actuality.log

Or I’m broken beyond repair – Part I of II.
Take your pick of post title, choice is good.

— Circa 1543, a then partially paralyzed Polish priest and mathematician, Nicolaus Copernicus published “De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium” (On the Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres). It was the birth of modern astronomy, and the first bold work which presented the hypothesis that the earth (and we) needn’t be at the centre of the universe, and everything else did not revolve around us. That we were, in fact, not particularly special in any way. He did this at a time when such statements would be decreed heretical, and the church would burn people at the stake making them.

— Circa 1623, a then blind Italian astronomer and mathematician Galileo Galilei published “Dialogo sopra li due massimi sistemi del mondo: Ttolemaico, e Ccopernicono” (Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems: Ptolemaic and Copernican). It was a work that forcefully asserted that the (above) Copernican view on things was not just a hypothesis, but showed it to be the truth. He was “vehemently suspected of heresy” for proving and teaching these ideas, and was sentenced to life imprisonment. He was also forced to renounce his beliefs publicly, on his knees with his hands on the Bible. This work, among other things, anticipated Isaac Newton’s laws of motion, and led Galileo to be later regarded as the father of modern science.

— In 1618, a deeply religious German astronomer with a childhood filled with much pain and anxiety, Johannes Kepler, finished “Harmonice Mundi” (Harmonies of the world) – a series of 5 books which covered music, astrology, philosophy, theology and mysticism. Arguably his most significant achievement was the realization that the planets moved in elliptical, not circular, orbits. It included his third law, which, not an apple, led Newton to discover the law of gravitation. Previously, in 1611, he’d published “Dioptrices”, which forever changed the course of optics. In spite of all this, he was never revered, famous or rich. He was always in financial difficulty, and had to hop skip and jump between several countries because of religious upheaval and civil unrest. Kepler had dealt with fat, simpleminded wives, the early deaths of several of his children, and having to defend an eccentric mother who was nearly burnt at the stake for practicing witchcraft.

And so, being considerate to the members of our audience with ADD, I end part one of this monologue. To see where this surprisingly informative yet seemingly pointless thing is heading, you’ll have to tune into this same space sometime soon, probably tomorrow.

Or nothing I actually plan to expend energy boring you with. So I’ll bore you another way. Here’s a document (PDF) that functions as a TODO list, and a base for future delineate related documentation.

Enjoy. Or not.

I don’t ever think there will be a time when I’ll be one of those folk reclining in a chic coffee shop sipping on a latte and typing away on their laptops. Add the iPod, the tie dyed bandana and ton of buttons pinned on your bag with socially relevant messages, you’ve got yourself your worst nightmare — the hopeless liberal-yuppie who thinks he is. For those very afraid, I’d like to inform you I am not getting there anytime soon.

But only because I don’t drink coffee.

Getting down to business, I’ve come to realize a bunch of things over these past relatively silent few weeks. The bulk of this concept I articulated the other day, telling you why there aren’t any (particularly worthwhile) updates. I just don’t see the “greater end” they achieve anymore. But there are subtle and far greater undertones which ring through my, and everyone else’s, existence. Let me put it this way, there are roughly two ways one can go through life. (I say “roughly two” because I’ve identified other possibilities, but they really aren’t high enough probability to consider and just add unneeded complexity to the argument. Think of this as a close-enough approximation.)
– One can either “live it”
– or “just exist”.

I don’t even have to explain what I mean by these two, as I’m sure you realize what I’m talking about. That’s basically it. Since there is no real reason to stay in just one of those states during the course of your life, you can, and do, switch based on circumstance. If things are going really well (or really horrid), and you let it get to you, you’re “really living”. As in feeling, experiencing, having a great time (or struggling with depression). If things aren’t particularly going anywhere, and you’re just “going through the motions”, your daily existence has become just that, an existence. You’re not particularly bothered, hurt, happy, inspired, … anything. You wake, you do your thing, you sleep. You’re potentially growing intellectually or emotionally, but for the most part, you’re just in some sort of hibernation. Not particularly changing, other than the greying and/or loss of hair.

