William Matheson's Journal

01:59 am - Body Language

I just finished a book, "Body Language" by Julius Fast. And before you ask, I did finish it quickly!

That classic cover is slightly sex-biased and has been updated in the revision I was reading.

Some points, some copied, some derived:

- Body language is just that, a language. It's "spoken" differently across different cultures, backgrounds, and even between individuals. Until reading this book, I was only passively aware of it and only consciously communicated with my words. But words are really only a small part of the story! (I think this also plays into why Kennedy was seen to win the TV debate while Nixon ruled the radio debate.)

- A mature person moves when he has to, and moves purposefully. Fidgeting is a sure sign of immaturity, and is a turn-off. One must also be aware of where they are spatially at all times - if you're clumsy with yourself, the take-home message is that you're careless socially and with other things that matter, too.

- Many leaders can lead without having to speak a whole lot! All you need to do is master the art of guiding people to do what they're inclined to anyway. Also, being a good listener doesn't mean just listening with your ears, you have to listen with your body, too.

- There's a great "artist appraising a painting" look that I want to learn and try out on people.

- I watched myself critically in the mirror and instantly realized why my super-exaggerated gestures, that to me are funny and ironic, put people off. This also dovetails with the whole moving less thing. If I'm a loose cannon with my expressions, it follows that I'm a loose cannon in general.

- The reason why I succeeded at Sainte-Anne is largely due to body language. The French immersion aspect forced me to learn it. Also, the body language there was a new kind - a kind of Saint-Annish, if you will, which means that I got to start with a clean slate, and I learned quickly. "Will is very expressive!" Luc would say. But after the contracts were finished, and we could speak English again, I quickly began to alienate people. I basically reverted to the body language I was using before I began the program. My movements started to convey insecurity, immaturity, and some degree of desperation.

- In the end, I'm going to see if I can "talk" more with my body and less with my mouth. I need to learn how to master silences. I also want to stop alienating people that I don't want to alienate. By just changing the way we carry ourselves, we can convey the message: "I am a great guy / girl. I am cool. I want to be your friend. Trust me." I can't wait to get back into the field after being cooped up here since Saturday. (Said Charlie Brown to Snoopy: "What's Joe Cool doing on campus on a Saturday?" Snoopy: "No wheels, man!" In my case, home with no bus service.)

Current Mood: awake

01:09 pm - Flashback

I was up until 2 last night working on my physics assignment - it's not so much that it was hard, more that I had yet to solidify a lot of the concepts involved in the questions. I'm on my way to becoming a sixth-rate mathematician, but physics is helped along so greatly by an intuitive grasp of math, and this combined with the lightning speed of this particular session makes me feel like I'm only half-awake. Also, the classes are long. Ninety minutes of physics instruction per day is enough for me, thanks. When we're coming around to the 2 hour mark (out of three), I feel like getting up and leaving. Today I wasn't the only one - I think we were all a little spent after the assignment.

Today the teacher was talking about stupid math mistakes, like making sure that you multiply to undo division, as in how:

10 - 8 = (1/2)(v)^2

becomes:

2(10 - 8) = v^2
20 - 16 = v^2
4 = v^2
2 = v

and then he started laughing and asked the class, "Did anyone here go through CPA?"

I alone raise my hand half-heartedly.

"Anyone have Mr. Lyne?"

"Yes," I groaned. "I failed his class - I got a 16!"

He went on to talk about how Mr. Lyne had a coin jar that everybody paid into when they'd make a silly math mistake. The teacher joked that his own son probably singlehandedly funded the term-end pizza party.

You couldn't have said the same thing about me - I wasn't even doing the math, therefore I wasn't making mistakes. ;-) I was terrible - I started out relatively eager and OK, but suddenly things got away from me. It was a combination of my PEI elementary education, two years in a Seventh-Day Adventist school with abysmal math and science, and my own personal hatred of school borne from the daily strife and harassment I faced there - all that thrust upon a teenager is, in retrospect, a pretty good recipe for failure. Toss me in Mr. Lyne's no-nonsense, no-sailing math class, and I instantly crumbled. I ended up failing Math 10 three times with three different teachers: 16, 8, 25... and then the school gave me a "Trucker Math" 10 credit that I graduated with. I came back and got my Grade 11 and 12 Academic and I did pre-calculus this summer, but that year continues to haunt me. About the only pleasant thing I remember is Mr. Lyne's bread.

These days I know how to use my deficiencies to my advantage and make lemons out of lemonade, but in those days I didn't, and I wish someone had tried to show me - can't blame them, though, because I was busy pushing people away.

I was so throughly rejected by everyone that I started preemptively rejecting others - people would say hello to me in the corridors, and I'd coldly ignore them. I really became my own worst enemy, probably in order to avoid the pain of straight-up rejection, but ironically it brought much more pain than just accepting the inevitable rejections we all receive would have been.

I just can't believe how much I've learned this summer. Apparently, for me, the best way to learn about myself and about other people is to take a bunch of math and science courses!

* * *

It was good for me to admit my failure in Mr. Lyne's Grade 10 math to everyone, even though it was thirteen years ago. Earlier in today's class I think I ruffled some feathers when we were talking about how you have to use fundamental units when using Newton's laws to find an orbital radius, while with Kepler's 3rd law, you can use whatever you want, as it's just Radius^3 / Period^2 of your unknown object compared to known values Radius^3 / Period ^2 of another (such as Earth's, if you're talking about the Solar System). (Note that the Kepler shortcut only works in situations where we know the properties of one other orbiting body. Kepler described the situation, but it took Newton to explain it.) So I suggested that for Rearth, just write 1AU.

Since Rjupiter = Rearth (Pjupiter / Pearth)^(2/3)
12 years / 1 year = 12 [years cancel]
12^(2/3) = 5.24 * 1AU = 5.24AU = Rjupiter.

Isn't that fun? Quick and dirty, but over these distances, who really cares?

* * *

A buddy of mine dropped in here and asked me about my plans for the fall. A lot of people are asking me how long it will take me to get my B.Sc. I guess the B.Sc. is really just a signpost - it's just a symbol for an achievement, not the achievement itself. Accordingly, I'm not really fussed about when it comes. I really just want to be on track towards getting somewhere, and I don't really care where the road goes. For so long I was just going nowhere, save for temporal bliss in places like Poland and Sainte-Anne. (My buddy asked me if I'd take courses during the summers to speed things up on the science end. Perhaps, but I'll probably be trying to get more Explore bursaries if I can!) Now, now I'm going somewhere, and it's so mystifying to strangers that I really do have to say things like, "Well, I'm going to do astrophysics, because I always wanted to be a star!"

