Rediscovering

One of the great things about tearing your apartment apart is finding stuff that you either had written off as lost or had forgotten altogether you possessed. I found a few (minor) gems in my rearrangement so far (I'd probably have found more if I would stop writing blog entries):

• A $5 Tully's gift card. I don't drink coffee, and I don't even know where a Tully's is, but still... $5.
• A book one of my coworkers wrote. I am torn between linking to it on Amazon and not linking, ensuring his anonymity. I'll ask him tomorrow and edit this post. I will say, while I haven't read it yet, I plan on reading it and THEN buying it. I just spaced that I had it. He's actually an inspiration to complete the book that I've started outlining myself.
• I also found a pair of notes that a chick wrote... hmm... three years ago. The two post-it notes were stuck together and tucked in between some Xbox 360 games, and the first one reads:
  and the second one...
  
  The funny thing is that the place we were going back to wasn't even my current place. I am a packrat. Those notes brought back memories of the second-craziest chick I ever hung out with more than once. Good times.
  
• A caricature of me from my graduation party (high school; I didn't really have parties for my later three graduations). My adam's apple and nose both stick way out. I guess that was before my cheeks and jowls won the battle for my face.
• Speaking of graduations, a partially-crumpled letter from Seattle U, congratulating me on achieving my MBA. I wonder if I should think of the letter as a bigger deal than I do. Hmm... 
• A card from Victoria's Secret that's good for a "Free Panty VS Undies" (a $7.50 value) plus $10 off a bra. I don't recall where I got this, and it expires June 14, but I can't force myself to throw it away. Between that and the Tully's gift card, I might be able to start giving out prizes at the door during prefunks.
• A candle holder from Hula Hula. Why do I have it? Because Patrón stole it when she was visiting Seattle last year (at about this time, now that I think about it), and throwing it away seems like a waste.
• Why can't I throw stuff away? Because I find stuff like the recharger cord for my electric razor. The electric razor I think I threw away two weeks ago. Oops.

What other treasures lurk in the remaining mess that is my apartment currently? We will see.

Rearranging

I moved into my current apartment about 32 months ago. When I moved in, I brought my TV and my couch and my bed and innumerable boxes of stuff.

In comparison to my previous, cave-like, apartment, my new place was magnificent. Natural light! Enough room for my computer and my TV in the same room! I didn't have to stack my cats, I had so much room.

So I set my stuff up, and it worked well enough. Eventually I moved some of the boxes, and I bought a shelf or two and put up some of my books. And it was good.

Fast forward 32 months, and I decided to change things around.

It started off as a need to clean my apartment. The problem is that I feel that urge frequently, and I act upon it frequently, but... let me present it graphically:

     ...

I'm sure that needs no explanation, but please indulge me (I did make these nifty graphics, after all (I actually stole one from the Web and then modified it... fair use, suckers!)

I want my apartment clean. I want it to look something like this:

Instead, it tends to look like this. Dirty and disorganized:

Unfortunately, that homogeneous representation is not realistic. It's more like this, with the red being stuff like dishes, vacuuming, kitty litter cleaning, etc.:

So I start to straighten my place. I WANT to clean it. I want to have neither red nor greenish liquid in my metaphorical glass. But, alas, I have limited energy, and my straw is all the way at the bottom of the glass, so I get this:

Not bad. The liquid level is lower... but my stomach is full. So I rest, and plan on taking care of it later. But, unfortunately, over time the red stuff accumulates again:

Even worse? The red stuff sinks to the bottom of the glass. The dishes pile up. The sheets need cleaning. The corpses need to be put through the acid bath. Whatever. So... I'm back to:

And then I get into the cycle where the last three states are repeated. I'm treading water, except insofar as (not represented graphically) the green stuff starts to accumulate, too.

It's no bueno.

This time, though? I've broken the cycle. My place is a fucking MESS, but I've broken the cycle. We'll see what colors the liquids are when I'm done...

