Month: April 2004

This is a blast from the relative past. I have this system where I pile up things I need said in various buffers, notepads in real life, compartments in my brain, and text buffers on the computer. Now they’re all overflowing with “externally unsaid stuff” and need to be purged, for sanity retention. There will hence be periodic random bursts like this. This was me screaming into a bag a while ago. I don’t necessarily feel any of this now, plus stuff’s changed. I just need to get it out of here as I see it every time I come to this file to jot something down, and it’s bothering me.

I thought I was pretty much through this last evening before I went to bed. I seemed peaceful enough, but I ended up tossing and turning instead when a bunch of loose ends kept popping up. I woke, often, with some odd thought relating to her tone, or something she’d said.

I thought I had decided I wouldn’t let it bother me. Damn it, I want to stop being affected. I want to be happy.

– Who cares how he would feel when/if told about the nature of our relationship? Is she ashamed of us? Of me?
   – Didn’t she ever need anything I tried to do?
– Why do men who come into her life now (or even earlier, come to think of it) get different treatment? Why was I told all the details in all their glory? Wouldn’t things be different if she hid them from me too? They aren’t told the details, so they can’t automatically assume my role, so will always be “different” in her eyes. Does this mean,
   – She didn’t ever want me at all, so was willing to use me as this sort of sacrificial lamb?
     – Is that why I feel so used? That I feel she knew all of this, and put me through it because I can take it?
   – She told me, and saw where it led to, so she’s avoiding it with them?
   – She isn’t and won’t be as comfortable and totally honest with other people, even if it is to avoid complications?
– Can you ever know too much about someone? How could you possibly know so much about someone being their friend becomes weird. Where is this “magic point” where it enters the “domain of love” when you just can’t be comfortable with a friend of the opposite (or same, if your preferences are different from mine) sex.
– Do I, what we’ve been through, mean so little to her that she can just forget it ever happened and go on to live happily ever after?
   – If yes, why can’t I begin to feel that way? Why am I so stuck and feeling all dumped?
   – Would she be so positive about things if he didn’t exist in the picture? Am I right in assuming this unified (60-40% split?) decision to wean off each other is easier on her because she’s been drawn to someone else for some time now?
– Who is she to keep doing this and affecting me like this anymore?
   – Don’t you give up that right after you dump someone? Why do I let her control so much, when she’s taken away so much?
– How “raw” can your connection be to someone, when you’ve not been entirely forthcoming about facts that form an important facet of your life?

I repeat, sanity retention.

And oh, the test, well if only life were comparably piece of cakey.

All together now, awwwww.

I’ve got this final exam test tomorrow. And since I’m this self proclaimed bastion of knowledge, (and because I’ve apparently got many more important things piled up) I treated it like I treat anything else of this sort, a minor inconvenience. And expectedly, I’ve goofed off until now. (Well, not now now, now as in after the Friends episode in about half an hour from now. So technically, I will goof off until then.) It doesn’t help that I’ve aced the class so far, and with all the leeway granted to you by the joys of “continuous evaluation”, you’re really not all that pressured into doing things for fear of, say, getting a bad grade.

Another problem here is it’s not particularly interesting. It starts of all fun and new, but gets quite boringly repetitive in a bit. And I wanted to read (yes, you can read math) for it like I’m reading a book (if I do read one I mean), but I just received this email saying I’ve got to go through some details in specific questions before taking the test.

Which means it’s going to be a long night.
And I’m cranky.

Where did you not want to go today?^TM

I saw High Fidelity again yesterday. I was sobbing like a little baby.

So this is how it works, though I wonder why. For a while you’ll be all normal, dousing yourself in the mundaneness of everyday life. You lock yourself up (metaphorically) in this little room and put in the many many hours of studying (or working or singing or … ) a day. You attempt to get on with whatever it is that you do, and keep yourself … I guess the word I’m looking for is .. occupied. It’s a life. You start .. attempting to suck .. happiness from the smallest of sources. I mean? What’s this all about? It’s a survival mechanism. While I’m.. admiring this pretty flower while avoiding that nasty looking bee, I’m not hurting myself with want clouded memories.