Current Mood: grateful

07:10 pm - One reason not to use PayPass...

Just searched my wallet and my room for a non-expired credit card without PayPass. And I found one, a nice shiny silver one, which will be good for another two years. This is important, and you'll see why in a moment.

* * *

So I'm at the SuperStore, and I'm picking a register. One cashier catches my eye, so I go to her lineup. Now, you have to be extremely careful about this. If it's obvious that you're singling her out because she's attractive, you're pretty much dead in the water. I had a comeback ready if her body language indicated that she was offended by this: "Hey, don't flatter yourself, you just had the shortest line." Fortunately, it was not needed!

She smelled very nice, she smiled, she even had a hungry look in her eyes. The indications were enough to try something. So I put my part of the grocery order through and I figured I'd surreptitiously write my number down on the merchant's copy of the credit card receipt. Hey, no harm in trying, right?

But lo and behold, I handed her my card, she noticed it had PayPass, and she moved it over the beeper. No signature required. The transaction and the opportunity had passed.

I laughed about it to myself, and determined that I'll try again next week... this time, with a card that doesn't have PayPass. ;-) I could also request cash back on a debit transaction, but that would create too much confusion, and besides I don't want to be opening my wallet in front of her - unless it's filled with $100 bills, she might as well not see it at all, and I don't have the money to be attracting people with the "I'll buy you things" shtick anyway. To twist a phrase used by a relative, "I'm the play guy, not the treat guy."

The game continues! By the way, everyone, I hate weekends. Why? Because there's no bloody bus service and I'm basically sequestered here the whole time as a result. I can't use my stepfather's wheelchair van for generic hanging out, and I don't want to use my mother's truck at all because she leaves her horse junk in it all the time and it smells like the inside of a stable. What a waste of a new truck - god, it would be a total babe magnet!! I'll just have to do the best I can with what I've got until I can find something better. Maybe I can segue a potential chemistry co-op into full time work before I actually get a B.Sc, and then just do the rest of the degree more slowly - I really can't stay here for very much longer.

Current Mood: contemplative

10:29 am - Pride and...

Awful Man Offers Witty, Acerbic Take On Everything He Sees - The Onion

I first read this article a while ago and remarked on the character's personal resemblance. But it wasn't until last night that I realized something more profound.

Generally, I have a slap or sting in my remarks, and I've been semi-consciously using them to drive people away. But why? Is it because I still fear being judged and rejected, to the point where I cut people off before they even get to make that choice? I act smug and proud. It's OK to be proud, but it's not good to injure the pride of others with my putridly odious remarks.

Being harassed and picked on all through school has left me with the legacy of always looking for the quick comeback, even when it isn't warranted. I think from now on I will try this, and use my predilection to my advantage: When a remark springs to mind, before releasing it I will first think about phrasing it in an inviting way (or not saying it at all). I should probably also think about what people will find funny, but let's take this one step at a time. Besides, there's little harm in making an unfunny joke, but there's a lot of damage done in making cruel jokes, funny or unfunny. (The funny ones are sometimes forgiven, but generally only by friends.)

I also have this idea that using slight left-handed compliments is an important tool when meeting women. While the jury may still be out on it, I grabbed onto this idea a little too enthusiastically, and used this idea as a means to pour out my acerbic barbs without shame or remorse. I'm definitely reevaluating this strategy, among others. I'm much closer to being the person I want to be than I was a few months ago, but I still have a long way to go.

See also: Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 5

Current Mood: awake

05:49 pm - a trancedental moment on a bench

I finally figured out what those broader implications were. I have been, up until this point, so monumentally insecure about myself (far beyond the healthy insecurity shared by all), to the point where I was utterly disbelieving that anyone could possibly like* me. (To this end, I was sitting on a bench thinking, “I’m a horrible person!”** and then I thought, “Now, wait just a second. Am I really that different?”) It often goes down like this: I make a friend, and then I wonder why.

So let’s say you’re meeting someone you’re trying to impress. That’s only human, of course. But if you are convinced that it’s impossible for others to like you, you can’t stop at being yourself. No, you have to put on airs, grind, force things. And that drives those very people (not to mention others) away. And in the end, you end up even further convinced that you’re unlikable.

Fortunately, when I realized I had this problem, I also recognized the solution: I just have to be friendly, considerate, helpful, and in casual situations utilize the advantages that I have (like I hope all of you use yours) without worrying about whether I’m using the right formula in a situation – there’s no surer way to become a complete tool. (There are ways to successfully use formulas, but I’ve decided to leave the learning and use of them to the otherwise talent-poor people who actually need them.) Sure, not everyone will like me. Few people are universally likeable, and those that are are usually on the other side of the grass. But not actively driving people away is a pretty good place to start!

Some of you might wonder who I got to be so insecure in the first place. I have to wordlessly point to school. I went in pretty OK – I was a happy child – but I came out fairly deranged.

Nothing that good weather, summer school (math sure clears the head!), and the advice of a few acquaintances-turned-friends can’t help, though. I almost wish I hadn’t spent all those summers out of town. I missed out on a lot.

* - I'm using "like" broadly here.

** - I’d blame my Christian upbringing for instilling me with the notion that we’re all (especially you!) depraved sinners and ipso facto bad people, but blame is useless because you could just as easily say that I’m to blame for not having stood up to the implicit and explicit efforts made to indoctrinate me. I think I’ve finally found my most personally meaningful argument against religion yet.

Current Mood: satisfied

01:18 pm - Socializing Notes

Reconstituted from notes written in my chemistry binder

I wore too much scented crap to chemistry class (OMG the irony) and since the room was so staid and stuffy, it got to be extremely awkward. I did manufacture some goodwill, though, mostly in picking good moments to speak out. I'd written down the formulae representing a bunch of chemical names, and the only thing I got wrong was that I wrote a "P" for potassium! ;-) Sharing this fact, "What if we wrote a 'P' for potassium?" got a few laughs.