Taco Bell Chit-chat

Overheard at the local Taco Bell/KFC.

Patron (in an overly loud, but not irritated, voice): Next time I'll get the $2 value meal.
Worker (standing behind the counter; didn't seem to speak English very well): OK.
Patron: The #4 meal comes with a drink and a double decker taco and Doritos.
Worker: No. It comes with the Double Decker Taco. Number one comes with a burrito.
Patron (pointing at the sign): No, look. Doritos.
Worker: There is no burrito in meal number four.
Patron: Am I a good customer?
Worker: What?
Patron: I would order a number four, but I just ate dinner.
(Worker walks away from the counter, back into the belly of the Taco Bell/KFC beast)
Patron: I liked your biscuits. Are you happy for me?

Movie Experiment II: Strange Brew

Strange Brew is a movie that I sort of grew up on. I had a videocassette of the movie that I watched a ridiculous number of times, and my mom and I referred to it as "The Movie" (not in print, so I don't know if it was actually capitalized, but it FELT capitalized when we mentioned it (I don't recall how or why my mother and I talked about it, but I just remember that we did...))

Strange Brew places number ten on my all time top ten movies in spite of how thick the nostalgia is whenever I watch it. Why? Because it's not that great of a movie. It's a vehicle for the McKenzie brothers characters (who originally appeared on SCTV) to talk about beer and be morons in heavily accented Canadian English.

Funny, but not exactly Shakespeare. Or even Mall Rats.

Interestingly, while it is not those things, it has a TON of elements paying homage to Hamlet. It has very little to do with the storyline, for the most part, and I don't know Hamlet all that well, but it's an amusing and random thing.

Another amusing and random thing was the pair of attendees for my showing of the movie.

The two lovely ladies who were in attendance were Shawty and Winner. (Queen Bee, who was a part of the original troika, had innumerable scheduling conflicts and ended up agreeing to see another movie, another time.)

Queen Bee and Shawty are the two people with whom I have interacted since I've been writing this blog that had to wait the longest for a codename. Shawty didn't get her codename until more than two years after I met her... she didn't really even get much mention in my blog with the exception of an example of using a White Knight as a neg.

I remember meeting Winner at Ozzie's almost three years ago (she probably remembers the exact date, both because she's got a good memory and I'm sort of a big deal). You can read a blog dedicated to her and her birfday party here.

Shawty and Winner had never met, and it was fun to get them in the same room together. Both are very opinionated and willing to speak their mind about things (as you'll see when I tried to get dressed to go out) and, in retrospect, it's probably best that Queen Bee wasn't there. Some topics are like politics or religion, and some topics are much more difficult.

Winner brought Mexican beer (the plan had been Canadian whiskey, originally, but Tecate worked just fine in spite of my general indifference to cerveza), I supplied some Hawaiian pizza (Canadian bacon... get it?) and cheese bread... and banana nut bread for dessert (unrelated to the movie, but related to the fact I'd just baked it the night before).

The movie went reasonably well, I think. It was made in 1983, which was several years before either of my guests were born, but the silliness is a bit timeless (for good or bad) and I hope that the ladies enjoyed it.

After the movie, Winner and I were going out to sing karaoke, and Shawty had to go home due to an extremely early work day the next day (today). We ended up going out a BIT later than anticipated because of their aforementioned opinionated ways.

A little background on how I get ready to go out: if I am going to go out drinking, I almost always prefunk, meaning I have some drinks to set a base and cut down on the amount I'll spend out and about town. I know that, due to alcohol, my ability to dress myself appropriately is impaired.

To account for this, I generally decide what I am going to wear (along with a general approach for my hair) before I have a drink. (I also apply guyliner, if I'm going to wear any, while I'm stone sober, because I've seen the damage that can be done when a drunk person (including me) applies it.)

