So if you've been watching the news regularly, then good for you. I bet you're well informed. When I didn't have cable I got my news from the internet, which I didn't do very often since I am kind of self absorbed. And since the news isn't usually about me, I don't pay close attention. Like most self absorbed people I'm too dumb to think about how the news might still actually affect me. But the news has affected me lately, and in a very personal way.
You see, as of about 2 weeks ago I have started receiving the newspaper for free. Sounds good right? Nope. One morning the paper was in my mailbox along with a note that read "You have been given a subscription to the National Post free for a month". But I don't want the fucking newspaper, I don't read the paper, and if I did it wouldn't be the National Post, Canada's version of USA Today. So what has happened is they basically are stuffing a giant piece of garbage in my mailbox every day. Awesome. Since the newspaper is bigger than a letter it also props the lid on the mailbox open, so all my actual mail, which I don't really want either, gets all rained on.
This is annoying, and also, I have no idea how to stop getting the fucking thing. Usually if I don't want something, like cable or electricity, I just stop paying the bill and the problem solves itself. But this thing is being put there for free, how do I stop that?
Maybe I could let the air out of the tires on the delivery boy's bike. Realistically that wouldn't even have worked in the olden tymes when there were delivery boys. And nowadays the newspapers in my city are delivered by dudes who are roughly 40 years old and do it via rusty minivan. So I guess I could wait in the bushes and murder him, but that might come back to bite me on the ass, although it might still serve to the betterment of society.
So I suppose I'll just wait out the rest of the 2 weeks. But I'm taking suggestions. If you have any email them to elpresidente@dontshakethebaby.com
Now then, the other night I had a kind of weird/funny experience. I was out drinking, like always, and I ran into a girl who I have known since high school. Anyway, she was at the pub along with this guy I know. Like her, I went to high school with this guy, but I haven't seen him much since high school. This specific dude, in contrast to almost all the people in that category, is actually a pretty cool dude.
This night he is sitting with the girl I just mentioned, and also 2 other girls who I don't know. I just guess that they are young, maybe 20 or something. He is talking with one of the girls that I don't know, and I can tell from his and her body language that he is on the pull. I can also tell from her body language that it isn't working that well. Oh well, win some, lose some.
As I sit down I overhear him saying something to the effect of, "the Russians are naturally a very gifted and brilliant people. Look at the cosmonauts, the Russians were way ahead of the rest of the world with their space program. Russians are very gifted." By the way, this dude is for sure not Russian. He looks Irish to me, so he's not talking about himself.
So after they acknowledge my presence I say to the girl "So you're Russian I guess?"
My high school friend says gesturing towards her, "This is Helga."
She says "I'm from Russia." She has absolutely no accent, it doesn't come out "Eye yam froom Roosha". I am instantly suspicious of her back story, not entirely because she lacks a cartoonish russian accent, although that didn't help.
I say to the guy. "You know that when you say one kind of race is really good at something, you think you're being generous but you're actually being racist." This would sound like a rude or aggressive thing to say, but he knew I was joking and he laughed it off good naturedly, because that is how he is. He is also not a racist.
Then he said, "I'm not a racist, I hate everyone equally." But he didn't mean it. It is true he is not a racist, but he actually likes pretty much everyone. He might even like everyone equally. But that particular saying is interesting to me because except this one time, most of the time when you hear someone say it, what they are actually saying is:
I probably am a racist, but according to my thinking, all the racist beliefs I hold towards all different kinds of people in my own mind somehow cancel each other out.
So I choose to interpret that statement as meaning that they are some sort of a broad spectrum racist, or a multifunctional racist, if you will. I am the opposite of that statement. I don't choose to hate everyone equally, that's a stupid thing to say. I dislike almost every single person specifically and unequally. Most people I don't like just for being ordinary flawed human beings, but some for more personal deeper or just poor taste reasons. Why? Because their flaws reflect my flaws. Annoying.
Back to the story. The alleged Russian "Helga" is looking at me.
I say "So you're Russian." Suspiciously.
