UnfriendEd (O)

I run a tight ship when it comes to Facebook. I regularly pare down my friends list and I rarely keep non-family members that don't add value to my life (either in real life or Facebook life) on as friends. Not that every time I unfriend someone it means I actively dislike them, but my Facebook friends list generally reflects my real life.

Much of the time when I unfriend someone they know it's coming, and most of the time they don't know it's coming they don't seem to even notice that I've unfriended them (for weeks, if ever)... which helps cement that I made the right choice in zapping them. (I saw one such former Facebook friend on the street the other night; I wasn't sure it was her, and then I thought, "OMG... what if she's pissed that I unfriended her 'lo, so many moons ago?" (I wish I thought exactly with that cadence and vocabulary...) Fortunately, she gave me a finger-wiggling "hello" and a smile that didn't reach her eyes and then we went our separate ways. It could have been worse.)

Because I keep my friends list rather tidy, I am attuned to being unfriended. I know, in other words, when I have one fewer friend than I had before, and by my nature I need to figure out who the unfriender is.

Sometimes it's someone who's hidden their profile, and sometimes it's a glitch in the Facebook system.

Sometimes, though... it's intentional.

This blog details some of those times.

Sometimes my blog rubs people the wrong way. While some might say that apathy is the worst result of writing (and I dislike hearing from my friends that my latest blog is boring *coughcoughWinnercough*), I think that there are far worse results: making my friends look bad, making myself look like a racist homophobic misogynist, or even misrepresenting my actual personality.

In spite of the risk of, say, implying that I am a racist homophobic misogynist, I often am willing to take that chance. You know, for the lolz.

One blog I wrote some time ago is The Unexpected Burded of Extraordinary Charm. It paints a picture of me being so awesome that it excused me walking out of a store with a security device still attached to a jacket I purchased. It was intended to be silly. But not everyone took it that way, I guess.

One of my Facebook friends posted a comment on the blog: "vanity at its finest". Maybe she really thought I was showing my true colors, or maybe she didn't like that Canberry was prominently featured. In any case, she un-fanned my blog and unfriended me on Facebook. I haven't heard from her since.

Oops.

Perhaps because I am pretty uninhibited about what I post on my Facebook wall, I sometimes forget that standard isn't shared by all my Facebook friends. Some time ago, I was Facebook friends with a woman I'd dated casually ("casually" in some regards, if that makes sense) and she seemed to have a pretty good/laid-back sense of humor.

Seemed to.

We'd been chatting off and on for a while and I was Facebook friends with both her and her roommate, and I felt pretty comfortable posting on either/both of their walls, because they seemed to "get" me.

Seemed to.

One day the roomie posted on my friend's wall something along the lines of, "I'm so glad that we got to [do whatever it was]! You're the best for helping me out!!"

And I responded, "She's definitely good for some things. ;)"

Maybe it was the winky. Maybe it was the straw the broke the back of a camel I didn't even know existed, but it was (as the first year Spanish students say) "bastante". Her roomie unfriended me. She blocked me on Facebook. I sent one "REALLY?!?" txt to her. And haven't heard from her since.

Oops, again.

One area of discord on Facebook is politics. I am not a very political person--I have my opinions, but am blessed/damned with the ability to see both sides of almost every issue, so I can muster no passion for political causes, and I certainly am not evangelical about anything other than the awesomeness of tacos and Teenage Fanclub.

There was a woman with whom I was friends on Facebook (a pattern developing, yes?), and she was a big dog person. Actually, a big animal person. I like dogs and kitties, but I'm not militant about it. This young woman worked in a vet emergency room and seemed to be all about animals.

(I am not sure, really, what she was like in real life. Unlike the rest of the people on this list, she was a "pure Facebook" play, as the startup crowd might call it if they tried to meet women in as many different avenues as possible. She was the sister of a friend of my friend, and I lured her into communicating with me. At least for a time.)