Well, last night I had decided to wear my stupid Ed Hardy jeans, which I had only worn once in public (as part of my Ed Hardy Party last October). After the gym, I took a shower and put them on, with a placeholder t-shirt. After Shawty and Winner got there, I explained that I planned on wearing them out, and that I'd have to figure out what shirt to wear later.

After the movie, it was time for me to get dressed to go out. It took longer than I'd anticipated.

This is a pretty accurate transcript:

Ed O: So... I need to find a shirt to go with these jeans...
Shawty: You're not really wearing those are you?
Ed O:Yes... with my awesome bright white shoes!
Shawty: Jesus Christ...
Ed O: See? [Holds up the shoes, which are still pretty remarkably white.]
Winner: Please don't wear those jeans.
Shawty: It's not just the stuff on the pockets.
Winner: Yeah, it's the cut, too.
Ed O: What? This super-baggy look is my signature look!
Shawty: Uh, no.
Winner: Please wear something else. Please.
Ed O: OK. Sure... [starts to walk back to bedroom]
Winner: Oh, wear the crotch pants!!
Shawty: The what?
Winner: He has a pair of jeans that he wears that you can't help but not look at his crotch.
Ed O: [from the bedroom] You can't help but look at my crotch, you mean.
Winner: What?
Ed O: Never mind.
Shawty: What are you talking about?
Winner: He wears these jeans that his crotch is, like, BAM! Right there!
Ed O: [Wandering out of his bedroom, pulling up the second pair of jeans.] I don't know what you're talking about, Winner...
Winner: Those aren't them!
Shawty: Those are them? His crotch doesn't look big in them.
Ed O: Thanks. I actually think I've lost weight or they've stretched, or...
Winner: Whatever. What shirt are you going to wear?
Ed O: Uh... how's about this? [Walks back to bedroom, comes out wearing shirt number one].
Shawty: No!
Winner: It doesn't work.
Ed O: No? OK, well... [Walks back to bedroom, comes out wearing shirt number two]... this one?
Winner: Eek!
Shawty: Hell, no!
[Shirts three and four are subsequently shot down, as well.]
Ed O: Well, which one SHOULD I wear? You guys know my wardrobe...
Shawty: [Walking back to bedroom] How about that one with the things on the shoulders?
Ed O: The epaulets?
Shawty: Yeah!
Winner: [In bedroom with other two] Yeah... the black short-sleeved one.
Ed O: Hmm... [holds up a shirt number five] This one?
Winner and Shawty (together): Nooo...
Ed O: Well... let me see... [digs through his "recently worn shirts" pile and pulls out shirt number six] This one?
Winner: Yeah!
Ed O: OK... I just wore it on Saturday night, but... [puts it on]
Shawty: What is that on the sleeve? Some sort of stain?
Ed O: I have no idea. [Licks finger and wipes off minor bit of something or other on the sleeve.]
Winner: Ewwww!
Shawty: Who DOES that? Why would you do that? What was it?
Ed O: I have no idea what it was, but it's gone now...
Winner: OK. Whatever. What shoes are you going to wear?
Ed O: One of my two new pairs of black shoes.
Shawty: The more plain the better!
Ed O: Uh, OK. What about these? [Holds up shoe pair number two]
Winner: Ugh. No.
Ed O: Um... OK. How about these? [Points to shoe pair number three]
Shawty: I guess so. Ed, sometimes you buy some cool stuff, but sometimes... I dunno.
Ed O: OK. So here's the outfit. What do you think?
Winner: The jeans don't work. They're too light.
Ed O: F me. Really?
Shawty: I agree. What about these? [Points to jeans pair number three, sitting on the keyboard near my couch]
Ed O: Ah, yes, the dirt-cheap pair of Earnest Sewns I got from eBay...
Winner: Yeah, those might work.
Ed O: OK... [Takes off shoe pair number three and jeans pair two, knowing they'd seen him in his underwear before]
Winner: What kind of underwear are you WEARING?
Ed O: What? They're Jockeys. Canberry got 'em for me.
Shawty: They sure are tight.
Ed O: They're underwear... [puts on jeans pair number three] OK. How are these?
Shawty: Are those girls' jeans?
Ed O: No.
Winner: THOSE look like crotch jeans!
Shawty: They look like girls' jeans.
Ed O: They fit me just fine, and they're not girls jeans.
Winner: Hmm... the pocket looks...
Ed O: The pocket is plain. Stop it about the pocket.
Shawty: I don't like the color.
Winner: The way they flare out at the bottom make them look weird.
Ed O: OK. Thanks. I'm wearing these tonight. But not this shirt.
Winner: Wear what you want.
Shawty: Yeah. Whatever.

