3/2/2014 in Journal Stuff

2/26/2014

Jimmy was high again. Asked the teacher about whether something was combination when it was obviously a probability. (it’d be like a kid trying to show he’s paying attention by looking at “6+6=12” and saying “So that’s the variable?” in trashed English)

He then proceeded to talk to his friend for the rest of the class, now that he showed that he was listening.

2/27/2014

Same two people were on the radio today talking about the Syrian revolution. Which could be summed up with a bunch of umm’s, uhhh’s, and “what does the CIA even do?” At one point, the girl decided to let everyone know that she just wishes someone “like the US” would go around and find out where all these bad people are and throw them in jail. Then there wouldn’t be any more problems (power vacuums don’t exist, obviously). This is a pretty significant paraphrase. If it was a direct quote, there would be a lot of stammering and a claim that she’s taken a religions of the world class that gave her a moment of clarity where she remembered she thought “no, you’re going to destroy the world in the future” and that’s why she’s not arguing from an ignorant point of reference. At least they didn’t spend the entire time losing their places this time.

So…turns out there’s a really attractive girl working at gamestop over here. She’s got the country blond vibe going, didn’t assume I needed help finding things or talk constantly. No drawn out s’s or stammering over what she was saying. After telling me that the new Plants vs. Zombies game is online only and that she’s had a lot of fun, asked me if it was getting it for my kids. She could have been fishing, but I always feel weird when people assume I have kids because of something I’m buying. Now that I’m back at the apartment, she’s probably a marketing strategy. The only gamestop this close to an engineering college would make her a pretty desirable target for their customers. I’m betting she gets hit on a lot and probably capitalizes on it. I would be another in a long line of smiling guys who may try and figure out some excuse to head back there to talk to her. Which would probably involve more purchases. (I may have also led into the conversation with the statement that it had been a long time since I’d been there)

A Walmart cashier assumed I had kids for buying twizzlers, v8’s, and raisin bran at the checkout.

Been through two of my communication class’s debates, which means mine is going to be on Tuesday. Topics so far have been the death penalty and the US as a world police. I’ve been keeping quiet because I don’t have a lot of knowledge when it comes to world affairs in general. Socio took up that argument a lot. He didn’t mention the power vacuum that would show up if the US wasn’t big brother, but still. I joined in a bit on the death penalty one due to my experience from my ethics/logic courses. So I actually feel like I brought something to that debate.

I found an interesting article pointing out that taking alcohol out of frats, making them a dry house, lowers both the number of insurance claims against the house by 85% and the monetary amount by 95%. This includes sexual assaults, destruction of property, and physical harm to people. I think I’m going to cite it in the debate on Tuesday.

Socio compared himself to another guy saying “we all come with our own skills. I wouldn’t expect to be able to beat you in basketball (motioning to this tall, dumb guy in class) but throw a 60 lb pack on and a 20 mile run and I’m not worried.” I wonder where he draws the line on his ego stroking.

2/28/2014

My EMgt teacher thought it was appropriate to offer the book “ABC’s of Marrying a Successful Husband” (or something like that) to the various groups of girls in the class. There are more girls in that class than any other class I’ve been to yet. Am I wrong to keep thinking this guy is a stereotyping asshat when it comes to any social issue? But he says it all with a smile, hands up like “don’t shoot me,” and backtracks on everything he says if it’s even slightly controversial with a “just kidding…not really.” If I wanted to be taught by a caricatured jester…

“Now, don’t tell your folks ol’ Smith is up here soapboxing for the one true teacher (Jesus). They’ll think you’re wasting their money and show up to campus to kill me. I’m just kidding…but not really.”

After pointing to a book and saying a bit about it, “This book will literally save your lives. Professionally. I’m just kidding. Maybe not?”

“I don’t know what to call you people motions to the literally African foreign exchange guys. Calling you black seems offensive. We all know why I can’t call you the n-word (class starts giggling and such) but I don’t like that word black. Seems offensive to me. “ He had just gotten through explaining that people in the country still get upset about their children dating blacks.

