Category: General

I really wasn’t kidding (571 kB Ogg Vorbis File; Particularly interesting around 35 s) when I said that my new nearest neighbour is very loud… in bed.

In case you were doubting me, or something.

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.

As lonely or desperate as they may sound, wet dreams are remarkably enthralling and gratifying experiences. Or so I am told.

On a related note, it is evident that having to consciously set aside time on your scheduling system for physical intimacy is an indication that things have gone horribly wrong.

On a related note, I was pleasantly surprised recently when a random act of kindness toward an elderly gentleman resulted in this:

We built a small cottage next to our home here in Flagler Beach not quite a year ago. It was built for our relatives and friends. Should you find your way into this neck of the woods, we’d be happy to house you—and a friend—quite comfortably in the cottage. The cottage is in almost new condition and quite comfortable. We’d need a few days notice should you some day want to visit down here in Florida.

Would you be my “friend?”

This sort of argument crops up all the time:

A student in a western system of education decides what they want to really study, whereas we in India are asked to cram any and everything to give us (so called) “more rounded” knowledge. Ultimately, the syllabi are so vast that we just get superficial knowledge of everything, and hardly learn much.

While this is perhaps essentially true, I just have a tiny bit to add as one who now has a little experience as an educator.

An educational system which allows everyone to choose exactly what they want—even from the earliest stages—results not only in a vast assortment in the sorts of things people know, but also the depth to which they are knowledgeable. Just because you give choice doesn’t mean people are always motivated enough to go very deep. Unlike a more structured, rigid system, a more flexible one doesn’t attempt to force or correct this, for it doesn’t see a problem. The onus is now on the individual to accomplish.

Oh, and something dawned upon me recently. While it may appear as though having to know a lot of things from different areas—even including a lot of memorisation[1]—is a bad thing; it is not. Often times, to solve complex problems, you need to draw on information from varying sources, and you need to know a lot before you can assimilate them into something cogent. A system which doesn’t force this on people will not produce as many kids who are “more rounded;” not offering them the skills they need to achieve this.

What I am probably saying here is that the educational system plays a big role no doubt, but individual motivation and inclination play just as big a part. (Which means things can go both ways either way.)

[1] Note: Memorisation; not rote memorisation. Rote memorisation is bad either way you look at it.

As a young child of maybe two or three, I distinctly recall having many burning questions. One of these—pertinent to our discussion today—went, “But how does the mommy’s body know to wait before she is married to get pregnant?” Of course, people skirted around the issue and I didn’t receive a real answer until a few years later, but the point I’m trying to make here is that even at a tiny age, I was beginning to discern between something that was biological and primal—getting pregnant—and something that was essentially human-concocted—marriage.

After spending years carefully pondering over so many things like this, I’m usually forced to acknowledge that actuality is really nothing more than a refined variant of some inkling I possessed years before. This case was no different, and I retain to this day a clear-cut notion of what is basic and what is tacked-on by society.

But I digress.

What I initially planned to do this evening was to ruffle a few feathers by going against the flow and speaking out in favour of arranged marriages. Now, this sort of union is very common in my part of the world, and since most people believe they will resent the choices made for them by their elders, they tend to feel constricted by the thought or even repulsed by the idea. Either way, they begin to hate the process a priori.

I will not do that. But for what I will do however, you will have to wait a tad.

My brother hasn’t been home in a few days.
He’s been living at a friend’s place.
“I’m helping him cope with his loss,” he says,
“of a little sister who was with him always.”

She was barely sixteen. She took her own life.

No matter how much I crib, I have to admit I’m pretty darn lucky. There is something to be said for being born a male in a male-dominated world. There is something to be said for being born in a generation where technology doesn’t scare me—but it doesn’t engulf and dumb me either. There is something to be said for being born in a culture where I’m allowed to find my own mate, but can also crawl back home with my tail between my legs and have one summoned for me.

There is a lot to be said for not having the media get to me.

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?

I’m not sure why Jack didn’t realise this earlier—narcissism perhaps?—but it just dawned on him that he might not be the easiest person in the world to live with. You see, Jack’s dad has been around for the past few days and Jack hasn’t been particularly accommodating; to say the least.

It turns out that Jack’s a neatness freak, or a control freak in general, and he wants what he wants done, the way he wants done, when he wants it done; that’s all. There ought to be no shenanigans, no clumsiness-induced spills, no random scattering of tissues, … . Under “his household,” every situation is monitored hawk-eyed, and he has a strong opinion on how “things ought to be done.” This goes right down to, for instance, how often and how thoroughly one must wash their hands, and Jack’s very vocal about it.

