actuality.log

Have you ever had that sickening feeling when you know you don’t want something, but also know that deep down, you really need it? It’s such a paralysing emotion to experience; being unable to move neither forward nor back, stuck only in the harsh realisation that whatever you do, you’re about to end up unhappy, unsatiated, or both.

I believe life would be simpler if it were more like fairy-tales; where what’s right and what’s wrong is starkly delineated. Without any shades of grey to get lost in, you can clearly paint yourself black, or white.

With me thus far?

Good, now replace the whole spiel about “being painted black or white” with “desiring women or men.”

Have you ever had that sickening feeling when you know you don’t want something, but also know that deep down, you really need it?

I know we’ve been through this a few times, but don’t you think that after being here for so long, it’s still really ironic that the only women around I find cute are so out of my league, they wouldn’t even be caught dead talking to me?

And, the women who really want to talk to me are so bleh that I can’t imagine them good for much more than a laugh… at their expense?

I really must rethink my strategy.

And, on a somewhat connected note, the people I’ve been running into around town just seem so beautiful of late. I mean that literally, superlatively so, and not in some weird way. At least, not weirder than having the urge to tell every woman you cross that she’s the most exquisite creature you’ve ever seen. And not be lying about it.

It’s like the town has been invaded by angels—the kinds without wings. Or perhaps they’re alluring elves without the pointy ears. Or perhaps, the town has been flooded by a slew of new fairies—the kinds without pointy ears or wings.

OK, I don’t know where they’re stemming from, but it doesn’t really matter, does it? All this means is that there is now an even greater abundance of women who will not talk to me.

Yes, I could have loaded the dishwasher and forgotten to turn it on.
No, I didn’t “Not turn it on to spite you.” Perhaps I’m just scatterbrained?

One thing that women—including moms—don’t understand is that it’s not always about something specific. And more importantly, it’s not always about them. Another person could just like or dislike or love or hate or whatever them purely independent of who they are as a person. Really, they can.

I don’t have reasons for feeling a certain way, or not, toward anyone. I just do. That’s why they’re called feelings and if they were as rational as thoughts, then I’d have clear, valid reasons. Don’t you think?

I wish the world would let me be. Let me feel like I want to feel, whatever that might mean. I just want to feel unconstricted. I don’t want another’s life intimately tied to my emotions or thoughts or decisions; that’s just too much pressure. Is that so wrong?

I feel backed into a corner. I feel trapped and choked. There, I said it.

It’s hilarious (actually, it’s not at all) how I’ve even become so troubled about saying anything here for fear of who I would inadvertently hurt. Between the stalkers, friends, relatives, lovers, exs… it becomes too hard to actually form, let alone express, a real sentiment. I long for a time when this was an untethered forum, where I could speak my mind. Where I could yell and scream and curse and no one would know.

Who am I kidding? I long for a time when I wouldn’t need to yell or scream or curse.

It’s a few A.M. and I can’t really sleep. I’m jotting this down as I stroll around outside my hotel room, almost as if I’m searching for another insomniac to alleviate the loneliness. Where, by ‘insomniac,’ I probably mean ‘sexually frustrated person.’ But they’re the same thing right? Right?

This would be a lot easier if I were curled up at home under familiar settings, but no, I’m stuck in some dingy hotel in what is (allegedly) the most happening city my country has to offer. You see, I’m here for a friend’s wedding, a sort of pompous “mostly north-Indian, slightly south-Indian tradition fused” affair; one which has actually been rather charming to experience. There has been much festivity over the past few days here, epitomised by the elegantly-dressed folk and their song and dance… and drink.

The wedding gift lovingly crafted by Crayola with my pictures over the past many nights was a huge hit; complete with phrases like “this is easily the best gift ever” and “I hope you know our kids and you make it to their wedding,” and culminated with my embarrassment on the dais as I was forced to accept hugs and laurels as I was presenting it.

Upon repeated explanation of the piece,

A clear-enough digital version to see some detail:

A crappy picture of the final product showing the mostly-transparent framing and size in relation to a couch:

I began to behave like this masterful story-teller on a book tour—pausing for effect when somebody was gawking wide-eyed, and overemphasising the corny bits I knew people were greedily eating up. While all this was rip-roaring fun superficially, I was furious deep down (What’s new, you say?). Apart from the usual anger triggers, I ended up having to deal with a bit more than I’d bargained for. Harping on specifics never did anyone any good, so I’ll leave you with a couple of unrelated observations:

1. North-Indian women—at least the ones who were brave enough to show a lot of skin—have the smoothest, creamiest backs I have ever seen.
2. While instinctively salivate-worthy, they—the ones I was brave enough to talk properly to—still sound as dumb as one would imagine.

