Poetry, in various forms

I'm boring and redundant. Let's hear from some others.

First off, the lesson I'm still trying to learn. I don't know the author of this fable, nor do imagine does anyone else.  For my co-conspirator in chatting, texting, and searching for beauty.

Two monks were on a pilgrimage to a neighboring province. They came from an austere and strict order, and both the younger and the elder followed their vows with intense observance.

They came to a river which had begun to rise with the spring thaw. At the river was a courtesan, finely dressed and painted, her robes the softest silk.

Even though the river was not higher than a man's waist, her elaborate and heavy garb made it impossible for her to cross without being weighed down and swept away. This was evident immediately upon seeing her.

The elder monk bowed to her, offered his help, and bent his back. She climbed atop his shoulders, and he carried her across the river and deposited her on the other side. Bowing again, he resumed his path.

The two monks continued their trek for many miles, and the younger monk seethed and simmered with barely tamped frustration. Finally, he could take no more and he burst forth.

"You have broken some of our most sacred vows! You have spoken to a woman! Worse yet, you have touched her! And more horrible still, she was a woman of ill repute. All things forbidden to us. How can you have done these things and walk beside me in silence and contentment? What have you to say for yourself?"

The older monk did not pause in his stride, as he replied, "You speak of the courtesan we met many miles ago. I put her down by the riverside. When, brother, will you put her down?"

Secondly, for some reason I have a stack of printed poems that came in a book shipment the other day. Those who know me have already seen this one, but I do love it so. It's perfectly funny and horrifically true. That those traits somehow exist together is wonderful.

'The Drunken Driver Has the Right Of Way'

by ETHAN COEN

The loudest have the final say,
The wanton win, the rash hold sway,
The realist's rules of order say
The drunken driver has the right of way.

The Kubla Khan can butt in line;
The biggest brute can take what's mine;
When heavyweights break wind, that's fine;
No matter what a judge might say,
The drunken driver has the right of way.

The guiltiest feel free of guilt;
Who care not, bloom; who worry, wilt;
Plans better laid are rarely built
For forethought seldom wins the day;
The drunken driver has the right of way.

The most attentive and unfailing
Carefulness is unavailing
Wheresoever fools are flailing;
Wisdom there is held at bay;,
The drunken driver has the right of way.

De jure is de facto's slave;
The most foolhardy beat the brave;
Brass routs restraint; low lies high's grave;
When conscience leads you, it's astray;
The drunken driver has the right of way.

It's only the naivest who'll
Deny this, that the reckless rule;
When facing an oncoming fool
The practiced and sagacious say
Watch out — one side — look sharp — gang way.

However much you plan and pray,
Alas, alack, tant pis, oy vey,
Now — heretofore — til Judgment Day,
The drunken driver has the right of way.

Hullo, Little Priest

Pop quiz time!

Which of these is cooler?

A. Getting to see The Rite for free two days before it opens nationwide.
B. Getting the nickel tour and wandering around the Warner Brothers studio for an hour before the movie.

Trick question! The answer is C. The ensuing conversation with my companion, Gunkle Blip.

Me: You know how to get my old man to see this movie? Tell him Rutger Hauer is in it. He has an unhealthy obsession.
GP: That was Rutger Hauer?
Me: Yeah.
GP: Shit. I didn't even recognize him.
Me: Yeah. We're a long a way from Bladerunner.
GP: Oh, they filmed that in the studio we just passed.
Me: Get fucked. 

It was a magical moment. I'm all tuckered out, but I'm sure I'll feel inspired enough to blah blah blahg away on the movie later.

P.S. I so spelled Rutger Hauer right on the first try.

Curious qualities of light

It's not quite three pm as I write this, and yet I feel my day is gone. Wasted. Over.

I'm sitting outside in the sun. There are intense fumes from my neighbors and their continuing car refinishing project. So, both bad and good to be outside right now. I really need to get a lawn chair or something. Despite an abundance of adequate padding, my hinder just does not like concrete.