Not particularly happening, but it works.

But not well enough. Then there’s this one small thing, (actually it’s many small and/or big things, since just about anything you see/do/hear/smell.. can trigger these emotions) and you’re back to exactly where you didn’t want to be. You’re suddenly pining away, this rush of memories and wants and hopes and all that hit you. They trigger emotions you’d kept (you thought) quite well leashed. You suddenly feel all lost and alone.

It doesn’t serve too much of a purpose. It’s almost like you enjoy arbitrarily torturing yourself.

You’d think rational people’d go, hmm, so it doesn’t serve a purpose, let’s kill the feeling. But it’s not as easy as that, obviously. Then there’s the constriction of communication channels. You can’t rush out and say things the way you once could, because now you’re not really sure what’s out of bounds. I mean, with changes come new boundaries, and you’re always worried about screwing up some more.

It’s like, you’re probably thinking along the lines of, “If I had the chance to hang out with the coolest people in the world, or be with this <insert insanely desirable quality here> person, or stay at home and be beaten at scrabble (while I was attempting to cheat none the less) by you, I’d still definitely pick you.” I mean, sure this sort of thing might work in a movie or some such, but what if circumstances are so that you can’t say it like that. Or that you can, but it won’t make a difference. However, come to think of it, I doubt however it’s said it will make any difference. It’s just, for whatever reason there’s this need to dream up ways of saying something like this without actually saying saying anything.

Meet a few hours of toiling away’s worth of an image.

Of course, the colours chosen are significant. And she has this fascination for rings. And I can be, well, a stone emotionally. So there you have it. The deal being, the stone is close enough to her to pull off that reflection. Meaning, where this stone wants to be. Close. Even if just as some cold inanimate presence.

There are a bunch of subtleties I won’t bore you with. But the deal is to say as much as you can with actually saying as little as possible. That way you don’t go out of bounds, and if understood, great. If not, it’s just some picture which ends up in some folder, or worse.

But sadly, this sucks on one more (selfish) level too. Which I fear is the most detrimental. The moment someone else out there indicates the slightest interest in talking to me, (which we sneakily construe as interest in me), I can kill it in an instant, like now, with this sort of behaviour. Your head’s all, ok, be all cool and understated, it’s going to be fine.

And then BAM!, this is the sort of thing you do anyway.

Man it’s hard not being suave.

:) (Yes, an honest to goodness smiley. A rare commodity that.)

The most amazing thing happened yesterday. Someone actually dedicated something to me. Yes, you read it right. I inspired someone else, and they put up an apt picture dedicated to yours truly.

(I was waiting for it to get off the front page, so I could link to its permalink, but I got impatient and linked to the home page. Will tweak this page when she updates hers.)

I’m so excited I could, I could.. do a cartwheel… coupled with back flip!
*Falls over clumsily*
Well, maybe not.

So check out this insanely talented (cleverly disguising herself as a paper-pusher) woman’s showcase. I’ve plugged her before, but with good reason. Her work is very pretty. (No, I don’t know any bigger words than pretty, you vocabulary god(dess) you. You have to get what I am trying to say.) And it makes me smile internally. (No, I don’t plan to explain what that means either.)

(I know her usage policy now reads I shouldn’t steal her images without asking, but I was devious. This image was sneakily stolen before that was up. I’ve been meaning to do this plug for a long time now, just never got around to doing it. I doubt she’d mind, but if things go awry, this picture won’t be up tomorow.)

Now, the following is an obligatory plug. Because I’m shameless and you can’t stop me. I’ve been working on the art pages, and a couple are beginning to take shape. Sure, there is no real new content, but it’s the backend I like working on. Once that’s done, things should be (relatively) oft updated, like the new photo pages.

Art :: Screen shots
Art :: Text effects

I’ve tried really hard to avoid writing about this, but I’m apparently not the king of self control I make myself out to be. Obviously, standard stupidity disclaimers apply, IAJAG^*.