It was, like, the single biggest strike against polygamy that I've ever encountered. I don't watch Big Love... are there scenes like that?

So I went and changed to shirt number four. I put on a leather jacket. I put on spectacles (which were vetoed by Winner) and hair product (which did little other than make my hair look puffy throughout the rest of the night). So, for those of you keeping score, it was shoes pair number three, pants pair number three and shirt number four.

After 20 minutes of an uphill climb, fashion-style, Shawty went home, and Winner and I wandered over to Ozzie's.

Movie Experiment, Night II was a great success, even if getting dressed by a couple of girls is less fun than getting undressed by a couple of girls...

Movie Experiment I: Mall Rats

The first installment of the Movie Experiment was to have been the #10 movie on my list of top movies. However, due to a series of scheduling conflicts between the participants for Strange Brew, Mall Rats, #9 on the list, was the first of the series.

There were no explosions of drama or actual explosives during the movie, which is probably a good thing. In addition to my three cats, there were three attendees.

It was only appropriate that Flowers (originally known as Morpheus) was there. Many basic facts of how I met people and when we first started hanging out have been lost in the mists of time, but I remember that Flowers proved to be the primary factor in my current social circle.

In the old days (well, the old days of my current life) I'd sing karaoke alone. Not just not singing duets, but going to the karaoke bar alone, sitting alone, drinking Sprites or ice water alone. One night in January 2007, I had finished singing a song and a guy approached me. It was Flowers, and he really wanted me to sing Don't Look Back in Anger.

I was flattered, and told him I'd put it in next. He had already put it in for me, however, and he had tipped Krazy Karaoke Host $10 to ensure I could get in before close.

Wow.

Yes, he thought my name was "Neo," rather than "Ed O," but it didn't matter (and, indeed, it gave rise to his original name in my blog). Within a few days, I was in his MySpace top friends, and the rest is history. Or the present. Or the future. Or some combination thereof.

F-Bomb watched Mall Rats with us, too. F-Bomb knew Flowers previous to meeting me, and he has been a recent karaoke/drinking buddy. Prominent F-Bomb adventures include our trip to Mexico in April 2008 and our recent Whistler excursion.

The third member of the Movie Experiment team was Stix. I met Stix at her place of employment in late 2008. She made her first appearance in my blog was when she attended the Killers Seattle show with me last year. One interesting thing about Stix is that she is more willing than any of my other friends to fight. Not, like, argue. I mean take a swing at another person. Just this month, we were at a bar and she looked at a woman and muttered, "Oh, she did NOT just give me that look!"

Fortunately, I've never seen her actually fight, and it was even more fortunate that fisticuffs were unlikely during Mall Rats.

Part of the basis for the Movie Experiment was to intermingle my different friends: take people that I knew from different parts of my life and throw them into the same room, watching a movie they'd never seen.

Last night we had the "movie they'd never seen" part covered, but all three participants already knew one another, so it was a failure on that front.

But that was the only failure. I ordered Chinese food and it was delicious. The three of them all seemed to like the movie, which was a relief.

