The Easy Road

I dislike how often things in the last nine years have been so political, and while the trend has been there probably since at least the 2000 election things do seem to be getting more intense, maybe in the last two or three election cycles. It’s annoying. EVERYthing has to tie back to red vs. blue, right vs. left, Trump vs. literally everyone else. Regardless of how you feel about specific people or parties or issues or whatever, can we all agree that it feels as though there’s been more media presence on all things political?  Even if it’s since Obama’s second term or whatever, not just the present administration.

Here’s what I care about.  I want to contribute to the world, because I just can’t rely on the government to do it for me.  I intend to make the best impact, and the biggest difference, to as many people as I can, and to make it easier for those who come after me.

I started writing this post on Sunday, January 28.  On the 29th, I found this:

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/poll-millennials-say-country-wrong-track-they-re-not-n841526

I guess I really am a Millennial, and I guess I’m a little disappointed in the fact that I’m not alone in feeling like the world is falling apart but we aren’t. The fact that the majority of my generation distrusts both political parties (rather, neither major party has a majority of trust) isn’t really bad in my mind, especially since the poll suggests that we are far more focused on issues and believe in our local involvement more than our political involvement. But I keep going back to “Waiting on the World to Change” and how that was supposed to be some kind of generational rallying song. The Republicans were in office and we young people, the rising stars of the next generation, were just waiting for the moment when we’d take over and finally have a chance to cure America’s political system of its ills. In 2008, I think we maybe thought it was happening.  A black president! A leader that the rest of the world loves as much as we do! (But back then I only had a vague idea of how much “we” was actually “me”, and not much idea of how different the rest of “us” could be.)

And here we are. Things in Washington feel very much the same, and I should know; I live here. On the plus side, life goes on like normal. My friends and I are finding new restaurants, enjoying the museums, and learning to live with the vague improvement that is the new Metro system. On the downside, there’s all this crap about the gigantic machine that can’t move, partly because it’s too large to do so, and partly because it doesn’t want to, and it’s all just down the street.

But I’m so happy at the idea that I’m not alone in my desire to make changes directly, in the idea that my specific actions can directly make a difference. And it’s a belief. I don’t think we’ve really proven to ourselves or anyone else that we are making a difference more in the community than in the national political arena. But I won’t be alone in trying, or in finding out.

Lightening my Shoulders

It’s not like I want my doctors to be wrong, but sometimes it’s annoying when they’re right. Weight gain, inability to sleep, feeling fuzzy all the time, getting tunnel vision, severe exhaustion, thoughts of death, wanting to hurt myself… Why does it all have to be stress? 

School is over for the year, the heaviest course load of grad school, the most classes I’ve taken in a single year since 2007. The new job is settling down, as we gain expertise and experience and settle into routine, finally able to start making improvements. It’s a little fun to hear that my parents are as exasperated with my brother as I am, and the edges are starting to fray, which makes me know more deeply that I’m not wrong, my brother is. 

And as soon as all the stress just barely begins to lift… I feel better. 

I don’t want to be continually stressed out of existence, and believe me when I say no one is happier that maybe the worst is over, even if just for now. I just wish that some of my symptoms might be due to a vitamin deficiency, or lack of exercise, or even seasonal affective disorder. Why do all the bad things get tied in to just one major condition with no easy fix and no defined set of symptoms that someone can point to and say “you have stress, category 3, because you exhibit seven of these 12 primary symptoms for more than one month straight”?

I remarked to my psychiatrist that as an engineer, I despise the fact that such a soft definition can exist, though I also completely understand that biological systems vary widely in their sensitivity and response to stimuli, and it’s only made worse by the addition of nurture to nature. But I still dislike it. Bleh.

So fuck you, stress. I’m gonna do nothing but sleep, play video games, and hang out with my friends for the next week. The hell with school, the hell with work, the hell with my brother, and the hell with anything else that comes my way that I don’t want right now, you can all wait. 2018 is right around the corner, and I don’t have time to come into it as anything less than awesome.

(P.S. Have you ever actually said “fuck you, stress” out loud? Like, with other people in hearing distance? It’s really cathartic. On a related topic, this post comes to you from the hallowed halls of D.C. Metro subway car 7393)

Trickle-Down Charity

Has anyone ever considered trying to invest money and effort into charity with the expectation that it will only benefit the situation generations ahead?  Is that what some charity is already?  Most?  None?

