Late? Perhaps

I guess I should give a quick mention to the fact that there is more than a year between the last two posts. Well, this is more about being busy and not really wanting to type. It is hoped that as work gets a little calmer, I will type a bit more. To be honest, I would not hold my breath. I am really lazy. I mean really lazy. Plus, I get frightened at the idea of someone actually caring and being upset that I do not post. So, best to keep it a surprise when I do post.

Jon

Thoughtful Comments

There are always some comments that just tickle me, in a bad way. Usually they are things said as a joke at some stage or are just accepted by the people who say them. What really bugs me about these comments is the lack of forethought. Two that quickly come to my mind each time I think of this topic are ones that have to do with couples, either being in one or by a part of a couple. These are the comments, “where is your better half,” and, “see that, you don’t really want a girlfriend.” These two familiar comments bug because of the deeper meanings and lack of thought about what it means.

Take for the first example the comment about the better half. Here this has some deeper meanings, which can be found with a bit of scratching. Firstly, it assumes that someone is only half a person. It is clear that it is meant to be “half a couple,” but no-one ever says that. This immediately puts me on edge, because I like being considered as a complete person. At the same time, I am not the “half” that the person wants to talk to. Instead, I am only the means of reaching the person they want to talk to, and they are only talking to me because of social etiquette. Or, it could mean they are glad the other half is not here so that they can do some bad talking, assuming I care about doing that. Being the worse person in the couple does not really bother me though, low self-esteem issues and so on.

Even worse than being half, is the comment about not wanting a girlfriend. This needs to be put into context first. This normally happens just after the man in the couple gets asked to do something by the woman in the couple, while I am around. Usually, this is something as simple and easy as, “please make me a cup of tea, babes.” At which point, the man walks past me, rolls his eyes, and says, “Look at all this trouble, you are lucky not having a girlfriend.” This comment, while a joke, is fraught with inconsistencies and problems that I end up grinding my teeth.

If someone makes this comment, they are either stupid, liars, or complete bastards. If they are really in a relationship and they are being tortured and being used as a slave, then they should break up. If they have not broken up, then he is obviously stupid. Similarly, he could just be lying about how bad the problem is or even to him/herself. The complete bastard comes in if it is just a joke. Cause then it is more just rubbing it in that I am single and that all he has to do to get the benefits of a girlfriend is make a cup of tea occasionally. To be honest, I would do a lot more before I found myself being upset at a bit of work.

With these two comments in mind, it is important to think about the things actually said and what they mean. These are used far too easily, and even as jokes they are somewhat lame and irritating. So, if I punch the next one who mentions one of these to me, then I hope it is understood why.

Jon.

Bikini so blue

It is sometimes very amazing what the mind can do. I have a perfect example of this. I, quite some time ago, did the thing of downloading a lot of music from a friend of mine. In this list of music is a song called La Chica Del Bikini Azul by Luis Miguel. Without my mind to click weird pieces together this song would mean nothing to me. However, with the brain being what it is, this song immediately made me think of a girl I went out with. Now this is strange because I don’t speak the language, and the links are very tentative.

However, the first time I heard this song, it immediately brought back memories. The first memory is fairly obvious. Even though my grip on the language, which I assumed is Italian and confirmed later, is tentative, I knew the some was about a blue bikini. Now this brought back a very old memory that I am not going to go into, sorry. The reader is just going to have to assume this one, and I know it is probably going to be worse than the truth. People who know me and her will probably realise how pathetic the memory is, but I would rather let people who don’t know think it is better than it is.

The other thing is the language. Now, Italian is a language I don’t know very well. I also was not sure that the song was Italian. But, I did find out that this specific song is Italian, although the artist is Mexican and normally sings in Spanish. Now the Italian connection is interesting for two reasons. First is that me and her used to do ancient history classes together. Of course, one of the ancient cultures that is always analysed is Roman. So, that is pretty straight forward. The second connection is a bit stranger.

She was always in love with Rome, and Italy. She as a younger person, I am not sure how young and will get to that, went to Italy. She apparently had a really good time there. I don’t know much about this because I was not going out with her back then, and I in fact did not even know her. However, she had a few times told me about this trip and all the fantastic things the Italians had said about her hair. She also often threatened to show me the entire set of photo’s she had taken while she was on the trip. Sadly, she never did show them to me, and I should probably bring this up with her, but it would be a bad idea for a lot of good reasons. So, I know that Italy has always had a soft spot for her.

Now, this is all probably a bit lame, and I am sure that people are thinking about how soppy this is. But, what I really want to point out here is the power of the mind. This song, the first time I heard it, had no direct connections, yet it made me think in that direction. This really makes me worry about the power of the subconscious. This makes me really unsure about the amount of control I really have over myself and my thoughts.

All I can say is, “Damn you Freud, Marx, and Nietsche! You have made the world a scary place to live in by pointing out reality.”

Jondough

Every hour hurts, the last one kills.

I have never really been all that fond of holidays; for me the holidays are just like any other day. Yes, you have much more free time to spend doing what you want, but usually by the end you are bored out of your mind and just want to do something, anything.

