blueswede

home again, home again, jiggity jig

So I've been back home since last Sunday night, and haven't
gotten around to updating this yet. Of course, that may be
mainly related to very little happening in my life.

I've been toying with the idea of getting a laptop to bring
with me to Maryland for the summer, so as to have a machine
of my own available. It's dependent mainly on how the other
people in the flat will feel about getting a broadband line
for the summer, so I guess I'm just going to play it by ear
for now, and if we elect to get a line and split the cost, I
have my eye on a sweet little Vaio that's probably going to
drop in price pretty soon.

In other consumer developments, I've recently purchased the
first season of Twin Peaks on DVD, along with volumes 2, 3,
and 4 of Dave Sim's "Cerebus," and "Gravity's Rainbow." So
even if I don't get a computer for the summer, I ought to be
pretty well set for free time. And as you can also see, I'm
becoming a huge consumer. Buy Stuff!

In the last two days, I've seen "Dawn of the Dead" and "Van
Helsing," both of which were good, though I don't think that
"Dawn" should have been called a remake of the George Romero
classic, since really the only two things they had in common
were a black police officer and a shopping mall. It really
felt more like a good "28 Days Later" knockoff than a remake
of the classic. "Van Helsing" was great fun though, and was
a nice take on Dracula. At some point I'm going to have to
read Bram Stoker's novel, and get a taste of what authentic
Dracula is like. Though I am pretty familiar with Vlad the
Impaler and all his antics in Wallachia, so I guess in some
ways, that's as close to "authentic Dracula" as you'll get.

So I recently was hanging out with a friend of mine who has
had just marginally better luck with women than I have, and
we ended up discussing our respective situations a bit. We
were able to reach a few conclusions:
1) Technical majors are bad to be in if your main life goal
is to meet women, since there aren't many women in them, and
people outside the majors don't often have the foggiest idea
what they're actually about.
2) It's usually a bad idea to date within your own field if
there are major disagreements over trivial things.
3) The shortage of single women our age works against dudes
like us who are short on experience.

This of course is nothing too new. Programmers dating each
other is a recipe for arguments about text editors; a couple
of psychologists dating each other is a situation that could
blow up from a disagreement over whether gestalt psychology
is legitimate (personally, I say yes).

Now in the wake of this, I thought of a few things regarding
myself:
1) There is probably some fundamental flaw in my approach to
the dating scene (god I hate that phrase), as I've seen guys
who are heftier than I am with worse table manners who have
dated pretty attractive women.
2) I no longer like the notion of traditional dating. I had
gone to a soccer match with a gal I know at college, and it
was really fun. I realized that doing something along those
lines beat the hell out of old "dinner and movie" stuff.
3) I'm really good at living single, good enough to teach a
course on it. "Ok class, today we discuss the proper way to
sit around in your bathrobe all day. Tomorrow, we will get
into the unit on the proper '80s albums to have prominently
displayed on your shelf."
4) Huey Lewis is probably one of my favorite musicians.

So, what does this tell us? Well, probably not a whole lot,
save that I might be able to make a few extra bucks as some
sort of "single-life" counselor to help out people who have
been burned and are adamant about being single for a while.
But that's just another entry on the list of my alternative
careers in case CS and radio both fail, with such thrilling
occupations as "math teacher" and "fixer."

I do think that this reflects a certain contentment with my
being single which wasn't there before. It might help that
I'm not around a whole bunch of really attractive women now,
and that I'm eating healthier, but I'm starting to think it
might be a major shift in my attitude. Single life has many
perks, and I'm starting to think that I might actually get a
better ratio of benefits to drawbacks from living single as
opposed to being in a relationship.

Which is kind of a frightening prospect when you think about
it. If I prefer being single, where's my motivation to even
try to improve my social life? Right now it's about perfect
for someone who prefers flying solo. And while that's okay,
the prospects are pretty bad if I should change my mind and
have done nothing socially for some time. Then again, maybe
being unattainable will make me that much more desirable.

Though I'd certainly hate to prove the morons who spew that
sort of bile correct in any fashion.

This is Dave, signing off.