I Bet You Think This Post Is About You, or Musical Hiccups

So my RealPlayer at work sometimes tends to hiccup. I'm not sure why. It's particularly prominent when I'm running a lot of applications (consuming memory) and I try to live stream NPR through my computer. (I've blogged about this before.)

Recently the issue has proven to extend beyond internet streaming, but also to music recorded on my hard drive. Sometimes my music gets "stuck." This is particularly annoying when it happens to do so in a song that has a repetitive refrain, thus masking the problem.

I bet you think this song is about you
I bet you think this song is about you
I bet you think this song is about you
I bet you think this song is about you
I bet you think this song is about you
I bet you think this song is about you

Sometimes it could take a while before you realize that the song doesn't actually repeat that phrase that many times. Of course, it's worse when you're listening to a remixed track, in which sometimes they do repeat that same refrain that many times.

Ironic that in this advanced digital age, my computer sometimes mimics a broken record.

The Return of USM

So I IM'd with my buddy Mark about the dream with him and USM and his OOI in it. Here's part of the ensuing conversation:

Mark: In yours, I think I symbolize something you wish you could be or some kind of person you perceive me to be.
Mark: Envy or desire to emulate or something.
Dennis!: really? strange. i just put you down as some random guy who happened to be you.
Mark: And you try, but it's awkward, and clearly you fear and expect the rejection that occurs.
Mark: Ah, but if it were truly random, it would be Random Guy making out with Random guy.
Mark: The fact it's me says something about how you perceive me.
Dennis!: the "you" character was almost completely pointless in my dream. well, except to rub in the fact that USM wanted to make out with every other identifable person in my dream except me.
Dennis!: USM was, more or less, anderson cooper.
Mark: Anyway, that's my dimestore interpretation.
Dennis!: the only other dreams i ever remember are exam anxiety dreams.
Dennis!: i've been out of school for seven years and i still sometimes dream about an algebra or history exam which i know i have not studied for, or even attended the classes for
Dennis!: once i had a dream where i was a mutant, like in x-men. even lived in a xavier academy-type place with other freaks.
Dennis!: my power was kinda like drew barrymore's in "firestarter"
Mark: I won't begin to discuss what the ramifications of THAT dream are.
Mark: flame. flaming. flamer. flame on.
Dennis!: and i got hit on by a really cute boy... then my frigging alarm clock went off.
Mark: lol
Mark: don't u hate that.
Mark: I'm not often so caught up in a dream I don't realize it's a dream.
Dennis!: how sad would that be if i could switch to that in my dream? i'd be saying "wow, you're cute. wanna come back to my place?" and he would respond, "of course. i'd love to go back to your place. it's your dream, after all."

Sentries at the Gate

I've reached the conclusion (again) that I am emotionally stunted and way too guarded for my own emotional well-being. I am once again driven to this conclusion by a random confluence of events over the past few weeks which, when examined in their totality, make the conclusion inescapable.

1: I will never actually date anyone seriously because I have internal triggers which will make this impossible.

I actually flirted with a guy on Tuesday night. Frankly, I just did it for fun. That and I was probably a little less than sober as I did, even though we weren't even really supposed to be drinking that night. The flirting consisted exclusively of some arm-touching and some back-fondling. At some point he even gave a kind a back massage. That was really about it.

I honestly don't expect that this guy will even remotely make an effort to get in touch with me again, even though I gave him a business card that bears my cell phone number. Why not, you ask? Because by this point in my life I'm hard-wired to believe that I repulse gay men -- or at least I do if they ever get a chance to stop and actually think about me. His having left the party has given him a chance to think. Ergo, I'll never hear from him again.

2: I keep far too much distance from even some of my closest friends.

Don't get me wrong, I love my friends dearly. There's nothing I wouldn't do for my closest ones. But I don't expect the same in return. Heck, at times I'll literally feel like it's simply wrong for me to impose on anyone, including my closest friends. My fiercely independent streak takes hold and asserts itself to an irrational end. (I've sort of blogged about this before.)