These holidays however, have been particularly bad for me. A couple weeks before Christmas I had finally reached that point where I had done enough reading and research: now it was time to actually write the thesis. Unfortunately life does not like me that much, and so decided to throw some bricks at me. Life usually throws bricks, but people usually get pretty good at dodging and catching them, and sometimes even are able to throw some back. However, sometimes too many are thrown, and once the first one hits you in the head it gets very hard to get back on balance to get to dodging them again. This is how it felt for me.

I finally start writing thesis, get the introduction down, and write most of the first chapter. Then some idiot, lets call him Mr. R, decides he wants my father’s business to make him 22 doll houses to sell through a toy company. To let you know the size of these evil houses: they contained 4 rooms, 2 top and 2 bottom, each was meant to be able to house Barbie both standing and lying down. So they were not small things! He gives us a week, 5 working days, since that is how long until his deadline. In which time we had to cut build and spray paint these houses. Firstly the wood arrives late. We now only have 4 days, and the cutting with the laser cutter will take 2 days alone, if we cut day and night, which we did end up doing. The parents also want to head up to Durban, which they did that Friday, so the last day of work we were alone to finish, as well.

We then notice on Wednesday that our dog is so ill that he can no longer stand. He had been ill for a long time before that with arthritis in the back legs so we knew his days were numbered. That Friday we do manage to finish, sticking the last bits on and putting the dollhouses into boxes just before Mr. R would arrive to fetch them. We give him the final printed invoice, which he suddenly thinks is wrong and he decides to haggle. I nearly strangled the bastard. The one important point on the invoice was a deposit he had to pay on delivery; which if we did not have we could not pay worker wages and also have the money to survive the holidays. He brings this late, and then also only brings three quarters of the amount he was meant to bring. This means that we were now living alone without the parents and having to watch every cent that we spent, or having to starve.

His arriving late meant that we were in a bit of a struggle with the day. Since it was now late in the day, and we were worried the vet was about to close. So we jumped in the car, raced to the vet and asked how much longer he would still be open. We had about 20mins. So we rushed to the house, raced back to the vet with the incapacitated dog, to wait in queue to have him put down. It was such a rush that we did not even have time to think about it and say goodbye to the poor dog.

Anyhow, to get to some kind of point: People do not realize that they should plan things ahead. Mr. R. did not think ahead, he should have started this project much earlier so that we did not have to rush, and do a shoddy-ish job on his project. It seems that he had this idea in his head and wanted to have it done for Christmas, and then Christmas suddenly was near and he had to rush to get things done. But, by doing this, he put many other people in trouble, and caused them problems. So the moral here is that people should do more planning so that everything does not have to happen in a rush.

Jon

Lovely platitudes

One of the things that I find quite interesting is thinking back on sentences that I have said in the past. Especially the weird and completely wrong and horrible ones. Doing philosophy at university has helped me a lot in being able to analyze them and say how completely rubbish they are. Giving myself good reason not to say them again. One of these sentences that has peaked my interest over and over again has to be a semi-common one that hopefully people will recognize. This is the typical love platitude of: "honey, of course I don't want to change you, you are great, perfect even, the way you are!". This all done on one of those special quiet nights when looking lovingly into each others eyes. Of course, she replies back with more or less the same thing.

I know many others than me know that this is a rubbish statement (sometimes it seems that everybody but me realized it was rubbish straight away), but if I ask for a show of hands who has done this I would not be surprised to see most people have. I definitely have unfortunately. Worse still, at the time I meant it completely. But then again, back then I did not think very much. Reading philosophy, especially the post modern philosophy, that I really struggle with, has actually given me terminology to be able to explain myself and make sense of even a sentence like this. Since, well I would find it pretty hard to imagine someone, anyone, not wanting to change the person you are going out with. I do not mean completely change, but little things, smooth the rough edges if you like. I would even go so far as to say something cute, like saying that even the most hard-hearted thug would like to change their other half to love them more.

As Jeff Foxwothy (I think it was him and that that is how you spell his name) from the Blue Collar Comedy Festival explains in his one section. Is that he imagines himself being constantly and slowly changed by his wife, even imagining his wife calling her mother to explain how well the changing is going. Something else interesting is that people do want to change as well. I would go so far as to say that the couple changes themselves constantly to suit the other, and if they get to a point where both refuse to change themselves anymore is actually where the couple splits up. Basically that it is the point where the individuals decide (Subconscously) that changing themselves any more would mean that they are not themselves anymore, so they have to leave to maintain their identities.

By changing I also do not mean the complete and sudden change. That is why I brought in the thing about even only changing how much the person loves you. You want the person to be intrinsically the same person, because well, that is the person you decided to go out with and like, maybe even love in the first place. The good post-modern philosophy word for this is iterability. It means that things are repeated, but that they never stay exactly the same, yet there is always enough to recognize something as that something. Take for instance writing, and even typing. I can easily say that I have written the letter "t" countless different ways, and that each time I can still recognize it as a "t". The same with typing, and one can even do this themselves, type a word, and then change the font. No two fonts are exactly the same, but in each font one can still recognize the word written (and I do not include the different language or symbol fonts).

The same thing is true about people. They age, they get haircuts, dye their hair, change clothes even. Each time they are different, yet enough stays the same that one can recognize them. I would say the same is true about relationships. You want to change the other person, but not so much that they cease to remain to be that person.

Jon