sleep deprivation insanity

so, sleep deprivation does weird things to your mind. actually, one of my friends told me that he’s experimenting to see how long he has to keep himself awake in order to hallucinate. i haven’t quite gone that far, but i’m certainly not functioning normally right now.

My impression is that it’s much harder to consciously regulate brain activity when you’re very tired. basically it gets harder to cause uncommon neural pathways to fire and easier for the most common ones to go. like i dunno, whatever one wants to fire does. so as you can see i’m having a hard time expressing my ideas clearly because i can’t choose words very well right now. and you’ll also see that i’m going to ramble like hell until i get bored of writing this post.

so why am i sleep deprived? i guess i should tell the story. so on monday morning I guess I woke up at a fairly normal time, like say 8:00. just guessing. i then began to work on projects, one of which was due on tuesday at 5 and the other on tuesday at midnight. so with the mighty power of energy drinks and bananas, i kept myself awake (but for 2 short naps) from then until now! oh yeah! actually it got kind of bad near the end, I was trying to write programs and they weren’t working well and I couldn’t understand why not. but probably it was simple and i was just too tired to figure it out.

also it might have been a mistake to spend an hour at dinner and 2 hours playing bridge. i also send a long random email to the hot girl that likes to play as my partner in bridge club but is a foreign grad student and wearing a ring on her left ring finger so she’s probably married but i haven’t asked her because that seems a weird question and anyway even if she’s not why would she give a second thought to a worthless dude like me. but anyway now’s not the time for such considerations.
oh man so i dunno like i just want to say stuff but there isn’t anything to say. asdfasldgh well this is pretty crazy. i’ll just ramble meaninglessly until things happen. oh man i want to become an expert in machine learning and code up some killer automated trading strategies and be a rich bastard! i want to be the next ray kurzweil! i am reminded of the talking heads song … uh… is it “the book i read”? or “first week/last week”? i think it’s “the book i read”. and he says at one point “i’m so ambitious” …. oh man i love talking heads, david byrne is the man. so was tommy makem, so sad that he has died. only liam clancy left. that man owns too.

my back hurts from sitting hunched in front of my computer for like 36 of the past 42 hours. its just wrong. i really need to start exercising again. well i guess i can start going to the gym as often as every day if i want! well i suppose i should go to sleep soon, i’m starting to come off the caffeine high from the energy drinks i had. dude i’m really crashing. it’s weird to be able to notice it as it happens. like i have stayed up late and had ups and downs of awake-ness before, but i’ve never crashed this quickly and noticably. weird! well i guess i’ll be passing out soon but for now i  shall ramble on some more before that!

god this post is so badly written. i don’t even know what i sound like. i cant possibly sound like a little kid. i probably sound drunk. don’t they say that? tiredness is equivalent to drunkenness? i wonder to what extent its physiologically similar. like maybe alcohol has a similar effect on neurotransmitter activity or whatever the change is when you’re tiredc.

oh yeah i relearned how to solve the rubik’s cube recently. apparently hardcore dudes oil their cubes with vaseline or something like that in order to make them rotate more easily. i am tempted to do this because i already damaged one of my cubes by rotating it too vigorously. the cube is so mathematically interesting. so is bridge. i want to get some bridge books to read this summer. i could totally be a beast at bridge if i put my mind to it. im going to have plenty of time for stuff this summer so I really should become good at something. or accomplish some goal. seriously.

goals:

read brothers K by dosty

get back in shape by going to the gym regularly, and actually lose more weight too

practice contest math a bit

practice bridge for the national championships

get better at programming

perhaps even learn to play the theremin as well!

get drunk (this has never happened to me before! but maybe at my next birthday party it will. i’ve got a lot of booze in here for that purpose right now)

yeah dude some of my friends are awesome. but i really don’t have many friends. it’s kind of sad in a way. i dunno i just don’t get close to people. i wish i could. :-/

how come i get into depressive thoughts so easily these days? maybe i should actually go see the docs here. maybe they’ll give me some pilllz. happy pills! i wonder …

all right screw it this post is over. BLAM rat-tat-tat blood is everywhere and all the people are screaming and dying! the people being, uh, that part of me which is writing htis post? oh god i have so much work to do tomorrow

Jet Li

I love Jet Li. I really do. I think he’s the best martial arts actor since Bruce Lee in terms of martial arts ability, and he’s also one of the best actors in the martial arts genre (which Bruce Lee wasn’t, although luckily he didn’t really have to play any complex roles).