Thus, making new friends is difficult for me. No, wait, let me clarify that: Meeting new people isn't too terribly difficult; it's the making new friends part that's trickier. You can meet new people all the time; it's the intimacy that comes with making them your friend that's tricky. And I find that this is a difficult endeavor for me.

I've met several great people in recent months whom I truly consider wonderful people whom I'd love to be able to hang out with more. Yet each of them, as is to be expected, has their own sets of friends, which include their own shared sets of memories/habits/hobbies/rituals, of which I, of course, have no part. So when I say to my newfound acquaintances, "Hey, you guys actually do that? I've always wanted to! I'd love to join you sometime...." it feels like I'm inviting myself into a social scene that doesn't necessarily want me there. All too often, this feeling is reinforced when those people actually do fail to include me when they make their plans.

3: I can't compose a personals ad to save my life.

Okay, this may sound stupid, but it's true. I've tried. It's quite difficult to put your life in 200 characters or less in a way which will actually attract attention. Whenever I try, I come across as trite at best, boring at worst. Is that who I am? Is that how people perceive me? Ugh.

What's worse, composing a personals ad forces me to set aside a more powerful impulse, viz., the impulse to get ballistic, and inappropriately bitter. Even if I find myself at a personals ad site with the best of intentions, and in a good mood, with the intention of composing a catchy ad for myself, I find myself overtaken with the desire to just type something like, "I'm not your type. There's nothing to see here. Move along. Get going now. Why did you even bother to click on this profile? Have fun. G'night now."

It's a good thing I'm doing okay professionally. At some point I'll just get a dog and call it a Life.

Competition in Bed

Continuing the ongoing thread of "Wow, I am so pathetic" lines of thought:

Last night I had the strangest dream. I wish the dream had involved me sailing away to China in a little boat, only to meet someone who had to get their laundry clean, but it does not.

The characters in this odd dreamscape: Mark, my friend in Seattle; an Unnamed Sexy Man (kinda reminded me of Anderson Cooper, but it wasn't him, alas); and a third man with whom I know USM has been flirting all night. USM and the third man are not "together" -- yet -- but if all goes according to USM's plan, they will be. I find USM incredibly sexy and nice, so of course, I'm kinda crushing on him as well.

I forget the circumstances leading up to the events, but the setting basically is this: Mark, USM, USM's Object of Interest, and I have somehow been brought together for an evening. It could have been a party, or perhaps we were all volunteering for an event together and were chatting during down time. In any event, we were all gradually getting to know each other over the course of a few hours. (I don't know if I knew Mark in my dream, or if he was just some random avatar of Joe Everyman.)

At some point, USM kisses his OOI. This does not make me happy, but I'm cool because, frankly, I'm used to not being anyone's OOI. The dream takes a turn, however, when Mark expresses his interest in USM as well, and somehow draws him into a kiss of their own. This is remarkable in and of itself as Mark (in real life) has a boyfriend of several years. This, of course, annoys me.

So, being the upfront and ballsy guy that I am (literally, in my dreams), I decide it's my turn. I take USM's hand and gently direct him towards me, where I have every intention of making out with him. Unfortunately, even in my dream he turns his cheek to me so that I don't make contact with his lips, but the Forceful Me takes a hold of his face and directs it back to me so that I actually succeed in making lip contact with him. And he doesn't resist, and in fact, it's quite nice.

I don't know what happened next. I don't know if that's because I woke up, or just because I dreamed on but don't have a recollection of it.

Even in my dreams, I play second fiddle. Something's not right.

Animated crushes

Okay, so we've established that approaching a random blogger on the street to say hi is probably inappropriate, although potentially fun.

What makes me even sicker than you could ever possibly imagine, though, is that I can develop crushes on comic strip characters. I'm flipping through an online strip right now thinking, Wow, the boys in this strip are CUTE!

I'll have to allow you to judge for yourself: Check out Boy Meets Boy. That link is for the first day of the strip. You can keep reading ahead a day at a time. I've been addicted to this for hours now.

I should possibly also point out that I have crushes on Rob from Get Fuzzy (though he does have some not-so-flattering moments) as well as Jeremy from Zits. Or perhaps I shouldn't point that out. It's just plain embarrassing.