While this attitude may have some hope of success when dealing with few-year-olds, attempting to treat a fifty-year-old man like he’s two is an absolutely futile exercise. It’s just, Jack doesn’t realise this and goes about behaving the exact same way anyway; causing some unrest in people around. The points of contention between Jack and his dad stem from other things too, like how money ought to be donated or saved, or whether kids need to be adopted or not, or whether food must be made at home or eaten out, … but we’ll get into those another time.

For now, it’s apparent that Jack’s been living alone for so long, most of his recollections of events past are clouded by what he wants them to be. All along, he’s been assuming that the cause of past confusion have been insensitive roommates.

Perhaps the problem lay elsewhere.

meta-do (med·ə dū, n): Information about doing something.

This word is defined in a manner similar to meta-data, or information about data. Just as “Album Name,” for instance, is meta-data about an MP3 song file, “Sure honey, I’ll take out the trash” is a meta-do; it is a statement describing an act.

As in, “Who is taking out the trash? I am.”

One thing yours truly had mastered at a very early age was the art of the meta-do. After carefully homing the craft through years of avoiding work around the house (“Go clean up your room this instant young man!”), he began to slowly apply this skill to all other walks of life.

The beauty and simplicity of this concept lies in the fact that, often times, people don’t really need anything done, but would like to feel like you’re willing and able. Realising this, I often go ahead and do just that—I never miss a chance to tell people what I am going to do “for them.” And that’s it, voilà, they employ me, adore me immensely, … until I really have to do something.

But before then, it’s too late. The con-man has already weaselled his way in… to their pants.

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.”

My body is so sore as I sit down to type this, it’s not even funny.

You might have been wondering why the man behind all of this has been so silent of late. Maybe something major came up, maybe something went wrong. Well, not to fear; it’s nothing major, I’ve just been too sore to type.

You see, I wasn’t kidding when I said that I “wanted to get a personal-trainer-person in my life tomorrow; as in tomorrow.”

We’re just going to call her… Piquant. Yes, that works well; she’s strong and stinging, but in a stimulating sort of way.

I’ve spent another couple of hours with her and she’s busy pushing me trying to figure out where I stand. Briefly, my upper body flexibility is phenomenal (the best the system has ever seen!), my upper body strength is abysmal (the worst the system has ever seen?), my cardiovascular capacity and lower body strength are very good (guess who was repeatedly lifting 340 lb, with his puny legs!), my body fat-to-muscle-mass-ratio is boderline alarming (think Homer Simpson and failing “the jiggle test”).

I just walked up to her with this big bag of money and said, “I’m broken, fix me.” (Yeah, just like that.) And Piquant’s been using information she’s gathered about me to figure out how to nudge me toward my goals. Where, by “nudge,” I mean “yell crudely (only as crudely as she can given her cute voice, of course) in an attempt to shame me.” And by “goals,” I mean the capacity to carry a reasonably-sized girlfriend—to bed.

I am not an inherently violent or emotional person at all. Of late however, I’ve become edgy and I’m finding it hard not to punch a hole in a wall. I’m hurting and I hate it. There is a terribly queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach, and it seems like my mind has concluded that random acts of aggression will solve the problem.

It’s heartbreaking when the woman you love lives under another man’s roof.

If you were to pick between being delightfully gorgeous, lewdly gawked at, mostly worshipped like a goddess but perhaps touched without your permission, and being appallingly grotesque, incessantly ignored, mostly treated unnoticed, like dirt, and obviously untouched, which would you pick?

And why?

(or, on the road to it, anyway.)

I haven’t done this in a while, so my skills are a bit rusty. And by “a bit,” I really mean “a lot.” I’ve been ridiculously preoccupied these past couple of months, and haven’t been able to get myself to sit down and string a couple of (decent) sentences together. It’s strange, this used to be so easy to do, and after this hiatus, my head is beginning to pound as I begin to write. It seems like so much work, and almost seems pointless.

Almost.

For someone who hasn’t ever had anyone close-close to talk to, a space like this to scream—even if it just masks the loneliness momentarily–provides much-needed relief. Hard as it may seem to write this evening, I’m pushing myself to do so. To sort of, you know, reacquaint myself with this space; because sometimes, I get the impression it’s all I have.

My space.

No external stimuli; be it fun, pleasure, fear, heartache… . Nothing.

Just me, my thoughts.

Stay tuned.