 5th grade. Her name was Stephanie Ramsey** and her friends asked me to be her girlfriend, but she wouldn't talk to me. Later in the that recess period her friends dumped me for her because she was too shy to talk to me.

If you use the generous definition of dumping that John Green does than I had an oddity of a relationship last year. I don't know. It was something. If you want to cast it as a relationship that has a dumper/dumpee continuum, then I was probably the dumper, but it ended very oddly. My words were the last words though. I'm being very vague and that's for good reason. This story won't ever be on my blog***.

Lindsay Lee Wells would be disappointed in my story-telling abilities. No fucking moral.

I think I would be around two standard deviations away from the mean towards dumpee on the dumper/dumpee bell curve. My brief and mostly childish track record doesn't quite agree with that, but it also doesn't account for my crippling shyness, terrible anxiety and general desperation. Those things did not exist together in me until I was in High School. The only thing that moves me towards dumper is that I eventually become irritated enough to fight back. Also, my imaginary girlfriend could never dump me; I could only dump her****.

My plans for New Year's are to start reading Will Grayson Will Grayson. There was a time not so long ago that you wouldn't get to know about how lamely I was going to spend my evening. I've stopped caring though. I used to log out of Facebook on Friday and Saturday nights and I would send tweets via text message from my bed, so people couldn't see that I was just sitting on my computer. I don't go to many parties and I don't do many exciting things period. There's no point in keeping up an illusion.

It doesn't really upset me that much to not be going out on most Friday nights or New Year's Eve. I think I pretend that I might be up to something other than being online to keep anyone from pitying me. I've come to the conclusion that people don't particularly care. I mean, people could've compared their Michael notes and found that I wasn't anywhere if it actually mattered. I'm quite content with just going out on occasion. I'd like my social life to be more active, but it's not something that I wallow about. I'm not going out every Friday and Saturday and binge drinking just because it's the thing to do*****. I'm alright with spending more nights on Xbox Live than going out.

Anyway, Happy New Year guys. I appreciate you spending any of you're 2011 on here and would be happy if you continued to do so in 2012. Expect a New Year's resolution-y post at some point in the near future.

Thanks for reading and please comment

-Michael
*I would advise you to not read the 'After' portion at night and if you do read it at night, you don't have to read the entire thing in one sitting.
**I think
***With some prodding I would probably share it privately with some of you. It probably isn't that interesting to anyone not involved in it though. Still, it was fucking strange.
****We've got a good thing going.
*****After School Special much?

Cry, Cry, Cry

I have spent the last three(ish) hours choked up reading the second half of "Looking For Alaska." I'm not sure if I lose nerdfighter cred in admitting that I haven't read John's books and just got them yesterday (well two days ago now) for Christmas. As much as I would like to really cry, I find it to be something very hard for me to actually do. Like, I'm constantly way too aware of myself to actually ever form tears.

I'm definitely not going to get into specifics, because of the desire to keep all of John Green's books unspoiled*. I think we're all especially sensitive to it now given the accidental shipment of "The Fault In Our Stars.**" However, I think we're good at this no spoilers thing, because I was pretty sure I had a pretty good idea of where 'Looking for Alaska" was going, but I was super-fucking wrong. And here I am at a quarter after one in the morning writing a fucking blog post.

Anyway, back the entire never crying thing. I don't think I'm all that good a outwardly displaying my emotions. Though that usually isn't so bad when I'm alone. I mean, I yell loudly and angrily at video games alone in my room all the time***. However, I'm never so unaware of myself of my emotions that I allow myself a good cry and I really felt like crying tonight reading that book. I do find myself feeling that 'choked-up' feeling a lot more often that I used to. As I don't think I've ever experienced tragedy, the thinks that make me feel like that are books and songs****.

I'm absolutely certain that my inability to cry is due to my conditioning as an emotionless male. It wasn't my parents either really. For as much as I bitch about my Dad, he definitely cries. I'm trying my best to be less stoic and feel. I don't think I'll ever be super-emotional*****, but I 'd like to not have a heart attack at 50, because I never expressed anything. No, I'm going to let my being anxious about every goddamn thing be what does me in.