Today was going to be such a productive, early start day. Insomnia struck again last night, however, and I had to drag myself from bed this morn. And I'm so out of shape that my bowling and couple mile walk around town yesterday left me sore. The left hip, she is not so happy with me today.

The weather here is so strange. It's kind of bipolar. My house was freezing cold this am, but when I stepped outside the day was bright and warm. My house has stayed cool. It's so foreign, the very antithesis of the south: shade actually makes things cooler. Temperature noticeably drops at night. Truly, the mind boggles.

Oy vey. I am about to approach critical mass in the furniture department. I will soon be forced to buy something to store things on/in. And I think I really need some type of desk, or else I will slip into financial ruin. I'm not keeping track of my necessary papers very well.

I haven't even spent today watching movies, which was my lazy plan B.

Okay, I've been outside for 30 minutes. Am I tan yet?

A Brief Open Letter to Adrien Brody

Upon watching "The Experiment":


Dear Adrien,


Hey pal, how's it going? That might seem like a casual question, but I'm beginning to get concerned.


You see, I'm rather fond of you.

You seem like a rather nice, sensitive, young man. I enjoy your films. I accept you in all your 999 glorious forms and visages:

But  there's a theme emerging. I think you know what I'm talking about.

You're a beautiful thing. So much to live for. So much to be happy about. So why do you keep taking films in which you, to put it delicately, have the holy living bejeebus knocked out of you?


Looking at your filmography, it's easy to start seeing the obvious trends. But there's some kinky ones that go above and beyond the usual. What's with the bondage? 

Bondage with assault and battery?

Bondage, a&b, and confinement in tiny, coffin like spaces? I mean, that's pretty specific, and it shows up in AT LEAST two of your films:

I don't want to do any armchair psychology here, but maybe something is upsetting you, and it's becoming apparent in your job performance? 


Look, if you are feeling upset, call me. I'll pick you up. We'll go somewhere quiet, and you can relax. You can talk to me. It's okay. Have a drink, sweetie. I promise, whatever it is, we can work it out.

ABrods, my sweetness, please heed this plea. You're not just hurting yourself. I'm not sure my heart can take much more of seeing you, to put it succinctly, having the ever living shit beaten out of you. So, if you can't get help for your own sake, do it for mine. I'm borderline myself, just ask around. Do you really want to have my suffering on your conscience? You're a smart fellow, and I hope this has given you something to reflect upon.

Rejoice, ABrods. You are child of the universe and made from magical stardust. You have amazing powers and can bring joy to the cosmos, if only you harness your energy for positive endeavors. Never forget, per this video evidence, you might actually be our Intergalactic Savior:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygI-2F8ApUM


Regards,


HF


(P.S. Not to contradict the above, by good on you with the CrazyAssEyes! in The Experiment. That part where you come round the corner to bash in that window--wow. I've known me some crazy in my time, and you, sir, nailed it in that scene.)

And just like that

the bubble bursts.

Way I figure it, there are two main mistakes you can make in life.

1. Deluding yourself into thinking you need something from someone.

2. (Lower on the mistake scale, but far more insidious) Wanting something from someone.

I don't have a lot of needs beyond the basic physical requirements, but unfortunately I'm still foolish enough to want things from my interactions with others.

It's like a sick gambling addiction. You keep throwing the dice b/c every once in a while you hit. However, the ending always leaves you with a deficit. A man will eat one delicious peach in his life. He will then eat 342 that aren't even comparable, just hoping for the chance to repeat the sweet experience.

I'm not surprised. Where you stand with people is usually pretty set---even major events cause temporary transitions in our interpersonal dynamics. But I'd be lying to myself if I didn't admit that I held out a small hope that my absence might be the impetus to reconnect, to take a little time, to make a little extra effort.

But I already knew the score. If they don't have time for you when you're right in front of their faces, they sure as shit don't have time for you when you are several K of pavement away. Nothing's actually changed. I just get to feel dumb for even hoping, just a little, that it might.

Why should anything have changed? I haven't. Not in a discernible way, at any rate.