She is amused by all this attention and says "Yes." Then, as if the concept itself had just suddenly occurred to her, she says, "Russian brides! You should get a Russian Bride, I bring them in. RussianBrides.com."
At this point I know she's lying. If it was any kind of Russian website it would be Russianbrides.ru. Not .com. The fact that she didn't use the Russian country internet suffix .ru shows she doesn't know anything about the landscape of the Russian internet human black market.
The ICANN internet suffix .ru is a necessity for most Russian crimes and scams, which probably constitutes 95% of Russia's GDP. Within the network of .ru suffixes exists a base of operations for warez, crackz, serialz and every species of virus, trojan, spyware and browser hijack known to man or Borg.
I say to Helga "You don't seem very Russian."
My friend then says, "She's also April. Helga and April."
I say "So you're name isn't Helga, its April?"
She is amused by all this continuing attention and says "Yes, April."
I say "Which is it? Helga or April? Your story doesn't check out. I don't know if I can even believe your name is April."
"Yes it is, I was born in April and my parents named me April." she says.
"Oh really, what's your sign then?" First time I ever asked a girl that question, funny, considering the circumstances.
She says "Taurus." I consider this. You see, I was born in April, and I am a Taurus, which happens to be the only zodiac sign I can associate with any month. If she hadn't said Taurus I would have known she was b.s.'ing about something. But she said Taurus, who are people born in April/May. I am still unconvinced however, she might be someone who knows the zodiac very well and thinks quick. A scary/sad possibility.
"So you're a Taurus?" I say.
She says "I can prove it", and she pulls up her sleeve and has a version of the Taurus astrological symbol tattooed on her arm. What that actually proves isn't much of anything, but I am already bored of where this is headed so I abandon asking more questions. At this point, the girl I know from high school is now long gone, and my friend from high school has left the table too. I see him drinking with some other people. I am not sure if he is coming back, so now its just me and Helga and also her quiet friend who has been sitting there with us not saying a word.
"Are you in to astrology?" Helga asks me.
"No." I say, and for some reason we both find this funny.
Helga's friend is somehow totally doing nothing except sitting there staring blankly and waiting for something to happen. So I just pretend that's probably how Helga's friend prefers things.
Helga says "I couldn't be interested in a man who isn't into spirituality." She points her face to her friend and says "We wouldn't be interested in any man who isn't into spirituality." Then her friend repeats the same thing. Helga looks at me, waiting to see what my answer will be to what she just said. My hunch is that she wants to find out what my feelings are on spirituality.
I look puzzled "What does that mean?". Pause. "Do you mean like ... ghosts?"
"We are very into spirituality. It's what we do, we are studying spiritual healing." She says.
I say "Is that like healing...with... ghosts?"
This question amuses her. Go figure.
"We don't believe people need drugs." She says. Then her friend says "We don't believe people need drugs."
"Huh." I say.
She says, "I believe that there are many parts to a person. There's the physical, the mental, the emotional, and the spiritual."
Her friend says, "we don't believe people need drugs." I bet if I pressed they would suggest that people don't need surgery either, but for the sake of amicability I don't pursue it.
I say. "If someone who has cancer doesn't take any medicine because you're treating their spiritual side, and then their physical side dies, that's ...uh... on your conscience." I expect a bad response to this. To my surprise she takes it and doesn't respond.
The reason I said this is that people who advocate non-scientific medicine tend to present themselves as experts. Given the opportunity they will mislead the unwitting into belief that their medicine somehow does something, or even worse, that their phoney medicine is somehow as effective as real medicine developed within the long medical tradition of research, study, and rigorous testing. It's sad, not amusing, that scientists and doctors that have spent history making giant strides to improve human health, for that effort are rewarded with suspicion and low key contempt. Not from everyone of course, but from a small group, from bogus witch doctors and shamans or whatever else you want to call these snake oil salesmen, and their depressingly vocal brainwashed gullible minion/cheerleader space cadets. What is their problem? I figure they dislike what appears to be medicine and science implying to be possessors and controllers of the truth.