But I like more about him than his sweet moves and hardcoreness. There’s something else that Jet Li does which I find highly admirable. What is it, you ask? It’s that Jet Li promotes cultural openmindedness. Let’s look at two movies of his that I just watched:

1) Fist of Power. This was essentially a remake of Bruce Lee’s Fist of Fury. The plot is simple: Chen Zhen (Bruce Lee; Jet Li) is a martial artist and he returns to his school to find that his master has been poisoned and the competing Japanese martial arts school is harassing his school. Bruce Lee’s movie was very pro-China and anti-Japanese, black and white. Jet Li’s version has the same plot, but it’s much more open-minded.

First, look at what happens to Chen Zhen. He’s studying in Japan, and he has a Japanese girlfriend (that he wants to marry). After the master dies and he returns to China, his girlfriend comes eventually, and his own school refuses to let her live with them and demands that he choose between his school and his lover. And he chooses her. (Note: in Bruce Lee’s version, not only is his girlfriend Chinese, but he chooses to defend the honor of his school despite her objections [she knows he'll die].) Then, the girlfriend recognizes how important the issue of his school is to him so she returns to Japan to wait for him.
Next, look at the general attitudes of the minor characters. In Bruce Lee’s film, the Japanese are clearly the aggressors and the Chinese are oppressed. There’s no question of Chinese blind hatred of the Japanese possibly being wrong, and there’s no question that any Japanese might not be so evil. But in Jet Li’s film, he shows that the Chinese wouldn’t accept any Japanese — they strongly objected to Chen Zhen’s wanting to marry a Japanese girl (even though the new master of their school was marrying a prostitute). Some of the people in the school were willing to accept her but most of them were not. And Chen Zhen couldn’t get a room for him and her in a Chinese hotel either, they wouldn’t allow a Japanese to stay there.

On the other side, most of the Japanese were what you expect: cruel oppressors. But there are exceptions. The uncle of Chen Zhen’s lover, a Japanese martial arts master, likes Chen Zhen and tries to help him. The Japanese ambassador in Shanghai was horrified by all of the violence and repeatedly intervened to stop Japanese from hurting Chinese. (This doesn’t mean that he didn’t think Japan should control China, but he didn’t want violence at least.) And the master of the Japanese martial arts school that was in conflict with Chen Zhen’s school wasn’t bad either. He was more of an “old-fashioned” villain. He was a complete ass, but he was at least honorable. When Chen Zhen challenged him, he told his school that there should be no revenge if he died. And when he found out that the reason he won his fight with Chen Zhen’s master was that the master had been poisoned, he was very upset: he would have preferred to lose a fair fight than to win dishonorably.

So while Jet Li’s version of the film doesn’t downplay the badness of the situation with the Japanese at that time, it is much deeper and has many more complex characters than Bruce Lee’s version. In all, I think it might be the best martial arts movie I’ve ever seen. It has a classic and simple plot, but still manages to have interesting characters; the acting isn’t terrible; the martial arts is amazing.

2) The One. I have much less to say about this movie. The only thing I wanted to point out was that in this movie, Jet Li’s wife is a white woman. And she talks to him in Chinese a couple of times. At one point he speaks about her in a way very reminiscent of Eastern philosophy. So again in his movie he has characters crossing cultural boundaries (and being happy as a result). Oh, also, when the multiple universe thing is being explained to him, he is told that in other universes the guy who is him is sometimes married to a different woman, or to a man. And in his universe he’s a policeman but in another he is a criminal. In a subtle way this suggests that everyone is capable of a lot of very different things. But maybe I’m reading too much into it (after all, Jet Li’s character reacts negatively when Statham says he was gay in an alternate universe).

I also watched War recently. In that one Jet Li is the villain, and he’s very secretive also, so there’s little to say about his character. But it’s an awesome movie too. (More of a Western-style shoot-em-up action than a martial arts action movie, although Jet Li gets in a cool sword fight near the end and he has some other sweet moves interspersed throughout the movie.)

In conclusion, Jet Li is awesome.

To be loved

Is it too much to ask?

My friends talk about how they intend to make five million dollars in the next 10 years. Or how they’ll make a big difference in medical research, mathematics, or something. They’ll have some huge success in politics or in social work. And I have those dreams too. I’d like to think that I could be very successful in mathematics or in finance. I’m a brilliant young guy and I should be on top of the world by the time I’m 30! But is this really all I live for?

I’d rather be loved.

I’m pretty creative. I could do a lot if I were rich. I think I could keep myself occupied. But I don’t think that I would be able to manufacture the same kind of happiness that comes when you are with a person and all you care about is her and all she cares about is you.

On the other hand, wouldn’t it be better if I just gave up on this, instead of constantly wishing for it in vain? If I could be satisfied by professional success, and be satisfied to reign in solitude, maybe I would be much happier overall.