After this, we took the 2nd exam for the class. All the facially attractive guys in casual sight of where I was (4) spent the entire exam cheating off the girls they spent most classes talking to. They’d wait for the teacher to get distracted on something and casually glance over. Flip their test to that page and fix something or fill it out, then switch back. I know this because I sit in the back row and didn’t study enough to know the answers off hand. I had to logic out what the teacher was probably looking for, and it was always the same every time I looked up. The amount of times I’ve had to hear about how you “can’t lead from the back row” this semester is nuts, but you can’t always see the problems when all eyes are on you.

OH, speaking of sensitive issues, I was watching one of those live feed things on the Huffpost about Penn State having a “gangsta” mixer between a sorority and fraternity and how it created an uproar. Because it was spelled gangsta and not gangster, it was rascist. A girl brought it to a guy’s attention, he collected social media pics about it off the frats accounts and got up in arms over it. But through the whole thing of everyone agreeing with everyone else (there were 3 people plus the…journalist? talking about it) is that I could not see how it was racist in its own right. Two black guys and a girl, all college or slightly older and the journalist as a middle aged man if I remember right. The guy the girl originally called up over the story said that nothing was wrong with cowboys, Italian mobsters (gansters), etc, as a mixer theme because the appropriate cultural groups (whites and Italians, I’m assuming he’s referring to) didn’t have a problem with it. But gansta themes were over the line because it mocked his black culture. The guy also self-describes himself as a well-educated individual as an appeal to some sort of authority. What I don’t get is why he considers gangs to be part of his black culture (who doesn’t seem to be a gang member himself) and something that only other blacks can be a part of. He continually clarified about how he doesn’t consider them all to be racist, just “culturally insensitive”…to the assumed target of…gangs. I get that some people look for a lectern to stand behind but…I really don’t get this one. From what I saw of the pics that were posted, it was a bunch of college kids dressing up like they were from Malibu’s Most Wanted. Why was this required to be stomped out? The three people complaining about it ended up making Penn state divorce themselves from the situation, the frat/soro both apologizing and removing the pics and I think they chose to make some sort of monetary reparations. Most of the arguments made it seem like they were arguing from a racist stance about perceived racism. It’s racist to assume someone black is in a gang, but assuming someone who is in a gang has to be black isn’t racist?

I’m wondering if someone else can help me out with understanding this. Using vague wording probably won’t help, to try to be clear on your word choices.

3/1/2014

Damn…Breaking Bad’s final half a season is rough. I have to keep leaving it and coming back. Everyone is so confidant until they’ve got a gun on them, then they suddenly regret every thought of revenge, manipulation, etc. Maybe the purpose of the series is to show how the illusion of security coats everyone’s perception. Hank actually became a respectable character, for not suddenly changing when the situation called for it. It definitely ended a lot better than that Dexter finale. That’s not too hard to beat, though.

Psych’s season finale on Netflix was depressing.

Roommate has been messing with the thermostat all week. He turns it down 20 degrees, then goes over to her girlfriend’s apartment to sleep. Comes back turns it up 30 degrees and the whole place is roasting again. He left the fridge open the other day when he went to class. Left a drawer open, then didn’t close the door and left the apartment.

I should be working on the take home portion of the exam from Friday but I can’t seem to get into working on it. Might be the pizza I had. It makes me want to lay down and wait for the full feeling to pass. Maybe I’ll hop on CoD or something…I don’t know.

3/2/2014

So, I’ve now got 4 different dating app things going. Match, OKcupid, Tinder, PoF. The people who have liked my profile have ended up either being bots, huge, or already have multiple children who “are their world.” I keep getting a mix of men identifying themselves as females, really physically attractive low 20’s moms, and people whose only pictures are of them at bars with drinks in hand as my locals. The down shirt shots, weird angles, extreme close up shots of whatever all tell you something about the person. Also tells you what they think is important to the guys they’re wanting to attract. If you think a photo of just your cleavage will get you someone who will talk to you for your personality, you’re both gullible and a liar. Both to yourself. There are also an incredible number of people with weird spellings. Like, intentional uniqueness that looks like people forgot how to spell for a moment. And if anyone is named after a rock or drink, there’s a good chance they’re an advert bot.

