http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=fyX0LK_t_G8

ten things i once quite liked but don't much care for now:
1. television
2. hotmail
3. proper capitalization
4. *mart
5. dinosaurs
6. e-cards
7. cell phones/ringtones
8. grade school, then high school, then college
9. winter (yes, even christmas)
10. horrible music

ten things i once didn't like but quite like now:
1. politics
2. tea; certain species of coffee
3. dissenting opinions
4. apple
5. npr
6. eminem
7. girls
8. pens
9. heroclix
10. the star wars prequels

ten things i've never quite liked and likely never will:
1. licorice
2. the sound of metal hangars on metal racks
3. commercials
4. extremism
5. waste
6. onions
7. country music
8. champagne
9. michael jackson
10. insomnia

ten things i've always quite liked and likely always will:
1. histories of war (esp. second world war tactics and the third reich)
2. being left alone
3. backrubs
4. organizing
5. reading and writing
6. a good sweatshirt
7. foolish excessive computer gadgetry
8. strategery games
9. sweets
10. staying up, sleeping in (often caused by one of the above)


tag; you're it.

anyway. i hope that in posting this, it'll get me back into the habit. how many entries were there last month? ouch. i've let you down.

and rabbit rabbit.

the question was/is 'what is there about being married that suprises you?'

the answer was/is

I do more dishes than I ever have in my life. when you cook real food (instead of bachelor food, which consists of cereal, ramen noodles, sandwiches, and macaroni & cheese), you suddenly have to use more real dishes. not just one bowl one spoon one cup per week rinse-after-each-use. those days are gone. the days of collandars and garlic presses and goblets and food processors and 12-piece dining sets are here. we have seating enough for four and place settings enough for a major holiday family get-together, and somehow this is all supposed to make sense.

also gone are the days of thinking in terms of 'I.' there is no 'I' anymore, except when I need to answer the question of who will do the dishes. (hint: the answer is always 'I will, sweetie.') everything is 'we.' this is certainly the hardest part for me, because very often the focus of my life, intended or not, is 'I.'

there's all the adjusting in the world to be done when living with another person for the first time. for example, I can't simply plan to sleep in on a random weekend morning. like, say, tomorrow. I enjoy the weekends for the sleep I can afford to have. she enjoys the weekends for the time we can spend doing things. it follows that this is a big problem for us. (see also 'in defense of the night life.') we're simply polar sleep-schedule opposites. among other sorts of opposites.

I am absolutely phlegmatic. she is absolutely not. I am an istj (things should be done well, and order is king). she is an intp. (things should be done with efficiency, and efficiency is king. she would copy edit that last sentence because the word 'efficiency' is in there too many times—it's not efficient.) I am eeyore. she is [fictional character who is completely unlike eeyore in every way and who would likely berate eeyore for taking too long to get over his depression]. you get the picture.


[aside: I am, of course, very curious to know what all you imaginary internet people are as far as meyers-briggs can tell. I would, of course, expect you to respond with your results. I do, of course, demand that you do.]


things get tense occasionally. for example. she likes to plan, plan, plan. currently neither of us has a real job. I'm looking and she temps as a secretary at a local university. she hates it; she's overqualified and the work is absolutely menial. (file this, collate that, staple these, deliver those, change the font on all our corporate documents to 13-point comic sans, …) the current understanding is that our situation could reverse completely within a week's time, incidentally dropping us off in any one of x-teen major cities in the region. planning in an atmosphere like this is tricky and short-term at best. oh how she hates it. and it's hard on me because it doesn't really bother me all that much. I'm just waiting to see, and she's not a wait-and-see kind of girl. I don't know how to deal with crying (not to insinuate it's something to 'be dealt with,' you understand) because it's not something I do every day, but I'm learning. slowly. it's all very taxing. it taxes me.

you think you know a person well enough to marry her (him, it, etc.), but you really don't know her at all. it's like this: think of a relationship as getting an education. so far for me it's been like graduating from grade school, giving eight years a miss and going straight to graduate work, and my professors don't bother to have any sympathy. they assign papers and homework and projects and it's just assumed that I'll keep up. I don't even know what all the words mean, and I'm supposed to have read and analyzed the book by now and I have a presentation due in five minutes and sparknotes can't help me WHAT DO I DO?

She loves coffee. I don't. I ride a scooter when I need to make short trips down to the store or to the post office or wherever and she hates my scooter and threatens to throw it out. I play time-intensive games like axis & allies; she plays easily-digestible games like rook and poker and threatens to throw my games out. I wear silly impractical shirts and she threatens to throw them out. she listens to tim mcgraw; I listen to led zeppelin and she threatens to throw them out. I very frequently threaten to throw her out.

and through all this retarded drama, somehow, miraculously, we're making it. we're not perfect but nothing is. so we do the best we can. she makes her coffee, I make my ramen noodles. we compromise. we're special naked friends. we're happy.

the interview (wednesday) I was dreading went far far far better than I had hoped/feared. the only problem now is that we have to wait for two weeks to find out the results. so what do I do now? keep jobbin'. booorrring. more on this later.

in related events wednesday night was the first night in months that I fell asleep before my wife did. … more on the wife later, as I promised a select few of you.


