Does Your Safeway Have a Hump?

I felt like doing some grocery shopping a half-hour away where there was actually some sunshine (it's been cloudy and foggy by the Sound for awhile now) and I was greeted by a hump.

I'll call him "Humpy".

Oh Canada

I've been in Toronto since the 30th and will be back in Sea-town on either the 7th or 8th (weather permitting; winter in these parts can be terrific).

I actually haven't done much of anything spectacular over the past few weeks. After celebrating Christmas with the folks somewhere in the woods of New England I arrived here, and since I'm trying to keep myself on a budget I've probably spent more time playing video games than anything else.

I have tickets for Maple Leaf and Raptors games before I leave however.

Happy Stuff-Before-End-of-Year

The puget sound is cold, and is not worth jumping in after plentiful amounts of wine.

The rainy-ish season is upon us, which means spending hours looking outside a window trying to correctly guess not only the type of precipitation, but whether or not it's really the spray from a homeless guy taking a leak somewhere.

My balls aren't very talented. They just hang there.

It is hard to incorporate umbrellas and Air Supply CD's in foreplay.

A Haphazard Sense of Wisdom

For some reason, I've been deluged (again) of late by sort-of-friends and past acquaintances about their perceived shitty lives, and the current state of depression they may be in. Depression is a serious thing, but the word gets thrown around a lot. If you get laid and feel better the next morning, you were not depressed. If you stop crying once you leave the Dashboard Confessional concert, you are not depressed. Simply being a mopey son-of-a-bitch does not equal depression. It means you're a mopey son-of-a-bitch.

My advice has always been simple, since I've only found the light in the past year or so. Know yourself. The "meaning of life", nirvana, and whatever hot air philosophical jargon you'd want to use, comes down to identifying within yourself what exactly, above all other things, you should be doing. More importantly, it's not just knowing what it is, but why.

It's not fate; you define it for yourself. If someone asks you "what this thing is" that either drives you or acts a prism which you view all of life through, you should be able to tell them, yet it's not your prerogative to make sure they understand it. It's your voice, it's your "thing". Fuck anybody else who questions it.

The crux of all of this is understanding the why. I can ask any asshole off the street what they do for a living, for instance. Many don't know why they do it. They may shrug and say "it pays well", or "I like it"...but the simple fact they shrugged first tells me they have no fucking clue. There's nothing wrong with that; some people live their lives without thinking about these things. However, if you're feeling depressed, and you can't identify why you chose your line of work (again, for instance, life is more than fucking employment) without a shrug and quick look to the heavens...well, I found one of your answers.

98% of the people I've met who are "depressed" (sometimes their own diagnosis which I question) are so, in my opinion, because they just don't know why the fuck they do things. They're bound by social constructs fueled by their own insecurities, which tell them to do things because, well, "someone" (often greater society) else thinks they should.

Trust me, your relationship dissolving is not the root of the problem. Staring into space while at work because it's sucking the soul of out of you is not the root of the problem. Monetary problems can exacerbate the issue, but again are not the root.

The root of the problem is the fact you don't know who you are, and I suggest you find out quickly.

What on Earth....

I rec'd a "break-up" email from a girl the other day, and while you may think I was rather shocked, hurt, and possibly on the verge of making a late night trip the apothecary, there's one piece of information that should be divulged.

I had not talked to the girl in about a month. Yep. No communication in a month. 30 days. No talking. Nothing. For a month. Nothing. 30 days. Nothing.

Now, what kind of girl would send communique desiring an "end" when as far as I was concerned, an "end" had already reached? The answer; I don't know.

But, I found it hilarious. I replied with a slightly longer equivalent of an "LOL WHUT", expecting it to mildly infuriate her, or at least demonstrate the amount of shit I give towards caring about the entire situation is hovering around zero, and surprisingly she replied pretty quickly, blabbering in incoherent girl-speak about "wanting to clear the air".

30 days. A month. No talking. A month. No talking. 30 days. And somehow, air needed to be cleared.

Women; a gender full of air cleaners, apparently.

Breaking Into This Society

I've already said to a certain degree that the infamous "Seattle Freeze" is mostly bullshit. A large amount of people who move into this area do so for jobs in IT, and the large majority of those people, let's face it, are not the most gregarious and outgoing in the first place. When faced with the reality that most people here, while nice, don't roll out the red carpet into their social circle upon first meeting you as the newcomer, then many of these new people, who are not used to exerting much effort into making friends outside of their own network, throw their hands up in the air and consider Seattleites as a whole a bunch of closed-off assholes.