But that is why the baby jebus invented movies and television. And chocolate. And starry nights. And dreaming.

As an aside: I really don't need to a speech about how to make the best of things. That's what I do. See the below post where I reach Ridiculous Heights of Joy over a movie arriving in the mail? If you ever opened your eyes and saw me, you might have noticed that I'm literally the person who stops and smells the flowers, in the supermarket, in other people's yards. I haul my sorry ass out of bed and go to work, pay my bills, contribute to charities I find worthwhile, and generally try to be decent. And I eke out meager little morsels of happiness from silly email strings and bad movies and dumb internet memes and driving a little too fast and playing music too loud and whatever other mild little wonders manifest. And I'm grateful for those things.

So when I say, or try to say, that I'm unhappy and I don't know how to fix it, please be advised: my failure is not due to lack of trying. All I ever do is try and try again. I'm just not very good at it and not smart enough to figure out a better approach.

So save me the stoicism, simple pleasures speech. And don't anybody else in the room put themselves out. If you don't want to listen to me, just tell me. It's so much cleaner, and kinder, than the alternative.

But then again, the fault is mine. I gotta quit making mistake number two.

Squeeee!!

Being compulsive, obsessive, and mentally disturbed is generally a drag. But it does have it's moments.

Right now I'm in that happy place that only the OCD, nerds, and geeks can relate to: premature overabundance of acquisition.

It's when you go on a collecting spree and order a bunch of stuff. Then the agonizing wait begins. Will the mailbox bear fruit, or only the ashen taste of bitter disappointment when you come home?

I'm in the sweet spot. This is the dimension where you have placed a bunch of orders and conveniently forgotten what you ordered. So each package is a surprise. And the bestest part is: all the lead times were VASTLY *over*calculated.

That's right, bay-bee! All my orders are arriving SOONER than expected. The mailbox, while still full of vexing important things that are not going well, bears a gift virtually every day. Even my damn Netflix DVD came in two days early.

It's like freaking Christmakwanzaakah all over again up in here. I have too much to watch! My cup runneth over! My DVR is backing up. Too. Much. Yay!

It really doesn't take much, folks. Not at all.

It's fading. . .

. . .but man.

I'm in a really weird headspace right now.

At least I have something pretty to look at

But my eyes are so tired. I feel a migraine in my future.

I hate insomnia. Why can't I be this awake at the end of the day, when I could go do things?
Why can't I be this awake at 6 a.m., when I'm supposed to get up for work?
Guess I'll just close my eyes and pray for that poetic perchance.

I should be feeling in the prime of my life, or so it's said. But all I keep thinking is "I'm too old for this shit."

Up

Interesting word, there. Can mean so many things.

Sometimes I wake in the night, for reasons I can't discern. Is it a dream? A noise outside? Some internal anxiety clock?

I don't know, and never will. But I think it's a noted phenomena for more than just me. It has it's own peculiar regularity. It seems to happen between the hours of 3 and 4 am, everytime.

An hour ago I was asleep, then suddenly I was not.

In the most general way, with all the possibilities, permutations, and variables of each situation, I think a safe assumption could be made that it stems from some aspect of not caring for yourself properly.

It's a piss poor time to wake up, I'll tell you. You're almost guaranteed not to be truly sleepy until it's time to really get up. But you usually feel like refried shit, so getting up and being productive doesn't seem very appealing.

And anything you take would only make you woozy enough in time to get up for work.

Feels like it's going to be a long day, tater. I had plans for today, for this evening. Good, healthy plans. Let's see if I'll make it.

********
Last night I had three interesting sets of conversation. One was a random interlude with a couple at a bar--she's an award winning architect and he's in the music business. They gave me their card, and he said he liked me. I reminded him of Tina Fey.

I had a fascinating discussion about linguistics while undergoing a semi-tortuous grooming ritual. My torturer/groomer had a mother who was a linguist and an anthropologist. Best painful experience I've had in a long while.

I was kindly chatted up by a lovely young women named Anna. She was their with her group of friends who were from  England, but currently worked in Scotland. Their reason in the States? Bob, the producer, had his animated film "The Illusionist" up for nomination in the Golden Globes this past weekend.