I'd started the class on the wrong foot, too. Anxious to show off, when the professor asked what we would write for lithium phosphate, I knew it was Li₃PO₄, and after waiting to see that nobody else was going to volunteer I ended up blurting out "three lithiums, four phosphates." "No, PO₄ is one phosphate." Whoops. =)

Anyway, it's always good for me to keep in mind that I'm not the only sharp basketball in the class.

I'm finding it difficult to apply my new social principles all the time. Sometimes I just fall back on making a conscious effort to look pleasant. I'm trying to passively read other's body language, too. And there's also the choice of what to and what not to tell people - I can usually tell when I've said too much after the fact, though! =)

In conversation, if there's a lull, I should actually be more assertive about what interests me. If everyone's deferring, I should be making my own segueway, and seeing if I what I have to talk about will engage the other party(ies).

On names, here's some good advice. Start out with (for example), "'Will,' by the way," not "What's your name?" The former is casual and disarming, the latter puts people on the spot. I've been relying too much on direct questions in conversations - especially with the opposite sex. I guess, instead, I should be laying the groundwork, talking a little about my own interests, and seeing if the other party opens up. [With some people, there's just so much labour involved. I usually don't want to bother with it, and as a result I come off in the end looking like a snob.]

In the course of a certain bachelor party, I forgot most of these principles. (When I remembered them, it was only to worry incessantly about having transgressed them.) I can take a small bit of comfort in one thing: so did everybody else! =) And with all that wildness out of my system, I can sit back and enjoy the wedding, reception, and next-day-BBQ in relative sobriety and tranquillity. ;-) I know there are a few people that I have yet to establish goodwill with, and I should have done so before, but I'll have more opportunities next weekend.

Current Mood: sad

10:05 pm - Talking to People! ... et l'aventure!

So I followed this piece of advice today:

"Practice small talk with random strangers. They won't remember you, and you can gauge really easily what is awkward by their reactions."

And you know what? Not only is it valuable practice in and of itself, but it's incredibly personally enriching! I've just applied this for one day, and already I feel like I'm really interacting and sharing with other people and not just sailing through them on my way to whatever.

I learned a whole bunch of things, too, often as a direct result of initiating conversations:

- Some runs of the 42 Dal-Lacewood, at Dalhousie, switch to the 41 Dal-Dartmouth (as the same bus). I had no idea! It also left me wondering, hey, why don't they mark it as an official "thru-route" in the Rider's Guide, like they do with the 14 and the 61?

- Oh, this is a chemistry thing - the teacher was highlighting how carbon, with four valence (outer) electrons, can bind in four places, making it really flexible and the central atom in many chemically-bound complex molecules. Then it struck me: "Carbon-based life!" Ding! And guess what element is in the next period down, also having four valence electrons and four bonding points? Silicon! After that we get Germanium, but being in that fourth period it's got all those electrons from the central d-block which are at a lower energy level numerically but not practically, and that changes things somehow, not to mention I haven't heard too much about "Germanium-based life."

Little moments like that are what I live for. I almost didn't go to class tonight because I was a little bit sick and I felt like I read the material anyway. Good thing I went, though, because the class really reinforced the earlier part of the current chapter, and I got a great confidence boost by anticipating much of what the teacher said and doing the classroom exercises quickly. On the last set I even took a bathroom break, came back, whizzed through some Lewis structures and the chemical equations behind them, then twiddled my thumbs waiting. And then I waited through my classmate's questions, anticipating the answers and wisely restraining myself from jumping in on them - behaviour that made me the object of revulsion when I took computer science. Anyway, it's all such a change from the last couple of nights where I'd been cursing the day I decided to take this. The textbook is kind of hard to slog through, but it gets the job done.

- Also in chemistry class, I chatted off-and-on with the girl sitting next to me. We exchanged smiles when I came in, and I sat beside her and we just talked. A gift was dropped in my lap: we both happened to be English majors. So that was pretty cool - it made the class go by quite quickly and pleasantly. Much better than last week in the Life Sciences Building, what with the strange location and the reduced attendance. I'm sure there are still people there who have given up and are now trying in vain to escape its labyrinthine trenches. As a CWY buddy once said, it's the only place at Dal where the professors will accept "I couldn't find the place" as an excuse two weeks or more into the class.

- I went to Saint Mary's and signed up for a summer membership at The Tower. I'm going to go to the indoor cycling class coming up on Mondays. I'll be able to go in one or two other days a week, too. I'll be picking up the gear I need tomorrow when I take Paul out for groceries. Cheap stuff from Wal-Mart will do for now. And, I got that information by - you guessed it, talking!

I'm ashamed to admit it, but even though I was at SMU for five years, I only went into the gym for gym purposes twice: both times to shower during the time that we'd lost our power for 13 days as a result of Hurricane Juan. For some strange reason I'd always been intimidated by the gym - I guess I can thank grade school for that, but this is way better than grade school. You also learn that just because people are tougher than you, it doesn't automatically make them jackasses. That's just a really bad kind of childhood classical conditioning that guys like me need to snap out of. The guys there will, say, hold the doors open behind them for you there as much as anywhere.

- AND I also signed up to be a frosh leader! And you know what the "worst" part is? It's the same bunch of ne'erdowells kicking around!! Oh man, that was funny. Even frosh leader / SMUSA legend S.P.'s name was brought up. Not that he's involved now as far as I know, but the continuity is definitely there. Oh man, oh man. It's going to be good times. And I think, this time, I'll actually be a good frosh leader, both before and during frosh week.

- On the way home, after I enquired about the hijacking story splashed prominently on his newspaper page, the guy later gave me that whole section to read, and I hadn't even asked! So that was cool, and I said goodbye to him when he got off, and now he's not really a stranger anymore.

- And then on the 89, I get to talking with a guy about trucking! Technical and logistical ins and outs, which probably wouldn't interest you. Of more general interest, you wouldn't believe the vast array of stuff that's literally hauled across the continent on trucks. Like computers that arrive in California by sea and are trucked all the way up here. Fruits and vegetables, too. That guy who crashed into the Cobequid Pass toll gate yesterday (yes, we talked about that) was on his way to Halifax from Georgia. (And he probably didn't sleep at all on the way, from the looks of things.) They do say, "if you got it, a truck brought it," and verily it seems more and more like the only things that go by rail are things like coal and grain. I talk to the bus driver, too. I get the same driver inbound and outbound, and sometimes I'm the only person on the bus, so it's pretty casual that way.