Her Facebook naturally reflected her commitment to animals. She posted pics of cute dogs she'd helped. She posted pics of her dogs. She posted about donation and service opportunities to help animals in need.

This is all cool with me, by the way. I respect people who have passion for what they do, and even if her message got a bit pushy, it was fine by me.

I guess it was fine until I ever so slightly challenged her world view.

She posted a status along the lines of, "The difference between dogs and humans is that you can always trust a dog" or "... never trust a human." Something like that.

I find that, to be honest, ridiculous, and I tried to subtly disagree by pointing out that many humans are trustworthy and that some dogs are no good. She sort of overreacted in her response, and I maybe should have let it go, but I pointed out that SHE worked in a situation where she put in a lot of effort to help dogs she doesn't even know, and that dogs lack the depth/capacity to do that sort of work.

Wrapping my point in a compliment, I thought, would make the message easier to handle.

The result? You may be able to guess...

She unfriended me on Facebook. I haven't communicated with her since.

Sometimes Facebook disagreements are aggravated by real life reactions. Much like with the previous chick, I got into hot water with another Facebook friend over animal rights statements. Unlike the previous woman, this person was someone I considered to be a real friend. Or at least something between an acquaintance and a friend... but not someone whom I'd only casually dated or knew because I thought she was cute after arriving on her page from her brother's friend's page.

I have not read Fast Food Nation. I haven't seen Super Size Me. I eat fast food occasionally and I don't want to see the fucked-up things that happen in the industry. I know it's not good for me, and I certainly know it's not pleasant for the animals who get killed in order to make the food.

Similarly, while I eat chicken and hamburger and all sorts of stuff from the grocery store, I don't want to SEE it being made. I don't want to hear the screams of the animals when they die or their glassy eyes as they just sit around, getting bigger and doomed to be slaughtered.

I don't want to see it because I don't find it pleasant, but also because I don't really care. I enjoy the NFL, but I don't enjoy seeing players running windsprints in practice, and I don't want to see them hurting themselves in the weight room. I enjoy water but I don't want to see it running over mud or dead animals rotting upstream before it gets purified and into my belly.

Life is unpleasant, and I know it. I don't need to be reminded of it.

My Facebook friend posted a link to a YouTube video about slaughterhouse processes, and had a comment along the lines of, "Before you eat another being, you MUST watch this!"

To which I replied, "Is celery a being?"

That did not go over well. She unfriended me.

But the story (such as it is) doesn't end there.

Within 48 hours (it might have been that night, it might have been the next night), I bumped into her outside of a bar. She and I "debated" the topic for about two minutes, and it ended with her saying, "I want to hit you in the face right now."

I don't know if I won or lost the debate, but I blocked her when I got home.

Fortunately, several months later we reached detente. She graciously apologized and I humbly accepted and we are Facebook friends once again.

The least expected unfriending I've received was some months ago. I hadn't posted anything outrageous. I hadn't had a blowup with a friend or insulted someone's dog or roommate or roommate's dog... and yet I was down a friend.

Some investigation revealed that it was my paternal grandmother.

I am fortunate enough to have super-cool grandmothers. I am not very guarded in my Facebook persona, and they're either open-minded enough to deal with it or they just don't pay attention to me altogether. Either way it's fine, right?

So when my paternal grandmother unfriended me, I was confused. I looked back through my recent wall posts. I looked at my recent pics. Other than a porn reference and a series of drunken pics of me with shaggy hair, there wasn't much that was potentially offensive.

I couldn't just call her, though. If she was actually mad, then I didn't want to face her wrath without any idea of what I was getting myself into. If she'd accidentally unfriended me, then I didn't want to make her feel bad or demonstrate that I was angst-ridden over it.

It was quite a pickle.

I let it sit for a couple of days and then I made a wall post and my sister and cousin and parents got involved. (It turned out that it was, indeed, accidental. She didn't know how she managed to do it, and was disproportionately apologetic. Or she's an excellent liar.)