For most of my life, I’ve actively chosen the more passive “existence route”, since that’s just so much easier in my opinion. There aren’t any surprises, there is no big moments of happiness, sadness, glory, embarassment, … nothing. You’re alive, and that’s about it. Which is sort of the state I reverted to recently, and that reflects in every aspect of my life. It’s most noticeable to you in terms of lack of (quality) posts or pictures, but it is clearly apparent in a lot of other ways to different sorts of people. But, as always, life isn’t content leaving me this way, no it isn’t. It takes effort to shut off all the stimuli outside (good and bad) and go on to do whatever it is you do “not affected”. I had done a pretty good job turning off most things and being un-unhappy or un-happy (not unhappy) and going about doing whatever it is I do. But stuff keeps coming back to remind you it is so easy to get swept into the other state.

Follow me through this one, it is so complicated I need to try hard to be affected, so I’d be all mad, and you’d see this post — If you were dumped by someone, for someone else (call them someone2) and you hate someone2, but have removed their existence from your reality, so it doesn’t matter, only to realize you’re giving a talk soon in place2, the place where someone2 resides, just ends up reminding you someone2 exists. It is not a fun schema.

The worst part in all of this is, I don’t see interpersonal relationships as an end in themselves now. I’ve begun to see them as stimuli to feel alive, both happy or hurt (preferably happy, of course) so I can channel those emotions into other areas.

Like articles and material I know is funny. Self depricating, but hilarious nonetheless. And that’s just wrong.

I don’t have too much juice left in my battery, and I’ve left my adapter somewhere (probably at work) so I must make this short.

Here’s the hard truth. I can’t really write anything on this journal other than metaposts^* or pseudo-technical posts when I’m not one of the following:
a. Aiming to impress someone (so they’d, in some sense, “fall for” whatever it is I carefully orchestrated, and consequently me.)
b. Subtly yet surely showing how euphoric I am that now “that someone” does, in fact, like me.
c. Loudly and extremely clearly scream in pain when “that someone” informs me they’ve lost interest.

And if it’s not obvious by now, currently I am not in any of the above states.

So all you will see is pointless drivel and things that outright make no sense, or have no real point. It’s obvious I am just another dumb male and a bulk of what I do/don’t do is dictated by trivial things other people may/may not say/do. In fact, I can’t really do too much outside intellectual things when I am out of such states. Which to the untrained outsider will seem like a total degradation in level of creativity or the absence thereof, but really, it still exists. I just don’t see the point in flexing those muscles when there are no ends to justify.

And no, sharply dropping readership is not sufficient an end.

The biggest bar on the above chart is just over 60,000 (subtracting spam) individual hits (not page loads) for actuality (not the entire domain) on a better month. The good ol’ days^TM.

^* metapost — A post that seemingly exists (like this one) , but contains no real info in itself. It ends up describing posting in general. (My dictionary, pp. 103).

I realize I’ve been quite silent on the journal for a while. It’s not been all bad recently. In fact, things have been rather nice. I’ve been catching up on a lot of lost sleep.

Now, with the pleasantries out of the way, I realize Doom III has been getting a lot of flak from random people (yours truly included) about how dark it is. But I never said it makes it any less fun. People who seem to be complaining about this are probably new to id software’s games and don’t realize that’s how a good chunk of them look. Actually most of them apart from the (then Apogee’s) excellent Commander Keen series, of course.

Anyway, here are some shots of Quake as I’ve been playing it a lot recently. And yes, it was rather dark and gloomy too. It starts of sort of like so,

And before you know it, it gets darker.

So if you want a bright and cheerful game, buy something else from somebody else. Don’t bitch and moan.

It’s just, I can’t believe how easy (and short) it is, even on the “hard” setting. I remember it being hard and long. (Note the choice of words.) Then I remembered, when I first played/passed Q1 and Q2, I wasn’t gaming with a mouse and keyboard, just a keyboard.

And that’s clearly not the easiest way to go about things. Considering you can be shot from above or below, and PGUP-PGDWN aren’t particularly smooth ways of looking up and down while moving around.

I did almost nothing this entire term. Which was good, for all the time I got to spend doing nothing. But extremely bad, for this past week. As a testament to how hairy things got, regular updates to the journal and photolog were suspended. Think about it, that’s some serious working.

(On an unrelated-yet-related note, I was talking to this person earlier, and she’s nearly convinced me it is an absolutely great idea to get a masters degree in math along the way too. You know, since it’s along the freaking way.)

