December Wolves: All I Know Is I Hope That We're Better Than That

The title comes from an ALL song called Better Than That. This post is obviously based on the fact that I'm not.

Okay. Jersey Shore.

First. I'm not Italian in any kind of meaningful quantity, so the use of guido as a term of endearment and solidarity is intriguing. I mean, the people (who are only a little bit older than me) are dumb enough to have no idea of the history of the word, but hey. It's their history and not mine.

Second. Seriously, these kids are dumb and self-absorbed.

Third. If I was being plied with vaguely attractive women, literally gallons of alcohol and a boring job (working at a tshirt store) with my crazy roomates, would I act that stupid? I've done really dumb shit when I was drinking. This is the time for them to do idiotic things. I did very dumb things this year and the difference between them and me is that I didn't have an MTV camera crew following me, I didn't spend an hour on my hair, I don't work out an eighth as much as they do. If i was there, what would I do? I'm not sure. I would probably have a complete mental break within two weeks after I realize that I am being watched as I urinate.

I mean, I read Hellboy books (the Library editions of them, anyway). I could fill a row of shelves with the books I own. My life would not be terribly interesting to film. But hell. These kids doesn't seem so bad. No, wait, I take that back. they do. They seem kind of stir-crazy, honestly. And when you add stir-craziness to a group of kids that never really grew up, it's not a good scene.

There's the Real World staples:
+The haughty, bitchy alpha girl that thrives on discord and assault.
+Dumb mooks of guys who make up for brains with brawn and chiseled bodies.
+One slightly self-aware girl.
+One completely pants-on-head crazy guy who gives himself a nickname.

Yeah, I'm going to have to back away from this now on the idea that I read books. Pretty much obsessively. All of that said, though. I'm scared of falling into the "well, thank God I'm not like them" trap. But really, I'm not quite as self-absorbed as those people, I hope, but I can sink to the same levels as them. I'm not as shallow, I hope, but then again, I've looked down girl's shirts and stared at butts. They're just being more straightforward and honest about it.

I just hope there's a difference between them and me that is more than one of degree, but that hope doesn't make it so.

Okay. Karl Rove.

I was excited when I heard that Karl Rove got a divorce. I shouldn't be. He hasn't done anything to me personally. He's good at what he does and what he does isn't nice. Okay, I'm being glib

again. But mostly, I disagree with the policies he proposed and the way he went about his business. Outing a CIA agent because her husband hammered the administration in a New York Times op-ed crosses the line.

But which line? I don't wish him dead. I just wish him out of his comfortable job. I wish him stop being so smug. I wish his life is harder, but intruding into his personal life seems like I'm going a bit far, even for a person whose actions I despise. And if I hate him this much then what's wrong with hoping his personal life disintegrates for everything he's done? I know the answer to that question, of course, because for whatever reason, I view the personal sphere as something sacred.

Then, he puts out a statement saying that he wants other people to respect his privacy. A call for privacy from a guy who sold out an undercover agent's identity for payback. Man, I want the jackals to hound him. I want some CNN 3 ring circus shit around his home and personal sphere. But no matter how poetic the justice sounds, it still doesn't feel like justice. It doesn't feel right. I want some blood from Rove for all he's done, but like this, it isn't justice. It's revenge. Justice is that the trail of evidence clearly and unambiguously catches up to Rove in a way that buries his political career.

I'll say this: Karl Rove, if you read this, I'm sorry for being happy that you got divorced. And I don't hope that there's a media circus around your divorce, but if there is, I'm not going to move to stop it or defend you, even with the slim patina of humanity.

What kills me is that it's probably more than you deserve.

December Wolves/Marathon: This Is Probably About You (4 of 13)

Fourth in the Marathon series. Fourth on the record. This one and Jolly Roger hit a little too close to home, so I usually ended up skipping them, which was a mistake. The song, Don't Ask If This Is About You, is about the narrator going to a party, looking for a night or two of physical intimacy to get him through a rough period in his life.

Sound familiar?

Additionally, I'm way behind on December Wolves. Again. But, I got a kick in my ass in the form of an email and this came out of it. Number five, based on Home Is Where The Van Is, should be much easier, but then again, I said that about number four and it took me the better part of two months to come up with what's in front of you.

I guess I thought I'd write this about ex-girlfriends. Somehow, getting all of those emotions off my chest again I think would be easier. I have to admit things I've admitted before. But now, I just have to admit I'm an interloper at a college where I'm taking a class. Christ. I'm going to a nominally Catholic school and taking His name in vain there seemed appropriate. I have to admit that my plans aren't coming together quite as nicely as I'd like and I...I've...

I've checked out of college.

So, what am I doing going to the anime organization and thinking about hitting on these girls? I don't know if I've really checked out. I'd like to say I have, but it's not all that clear. I would like my life to be comfortable and one of those ways is college. But I feel skeezy, and even when I contribute something to that club, I still feel like a lecher, like it's their thing and I'm shoehorning myself into it.

I know what I need is a relationship and what I want, which is closer to my grasp, so I believe, is physical contact period. It's what I see in Don't Ask If This Is About You. There's a line, "sorry, I don't mean to be so old and drunk." It sums up perfectly my self-loathing feelings hanging around the kids I don't know watching anime. In short, the creepy old man.

I don't want to get too fatalistic, though. It might confirm a couple popular theories about me, spread by girls I have been linked with. I have nothing to prove to any of them. Not a single sexual partner. I have tried and failed. I have slept alone and I have slept with them. I've been scared of at least one and I've never woke up so refreshed when I opened my eyes and saw another one was still there.