This what you get with me after 1am. I wouldn't call my self 'vulnerable' exactly, because if I'm guarded enough to not cry, I'm sure as hell guarded enough to keep shit from this post. I'll just say my inhibitions drop a little. Also this will be even less proof-read****** than usual, in that I wouldn't proof read it at all.

Also, I say never cry not exactly in the literal sense, because I think I've actually shed tears twice since being a 'grown-up.'

Thanks for reading

-Michael
*Given the weird-ass ways that people stumble here, I think it's best not to hint at anything.
**To be fair, the book would've leaked anyway, because everything leaks and spoilers would be abound.
***I'm pretty sure Mom thinks I'm a mad-man
****Movies don't really do that for me. Deathly Hallows part two did it, but that was entirely because I had read the book.
*****Could you imagine?
******And I hardly proof-read as it is.

It's Not Winter

I did the last bit of my Christmas shopping yesterday. It was only the second time I actually had to go out to do any of it this year. The internet is wonderful. The only consequence is that my 'recommended by for you' section on Amazon is ruined. I'm not saying its's not entirely my Sister's fault, but her Christmas list exuded lameness. It's just that now it recommends things like Michael Bublé and that's just horrifying. The internet gods can't think these things about me.

The sacrifices I make.

The presents I got for my Mom were delivered on Monday. They weren't all that big, but they came in a gigantic box with lots of packing. They aren't even fragile. I think that's why I had to pay $7 for shipping. I got a gigantic box and packing material.

I'm going to set off one the adventure of wrapping them tonight. I'm not very good at wrapping presents. I understand how it should work and they should look, but that's never what happens. At least most of the things I have to pack are rectangular in nature, which makes things a lot easier.

I'm going to have to buy a new keyboard soon. I'm not particularly friendly to my keyboards, but this one's lifespan has been surprisingly short. That's not particularly surprising given that it was the cheapest wireless one at Best Buy when my last one when kaput. This one still works except the spacebar sticks. That's about the worst problem a keyboard could have. I think I could get around a letter not working, but excessive or nonexistent spaces make things annoying.

Did you know the Winter Solsctice isn't until 12:30 EST tonight (or 9:30 PST)? So, it's not technically winter yet, Em... I mean everyone

-Michael

The Baby Jesus

The other night I was looking at the full moon and decided something. I want to live on the moon someday. That would be cool. I realize that a lot would have to happen and NASA would need to be, you know, funded again. Still, you can put that along with becoming the Cookie Monster as my life goals. Being the Cookie Monster on the Moon and I would be one happy dude. In a not unrelated note, I've been watching a lot of Astronomy videos lately. Space is fucking cool.

My life has been terribly lame as of late. I should qualify that by saying more terribly lame than usual. I feel like if you all knew the sad and pathetic ways I spend a lot of my time, you wouldn't want to know me anymore, which would just make the lameness factor even higher.

I'm leaning towards just leaving my NaNoWriMo alone. I was just going to leave it alone for a week or so and then go in and at least start trying to copy-edit it. However, the further removed I got from the less I wanted to go back into. As I get further away from it the worse I feel about. I know that a lot of that is me just being self-critical. However, when I think of any form of art I've come to love it's always something that I grow fonder of the longer I've gone without experiencing it*.

I really feel like I hardly do anything anymore. I suppose I've done basically nothing for most of my life though, so I guess It's just weighing on me more. I had a terrible night a few Fridays ago due to that stuff. It was as bad of a place as I've been emotionally in quite awhile, but it hasn't repeated itself, which is great. It's a bit more complicated than what I've written here, but I can't be expected to fully understand myself.

On a much lighter note, there's a very special birthday coming up. It's the birthday of someone is awesome and very short. I'm talking, of course, about The Baby Jesus**. Actually, The Baby Jesus was almost undoubtedly not born in December***, so he's just a big phony trying to get presents.

Blasphemy

-Michael
*An example here would be The Da Vinci Code. I absolutely loved that book initially, but now that I'm years from having read it I don't look at it too fondly.
**Or Emma. I'm actually talking about Emma
***Evidence for Emma's December birth is pretty solid