And then I was Facebook friends with my grandma again, and Facebook life--for all its ups and downs--was once again good. :)

Potter

You know how things kind of snowball? Like, you do a little meth and then all of a sudden your teeth are falling out as you pose for a mug shot?

Well, I had something that snowballed. It started off little and then, by the end, it had taken on a life of its own.

First, though, know that I had never lived by myself until just over five years ago. I lived with my parents, and then roomies in college, then my parents again for a year, and then My Ex for the better part of a decade. It was only in early 2006 that I came home to an empty residence.

Well, almost empty.

I have, as you may know, three cats. I never intended to have three cats--especially not in a one bedroom apartment--but it just happened.

That's not the snowballing part, though.

When I was a kid, my parents would leave the house and we would leave music on. Why? I was told it was because the dog enjoyed it. I never really accepted that answer, and while I never fully understood it, I understand now that it was just a habit.

I had my own habit related to my pets, and it snowballed.

Houdini is my oldest cat. He's almost 13, a gray and white short hair. Truman is the middle, and he's 12 and orange and idiosyncratic. Potter was the youngest. He was black and fluffy and the friendliest of the kitties to anyone who came over and visited.

I had Potter put to sleep about an hour ago. But more on that in a moment.

Because I lived alone, except for my cats, I took to talking to them occasionally. Not full conversations, of course, but something above and beyond "Here, kitty, kitty!" and "Stop pooping on the carpet!". When I left for work (or karaoke, or to volunteer at one of the innumerable places that I so often do) I felt like I had to say SOMETHING. An apology for leaving them alone? An explanation for why I was gone so often?

I settled on something odd. Simple, but odd.

"Houdini, you're in charge."

I didn't say it every time I left, but most mornings I did. While there was never any specifics given for the responsibilities involved with being "in charge", Houdini was the natural fit for the job: Truman is too slow (mentally and physically) and Potter was too flighty.

Potter was the baby. He was only two years younger than Houdini, but for some reason he always struck me as markedly smaller and markedly less mature. Innocent, even.

(Anthropomorphism run amok!)

"Houdini, you're in charge" snowballed in my head into discussions and explanations of why Houdini was perpetually left as the feline overlord. I would occasionally argue against imaginary charges by Truman and Potter of discrimination.

Actually, it was only ever Potter. I guess even an imaginary Truman was too laid-back to have any ambition. Mr. Potts, though? My imaginary Potter wanted to be treated like a grown-up. He wanted responsibility.

I bargained with this imaginary Potter, telling him he was getting closer to earning the spot, and that it would be his some day.

Well, I was wrong.

It's Monday night and about 72 hours ago Potter started getting lethargic. He normally wandered all over the apartment, following me and checking out what I was doing. Jumping on the couch, then on my lap, then lying on the floor by the door. And then repeating the cycle.

He slowed Friday night and Saturday and by yesterday he was simply lying in one part of the apartment and then moving to lie somewhere else. He had his routines... but they were all out the window. There was something definitely wrong. He jumped, painfully for him it seemed to me, onto my lap last night as I was using my computer. He'd spent hours at a time there, and part of me worried that it would be the last time.

This evening I took him to the ER and it turns out he had a blockage and kidney issues and heart arrhythmia. It was going to cost thousands of dollars to fix him up in the short run, with absolutely no guarantees it wouldn't happen again.

I cried and I told the vet (who was crying herself; I have no idea how she could care so much about a cat that she had met minutes before) that I had to let him go.

I had Potter put to sleep about an hour ago. He was a great cat and I'm hopeful that he had a good life. I will miss him.

Surprised

Have you ever seen Reservoir Dogs? If you haven't, then you should. It is, after all, one of my top 10 movies.