One of my friends spent his evening yesterday packing boxes of supplies for the poorer parts of Africa and Asia, goodwill kinds of things destined for those who literally have the least, and I count that as a noble effort without any sarcasm or reservation.  But it has occurred to me in the past, and again when he told me about it, that while I do routinely donate a fair amount of money each year to charitable organizations, they tend to help people closer to home with different sets of problems.  I think I’ve specified them before, but let’s restate just for the sake of understanding my context.

Help Our Military Endure (HOME): supporting deployed troops in combat zones: http://helpourmilitaryendure.org/

Ben Sullivan Memorial Fund: supporting mental health research and the ability to talk about depression and anxiety: https://gkccfonlinedonations.org/sullivan/sullivan.asp

Ascanius Institute: promoting classics education for elementary school students and others: http://www.ascaniusyci.org/

Traditionally, these three constituted the bulk of my giving, mostly because I believe in those causes and because I know the people running the organizations.  Recently, it’s grown to four with the addition of FIRST robotics (https://www.firstinspires.org/robotics/frc) and advancing STEM education, especially for disadvantaged and underrepresented populations.

And that summarizes my idea of what’s important, and what I think I can make a direct material contribution to in my life.  Supporting the troops that keep America safe; keeping my friends and family (and strangers) safe from themselves when they want to hurt themselves in the worst of ways; and making education available to children, when it can matter most to their life and paths.

…. and it’s all here.  For American citizens, many of them living right down the street from me.

This is where the annoying parts of my brain kick in and begin asking really unnecessary questions, like “why worry about people who already have enough to eat when other people don’t have that?” or “if you really cared, wouldn’t you give to a wider range of charities than just these?”  These are toxic questions that I try to avoid or rationalize, and I think I can reasonably say that I’m doing a good thing.  There are causes I have, that I value for my own personal reasons, and I am supporting them to a level appropriate to their importance and my ability to give.

I don’t want to get into the actual theory of trickle-down economics, because I have no idea how it’s supposed to work except in the broadest of terms, and I have no education or direct experience in how it has evolved over time.  I also don’t want to ignite a political debate for it.  But the point I’m starting to feel is that I feel like aside from HOME, my charities seem targeted to building a sustainable, educated population.  Building education and opportunities for students of all backgrounds results in a broader civil culture in the country, better equipped to participate in political elections and discourse, better able to support the intellectual prowess (and especially STEM competitiveness) in the global arena, and a population that can help itself and help others.  I want to make it so that more people will feel like I do: that people are most important of all things around us, that we can help each other.

There may be a part of me that thinks that, by donating to supporting the youth of America, we can be better prepared as a nation to help other places in the world… in a number of years.  We have the wealth and basic technology to help all the slums and disaster areas of the world right now, if we had the desire and political willpower to do so.  But in thirty years, I hope that some of the kids I work with now will be the ones to institute the political willpower and national drive to actually execute the actions we have the capability for now, and that they will be able to lead technological shifts that allow us to reliably avoid some natural disasters, and the global apocalypse that could be coming from ecological or economic or astronomical sources.

So.  Is it better for me to try to invest in the long-term future of the country with the idea that we’ll be better prepared to solve the larger problems in the long run, or should I provide help to those who need it at this moment?  Or both?  Is one “better” than the other?

I hate those questions, and it might be because I think there’s a poor assumption made that one kind of help is inherently better than the other, when really both should be lauded.

So here’s my conclusion for the day: at least I’m doing something.  Something is better than nothing, when it comes to well-directed, well-organized, thought-out help.  And I will give the standard Thanksgiving encouragement that you’ll hear from other people and sources through the rest of the year, just like every year: reflect on what you have and what makes life good for you, and consider the problems you see around you.  What can you do to help, even just a little bit?  It doesn’t matter so much to me if it’s the immediate problem right in front of you, or if it’s the long term fixes to the catastrophes lurking in the wings.  Just remember the CPR maxim: “adequate care provided is better than perfect care withheld”

Thanks for thinking about it.  Thank you more for doing something about it.