So yeah, talking! I didn't get struck by lightning - nobody sneered at me, and very little - if any - face was lost. Yeah, it's not like I got a date out of any of it, but that kind of thinking is absurdly short-sighted (not to mention odiously self-serving) anyway. Besides, you have to learn to walk before you can run! (Although I remember a study that reported that running was physiologically easier since it's just controlled falling - BUT ANYWAY MY POINT IS)

Also, funny thing, most of the time, my interlocutors did most of the talking. I had very little cause to have to search for something to say. People have zillions of ideas crying out for expression, and all they want is an understanding ear. All you have to do is put yourself out there and give it to them.

(I also think I know the biggest reason for my failure to establish sustained goodwill among my coworkers at S.G. [a Japanese private grade school I taught at in 2008], especially the Japanese ones, but my fellow foreigners as well. I think they could see that while I cared a lot about being courteous, they saw through that and could see that I was really self-serving. I should have followed F.'s example and made more small talk with the Japanese teachers. I mean, they were sour and taciturn by times, but I should have gone beyond myself and tried anyway. That's the challenge - that's the spice of life - for the default, the minimum, just isn't enough, unless you want to get the absolute minimum out of life.

In any case, I was not thinking about others nearly as much as I should have been. It was me-me-me-me-me morning 'til night. Granted, the work environment had "I will work selflessly in my life for others" literally jammed down our throats, and this, among other things, caused me to want to rebel. I'm thankful every day that I'm out of that place, but I'm also starting to realize in what ways I was the author of my own problems.)

It's not hard. If you talk to people, you'll have cause to think about them. By thinking about them, you'll have cause to talk to people. It's just a matter of trading this cycle:

"You don't really talk to people. As a result, you don't learn how to talk to people. This leads to people not wanting to talk to you."
"As a result, I don't want to talk to people, so I don't talk to people, et cetera."
"Right."

for another, better cycle.

Okay, let's see how tomorrow goes!

Current Mood: jubilant

10:35 pm - Skiing by the Souris Line

Canada 2009
A collection by blue_william.

Current Mood: mellow

08:31 pm - 71. Ingrid's

We went to Ingrid’s birthday party last night. It felt fun and surreal to get on the train with the rain coming down and experiencing the giddiness of anticipation.

Boy, was it ever crowded in the place she booked. There was food and fun aplenty. But I also realized why cover charges can be so high in Japan – not that I’m picking on this event, because food was included – they need the money to bribe the fire marshal!

I met a guy there who used to teach core English in the junior high at S.G.

“[S.G.] is very very low salary!”

I laughed.

“I quit [S.G.]! Now I work in public school! I get twice the salary!”

He was a bit drunk, but he had a valid question in asking me why I don’t quit. I had to think about that. Well, staying with the job is the path of least resistance (though I didn’t tell him this), but I also like my kids – I even want to stay a little longer and finish this academic year, because I think they deserve that. Plus S.G. paid for my airfare. On that note, I emphatically suggest that people arrange their own travel to where they plan to work – you neatly eliminate the possibility of your workplace charging you for the ticket post-facto, which therefore makes you a free agent, putting you in a much more effective bargaining position.

The boys from S.G. sang “You Sexy Thing” for Ingrid; I attempted to follow this with “Birthday,” and what I wanted to have come out of my mouth wasn’t at all like what actually did. Mercifully, it was a short song. I talked to M2 about it later – he killed on such standbys as “It’s Not Unusual” – and he said that for an updress special event like this, one should sing songs that one knows they are comfortable with. (It didn’t seem like the right venue for “Welcome to the Jungle,” though. =)

* * *

These foreigner-rich social events are kind of hard for me. Everything feels superficial. As F. put it, people wear masks. As I put it, we make up the Island of Misfit Toys. Most people aren’t really here because they love travel and seek out enriching intercultural experiences. I know I’m not.

I was really disappointed, because I had wanted to – well, you know, meet somebody. But I don’t know if this is the right venue. (Or the right country, for that matter.) The dating pool of foreigners and Japanese-girls-who-speak-English-and-like-foreigners-and-go-to-these-places is vanishingly small.

Even making friends isn’t always easy. Well, it’s about the same as it is anyplace. And that’s the problem: this particular group is so small that you keep seeing the same people again and again and again and again and again, and if you didn’t hit it off with them right away it just becomes super awkward. Like, “Hmm, OK, I’m going to go stand over here now,” awkward. You know, people that you see all the time that you should be acquainted with, yet you’re not ever going to be acquaintances? Unless you’re still in high school or you live in a very small town, you might not know.

I did get to talk to some people I didn’t previously know, which was super. And who knows, maybe over time I’ll get to know more of the group, and these kinds of events will become less and less awkward. I feel like an outsider, and I don’t help my own cause by leaving Ingrid’s bar repeatedly to walk around and take photos. I just don’t like the smoke and the noise and the so-called “dancing.” It’s boring and superficial.

I met a girl back in February who felt the same way. Unfortunately, we didn’t hit it off. She was sXe, and I was goofy. And that’s fine and normal – most potential pairings don’t click – except here it could be a while before the next person like that comes along!

So I’m coming to accept the fact that my choices are limiting my opportunities. I don’t think it will be so much of a problem when I get back to Canada, though. Even though the odds may still be against me, the sheer numbers of people mean that I’ll have to meet someone eventually. And I can work on not being so boring and pedantic – what was I thinking when I said to that Japanese girl who taken a photography program and mentioned that she liked macro photography that I didn’t know what marco photography was, could she please explain?

Of course, one person’s boring thing is another’s interesting thing, but I could still stand to work on my conversation skills. And I really need to stop “selling myself short.” I don’t know how equivalent this is to, “don’t be completely honest.” Input would be appreciated.

Have a good one, everybody!

Current Mood: contemplative

05:32 pm - tech milestone; notes from opening night

Today is the first day I’ve brought a modern laptop to a class. (I once dragged my old 386 to Intro Computer Science to run Turbo C++ in MS-DOS to try out little code snippets while the prof. ran Visual C++ on Windows 2000.) I’m really impressed with the battery life, especially for a large-ish 15” notebook – there was almost 20% still remaining, after being on from 11:45 straight to 3:45 – three straight lectures! I guess I could get about four or five hours straight just typing in MS Word in these optimal conditions: not playing music, not running SETI@home (that eats the battery), and disabling the wireless radio (generally, it’s distracting to have web access during lectures anyway). I’m really glad I sprung for the better battery.