It’s amazingly hard to stop hoping for something. To convince oneself that the possibility does not even exist.

Another explanation for “yellow fever”

“Yellow fever.” You’ve probably heard of it. It’s a slang term for the phenomenon of white guys exclusively being romantically interested in Asian girls*. Other than politics, it’s the one thing about Westerners that pisses off Asian dudes the most. Part of why it’s so annoying is that it seems to be completely arbitrary. Some of the most standard keystones of the Western conception of beauty (blond hair, large breasts, curvy hips) occur very rarely (if not only artificially) among Asian women. But a lot of white guys like Asian girls anyway, and people are always coming up with various socially-oriented justifications for this.

I don’t want to flog a dead horse, so I’m not going to rehash the old debates. I just want to propose a completely different reason that a small minority of white guys suffering from yellow fever might have. This minority is the group of nerdy white guys.

Here’s the thing: there’s a general cultural split along intellectual lines in America, where the majority of Americans look down on academia and higher education, and a small minority of “nerdy” types pursue academia intensely (though possibly applying their knowledge to industry later, they remain part of the intellectual elite). There’s also still a fair amount of gender discrimination against girls in academia and professional jobs; although this has been abating for some time, it’s still quite strong in some places. But these things haven’t really been absorbed into the mindset of the typical Asian immigrant family.

So imagine that you’re a white nerdy dude, and you’re in high school, college, working for a high tech firm, whatever. What sort of women are going to be around you that value knowledge, learning, intellectual curiosity? What sort of women will have similar interest in science, math, computers, “nerdy” stuff? There will be disproportionately many Asian women! At my school, for example, there are far more Asian women in the analytical sciences and scientific engineering departments than there are white, Hispanic, black, or women of any other ethnicity (combined).

Now look at the plight of the nerdy white guy. He isn’t attractive to the typical white girl, and (other than physically) she isn’t too attractive to him either. However, the typical Asian girl (at least that the nerdy white guy is likely to encounter) is far more likely to share interests and values with him, so it’s only natural for him to develop a general preference for Asian girls.

Just a thought. I know for sure that I stereotype people I meet in this way.

*As far as I know, “yellow fever” is exclusively used to refer to white guys’ preference for Asian girls, but I’m not really well acquainted with many gay people, so I’m not sure if they use it to refer to white guys’ preference for Asian guys or white girls’ preference for Asian girls. However, I imagine that for similar reasons to the ones I gave above, if I were gay I’d still prefer Asian guys. Most of my male friends right now are Asian.

A couple of short stories

— 1 —

Blood ran down the handle of the knife and onto his hand. The warm, wet feeling pulled him out of a funk. He looked down at the horror he had wrought. Girl’s body at his feet. Pool of blood. His mother’s old paring knife. The textbook she had brought with her, pages already starting to warp from the liquid. A lot of blood.

He couldn’t explain why he had done it. Disconnected thoughts shot through his mind as he cleaned up. One thing was sure: he felt no remorse for what he had done. He felt the same as if he had just swatted a fly or stepped on a cockroach. He first used a couple of towels to collect the blood and wipe himself off. Then he removed his bloody shirt and put on a clean one. A quick trip to the bathroom followed. He washed his hands and face and cleaned the knife. Back in his room, he lined his huge plastic storage bin with sheets, then stuffed the girl and the towels in. He secured the lid. Mopping the floor took only a few more minutes, and then his room looked completely normal. He would have to do a more thorough cleaning after he disposed of the body, but this was sufficient for now.

I’m a killer.

Although he felt no different, and his room now looked the same as it had before, something fundamental had changed. He finally knew what he was capable of.

***

He sat before another woman holding a clipboard in her hand. The scene, however, was otherwise much different from the one fourteen years before. He was under guard and in restraints. She was a reporter, not a student.

“And at last that brings me to the most obvious question: why did you do it?”

“Sorry to disappoint, but there’s no real reason. You could say that I did it because I could. You know, today is the fourteenth anniversary of my first murder? I still remember that day. She came to me to ask for help on her homework. I was in the middle of cooking dinner. She was standing there with her clipboard, just like that one you have there, and asking me how to do some problem. I was holding the knife. I suddenly thought, ‘it would be really easy to kill her. I could probably get away with it.’ That’s all. No sick story of abuse by my parents. I didn’t torture small animals when I was a kid. One day I just killed someone on a whim, like another man might pick his nose. You know you shouldn’t do it, but if no one is looking, you can get away with it. It becomes a habit.”

Forty minutes later, the guard and the interviewer were dead. They were the twentieth and twenty-first people he had killed since had been imprisoned.