Anyway, as always, 3-4 sleepless nights and I’ve pulled through. I like amazing myself with 28-30 hour stretches of absolute productivity. All class related work done, and the end term crunch has now been reduced to just ‘end term’. And now if you’d excuse me, I’d like to sit aimlessly and bask in my pseudo sense of achievement.

Except they aren’t really conversations as much as they are eavesdropping. And they’re really more short descriptions of things heard than real excerpts. In my defence, I didn’t really want to listen to these, but proximity to the conversationees sort of forced me to.

Honest.

ACT I - At a crowded 'Indianized' pub and grill

The guy in the table next to ours is going a tad overboard with his tale telling. He’s with this (arguably gorgeous) woman, and obviously, he aims to impress. Apparently, he’s been to India (it comes up when he doesn’t mispronounce two dishes while ordering), so she’s excitedly asking him to describe how his trip was and so on. And then it starts, he begins to describe (among other things) how he cocktailed with (not one, but TWO) “Maharajas” and how they still live in extreme luxury ruling everyone, while people still revere them.

Now let’s back up the truck a bit, *beep* *beep* *beep*. It is an obvious fact most guys aren’t too interesting. So once in a while they (OK, we) need to stretch the truth a bit in order to make ourselves appear cooler than we really are. Now I don’t know if you know this, but there is this unwritten rule between guys that when one starts doing this, and another realizes it’s happening, he doesn’t just cut in and burst the bubble that’s being weaved. That’s just wrong. Fun, and a great way to win her trust, but wrong.

So I just sat there, some 2.5 feet away, biting my tongue trying not to scream “I AM FROM INDIA AND I DON’T KNOW OF ANY MAHARAJAS RULING, NOR WOULD I REVERE THEM IF THEY DID. WE’RE THE LARGEST DEMOCRACY IN THE WORLD, YES, BIGGER THAN YOURS YOU MORON”.

And I looked at her looking at him all wide eyed, and my tongue was beginning to bleed. But I didn’t do anything. Rules are rules. Actually, no, it had nothing to do with any rules. I just realized blood in my mouth is better than blood on the ground.

He was well built, yes he was.

ACT II - Queer folk at a coffee house

I’ve been spending more and more time at a neighbouring coffee house. My temporary not-really-legitimately acquired internet connection at home worked out to be a lot more temporary than I’d originally imagined, and I needed a quick fix. Anyway, spending entire days in coffee houses gives you the chance to meet with the most interesting sorts of people. And by “meet interesting people”, I also include (arguably unintentional) spying upon the odd behaviour of very different sorts of people — from the nose picking (yet strangely alluring) blue haired goth chick to the 80 year old man with a Bible trying to get you to convert with the promise of a free meal.

So, last evening, for about 3 hours, I got to listen to a couple of gay friends talk about their respective recent string of dates. In mind blowing detail I might add. And no, don’t look at me like that, they were 2 feet away too, and I didn’t carry my headphones. Anyway, I’d always assumed it’d probably gross me out hearing the… let’s just call it “cuddle chemistry” (you don’t even want to know where I picked up that term) details when it came to a couple of men. But no, it didn’t bother me in the least and seemed totally natural and genuinely sweet at points.

(But then again, continuing in such a manner, there is a good chance I will say something that I’d rather not have “archived forever” on the internet, so I’d rather change the tone just a bit, and move on to the next act of our little monologue.)

And oh my god, I didn’t realize the sorts of things people are capable of noticing about you. Firstly, men aren’t supposed to know and use colours like “mauve” in conversations, and secondly, you don’t dump someone because the underside of their sole was not of a certain colour scheme match with their belt strap. Or, should you?

ACT III - Pr0n in Chinatown

Now this is probably the weirdest of these three. Like I was saying a few days ago, parts of Boston under the “theatre” district apparently almost completely shut down on Monday evenings. And I was hungry, so as I was idly walking around looking for a place to grab a bite. I stumbled into Boston’s Chinatown, and this shady looking, you guessed it, Chinese place. But I figured I would try it since hadn’t too much of a choice.

I walked in on the not-so-busy wait staff enjoying and excitedly commenting on some seriously oriental pr0n right there on a TV viewable to all customers. Now the weird part was that it didn’t seem to bother anyone that a customer had walked in, and they dealt with me as they would any other customer given any other circumstance. Even weirder still, were this flick was running with extreme subtitiles, complete with “oooh”s and “mmmm”s and such. And the weirdest part was I wasn’t entirely sure if this was some scene in which the woman was being raped or whether she was being pleasured. Yes, it was of such stupendous quality.

