People are weird

I had an odd thought earlier today. The title is a polite version of it, because it was actually more like people are retarded. I'm not certain how much this applies to everyone in the world, but I'd suspect it counts for a significant chunk. After all, the only prerequisite is a tendency for your imagination to have run wild when you were a kid.
That is, in fact, the key component. What happened to those worlds - the tiny but brilliant ones that were constructed inside our heads? The yearning to somehow be apart of worlds that were so much richer than ours, so much more full of adventure, so filled with life itself. Or so they seemed anyways.

The simple response would be that we grew up and in doing so saw that the real world could never have such things; but is that really the case? Yes, yes, I'm sure the first part happened, but what are the real limitations of this world? How is it that we came to live in this seemingly drab and boring land if countless multitudes of people are filled with dreams, hopes, and desperate wants to find adventure and discover the unknown - continuously! It's not just our generation or something, this has been going on for as long as we could record our thoughts. The stories came before history was ever kept after all. We even, in our wisdom, remade large parts of our history into more fanciful versions as if to appease that inner hope and ignite it in those who would come after us.

It seems like those wild thoughts get contained as we get older. They're carefully wrapped up under endless excuses for why they can't happen just then, right up until they're distant enough that they can be stored away forever in nostalgia. Left as tiny happy glimmers in our memory of a time when we thought we could do so much more. Really, that's all that remains by then, isn't it? We recall our younger dreams and we're always just a bit sad because they never came true, that nothing we so eagerly waited for ever happened.

It's easy to explain why this happens to everyone - the slow assertion of what we'll call 'reality', but how reality came to be the way it is leaves more questions. If we've all - and I suspect, or at least hope we've all had dreams - why did we ever grow up and make the world the way it is? Why haven't we ever tried to change it? When we think about the world all that comes to mind are hard cynical thoughts about coming wars and old grudges that will never die, horrible tragedies that scar entire cultures and wipe out others. We make concessions for what we wanted and resign ourselves to whatever is handed out to us. How did we come to make this, given what we all started as when we were young?

It's an odd day for thoughts, I guess. Melodramatic grumblings and whatnot. It came about when some of my family were talking about how good it was that a friend had - apparently against all odds - found work doing what she had always hoped to do.

Also yes, I know this can be taken as overly optimistic thoughts about the innocence of youth, but I can't for the life of me remember ever reaching a certain age and suddenly deciding I wasn't going to go in for that happiness shit anymore. I can't imagine anyone else did either. So why is it considered a rare and great thing to still be striving to achieve your dreams - shouldn't we all be doing that every day? There's nothing stopped us but ourselves.

Writing is cathartic. I hope.

Yay! Another post about writing after I swore I’d stop making those..!

Ah well, don’t look at me that way. This isn’t about me trying to write here more; this is about writing itself like in the purple prose post from way back when. Alternatively it’s about the common misconception of cathartic actions.

Whichever. Onwards.

Ever remember some one (perhaps yourself) mentioning how they find something they do cathartic? It was probably used in that context as being a stress relief. Other ways it’s portrayed is with the phrase cathartic release; sort of getting whatever the action is out of your system. The frequent example used is to punch a pillow a bunch of times instead of some one’s face. The belief is that by doing so you let off a bunch of steam and no longer feel angry. A wider held similar belief is that you shouldn’t ever bottle up emotions, under the pretense that you might explode into a bad case of insanity.

It turns out there’s a considerable amount of evidence that this is all horribly wrong. Well, no, I should clarify. Not all of it, just the overwhelming majority. I’m not certain precisely why the mechanics break down as so, but it seems people who continuously wreck murderous assaults against their pillows aren’t more stable than those of us who quietly try to keep their emotions under control. In fact, pulping your pillow could lead to more aggressive behavior when dealing with people at a later time. Your body just gets used to using that as your method of releasing anger – punching the shit out of whatever’s at hand. If you happen to be without an abundance of pillows at your day job, this could have dire ramifications for your fellow coworkers.

The opposite end of things holds up as well; if you continuously practice at keeping your emotions under control when the really big stuff happens you’re more likely to keep a level head. I think this whole situation is just one of those times logic gets us all into trouble. Both assumptions make sense when you think about them, just it turns out the correct answer is minutely more complicated to come to and thus wasn’t adopted as conventional wisdom.

(Side tangent; don’t wikipedia ‘Conventional Wisdom’ unless you want a little less faith in humanity)

So! What does all this have to do with writing?! Well I thank you for asking hypothetical reader person; it means that cathartic actions can be an enjoyable response to an action that could lead to choosing that action more and more. Yes! I just spent several hundred words explaining that writing lots makes you want to write more. I have enlightened virtually no one who already writes, and probably failed at convincing anyone who doesn’t to try. But look on the bright side; if anyone ever asks why journals are so popular you now have an answer.