I am sick beyond my wildest dreams. I need help.

Blog crushes

Is it wrong to have a crush on someone just because you read their blog and find it funny, witty, relevant, etc.? (Doesn't hurt that they also have their picture posted.)

I have this strange fantasy that one day I'm going to walk down the street, either here or in some city I'm visiting, then suddenly do a double-take and say, "Hey! You're [insert blogger's name here]!" only to have them turn around, look at me, and morph their face into some mixture of abject horror and strange fear, and say "... and who the hell are you?"

It'll be worse if I'm actually able to rattle off a bunch of stats about him, like what television shows he watches, the names of some of his siblings, the cruise he took in 2002, a rally he attended, and even the names of his pets.

I need to get out more.

A Pound of Flesh

Some friends and I were having brunch at Eastern Market the other day, so we decided to do a little bit of flea market shopping when we were done. We walked around for a bit (I was going to buy a nice framed set of old-style Chinese coins, but the frame was terribly nicked), then happened to wander past a real estate office.

They had copied and put out a list of all the open houses taking place that day. On a lark, we decided we would go check out the ones close to the neighborhood.

I've been hankering to buy a new place for a while now. My current place feels so tiny. And, I am a master at accumulating junk. I want something bigger. I want something more "adult." I want a house house.

The first house we checked out was decent. It was a two-story townhouse, 3 bedrooms upstairs, living room, and kitchen. There was even a basement apartment complete with certificate of occupancy and separate entrance... mortgage offset! The upstairs was rather poorly laid out, though, for two of the three bedrooms were ridiculously small, and really usable only for children.

The basement apartment was occupied by a man named Jake. Undoubtedly, he was a Hill intern. He had framed pictures on the walls of him with various Republican bigwigs. It was sick. (Kidding!) The apartment was really well laid out... cute, not too cramped. And he had one of those microshavers (you know, the kind for "sensitive" areas that you can use on a balloon and still not pop it). My friend Elizabeth dragged us out of there when she realized that we were learning more about the occupant than about the apartment.

Not that any of us were really terribly serious about buying anyway.

The second place we saw was another two-story with basement. The basement contained a washer/dryer and what was charmingly described as an "in-law suite" or "au pair suite." (Yes, that's right, I'm planning on hiring an au pair when I move to a new place. You know, to take care of my nonexistent kids.) The backyard was expansive and great for entertaining! Hibachi heaven! The living room was large and included a fireplace, there was a separate dining room, and a rather large kitchen (lots of counter space!) with a dine-in area there as well! All this for only $640,000.

Man, I need to make more money, or move to a cheaper city.

So, my pound of flesh. In the bedroom on the second floor, there was one of those crawl spaces you get to by pulling down a ladder otherwise recessed into the ceiling. Unable to resist, I pulled the string down to reveal the ladder, and the rather completely uninspiring crawl space above. I didn't feel like crawling up the ladder, so I figured I'd push the ladder back up. Woah, strong springs! The ladder proceeded to retract back into the ceiling with alarming force, and with my fingers still captured in the string, well....

I pulled the better part of my left pinky nail off.

I didn't realize that the pain I felt was actually more than just pain until we got outside. I discreetly asked for a tissue or something to cover my bleeding finger. Of course, I tried to be discreet, but my friends noticed. I had to eventually make my way to a Starbucks and ask for a cup of ice to numb my finger.

My finger's not hurting as much now. It only hurts when I accidentally directly touch the area that was erstwhile covered by the nail. But I will note that it's an absolute bitch to type when you can't type "a", "q" "z" or the capital letters of anything on your right hand without moving your left hand off the home keys.

Dreamscapes

Okay, my life has officially hit the realm of the impossibly pathetic. Although I'm reassured that this happens to others frequently, I'm still bemused at my immense reaction to this.

The other day I was having a strange dream. And I do mean strange. Part of it involved my superpowers. Yes, superpowers. I was able to set things on fire with the sheer power of my mind. Wait, it might have been the power to make things explode. Well, something like that. At one point in the dream, like Drew Barrymore in Firestarter, I had to turn my attention to a large tank of fish to make sure I didn't do anything disastrous. (Unlike Drew's, however, my re-channelling of energy caused poor little fish to jump out of their tank, which has suddenly become a teakettle thanks to me.)