Which brings us full circle. Good night.

I’m going to keep this short because the harsh glow of the screen annoys me. And, by “annoys me,” I mean that I am on the verge of throwing up.

You see, yours truly has been plenty sick all of this week, and the general pressures and trauma and workload I’ve been subjected to have ensured that my issues have spiralled well out of control. I’ve been asleep—passed out, more accurately—for over twenty of the past twenty-four hours, and I still feel near-dead drained. My head is pounding and I know how it feels like to be dumb. (As in mute; not stupid. We’ve had our fair share of daftisms.) My bleeding throat has decided to stop functioning and I can’t communicate with anything more than hoarse, barely-audible whispers. Also, I am getting sick of my diet which as primarily revolved around a plethora of soups and teas… and the occasional cognac.

But hey, at least I don’t get slapped when I huddle up close to attractive women and whisper into their ears as I “talk” to them!

(There is nothing yours truly enjoys more than taking a random personal observation, warping it way out of proportion and generalising it to all (wo)mankind.)

It’s no secret that women perpetually yearn for men to “communicate more.” Actually, let me rephrase that. (It’s almost no problem if they just yearned for it wistfully, and sighed softly to themselves in disappointment. But no) Women don’t just yearn for men to communicate more, they often demand it. You know, the incessant phone calls (about why there aren’t enough phone calls!), the constant need to express how lacking their man is when it comes to expression, the need to discuss over and over topics that have already been beaten to death… that sort of thing.

Perhaps they don’t realise that men are entirely capable of expression, just without so much emphasis on the god damned talking. Men are clearly more physical, and vastly prefer touchy-feely means of showing (and being shown) how we (you) feel. That is all ladies, it is not like he doesn’t want to express something to you, he just tires easily when having to go on and on translating to a tongue you’ll understand. In case you haven’t realised, for every time you’ve thought “Oh my god, it’s 3 A.M and I have a meeting tomorrow. Why am I still wasting so much time having <insert pleasurable activity here>?” he’s gone, “Oh my god, why am I still talking to her? We’ve gone so many hours yapping without <insert pleasurable activity here>.”

So there you have it; the simple truth. If you’re so concerned about not conversing, start communicating in a tongue he can understand. Remember that he’s the sorts who probably shaves one leg when alone, to feel like he’s rubbing against a woman’s when he sleeps.

It’s funny how “specialists” get paid a ton of money to disseminate a lot of information amongst the general public; most of it being patently false, if not just incorrect. Case in point, I was reading an article yesterday that was entitled “The top 10 reasons men don’t commit.” Yes, it was in one of those women’s magazines—you know, the kinds that surveys its readers on how kinky they are in bed?—and why I was reading one is a story for another day.

Anyway, during the course of the article, the author went on and on about different, very specific things; such as how he wants to “have time for his buddies,” or what impetus could he possibly have to “buy the cow if he could get her milk for free?” And, while I am not going to argue that either of these are blatantly false, I’m fairly certain that she—and I stress that it’s a she who wrote this—missed the central issue here entirely.

And here it is:

Men don’t commit because they’re holding out for something better.

That is all. Listen to me, re-read that sentence over and over until you get it. It’s not about a man needing “more time to do his own thing,” or him being “unaware of your biological clock;” it’s about him constantly living under the hope (fantasy, more likely) that there is someone else right around the the corner who’ll rock his world in many more ways than you do.

He doesn’t see himself as being non-committal, he sees himself as waiting to commit… to her.

And you know why? It’s because men are stupid. They fail to recognise one of the basic tenets of reality: If you’ve found someone who lovingly dotes upon you, excitedly listens to you and participates in things that you care about (and you enjoy reciprocating), teaches and learns from you in delightful ways, … you’ve got to learn to let the little things slide. Put that romance novel down and realise that there is no perfect-perfect person who’ll be “all that you dream her up to be,” without any flaws whatsoever hiding in the closet.

She doesn’t exist.

The men who get this, happily commit and cherish the woman they have in their arms. The ones who don’t, well, they just end up bitter and all alone.