——————–

Bob Award for Best Coding Aid, At Home And On The Job: Taylor Swift

What the fuck, Tay Tay.  I honestly like your music, and I think you’ve got some good writing skillz and some wonderful pipes.  But “Ready For It” has proven to be a wonderful song to put on and ignore while I code computer programs at work.  I don’t get it.  The basic development of a concept that netted me my first published work (paraphrased: “how to dodge space junk without really trying”) consisted of two days straight listening to “22“, and now I’m watching you turn into some kind of N7 Fury or other biological-augmented adept or sentinel or something and frankly it’s just distracting while I try to silence space computers from complaining when they get cold or lonely or whatever.  What is it about you that brings out my technical side?  Might be the clothes.  Let’s keep working on that line of thinking.

… though, come to think of it, a lot of your songs bring me back to high school in different ways, none of them real (because I don’t think I’d ever heard of you until well after I’d moved back to Maryland, so in the 2012 timeframe).  But that’s another post.  Just keep doing what you do; I bought “reputation” so we’ll see if that can carry me through the next few school projects and finish the year strong for Fermi.  If you come to town, Ms. Swift, I will happily buy you a drink to thank you for your (material, albeit peripheral) contributions to the technological success of the American Space Program, and we can discuss some of my other projects and how you might be able to contribute.  I’m working on this fantastic thesis…

New Year’s Resolutions

A brief selection… and to be honest, these are probably more of the “after grad school” type of resolution

1. Invite someone who doesn’t agree with me politically out for a beer and some civil discussion
2. See at least two new museums, to which I’ve never been before
3. Revitalize my knowledge and enjoyment of the DC nightlife
4. Take a road trip, several hundred miles, destination TBD
5. Renew my passport…
6. … and get one more use out of the old one before it goes

The Human Element

Trump has had two interesting side effects on my view of the government, I realized the other day.  First, it has made me realize (or remember) that Congress is actually made of people, real people who make it very easy for us to usually forget that they’re more or less like us.  Second, it made me grateful that Congress can stand in the way of the President.

I think the problem is that politicians are easy to hate, and they make it easy to hate them.  It’s not that they like to be hated, but they do like to say things like “as my esteemed colleague seems to be forgetting, the thing he’s tried to do has already failed twice” or “my good friend, the senator from this other state, hasn’t been very good at representing the will of her constituency”.  They pick on each other publicly, and we’re all going numb to it.  It’s rare for anyone from one party to defend, support, or compliment anyone from the other.  And it’s not like I want more things like the shooting at the congressional ballgame practice match (or other shootings against politicians of all stripes), but it was good to hear about the democrat being the first person to get to the hospital to check on the republican who was really bad off.

But more than that, I want to remark about Brad Wenstrup, a former army field surgeon (and still in the Army Reserve, apparently) providing first responder care to Steve Scalise until Scalise could be transported to a hospital.  Take a moment and think about that.  For a moment, in that sentence, I can write about two men, one saving the other’s life, and you might not realize that they’re both elected to the US House of Representatives, and for a moment, maybe it didn’t matter to either of them.  The man shot began praying, and the other man, you could argue, answered the prayer.  I don’t know much about either beyond this story, and maybe I should research more and decide what I think of them as congressmen, but… I kind of like leaving that part of their careers by the wayside for now, for a while, and keeping them as people who needed and gave help.  They were human beings to each other, and one called on his faith while the other called on his skills and former life to help.  That means something to me, and it makes the both of them feel a bit more like the people they represent, instead of being a suit and tie and a voice that I might not always agree with.

There’s also the idea that Congress might actually be living up to its reputation of being obstructionist and difficult and intractable.  They’re pushing back against a lot of the policies I don’t like coming out of the White House, and for the first time, the folks in both houses are actually doing two things to prevent stupidity and abhorrent behavior: in many cases, they’re able to passively resist by being as ineffective as before.  In cases where the proposed policies are explicitly contrary to American law and ideals, they’ve actually been pretty good about crossing the aisle to say that it’s stupid and we’re not going to let this go on.  And while I don’t wish for a dysfunctional government, I’ll take it if needed to prevent stupidity.  And I’m happy that occasionally, when they aren’t dysfunctional, they can identify places where they can say, even if they don’t agree with which direction the country (or some particular policy) should go, they can agree enough that this particular policy or another is not the way.

I’m grateful for these things.

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One of my favorite artists, Danielle Corsetto, is kickstarting a full edition of Girls With Slingshots, one of my favorite webcomics of all time!  It was opened with a goal of $50k, passed that in the first 24 hours (I think, not sure), but is currently well funded.  All I can say is that it deserves every cent, and I don’t think you’ll regret the investment.