— 2 —

Two men sat together on the ledge. Their feet dangled over the side. They had not met before, but they felt a strong sense of camaraderie. This was because they knew they were there for the same purpose. Without even speaking to each other, they somehow came to an agreement that they would spend a few hours together before departing.

Finally, one of them spoke.

“What brings you here, my friend?”

The obvious question. What else would one ask in these circumstances? For these two men, their respective answers to this question were the only things that mattered.

“Well, it’s like this. I’ve always been a driven man. I moved from one goal to the next, fulfilling one purpose and the next. When I was in school, all that mattered was that I got good grades. School was everything, it was my life. I excelled at it. When I graduated, I went to work, and I took this same mentality there. I spent all of my time working, and I was very successful. Then, one day, I met a lady. She was a real lady! In short order, she became everything for me. I married her. We had a family. My family was my world, my reason for living, just as material success had been before that.

“Then there was the car accident. There was no one to blame. Not that this mattered to me. All that mattered to me was that my family was gone. It seemed that my life was over. I talked to my friends. I talked to therapists. I tried to cope. But none of their comforting, none of their suggestions helped. My only recourse was to come here to seek the solution. And here I sit! What of you, good man?”

Not an unusual story to be told in a place like this. The first man reflected for a moment on the second man’s story. After a long silence, he finally replied,

“I’m terribly sorry, but I don’t think I could explain. I know it’s quite rude of me. I’m afraid there’s simply no way for me to put my feelings into words. Suffice it to say that I came here looking for the same answer that you did, although my circumstances are quite different.”

The second man was not upset. In a place like this, why get angry over such small things? In turn, he reflected on the first man’s mysterious statement. At length, he spoke again.

“Are you ready?”

“Yes, I am ready.”

The two men shook hands. There was nothing more for them to say or do. It was not long after this that they had their answer.

More writing, depression, relationship thoughts

Lots of stuff to write about. I talked to one of my friends about relationships, and I’m still depressed, so let’s get that boring stuff out of the way. Then I’m going to churn out one or two quick short stories. I’m still not in the mood to continue the one from before — that one is a bit too optimistic and “fantasy”-ish for the way I’m feeling now.

So. My friend is a really short dude, kind of nerdy, and he can’t get a girlfriend. I’m a math nerd, and I can’t get a girlfriend. We have two friends, one of whom is even shorter than the first guy (and also nerdy), and the other who is even more socially awkward and intensely math-nerdy than I am. These seem to be the most obvious deterrents for our having relationships with girls. And these other two guys have girlfriends. We were sitting around trying to rationalize why they do and we don’t.

He thinks that they have girlfriends because they tried really hard to get girlfriends. We don’t because we don’t make enough effort for it. It seems plausible. But is this really how the world is? Because we don’t make enough effort to get a girlfriend, we don’t get to have that experience? Of course, if we never talked to girls or never asked girls out, then of course we would never have that kind of relationship. But it’s not like we don’t try at all. And it’s a bit saddening to think that whether you have a girlfriend isn’t actually mainly affected by your personal merit, but by how much effort you put into pursuing girls. In my youthful optimism, I still had some hope that all I had to do was meet a girl, and be a good person, and then she might like me and I might like her and things might happen. But no. Someone else, who may or may not be more intelligent, kind, whatever, is going to date this girl first, because he is going to “go after her” while I am just saying hi when we pass by and trying to act nice.
The obvious solution would of course be to spend more time hitting on girls. But there are some problems here:

(1) I don’t really know how to do this effectively.

(2) I don’t think it’s polite to do this when you don’t even know if the girl is available (which isn’t always easy to ascertain).

(3) I don’t like being rejected (and being an unattractive dude, this usually happens), which makes this sort of effort a generally unpleasant process.

(4) I am pretty focused on academics and stuff, and I don’t have that much time for messing around.

(5) I’ve become intensely pessimistic about myself in this respect. I just don’t think there’s anything attractive about me, unless the ability to solve math problems or understand algorithms is attractive. I feel rather unmotivated to put much effort into an endeavor which is doomed to failure.

I think my friend’s reasons are similar. (4) might be the biggest one for him. (5) is probably mine. Anyway, it sucks. I don’t think this is the cause of my recent depression — this kind of depression is chemical, not psychological — but it has certainly become a main focus of my negative emotions. I vaguely wonder if I should seek help. It’s not like I’m actually going to kill myself. It would take too much change from my current system of belief before I could justify that. But still:

- lately I’ve been thinking about suicide a lot, even though I know intellectually that I’m not going to let myself do it.