My only problem is that, especially in my very small Chaucer class, I’m wondering if my constant typing annoys people. I will break a social rule and ask – on a day that I don’t bring the notebook. =)

In Intro Psychology it’s okay, because dozens of people have notebooks and the venue is a cavernous lecture theatre.

Actually, I have a few problems with Intro Psych. I love the material, but I kind of dislike the class, because everybody hates me. Gah, it’s like Computer Science all over again! Every time I answer a question or basically do anything, I hear snide whispers. What gives?

On Monday the professor was saying something like, “You’re happy! You’re astonished! You’re amazed; as if you got 100 on the exam! Actually, I think one person did that.”

That was me.

I didn’t do as well on the first exam; I only got a 98/100.

I wisely stayed silent.

We opened last night, and it was OK. Our closing song was a rousing, upbeat rendition of “Hey, Ho, the Wind and Rain.” In fact we were so enthusiastic that we came up with four simultaneous and different ways to sing the first line of the last verse, and equally different timing on the final notes. We sounded like this:

A loneat whime ago the world began
with thhey, ho, the wiand the ndrain
But that's all one, our pldone is lay
And we'll strive to pleayou se, evday ryday!

Still, our audience seemed happy. Some of our scenes were really smoking. Overall, it was a successful first show. Tonight should be even better. I’m going to see if I can pick times to be a convincingly, deeply frustrated Malvolio. I want to harness things like missing my bus two days in a row because the rat b*****d came early, walking all the way back home from my bus stop last night because my mother didn’t feel well, but then being asked to move the van that would have saved me the exhaustion on top of exhaustion (when you’re at school for 10-14 hours at a go, an after-midnight 25-minute walk home is not as pleasurable as it ought to be). I’m hoping against hope that Simon, the lighting guy who lives in Sackville, drove down here tonight – getting a drive from Mom lately has been like pulling teeth. I miss the car. I really miss the car. Last semester was an entirely different lifestyle. If I went back in time to January, I think I would have taken the (obscene amount of) money I spent on this notebook and put it on a car. The problem with the car, though, is that it’s a continuing money pit. The notebook requires comparatively little upkeep and maintenance, and it can generate its own creative wealth.

That paragraph got lost and forgot its destination. I’ll leave you with two unrelated (yes, actually unrelated) things:

( pay attention to your friends... )

2. Our little blonde-haired friend has recently filed a civil suit against one of our actors. In fact, she specifically timed the suit to coincide with our opening night (and, sadly, her “You guys hate me!” is becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy), and our actor showed up at court in his costume! They set a date for the meat of the proceedings. We know that she set this time deliberately, as the time of day in question is normally reserved for traffic court, unless someone specifically asks for it. And there was the usual drama of her not wanting to be in the courtroom with him and all kinds of other nonsense. OK, end of story. Or so we think.

For the play, I needed to fill up some prop wine bottles with water. So I’m at the water fountain by the security desk filling these bottles. Suddenly I hear someone at the security desk speaking on the phone, “… May [trial date]th, [charge], he’s in the play…”

… and I turn and discover this same girl, with her back towards me. I made haste to fill up the bottles and escape without being noticed. I may have succeeded.

The problem with all this is that on one hand she says she’s afraid of this guy, and on the other she proactively comes to where he is to attempt to make trouble. On one hand she cries of his supposed unspeakable offences, and on the other she says it would be awful if he moved on. On one hand she’s broke, and on the other she borrows money to buy puppies – and reportedly asking, “I wonder what [the guy] would think of these?”, and to top it off she also borrowed money for something else (but it’s so sensational that I dare not say what outside of absolute proof). So what gives? Nothing she does makes any logical sense. Except to her. She must have her own internal checks and balances. Her task will be to make them fit with those of the outside world. I wish her well in this, and look forward to seeing her well adjusted in her later years.

Current Mood: cold

03:06 am - dress rehearsal

We had our dress rehearsal tonight. A few of the lines that I had solid in front of my bathroom mirror this afternoon took wings and flew into the rafters post-cue. The whole experience was a truckload of learning – everything from costume practicalities to getting around the building to access the other end of the stage; and all manner of incidental learning from how to walk quietly in dress shoes to how to handle seriously stressed out members of the production crew. =)

I’m exhausted. I just spent a couple of hours making all of my cues into a list, with the hopes of nailing what for me has been the biggest trouble spot so far. Take a look! About 50% of this, I learned tonight for the first time. We open on Tuesday.

( Malvolio's cue sheet )

Anyway, I think I can swing it, especially with these cue cribs folded up in my back pocket. They’ll go a long way towards eliminating uncertainty and indecision. I also won’t have to look at my script for any reason whatsoever.

One of my good friends has accused me of being rather snotty towards them lately. As fickle as I feel some of the rationale is, she was (unfortunately for me) quite right. I don’t know about the specifics, but there’s ample evidence that 1) I can’t take a joke, 2) the jokes I make are often completely insensitive, and 3) I often don’t have two clues about what’s going on in the world around me. This is something for me to work on. Frustratingly, it’s hard to be told things like this, and the initial chagrin is choker.

Current Mood: exhausted

11:46 pm - tenative life plan; rehearsals continue

Life Plan (please restrain your LOLz, though constructive input is appreciated)

1. Get a job.
2. Move into the city.
3. Write for the Coast or at least blog / write frequent reviews. Be sure to act as much as possible.
4. Voice lessons! (& relearn the piano)
5. Save up for…
- B.Ed, good for teaching: expression, freedom, long vacations, ability to write, ability to get involved in high school activities like film clubs and drama
- Law, good for getting into entertainment law? See how the downtown situation goes with regards to acting.
- Master’s Degree (also an option, depending on the outcome of 1-4)
- Or borrow some money so that I'm spending more time at job-ideal than job-transient?

6. Write a novel.
7. Get it published.
8. Write a really really awesome second novel.

(not necessarily in order anymore)
9. Teach self math and physics. I'm my best teacher, and Paul Lutus did it. I doubt I'll be called upon to engineer the electrical systems on the space shuttle like he was, but I've got to start somewhere.
10. Learn about people. Man, people are... er, crazed up. Many of the obstacles I've stumbled into have related to my past complete inability and presently compromised-but-improving ability to handle people.
11. Raise a family? Ye gads, that’s a lot of work! =) Also requires me to accomplish numerous prerequisite things that aren't yet on this list!
12. Build a cottage on PEI? Ah, must restrain my arrogance here. This depends on how serious my Aunt is (she and relatives own a large field in Fortune with a strait view). And even just bringing in utilities costs megabucks. You have no idea. Setting up the power poles probably requires completion of tasks 6 and 7 alone!