If you've seen it, then you may or may not remember the following clip. If you have not seen it, you should be able to watch this with minimal fear that any plot spoiling will occur. (Although you cannot watch it without lots of curse words occurring.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPZ9kidioi8

(It's not letting me embed it. *grumble*)

For those of you who care not to watch it, it's Quentin Tarantino talking about the meaning of Madonna's song Like a Virgin. Basically he's claiming that it's about a woman who'd slept with a lot of guys, but then she meets a guy who makes her feel, physically, like she'd never had sex before.

Anyway, I was reminded of this over the weekend. I was at Ozzie's and I was having a drink and waiting to sing, and I heard something.

I've heard some things, in my years going to Ozzie's and other karaoke bars. I've heard some great singers and I've heard lots of mediocre singers and I've heard a massive number of bad singers.

After a while, one builds up a tolerance for terrible singing. One needs a toughness that allows sanity to remain without being overwhelmed by disgust or anger at the people who just aren't good singers.

I have a pretty high tolerance for bad singers... after all, almost everyone that sings is there to have fun, and being positive is much more healthy and fun than being negative.

With that being said, I heard something. I heard a singer that was very bad.

She was so bad, that she caused me pain. It hurt me.

It shouldn't hurt me, you know--my ears should be Bubble Yum by now--but when this chick sang it hurt. It hurt just like it did the first time.

What was it about her? A combination of things. Was she out of tune? Yes. Was she enthusiastically off-beat? Sure.

But she had that special something that made her resonate on a visceral level. I don't know what "it" is, but she had "it".

And I hope I don't see "it" again any time soon.

A Fine Line Between Kind and Stupid

I work on and with computers quite often. I read about people getting hacked or phished and it turns out that it's not very often brute force: having a computer run every username/password combination is simply too time- and processor-intensive for most potential intruders.

Instead? Social engineering is key. Determining what password a user is likely to use helps cut down the amount of work it takes to get in. Asking what a user's password is can be tricky and might require nerves of steel, but that is even easier.

While it's easy to think that I will never fall for that some or trickery, I try not to delude myself. I can keep my guard up but I know that I can fall prey to it, also.

Of course, even if we sometimes forget, scams--like porn and dating--predate the internet. People learned long ago that cheating someone out of valuables is often easier than earning those valuables through honest work.

OK. So. Please pause there. Hold that thought, even.

Now back to me. I don't like talking to people. Unless it's for my job--where talking to people is a key reason I get paid in (reasonably) hard US currency--I don't like talking to people unless (a) I know them, or (b) they are attractive women.

That might make me sound like an asshole, but it's generally true. I'd say that I'm working on it, but... I'm not. Not really. I don't want to expend emotional effort to learn to like talking to strangers in random social settings.

Even, though, as I have come to terms with my introverted streak, one thing that I do want to work on is willingness to help people in need. I have a tendency to be self-centered and, when coupled with my introversion, it means that I am oblivious (or even apathetic) about the plight of people I don't know (who don't just HAPPEN to be attractive women).

I try, at least sporadically, to help those who seem to need it, even if it means talking to strangers.

Which brings us back to the thought that you've been holding...

Some time back (a fortnight? A month?) I was approaching my apartment building. There was a guy who was using a cell phone right outside the door of the building, and I fobbed (is that a verb?) my way in and past him, and he initiated conversation. I was not altogether pleased, but I didn't want to be rude, so I had this conversation with him:

Dude:  Hi, could you help me out?
Me:[warily] Uh... maybe.
Dude: Do you know the best way to get a hold of the building manager?
Me: [pointing to the phone on the wall] Did you use the--
Dude: I just called the number on the flier and used that phone... no answer.
Me: Sorry to hear that. No I don't--
Dude: Hmm... well, could you do me a favor?
Me: I don't--
Dude: I just came from Renton to pick up my friend's car. He passed away and it's in the building's garage.
Me: I don't know...
Dude: If the manager were here, he could just let me see if the car's even there. It's a brown pinto.
Me: Well, yeah, I don't--
Dude: Could you maybe let me in to just take a look? I've come all the way up here and would hate to just turn around if the car is right in there.
Me: Hmm...
Dude: I've got the key, even. Look [shows me the key].
Me: OK. I'll let you in.
Dude: Thank you so much! I appreciate it!
Me: ...