I spent some time in the mall today, and with the amazing pastel and floral spring line up for little girls, I just stood there staring wishing I was ten again. And female.

(That’s more than you needed to know. Moving along with what I really wanted to talk about.)

I’m scared. Well, I’ve been angry for a chunk of my life, but now that’s morphed to cold fear. I regard being handed a Y-chromosome (or whatever else it is, biologically) and consequently being born a human male as one of the greatest injustices in the history of the universe. Somewhere in the league of… people having the ability to kill each other arbitrarily. Yes, this is a huge deal.

I could branch of into this, “how much cooler it is to be a female” sermon, but I will reserve that for a weaker moment. For now, I will take a small detour into male suckiness, and get to the point. Guys are, to put it mildly, not very bright. We serve little purpose, and don’t contribute a great deal toward the overall progress of anything. We usually aren’t clean, organized, thoughtful or sensitive. We can be mean, rude, and our humour can be very, very crude. So crude you need to be told it was a joke and that we were offended you didn’t even giggle.

By now you’ve all heard all the jokes everywhere. “Now all women need is a device to open pickle jars, we’re doomed”. Or, “Now all they need is a spider crushing device, we’re doomed”.

And me? I wasn’t ever strong enough to be asked to open a jar. When there was a mouse or some such around, I’d be the first to jump up and scream like a three year old (you know, when she gets to see Justin Timberlake? or whoever else the youngins worship these days) on the coffee table. I wasn’t of too much use in any of those departments, unless my screams scared the little mouse away.

However, I could always take solace in the little things I assumed couldn’t change. I mean, she had to have me around for some stuff. She just had to. Me and my kind couldn’t be discarded while life as a whole goes on happier than it’s ever been. Or could it?

We now have the genius scientists coming up with baby mice with two mommies. No, not one dad and the woman realising she’s lesbian and running of with another hot woman style two mothers. Just the two mothers, and the wonders (or horror, if you’re looking at it from where I am) of parthenogenesis.

Which reminds me, imminent redundancy.

Kidding. Just been too lazy to document my boring days.

Update:

Or something like that. It does go to something like 40 degrees at night at times, but for the most part it is bright and warm outside. (Well, relatively, anyway.)

I’ve been going to Rackham to catch up on some much needed reading. The peace and quiet offered by the facility is quite awesome. And before I forget, the purpose of this post was to plug the new photo album.

It’s got tons of pretty pictures.
You know you want to see it.

aggreg8 is actually beginning to fall in place.

Woohoo!

Music today is not always nice and happy. Never go to sleep with one angry song looping over and over again. You’ll feel horrid and mean when you wake after a few hours. I feel so bitter right now. Then again, what is the deal with this arbitrary shutting down and going to sleep at my desk anyway? Sheesh.

Just a short while ago, I was this weird outcast guy. I was so different from everyone else, they warned their kids not to get too close to me? Random people who amount to nobodies in this world judged my behavioural patterns. “Ohh, who does he think he is to not hang out at the ‘desi hangouts’ all the time ?” or “So who does he think he is to have shoulder length hair?” … Just a whole lot of arbitrary crap, for no real reason. Some people do things differently from the “conformant mindless drones”. I am one of those people, and I’m very proud of it. And I am quite capable of dealing with (consequent?) nonsense from other people.

For some reason, I remembered the much famed “Our paradoxical world” slide show. (Ahh, the joys of misbehaving mouse drawn art.)

Anyway, today there was this social mixer (yes, I went) sort of thing where I ran into a lot of people. Ahh yes, how they come groveling to me when they need something. It’s the same people who felt they were cool enough to judge me or what I do, without even getting to know me as a person a short while ago.

(As an aside, I have no qualms about people judging people, people with prejudices, people with biased opinions of different sorts… I mean, everyone has a lot of all of that and more. It is how much you let it affect your rational decisions and how much of it you show through your actions that has to be moderated. If you’re smarter than me, by all means, think me dumb. Just, not otherwise. And don’t tell me anything of the sort, because it isn’t very polite.

