Total Perspective Vortex
What really happened to Trillian? Theories abound, but you can see what she's really been up to on this blog. If you're looking for white mice, depressed robots, or the occasional Pan Galactic Gargleblaster you might be better served here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/hitchhikers/guide/.
Don't just sit there angry and ranting, do something constructive.
In the words of Patti Smith (all hail Sister Patti): People have the power.
Contact your elected officials.
Don't be passive = get involved = make a difference.
Words are cool.
The English language is complex, stupid, illogical, confounding, brilliant, beautiful, and fascinating.
Every now and then a word presents itself that typifies all the maddeningly gorgeousness of language. They're the words that give you pause for thought. "Who came up with that word? That's an interesting string of letters." Their beauty doesn't lie in their definition (although that can play a role). It's also not in their onomatopoeia, though that, too, can play a role. Their beauty is in the way their letters combine - the visual poetry of words - and/or the way they sound when spoken. We talk a lot about music we like to hear and art we like to see, so let's all hail the unsung heroes of communication, poetry and life: Words.
Here are some I like. (Not because of their definition.)
Mamas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Smart Girls
(A Trillian de-composition, to the tune of Mamas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys)
Mama don’t let your babies grow up to be smart girls
Don’t let them do puzzles and read lots of books
Make ‘em be strippers and dancers and such
Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be smart girls
They’ll never find men and they’re always alone
Even though men claim they want brains
Smart girls ain’t easy to love and they’re above playing games
And they’d rather read a book than subvert themselves
Kafka, Beethoven and foreign movies
And each night alone with her cat
And they won’t understand her and she won’t die young
She’ll probably just wither away
Mama don’t let your babies grow up to be smart girls
Don’t let them do puzzles and read lots of books
Make ‘em be strippers and dancers and such
Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be smart girls
They’ll never find men and they’re always alone
Even though men claim they want brains
A smart girl loves creaky old libraries and lively debates
Exploring the world and art and witty reparteé
Men who don’t know her won’t like her and those who do
Sometimes won’t know how to take her
She’s rarely wrong but in desperation will play dumb
Because men hate that she’s always right
Mama don’t let your babies grow up to be smart girls
Don’t let them do puzzles and read lots of books
Make ‘em be strippers and dancers and such
Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be smart girls
They’ll never find men and they’re always alone
Even though men claim they want brains
Life(?) of Trillian
Single/Zero
Friday, December 09, 2005
Hi everyone! Guess what! Christmas is just around the corner! Woohoo!
I've got plenty of angst, woe, depression and bad cheer so stop in if you find yourself in need of a holiday recharge.
It's looking bleak this year. It may very well be the year I become a holiday suicide statistic. It's not even December 10 and I'm already contemplating death by perky plaid Christmas ribbon strangulation, death by eggnog overdose, death by Christmas tree (yes! It's okay to say Christmas tree now! Dennis Hastert says so!) light electrocution and other festive ways to kill myself.
Gosh, don't you just love the holidays? I sure do.
You know, at this busy time of the year it's nice to take a moment for yourself spent in quiet reflective contemplation of what the season is really all about.
Pressure.
Intense, self inflicted, family inflicted, work obligation inflicted, charity inflicted, church inflicted pressure. Pressure to perform. Pressure to provide. Pressure to help. Pressure to be good. Pressure to believe.
Every year I run around like crazy trying to find if not perfect, at least thoughtful presents for the people I care about and love. Don't get me wrong. I want to buy them presents. I love them. I genuinely wish I could buy them lots of really great presents all year. But the calendar and social protocol dictate that we have to procure a gift, some gift, any gift during the holiday season.
The advice columns dole out wisdom and advice about hot gifts, cool gifts, thoughtful gifts, extravagant gifts, inexpensive gifts. Heck, I myself offer up a yearly suggestion list of gift and shopping ideas.
Hey, wait a minute, it's that time of year again, isn't it? I'm supposed to give you some shopping ideas and tips. Cripes. I knew I forgot something.
Sorry.
Well.
No.
I'm not.
I'm not sorry at all.
Figure out your own damn gift giving dilemmas.
Ha ha ha. Ho ho ho.
Had you going there for a minute, didn't I?
Psych!
Not!
The advice columns also say we should treat ourselves to a little something at Christmas, too. Something we know no one will think to give us. Because the people we care about and love don't love and care about us enough to figure out that special little something we'd like as a present. Hey. It's not their fault. We're complicated and selfless. We don't really need anything. Still. You'd think they could come up with something slightly more original than bath products. Seriously, do I smell bad?
Right.
So.
My shopping advice list is a little different this year.