That said, since my job is in sales, I've encountered a lot of people also new to the area who need to "network" with those w/in this society for the sake of their employment, which is a similar yet still different nut to crack entirely. Admittedly while performing the duties of my own job, I've come across this as well, but it's not the end of the world.

The fact of the matter is Seattle is not New York, Boston, Los Angeles, Chicago...[enter virtually any large metropolitan area] in two giant areas; it does not have a large, cherished history of attracting professionals from "the outside", and its location is fairly remote as the unquestioned population and economic center of the still largely undeveloped and unurbanized Pacific Northwest.

Before the boom of Microsoft and its ilk, it was essentially a giant fishing and industrial town staffed by lost Northern Europeans and Asian immigrants. If you came to the area, you were like my Dad; you were in the military, got stationed here, and left once your commitment was up or you were transferred. All the other major cities on the east coast had long begun their economic transistion before a certain campus was built in Redmond. While the overall growth of the area here was pretty rapid (and wages here are good), there is a reason why "the grunge" movement started here, and no not because it rains a lot and drugs are plentiful; the economy, for a long time, sucked.

For years, Seattle was just the lone decently-sized city, nowhere near anywhere else in particular of note (Portland, OR is not a major city, and doesn't even compare to Seattle both in overall size and economic importance). It's isolation I'm sure brewed a sense of "Us vs. Them" that still fosters, particularly among the older population today. 15-20 years of young professionals graduating college to work for tech companies (engineering positions at Boeing being the only other draw for outsiders for fucking years and years) in the area is simply not enough time for a true Seattleite to accept and understand that Seattle is now something different. Couple that with now various multinational companies opening regional offices which now represent various industries (keep in mind, I moved here and I'm not in IT), literally overnight in comparison to the path most cities in the United States have taken, the city has changed remarkably. From strictly a social standpoint among the "old money" and the official "Seattle elite", probably too fast.

New York has been attracting people from all over for centuries. Damn near every other big city (particularly on the east coast) has been doing for several decades. Many of the skyscrapers you see in other cities were built 50 years ago and even further back. Most of Seattle's skyline was built after 1970. Seattle seriously has been doing it (and at a breakneck pace) for...what, three decades? Maybe four? People born and raised here have seen the transformation and can't help but want to keep those they've known for years at their side, while casting suspicion at newcomers because, well, "they don't really know Seattle".

Is it fair? Not really, but climbing up their ass about it isn't either. Respect the fact that this city has seen an economic rise (and social change) over the past few decades, that more and more people means more and more construction and development and less easily accessible nature and space, and it will take a considerable amount of time before "Us vs Them" simply becomes "Us."

Manliness

My Dad always told me a lot of things; most of which were never terribly important to me because he was perhaps already half in the bag when he uttered the words, or I was too busy staring at the ceiling. If I actually had a viable distraction at my disposal, say the TV or a hot girl within reasonable distance, then it wouldn't even register to me that my own father was talking. For a military man who owns a lot of guns, he doesn't always command a shitload of respect.

One thing though that fell out of his mouth that formed a coherent, rational thought which I also picked up and retained for myself was his opinion on being a "man". It surprisingly has nothing to do with a penis; whether it's the length, girth, or the amount of tricks it can do. The definition has nothing to do with women; the number you've been with, the quality thereof, or the tricks they can do (although I would consider the boyfriend of a girl who can do DP while baking cookies and writing Shakespearian soliloquies with her foot to be a "man". He would receive an honorary Man Express Gold card, with 50,000 free Man Express Reward points.)

It also had little do with one's job, one's hobbies, their social life, their goals...it all came down to simply owning up to your mistakes. If you fuck up, and I mean FUCK UP, and look people in the eye, particularly the ones most affected by your fucked up-ness, and tell them, "my fuck up", then you are in fact a man (as well as one who swears too much. 3,000 point Man Express Reward bonus).

I write this because in the past couple days I've found it staggering just how few "men" fail at being, well, "men" (-15,000 Man Express point automatic reduction for every offense). I'm not going to sandbag this individual anymore on the internet (not manly, potential loss of Man Express points, and I would feel kinda bad), but I made a fair amount effort on my part to understand this particular "fake" man, and to see where he was coming from, and I walked away feeling more upset and frustrated that this so-called "man" was being...a bitch (I win 2,000 Man Reward points for the insult, but also penalized -25,000 points for killing this joke entirely). I hate bitches, by the way.

My point? Tell shit like it is. You got a problem? Diagnose it. Find the root, and if it's yourself, which it will be A LOT in life, then say so. Pansy.

Now pardon me while I redeem whatever Man Reward points I have left. I think I have a free flight to Cancun...no, wait...Camden. Shit. Off to fuck bitches and start fights to increase my points.