#Glee

Watched the Rocky Horror episode of glee. Musicals can also be insufferable. Also, kind of horrifying to watch an already pretty vanilla concept watered down even more. "Heavy Petting" converted to "Heavy sweating?" Jesus. F-ing puritans. If you have to change the lyrics to "Heavy Sweating" you can't do Rocky Horror. Also, Dr. Frank-N-Furter played by a woman playing a man playing a woman is not somehow more gender-bending, it's just a cop-out because you were too afraid of offending anyone to actually have a man do it. So, uh, bullshit.

Oz has spoken!

#constantprojection

Have skinny people always been this insufferable? I assume it's more or less a direct correlation with my weight anxieties. Also, it's a bit of turn-about is fair play problem (in that men are now judged more on their physical appearance in the same way women have had to put up with for a long time).

So those are factors.

But still, I detest the smugness. Either "this is effortless for me." or "I worked hard and you're fat because you're not dedicated." Both seem to ignore the possibility that genetics might somehow be a factor. Maybe.

There's more I can do, to be SURE. But ye gods is this a button right now.

#twitter rage

I just posted about 6 tweets in a row. mostly unrelated. None suitable for a blog post. Will this upset the twitter police? Or is it okay if they're unrelated topics? How many tweets in a row until it's rude? It's not a tool, it's church. It's a novelty. "Express yourself, but not too loudly" I'm not mad at a particular person, (although I can think of one person that would be forgiven for being tweaked at me for this post, I can make amends if asked). I'm mad that this is the new normal. This is not an acceptable world to socialize in. It kills everything good about interacting with humans. YMMV.

#clarification

I think I may come across as too extreme. There are many of you I don't see very often, but still value the times I do see you. Anyone I know personally who's reading this blog for instance. My thinking on this is fairly murky I've realized. As in, like so much of the rest of my life, I don't understand what is going on with me. So apologies if I offended anyone. You don't need to be an emotional intimate necessarily to be appreciated by me. There remains a certain area of friendship in between strangers and intimates that I don't get and other people seem too, but I don't really have a better definition for that yet.

Maybe I'm just misanthropic. Hmm, perhaps I could just rename this "misteranthropic." Yeah, that would be clever. Oh wait . . .

#furthermore

A lot of my friendship issues stem from the fact that I have problems with casual friendships. I don't see the value in friendships consisting entirely of pleasantries and small talk. If we're not exchanging thoughts, feelings, or at least talking about a common interest, I'm not sure why we're bothering. However, other people seem to delight in a wide variety of friends they barely know, so maybe it's just a personal preference kinda thing. But it informs a lot of my prejudices in these rants I go into. Just for the record. I'm well aware this could just be crankiness or autism or something on my part.

#corollaryaddendumadditionally

Pursuant to my last post, a brief rant on social networks. Please keep in mind, this is just me coming to terms with a new age of interaction.

I think what I've realized irritates me about social networking is: your friends are not your fan club. It's okay to not have enough energy to update each and every one of your friends on the intimate details of your life. It's pretty reasonable to make big announcements in fan club form, but our friendship is only meaningful to me, inasmuch as we talk directly. We don't have to exchange all relevant life details every time we meet, but if the only interaction you want with me is for me to follow your newsfeed . . . that's not something I'm going to be into. It has no value for me, and it means I clearly have no value for you if personal interaction is not what you're going for. I'm just not interested in being part of anyone's fan club. I'm interested in conversations, not status updates. And for the record, most of my updates are more akin to tweeting/screaming into the void. I'm pretty okay if my friends don't follow my online presence that much, I just like expressing myself. But you're free to call bullshit if you find me in hypocritical breach hereafter.

Crank summary: We exchange status updates for conversations at the expense of our friendships. I think it's another example of our continual leap into the shiny and new with no time to ask "is this better?"

#Twittersucks

I'm still having trouble coming to terms with twitter. Whether this is because I'm a cantankerous old luddite (who's currently typing this on an ipad), mentally disturbed, monumentally stupid or ABSOLUTELY CORRECT remains to be seen. Yesterday, I initiated a bit of a tweetocalypse, annoying some of my followers because I had a thought longer that twitter would allow and posted about 20 tweets. I did it semi-ironically, because it's so funny to me how hostile the service is to big words and long thoughts. My cantankerous side says I find no value in the service as a series of short, disconnected trivia statements, but that's not entirely true. I enjoy reading a few tweets, from people it seems more awkward to talk to in real life. I feel like I understand them better.

But part of me just rankles at the idea of a service aimed at minimizing self-expression. It's actually rude to have thoughts longer than 140 char. I was reminded twice that the "thing to do" is write a long blog post and then post a link to twitter, which also rankles for reasons that aren't clear to me (and which I won't be doing with this post, because fuck twitter today). I think it just offends me to have social networks that stifle self-expression, and big words, and long thoughts, in fact make it socially rude to do that. For one, it reminds me of church, which I am an unreasonable ogre about nowadays, and for two, I have the strong feeling that what our society needs is LESS emphasis on the trivial, shallow, and mundane. My suspicion is that twitter and facebook are not suitable replacements for personal interaction. Twitter is too short for nuance (and in fact the amount of tweets needed to add nuance apparently burns users with unholy fire), and facebook just naturally devolves to the trivial, because if you post anything approaching an opinion it just starts arguments.

I'm going to keep using twitter I suppose. I get enough out of the people I follow that it has marginal utility for now. But I will continue to be offended that more than a few tweets is faux pas. "Express yourself, but not too much." is really not a guiding philosophy I can get behind. It's the type of social pressure I've been trying to escape my whole damn life.

#Onegiantleapbackwardforman

Ye gods, what a failure of a week. Up all night playing WoW of all the goddamn things. Waking up late, late to the office, unable to focus until 8 or so. Horrible goddamn cycle. The magic of iPad will not let me link the video I want to link (less because of iPad I think, more because the RIAA doesn't like linking songs without flash advertising). Anyway. Fuck it man, just fuck it (this is more of a stephen colbert reference from America the audio book than a genuine "oh despair" comment).

September -

Depression, Anxiety and after surgery blues - 4
Soylent H - 0

Time to go write in my other totally public diary that no one knows about. Or perhaps in a private diary. Or perhaps, tagging box cars as I am wont to do these days.