Consecutive Lonely Weekend #168: Enter Confusion

Another lonely weekend on its way and saturday morning I was wondering if I’d have any highlights to write about. And apparently I do.

The closest thing I have to a friend, or maybe I should say ex-closest thing I had to a friend, apparently hates me and I have no idea why.

She IMed me saturday with “ohhhh shit” so immediately I think she found out bad news from her doctor, or is in a fight with her room mate, or something really bad happened. And as I usually do with my friends, I begin to worry, until she tells me that you get into a Chiodos (her favorite band) show for free if you send them a pic of your Chiodos tattoo. I breathe a sigh of relief knowing that is not life threatening news. I’m about to ask her if she ever got that chiodos quote tattoo she said she wanted, she mentions that she gets paid on friday. I figure thats her way of saying “I’m getting my tattoo after I get paid on friday.” I have nothing really relevent to add to her last comment. I know she loves Chiodos/Craig Owens, I know she’s been talking about getting a Chiodos tattoo, I even know where she wants the tattoo. Hence, I’m sure she’ll send the pick of the tattoo to Chiodos, hence, getting into a future Chiodos show for free. So, instead of saying nothing which might imply that I don’t give a shit about her getting a tattoo or seeing chiodos, I just say “OK.”

And those two little letters apparently pissed her the fuck off…

She called me an asshole at least twice, said that I purposely make her feel like shit all the time, and that I never care about what happens in her life.

Enter confusion.

So I’m here, trying to figure out what the hell I did. All this just because I said “OK”? Maybe I should have asked her to describe the tattoo she’s getting again, even though I already know about it, and it’d be a waste of time for her to explain it to me again.

So, very concerned that she’s angry with me, I ask her how I’ve made her feel like shit. She repeats the fact that when she says something I don’t care care about it, which is untrue, I’ve always found her fascinating. So I ask her for a specific example of when and what she said and what I said, or didn’t say, that made her feel like that, but she just repeated that everything I say, every single day, I make her feel like shit. No specific examples, however. If, and its a big if, I did say something to her that made her feel like shit, it wasn’t my intent, it’s very possible she misunderstood me. But everything I say makes her think I don’t care about her? I find that hard to believe.

So I compiled a list of things that she might mean, In my still confused state these seem like viable examples to times where I’ve said or done something that made her feel like shit.

1. The time she got to go to an amusement park and camping for her birthday, and I left a comment on her myspace saying “I hope you’re having fun on your birthday, you deserve it.” I totally understand how selfish and assholic that comment is.

2. When she told me she was gonna die during surgery, and I waited by the phone for hours until her mom called after her surgery, and said that she was OK, and the immense relief I felt, how I basically jumped around the room, incredibly happy that she was OK and nearly started crying because I was so happy she was still alive. That was also the sign of a major asshole.

3. The times I go out of my way just to make her laugh, even if I gotta make fun of myself, and usually failing miserably. Muchos Asshole.

4. The numerous times I told her how beautiful, strong, smart, and overall amazing I think she is. Perfect asshole characteristics.

5. When she went to the warped tour and got her chance to meet Chiodos/Craig Owens I sent her a myspace comment saying “I hope you have fun today.” and later on, after she said she was moments away from the best moment of her life, I left a comment that said “I’m glad to hear that you’re happy” (Not to mention the numerous times that I’ve been glad that she had fun doing something or going somewhere). Only assholes get happy when they hear that their friends are happy.

6. All the times I felt bad that I couldn’t do anything to help her health, or be there to do stuff with her, and expressed my sadness due to helplessness. A nice person wouldn’t do that, only an asshole.

7. The times I try to talk her out of hurting herself. Most nice guys would just let her do it.

8. The 4 or 5 times, if not more, that I get all excited about her coming here to hang out, and she doesn’t make it here, but I’m just as excited, if not more, the next time. Starts with an “A” ends with a “sshole.”

9. That fact that I always try to learn everything I can about her. Assholey.

10. The uncountable times we playfully argueed over who loved who more. Most assholes would try to prove how much they love a girl, hence, I’m an asshole.

So yeah, I guess I can understand that she thinks I’m the world’s biggest asshole.

Conversational Cannibalism and Interaction Insanity

Let me start off by saying I have very few, if any friends, and even less “good” friends. Most average people have 1-5 really good friends, which they’ve probably known for a long, long time, another 10 or so friends, and then a dozen or so acquaintances they they’d wave to and chat with on the street but probably are not expecting birthday party invites.

I, however, do not. The guy that I would normally call “my best friend since kindergarten” and I have hung out for maybe 10 hours in the past 3 years thats about 1out of every 2630 hours. Now its not his job to hang out w/ me, he lives on the other side of the state and has shit to do. And thats not what this blog is about.

This blog is about the physical and psychological need to interact with people. And I firmly believe that a massive lack of intelligent conversation and general interaction can lead to a mental breakdown or even down-right insanity.

Now, I’m not claiming I’m cuckoo-bananas, but I do often get depressed when I go a short time without talking to someone. With the exception of the few hours I hung out with my friend Will this year, all my conversations have been with my parents, a store clerk, my dogs (they don’t talk back sadly), or someone to whom I said “Hey, are you doing any hiring here?”

The lack of conversation and interaction makes me desperate, the longer I don’t talk to someone, the more desperate I get, human interaction is a basic human need. Some other basic human needs are food. A person goes without food for a while they’ll get desperate. They’ll hunt for food, they’ll steal food, they’ll rob or even kill someone to get money to pay for food if they have to. A normal, well fed person would never resort to cannibalism, but if you get stranded in a cave and go a few weeks without food and most people will think “Man, I hope the fat one dies first, he could last for days.” Think of it like this, if brussel sprouts are your least favorite food, but if its the only thing you have to eat, it doesn’t taste so bad when you’re starving.

