I just woke up. It’s 1:38pm. My back kinda hurts a little. My throat kinda hurts a little. But I bet I can fix these things. I bought a pack of cigarettes last night (Sampoerna menthol) and I smoked one stick. I was tempted to smoke another right after waking up even though I don’t feel all that good. It’s funny how these routine things just creep up on you. I was thinking, man, if I only I had that sort of routine stuff with productive things like reading or writing. And then I remember now, while writing this, that I used to be like that with books- I used to read until I fell asleep, and wake up and immediately continue reading before doing anything else.
I had a rather amusing, interesting dream- all I remember was going out with my girlfriend and bumping into one of her secondary school friends, and the girlfriend had to go to the toilet, so I was stuck with her friend- who’s fabulously rich- and we proceeded to have a long conversation/argument about life and love and money. I can’t remember the specific details, but I remember that we had a major disagreement about something and we both got rather standoffish and passive aggressive (we both had different interpretions of the idea of broken, and polished) and I think ultimately she realized I wasn’t insulting her as much as I was describing how all of us are (broken), and then we had some degree of reconciliation (she told me I was a good screenwriter, which I thought was odd). The funny thing is, I’ve never really talked much with this person- maybe exchanged a few SMSes in secondary school, maybe read each other’s blogs, and maybe met once for lunch at McDonald’s, but that was it, really. We’re not friends on Facebook or anything like that. It’s so strange that she would enter my mind, fully formed, in a dream. I wonder why. Brains are so strange like that.
I’m reminded of two other people I personally considered friends who aren’t a part of my life anymore. Interestingly, they’re both women. I wonder if that’s a coincidence, and if I can speak about this without coming across as sexist, because I really don’t hold anything against them for being women. I think women are more complex than men- with the case of the women, our differences seem to have become irreconcilable for them, while it is clear (to me) that we still have much in common that we care about. In comparison, with guys, if we fight, it’s either a big deal and we go our separate ways, or it’s not a big deal and we don’t care about it anymore. With girls it seems more complex- it’s possible to love and hate the same person to a far greater degree.
That’s just my intuitive stance on things. It’s probably overly simplistic and it doesn’t capture the fact that some women are more black-and-white than most men, and some men are more complex than most women… is the heuristic still useful if it doesn’t always apply all the time? Technically there is no heuristic that applies all the time. So I suppose it’s only useful as long as it guides practice/application in the real world. But even that is a little complicated, because we tend to cherry-pick our practices in the world, so we focus on what confirm our theories and throw out what doesn’t. We’ll find some way to explain a gap in the theory, instead of discarding it and seeking a new one. That seems to be a consistent human failing that we just got to work on.
My stomach hurts a little, and for some reason, several times while writing this I got the impulse to pause the timer and open up chrome and check my Facebook. It’s a total addiction, impulse, drug… it’s really not healthy! After I finish writing this, I’m going to maybe look for something to eat and drink, shower, maybe have a cigarette, get some reading done (so that I don’t spend too much time sitting in front of the computer all at once) and then do up my resume. Yesterday wasn’t the most perfect day, I think because of a bad sleep choice and too much dust.
Oh yeah, as I was cleaning my room, I wondered- would I have gotten less messed up (nasally) if I had just thrown out one article of clothing everytime I entered my room, instead of trying to do a major overhaul? That always strikes me as the best way to declutter- instead of doing something big, do something small, over and over again. That way you don’t get the trauma of large scale action (which can be cathartic, I guess, but I seem to have a sensitive nose)
Oh yeah, yesterday I discovered a thread on reddit (through /r/bestof) that was /r/listentothis and it has a list of 15 fantastic artists that the world doesn’t know yet, and a fantastic discussion about the future of music. Reading it was an absolute fucking pleasure. On the other hand, I was also reading an article on the New York Times about how pasta ought to be eaten. They talked about how you shouldn’t use a spoon (except when the sauce is really watery), how some pasta should be hanging off the fork because otherwise it must’ve been overcooked… and the more I read it, the more I thought, oh god, what a crock of shit, they’re trying to legislate culture. People used to eat spaghetti with their hands before cutlery was invented. STOP LEGISLATING CULTURE, let people be. Jesus Christ. I don’t understand why we do this. Okay I can understand things like “Don’t sit with your legs on the table, that’s disrespectful”- but what the fuck is up with specific ideas like “leave some spaghetti hanging off your fork”? I can’t be fucked with understanding this sort of thing. I’d much rather engage in a productive discussion about the future of music. Enjoy it here: