Local Insanity

In the usual style of a stream of consciousness I’m writing this immediately after watching Garden State (thanks Kip!), which I just saw was written, directed, and lead by Zach Braff! My guess as to how it’d go is that they’d end up apart either because a) she had some terminal illness (oh wait, that’s A Walk to Remember) or that they were just meant to be friends that changed each others’ lives by giving the other perspective (uh, oops. Lost in Translation). Actually they end up together in the end but in a way that feels real and leaves much of the usual cliché behind.

So some people use drugs prescribed by a doctor to change their mood (Zoloft is the new popular one, right?). Some use drugs not prescribed by a doctor. Some use alcohol to deal with things in their life that they either can’t or don’t know how to deal with. I use movies. And music. And I know I’m not alone in this. How many of the three of you have that favorite movie that you like to watch on a rainy day or when you’re feeling just a little down? The funny thing is that people know this but it’s really just a perspective shift, like the Necker Cube.

Favorite message from the movie: when he’s talking to his dad, he said that they should try just being okay that they are who they are. Fricin’ obvious, no? But we don’t do it. Oh perhaps you do, reader #3, but I know the others don’t. And I don’t. I have these Bose headphones which I just noticed have a pretty low rating on Amazon. I’m not an audio snob, but I bought them because I liked them when I tried them out and they were on sale at a Good Guy’s closing. I stopped when the right side’s plastic part broke, that is until I took some initiative and visited my local Wallgreen’s to buy some Krazy Glue - about a year later. I even managed to avoid gluing my fingers to my eyelid! I use them to listen to music and language lessons on BART, since my iPod headphones don’t block out enough sound to allow me to hear what I’m supposed to repeat back in Japanese to the people staring ahead on BART who can’t hear me anyway. As a consequence of this I take them off when I’m walking, but it’s too much trouble to put them away, so I put them around my neck, and I realized that I must look a bit like Rob in High Fidelity with my leather jacket and messenger bag.

But the thing is, it’s really a costume, and it feels like a costume. I’m playing the role of That Guy who wears headphones while walking around and has a tape deck at home and prefers vinyl to CDs and makes lists of his top five whatever a couple times a day. It’s amusing to me that people might envision this whole other fictional part of my life based solely on my wanting to carry headphones that actually block sound. When I was in Santa Barbara I biked to work, and I became an environmentalist - at least to other people. I’m just a cheap bastard who is afraid of buying anything that’d tie him down is really all it boils down to, but that’s not what others think. Do I recycle? Yeah. Did I go watch An Inconvenient Truth and get freaked out by it? Sure. But I’m not an environmentalist.

The other point I liked from the movie, which was similar to the first, is shared by Fight Club and many others, just phrased differently. In Garden State it was that it doesn’t make sense to break off relationships with people in order to work out your “issues”, whatever they might be (exceptions might be made for those with homicidal tendencies, but I digress) and that you’ve just gotta live your life and deal (Kip, you should be nodding your head about now). The way Brad Pitt put it in Fight Club was, “This is your pain. This is your burning hand. It’s right here.” The extent to which this was what I did with Sarah is unclear to me, but it played a part. For that I’m sorry (as if it matters, nearly a year later).

Movies also provide for me some sense of anchoring. When I first moved to Bakersfield and didn’t know anyone, just starting high school, Kelly and I would get home from school and watch Hook. We watched that movie so many times. When I first moved to Santa Barbara I did the same thing, just with a different set of movies. I’m doing it now, and in my rotation are Pride and Prejudice, Superman Returns, Lost in Translation, and newcomer The Illusionist and perhaps Clerks II.

As a developer, this is sort of a natural thing to have happened. I spend a lot of time on the computer, and watching these movies is something I can do while I work without distracting me too much. It’s like an IV. I suspect, however, that there are better drugs out there. I enjoy spending time with friends, there are just not enough of them in San Francisco yet. Zazen is another that I’m determined to try. Wandering aimlessly around the city has proven to be beneficial. Today I discovered Glen Canyon, which doesn’t quite have the view Bernal Hill does, but it’s a lot more green and pretty.

I’ll close this weird post with a question: if you dropped everything right now and went traveling, how long could you go? Would you stop because of financial reasons, or homesickness, or something else? My answer: about a year, stopping for financial reasons.

Jelly Bellies are the product of evil genius. Here’s why:

• They smell good when you open the container, but you can’t taste it until you bite on it (or suck on it for a long time), forcing you to eat them faster than you might like.
• There are many nearly diametrically opposed flavors that nearly share colors.
• When gauging how many there are in a container, you will almost always be at least an order of magnitude off.
• They’ve usurped the position as the official “upgrade” from jelly beans.