$4.50 for a bottle of wine is winning. once at a restaurant I spent $8 for one glass for a girl I know, and of course the price was not advertised up front. oh no. I had to wait for the check. fascists. WINE thank you for being so yummy and pink, you raelly hit thhe spost.


newly added to my wishlist: this. oh the things I could do with that much screen real estate. size is matter, friends. size is matter.


viral meme from the oxford dictionary of quotations (5th ed.), p.234#21: 'the terrorist and the policeman both come from the same basket.' (joseph conrad, the secret agent)

if you know the definition of a viral meme you're a winner and a loser. sometimes that's the best a person can hope for.

sure you can get up earlier than I prefer to (read: earlier than I can).

sure you can wake up and be cheery when even the alarm clock's still asleep.

sure you can hit the ground running and lovingly prepare your mochaccino frappalatte (using the coffee maker's loudest settings, of course) and spin like a tasmanian devil around the kitchen and call out to the world and sing your morning songs and generally annoy even the rocks with it all.

you can do all these things. but tell me, truly, can you finish a good book in a single sitting if it means staying up past sunset? have you ever lain in the grass some summer night, all night, to watch a meteor shower? can you get in the car and just drive for the pure and absolute thrill of driving on an empty highway with the headlights off?

here's how I see it. you can get to your desk in the morning as early as you'd like. you can outperform me for the first four hours of the day. but after your jet fuel explosion has burned itself out, when you're taking your mid-afternoon nap from which even an intravenous coffee drip cannot rouse you, I'll still be burning diesel. when you collapse on the couch after work and float on auto-pilot through dinner and everything after, there I'll be, solid as a rock and energized enough to do all those things I described earlier. energized enough to write about it on the interweb.


… okay, you got me, the truth is I'm just out of college and don't have a job yet so really there's no motivation for me to go to bed and even less for me to wake up so YES FINE you're superior to me especially in the morning but I swear as soon as I'm employed I'll be sure to start burning diesel again.

until then I don't have an excuse. other than doom 3 won't play itself.

plus you kick me all night and always sleep in the middle of the bed.




edit:

why do I keep taking these things?

that probably-copyright'd picture means that I am a redhat. (incidentally, I know what redhat is all about.)

I'm too much of a geek to be a genuine hat of any sort. I was hoping my result would be something simple like 'white hat' or 'black hat,' or something impressive like 'wizard hat,' and am frankly disappointed that those results weren't even available. I think the cupholder story is funny. I meticulously copy edited this automatically generated result.

what sort of hat are you? … you know, if you care about silly things like this. which personally for the record I of course do not.

substance should return shortly.






What should people know about you?

I can 'stop being so depressed all the time' about as much as you can stop having a heart attack. leave me alone. they don't sell pacemakers for what I have so kindly piss off.

I count binary in my head. [tangent: in related news, I can count to 31 on one hand and 1023 on two.]

I curl my toes when I'm feeling stressed.

I am a grammar algorithm.

Libido ergo sum.



What's your favorite song right now?

all at once:
according to iTunes play count, it's Josh Groban - Remember When It Rained. according to mood, it's The Mars Volta - Televators. in the car, it's Radiohead - Dollars & Cents. [aside: I would make a great emo kid.]



Who's your favorite band or musician ever and why?

The Flaming Lips. constant consistent refusal to conform is oh-so-sexy.



What's your favorite movie ever and why?

Requiem For A Dream. see my (uh) second post (I think) for details: [http://www.hatelife.org/v/antimatt?sort=asc]



What's your favorite book?

if I absolutely must choose only one, it is Ian McEwen - Atonement.

otherwise, also
Kurt Vonnegut - Slaughterhouse Five
George Orwell - Nineteen Eighty-Four
Daniel Villasenor - The Lake
et cetera ad nauseum.



What's the one thing you believe in most strongly?

God. not that one would know it judging by my lifestyle, behavior, language, media library, refrigerator, …



What's the easiest way to get on your nerves?

draw conclusions from opinions or from shaky premises and expect me to take your argument seriously.
resort to violence.
drive an H2. [http://www.hummerdinger.com/]
get custom wheels, lowride your frame, lowride your seat, decal your name in a retarded font on your rear window, install a bass cannon, roll down your windows and play hip-hop as loud as the laws of physics allow as you drive down the street of my residential neighborhood.



What's your pet's name?

at present, I have none. eventually we're going to own two cats, one named 'Thor' and the other named 'Dog.' I have seen the future.



Who do you think is the sexiest person alive?

Selma Blair.



What's your favorite quote?

[http://www.hatelife.org/s/51084]. end quote.