Anyway, so if anyone asks me "Oh, so what do you plan to do?" as they often do at parties and such things, I now have at least a shadow of an answer. It would be so much better if they asked, "Hey, what do you think about XYZ?" - Ah! You know what? I shall do the same for others! Yes, I will make a concerted effort to ask for (and remember) people's opinions. What could be a better conversation-starter? If all you talk about is school and work and plans and people, you only get to have a good conversation IF you have certain things in common, and even then you might be stuck in the commiserative or sycophantic realms - and although only the former is really destructive, both are equally brainless.

Sheesh. I can't believe I just figured this out now. The would would be a much happier place if we all had the benefit of learning these things in early childhood, where these things ought to be learned, in my opinion.

Well, nothing to be done about it now! Just keep swimming, just keep swimming...

* * *

I'm excited about the play. I think we had a pretty good rehearsal today, and for me it got quite a bit better as time went on, my post-party sluggish dissipated, and I stopped missing cues. =) I don't know if I'll quite be able to approach [director] Glenn's idea of gravitas, especially with my tenor voice and innate exuberance. I'm having fun trying, though, which is a sea change for me.

Well, back to the books!

Your Pal,
~ Will

Current Mood: accomplished

11:58 pm - the term paper, the squirrel, and Halifax's famous friendly people

I wrote my Contemporary Canadian Fiction final tonight. I think I did pretty well, and I was bolstered by the fact that I got an A+ on my term paper, on “The Cross-Cultural Appeal of Alistair MacLeod’s No Great Mischief.” I’ve never gotten an A+ on a term paper before – not in any course, not even Intro Lit.

I also got an A as my mid-term grade in Chaucer and the 14th Century. That’s nice, though the hard work in that course is yet to come.

The bus ride in was annoying, and I would have driven were it not that I had plans for a few celebratory pints with a buddy of mine (which fell through, much to the relief of my wallet). Anyway, the 80 was about ten minutes late, and this lateness snowballed so that I was five minutes late entering the exam room. First I entered our classroom, which was the wrong room of course, but then I ran into Dr. J.B.’s assistant Cheryle and she showed me to the correct door. Better to be born lucky…

I start off the exam by writing 300 words on one of two things when I was supposed to write 150 words on each thing. This slowed me down quite a bit, and finishing each of the essays to my standards meant I was the last one to finish. That’s the only thing I don’t like about exams: that socially awkward end. You’re technically allowed three hours for an exam, but if you even take two you’re going to be the only one still there, and your professor may ask you if you’re writing a novel.

I discovered the Gorsebrook had closed (at 7:30!!) and texted Jer, then I headed for the Spring Garden Road library to slip the novels from this course back into the book drop. There were a lot of sketchy characters about; one guy put his fists up to me after asking me for a light the second time. Ass.

While waiting 40 minutes in the cold for the 80, I ran into the Book Mark on a whim and got Mom’s Christmas present. So that’s done, at least. Then the 80 finally came and all was fine until some really smelly person wound up in front of me, and it was many stops before I could quietly and unsuspectingly move to one of the lateral benches.

Well, there but for the grace of God go I.

I got off in Bedford and scraped the ice of the car, then came home. It was garbage night, so I had to hang around outside for a bit more, and Mom and I saw a flying squirrel. They look a lot different then the regular daytime squirrels; this one had pitch-black eyes and flaps of skin around his legs. He climbed up the side of the house and took off as I was placing the recyclables and garbage cans in the van.

OMG those cans were cold tonight. I think the problem was that one of them was a little wet, and the temperature was about freezing. My fingers are still a little numb as I type this. Eyahh.

Anyway, that’s the story of my night. I just wanted to tell you about the term paper, the squirrel, and the d*****bag with the fists. Good night!

Current Mood: sore

01:49 am - in which I experience many awkward moments

I’m going to restrain myself tonight. I am going to have this entry finished in an hour! Yes, that means minimizing Google Maps and Wikipedia links, which are probably my favourite part about blogging anyway. Yes, some intrepid e-friends of mine such as kitkatlj will pen thoughtful, almost academic entries about the most important social and religious issues in our world today. Others such as carrieko have an exciting life abroad. But I continue to boldly forge my blog on the anvil of idiocy, in the name of having the best idiot’s blog on LiveJournal. Let me know how I’m doing if you get the chance.

Okay, 11:45pm, I’m on the clock! Paul and I just got back from groceries. It’s a shame I didn’t have my camera with me, as they’re selling buckets of chicken-bone candies at Sobeys in Clayton Park for $124. I kid you not. The scary part is, two of them have been bought since the last time we were there!

I had a few really awkward moments today (but some of them were pretty funny). Let’s start in the morning.

I’m on the bus, sitting near these two guys having a chat:

“How was the missus’ last night?”
“Oh… well, I was exhausted this morning, let me put it that way.”
They laugh.
“How’d you like her ta-tas?”
“What? … Oh, yeah she’s got really nice b***s. Really nice.”
“Yeah… so what’s her name?”
“A***l.”
“Is that really her name or just a nick-? Wow, that’s just too f***in’ weird.”
“Yeah, her family’s Portuguese but she was born in Kuwait.”
“Where is Kuwait? Is it in Iraq?”
“No, it’s another country.”
“It’s small,” I throw in. (We had exchanged a few items of small talk already, because the questioning fellow had his suit hooked on the handbar above us, which is a good conversation starter.)
He turns to me, “I thought there was a city in Iraq called Kuwait.”
“There might be, but Kuwait the country was invaded by Iraq – that started the first Gulf War.”
“Oh.”
Suddenly a woman’s voice is heard a few rows up, addressing the answering boy. “Are you A**x?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m her sister.”

The worst part, after two of the three of us stopped chortling, was that we were on the 80, and we weren’t even at China Town yet. Boy, was that ever a long, awkward bus ride.