- i also thought about self-mutilation a bit. that’s easier for me to justify, too. like, why not give myself some horrible scars on my face? it’s kind of honest, then people will see my ruined face and they can know that i am a ruined person inside as well. And that’s not going to cause nearly as much emotional harm to my family and close friends as suicide would…

- i have been encountering a LOT of difficulty with doing anything lately. In the past 2-3 weeks, I’ve basically done almost nothing. I do as little as possible in order to get by. It’s horrible, because I should be doing well in my classes and research, and I should be exercising. I have plenty of free time. but instead of doing what I know I should, I just watch another movie, or lie on my bed doing nothing, or wank, or read webcomics. Too much more of this and it’ll have a pretty serious negative impact on my life.

So those are the signals of depression. (Well, all of this and the fact that there’s no direct cause. Nothing bad has happened to me lately. In fact, from the outside, my life probably looks to be at a relatively high point right now.) I don’t know. I’m just not motivated to do anything, though, and that includes going to talk to a doctor.

Well, I promised short stories, but I think actually I should probably post those separately, ’cause this post is kind of long already.

The Saddest Thing

yeah, so if I’m depressed i guess i might as well take it out on some fictional characters instead of my friends or myself

this story is inspired by this comic

The Saddest Thing
it would have been a compliment to call the place a dive. it was a bar for vagrants and criminals. the sort of place you’d think you’d only see in a movie. bartender all keeping a shotgun behind the bar, chairs rickety from being broken in fights and then glued back together, guy sitting out front to watch for cops. henry had spent many an evening in a dark corner of this place, trying to get drunk. he knew all the regular patrons, though they didn’t know him — no one really knew henry. and not many people came to the bar other than the regulars. it was a place that people avoided.

so when the door swung open and a waif-like young woman walked in, people noticed. many eyes were on her as she walked to the bar. inevitably, one of the drunk thugs she passed reached out and grabbed her. immediately, a move like lightning, a quick glint of metal, and a cry of surprise and pain. the drunk held a napkin to the cut on his cheek. several people laughed; a few applauded. she was very quick, and they were impressed.

at the bar: “what can i do for you, missy?” / “just a shot of tequila. whatever you have. and a place to sit where i won’t be bothered.” / “four-fifty. and you can sit over by that weirdo in the corner. he don’t talk to no one.”

her voice was surprisingly deep and raspy. henry briefly considered that she might be a sex-changed man, but dismissed the thought. she came over to him and sat down. he saw that she was carrying a small white suitcase. it looked like a little kid’s suitcase. she drank her shot. he took a swig from his bottle of whiskey.

some time later, three men approached henry’s corner. one of them was the drunk who had grabbed the girl earlier. henry recognized the other two; they were friends of the first guy. one of them spoke: “hey lassie, looks like you hurt my friend here a little while ago. we’ve got an idea for how you can apologize. why don’t you come follow us out back?” / “fuck off.” / “i’m sorry you feel that way.”

the guy took a step forward, but henry stopped him. “you boys just forget this and leave her alone.” / “this ain’t any of your business, you half-wit drunk motherfucker!” the girl was also incensed. “i can take care of myself, thank you very much!”

the big guy laughed at her defiance. henry told her “no one else in this bar is going to stop them from raping you. they just won’t care.”

she was unimpressed. the big guy moved toward her. as he reached out to grab her, again her arm moved like a striking snake. the man didn’t even try to avoid the knife. she left it buried to the hilt in his right biceps. he laughed at her again and grabbed her by the shoulders. she struggled, but she couldn’t break free of his grasp. “help!”

henry laughed. “changed your tune, eh?” he stood up. “put her down.” / “don’t make us hurt you too, little man.”

thirty seconds later, the three men lay sprawled on the ground, unconscious. the bartender emerged from the bar and dragged them each in turn to the door to throw them out. henry returned to his seat. he didn’t even look at the girl. he drained his bottle of whiskey.

“you drank half of that bottle since i came in here.”

he nodded.

“it started out full this evening.”

he nodded.

“that empty bottle on the floor — that’s yours too.”

he nodded.

“that’s impossible. you drank two liters of whiskey in one evening and you don’t even look drunk.”

henry laughed.

“i’m cursed.” / “cursed?” / “yeah. cursed. just like you, but worse.” / “just like me? you mean … ? but how did you know?”

henry didn’t answer this.

“but my arm isn’t a curse! it’s wonderful! i’m so much better off with it than i was with my natural arm!” / “perhaps for you it is not a curse.”

she looked at her arm for a minute.

