The 6900

I just lost 600 words. This is what I get for being productive.

Actually, if you want to be technical about it, this is what I get for inserting a graphic of a frog, naming it Tom, then calling it my mascot: Tom the Time-Traveling Toad.

That wasn’t the problem, really, the problem was my realising that Tom was composed of several dozen smaller pieces that could each be taken away and then taking them all away one by one until I could no longer recognise Tom, then, after that was finished, hitting Control + Zed a buncha buncha times until I could get the original Tom back and then delete him with a simple delete command.

Did I tell you I’m going crazy? : )

Update: I’m now up to 2,000. If you add that to the 4,500 I had to do earlier in the week and the 2,000 that I wrote last week, and the 7,300 that I’ve been writing in my posts complaining about how I spend all my time writing… that’s a bejeezus-load of words! And I’m only 1k away from finishing.
To tell you the truth, I sort of don’t want to finish. It’ll be like hammering a nail in the coffin of my Australian odyssey.

(a bejeezus is now equal to two butt-loads and a bushel or about 17,000 words. None of which are interesting.)

(17,000? The NaNoWriMo is a total of 50,000 in 30 days! I did 17,000 non-contiguous words in 12! If I kept that up, I might be able to finish in 36 days! That means… absolutely nothing…)

| 2 Comments

“Not until you think of the irony”

I found this exact note on the computer I was working at:

REGISTRATION-INDIVIDUALS
PO BOX 9942
MOONEE
PONDS VIC 3039

Dear Sir/Madam:
I have just learned that someone has got the access to my tax file number, and I’m concerned that she may use it.
It will be greatly appreciated if you can issue me a new number.

My personal details:
Tax file number: 244 129 728
Name: Y. Wang
Passport Number: G 211806360

| 1 Comment

Nice Guys Screw Themselves III

Nice does not mean spineless.
Sometimes guys hide behind the excuse of “I’m a nice guy” in hopes of sympathy. Perhaps if people realize that nice guys mean well but have a universe to compete against, perhaps then their niceness might work for their benefit.

It won’t. Ever. Give it up. The fundamental difference between someone who is nice and someone who is spineless is thus:

• a nice person will forgo his own desires for the rights or greater good of others (perhaps even just one other and perhaps the good will not be greater for them, but the frustrated desires will be bearable for him).
• a spineless person will forgo his own desires every time doing what he desires would require acts of courage, honesty, or bluntness. He will convince himself that he is doing it for the greater good or that “the time wasn’t right.“

Or, to give an example:

• A nice guy drives his crush home while she is completely intoxicated and, even if she hits on him, he does not take advantage of the situation.
• A spineless guy will not take advantage of the situation then, or later on when they’re talking about it, or when she mentions that no nice guys like her, or ever. A spineless guy will brood constantly while his crush has a boyfriend, but not make a move when she does not.

There is a difference.

This is not to say that, if you’re a nice guy, you should automatically start hitting on girls you like. Sometimes they won’t like you back (who are we kidding? They’ll never like you back). To put a girl in a situation where she must either reject you or force herself to date you is mean.

But I’m a big fan of open source. If there is a chance, you should go for it or forever shut up about it. If there is likely not a chance, you should probably still let her know. Otherwise the two of you are going to be working from two different planes of existence.

To this day I do not regret ever telling a girl I liked her. Perhaps I regretted it at the time, but usually it just made the relationship more honest (nonexistant is honest too).

Some girls wouldn’t want you to tell them, that is up to you to figure out. Often, she will give you verbal cues (”why do all of my male friends end up asking me out?”) if not physical cues (moving away when you sit next to her). But more likely, she will give both or neither in confusing bursts.

… pfft! Women.

| 2 Comments

nabµf #10 of 29

Pixel looked up, a little jaded.73¤!¿ looked back, eager.

“Are you him?” Pixel inquired.

“You mean me?” 73¤!¿ countered.

“You realize that this is going to be an eternal recurrence?” Pixel said to his future self.

“A what?”

“An eternal recurrence. Eternal recurrence. Eternal recurrence. It’s a concept developed by the Egyptians that Nietzsche uses… Oh, just follow the link.”