Sometimes, It Doesn’t Work Twice

A few years ago, I wrote a post about one of my ex girlfriends getting engaged.  She’d been with the guy for years and it felt natural, and she deserved him (and he deserved her, so far as I can tell).  And I felt it so odd to feel happiness for her, pure and untainted by jealousy or nostalgia, but I embraced it and went with it.  They’re still together, and I’m still happy for them.

Last night, I was pissing around Facebook (which I specifically avoid doing, most of the time, for reasons we’ll see) and found pictures of another girlfriend from high school, in the act of getting married.  I did not handle this one nearly so well.  I didn’t sleep too well last night, and it’s one of these things where every time I stop thinking about it for a while, my brain will randomly inject the picture of her being walked down the isle by her father back into my stream of consciousness.

Let’s be clear.  I am happy for her, and certainly I don’t think I should be with her any more. We dated literally more than half our lives ago and we’ve both moved on to other people, but I guess I never expected her to be quite this gone from me.  Not that I’d ever have another chance, anyway.  Why does this matter?

My doctors, lately, have praised my expanding emotional range, saying I appear to be moving back to a range that’s about one expected of a “normal” adult, and I’ve enjoyed it in bits and pieces.  Certainly it’s fun to laugh and actually mean it, and I’d practiced with feeling sad through movies and TV shows, because I hadn’t too much opportunity to be really sad in the past few months (worried, anxious, terrified, yes, but not sad).  One of the techniques I’m supposed to be practicing is to ask myself to describe the sensation of the emotion, in the language of physical feelings.  I don’t know that I can describe this as a feeling on my skin or in my stomach; I’d say it’s more of the intense desire to turn away and recoil.  Maybe it’s a little like those jump-scare flash animations from the early-2000s internet, where they make you stare at the screen for a few seconds and then throw up a picture from The Exorcist and play some really loud scream through your headphones or whatever, where you freak the hell out for a few seconds and jump up and run out the door before you really realize what’s going on, though I really want to emphasize that there’s no revulsion in my feeling, it just is that visceral flight instinct.  Why on earth should I react like that, so strongly, about someone I haven’t seen in person for years?

There’s also the slight sensation of unease or disappointment in myself; I immediately thought of how uncomfortable this made me, and it wasn’t until a few minutes later that I came to the conscious thought that I should be happy, dammit, for her, for them, for their future together, and why should I be so selfish?  I don’t really know if it was a natural progression of emotion or if it came about by my foreground thoughts guiding me to what is traditionally considered to be the “right” feeling for the situation.  And I am happy for them, I freely admit that.

Well, there’s always the quote about “if two people can stay friends after they were together, either they never were really in love, or they still are”.

While writing this, though, I remembered the second question I’m supposed to ask myself, after trying to describe the feeling of the emotion: “can I ‘be’ with this, can I live with this feeling?”  And it’s good to not only describe the current state, but also figure out how to incorporate it into your life going forward, and maybe part of the problem I’ve got is that I don’t know how to go forward.  Obviously I will, there’s not really a choice to be made there, but there have to be some adjustments and I just don’t know what they are.

I think the best things I can do are to be supportive and happy for them, when I next talk to them, and the love-languages part of me is yelling to find a wedding registry so I can get them something to properly start their new lives together.

—– Breaking here, out of time.  I’ll write more later, there’s more here that needs talking about

An Open Letter to Stefan Karl Stefansson

Dear Stephan Karl,

Apparently, you’ve become one of the most successful memes of the year (I think “successful” is a good word for it, though it’s not like they really get ranked), but I admit I’m late to the party. I first remember seeing the Robbie Rotten memes a few months ago and wondering what the hell I was looking at, but without a name, I’d figured I wouldn’t figure out that particular craze in time. No matter, I can live without it, I told myself.

A few weeks later, Aplfisher used this particularly hideous and catchy mashup as an outtro for one of his streams, posted the link, and I became enamored with this particular variant of “We Are Number One”, both because of the random phrases strewn throughout (all yours, and all sans context) and from the dark feel of Melanie Martinez‘ music. It’s not unrealistic to believe I’ve listened to the mashup fifty times in the last month, and both of the stem songs nearly as much.

Because I knew your song as a meme, and because of the production quality, I honestly couldn’t tell if it was a children’s show or some kind of parody (I later used the power of the internet to find out for sure), but the energy and fun feel got to me, and I’ve begun to really enjoy the song and your performance.