I felt a bit of pressure, after all, in terms of them liking it... which is sort of weird, given my general lack of involvement with creating the film (and by "general" I mean "total"). I still, though, didn't want to waste their time or have them think less of me due to, say, Jeremy London's bad acting (and, trust me, he has some terrible acting moments).

About 15 minutes (and, in my case, about two potstickers and a pound of mongolian beef) into the movie, the question of when the movie was made came up. "Mid-90's," I said, "maybe 1995?"

It didn't elicit the "I was three years old" response that I seem to get so often when I cite dates for movies, songs, or my degrees, but Stix looked at me and said, "No wonder I don't know this movie."

After it was defined as a movie from 1995, it was fun to watch how many people wore flannel (short answer: a lot). It almost made me forget that it was 15 years ago.

The movie ends with the protagonists getting the girls and Jay and Silent Bob walking off into the distance with an orangutan (a non-sequitur that lead into a brief discussion of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back). Our movie ended with smiles and discussions of whether they would be participating in any more Movie Experiment nights.

It also ended with one twist: someone put a $20 bill on my kitchen counter. I did not expect anyone to help pay for dinner, but I am put in the odd position of trying to return it without asking the wrong person whether they left me money (implying, perhaps, that they should have, too). I am, instead, going to punt from doing the responsible thing and post it here, in this blog: I don't want your money. I just want you to laugh at the right spots of the movie I make you watch.

Movie Experiment Prelude

Last April I put together a top 10 movie list. They weren't the movies that I thought were the best, nor were they movies that I thought others thought were the best... the list is comprised of movies that I really enjoy and/or have a lot of nostalgia watching.

When Facebook made a change to allow users to "Like" non-Facebook elements of the Web, I took the time to "Like" each of my top 10 movies on IMDB. Very geeky, of course, but... it's me. C'mon.

As a result of my actions, I sort of spammed my friends news feeds with movies that, as it turns out, most of them had never seen. This, coupled with something else I'd been pondering, led to the Movie Experiment.

The other thing I'd been pondering (above and beyond Iran's race to get the Bomb and whether Greg Oden will be able to ever get in a complete NBA season, of course) has to do with social circles and friendships.

When I started my "new life" about four years ago, I had essentially left my previous friends behind. A clean slate not because I didn't enjoy many of the relationships and the people involved but because of complications related to the termination of my marriage... to be honest, I didn't want to make people choose between me and her, so I didn't give them the choice. Honorable? Cowardly? Other? I dunno. But it's what I did.

Over time, I met new people and people who knew people and built up a new circle of friends and acquaintances. Actually, several circles, with varying levels of overlap.

I think that, for most people, there is a saturation point involving people. Not involving an individual person (although perhaps that, too) but involving the number of people one can know and care about. Our monkey sphere can only be so large.

When I hit that saturation point--or at least approached it--my friend and acquaintance acquisition rate slowed. I spent more time with the same people, and that had the positive effect of allowing me richer relationships. It also had the effect of intermingling my social circles.

I don't really consider myself a social hub (or a "connector", as Gladwell calls them) but, I suppose, over time it's natural that like-minded people hang out together more, and I helped in a few people to the central (current) social circle.

(There is danger, of course, in putting all of your eggs in one basket, whether that's actual eggs or relationships. I did that in my previous life and it resulted in an extended period of emotional isolation (even worse than standard life-drive ennui). I see, unfortunately, similar possibilities now as a single apple can spoil a whole bunch.

(Wow. Metaphors galore!))

Back to the Movie Experiment: in spite of my non-self-identification as a social hub, and in spite of my fears about homogenizing my social circles, I came up with the idea of having movie nights. One of my top 10 movies each week, with three people who are my Facebook friends and, I'd like to think, friends IRL. The thought was to share some of the movies that I think are really good with people who might not even know one another...

I plan on blogging about each of the nights (and, yes, I know that the observer effect might come into play), but depending on the excitement level of any given night I reserve the right to lump multiple nights into single entries.