Then I came to realize that the strange superpower I had was actually in context: I was somewhere pretty much akin to the Xavier Institute, where everyone basically had some kind of power. I know this because everyone else around me was a student (because, you know, I'm so young as to still be in school), and because no one really batted much of an eye when my superpowers threatened to go awry.

At some point in this dream, I was actually unable to restrain my powers, and entire plates of sheet glass which served as windows to the academy shattered. I laughed and basically just said, "Uh, oops. At least that shit is replaceable." (I know what you are thinking. You are thinking something else happened at the same time that this big explosion occurred in my dream. You are wrong.)

But the point of my patheticness (is that even a word? Well it is now) comes from this: At some point in my dream, a really cute boy starts hitting on me! I mean, he was really cute. Despite the fact that I dream-lived right across the street from the school (now complete with tremendous amounts of shattered glass), he was insisting that I hop into his car and spend the night at his apartment. And the thing is, I was going to go. I was actually kind of excited (again, no pun intended), in a freakishly schoolgirl kinda way, that some really cute boy was so into me.

At that point, my alarm clock started going off. Somehow, Bush's economic recovery theories made their way into my conversations with this boy. Which, I think you'll agree, is just plain wrong, on many levels.

My patheticness derives from the fact that I spent the better part of the waking morning quite sad that, in fact, I was awakened from my delightful slumber before ever getting to see my (literally) dream boy naked. I guess you can say I was a victim of premature awakening.

***

Earlier in the week, I had my recurring dream again. The one about the algebra test. As usual, no one in the class was remotely sympathetic to me about my dilemma. It's amazing how stressful those dreams are. It's amazing how quickly I revert to the stress of academic life. The strangest thing is, I'm pretty sure I'm capable of controlling my dreams, at least to some degree. I remember once I dreamed I was making out with someone who looked remarkably like an ex of mine. In my dream, I promptly changed his name and even the color of his hair because, Gawd, who wanted to be making out with him? And yet, I remain unable to change anything in my algebra anxiety dreams, and I continue to panic over a non-existent set of LaPlacian transforms.

What?

Have I mentioned I'm also unusually forgetful lately? Isn't it a bit early for Alzheimers?

I frequently will read something at my desk, realize that I need to do some followup, get up from my desk... and promptly forget what followup I needed to pursue. Here are the stage directions to the play, conducted mostly in internal monologue:

Me: "That's an interesting point. I don't know that it's accurate. What did the original document say? I should take a look at it. It's probably in the file."

[I get up and head toward the file room to get the document. The internal monologue continues when I'm about 1/4 of the way from my office to the file room, which is about 20 feet away.]

Me: "What was I supposed to go look for again? ... Dammit!"

I bring this up now just because this morning, I thought of something that would be cool and fun to blog about. But when I actually opened up the window to write the blog.... nothing.

Disordered States

I think I have ADD. I'm far too old for this.

I've just recently come to this conclusion, and it bugs the crap out of me. I hate it. I hate the thought that I might have a "disease" that's usually prevalent in grade-schoolers and adolescents. I hate the thought that I might find myself medicating myself into a proper state of mind when what I really could use to get my head focused better my just a swift kick in the ass. After all, that's what they did to us kids when I was growing up. No mollycoddling "let's just give you a few pills and you'll be all better" mentality. No. We got, "shut the hell up, listen to the teacher, and do your homework if you don't want to suffer some form of punishment."

But now, my faith in the "suck it up and just do it" mantra could be waning. Because I'm realizing that I am simply unable to concentrate, and I may just want to blame it on some sort of physical disorder so I can escape responsibility for it. Didn't get my work done today? I couldn't concentrate on the assignment. Had to surf the web instead. It was more fun. Didn't get the laundry done this evening? Couldn't help it. There was a string of really really addictive TV shows on, and I kept surfing between five of them when the commercials hit.

Q: How many ADD kids does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Wanna go ride bikes?

I guess I should see a doctor. But I still hate this.