At the risk of sounding snotty, I'm going to posit that I really don't think I would have managed to have any of those conversations in my last state of residence. And certainly not in one night, in random succession, in one 1/4 block area.

Welcome to La La Land.

Apparently, it's Quotation Weekend

Rather than blather on about my tripe, let me give you the words of someone else who very succinctly expresses something I've tried to say many times. I came across this in a rather random way, just minutes ago:

I think the concept that there’s one person who’s gonna make you whole, this Gibran kind of thinking, is so detrimental. I don’t think it’s the other person’s responsibility to make you whole at all. It’s the other person’s responsibility to make you laugh, to give you a dance now and then, to read the newspaper and tell you about things you don’t have time to read about, to introduce you to music you don’t know, to tell you when you’re full of shit, to fight fair, to be good in bed, to say, “Come on, let’s go have an adventure” when you’ve become a little bit of a stick in the mud. But it’s not their job to make you whole, and until you are whole, I don’t think you can really enter into a relationship with somebody and have it work. The test for me of a great romantic relationship is how productive you are during the relationship.--Susan Sarandon, interviewed by Martha Frankel

I love that this quote is essentially in response to Sarandon answering "Yes" to considering herself a romantic. I had never considered one of the benchmarks of a healthy relationship being one's productivity, but I like and agree with this notion. It's another way of measuring how healthy you are---are you out there living and doing and being? 


Conversely, if your relationship (be it familial, friendly, or romantic) is the source of all your mental energy, I think that's a bad sign. You shouldn't be spending all your time doing damage control, worrying, attending to, planning for, or evening thinking about just one person. Not only is it unhealthy for you and a doom for the relationship, but it's unfair to the other person and the relationship.


Nothing can be your everything. We have this strange idea/ideal of what our relationships are supposed to encompass. I think goes something like this:

1. Completeness of the self through union
2. Union must be of a sexual/romantic nature (friends are just a by-way on the road to finding The One, and can be tossed aside when objective is achieved)
3. Union must be strictly one on one (monogamy only--which makes life a lot simpler, in many ways. But if we didn't focus so much on the sexuality of the relationship, then we could be fulfilled by many people. You know, like friends.)
4. Union fulfills all possible emotional needs (minor exceptions made for having children, which is the other glorified idea/ideal we worship as  sacred cow)

What a set up! You have to be not only my only thing, but my everything. You are responsible for meeting all my psychological, sociological, and physical desires. If you really do care for someone,  how can you place such an unachievable expectation on them and then think it will work out? They will fail you, at some point, and you will both suffer for it. 


In a related thought, and one I have trouble implementing, is this: your significant other is not your therapist. That's a tricky one, if your focus is on honesty and open communication. There's a line you have draw when it goes from talking to dumping. 


The people we bring into our lives should be both our guests and our hosts. I'm not saying that you can't or shouldn't have a primary companion--but I am advocating giving serious consideration to how you go about setting that up. And I'm not trying to promote a free love/open marriage/whatever thing. That's part of my problem with the whole ideal---the fact that we focus so much on the sexual aspect makes us overlook the value of the emotion, affection and attention of everything from friends to family to pets. 


I don't talk about this type of stuff much, because there's always a responding air of "the lady doth protest too much" or "you're just a bitter betty" or "it just hasn't happened for you" or "wow, you are one cynical sumbitch."


All of which miss my intention entirely. I'm not down on the concept of love. It's one of the better things humanity has managed to cook up for itself. The best might be music, but that's a whole other kettle of crawfish. 


I think we deify love, we exalt it, we pay it lip service, but we don't do it in the way of it. We don't help it out. We don't give it much thought. We expect it to happen, and get pissed when it doesn't happen exactly like we want it to. We narrow our definitions, and worse, we try to police how other people express their sense of the emotion. 


We talk about love as a beautiful flowering plant, then when we get it, we stick it on the shelf and forget about it. Then we have the audacity to be angry when it dies. We  treat it like an acquisition that, once obtained, requires no further energy or action. 


