Guess who’s back?
Huh?
Back again?
I give up.
Your subconscious.
Ah, greetings and salutations and such.
Salamalaikum.
My my, aren’t you all cultured. And now I’m on the Homeland Security alert list, thanks.
Well, I had to Google that one. And sorry. (Hi Mr. Ridge.)
Ah, well, A for effort. So what’s up?
Oh you know, chillin’. Saw you hovering over your keyboard with that slightly confused look you get when you come across the Nickelodeon network and you wonder if you should be enjoying the program or flogging yourself.
I make a look…?
Anyways, so I’m here to give you a metaphorical kick. Metaphorical since I am not corporeal.
Them’s some big words, Tex.
What did you think of “24”?
Well, I’ll take Marshall on “Alias” versus super-hacker Kim, if only that I think Kim’s jiggle factor will be reduced in a mostly sedentary role, removing the one bright spot from her performance. The “Jack as junkie” thing was pretty sweet, since I should have seen it coming but didn’t. Michelle is hot in that “I could actually meet her” way. She wouldn’t talk to be, but ostensibly we’d be at the bar and I’d go, “Oooh, I bet I could talk to her” and then, like, not.
I caught you watching a bit of “Angel” afterwards.
Ah, yes, Season 1, Episode 18, the end of the 2nd Faith arc. I think it’s because I’ve sat through the final two seasons of “Buffy”, but I really rooted for Angel’s verbal dressdown of Buffy at the end. Actually pumped my fist. Um, don’t tell anyone that.
Your secret is safe with me.
Most excellent of you, old chap.
What was so fist-pumping about it?
Well, Buffy’s being a bit…well, Buffy, which is to say self-righteous served with a side order of anorexia with a dollop of “angry arm crossing” thrown in for good measure, talking about her new boyfriend, and how she can trust him, and Angel fires back with,
"You found someone new. Well, I'm not allowed to, remember? I see you again, it cuts me up inside, and the person I share that with is me. You don't know me anymore so don't come down here with your great new life and expect me to do things your way! Go home."
And this caused you to pump your fist? Why? Some direct correlation?
Not directly, and at the time, it was mostly about seeing Sarah Michelle Gellar get upset, turn sideways, and suddenly disappear. (I miss Season 2 Sarah so much. Let’s have a moment of silence. OK, done.) But the duplicity that Angel calls her out on, yea, I can sort of identify with that.
How so?
Well, it’s tricky, since I’m sure that I myself am as guilty of such duplicity. Course, we’re all blind to that. I refuse to believe we’re consciously hypocritical. So I’ll own up to any and all unknown ways I do what I’m about to rail against.
Fair enough. Doubt everyone else will buy that, but continue.
Eh, there’s always someone. I kind of alluded to it the other day, that whole notion of loving to be loved. There’s a sort of flip side to that, which are people in love with the idea of being loved. Which is very different than wanting to be in love.
Explain.
Well, it’s the one-way/two-way street analogy again. While the latter can still lead to heartache and is potentially narcissistic to an unhealthy degree, there’s at least the conception that you yourself want to give as much as you can get. In the former, well, you kinda wanna bask in the glow of their tanning bed rays of affection. Only, in this case, ironically, you come out golden brown and they get the skin cancer.
You seriously need to work on your analogies.
Undoubtedly, but I thought I was on a roll, and it turns out I rolled a bit too much. Point still holds, though. In Angel’s little sendoff to Buffy, I found a bit of what I wish I could have said to certain people over the past few months, and a bit of what I’ve finally been saying to some people in recent weeks.
Which is?
Well, that I’m a touch sick of living on a one-way street that’s also, turns out, a dead-end.
Meaning?
To be the guy who is desired to desire, but not actually achieve, is a role I’d gladly shed. Starting to feel a bit like the patriarch in “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” here.
Dude, for starters that’s pathetic, and secondly, no one got that reference.
Ah, well, for pathetic-ness, guilty as charged. As for the latter, well, they can read the play, it’s a real pick-me-up read.
Kinda like this entry.
No diggity, no doubt.
So, wanna parse the above meaning into something that’s vaguely English?
Hrm. Well, I’ll try. I’ve tried to talk this over one-on-one with the Commander, but he’s usually drunk on Cristal with 3 big-booty ho’s surrounding him every time I see him face-to-face, so he’s been completely useless. For some reason, I am vastly appealing to women who want someone to pay a lot of attention, so long as it doesn’t end up being physical.
Ah, but couldn’t one also say you yourself are attracted to this type of woman?