After my fin de siècle quiz, I puttered around for a bit and then met up with K. for lunch. First she needed to bring her books to the used book buyback, and since she had so many left over from previous semesters, she was dragging them along in a wheeled suitcase. When I first saw her I thought she was going back home today. Anyway, we took care of that as much as we could, but while some of her books would fetch $50, others would fetch $.50, so we dragged most of her books back to her apartment! (I’ve never sold a textbook yet, and I’m beginning to think that I’m not really any worse off financially for my restraint.)

On our way through the South End, we met Paul (Angela’s husband Paul, as opposed to my stepfather Paul) on the street on a coffee break with his co-workers. Paul invited us to tag along, and we chatted about our travels and the new baby Zachary, and K. knew Angela, so the conversation was easy. They left, and we went on our way, eventually coming to St. Mary’s Basilica in order to complete K.’s Religious Studies homework. (By now we’re starving.) I flipped through some hymnbooks in a vain search for something familiar while K. walked around taking notes.

She didn’t get finished, though, because we were all but forced to leave early after I walked by a guy sitting at the rearmost pew, and he murmured something “Jesus… soul,” that seemed to be directed at me.

“Pardon me?” I asked him.
“Yeah, you don’t … [indistinguishable] … FRIGGING IDIOT!!!”

At this moment K. took my arm and led me behind the wall of vestibule. “You don’t want to talk to that guy.” And K. decided that rather than risk catching his notice again, we ought to leave quietly. I feel bad for being so naïve (and essentially making K. have to come back tomorrow); I didn’t know he was a loon. But I feel even worse for him, because in running away we were being rather unkind, weren’t we? I can think back to how I was so rudely treated in high school, and a lot of it boiled down to my inability to deal effectively with other people (most of the problems arose from my negligence of letting others feel important). But when people ran away from me, it didn’t teach me anything at all, it just caused me to feel even more resentment. That poor fellow at the pew must have decades’ worth of pent up rage and frustration. It’s heartbreaking. But yet we’re both unwilling and unable to do anything about it, and we go back to our own blessed lives. It seems almost un-Christian, and yet there we were in that Christian church.

So we finally eat, at the Shoe Shop. We walk back to K.’s apartment. In order to deambiguify things, let me add that she shows me a picture of her chic-looking Cuban boyfriend. =) I go my merry way, and about a frillion minutes later I’m back on the bus heading into Bedford.

Just as we’re approaching my stop, I look out the window into the Sobeys parking lot where I’ve parked my car. It’s still where it was in the morning, except now it’s surrounded by a Christmas tree lot.

When I approached my car, a gaggle of kind rednecks poured out of their trailer and offered to move some of the trees so I could get out. I thanked them but declined, and tried to get out on my own, already embarrassed for having left my car in their way for the past eight hours. I promptly back into a tree, tipping it a few degrees askance. Then I try to pull myself around some kind of rack, and by this time I’m getting hand signals, and basically by the time I got out of there I wanted me and my car to disappear into the evening mist.

I think that’s everything, and I’m way over my time limit. Tomorrow I’ll present my thoughts on the Liberal convention – IF I get my Contemporary Canadian Fiction paper finished. If not, then no dice. Also, I have it from castusalbuscor that we may hear about our Twelfth Night auditions tomorrow. I’d better get some sleep so that I don’t answer the phone, “He-uh,huh-wha?”

Current Mood: tired

08:46 pm - the October classic

Okay, where was I?

If you were in Dartmouth during rush hour and spotted a giant blue Chevy Silverado 2500HD with a big “2004” sticker on the windshield and ridiculous rainbow steamers trailing from the antenna, that was me. Damn, that was a big truck. 4 doors, 4-wheel drive. No trouble getting it around town, though – it took off and stopped about as well as you could possibly expect. Apparently it had over 300 horsepower. I also found the brakes (an important consideration) easy and effective. It’s actually easier to stop than the car.

After evaluating the truck for Dad (on PEI) and calling him about it, I had a bit of a headache – whatever cleaning chemical they used in it, it was harsh. I’m still reeling a bit.

I stopped in at C’s on the way back because I’m hardly ever in the SE part of Bedford, which you basically have to drive through to get back to my area if you’re coming up on the Dartmouth side. I drove into Ridgevale and parked in front of their house. I rang the bell, then someone else pulled up in front of the house. They were looking for C. as well, but for different reasons: I was there to pick up some books that I originally lent to Joe, they had tattoos, cut-off sleeves, and called C. with a Palm Treo - they were likely there to pick up something of a different sort, if you gather what I mean here. They seemed like nice guys, but I was happy to get back in the car and lock the doors. (No one was home.)

Okay, rolling back the clock a bit, there was the matter of The Concert. I was going to skip the whole thing entirely and spend the evening on schoolwork, but then I happened to catch Sarah’s blog mentioning that she lived near the commons and was going to watch it from her deck. So I called her and asked if I could come over. It was great to see her again after such a long time. They have a really nice place, and they had the foresight to set up a tarp before the rain really started pouring. We sat in a tight circle of chairs and heard most everything, except that the wind started pulling the tarp off its station towards the end of the Rolling Stones, so we then retreated inside. Also, I happened to miss Sloan, who were opening, and I would have liked to have heard them, though I did hear Alice Cooper loud and clear.

I should mention that Metro Transit had special bus service set up, which I used thinking that traffic and parking would make driving prohibitive. As it turned out, though, I could have easily parked on Cornwallis Street near Sarah’s. Then again, if it wasn’t raining it’s unlikely that I could have been so lucky.

After spending Saturday night (but no money, thankfully) on the concert, I had a ton of catching up to do, including a small presentation and a paper. The presentation, concerning Joseph’s origins and role in Wuthering Heights, was a lot more coherent in my head than it came out orally. I actually froze dead in my tracks a few times. Nobody laughed at my small jokes. I guess it needed more work.

The following evening, I stayed on campus long into the night working on a Posthumanism paper. I got to know the fellow next to me – Ali, who hails from UAE and speaks six languages. What an advantage! Nice guy, too.

While I was fiddling with the paper, I uploaded a few of my videos to YouTube. So now you have more options than ever before… I think I’ll put Life After Y2K up there sometime soon as well. It’s not nearly as polished as the two NSCAD pieces, but it’s corny enough to be worth a look.