Even if scientists claimed that, why is that so hard to accept? That the hard work and discipline shown by doctors and scientists yields results, unlike the halfwit folk wisdom, fairy tales and wishful thinking of hollistic chicanery? These hollistic charlatans, well intentioned or not, perhaps thoroughly fooled by their own pseudo-science horseshit or perhaps not, give people bad advice and put the health of trusting people in danger. So what I'm saying is I dislike the entire idea.
My conversation with Helga/April continues, I make jokes about her medicine classes being just like witches at black masses, and I make various other attacks on her whole belief system, all of which seems to raise her interest rather than piss her off. Go figure. She counters with the argument that spirituality is something people need. That spirituality is important because you feel it. I gather her point to be that the importance of spirituality comes from feeling, not from reason.
I swear that I actually say the following. "I think people are by nature empiricists, but they want to understand the patterns in the world they see around them. Some people need to rely on all kinds of make believe stuff. But it's a waste of time." I am starting to regret how this is conversation is panning out. I make some vague and slightly off topic points about how people want things to be simple so they don't have to worry about them, but that life is too complex to ever make understanding things easy or obvious. Growing up means getting used to not knowing what is going on and living with it. She accepts my rather uninventive philosophical musings as sufficiently whatever enough to change the conversation from the subject of spirituality.
So instead, she proposes that she will answer any questions that I have about women.
I say, "Nah, I don't have any questions".
She says, "No honestly, I'll answer any questions you have about women."
I say, "I already know everything about women, I don't have any questions." I have to force myself to hide the amusement I feel that this young lady is making a kind of condescending offer. First off, she's young, so I think she probably knows as much about women as I do. Now I won't claim to know the first thing about women, but I don't think there is some key piece of information that once you have it, every instance of behaviour from all women will just make perfect sense to you.
But! If you have trouble with the opposite sex there are a few easy ways to fix it that I have picked up on. Learn how to identify girls with low self esteem. If that doesn't work, lower your standards. Last I looked, the world was full of scared needy people just waiting to grab for dear life to the nearest warm body that fits at least 50% of their mental picture of their ideal mate. Try to look like 65% and you're a fuckin shoe in.
Anyway, in her case I think she was just trying to keep me talking and asking questions so she could reveal things that might build my interest in her. Maybe I'm wrong, but considering the amount of casual indifference she had already put up with from me, why else would she want to me talking? So instead of asking questions about women I just started volunteering personal information about myself that I was making up on the spot. I fear owls, I dislike canned food, I have problems with monogrammed towels. I recognize that being on the other side of that kind of conversation can be annoying, but my mind was starting to wander. The alcohol was starting to fog my thinking and other people who I knew came over to the table, which kept interrupting the continuing conversation.
But then things took a different turn. Very, very, rarely, I have just the right balance of drinks and jokes in me that I start saying all the right things to a girl. This started to happen more and more as our conversation got increasingly fractured by interruptions, maybe even because of it. I sensed her finding me funnier and interestinger.
And I don't want to write this, just as much as you don't want to read this, and for just as many good reasons that I don't want to write it as you don't want to read it, but I had no desire for sex. I know it sounds presumptuous of me to assume she was going to sleep with me, but very rarely I can be charming, and also, it wouldn't have mattered if she did.
I might mention that the problem was not that she wasn't good looking enough, not that that matters to me when I'm drinking, or also even when not drinking. And, none of my close friends were around to know about it anyway, so that wasn't there to stop me. But it was getting late and she would expect me to turn on some kind of charm if anything was going to happen. I just didn't have the energy to be sexy, so I decided to run out the clock.
We kept talking, just chit chat. It got late enough pretty soon. Her and her friend got ready to leave. She put on her coat, and walked around the table and facing me and smiling she said "It was nice to talk to you. It was interesting." I assumed the seeming candor of her statement was because she was actually being honest. Now I wonder if she has a blog. And on the unlikely chance that she would have retold the same story, I would like to read it to see if she saw things differently. She probably does have a blog, probably on myspace or something. However, as egomaniacal as I pretend to be, of course I am flattering myself to think that talking to me qualifies as a blogworthy turn of events.
Anyway, that's a story.