Your woman’s penchant for country music doesn’t seem so bad now, does it?

(I can still imagine many a man reading this and going, “Pffft, I fail to see the upside to this settling thing you speak of.”)

I’m writing this to let the world know I am alive. I know you all care very much.

Yes I’m occupied, but not so occupied that it’s preventing me from writing here; so here’s the deal.

I don’t know whether women are trained by watching too much porn or whatever, but my new nearest neighbour is very loud. And by very loud, I mean she’s very loud in bed. Perhaps her man is really this hung stallion or whatever, but I’m willing to wager that she’s just a lot more expressive than she needs to be. Either way, the only free time that I have to pen my thoughts is when I’m home for a few hours after a hard day’s work.

And I really can’t there either, for I am distracted. In a good way.

What is the deal with Japanese women and their need to dress like they’re 20 years younger? Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I’m complaining about grown up women in schoolgirl costumes; it’s just, what is the deal?

Or perhaps, the question ought to be: What is the deal with other women? Why don’t they dress up in those cute, short schoolgirl uniforms more often?

This is another query to the women in the audience. Are you capable of discerning between the following two statements?

“I find her attractive.”

and

“I am attracted to her.”

This style of post is an interesting first for me. Actually, it’s more of a first than it is interesting, but I’ll let you be the judge of that.

If you don’t already know, many of my posts first spawn on scrap bits of paper, fester there for a while and only occasionally do they evolve to posts on my web log. While this process takes some time, the emphatically static nature of my life ensures that my world-view doesn’t change in this interim.

Usually.

Today, I present to you something I scribbled a few weeks ago, and tomorrow, I’ll present my current take on things—a starkly different conclusion. Maybe you’ll see how much my life has changed in this period.

Then: You come across a variety of people everyday, and you know how different they can be. Some people you meet, you judge yourself to be “cooler than,” so you feel that you can “do better than them.” In the sense of selecting a life partner, this roughly means that you’ll pass on them because you’ve decided you can “do so much better.”

And then, you have the other half of the crowd who you feel are just out of your league; intelligence, finesse, grace, … whatever the criteria. In the sense that, there is no way you could possibly be with them even if you wanted to. Which, of course, could just as well be paraphrased as “they couldn’t possibly want to be with you, for they realise they can do better than you.”

Since no two people are equal—however well-matched they seem, you can still find the most subtle (and possibly trivial) thing and toss them into one or the other of the preceding two categories—the set of people you can’t (or won’t want to) be with covers just about everybody.

And “everybody” is a superset of all women.

Essentially, I’ve just shown that there is an extremely good chance you’re ending up all alone, or with someone who leaves you unsatisfied and unhappy.

And that’s something to think about; or not, if you’re the kinds who doesn’t like giving up hope on “eventual perpetual happiness.”

Stay tuned for an updated take on things.

This was supposed to be a post on sexual tension and an inability to masturbate, but I can’t get myself to divulge it.

When I first started this journal a long time ago, the basic premise of the exercise was that I keep a log of the events in my life; an “actuality log,” of sorts. People who know me, are aware that I am notorious for forgetting details, and this journal was supposed help me in that regard; especially so that I would have something to reminisce about when I looked back. The fact that it was publicly visible was an artefact of the medium I chose, and wasn’t in my conscious thought as I began expressing myself.

And then, things changed.

I don’t know when exactly—perhaps it wasn’t even at one specific moment—but at some point along this journey, I became acutely aware of my primary audience pool: Women in their mid-to-late twenties. Single women mostly, and as it turns out, this includes single women who adore me. With this realisation came some shifts to how I went about articulating things. There were many more trips to the thesaurus, and a lot more conscious thought and proof-reading in general; for I began to care about how I sounded. Silently, I began to care about how my audience perceived me. This in itself wasn’t bad, because it typically meant that my posts started sounding a lot better—more refined and fleshed-out.

But the detrimental thing was that, at around the same time, I began to consciously work toward embedding within them a concocted idea of who I am; an idealisation, a fantasy. And with all this blurring of fantasy and reality, it turns out that actuality dot log has evolved to become anything but.

It’s just, “not actuality dot log” doesn’t have the same ring to it.

