Alpha to Omega

I’m tired of the negativity accusations. I see the world differently, and that’s all there is to it.

I like the rain. It’s just water. You walk around afraid of it, with an umbrella in your hand.

I laugh at myself on a daily basis. This is healthy, and the mark of a true cynic, not a pessimist.

I get disappointed and let down by people. I couldn’t do this unless I had some kind of hope or expectation in the first place.

You don’t understand that most of the time my humour is exaggerated and melodramatic. I’m certainly not sacrificing goats and chanting death hymns to chickenheads every night. This is your perception, this is your problem, and these are your hang-ups.

Am I weird because I refuse to use the Starbucks words for small, medium and large? It's always been something I considered a snobbery on their part, and I suppose in return, a snobbery on mine. A friend of mine pointed out that this was a rather strange snobbery for me to have, a refusal to accept European coffee standards, considering my penchant against anything North American. But, I find, (and I’m sure I’m not the only one - don’t lie!), that I feel like I’ve missed something when I hear someone order a “Grande double dry no-fat sugar-free vanilla soy latte”. Like, when did I miss the course on ordering at Starbucks?

After all, the customer is always right, right? Am I to assume that suddenly the capitalist concepts responsible for this sad cliché are dead? I know I don't need to answer that question, we're all liberal conspiracy theorists here. I think I've acquired something of a reputation at the local Starbucks, where the drink Nazis are constantly correcting me when I order a large chai latte. They seem to watch me very carefully when I come in, as if I'm going to cause some kind of uprising among the other corporate victims.

I also have this strange habit at other places. For instance, there are certain words that I just find funny. They aren’t particularly humorous words, I just know that when I say them I will probably start to laugh, or I will not be able to stop myself from pronouncing them in a really obnoxious voice. One such word is delectable. I also don't think I'm capable of saying 'delightful' without it sounding sarcastic. I encounter these problems at restaurants all the time, and when I do, I always end up pointing at the menu and asking for ‘this’. It’s terrible and I really must stop, especially since I’m not eating anywhere with optional side dishes.

I hate Times New Roman. I usually refuse to write with it, but in this case it cannot be helped, and if it can, I would like someone to please enlighten me as to how.

The way I see it, I may have something interesting to say. And conforming to socially accepted and revered fonts such as Times New Roman, to me, seems potentially misleading to my reader. I also want to weed out those annoying conformist types who will take one look at my slightly deviant font and whine about how they can’t read it, even though it’s perfectly clear. I can’t have readers like that; it’s simply not in my nature.

We are so petty. Our lives are filled with turmoil that we create, drama we deny we want, and relationships that are based on convenience. I’m sick, I feel so sick and so exhausted I just don’t know what to do.

I’ve listened to this album over and over again, probably three times now. It’s Amazing Grace, Spiritualized and there is a song called Hold On, and it goes like this:

You gotta hold on baby to those you hold dear
And onto the people you love
‘Cause death cannot part us if life already has
Hold on to those you hold dear

And I love this song. And I’ve been crying as I listen to it, and even now as I write this.

There is something going on with us, with people. You see, I think we look at our parents and decide that we want something different. We just don’t know what that is. Who am I kidding? I can’t handle a casual relationship, I can’t handle a real one either. However, I’m not the only one. Everyone else I know is doing what I am right now, cutting out relationships (that necessarily means people) and searching for ourselves. And this is why I’m so upset. Because we’re all so fucked up within ourselves we can’t even hold on to the people who matter in our lives. Life is too short to lose ourselves and them at the same time.

I re-read The Catcher In the Rye today. It’s about my sixth time I’d say. The thing about good art that I love is every time you go back to it, there’s always something you didn’t see, hear, realise or remember the time before. I like that the way you're thinking or feeling that day, whatever state you're in, is mirrored by what becomes most memorable. In this particular instance, I found a passage towards the end of the book about education.

“ ‘I’m not trying to tell you that only educated and scholarly men are able to contribute something valuable to the world. It’s not so. But I do say that educated and scholarly men, if they’re brilliant and creative to begin with – which, unfortunately, is rarely the case – tend to leave infinitely more valuable records behind them than men do who are merely brilliant and creative. They tend to express themselves more clearly, and they usually have a passion for following their thoughts through to the end. And – most important – nine times out of ten they have more humility than the unscholarly thinker.’ “

In my irritating need to classify, I ended up assuming that if this was true (and I think it is), there would be four different types of people, (without taking into account the grey, shady types and exception-to-the-rules, of course). The first are the “educated and scholarly”, the “brilliant and creative, educated and scholarly”, the “merely brilliant and creative”, and finally, the uneducated and uncreative.

I’ve encountered a few people who were educated and scholarly, but unfortunately not very creative or brilliant. Salinger didn't quite touch on how absurd these bastards are; these are the pompous idiots who quote dead guys and drone on about other people's ideas. It is most depressing to encounter people whose entire minds are paid for and for whom it is only chance that separates them from the uneducated and uncreative, i.e. the simpletons. There is a certain innocence and charm to a simpleton, whereas someone who is merely educated tends to be uninspiring, galling and monotonous. It wouldn’t be so terrible if they had some humility about themselves, though usually this isn’t the case; I suppose it does take a certain level of haughtiness to consider education indicative of intelligence.

I used to be the kind of person who rejected the idea of education as some kind of mass production of thought. To some degree, I’ve retained some of this jaded ideal. However, in the past few years, mostly with the onset of protestors and war and Bush and Michael Moore, I’ve begun to notice that the lack of it, often the outright rejection of it, leads to a pitiful state of affairs. I have no idea if the people I encountered were intelligent or creative; their absolute illiteracy prevented me from knowing so. This was my major gripe with the protestors. There were many who began speaking and had great things to say, but were completely drowned out by the jackasses who were there because somebody told them Bush was a bad guy. There was also the “I wanna be a hippie” thing, but that’s not for this space and time. To summarize, I’m a little tired of people needing to be entertained in order to open their eyes.

The real issue here is of course, humility, not education or brilliance. Considering my opinion of those without it, I should probably be learning how to do it.

I had a strange dream last night in which Paul Martin used extra Canadian tax dollars to build a magical telescope from which he could watch random people across the country having sex. Now that I'm conscious I've revised the dream a bit, replacing Paul with Steven Harper. I also think that it would have been more interesting if George Dubleyuh had found some excuse to invade us and steal it.