Apparently I have this in spades. Thanks for keeping me sharp, 25.

I was greeted at work today by a stuffed monkey with an arm wrapped around a bottle of Southern Comfort, topped off by a large balloon. It was quite a sight, and gave me a nice laugh.

Lunch was at Ahi Sushi, which I believe is the sushi place of choice for me and Kip now. I had sashimi, and enjoyed it thoroughly. 25’s game was on today, but I felt that I did fairly well in that area with only one or two embarrassing comments on my part. I think I will be better off if I take a cue from Kip’s recent attitude toward foosball: don’t keep score.

After work I biked to Cooney’s downtown for Pub Quiz, which was about the same as last week: current events (of which I seem to know nothing) and odd historical/musical/astronomical trivia. I contributed very little to my team, but a good time was had by all.

All in all, a good day. Thanks a bunch to Kip, Jen, and Zoe for the entertaining morning, to Mom and Kelly for the lovely Harry and David package that contains all kinds of goodies, and to everyone who took the time to wish me a happy birthday.

On a side note, if you don’t know what 25 means, you are not alone, and probably wouldn’t get it unless you happened to hang out in #caboose sometime last week (hi railers!).

Technorati Tags: birthday, sushi

Between flirting and outright rejection lies a large spectrum, and it is frustratingly difficult to place anyone on it with certainty. Perhaps I don’t need to, and perhaps that’s part of the fun - if I can really call it that. Better to be amused and play along than to get angry. En garde, Twenty-Fiver!

It is those who most recognize the weaknesses they possess who seek out the remedies most vigorously. I sometimes feel that my powers of recognition are not strong enough to account for my weaknesses. If they were, I’d practice Buddhism more consistently - or so I tell myself.

The weakness at issue is one of focus. Trying to quiet the mind is, as they say, like trying to quiet a drunken monkey. What is the monkey telling me? About my lack of a social life, about my taxes, about whether I really need a car, about some cute girl, about getting a new MacBook Pro, etc. These are things that I have to deal with, yes, but not things that have to steal my focus like the annoying update managers in Windows and OS X.

What does it take to learn this ability? Hard work, I imagine. As time goes on the prospect of spending the time to learn it seems less and less daunting compared to the daily struggle of battling the monkey (no, not that monkey).

Some interesting things occurred to me on this topic over the last week or so. Brett, one of the guys from work, left to pursue another job more closely related to his chosen field: physics. During the last week at j2, he still did his job, but he was fairly nonchalant about it. Obviously he knew the problems that would arise would not be his to deal with, and that we were there to take up the reigns. This is decidedly not how I feel about my job at the moment. I get stressed by problems. Inefficient designs and practices grate on my nerves. “Waste is a thief,” as the Microsoft guy in Fight Club said.

It would be nice to capture the feeling Brett had during his last week and apply it every day. The problems that arise will not be mine forever, nor will my accomplishments. The code I write will eventually be replaced by (hopefully) better code as time goes on. As I’ve learned time and again, however, intellectual understanding is merely the first step in the process of putting something like this into practice.

Feeling the same way about women would be nice too. I’ve said that I don’t want to actively pursue a relationship, and that’s still true, but the desire is there nonetheless. Maybe if I bike long enough and hard enough I’ll reach the end of the world where I can sit down and look out into space and finally leave the damn monkey behind.

Technorati Tags: buddhism, philosophy, focus

When life tosses you a curve ball, you gotta stop and wonder why it insists on playing baseball.

An astute observer would say that it is I who have thrown a curve ball - to myself - and so I should be prepared for it. I wasn’t, but there’s some consolation in my belief that I don’t think I ever could have been.

When previous relationships ended it was relatively easy to go on. Well, sort of. My first was difficult to get over. The thing with this one is that I was so used to being with Sarah. It just was. Kelly told me that Jason reacted to the news of our breakup thusly: “WHAT?! Tell him to get back together! They can’t be broken up.” I guess I wasn’t the only one who was used to it.

Our history - our momentum - was what was keeping me in it near the end. It is difficult to let go. It was the right thing to do, but it wasn’t any easier for that being true. Sarah will move on and find someone better suited to her. I want to be single for a while, if only to get some perspective. And yet I find myself jealous of Hawk. Ack.

And of course j2 had to go and hire a gorgeous administrative assistant just as I was deciding this. Oh well - the greater the challenge, the greater the reward.

Technorati Tags: life