Stepping Up to the Plate

I'm too old to be living the way I am.

My friend Jessica is getting married in a few months, so I, of course, had to shop for housewares. The task was made substantially easier by the fact that there exists a registry, and decisions regarding what to buy were pared down to one tiny consideration: price.

So I surfed through the Bloomingdale's web site and selected a few items for purchase, clicked a few times, entered a credit card, and happily completed my duty as a happy wedding celebrant.

Bloomingdale's appears to have (quite stupidly) misinterpreted my request to hold off on delivering the goods for a few months. To wit: Because I didn't want the gifts to arrive too terribly far in advance of the wedding, I asked Bloomie's to hold off on shipping them (two sets of items) for about a month. Bloomingdale's interpretation of my request: Please ship the items whenever you get around to it.

So Jessica got the wedding gifts early. I had to call to verify that she had received them, because, given the conflict between what I requested and what actually occurred, I couldn't be sure there wasn't some big, even stupider mix-up somewhere.

One of the gifts I sent were a set of plates. Very nice, apparently. Jessica's quite pleased with them. And, she reports, "Jason [the fiance] won't let us use them yet. He's not ready to throw out our old sets yet."

At which point it hit me that the plates I use on a routine basis at home are not "sets" of plates. They do not look "nice" by any stretch. In fact, they are literally leftover salad and dinner plates, and cereal bowls... as stolen from my college dining hall. And my alumni association is pestering me about my tenth-year reunion.

So, without a second thought, I asked Jessica if I could have the soon-to-be tossed plate set. I'm excited to get new plates and stuff. Even if they're hand-me-downs. I'm too cheap and poor to go buy new ones myself.

Man, I Feel Like A Woman

I've recently come to the conclusion that I'm a big ol' girl.

Okay, that was a little dramatic. But it's still at least slightly true. Apparently all the literature says so and supports my self-diagnosis.

The single biggest indicator of this circumstance is my relationship with my best friend from high school, Mark. He lives in Seattle. At times I wonder why he's still my friend, seeing as we can never talk without fighting.

But that's the point: We have vastly different communication styles. Were we both of the "masculine" communication style, we might get along much better than we do. But we aren't.

I was recently bitching and moaning to him about the District's voting rights -- or lack thereof. "Half a million taxpaying U.S. citizens are denied an effective voice on the floor of Congress!" I railed. "One person one vote is a sham in this country!"

Mark's response boiled down to: "So? Move."

His argument further consisted of: "You knew what you were getting into. You're an adult, you're educated, and you made the conscious decision to relocate to the District and buy property there. If you were some uneducated black guy living in S.E. D.C. who was born and raised there and was systematically disenfranchised, I'd have more sympathy for you, but you should simply know better."

My response -- "and if a black man in 1950 for whatever reason made the choice to move to Alabama with its Jim Crow laws and its public lynchings, well, heck, he deserved whatever he got, up to and including execution" -- could not sway Mark. Moreover, he had no problem with my assertion that he was using my education and my race against me in a fight for equal voting rights -- as if certain people deserved representational voting rights more than others. If you're black and historically disenfranchised, you present a better argument for getting the vote than some uppity Asian lawyer who chose to move to the District. The uppity Asian lawyer can go voteless if need be. If we handed out votes one by one to District residents, I'd be one of the last to receive it, because I deserve it less.

But, I digress.

My point is this: I was bitching and moaning. That's really all I was doing. It's frustrating to me that taxpaying citizens of the United States can't vote in matters of national policy. Still more infuriating is that we don't have an effective voice in matter governing our own local affairs (Congressional oversight of the entire District budget).

Mark's response was not helpful to me. His response was basically, "Shit or get off the pot." Do something. Fix the problem. Moving to an actual State is a quick fix to the problem. Slower fixes include lobbying or otherwise getting the word out. But, in Mark-world, bitching and moaning did nothing. Do something.

The conclusion I draw from this? There are times I need to vent. And when those times come, I just want to be heard. And all I need is an occasional, "Yeah, I understand." And what I don't need is "Get off the pot."

Like I said, I'm a big ol' girl that way.

Related Link of the Day: www.dcvote.org