As I was spending my spare moment in quiet reflective contemplation, I realized I am complicated, selfless, and in need of nothing easily procured, wrapped and put under the tree. No wonder I get all those bath products. I don't even know what to give myself.
iGuy? Well. That's a long way away from now. Many moons and many holidays shall pass before those wise men appear under the tree.
What do I need? What do I really, really need? A new job. Money. Health insurance. Yeah. That's pretty much it.
No expectations. No emotion. As helpful as that stance is for me, it does complicate things in the gift giving arena. Basically anything and nothing would be the perfect gifts for someone like me who has no high or low expectations and no emotions.
Emotions.
Hmmmm.
Well.
Now.
Maybe there's a gift I could give myself.
One or two emotions to spend however I want.
I have been very good at voiding myself of emotions. I'm getting really good at it. I haven't had any expectations in months. I'm almost the emotionless blank void of a person I want to be. If I felt emotions I would be proud of myself. But I don't so I'm not. And that feels right because I feel nothing.
I do kind of miss emotions now and then. Usually in those quiet moments of contemplative reflection. I miss the good ones. Antipathy. Enmity. Envy. Lust. Yeah. I really miss lust. Though honestly, without love lust gets boring and very empty. Shallow. Not a lot of fun. Maybe that's just too many unloved years talking.
Still.
Maybe I should give myself the gift of lust this Christmas.
Hmmmm.
Johnny Depp. Bryan Ferry. Hugh Jackman. Pierce Brosnan. Me. Candlelight. And a bottle of wine. Mmmmmmm. Yes. That could be really nice.
Okay. Enough of that. No good can come of lust. Forget lust. Too much lust and not enough love in my life has been the source of a lot of problems for me. Lust = very bad idea.
How about antipathy? That's a good one. Antipathy is very underused and underrated. Justifiable hatred. Enmity, too. Hate. Yeah. I know. It's no good in any form. Usually. I know.
But.
Then again.
Are we really expected to go around loving everyone, even the people who do really, really bad things? Are we really supposed to love and forgive the people who abuse and hurt children? What about people who fail to spay or neuter their pets then throw the unwanted kittens and puppies in the trash or along a busy highway? Is hatred not justifed in those cases? Should we not feel hatred on behalf of their innocent victims? These are not good people. I don't care what's fundamentally wrong with them. I don't care that they were abused or neglected as children. It doesn't matter. They better than anyone, then, should know how wrong and harmful abusive and hurtful behavior is to children. Fuck compassion. What they're doing is sick and wrong and unnecessary. Yes. A little antipathy or enmity goes a long way. I know. You're thinking, gee, Trill, that's kind of harsh coming from you.
Yeah? Well. I've got two words for you: George Bush. Not so against antipathy and enmity now, are you?
But. I'm not a hateful person.
Not really. I have felt hatred, yes, but, deep down, really, there's not a lot of hatred in me. Which is actually a bit of a problem. I've been too compassionate. Too forgiving. Too understanding. Too sympathetic. Too empathethic. Oh man do I have a problem with empathy. There's an emotion I still have to battle on a daily basis. It's difficult for me to not care. Even though I know I shouldn't. Even though I know it's a problem. Even though I know if I'm going to make anything of this life I've got to be less empathetic and a lot more apathetic.
But.
Hatred's not the answer for me. Even if it's antipathy or enmity. Not even as a Christmas present to myself. It's not what I really want or need for Christmas. You go ahead and try it if you want. Let me know how it goes.
Envy? Well. I mean. It's the most envious time of the year. (That's going to be a song. Just you wait. It's the most envious time of the year. With much income gloating and loans out there floating, it's the jea- jea- jealousy time of the year... Anyone know Johnny Mathis? If I write it, will he come?)
Envy seems like the obvious choice as an emotional Christmas present to myself. Allow myself to be envious. I mean, heck, I am envious of everyone who's so successful without really earning it or even working for it. Maybe admitting it would be good and healthy for me. Yes. I envy people who have loving spouses, children, homes, dogs, cats, health insurance, good paying jobs they like, cars... yes. I envy those people. I thought I'd be one of them. Turns out I'm not. Because I suck at life and I'm a failure at it. So much so that my best solution was to void myself of emotion and allow no expectations, good or bad. That's a pretty bad state. I admit that. But it's working for me. I tried everything else with no success. This is working. So back off and mind your own happy little business and life. I'm not judging you so don't judge me.
Hey.
Wait a minute.
I'm sounding rather hostile, aren't I? Yes, yes I am. Maybe even a bit rancorous.