For the stalkers in the audience, I’m now in a college town in Colorado. The primary purpose of this trip is toward this conference or something, but you’d never know given how unprepared I am. The hotel is cheesy—with its crap “decor,” the weird smells in my room (ugh) and all its gaudy colours—and it sucks even more because the Internet connection here is beyond flaky. I’ve been forced to walk around for a while (ick) to find a signal strong enough so I can post this.

This part of Colorado is very different from another part of the state I’d been to earlier, and overall, it all seems very subdued and bleh. Totally underwhelming. The mountains aren’t really impressive, the colours aren’t really vivid, the … or maybe I just like to bitch. Now, I must leave, to go work on things toward talks, and then, on the talks themselves; to prevent making too much of a fool of myself. A little bit of a fool of myself is OK. A lot is not.

I miss my bed, with Crayola on it.

Update: Oh my gosh, perhaps I bitched too soon. I just stepped out of the shower, and that delectable shower-head just about made up for every other crappy thing about this place. Oh goodness, imagine the time I’d have had if only I possessed compatible anatomy.

Women get to have all the fun.

Looking around, you can’t help but notice the first sightings of the much-missed hemline. And with rising hemlines, you can’t help but acknowledge the onset of spring. As much fun as winter clothes are—leaving so much to the imagination—this is a very welcome change; one that makes you thank the stars you were born a guy.

And just as you’re beginning to revel in this newfound pleasant change of scenery, in comes “graduation day,” and before you can say “waxed legs,” the entire town is deserted; leaving behind only the science and engineering grad students, of course.

No, it’s not like they’re busy, but it’s just that they have nothing else happening in their lives; forcing them to hover around their natural habitat—their labs.

With this cheery weather though, and a schedule freed-up by the lack of classes, I’ve managed to effect some changes into my life. I will get into details regarding this later, but apart from becoming “mostly vegan,” I’ve begun to walk to and from work each day; a 45 minute walk each way.

And by 45 minutes, I mean 45 minutes, at my pace.

I’m the sorts who, literally, stops to smell the roses and skips stones across ponds. Anyway, a combination of changing my nutritional patterns and this daily trek has resulted in me losing about 13 pounds over the past 2 weeks. This leaves me just 3.13 kg shy of the mass I aim to be at. (The astute would have noticed the little I trick I played with units—lb and kg—in the previous sentence.)

No-effort weight-loss. Another one of the three or so reasons it’s good to be a guy. Ironically, my clothes fit worse. It’s like I feel dorky and wimpy in them now.

During some—also much-missed—time in the sun, I happened to see two Mini Coopers yesterday. This is a strange occurrence, because not too many people—everyone’s a poor student—seem to own one around here.

One of these was a cute, yellow coloured convertible with its top down. It had the license plate ‘NIMBLE.’ Both, however, were driven by elderly women; so I’m sure she was using the word NIMBLE in reference to the handling of the car.

Or, was she?

(Not to get into anything technical, but I’m writing this from a new computer. And it’s freakin’ sweet.)

By now, you’re actually beginning to have thoughts along the lines of, “Women’s entertainment? Just what sort of woman is this supposed to be entertaining? Can it even be classified as entertainment at all? Who gets paid to make this crap? Do people get paid to make this crap?” You know, that sort of thing. But you brave on; because the evasive remote is still missing.

If you’d expected that the wife’d be entirely indebted to him (and end up some sort of weird subservient slave) because he:
- found a woman with a compatible lung who was willing to donate it when she died,
- killed aforementioned woman conveniently close to his wife, and
- made sure her organ was transplanted to his wife, saving her life,
you’d be wrong.

I mean, come on. If someone went through all that trouble for me, the least I could do is satiate them sexually. But not this wife, no. She’s still harping on the one tiny detail; that he slept with the other woman (for her no less; and what of all those times she got off observing them hidden in the closet?). She resents him entirely. But she’s all operational now (as in can breathe without that huge oxygen-tank-mask-contraption thing), and has needs too. So what does she do? She runs-off and begins to sleep with random men as she’s travelling—to promote her children’s books, which have now magically become a success! (You know the writers are doing their best to get her to strip, god-awful scar and all).

By now, you’ve lost way more hours that you’ll never ever get back than you can count. And you go, “Screw the remote!!,” as you begin to flail your arms and kick your extended legs hoping you’ll knock the TV off its stand, saving you from further agony.

So the tale ends there, abrupt as it is, because that’s as much as I could take. No, I don’t need to go to the store to buy a new TV; it turns out I was sitting on the remote all along.