Indeed, and thus a conundrum. Probably a mix of the two. Thing is, the chemistry in these cases is palpable, almost instantaneous, and I fall into the same trap over and over because the beginning stuff is so damn good, it masks the fact that these relationships have the predictability of any Jason Vorhees movies.
But without all the screaming.
Oh, no, in that way the two are still eerily alike.
So let’s get this straight. I’m to believe that one by one, you engage yourself in relationships in which there seems to be some mutual attraction, until you reach out and touch someone, and then it’s kaput?
Well, not ALL my interactions go that way, no, but enough over the past 6 months to have me babbling for pages and pages about it, that’s for sure.
So what’s to be done?
Not a lot, really. Be really easy to at least give lip service to the “screw all y’all” as so eloquently stated by Strong Bad. Can’t, tho.
Why not? Buy a GameCube. They’re like, less than $100 now.
Because, because…well, I don’t know because. I’d love to say not all women are like that, but I’m on a streak that would make the Red Six management fire me if I didn’t bring in a relief GF sooner or later, that’s for sure. Those first few weeks/days/phone calls/emails are so good, so pure, so much damn fun that it’s impossible to believe anything bad could ever come of them. And sooner or later, one of those will actually work out.
Heaven on Earth?
Heck no, this ain’t Belinda Carlisle ditty here. It’ll be work and fights and scuffles and all that jazz. But anyone who can get the wit and the heart racing that fast, that quick…dunno, call me crazy, that’s the kind of girl for me. She’s got passion, and at the end of the day, that’s pretty much a prerequisite.
Yea, but how about taking a relationship at 33 1/3 instead of 78 RPM, Flash?
Well, I suppose it’d be the “normal” thing to do, but then again, there’s so little that passes for normal. Nearly every “How did you meet” story sounds like the culmination of so many haphazard circumstances that make the two of them actually meeting seem so infinitesimally small that a Hollywood producer would dismiss it as “too far-fetched”. And these are the people who made “Serendipity”, for crying out loud.
OK, but shouldn’t you be better equipped to detect warning signs earlier on?
Obviously not. I’m not much for the intellect, my vocabulary to the contrary. Unless most people, I didn’t care that Grady Little kept in Pedro in Game 7.
OK, you’re losing me here…
Nah, nah, stay with me. OK, you look at the stats. Pedro at 105+ pitches, opponents hit .370, right? Ridiculous. You shouldn’t keep him in there. Except it’s Game 7, and you’re 6 outs away, and you’ve got your best pitcher, and despite all the stats, despite all the evidence, you keep him in. Goes with his gut, not his mind.
And they LOST THE GAME!
Doesn’t matter. Least, it doesn’t to me. Would I had rather he played it safe and won? I guess, but Grady didn’t want to do that. I respect that. Luckily, my choices to go with my gut versus my intellect hurt at most two people, not 12 million. I know the odds, I know the risks, I do it anyways. Lately the only loser in thse has been me, but that doesn't mean I'm hangin' up the cleats, either.
Why?
What else am I supposed to do? Sit around, being all mopey?
Dude, you’ve written 1,500 mopey ass words already…
Point is, you pick yourself up, dust yourself off, give it another whirl. All you’re supposed to do. Can punish neither myself nor anyone else who might come down the pipe for what’s happened in the past. As much as it might be to try. Done the masochism thing. Listening to a little Barry Manilow. Fed some pigeons. You know, the usual. Now I’ve got bird-poop on my shoe and “Mandy” in my head, and frankly, that’s no way to live.
So, where do we go from here?
Well, I could break into a little “To All The Girls I Liked Before…And Who Liked Me Until I Showed Overt Romantic Interest and Suddenly Fled Like Vegans from A Meat Market” ditty here. (That was the original title of the Iglesias/Nelson duo; that’s today’s “Little Known Music Fact”.) Seems sorta silly, and redundant, since I’ve dealt with each of these cases on a one-on-one basis in some fashion. One foot in front of the next. Second verse, same as the first…well, until the second verse is completely and utterly different from the first, and that will be a very nice verse indeed.
So, in the end, you just wanna say that episode of “Angel” was pretty darn cool?
Yea. And Eliza Dushku is smokin’ in that ep, to boot.
Think you did a good job here?
Heck no. A touch afraid to even look back at what I've written. I'm sure it's drivel. I'm banking on points for honesty.
Just go on and hope it's OK, and patch any whole in later on?
Hey, it's a built-in topic, something I usually don't have the luxury of.
You ended that sentence with a preposition.
Oh hush. I'm out.
Hey, where are all the crappy New Age photos of people holding hands?
I don't like you. Say goodbye.
Goodbye.
Goodbye.