That's new. In spite of the above bout of trial enmity and antipathy, I'm not a naturally angry person. It takes a lot to make me mad for myself. I get mad and upset when I see injustices inflicted on other people, but not when it's inflicted on me. When I see an injustice I'm more about taking positive corrective action than festering hostility and lashing out in anger. I'm more the type to get hurt than angry when the injustice is inflicted upon me. I'm also the type to blame myself rather than get mad at someone else. Good girl and all that. Responsible. Anger and hate are unattractive. No one likes a pouty Polly. Smile and everyone will feel better. Getting mad will only make it much worse. Come on now, give us a smile, it's rude and unthoughtful to be mad.
Oh. My. Swutting. Godless.
Where did that come from?
My parents. That's where.
I wasn't allowed to be mad when I was young. Well. I mean. That's being harsh. My parents are reasonable. They didn't expect me to never be angry. But. They did expect me to understand it doesn't solve anything.
And they're right. It doesn't. But. Somewhere along the line I took it to an extreme and thought I shouldn't feel anger. And no, I'm not blaming my parents. That's my own mixed up psychotically dysfunctional self abusive brain at work.
So.
Huh.
So really, the whole void of emotions thing is really nothing new for me. I've been voiding anger since I was a kid. During my quiet reflective contemplation I realized I cannot remember being really, truly, honestly, horrifically mad. I've been hurt. Annoyed. Conflicted and confused. (All the other girls got bewitched, bothered and bemused, I got annoyed, conflicted and confused. Cripes. Open these floodgates and look what pours out all over the place. Don't mind me, I'm just having a major life dawn of realization here.) But never, that I can remember, have I been what I would consider really mad. Raging anger. Furious. Enraged. Nope. Never. I've been really, really hurt. Badly. You have no idea the pain and hurt I have felt in my life. I don't go around thinking about the amount and type, but I have endured more than one human's fair share of hurt and subsequent pain. This isn't, "oh, poor me." Pity is one emotion I do not want or need. But I'm thinking about some of those big hurts, the ones which have scarred me and I'm wondering if maybe a little anger would be not only justified, but allowable and even expected. Maybe I've been repressing anger without even realizing it. Maybe I need to release some hostility over a few things which hurt me instead of making me mad.
By Jove I think she's got it!
Eureka! That's it!
I'm giving myself anger for Christmas! I am going to allow myself to be mad.
Oh boy! I can't wait! This is going to be the best Christmas ever!
Wednesday, December 07, 2005
You know how you go along through life observing, maybe doing a little reporting here and there, taking it all in, learning, eventually realizing people, individually and as a species, are really weird? And once you realize this you sort of feel kind of enlightened because you naively believe, "hey, I've seen it all, or at least a lot of it, and I've learned that people are weird. And so having come to that realization, nothing a human does can surprise me. Not really. Not in that big, shocking way because I know that fundamentally people are weird. Ergo, they will exhibit weird behavior. Huh. Enlightenment. Wow. I'm so enlightened. Life's going to be a lot easier now. Terrific. Here we go then."
And then you decide to give online dating a try.
And you learn that everything you thought you could handle because of all that enlightenment and the acceptance of the realization that people, individually and as a species, are weird, confounds you. Leaves you stymied. More convinced than ever that humans are very weird, but stymied and confounded nonetheless.
Because there is nothing, absolutely nothing you could observe in life which can fully prepare you for the weirdness you may encounter if you give online dating a real and serious try.
Yep.
I've been out of commission for the past week-ish. Out of town. Under the weather. Certainly in no position to be giving 50 First Dates any effort. When I finally had the time and energy to deal with, erm, I mean, eagerly open the email from my online dating sites I found: A lot of the usual, scads of "clearly did not read my profile or would have known I don't date smokers, underaged boys, retired men or taxidermists," a few "hey, maybes," and this guy.
Normally I would have deleted him upon first glance of his basic stats: Way out of my age range. Many years older than the age I post as my max age. And yet, like so many other divorced guys hopped up high on Cialis, he sent me an email anyway.
(That behavior would fall into the "normal" weirdness for which life has actually prepared me. People are weird, therefore they will ignore basic facts presented to them and believe themselves always to be the exception. Which I find interesting and proof of the weird human thing because everyone feels they are the exception. We can't all be the exception because that would make the exception the norm. Exceptional means better than normal. We're not all better than normal. Most of us aren't even normal. Many of us peak at normal on a really good day and flop around in the below normal unexceptional gene swamp the rest of the time. That's part of the path to enlightenment: Realizing people are weird and since you're a person you, too, are therefore weird. And probably unexceptional. If you'd just apply yourself you could really do well. You're capable of so much more. Your third grade teacher told you so. She was right.)
But something caught my eye.
There was something familiar about him.
Something very, very familiar.
I took a closer look at his profile photo. I looked at his city. I looked at his other profile photos...
...and that was where I was hit with the realization of several things.