“i still don’t understand.”

henry sighed. “you couldn’t possibly understand. people in this place, they can’t understand. you know what it is to suffer. i can see it. you know what it means to have nothing, no possessions, no hope. but i have seen much worse. i have had everything. all i ever thought i wanted, i earned for myself. i achieved all of my dreams. and when i had finally climbed the last peak, when i stood atop the world in glory, at last i realized that i was no better off than when i started. all those things, they meant nothing. i realized the terrible truth: in my quest for perfection i had lost all connection with other people. i had turned myself into a soulless machine. i had everything, but i had nothing.

“in anger and despair i threw it all away. i hated myself. and no one was there to help me. no one to care for me. and now i am one of you. i have nothing. nothing but the ability to beat the crap out of wise guys like them, and the inability to drown my sorrows in booze.”

in jest, she replied, “sounds like a good case for suicide.”

henry laughed again. “that’s what i thought too, back then. but i can’t kill myself! in my infinite youthful folly, i clung tightly to optimistic dreams. immortality! and not the dreadful immortality of jonathan swift’s struldbrugs, but eternal youth! who could resist the allure? but on that day, the day when i achieved that which i thought was the greatest thing a man could ever achieve, the day when i realized that i had thrown my life away in pursuit of things of no value, at last i recognized the horrific extent of my curse. little miss wanderer, i am not simply cursed. i am cursed for eternity!”

“are you serious? you can’t die?”

“oh, i suppose i could die. you probably couldn’t kill me if you tried, but there are certainly ways that i could die. hell, i could go hijack a space shuttle and fly myself into the sun!”

“but you said you can’t kill yourself…”

“right. i can’t. there are some things i can’t do. i can’t kill myself, i can’t kill other people, i can’t rape. and it’s pretty hard for me to hurt people or damage other people’s property.”

“you say you ‘can’t’ as if you have no free will.”

“it’s kind of like that.”

she didn’t reply, but she obviously wanted further explanation. however, instead of giving any, henry went up to the bar. the bartender handed him a bottle of whiskey. henry returned to his seat and took a swig from the bottle.

“don’t you pay?”

“i paid in advance.”

“do you drink this much all the time?”

“pretty often. if i drink fast enough, i do get a bit drunk, and then sometimes i forget how much i hate myself.”

“but… that’s a lot of booze! isn’t it expensive?”

“money is nothing to me.”

she laughed. “you’ve overcome all of the basic problems of life. but instead of relaxing in comfort, you spend your nights in this hell-hole and waste your money on cheap booze?”

“i’d be no happier on a comfortable couch in front of a huge hd tv with a glass of dom perignon in my hand than i am right here. being around other people whose lives suck is a little bit comforting, in a perverse way. misery loves company, right?”

“well if you have everything you want, why not share some of your wealth with people like us!?”

“that was my original intention, actually. i thought, ‘i’ll become rich and powerful so that i can help others!’ such an idealistic fool. too bad i never met bill gates when i was younger. he could have told me that even if you’re the richest or most powerful man in the world, people still don’t care about you. they’ll appreciate your money, sure. but they don’t really care. and i realized that i had spent my whole life up till then, i had given up my humanity, just so that a large number of people could think of me as useful. i thought i’d transcend the limitations of the human form — and i was right! i transcended the human limitation for self-hatred!”

the girl rose and returned to the bar. she handed the bartender her glass and another 4.50. as he poured her
drink, he said “you been talkin’ to that dude for a while. never seen him talk to anyone before.” / “he’s weird.” / “i’ll say! he really beat the shit out of those three guys. i didn’t even know it was possible to kick someone like that! like a in fuckin’ jet li movie!” / “yeah.”

she returned to her seat with the drink.

“you’re ridiculous. you say you achieved everything you wanted, realized it wasn’t what you wanted after all, and then what? you give up? and you say that people like me can’t possibly understand your pain. what pain? of getting everything you want and then wanting more?”

henry didn’t seem perturbed by her accusation.

“You think I didn’t try? For years I tried. People always wanted to know me. They pretended to like me. But they just wanted to take advantage of my generosity. It’s just like I said before. I succeeded materially. Emotionally? I failed miserably. I couldn’t figure out how to get people to view me in that way. I tried keeping the truth about myself secret, but this didn’t work either. Then almost no one had any interest in me. It was virtually impossible for me to make friends. And when I did, they’d inevitably find out the truth, and then they’d be horrified and disgusted, or they would start to view me like the others, a source of wealth and power, or they would be upset that i had kept the secret. Nothing works!

“And no. My pain isn’t about getting what I wanted and then wanting more. It’s about playing the game of life, thinking I had won, and the finding out at the last move that I had in fact lost miserably. It’s about expectations. If you’ve been losing since you were little, losing more is nothing new.”