And yes, while I'm coming close to a line, I'll say this: There will be no regurgitating of private, privileged information here. My feelings, though, are fair game. Theirs, less so. Less tellingly, if you want "the stories", you can go look for the entry where I am so paranoid, I see my ex-girlfriend's concern about me and dexterity with navigating gossip as the Russian mercenaries patrolling the newly captured Big Shell in Metal Gear Solid 2.

Shit gets unreal.

But where I'm breaking from the song is this: I'm willing to wait. I'm not taking anyone out I don't want to. There was a year (this one) where I looked for a year of "just getting me by" romantically. It didn't work. I was so fucking stupid. I a) didn't get laid that often and even if I did, b) it just reinforced how much sex and feelings are mixed up for me. I felt like an outsider in the anime group even when I was legitimately trying to be a part of it without the onus of boning.

I wanted someone to hold me to get me through. I was looking for that "just" moment. Maybe I'm being overly critical of myself. It wouldn't be the first time, certainly. But in "looking for someone to touch tonight", I allowed myself to disbelieve what a wise Italian woman told me. I let people down. I don't want to be leant a blanket by anyone I don't want to sleep with for months to come. I'll be alright. I can hold myself.

I have my own parallels. Specifically, Daredevil. He got fed up with corruption in NYC, pushed all his friends away, fought off 100 Yakuza stooges for three minutes until the FBI arrived and then he disappeared. His soon to be wife left him, serving him with an annulment and his life spiraled even further out of control. Black Widow (attractive Russian secret agent lady, redhead) showed up in his house, because her cover got broken and despite the near constant flirting from her, they didn't have sex. Why? He hadn't signed the annulment yet and he didn't ask his girlfriend to marry him under false pretenses.

If you're willing to swallow the pill of monogamy intellectually (which you don't have to), that kind of decision and control takes backbone. If not, well, you've probably stopped reading a while ago. I hope I can face the future with that kind of commitment and resolve. I'll let the future come when I wake up. But for now, no one's holding me when I sleep and the difference between 2009 and now is I'm choosing it this way. Breathe in. Breathe out. Survive. Now, to grit my teeth and make it through the year. Alternatively: Be awesome.

I think I'll choose awesome.

Taking Aim at the Fatosphere. WHICH IS TOTALLY EASY BECAUSE IT CAN'T RUN FAST.

The New York Times has this giant article on how fatty bloggers are all, I dunno, blogging. Which is great. For them, I mean. It is slowly dawning on me (because I am very, very stupid) that there are blogs to satisfy almost any sort of predilection a person can have. Whether you fancy cats or like anorexia or are fond of music or whatever, there is someone out there pontificating endlessly about it.

This does not mean I have to approve of what is being said. I do not take the fatty bloggers seriously, any more than I take the anorexia bloggers seriously. Partially because my recent BMI measurements placed me around the upper end of "Normal Weight". WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN, INTERNET? But also because it illustrates the one thing that I hate most in life: people who are satisfied with who they are and what they are doing. Blogs are supposed to be tawdry or witty or riddled with neurosis (self-referential pause inserted here), not life-affirming details of what some sassy overweight teen is eating and how she doesn't care who knows it.

That's great. I get it that when you are in certain states of life, you want to commune with other people. But this cannot be healthy. I mean, not just that it's reaffirming (what I interpret to be!) an unhealthy lifestyle (that is, the lifestyle where you are happy and you communicate with others - WE HATEFUL TROLLS DEMAND THAT YOU SUFFER), but that you're doing it and expecting praise. How brave of you to accept yourself! Aren't you novel, aren't you grand! I totally wish I could drown myself in the crushing mundanity of my own life in front of an audience! GRR.

There's no sense of self-reliance in so much of the online community. The self-acceptance that's so often preached online is nothing more than dependency wrapped up in the comfort of anonymity, that having attention paid to you is good, so long as people are stuck watching. It's worse, in my opinion, than a rich/poor division, because the watched/watcher division is invariably skewed towards the lowest common denominator. Television studios don't make shows that are too highbrow because then people would form dreadful individual opinions about things - including the possible opinion that the watchers of the show aren't smart enough to understand it. Wal Mart has pulled magazines like Better Homes and Gardens and the New Yorker and others. Do you know what this leaves behind? The magazine rack at the most popular store in America is pretty much just Nascar magazines now. The notion of challenging a reader has gone out the window, along with flowery prose and the effing Dodo Bird. As Kurt Vonnegut (speaking of things that are extinct) said, eloquence is just a matter of waste nowadays.

The notion of self-satisfaction (was going to say "satis-fat-tion" but realized that is an incredibly stupid thing to say - but I just said it! Yay me!) coupled with a desire for approval does not, to me, display any shade of good thinking. If anything, it reveals a crippling inability to achieve the kind of satis-fat-tion that makes an interesting individual, substituting trifles for actual content. This profligate blogging is no real solution, but a placebo to achieving a healthy balance between the personal and the private. It's no forward progress, but rather, simply justifying the old idiom that misery loves company. We may be perplexed by a single problem in life, but hey, at least we're all stalled at the same point.

Which is partially the purpose of my participation (what is it with all these multisyllabic P-words? My professors would've demanded my head on a platter by now) in the blog-o-rama. I do it because I am a neurotic, self-hating individual, but also because I've been told that I do my best writing when I feel strongly about an issue, and also because I can only hope to get a chuckle or two out of the reader. Hey, I'm a third child - getting attention is something that I'm good at. It may be that I think I can help the world (snrk) by blogging about blogs, in some kind of snake-biting-its-own-tail sort of way. It may be (read: is) the real fuel for my bilious temper is just simple jealousy, that there are people out there who I feel are undeserving of the attention paid to them (the hidden truth: SIMMERING ALCOHOLISM).

But at least I'm self-aware enough to admit it. I may not practice what I preach ( and who does these days? ) but I at least have the good sense to present myself as a trifling hypocrite, and not as someone who should be taken seriously.