And then I spent the rest of the evening wondering if I should have escorted him to the garage and escorted him back out. Or if I shouldn't have let him in at all. Or if it was just perfectly fine that I let some random dude into the building.

On the one hand, lots of old people die in my building. It's entirely reasonable that amongst the hundreds of my neighbors someone had kicked the bucket.

On the other hand, crime is pretty common in our area, ranging from a bomb scare to Politica's car getting stolen to all sorts of other reasons cops are parked on our block that I don't even know about.


On still the other hand, he seemed desperate. He gave details.

On still... OK. Enough with the hands.

Liars know to give details. Scammers know to make a series of small, reasonable requests and to escalate once they get to "yes". Thieves know ... well, how to steal stuff, I guess.

Was he an honest guy in a jam? Or did I help him break into cars and/or someone's apartment?

And why do I talk to non-attractive female strangers... ever?

All's Weird that Ends Weird

Sometimes I like to tell stories of things that happen in my life. Sometimes those things flatter me, but more often they are passively embarrassing or overtly humiliating. This is a tale that is both of those latter things.

I was, once upon a time, singing at Ozzie's. Shocking, I know. I was there by myself on a Saturday night, and I was drinking more than a little bit.

I was downstairs, waiting for my turn to sing, when I saw a couple of reasonably attractive young women standing in front of me. One of them had, I noticed, a card on a necklace around her neck. My eyes are pretty good, but I couldn't make out what it said. Because of the combination of the woman being attractive and me drinking more than a little bit, I asked the woman what the card read.

"Have a man speak to you in another language."

Immediately upon reading this, I went into inner turmoil. It was minor turmoil, for sure, but it was turmoil.

As everyone who knows me should know by now, I'm not a big fan of bachelorette parties. More specifically, I REALLY don't like them. I admit that they have their place as a ritual for brides-to-be, and for the brides-to-be's friends, but I also know that much of that ritual is to mockingly flirt with men around them while ignoring objective measures of attractiveness... meaning they usually act much more hot than they are.

(Yes, I know society's standards for beauty in women is, at many levels, bullshit. I know that how a woman is on the inside matters. I know that it's not fair that gorgeous women get away with more in life than more plain ones. But when I'm in a bar drinking, I rarely care much about any of that.)

So, on the one hand, I had my disdain for the bachelorette party generally. On the other hand, I had a great opportunity to talk to a couple of attractive women, and ... I'd been drinking more than a little bit.

The rum won out (as it occasionally does) and I opened. It went something like this:

Me: Puedo hablar español para usted...
Her #1: What?
Her #2: Ah... [insert a BUNCH of Spanish that I didn't follow at all due to ignorance and rum consumption]
Me: Wow. I didn't get any of that.
Her #1: ...
Her #2: ...

There comes a time in every conversation with women I don't know, where I have to power through discomfort or flee (as gracefully as possible).

The conversation with these two women wasn't a disaster to this point, so I continued the chit-chat, asking if either of them were the ones getting married (they weren't) and if they were going to sing (they weren't).

Her #1 clearly wasn't that into me. My ego told me it was because she had a boyfriend, of course. (Whether facts would tell me that or not is another matter. I never found out.)

Her #2, though? She was staring at me the whole time with a big smile on her face. That, for the record, is either a very good sign (she's interested) or a very bad one (she's totally insane). I decided that it was probably the former, so I got their names, told them it was great to meet them, and that I'd see them around the bar later.

And, I did see them around later.

More rum had gone into my system, and I was getting ready to sing upstairs when Her #2 approached me. She had a card around her neck this time, and as the karaoke song was being queued up, she smiled and stared at me and I grabbed the card and it said, "Be serenaded by a man."