Jeez. I should really be out buying a chair to sit in or going to work out or something. In regular fashion, I've managed to take a decent wake up time and squander it's benefits. Oy.

Dark Little Treat of a Scene

SPOILER ALERT (for a movie you will never see) called Dream Lover. If you like the idea of film noir, or if the film Double Indemnity means anything to you, stop reading this right now and go find a copy of this film. Shoot, I think you can watch the whole thing on the YouTubes interwebz you kids like to use.

I have just rewatched the ending to this movie three times in a row. I'm posting the very last words of the scene, and of the film. On paper it probably doesn't look like much. But the delivery in this whole scene is prime.

He: Who are you, Lena? Who will you be when you die?


She: You don't have the guts.


He: Don't I?


She: No Ray. You're too practical. And what about the consequences?


He: There are no consequences. That's the flaw in your plan. I'm crazy. You've driven me crazy.


She: That was the whole idea.


He: Well crazy people aren't responsible. Crazy people aren't legally responsible. Not guilty by reason of insanity. In a year, I'll be sane again. And they'll have to let me out. 


Okay, I know I've been fanwanking about Spader here a bit. But Got-dayum. This may not be the best movie he's ever done, but this may be one of his best pieces of acting ever.

Bold words, I know. Especially since I have barely touched a third of his film oeuvre, but this is striking me as really good. I mean---look, I just told you I watched the last ten minutes three times in a row.

The trick here is that we get all of the Spadery-goodness wrapped up in one character. But you don't even realize you're getting it, or that he's done it, until the credits roll. For the price of a single admission you get Sensitive!Spader, Schlemiel!Spader, Sexy!Spader, Breakdown!Spader, Crazy!Spader, and a special appearance of the legendary Shark!Spader (know him by his eyes, his cold, predatory, hypnotizing eyes).

Okay, let me take it out of Spaderisms and put it like this: what's done in this film is to take the Everyman role, place him in the WTF Is Going On plot, and have it sell, completely. Our protagonist is a nice guy, but not too nice. He loves his wife and wants to believe her, but he still has doubts. We suspect right along with him, probably more than him. And we get to watch him talk himself out it, fall for seduction, and develop the quirks, paranoia, rage and other emotions you'd imagine a real person going through in such a situation.

Lots of actors do great jobs playing characters that kind of blow our minds. Anthony Hopkin's Hannibal Lecter is great example. It's a stellar performance, and Sir Tony does the amazing job of making you believe in an unbelievable character. An unrelatable character. A person (most) people will never meet, yet we believe he exists.

But playing the character that you do know. The guy you could be, or could be your best friend. And watching *that* person go through a slow descent into a surreal crisis. Watching your Everyman evolve, adapt, or maybe just finally flex a muscle that was only hinted at earlier---that takes some talent.

I'm not doing a very good job here. In other movies, when the villain gets their comeuppance at the hands of our Finally-Driven-To-The-Edge hero, it's usually an accident. Or self defense. Or temporary insanity. Or just a nice satisfying bullet to the face that makes the audience feel good, but doesn't really necessarily jibe with the Hero's character. But it works for the plot, so. . .

What's amazing about what Spader does here is that it is totally within his character, within the realm of plot possibility, and even though it's surprising, it's still plausible. When our Hero gets his revenge, it's beyond revenge. And even though we know he's this sweet, loving, caring, Average Joe, we also know that he's smart enough, mad enough, has the history for it, and maybe just secretly shitty enough to pull it off.

The last scene is the corker. Because that's when it all gels. You get about 5 Spaders! in rapid succession, but it isn't hammy or overblown. It's just our Hero, taken to a logical conclusion. And maybe, just like all of us, with a little more of the abyss inside than we ever like to admit.

Unff

That's the sound of a sucker punch to the gutinoids. But not necessarily a bad one.

I'm stewing over a few things, holed up in my Fortress of Solitude, when I get a call from a whole room full of people I used to work with.