“Eternal recurrence?”

“Eternal recurrence.”

“Eternal recurrence… hmm. No, I’ve never read Nietzsche.”

“What? Of course you have, you’re me!”

“I’m not you, I’m my own person! Just because I came back in time to see you doesn’t mean that I are you!”

“*Am you.”

“Am not!”

“Nevermind. You are wise in the ways of the pixatic method.”

“I taught myself.”

“You had the best teacher.”

“He knows.”

“Well, it wouldn’t hurt to show it sometimes.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay. So, why are you here?”

“I don’t know. Because I have to.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you see, when I was you, you came back to talk to me. So now I have to do it too because you did and I’m afraid I’ll pop out of existence if we don’t.”

“Well, that blows.”

“Tell me about it, you’re a lot less fun than I imagined.”

“You know what? I don’t have to be a part of this. Eternal recurrence or not, I’m going to refuse to travel back in time. I’ll pop out of existence before I do.”

And 73¤!¿ did.

“Oh, F’ing A. You’d think I’d learn better than to end my own existence by now.”

| 1 Comment

Nice Guys Screw Themselves II

I was a nice guy all of my life. Not ‘nice, nice,’ but nice. One of those people that girls would call at two in the morning to complain about their boyfriends.

And I listened.

And I cared.

Then I stopped. It was half because I realized the pattern that was going on and half because I systematically alienated every one of my female friends.

Now I consider myself a jerk. I don’t know if it’s actually true, but it sure makes me feel better. You’d have to ask someone who knows me. I’ve declared myself an idealistic nihilist jerk who wants the best for everybody but doesn’t consider humans to be morally considerable. I figure the more contradictions I throw in my personal description, the more accurate it’ll be and the less people will expect of me.

Yesterday I had a conversation with my roommates. I posed the question of whether they’d prefer a boyfriend who was emotionally distant or one who was too attentive.

“emotionally distant.”
“distant.”
“yeah, probably me too.”

Why? Because the alternative was suffocating. So then I asked whether they’d prefer a nice guy or a guy who was consistently a jerk. They asked me for a few hypotheticals, but eventually responded with:

“jerk, because nice guys are boring.”
“I’d get tired of the nice guy.”
“neither.”

Then I went on to question them as to what would make the ideal boyfriend, just because I was curious (their responses were boring and noncommittal, no sense repeating them here). I’d always realized women were drawn to making stupid choices, but never thought that they knew their own patterns.

I also never realized that they equated niceness with boring. Nice does not mean boring. Nice means that they legitimately care about someone other than themselves. Nice does not mean predictable. Nice also does not mean spineless, but that’s a topic for another post.

It is perfectly consistent for a nice guy to be random, romantic, or just plain insane.

Imagine two boyfriends. Boyfriend A and Boyfriend B.

• Boyfriend A is nice and predictable. He always opens doors, he always pulls out chairs, and he always asks his girlfriend how her day was.
• Boyfriend B is a jerk and predictable. He always unlocks doors but only opens his own, he always pulls out his own chair only, and he always interrupts his girlfriend when she’s talking.

Eventually, the girl will grow tired of Boyfriend A and might break up with him. Boyfriend A will fight for her, but ultimately understand because nice guys always understand.
With Boyfriend B, she’ll grow annoyed and frustrated and might try to break up each time, but he’ll always convince her to stay and she’ll look past his bad characteristics to his good ones. She’ll stay with him, and each time he’s being a jerk, she’ll call up a nice guy and complain.

(enough linking already. Read this post: http://www.pixcapacitor.com/2005/06/nice-guys-screw-themselves/”>. It’s more accurate than I’d care to think about)

The problem with predictable nice guys is that their niceness turns against them. When niceness is predictable, girls will try to get rid of the predictability and see the good traits behind, never realizing that they’re getting rid of the good traits with the predictability.

Jerks have less good traits, but their traits aren’t tied in to their predictability. As such, women seek them out and stay with them longer than necessary.

What’s the solution?
Hell if I care. Leave me alone. I’m the unpredictable jerk.

| 2 Comments