I told her it seemed I was the next best thing, and I sang to her.

She seemed to enjoy it, and at the end of the song I noticed that her entire bachelorette troupe was in a booth on the other side of the room. I noticed because they were all chanting, "Kiss her. Kiss her."

I looked at Her #2 and she stopped staring long enough to roll her eyes. We smiled at one another. And I kissed her.

To the applause of her party.

Coincidentally, it was just about closing time. I asked where she lived (she lived close). I asked her if she wanted an escort home (she did). I asked her if she wanted to leave right then (she did).

On our way out of the bar, one of her friends checked in on her, establishing that I wasn't kidnapper Her #2, and that she was sober enough to not be constructively kidnapped. After a brief conversation, we headed to Her #2's place.

Which was fine. I'm going to gloss over things until the way the night/morning ended, but highlights/lowlights included:

• No television (??)
• An awesomely friendly Siamese cat
• A funny txt exchange with one of her friends that she let me write "her" end of

So... after a couple of hours of talking (and stuff) it was about 4AM. I was exhausted and much more sober. And the conversation got weird.

Her #2: ...
Me: What's up?
Her #2: ...
Me: You're acting weird all of a sudden.
Her #2: ...
Me: What's up?
Her #2: ... it's just ...
Me: ...
Her #2: ...
Me: Is it cool if I crash here tonight?
Her #2: ... well, my parents are going to come pick me up tomorrow...
Me: What time?
Her #2: 10:00.
Me: Bah. No problem. I'll get a few hours of sleep and be out of here well before then.
Her #2: ...
Me: What?
Her #2: ... I think I need alone time.
Me: OK. Now?
Her #2: Yeah.
Me: ...
Her #2: ...
Me: Are you just waiting for me to leave at this point?
Her #2: Yeah.
Me: Ouch. OK.

And so, with that, I got dressed (meaning put my shoes and jacket back on, of course), petted the cat, and departed.

It was (and remains) the oddest brush-off I'd ever received from a woman while in her bed, and I lashed out in the only way I knew how: I failed to ask for her telephone number.

That'll show her, right?

Even after all this time, I'm still processing whether this experience makes me dislike bachelorette parties more or less...

The Invisible Injury

Growing up, I think we all hear the same things from old(er) folks. Insight and advice and laments and observations that don't really register. Stuff that, essentially, adds up to, "I didn't really think it would happen to me, either, but you'll know what I'm talking about someday."

Which, of course, is not always true. We won't all know what it's like to have lost a leg in Vietnam or to lose our life savings in an elaborate gardening misadventure or to find out that we actually killed our father and married our mother and then gouge our eyes out.

I mean, we all can do anything we want in this world, right? So there's time. It's just not likely.

One of the things that I'd (blessedly) managed to avoid was the aches and pains that so many people talk about as they get older. Until recently, I'd have a sore muscle and then it would go away--either because I tweaked my ankle walking down the street or I slept on my neck wrong.

Lately, though? My knees hurt. I might have tweaked the right one working out, but giving it time to heal hasn't done much good... and now my left one is starting to feel bad, too. Maybe it's feeling neglected in my allocation of attention. I dunno.

Perhaps these are isolated, temporary, aches and pains... like so many in the past. I guess I'll just have to wait and see.

The thing that I'm more concerned about? My voice. My speaking voice gets dry and raspy at the drop of a hat nowadays and my falsetto singing voice is just... gone. It's been about a month now and I think I'm more worried that I won't be able to sing Grace Kelly than I am that my legs will hurt when I change sleeping positions.

My voice has left me before, of course. My singing voice has disappeared before--late 2007/early 2008 it was gone for about three months, and when we went to Las Vegas in 2009, I couldn't even singing Stayin' Alive--but I always got the sense that it would come back. I always had confidence that, like the bruised tailbone I received in November, 2002, it would linger for a bit and then one day I'd wake up and all would be right again.