I can’t wait until December, when I’ll have the time and means to work on my website again…

And between all this, somehow, I watched the entire second season of Monk. You need to see this show. It’s the funniest thing on TV today, and easy to find in the USA – it’s USA Network’s signature show. It was airing on ASN here in the Maritimes, but I haven’t found it in its usual Sunday night spot. It doesn’t really matter that much because I’m watching the series on library DVDs anyway, and I need Sunday nights to study. Live TV (with commercials – YUCK!) is so Stone Age.

[Here's a review from The New Yorker that almost perfectly illustrates the brilliance of Monk.]

This brings us up to this past weekend. Catherine and I were going to get together and do nerdy things like drink wine, play video games, and watch DVDs, but she got sick that day. I went hither and yon through my phone list, in that I-just-got-out-of-the-shower-and-now-there’s-nothing-to-do sort of desperation. Fortunately, I had the good sense to call JuJu, who invited me to Sarah’s birthday party. Now, I didn’t even know it was a birthday party, though I had a funny feeling I’d see Sarah there, which was quite remarkable to see fulfilled. I have to admit that I had an uphill battle against my antisocial inclinations in order to get to know, quite literally, a group of strangers. But the effort was worthwhile, and I’m sure JuJu would be proud of me in his “Will, you’re supposed to do that anyway” sort of way.

And that just about brings us up to date. Time for a snack and then it’s back to the books. I find it is slightly better than working, so I can’t complain.

Current Mood: hungry

09:07 pm - A Ramble Written Friday Night In A Sleepless Daze

What we dream about changes every day. Not only do our desires shift and change like the spectra in a kaleidoscope, but when we achieve one facet of our self-idealization, a new ideal quickly surfaces to take its place.

For me, this has been one of the fundamental battles of my life. I’d like nothing more than to be able to live content with what I have. On the other hand, I see the survival benefits that discontentment brings. But who said the business of Survival was pleasurable?

One of my old buddies-of-a-sort asked me once, “Will, why do you always think the minimum is enough? Cause it ain’t.” He’s right; it’s not.

(This is one of those narratives that threads the narrow passage between the sandy bank of constructive self-analysis and the boulder-strewn shores of emo literature and suicide notes. As always, I try to land on the beach and avoid the rocks.)

Take a look at fashion for instance. You need many different styles of clothing for different purposes. The styles need to be current – you have to pick out your own clothing with reference to what other people are wearing. Even the most “unique” and “independent” and (especially) “Goth” or “punk” among the human race often state their distinctiveness by wearing the same kind of clothes that 10,000,000 other punks and Goths are wearing. You can’t win – very few people can pull off a truly distinctive yet effective look, but I wish more people would try. The world’s much too concerned about conformity for my liking, not that Society really cares about my opinion, at least at an individual level.

Anyway, about fashion. I’m watching TLC’s “What Not To Wear,” and I think, “Gee, I should probably be on this show.” The hosts, for instance, just blew me away with their knowledge of how to pick well-fitting clothes with tasteful, flattering designs and patterns. (Wouldn’t it be great to be an expert at something? It’s a piece of my new self-idealization!) And then the hairstylists and make-up people come in and do just as much, or more, to change the subject of the episode from “ow” to “wow.” And I watch this, and I add “money” to my self-idealization, because I need a lot of money to pay for good clothes that fit and proper hairstyling, but I don’t need to worry about make-up because men aren’t required to wear make-up if they don’t want to.

To make money, I need to spend a lot of money on developing the skills I need to get a job that I like, which is the only job I’d want to stay with, otherwise, quite frankly, I’ll be content to stay at home and play video games all the time and only come out once a week to take my stepfather for groceries*, and then I’d have real problems.

* - It’s quite likely that I’d continue to hike around the wood paths and lake trails of my area, as I’d run into so few people that I don’t have to care about my clothes or hair.

So now I am lucky, because I can work at a job that I sort of like and pays me almost enough, and I can put everything away because I do stay at home most of the time, coming out to take my stepfather for groceries on Friday nights (I’d also play video games, but I don’t have time, because when I start playing an RPG or something, I can disappear for days) and I drive my mother’s car at 55 mph (90 km/h) and I bring a brown-bag lunch to work and I have enough clothes handed-down or from birthdays or Christmases past that I don’t have to buy new ones now, which is good because I’d probably buy all the wrong clothes anyway. (“Ooh!” my eyes will say to my brain. “Check out this great looking t-shirt!” and I’d strut out of the department store like I just bought a hand-tailored suit.) I will buy a new suit when I get a job that I like, and I will also buy a place to live and a small car.

I am really trying my best to be honest now. It’s quite cathartic, and I feel like I’ve cut down on a lot of the clutter in my brain by writing this stuff down. All this (well, aside from the heart side of things, which I won’t get into) is what’s in my head now. Therefore, it is also me, right now.

I’m not an expert in anything, which isn’t a real problem for me, but it can be a problem for others because most people expect other people to have serious, life-consuming passions that they can talk about backwards and forwards (and Star Wars doesn’t count). A lot of the girls I see on personals and dating websites state that they want guys who know exactly where they’re going. I only have a vague idea, and I have no socially acceptable life-consuming passions (sleeping until noon and spending three hours watching sports highlights or the weather channel doesn’t count).

The way I see it, I have two options. Either I can bundle up the micro-passions I do have (say, photography and/or writing) and present them on a very low-key basis, but while that can help me be a good conversationalist by having the tools to ask the right questions, it won’t help me swim when I encounter someone with a digital SLR and $3,000 worth of lenses and filters, and all I have is a zoomless old beater and an enthusiasm for long walks taken while swinging a torn camera bag from my shoulders. I’m content to stick with the old beater until I get a nice job, because I know it backwards and forwards. I’ve had a lot of good times with it, and I can’t justify the expense of a better one anyway when I need $5,000 just to go to school this year.

Anyway, what bugs me is not that I don’t have the stuff, but that I have to spend thousands buying my way into something in order to be taken seriously. Actually, that sounds fair – the part that really makes me pause to ponder is that a lot of girls would require me to be seriously into at least something in order to be worthy of consideration in matters of the heart.

Oh, well.

It’s all kind of pointless in the end, because in spite of my difficulties in interfacing correctly with society, some girls have thought I was cool, and it had nothing to do with photography or writing. It doesn’t matter if the number is still in single or low-double digits. But it means I have at least something to offer, and that’s a very nice feeling to have, although in saying this I hope you don’t think I’m being overly conceited.

I have to go to work tomorrow morning.

Bye for now,
~ Will

Current Mood: crushed