The girl scowled. “You’re an ass. You think it hurts more to throw something away and then realize you threw it away than to have it taken from you? You think you hate yourself more because you’re directly responsible for what you’ve become than if you, you, oh! I can’t put this in words, but you don’t know what has happened to the rest of us so you can’t say that what happened to you was worse!”

“What happened to you, then?”

“When I was seven years old, I came down for school one day. My parents were both at the breakfast table. I still remember the words they said to me. My mother said, ‘Sarah, you’re an ugly little girl. None of your classmates like you. You’ll never be pretty and you’ll never amount to anything. As far as your father and I can tell, you’re absolutely worthless.’ Then my father took me by the hand and led me to the front door. He opened the door and my suitcase was on the porch. He led me out, and he said ‘Goodbye, Sarah.’ Then he went back in and closed the door.”

Henry sat for a moment in thought. Then he said, “that’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.” He stood up and walked out of the bar.

Sarah contemplated her experience for a few moments. Then she noticed that Henry hadn’t taken his bottle of whiskey with him. She picked up her suitcase and looked through her meager possessions as she finished the half-liter of drink. When she was done, she rose. She didn’t pack up her bag. She left it on the table as she walked out of the bar. No one stopped her to tell her that she had forgotten it. She drifted across the parking lot and toward the superhighway. She used her mechanical right hand to rip the barbed wire which prevented people from getting onto the road. Cars and trucks whizzed past at 150 miles per hour. She didn’t have to wait long before a big freight truck came barreling along in the rightmost lane.

It was years, however, before Henry finally found a loophole in the computer program that forbade him from destroying himself.

————-

im tired. i’ll probably write something else tomorrow morning. maybe i’ll write another installment of the ol’ Darius & Hyacinth story, or maybe I’ll write something new. maybe it won’t suck either. right. i wish.

Invisible & Silent

The song Invisible & Silent by Covenant does a wonderful job of conveying the emotion that I tried to express in my previous post. I couldn’t find a good live video of the song on YouTube — there were a few, but the sound is terrible. The video I’m posting has fake sound: it’s a live video with the Northern Light album version playing over it.

I’m sorry for failing to post anything interesting here lately. Basically, I’ve been completely occupied with organizing a bridge tournament, doing math, and worrying about this girl. I’m a bit annoyed at myself for this. I’ll see if I can explain why; maybe it would give some insight about why people like each other or something.

I don’t really know her. Why should I have strong emotions about somebody that I don’t really know? Especially since I’m not emotionally attracted to girls based on their appearance. (Actually, I’m an extremely lucky guy in that after I get to know a girl, whether I think of her as attractive is highly influenced by my opinion of her personality. So if I like a girl “for who she is”, I automatically think she’s much prettier than I would if I just saw a picture of her without knowing her.) But now there is this girl whom I hardly know, and I am thinking about her a lot and I’m stressing about whether I have any chance with her.

Let’s go over what I know about her (minus some personal details which would possibly identify her). She’s a grad student in chemistry. She’s from China. She’s learning how to play bridge. THIS IS SERIOUSLY ALL I KNOW ABOUT HER. I don’t know anything about her interests outside of bridge — she told me what she’s researching now but she said she’s not particularly interested in it and is just doing it because her advisor made her (advisors do that kind of crap sometimes — I got lucky, my advisor lets me do whatever I want).
I never see her outside of the bridge class and bridge club meetings. I just don’t know her.

I think it’s because the first few times that she came to bridge club, I was feeling very depressed, and she was very cheerful. Maybe my subconscious just viewed her as a sort of counterweight to my depression and was attracted to her for that reason. I guess this isn’t completely a bad reason to be attracted to someone (because she is a cheery person, why not?), but I question whether I would have found her attractive if I hadn’t been depressed those evenings. Who can know? But now even though I doubt that she would have any interest in me, I can’t get rid of this emotion about her.

I don’t really know what to do about it. I haven’t managed to convince myself to stop liking her. What lesson should I take from this Covenant song? I shouldn’t entertain any hope? Am I tricked by her smile? It’s not worthwhile to fight for this illusion? But could I forgive myself for failing to even try? If I ask her and she rejects me, at least I know that I didn’t throw away anything on account of my fear of embarrassment.

But it’s not really just fear of embarrassment that deters me. It’s also that I’m afraid of what effect it will have on our relationship if I bring this up. Would she still be willing to talk to me, be friends with me? Would she still come to Bridge Club? It might be awkward. Why is there so much social tension surrounding courting?