I won’t either.)

What is this about? Around this time, the people stopping with their masters degrees are finishing up (yes, a term after some other people). And with the brilliant job scene (extreme sarcasm), only a handful of them have some hope of finding some sort of work. Somehow, they get to know things like I have relatives who head research in large companies. Now, they’re all “Hey (insert an equivalent word to ‘friend’ here), how are you. Blah blah. Blah Blah.” I am like hmm, “Do I know you? What the fish do you care?”, this doesn’t seem normal, where’s the catch. And then it comes. “So could you please put in a word for me”, “forward my resumé”, “get me in touch with him/her”…. and a lot of other such similar things using different words, but boiling down to the same thing – Please help me.

Hahah. Firstly, I’m saddened by their stupidity in assuming my word has any weight with regard to anything of this sort. But more importantly, yeah, suuuure I will go all out to make sure your sorry life gets on the track you want to be in. Considering all you’ve done for yours truly is to be nice and kind and generous and understanding and …

Suuure. Ahahahaahah.

Ok, so I don’t plan on mocking, laughing, abusing the situation, or kicking sand in their faces. But that doesn’t mean I plan on being the “bigger man” by allowing people to trample me when they feel like it, and magically helping them when they need it, either.

Fish them all I say. I don’t need. They do.

Never forgive. Never forget.
And never forgive.

And totally unrelated, carefully sprayed hair-spray sure beats hair in your face at inopportune moments.

The term is almost over. Which means obvious end term pressures, but I’ve got a lot more piled up. Exams and such.

Anyway, it was supposed to be earlier in the term. Scheduling issues, forced it to the 22^nd of this month. So my life near stalled for the past week. Then came the first SNAFU, and it got pushed to the 29^th or some such. Fine. Then said SNAFUs cascaded, and now it looks something like a month away.

I should be happy, but I’m not. I don’t like being scared and tense and all that sort of thing.

I mean, not in an academic setting. Don’t I have 19 million other outlets for these sorts of emotions? God.

What’s the deal with lose lose situations?

I was at this restaurant at lunch, and this is one of those rather smallish places that gets rather crowded. Anyway, there are these (rather narrow) pathways formed at the gaps between the backs of chairs. At some point of time, when I was not quite lost enough in my meal, I happened to notice this (rather not small) woman who needed to make her way through the (rather narrow) path.

Anyway, point being, I could acknowledge that she couldn’t… fit and move my chair… widening the path? and get cold glared at, for calling her fat without calling her fat. Or I could just sit there and get cold glared at for being an insensitive clod.

Needless to say, I got the cold glare. Sheesh.

Yes, rather is the word of the day.

Sorry, but I have to use this journal as a (low tech) way of clarifying something. My email system seems to be mysteriously misbehaving, and I need to know if my replies to your email are making it through. You know who you are.

You should have received three resent mails. Please please let me know if you get them (or actually, even if you don’t).

I did reply as soon as I saw yours. Honest. And I am alive, and not sick.

Clickey clickey.

I know I said I wouldn’t paste images arbitrarily. And trust me, as pretty as these flowers look, they’re pretty evil. Hmm.. they’re pretty AND they’re evil. Yesterday was warm, bright and cheerful outside. I had to take a little walk. There was a minor incident involving me crossing at this intersection, staring at these flowers, dropping my camera bag, not realizing (still staring), suddenly realizing, turning around, forgetting to look for passing cars, almost getting …

you know. All is well enough however.

And that is why this seemingly random image post means enough to be posted. As if it being one of my coolest ever flower picies ever wasn’t enough reason.

Being alive feels better than it did a short while ago. *Breathes*

I was just informed that because I don’t talk in Tamil, have longer than usual hair, don’t cook “normal things”, am “actively attempting” to live outside the “traditional desi hub” and stuff like that, I am this sort of weird outcast.

No, not revered freethinker. Weird outcast.

I repeat. Hmm.