There is another world There is a better world...

as promised, life is back to as normal as life can be, and i am done being morose for the time-being. i guess i didn't really have much else to say at this juncture except that the funk that was clouding my post about my graduation is gone.

in a completely unrelated topic, why is it that a woman who could easily be my daughter (street-legal, as it were, but still in the late teens/early twenties and therefore young enough to be the firstborn of a dude who is going to be 40 (yes! 40! (?!?)) next month) make coquettish eyes at me and flirt? and no! no, no, no. saying something like, "you're hot" et al is not really answering the question for me. i am curious as to what the driving attraction for her would be, not necessarily to me specifically, but to a man who is obviously older. as a writer, i feel i need to at least have a basic understanding of what is going on in her head.

and yes, a young blonde with a lip piercing who was graduating with me was doing exactly this before the crowd expanded and she was pushed away to find some other guy to flirt with. i was simply being polite back, o my beloved non-existent readers, lest ye think in some way my heart is straying from my lovely wife. but in all honesty it is a weird combination of emotions involved for me: i am flattered (i mean, after all, i am a dude. a dude who doesn't really think of himself as sexy. or hot. and everyone wants to feel attractive. this is completely set apart from my feelings for my wife.), and at the same time, i automatically think, why the fuck is she flirting with me as i am obviously much older and there are at least 50 hotter younger buffer guys nearby?

my wife simply says (as she does, matter-of-factly, as if it should've been so clear to me) "it's cause you're sexy." i sure do love her.

and when i pose the same concern about what is going on in a woman's head to my wife, she just as matter-of-factly says, "security."

can the woman's thought process really be boiled down to one word? was this lady thinking that by making eyes at me we would have a long conversation, fall in love, and i would take care of her till i grow old and die and then leave her to pine for another 20 years until she herself is finally old too?

somehow i doubt that.

comments from anyone (but especially women) as to what sorts of thoughts, however random, back this action are most welcome. it is not necessary to make confessions, i am not asking anyone for their sordid past. generalities are sufficient. i would just like to approximate an understanding of the woman's mind on this. thanks.

darth sardonic

Deep in the cell of my heart I really want to go...

some part of the scrawny, gawky kid who hated himself and never fit in still lingers within me, and that fucker has a knack for doing and saying the wrong thing.

this should, i spose, be a happy post about my graduation from community college with an associates of science in drafting design. and it is. but it's funny how whatever i write is colored by the mood i am in at the time. so it will seem a little incongruous when i say i am feeling a bit like a failure.

now, come back and talk to me tomorrow. all will be well, i will have cast off this funk caused by lack of sleep (i used to be permanently exhausted due to the kids not sleeping and now i am permanently exhausted because after i do what i have to do, i do what i want to do and there just isn't enough hours in the day.)

so, back to my graduation. i thought my grades in more recent times would be more than sufficient to bring up my cumulative gpa to graduate with honors. i had an abysmally poor showing at my first year of college, where i barely went to class let alone read or study. well, apparently how i do the math and how they do the math are not the same and i came in just below the "with honors" cut off.

small matter. i was still excited (in my ben stein kinda way) to be graduating, and proud of myself (in my self-deprecating manner) of my accomplishments. it felt good to walk across that stage in my robe and mortarboard, tassel tickling my ear. it's taken me an incredibly long time to sort of "come into my own" so to speak, and my graduation ceremony was a sort of culmination. and i got to have my wonderful, lovely wife (who told me i was the hottest guy up there) and my two boys (who cheered and kept shooting me thumbs up or double index finger pistol shots combined with winks) there, and that was at least as important as getting the diploma in the first place.

i am looking for jobs, but the prospect looks bleak around the area, so further into summer i may look for a job on base that is unrelated to my actual degree but that would at least afford me a paycheck. can't be too picky these days, can we?

i don't know what to say about the tiny misfit riding along inside me. i'm never gonna be fully rid of that guy. and i couldn't be, or i would cease to be me. i wish i could suppress him more. but then, again, i would cease to be me. as i said, this too shall pass, let's focus on my graduation.

darth sardonic

tagged--18 and...

dj kirby tagged me with a musically-inlcined tag this time around. i'm sposed to travel back in time to when i was 18, wax nostalgic about the music i listened to, and tell you all about it. this oughtta be lots of fun:

the university. it was my first time out from under the oppressive thumb of my uber-conservative dad and stepmom, and by god, i was going to enjoy it. i grew my hair out and ratted it into a snarl a la robert smith, of the cure (and frequently wore the white base, black eyeliner, and garish red lipstick to complete the ensemble), dressed in nothing but black nearly every day (shit, i still do that a bit), and wished i was dead 90% of the time.

i wanted to be different. i wanted to be the same. i wanted to be liked. i wanted to be despised. i desperately wanted to date as many girls as i could (in high school, due mostly to the aforementioned looney folks, i had had one, and only one, official date), but i didn't want to belong to the mainstream. so i did what any 18-year-old does when he wants to be a noncomformist: i conformed to the popular subculture (hahahaha, we all think we are so fucking cool, that we are doing something that has never been done, that we are proving our independance, when in reality, we just pick option "b", buy the appropriate uniform (with one or two "personal" twists), and hang out with people exactly like us.

so you, o beloved non-existant readers, will hopefully forgive me if my list of songs isn't familiar to any of you. i will also point out that the bands/songs i list here are all songs i still listen to today. these are not the songs of a fleeting moment, these are songs that affected my life.

the very first song that came to my mind when i read what was expected of me this time around, was dear god, by midge ure. this song is actually quite like a soft pop song, building in intensity towards the end, with expansive and epic feel. a beautiful song, i recommend it for anyone. the former lead singer of ultravox takes on spirituality vs. humanity. and don't worry, the god of the title isn't being railed against, if you listen close, we as humans are: we had it all, and we threw it all away/give me, love for the lonely/give me, food for the hungry/give me, peace in a restless world.

so this would fall at the top of my list, and i recommend everyone check it out, i think it will be a crowd-pleaser.

as for the rest of the list, well, take your chances, heh heh.

i fell asleep listening to skinny puppy once (the album cleanse, fold, and manipulate), and had horrible and strange nightmares and woke feeling anxious and paranoid. i still love old skinny puppy, but make a habit of not sleeping to their music.

anything by bauhaus, but especially all we ever wanted was everything, it's a simple song, but something about it fit my general mood of "what's the fucking point?" that i had at 18.

the cure, obviously. a night like this was a good one, i was "coming to find" her if it took me all night, i thought, hahaha. also, inbetween days, which is sort of a break-up song, but with surprisingly upbeat music. odd, i was listening to that kind of stuff the other day and posted about it, hmmmm.... a running theme, maybe?

joy division. ah, one cannot begin to capture how connected i felt to joy division. the lead singer had killed himself after they had been a band maybe 2 or 3 years (the rest of the band went on to become new order), and their songs were mostly dark, and brooding. i loved it. i love it still.

a plethera of punk bands: the clash, sex pistols, minor threat, 7 seconds, the exploited, dead kennedys, et al.

and finally, and to keep this semi simple (too late), the smiths and morrissey. morrissey has never written a happy song in his life. and while i find some of it a bit whiney now, i really felt that morrissey "got" me at the time, new the pain i was going through (it's called "teen-angst" ya dippy, and nearly everyone goes through it, god i was a pain in the ass to be around at 18!).

as far as who to tag with this, i will have to get back to you on that, as i have to get ready to take the kids to their therapy.