Oh, and for the life portion of the blog; this all came about because I’ve been writing a bunch recently and now find it a bit easier to do. Thoughts come easier and the urge to put them to type is growing a bit. Wording is still a finicky bitch, but that’s more or less expected. Of course, I refuse to make anything like a promise to do anything, but I can at least say it’d be nice to write a bunch more. Finding ways to put the buzzing in your head into real ideas has always been a subtlety pleasing thing for me. And hey, it keeps me from talking to myself too loudly.

(Gonna have to make a post on that. Seriously. Thinking aloud shouldn’t get you as many crazy looks as it does – besides, it makes dialogue more natural if your thinking up a scene for a story)

Oh, and a gripe. You know what sucks? Having to work Saint Patty’s Day, expecting to get off early enough to go drinking with your friends, then find out half way through that you’re going to have to come in early the next day to do a presentation to a roomful of people. A presentation we’ve not told you about until now. Have fun!

Bloodysoddin’painintheassworkalwaysgettingintheway…

Ragnsty! Arghnst! Ragebutforangstyreasons!

Hullo Internet. I couldn’t think of a way to combine the words angst and rage (RANGST just sounds stupid, sorry), so you don’t get an intro this time.

Where the hell are gamer chicks?

No, seriously. I may have just had a horrible string of luck, but I can’t for the life of me figure this shit out. I know some. Actually, I know nearly a dozen at this point – but none of them happen to exist in Ottawa. So what the hell; does our snowy little capital just suck or something?

In case you’re wondering, this angsty rage was brought on by innocent idle curiosity. I was talking with a bunch of people bored as hell at work and when by some twist of the conversation relationships came up, and that lead in a round-about fashion to everyone fumbling about trying to define their ‘type’. I’m not entirely certain how that came up, but if you can’t empathize with random discussions shooting off on odd tangents…well, then, you need to ramble more. I dunno. Maybe it’s just a thing that happens around here.

Anywho; when it came around to me I, like those before me, tried to explain things that don’t easily fit into words. In hindsight I probably should’ve just tried to make a witty one liner or atrocious pun and turned my brain off. Though if I recall it was sometime before ten in the morning, so I guess my sense of humour hadn’t gotten out of bed yet. The result was a big long run on sentence that tried to incorporate a few things;

• Games are cool, so are gamer chicks.
• I like philosophy. Wait. No. That’s stupid, I don’t think anyone says that for this stuff.
• I’m weird in a way that can only be described by pointing out how many medieval weapons I have and how often my friends and I have cut each other open dicking about with them.
• I like the confidence to show said weirdness with abandon.
• Hey, everyone likes writing stories and getting lost in forests, right? Pah, that probably doesn’t even count it’s so common!

It was about that point I realized my co-workers (remember; I work security at Wal-mart) were staring at me like I was describing a particularly rare type of flying hippo. Given I realized I was more or less picturing a female me in the hopes of finding some one bizarre enough to relate to I can’t really blame them.

Y’know, the angsty side is people might be tempted to point out how the rather broad label ‘gamer chicks’ probably isn’t going to include people who like all of those things any more than the rest of women out there. But some inane part of me hopes there’s a person out there who does. And hey, it figures gamer chicks are more likely to contain people who, even if they aren’t as weird as me, can at least tolerate me.

So over the years I’ve kept a casual eye out for that sort of thing. It hasn’t had much success. You may have guessed this from the start of the post. At this point I’m stuck wondering where the hell they all went, or if there’s some secret and magical way I can identify whether people at random fit the mold aside from walking up to women with a Penny Arcade strip printed out, asking “Does this mean anything to you?”.

Now hold on; let me scale things back a bit before you think I’m completely anti-social and mildly retarded.

The intellectual side of my brain is capable of yes, piecing together that a large part of this problem is simply contact and that comes from a lack of just meeting people. And yes, I have friends, and yes we go hang out at the bar when we’re not off maiming ourselves, gaming or getting lost. But when you sit back at a bar and take a long look at all the other people in there it’s really hard to believe any of the people hanging out there would be interested in some one like me.

It’s illogical, I know. I may be weird, and thus somewhat rare – but I’m at that bar too, so it’s not impossible for other people to be there that are like me. I suppose it’s just a daunting task to go get rejected a thousand times to find that one person who’ll be right. Ugh. See, now I’ve typed a bunch I’m running low on rage and it’s just mostly angst left, so I’ll wrap things up.

After all, there’s no argument to be made here. At least not for me; I’d plainly consider it worth it to find an absolutely amazing person who loves the things I do even if I had to be laughed at a thousand times. I just haven’t succeeded yet and find that state to be a RANGST-ish one. There may be a good note to end this on though; I’m looking into a few gaming groups about the Ottawa area and inside Carleton University. If the old hat of the bars are failing me, maybe another track would be better. Who knows? Time will tell.

(Oh, right. I think this is the point where I promise to post if anything comes along, but, yeah… No. That’s not gonna work, and we both know it. I’ll post if I post. Good day.)