The kinds of things I run into at times surprises me. And oh, the food wasn’t all that bad either.

And may I reiterate — Man it feels good to be able to write again.

Boring flights induced verbage.

   You hear tales of great success everyday. If you pay close attention, you’ll notice a commonly recurring theme which begins to emerge. They usually start with this person who was handed very little to them when they first started (to make an exaggerated point, let’s say they were born blind), went through exceptional struggle, and came out on top to be the best they could be – in whatever avenue they chose to pursue. Truly inspiring, yes. What they fail to articulate is another aspect of this tale.

   I, like most other people I am sure, have let a lot of this go into my head. I fail to see what’s blatantly obvious. You set the origin point for such folk (due to their unfortunate circumstances or whatever) so low, that any point they end up can be construed to be a great success. Any path they tread will involve hurdles most other people (you or I) will not ever get to experience. But before you realize it, you’ve tuned yourself into believing, unless you’ve started WAAAY LOW and/or STRUGGLED REALLY HARD, you haven’t really achieved anything.

   Now why am I bringing this up seemingly out of the blue? I was having this conversation earlier and well, it really wasn’t much of a conversation. It was just me bitching about how easy everything’s apparently been for me. That I’d been feeling terribly jaded and didn’t really feel like I’d amounted to anything. That anything I bothered to try, I ended up being better than most people at with little or no real toil. Picked singing — won every single contest I’ve been at and performed at a lot of cool places and national radio. Pick instruments, do similar things. Start complicated research, get enough interesting things to talk about within a short while, and be let out alone to handle myself in this kid state. Get asked by different people when I’m getting done with my studies, so I can work with them? Start publishing pictures, get noticed by reporters in large news papers and get interviewed. You know what I’m talking about. I had this large list, but rather than attempting to sound proud or stroke my ego bullet-listing life accomplishments, I was sulking and generally depressed as to how little of a challenge any of these have been. How I haven’t really experienced a thrill of achievement or success.

   That on top of this, (or because I oft sounded this way) I’ve even been accused in the past of being ungrateful for all that was “handed” to me and I took for granted.

   After patiently listening to me go on and on for quite a while in this manner, she said a couple of things that seem so obvious in hindsight. Whether or not my life changes tremendously as a result of these words, I am forever indebted to the effect these words had on me. She said:
1. You’re glorifying struggle and failure. I seriously doubt it will be as fun and rewarding for someone who goes through them.
2. Why does everything on that list, everything you’ve tended to mention so far base itself on intellectual or creative pursuits? Why not you try something totally different, something physical for instance. Because you don’t try things that you’ll find hard.

   I was obviously floored, I don’t like being told obvious things of this sort to my face.

   Whatever I say about not being ambitious or being totally content, whenever something matters to me, I never aim below extreme greatness. Whether I get there is a totally different issue. I need to be there at a point, a point most people would regard as tremendously ambitious, and yet feel just “average” about it.

   Screw you world, if you design the system the way you want to, I will circumvent it the way I want to. I am going to try something hard for me, fail, try again, end up mediocre and nowhere close to greatness, and yet feel like I’ve made a huge accomplishment. So, for now, my immediate goals are set. I pick two activities I am guaranteed to suck at. Any two — I am now leaning toward something which involves some manual dexterity and creativity like painting or pottery, and another which is more physically demanding, like a sport or dance.

   If neither of these seem to do the trick for whatever reason, I know something that will. I will aim to sculpt my body, a quest that does not end until I’ve matched up to the square jawed homunculi of Calvin Klein ads which threaten to make every day an existential holocaust.

   Sweet sensation of relative success, here I come.

It feels good to be able to write again. I don’t even particularly care if you liked it.

I am getting over one of a few addictions. You know when people try to quit, say smoking, they stock up on nicotine patches and gum and so on? I’ve been doing something of the sort recently.

I’ve been sober for quite a while now. I don’t feel any better, but apparently this is good for me. I know you’re wondering, that’s not enough apple juice, what if you run out? Not to worry little one, if you look really carefully behind those bottles, you have a stockpile of other juices.

Now if that runs out too, we’re in trouble.