Anyway I’m inclined to follow the song. I’m not an attractive person. I have nothing to offer. I have nothing but a sharp mind for solving problems. She’d have no reason to want a relationship with me. I am only able to help people in material ways, and so I will be repaid in kind. It’s about time I get used to this.

Kind of depressing, though. Seriously, material existence isn’t enough for a fulfilling life. I’d probably kill myself if it weren’t for how much that would hurt my mother. Who cares if I could easily be a “successful” person? So what if I could have a six figure salary right out of school? Then I can sit in my apartment at night alone and — do what? Eat expensive food? Drown my loneliness in expensive liquor? Watch porn on an expensive TV? These things won’t make me happy. Or I could use my money to try to help people. Maybe a bit more rewarding, but still, I don’t think I can accept that the sole purpose of my life is to play the economic role of Robin Hood. Get paid a lot by rich people and redistribute the money to the poor? Nothing wrong with it, in a moral sense, but it seems like such an empty life.

Maybe if my mom remarries she’d be able to handle it.

Rejection

Everything rests on this one moment. Not everything, of course. But if you think about it too much, it starts to seem that way. Your emotional security, your happiness, your future all seem to depend crucially on a 5 minute conversation.

You think too much about it. It seems so important, and you want to reduce the uncertainty. You want to improve your chances. You try to look for tiny clues, constructing information out of nothing. Every positive suggestion makes you giddy with hope, but then your emotions dive again as you admonish yourself for creating false hope. But every negative suggestion just reinforces your fear.

Do you wait longer so that she knows you better? Or do you ask as soon as you reasonably can? Do you wait for a very opportune moment, or do you aim to ask before too much time has passed? How do you recognize the opportune moment? How long is too long? How many unanswerable questions are too many?

What’s a romantic date and what’s just social? Can you ask her to do this or that without suggesting anything? Should you? Why are you asking questions again? This leads nowhere. Thinking more intensifies the anxiety, doesn’t reduce the uncertainty. Nothing solves the problem but asking, and asking is the thing you fear the most.

So many doubts. She seems so great, so why doesn’t she have a boyfriend already? Maybe she does and you just don’t know. Then it would be quite embarrassing to ask her! Won’t she realize that she could do so much better than you? Maybe she just doesn’t want a boyfriend at all. That wouldn’t be too embarrassing, but it would still be the undesired outcome.

But there’s still hope. Maybe you’re the only one who thinks she’s so pretty, because you have an unusual conception of beauty. Maybe she’s kind of strange and you’re the first guy open-minded enough to think of her as interesting, exciting, attractive, rather than weird. Maybe your belief that you’re completely unattractive and undesirable is actually wrong and you just haven’t managed to ask the right girl yet. And maybe this is her.

This hope is a wisp of smoke blown in a crisp breeze. You hardly catch a glimpse before it’s blown away. A bit more just rose up, but you’re not sure where it came from. You want to follow it, but it could have been nothing more than a shimmering mirage.

Can’t ask her. Must ask her. When? How? Fear. Hope. Everything and nothing.

How much suffering will I put myself through before the simple 5 minute conversation that means so much, yet so little? How much longer will this last? Or should I forget it? Is that hope nothing but a mirage? I shouldn’t concern her with my folly. The angel deserves not the burden of the sadness of a worthless man who saw her gliding by and grew enamored of her. Perhaps it is even a duty or a kindness that I should dismiss these thoughts and keep my feelings to myself.

Why can’t I be like the stereotypical Chinese martial arts hero? My profession, my duty above all else. Never distracted by women. But here I am, writing this, pining away for someone who surely doesn’t give me any thought when I’m not in her presence. One day we will be able to control these kinds of emotions chemically. And I’ll feel no remorse as I inject the love-suppressing drug into a vein. Then I’ll sit down at my desk and focus on my work. At peace with myself at last.

What’s wrong with me?

I don’t know what’s wrong right now. I just can’t find motivation to do any work. Intellectually, I’m quite aware that I have to meet my advisor next week (probably tomorrow!), and I’m totally unprepared. I’m also aware that I have a long and difficult programming assignment due this week, and I haven’t even started yet. But this just doesn’t motivate me to do anything.

Why do I just want to sit here? Why do I want to sit alone in front of my computer and watch mindless action movies? Or play bridge or lie in my bed doing nothing or read? I like math. I’m interested in that theorem. Where has that gone? And I am excited by machine learning. Why am I not motivated to do the assignment? It’s a cool assignment!

Motivation is the weirdest thing. Sometimes I have no trouble focusing on my work. I just sit down and get going, no second thoughts. But right now I know I should do it, and I’m just not obeying. I don’t want to. WHY NOT??? This is incredibly frustrating.