I am superficial to a point. People shaped like mushrooms, who have the same painful looking smile in every photo, who feels their sellable self is the drinking partyer, or who have already shared significant milestones in their life with other people aren’t particularly attractive to me.

Oh, and messages. For whatever reason, people put very little effort into anything they write. It’s all abbreviations, misspellings, exaggerated emoticons, and zero content. One girl I was talking to would not give me anything specific on her day. It was always vague storytelling. I’ll mention something about my classes, about situations, about things I do for fun, etc, and I’d get something back on her day with nothing regarding anything of substance. She had a late dinner, nothing about what food she likes. She hates being cooped up all winter (who doesn’t). I say I played some xbox over the weekend and was watching the Ken Ham/Bill Nye debate, she says “I’m jealous of the game playing” without any reference to what she would enjoy. I ask her about her week, I get “it’s going good, been working a lot but at least it’s money :D” … Her way of starting conversations were “Hey you” and “hope you’re having a good day,” which immediately made me think of mom’s texts when this girl and i really don’t have a repertoire yet. When you first response has you typing out “I am. Hope you’re having an adequately vaguely constructive day. Since that is literally all I know about you.” She started the conversations with me, but mentioned nothing about what she read about me that she liked, was interested in. Nothing was shared in common, which made all 30 something back and forth messages empty to me. She is Cleverbot’s previous versions.

I think I might be too picky to be happy with people in general. I’m going to have to get really lucky to find someone obviously interested in me that I would be willing to take the first step for. Because guys are supposed to take the first step. I had vague hints (now that I’m long past it) that I had a lot of girls in high school that liked me. Two of which I would have loved to have dated. They gave signs in ways that I wasn’t wise enough to pick up on, or was too alien to me for me to be not freaked out. Sally came to a piano recital of mine when I just assumed she was there for Erin (she found out about it from Erin and spent a lot of the time complementing me to dad…which means something considering she plays the piano for most of her church services and was really good). Erin had Stephanie tell me she wanted someone to take her to a dance (I hate dances and I thought Erin would ask me if she liked me, so I didn’t think anything of it and told Stephanie that Erin already told me Larry had asked her). Erin told me Stephanie wanted to come to our prom but didn’t have a date (I hate dances, told Steph she could go as my date and I showed up like a tool, not planning on being there long and had to deal with stupidly embarrassing situations where my mom and hers did things without my knowledge). I wasn’t dressed up, corsages didn’t match, and I felt majorly out of place. The road to hell. Amy stuck my forearm in her mouth while watching fight club with our whole social group there (made things uncomfortable for me because then John and Ali turned into a weird “get between them” mode because they both had crushes on her). Steph kept rubbing her foot up my leg in the middle of a movie theater (I missed a lot of that movie…) and I was like a deer in headlights because I had no idea whether she was doing it on purpose. She ended up making out with Ali later on that week. Amy complemented my singing and actually said she’d be willing to sing duet with me if I volunteered for the national anthem for the pre-football game patriotism.

But I never really considered these to be things out of the ordinary. They were friend things (outside the leg touching thing, but she was rumored to use people and leave them, which seemed pretty accurate to what she did later…oh, and the arm in mouth thing, I thought she was high) that you do for other friends. Wish I had another chance with Sally. I mean, back then it wouldn’t have worked out very well, I think. I had no work ethic, little self-confidence and it would’ve just ruined our friendship. Now, she’s dating someone else. Everyone’s dating someone else or married. And in thinking back on it all, my favorite memories of every one of them is when I made them laugh. It’s a weird mix of happiness and lack of defensive barriers that strikes a chord with me.

I’m currently considering writing off the accounts and changing the “salary” mark from unemployed to something close to what I’ll be making on graduating and see what happens. They don’t find me unattractive, they’re just superficial! Because I’m good at rationalizing it all away.

With any luck the family reunion in a month won’t be too bad. It’ll be better than being here on campus. St. Pat’s week is not for me.