It's my old bosses, PDiddy and the Chuckster, running a proposal. Apparently, there have been five in the last month since I left. The irony of that is...well, I don't even know if irony is the right word. That's just life in Proposal Land. They always almost drop, almost drop, almost drop, then BLAMMO--without fail they all drop at the same, worst possible time.

I had just this morning been thinking, rather fondly, about my old boss PDiddy, and told the guys as much on the phone. I had actually been on the verge of writing him an email this morning, but chickened out for some reason or another.

I realize that under his tutelage, I have either been trained to be the most amazing secretary ever, or a completely deranged, compulsive obsessive, detail fixating nutjob. These might not be mutually exclusive concepts.

But there is a secret in all of this. All I really wanted to say in my email was this:

I miss you.

Because I do.

One of the things I didn't anticipate was the vast difference in feel between an office I'd worked at for almost 6 years and a brand new one. Sure, the people I've met have been friendly. And I probably have more in common with a larger percentage of them than I might with the crew I left behind. But still. . .

I guess I just didn't bank on the obvious fact that we end up spending a sizable chunk of our waking lives with our coworkers. I can honestly state that I saw more of my coworkers, even socially, than I did of anybody in my family. And in the last two years, more than any one in my social circle/friends.

And the kind of work they were in the middle of today--it's grueling, hellish, thankless work. But for some of us it engendered a foxhole camaraderie. After we worked a few weekends, or months of weekends together, we became a kind of loose knit team. We got stuff done, when it *had* to be done. And we didn't bitch. Well, not too much. Everybody had their quirks, and you pretty much knew when to give somebody a pass or some free space.

And never, EVER, print anything out on legal sized paper for PDiddy. Unless, like me, you just find some kind of perverse pleasure in seeing him get riled up. Yeah, I'm sick like that. Just ask Bef. She's lived with it for years.

(BTW---how is your SpaderWaiter, Beffrany? Dost thou stalk him at new locations? Is he working at TGIFs now? I know that you know, you sick little thing you. And Billy Zane is still teh gay).

I think I lost the thread here. But in case it didn't come through, that was a cool phone call to get.

It made me smile. In fact, I'm still smiling.

Narcissim Vs Self Loathing: Mutally Exclusive or Strangely Compatible

~or~

The Disturbingly Freudian and Masturbatory Nature of Aesthetics

Somehow, I don't think I will sell many tickets with that marquee.

So after the events of today, I think it can be officially called Spaderpalooza. Gmail almost broke from the emailz wut wuz flying back and forth. I will state, again, that I don't care for Gmail's method of tracking a string of messages. I have a backup system that I check, and sure enough there were several threads I missed out on today, all offshoots of the same message. (The email heard 'round the engineering company, as it were).

Anyhoo, some things I was thinking about even before my last post came up several times in various exchanges today.

First, let me establish a few points. Please, this is not an attempt to fish for compliments or garner sympathy. These are simply the facts as I see it and not the interesting part (for me). So let's not argue about the following or anything. Really. I'm fine with this reality. Well, I mean, I accept it. Okay, moving on:

1. I do not find myself to be aesthetically pleasing in any way. I accept than I am not hideously deformed (on most days). However, the features I possess, body and face, are not features I would label as attractive or beautiful. I don't want to list all my flaws, b/c that's a door NOBODY wants to open. But I just don't like my face. The body....jeez, let's not even go there. Really. Nobody go there. Ever.

2. In a separate, but ultimately related development, I find that I am drawn consistently to people who have the opposite of what I consider my features to be.

3. In another related note, I have begun to wonder at the correlation between what I find attractive, and what I wish I had. That is, do I find something appealing because I covet it, and want to be it?

4. To round out the notes, its worth saying that I had no real concept of what I actually looked like until I was about 12 or 13. And even then I didn't realize some things for a few years. Let's just say that three way mirrors are illuminating, soul crushing things. It's also important to point out that my aesthetics were already well on their well to being fully developed--so what I find attractive is not a knee-jerk contrarian reaction to my own visage. You can't imagine my disappointment when I realized I looked nothing like what I thought (which was, of course, that I was in my own aesthetic ballpark).