Your singing in particular deserves a callout, because I never really appreciated how hard it is to switch between an evil monologue and singing with tremolo in the span of a bar, from “here’s a little lesson” to “in trickery”.  But there’s more, there’s variety and energy and an obvious stage presence even in a green screen video, with the right amount of overacting and hyperbole that just really makes me want to be able to adopt your style. If I ever get to entertain an audience like you have, I hope I can do as well, with humor and just the right kind of intensity. You can even do it on the fly, throwing out little lines at Mani Svavars during your Facebook live stream, and it just made me happy to know that it wasn’t all scripted, that you could do it on your own and in the moment.

I know you’re having a hard time right now, but I hold out hope for a recovery. In the event it doesn’t happen, I hope you understand and rejoice in knowing that you’ve apparently gained a huge fan base in a way you probably never expected, and one in addition to the children’s lives you’ve brightened. You won’t be forgotten. You are number one, just as you said.

-Bob

P.S., I’ve tried watching bits and pieces of the actual show from which this originates, but it’s weird as hell and, being a 32-year-old american, I might not be the right demographic.  I guess it just proves, though, that children’s shows, done right, can be at least a little interesting to adults (looking at you, Pixar)

P.P.S., it’s been a while since I laughed so hard at anything like some of the other, even more ridiculous mixes of the meme. This is the best one I’ve found (not safe for work, be careful with speakers being loud)

The Summer Gods

It’s odd to have bands that I like more than anyone else in my friends and family groups, but I really like Third Eye Blind, and because I got into them in high school, I’ve enjoyed their music for literally half of my life.  And last night, I got to see them live.

It was overwhelming, the kind of thing that will take me a while to process, but the best overall line is that my brother said they put on a hell of a show, and they absolutely did.  Everything was just right, and the only thing that stood out was that obviously Stephen Jenkins was in control of the situation… but we wanted him to be, and he rewarded us.

And there were moments I never really expected, either, like when they played “Wounded”, which never struck me as being a particularly memorable song from Blue but I just happened to have been listening to a lot a work, lately (the first three albums were staples of my high school career). But ultimately, it was everything I could have hoped for. The singing was strong and on point, with a heavy dose of audience participation in basically every song, a few breaks here and there for fan appreciation (hearing about how our support made the band what it is and our love for the music kept the first album “in the present tense” after twenty years).  We learned that Jenkins had written a song as something to be sung in a bar at closing time, and we all sang our hearts out for three or four rounds of the chorus after he taught us the words we already knew.  We got to feel the bass drum hits through our chests in those subtle and changing ways through songs that I’d memorized a decade ago, and hear opening guitar riffs from an album eight months old.  And we learned that there was supposed to be an EP coming out for this tour, but “We’re Third Eye Blind; we fucked up.”  I got to wear my 3eb shirt for the first time, and I was only maybe a hundred feet from the stage, slightly right of center, so I could see the tenseness in Jenkin’s jaw and see the exhaustion creeping into the drummer in “London”.

What a ride.  I need to keep thinking about it, but hopefully more will come later.

---

I should add (not as a footnote, so much as icing on the cake) that Silversun Pickups and Ocean Park Standoff opened, and both were fantastic.  OPS had a remarkable stage presence for a small band and did a great job at keeping energy up for a just-filling stadium, and did all the right things for a live band; they’ve got an EP out which is pretty good, and I can honestly recommend.

SSPU has a moderately good history with me.  I own their first two albums and really enjoy the music, but I saw them at a DC101 Chili Cookoff a few years ago and wasn’t really impressed by their set.  It seemed like the studio added a lot to their sound, and I didn’t really understand their setlist.  Beyond that, I’ve always felt like SSPU was basically the Brian Aubert show, and I get it, he’s a major force in the band, but I just wish that they’d balance things better in the music videos, somehow, and make sure the other members were full contributors instead of just beams propping up the pedestal.

Last night, though, they redeemed themselves and more.  Aubert was a frontman, but just as he should have been, and it was obvious that the whole band was in on the action (an impression reinforced by having Circadian Rhythm in the playlist, sung by Nikki Monninger and providing a great downtempo counterbalance to the high-energy songs around it). The sound was much more cohesive, natural, and they had all the energy that a band with two people sitting down can have.  The setlist was just right, the mixing was appropriately bass-heavy, they bantered right and finished with the favorites, and basically they gave me just what I wanted.  Plus, the drummer is still fucking insane and keyboards were on point.