But maybe this time will be different. Maybe this time I will never recover, and I will have my singing options reduced permanently. And maybe, just maybe, some day I will tell the story to some young person about how I didn't really think it would happen to me, either, but he'll know what I'm talking about someday.

Birthday Party Aversion

Shawty? Nope.

TM2000? Nope.

Winner? Nope.

Stix? Nope.

Big Apple? Nope.

Queen Bee? Nope.

F-Bomb? Nope.

Sneetch? Nope.

Raft Mate? Nope.

These are all people that I consider to be friends of mine. They all invited me to their birthday parties/birthday get-togethers within the last year and I did not attend. In over half of the cases, I had declined in advance, but that doesn't excuse my absences. (I'm not counting folks like lol who have given up on inviting me, as well as others I'm almost certainly currently forgetting.)

I've known Shawty for almost exactly three years. We met the on her birthday eve in 2008. We spent, basically, that whole weekend together and we dated for several months after that. In 2009, she was dating another guy but I just happened to be at Ozzie's when she had her party. In 2010, I drove up to Who-Knows-Where, WA, to go to dinner and dancing with her and her friends. I was there as her ex-bf was being all weird when she was talking on the phone to her then-bf (who was an International Man of Asshole, as it turns out).

We chat every day. She's an important person to me, and I know she's been having a less-than-optimally fun time in life lately. Her bday party was on Saturday night, and I didn't go. And I feel like a dick now.

It wasn't a matter of a conflict--I had planned on going, and I would have been happy to spend the evening with her under other circumstances--and it wasn't a matter of really wanting to do something else... I am coming to terms with the fact that I really REALLY don't like birthday parties.

I have spent most of today thinking about what that is... whether there is some legitimate reason that I can hide behind as I reflect on all the birthday parties that I have chosen not to attend.

Let's start with my own birthday.

• There's the obvious: I'm old. I don't dislike my birthday, in particular, but celebrating my advancing age? Just not a high priority. 
• Secondly: I don't care to be the center of attention. Even when I dress ridiculously or sing a karaoke song or take a chainsaw to a marching band, I enjoy being able to disappear.
• I've had a bad experience or two regarding my birthday. As a kid I don't really have many memories of my birthday. I don't think I have big parties, but I remember that I would get cheesecake as a wee lad and then german chocolate (with the coconut frosting) as I got older. I have no negative memories of birthdays, which I guess is good, right? Well, in 2008 I had a very brutal birthday party involving misunderstandings and girls and an overwhelming sense of pressure. It was a really stressful night, and it's part of the reason the last couple of years I specifically haven't gone out of my way to do anything.

Now, onto other peoples' birthday:

• While I am friends with the birthday person, I rarely am friends with (m)any of the other party-goers. Being around people that I don't know but am expected to interact with makes me anxious. 
• There are certain kinds of people that I specifically do not enjoy being around. Both in a general sense and some specific cases.
• Location is an issue for me. I really do not like the BalMar, for example. I find the drinks weak and the service ridiculously slow. I find the dance floor packed and unappealing. I can honestly say that I have not had fun any time that I have entered the doors of that place (and once I was pissed when I didn't even get into the doors, although that was sort of Canberry's fault for not bringing the proper identification). There's also the proximity angle to a location... some places in Seattle are difficult to reach via busline and expensive to reach via cab. And I don't drive if/when I drink.

I have a tough time balancing the facts that (a) I do not enjoy being unhappy, and (b) a birthday party for someone else does not exist to bring happiness to my life.

Maybe I'll figure it out and start going (assuming I keep getting invited). Or maybe I'll just figure out that I'm some combination of lazy/selfish/other and make my peace with that fact that I'm not going to attend birthday parties with any regularity.

In any event, I'm sorry to Shawty for not going last night. And I'm sorry to anyone else who may have invited me only to see me fail to attend. I appreciate the invitations and I appreciate YOU. I just don't appreciate birthday parties.