Okay--so, why establish all this? Because even with this genuine distaste for my own appearance, I have been accused of crushing on people that look like me. Let me use a much funnier explanation from an email I got from a friend:

i.e. I'm afraid that I would have to totally call foul on your Spader obsession... Since he could be your twin brother!!! I swear... you and Jimmy look more closely related than you and any other member of your family that I've met. Now that I've shed some light on your vain obsession I think I've explained my own recurring Spader fantasies ;D He's hot!

Now, my pal is busting my chops here. But he was serious, too. He does know what just about everyone in my immediate family looks like. And he maintained his position under my Inquisition style interrogation. Everyone says I look just like my mom. JUST LIKE HER. (BTW, I don't. Nor do I judge her to be in the same spectrum as me. My mother is much better looking than I am or ever will be. Love ya, moo!):

Yes! I really do think that you bear more resemblance to Spader than you do to yer mum. Something about the eyes, nose, mouth, and chin area... 

WUT? IMPOSSIBLE!

And yet. . . as I peered at the pictures, the profile in particular, I could see it. Grudgingly, but it was there. At my inquiry, other folks chimed in. My favorite is this:

Son of a gun!  It's true.  You even have the crazy eyes!

Funny. But I'm on to you, mister. You just want an excuse to show that picture of me where I really do look just completely insane, round the bend, full blown lunatic with a psycho gleam in my eyes. You are still officially NOT ALLOWED to show that pic around.

In exchange, I will keep my vow of silence on the little matter of the Snuggie Elvis incident that ended in shame and misery for you.

Anyways--so how the hell does that happen, I wonders to myself. I did mention several times that he wasn't my usual type. There is the factor of being swayed by awesome talent and charisma. True story: Christian Bale is a good looking man, but his appeal for me is fueled completely by  his talent. His talent makes him attractive, and therefore I can find him aesthetically appealing. If he couldn't act, I couldn't be bothered.

So maybe Spader, and things like him, dazzle me with their talent and wit. Much like a sparkly bam-pow (that's vampire for people who don't stay up late nights being forced to watch dumb movies with me). HE SPARKLE DAZZLED ME WITH HIS CHARM AND GRACE.

Or, maybe (lookout, here comes the theory), sometimes we seek out better versions of ourselves. How do you draw the line between fascination, attraction, covetousness, envy, and desire? Can you dislike yourself but be self absorbed enough to seek out a better version of you? Drawn to what you could have been, if only the gods had been kinder?

There's lots of Evolutionary Psychology (don't ever read any it's sofuckingdepressing) texts that speak to a biological hardwired preference for similarity, for known and familiar things. (There's also a whole thing about how we're hardwired to avoid incest, but I'll be honest, I think the Evo Psy guys are reaching with these two points that seem to contradict each other. That's just squicky though. Unless they are at least your second cousin. Then it's okay. In certain parts of my family. I'm just saying. . . )

Whatever the case, it doesn't change the fact that Jimmy Spader is smoking hot and intensely lovely. I have Secretary on the DVR and Supernova on order, and Stick Up came in the mail today. Just lucky, I guess.

All of which means that some people *cough craigyferg cough* are safe. For now.

But be wary. Tick tock, Ferguson. Your time draws nigh. I know where you work. Sort of. You're within my reach, if I can make it through traffic. Enjoy your freedom while you can. I will hold onto my sanity and my desire to stay out jail for as long as I can, and leave you be.

But a reckoning surely cometh.

 I should probably take this time to mention, per my attorney's constant nagging advice, that this entire blog is completely fictional. There is no truth to it whatsoever. I am not a danger to society or any of these people I would appear to be stalking. In fact, I'M NOT EVEN A REAL PERSON.

And as long as I'm being lascivious, oversharing, and all that stuff, I offer you examples of people I find extremely amazingly incredibly stupefyingly beautiful and dead sexy who look nothing like me at all. Not a whit. And bless them for it.