And then I decided to write a short bit out of boredom

Y’know, I was planning to start this off with some sort of witty commentary about how this place is dead and in all probability lead into a terrible zombie pun. Frankly though, it really wasn’t ever a hotspot of activity. My friends and I all aspire to having a multitude of opinions we’d love to express to the world and that could be quite true, but we’re also lazy. Horribly lazy. Most of us have both jobs and work and unsurprisingly making a massive post on a blog site slipped into the ‘extra work’ category in our brains whenever we thought about it.

Furthermore we couldn’t ever get out of that ‘Your blog post must be this long to be good’ mentality. It turns out stacking your own standards against you doesn’t help productivity. Thus without further ado I’m taking back all my apologies about not posting and revoking the promises of being better at it. I suck at committing myself but still want to abuse this place for cathartic-ranty-release every now and then, and by gods I’ll use it for that. On the plus side there’s virtually no chance of anyone ever reading this anymore so I don’t think there’s going to be vast armies of disappointed people.

Anyways: life. Yeah, that thing this was meant to be about originally; random shit happening to me. Loosely described in an attempt to get more practice at writing in some format other than a stream of consciousness (Boy did that ever work!). My job has finally improved – which it saying something; I work at Wal-mart. Granted I have the security position so my job might not be quite as dull as pushing carts around, but I don’t think some one is going to make a movie out of it anytime soon.

Things are looking up since they moved me to the new building. For a bit of background, this was the place I originally applied for because it’s just a 15 minute walk from my house. Once I break out the bike for all intents and purposes there isn’t a commute anymore. My old building was up in Lincoln Fields – a hour long bus ride away in a shittier part of town. In reality I only save maybe an hour of dicking around on a bus each day; even less when you consider the number of times I just drove, but the ability to actually come home for lunch and let off some steam can’t be understated.

The job itself has become more demanding since I moved as management here expects a bit more from their security in the various safety and shrink (Read; theft) meetings. It’s made up for though by the store itself being quieter and the managers themselves being quite likable. All in all it’s worth noting that I was in the process of quitting less than a month before and now am looking for ways to prolong my stay with the company. However, I must admit my working future looks dubious due to the looming advance of University.

(Hurrah! Transition sentences!)

That’s right. Crimino..lo…gy…. er, Law! I’m apparently taking a B.A. in Law now. Who’da thunk it? I’m still gunning for Criminology, but it seems I’m going to have to prove to the world I’m superman or something very near before it’ll let me have it. The situation is, well, weird. My GPA from Police Foundations was too low for me to get into second year Criminology, so Carleton University kindly offered to let me into Law second year instead. It turns out though the B.A. program is open enough that I can make my entire Law year be made out of courses compatible to criminology – in other words, precisely what I applied to take anyways. Furthermore if I managed to bring my GPA up another 0.3 points as measured by that year alone they’ll actually let me into Criminology third year.

So what the hell does all that mean? Well, I don’t waste any time for one thing. If I stay on course I can be done my schooling in three years and still have an impressive if mildly convoluted resume. The break down goes like so:

Police Foundations (Two years)

|

B.A. of law (One year)

|

If GPA >3.3

|

Criminology (Two years)

|

Success, fame, and happiness.

All told I get to claim a complete Police Foundations diploma and Criminology degree, effectively six years of school for only having done five.

I’m not certain if I can claim anything in Law if I only do one year of it, but I’m looking into options for third year Criminology. If I can continue to pick courses that work for both of those programs I think I might be able to claim a minor in law (Two year program). This would mean I did the equivalent of eight years of school in five; and yes, that would be stupendous.

Speaking of stupendous stuff, (man, I’m getting so good as this topic changing thing) I went to PAX east again this year. I think I need to make an obligatory note of how fun, amazing, enlightening and over-all awesome it was. I mentioned the last one in another one of my posts a while back concerning communities, and more or less everything in there holds true through to this year. I had a personal moment of ‘hurrah!’ when I managed to run across and talk to the creators of Escape to the Movies (Movie Bob) Brentalfloss, and even one of the Penny Arcade guys; Jerry. I must admit, it was mildly surreal. They aren’t movie-stars or anything and will just about never be recognized outside of ‘internet fame’, so they tend to all be distressingly normal. Nothing throws a fans head through a loop more than finding out the people they eagerly follow turn out to be genuinely nice and humble. Special kudos goes to Movie Bob, who Josh and I interrupted (after angst-ridden hesitation about being annoying) just after he got some food. Really, we did err on the side of annoying fans there, but he seemed still perfectly happy to chat for a while and never blew us off.

I honestly don’t think it’s possible for the guys at Penny-Arcade to put on a bad event at this point, not with the audience they’re dealing with. Now it has without a doubt become an annual thing for my group of friends, and the only difficulty is seeing how many addition people we can bring with us. With any luck next year that number with be in the double digits. We’re looking to have quite the party of people.