Negging and Hating at Trinity

I have never been a big fan of the term "hater." Sometimes valid criticism can be dismissed by over-confident individuals as mere haterade. Or whatever.

My friends and I, heavily influenced perhaps by PUA lingo articulated in The Game and other sources, have integrated the term "neg" into our vocabulary. Backhanded compliments ("Those shoes look comfortable") and offputting acts (offering a chick a stick of gum) allegedly keep women off-balance.

Further, we use the term "negging" for alpha-type jostling in any situation, micro or macro. The larger the group of us hanging out, the more likely someone is going to want to assert himself to establish some sort of dominance--where we eat, where we sit, when we leave, etc. I'd say it's ridiculous except that it's probably programmed into us.

It's a great reason to avoid large groups for me.

Those two elements, then, go into my understanding of our use of the term "neg." It seems like it's pretty much the same as "hate". But it's not.

On Saturday night at Trinity, I experienced one of each. See if you can tell the difference.

The Neg

I was in the Blue Room, moving around a little bit on the dancefloor, when I started up a conversation with a woman. She had made good her escape from a guy who was following her all over the dance floor, so she and I joked about that, and then she pointed to her roommate, who was making her way over to talk to us.

"You need to know," I light-heartedly informed her, "that you might have to make fun of other people if you're going to hang out with us."

"You mean," she coldly replied, "make fun of guys who wear suits to dance clubs?"

My smile kind of froze as I digested that. Was she making fun of me? Or, rather, was she making FUN of me? Or fun of ME?

I wasn't wearing a suit, first of all. I was wearing a black jacket and a tie, sure, but black jeans.

Secondly, making fun of someone wearing a suit at a club is a bit like making fun of someone bringing a baseball glove to a baseball game--doing so is a BIT weird, but it's not that much of a much.

So I politely informed her of the makeup of my wardrobe and went back to talking to her friend.

The attempted neg failed. I did not rise to the bait, and she wandered back to the other part of the dancefloor.

The Hate

Later that night, I was in the main room. F-Bomb and TM2000 had gone home, but I wanted to squeeze all I could out of the night, and staying until closing results in many interesting sights to behold.

This night was no exception.

It was about 2:15, and the crowd had thinned considerably (oddly enough, it had become largely white, while earlier in the night it was about 60% Asian...). I was dancing along the South wall, by myself, when I saw a woman, also dancing alone.

I was drawn to notice her, initially, because she was an attractive woman. Very fit and optimized. ("Optimized" is a term we use for when a woman is all dressed up; if she looks great optimized, she might not look so great when not dolled up, but a woman who's not optimizing and looks great is a definite good thing.) More interesting, though? She was dancing with PURPOSE.

Her purpose? The bounder standing along the wall about 10 feet from me.

She was making eye contact with him. She was bending over in his general direction. She was locked in on him, and he was enjoying it with his eyes.

It didn't make too bad of viewing for me, either, but after a few minutes it was enough, and I started watching other things going on.

It was at that point that I heard, from behind me, "... cellulite ..." in an unhappy voice.

I turned around and saw a pair of women staring at the purposeful dancer. They, too, were optimized. But they didn't look as good, and it was killing at least one of them.

"Can you even believe her," she asked me as I turned to her.

"That's quite an outfit she has on," I commented noncommittally. "Showing quite a bit of skin."

"Yes," the Hater went on, huffily. "And can you believe it, given she's got cellulite?"

"Uh... what?"

"I mean... look at her!"

"I am. I have been. Yeah I just don't see it."

And I didn't. I looked for it at this point... trust me. Heh.

I then looked at Hater's friend, trying to judge whether she was Hater2 or ... something else. Fortunately for all that is good in this world, the friend sort of crinkled her brow, acknowledging that her friend was, indeed, a hater.

I might not be a big fan of the term "Hater". But it has its place in the world.

Because haters be hatin'.