Well done, folks, and thank you.

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SPOILERS FROM THIS SPOT ON: here are the setlists

http://www.setlist.fm/setlist/silversun-pickups/2017/pier-six-concert-pavilion-baltimore-md-be49d12.html

http://www.setlist.fm/setlist/third-eye-blind/2017/pier-six-concert-pavilion-baltimore-md-3e49d13.html

The biggest complaint I can have about the 3EB playlist is that I would have loved to have more from Out of the Vein and Ursa Major. The playlist was a 20th anniversary tribute to their first album, and I loved the opportunity to hear the songs I never thought would make it into a concert, like Motorcycle Drive By and Burning Man and Narcolepsy, and certainly there’s something to be said about letting a sold-out crowd belting out “I don’t wanna go to London” and feeling the emotion push back from the stage for the call-response. But I was also hoping to get Monotov,

… and, of course, all this means is that I have to go see them again.  Can do.

 

Tightening Circles

So here I am, again, and I’ve good memories and bad ones, new and old, lots on my mind. First, the good, as it should be. I’ve heard three of my best friends say wonderful things to me: two of them, unrelated, have called me an uncle to their children, and I don’t think under ever been quite so honored. A third said I was her rock in hard times… Not bad for having known each other for nearly fifteen years, half our lives. These are great things to hear, and I’m proud, happy, eager to fulfill the duties these titles bring. 

On the other side of things, I feel alone. I can’t quite seem to reach out properly and tell people face to face about what’s going on in the day to day life I’ve inherited over the past few years of work, school, and relationships. It’s getting harder to find people and attach to them, be able to open up, and I have to admit the friends I do have are evolving as their lives progress without me. Not their fault, not anyone’s fault, just a consequence of having lived this long. 

This summer will be busy and fun and tiring, and then I’ll cap it off with a last semester of class and taking on more responsibility in a new job. No new house. No new computer, road trips. No money for any of that, and not many people with whom to share it, anyway. I want a companion, time, and the ability to relax and enjoy both. I want to continue mutt recent trends of escapism and freedom or advancing gently outside of the contracted comfort zone I currently inhabit. 
Time to finish fixing the hole where the rain came in, it was causing my mind to wander back to years ago, lives ago, making me want things that just aren’t possible anymore. Keep cleaning my apartment, deep cleaning, keep making progress and doing the things I’ve wanted and need to do for months. Spend time appropriately and not too wisely, but well enough. 

Confidence is maybe finally growing back

Imagining

I heard in high school that fantasies were actually really healthy for kids. I don’t really remember the context, but of course I applied it toward sex, and I think that was kinda what they meant anyway. Imagine what kinda of things you’d like to do and the kinds of people you’d like to do them with, get used to yourself, save some time and heartbreak by seeing which fantasies lasted the longest, with the ideas that seemed to linger maybe being more of what you wanted long-term. This was supposed to apply to relationships, careers, everything. 

I still fantasize, and even think about what I used to think would be awesome for me, and not even most of it is sexual, but of course that’s part of what I want in a relationship. And I can still tell you all the physical parts I find most attractive, eye color, hair, hips, clothes. But who cares? Green eyes and red hair and and freckles has no bearing whatsoever on whether or not I’ll be able to stand them in four months.

So I set about fantasizing about my ideal personality, and I came up either completely blank, or a combination of all my recent girlfriends.

I know, fuck me, right?

How do you define the ideal partners’ personality without being completely fake? How can anyone match what you want every way, but not be a fabrication? I guess the two options here are that there is no such thing, and I need to make sure I change my expectations and be willing to compromise, or she does (or even they do) exist and I need to keep looking. Both are hard to consider, and I have no real idea of how to proceed in either case. 

I want her to be sane (in the sense of having any formally-diagnosed mental illnesses under treatment, not in the “all women are insane, deal with it” way). I want her to be kind, of course, but funny, really funny. Make her self-contained, not relying on anyone to make her whole; make us complement each other, not complete the other.

And, hell, while I’m dreaming, might as well give her hair like Ramona Flowers.

——————–

Currently playing: 

Foo Fighters – Best Of You

Van Morrison – Did Ye Get Healed?

Blink 182/Robert Smith – All Of This