(insert Psycho shower scene soundbite here)
The things I realized were:
A) People are swutting weirder than I ever could have swutting imagined.
B) He is the father of a woman in my office.
You heard me. The father of someone I know, a man I have met a few times and clearly knows who he's emailing, contacted me for a date via an online dating site.
A woman I actually like. A woman in that gray area between coworker and friend. I like her more than I generally like coworkers, I mean, I've met her father for crying out loud. He works in town and sometimes stops in the office. I always chat with him and once I even showed him how to use iTunes. He's, you know, nice, in that father of a friend kind of way. Not in any way other than that, though.
I have several photos posted on this dating site so I am 100% certain he knew who I was when he emailed me. However, he didn't actually mention this fact in his email.
Not surprisingly, his email was short and rather cryptic. "Hi there. I know I'm older than you want (so why are you writing me?) but I think if you take a minute to look beyond our age difference you'll see we have a lot in common. (Yeah. We both know your daughter, for a start.) "
That was it.
I read his profile several times and fail to see what we have in common other than the fact that we don't smoke. (I know, I know, that's a huge start, I know. I shouldn't be so picky.) He doesn't like cats or dogs. (I can vouch for that. He made a sick dead cat joke when he saw the photo of Furry Creature on my desk.) He likes riding his motorcycle. (I can vouch for that. I had to hear the story of his near death crash experience.) He doesn't "spend much time reading" because he'd "rather have fun than sit around reading." (I can vouch for that. He didn't get a joke I made about Haikus. "What's a Haiku?") He describes his sense of humor as slapstick. (I can vouch for that. He is fond of Stooge-a-palooza on a local network.) He is not looking for a serious commitment. (I can vouch for that, too. I've heard his daughter's (my coworker) lament about his post mid-life crisis and her worries about what will become of him in his old age.)
Let's just pretend we have a lot in common. Just for the sake of me trying to not be too picky about the men I date. Let's say apart from our age difference we really were good for each other.
I swutting work with his daughter.
wavy dream sequence screen to the image of me going to meet my new boyfriend's family who is my coworker and her siblings. "Surprise! I'm dating your dad!" Then a few weeks later, me coming into work on a Monday morning. As I walk past my coworker's office I say, "Hey, Coworker, how was your weekend? Mine? Oh fantastic. I'm walkin' a little funny today but it was worth it if you know what I mean, nyuck nyuck. That dad of yours is incredible. Give him a Cialis on Friday and he doesn't stop until Stooge-a-palooza on Sunday afternoon!"
Back to reality.
A) I do not discuss my sex life (or lack thereof) with my colleagues or coworkers.
B) She's his daughter.
C) There's a rule imprinted in human DNA that states people do not want to know about their parents' sex lives.
Let's just pretend I don't work with his daughter. Just for the sake of me trying to not be too picky about the men I date. Let's say apart from our age difference and the fact that we have nothing in common, I don't even know his daughter and therefor he's "datable."
wavy dream sequence screen to the image of me trying to read with the Three Stooges blaring in the background and this guy laughing and guffawing, "hey, sweetheart, you'll never guess what Moe just did to Curly! Sheesh, he never learns!"
"Um, let me guess, slapping, punching and stupid vocal sound effects?"
Back to reality.
Okay. Leaving the Stooge Factor out of the equation, we're just not a good candidate for couplehood.
And then there's his daughter.
My coworker.
A woman I like and respect.
Whom I have to face every day from now until as long as I work with her knowing that her father tried to pick me up on an online dating site.
Now, more than ever, I really, really have to get a new job.
But until then, what?
So far I've simply ignored his email. I haven't responded. (I'm invoking cooling off period so no one gets hurt.)
The next time he stops in the office is going to be beyond weird. I'll duck and hide, but I can't live in constant fear of this guy showing up in the office. Some day, some time, I'm going to see him. And it's going to be really weird.
Although not as weird as trying to pretend that a coworker's father didn't hit on me online.
She must never, ever know. She's already got some issue regarding her parents' divorce. The last thing she needs to know is that her father is not only hitting on much younger women, but women who are her coworkers as well.
Maybe I've got her all wrong. Maybe she'd be cool with it. Heck, maybe she even encouraged it. But I doubt it. I like this woman. She's not weird like that. She's capable of thinking far enough ahead and reasoning that a coworker dating her father could potentially be a seriously bad thing.
The question this week is not should I date this creep, but what, if anything, should I say to him? I'm thinking maybe something like, "Hi Coworker's Dad. I'm going to assume you meant this as a joke. Ha ha. I think it's best of Coworker doesn't know about this, even though it is a really funny joke. Ha ha. She might not see the humor in it and we do have to work together. Good luck out there. - Trillian"