Now how does cannibalism and/or brussel sprouts? If you ask me, conversational cannibalism would be classified as talking to yourself and answering back. You hear, or know of, homeless people talking to themselves as they walk down the street. Not too many people stop to chat with a homeless man.

Luckily for me, I’m not a conversational cannibal… yet… I still have one method of interaction left: The Webbernets… Its why I blog. Comments are like quick convos. Quickies are fine if you’re not getting anything else. There are chat rooms, social networking sites, lots of options. Lately, the only friends I can say that I actually have are something I call e-cquaintances, people you talk to through chat rooms, IMs or social networking sites. I’d say I have 1 really good e-cquaintance, 1 or 2 semi-good e-cquaintances, and around 3 not so good e-cquaintances. And only one of those I talk to more than two times per month.

So I decided to broden my e-rizons and join some social network sites. Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, OKCupid, FaceTheJury, Plenty of Fish, Yahoo Personals, Adocu, and Faceparty are only a few of the websites I have or had accounts on that I would say I used to meet people. With the exceptions of 2 or 3 people on Myspace, I’d say social networking for me was an epic fail.

The thing I dislike the most is the fact that people who have dozens of real life friends get all the friends on these social network sites. Granted, its “social” and if they have lots of friends in life then they are obviously good at “social.” I’m not so good at the social aspect. Besides Myspace, none of my plethora of social network adventures turned out to be more than one or two short conversations and then nothing. End of conversation. End of possible budding friendship.

So what is a guy to do before succumbing to conversational cannibalism? Should I just start planning for interaction insanity? I used to think “Hey, if they won’t talk to me, maybe they’ll talk to someone else.” But that can get someone in trouble. I’d talk to someone about this problem, but… I think we already covered this…

200 Things I Want To Do Before I Die

Me and my friend Nicole pondered making a 100 things to do before Death and a 50 things to do before her next birthday List… as it turns out listing 100 things was rather easy for me, so I went above and beyond the call of duty and added another 100 things to the list… so here it is, I’ll cross things off as I complete them… The ones in bold are the top 10 most important.

1. MEET NICOLE!!!!!!!!
2. See Nicole become 100% healthy.
3. Prove to Nicole that she is amazing.
4. Prove to Nicole that I love her more.
5. Have & hang out with friends.
6. Have Girlfriend/Fall in Love.
7. Make a board game.
8. Visit the Sphinx & Pyramids of Egypt.
9. Visit the 7 wonders of the world.
10. Get G4 back.
11. Get a job & stay at job for longer than 1 1/2 months.
12. Go to an iMax theater.
13. Participate in the Running of the Bulls.
14. Visit the Museum of the Weird in Austin, Texas.
15. Touch an elephant & rhino in Africa (not in the inappropriate way).
16. Spend thanksgiving feeding the homeless.
17. Watch a live Old West Shoot Out reenactment.
18. Leave Galeton.
19. Play the trade game with a friend. (2 people buy something for $10 at store/mall. They exchange purchases, try to trade them to other people for more worthwhile objects. After a week/month person with most worthwhile object wins. Document it on film.)
20. Help someone accomplish something they want to do before they die.
21. Finish at least a seasons worth of TV scripts that I’ve started, Finish at least 25/100 of my sports comedy movie scripts, & turn a couple of my stories into movie scripts.
22. Invent something useful.
23. Get several tattoos & piercings. (Including a 3D tattoo)
24. Finish downloading 80’s & 90’s Commercials, Ask a Ninja, Red vs Blue, & Pruane videos and make DVDs of them.
25. Participate in a Civil War/Battle of Gettysburg reenactment.
26. Be generally happy for at least a month straight.
27. Visit an amusement park.
28. Give an entire Town free ice cream cones on the hottest day of the year.
29. Check out the Devil Boat (Submarine in the Desert) in Idaho.
30. Walk across Rhode Island.
31. Save someone’s life.
32. Read more often.
33. Increase NES game collection & collection of old school, b-movie horrors DVDs.
34. Check out Fredosaurus Rex (The Mr. Rogers Dinosaur) in Pittsburgh, PA.
35. Always stay recalcitrant.
36. Visit Yosemite National Park.
37. Go to one of those insult restaurants.
38. Take up free-running.
39. Write Deception Theory book.
40. Build, or convince someone to build, a Nostalgia Hall of Fame.
41. Watch Trent Reznor take down the music industry.
42. Get a Clutch band shirt.
43. Finish Diablo II w/ all characters on all difficulties.
44. Go on Route 6 Road Trip (Massachusetts to California) and Weird Named Town Road Trip.
45. See northern lights.
46. Visit The Church Built Around a Rock, The Rock Animal Zoo, and The Unclaimed Baggage Center in Alabama.
47. Spend the night in an old castle.
48. Give someone a relaxing massage.
49. Learn something new every day.
50. Go around a town and collect pennies from people and donate them to charity.
51. Visit the Grand Canyon.
52. Publish a poetry book.
53. Convince a very rich person to make a large donation to charity.
54. Go to the Habitat for Humanity’s Slum Theme Park in Georgia.
55. Outlive Keith Richards, dance on his grave.
56. See my 10 favorite bands in concert.
57. Protest something.
58. Hear someone say they need me, and really mean it.
59. Visit the Hakone Kowakien Yunessun Wine Spa in Hakone, Japan.
60. Go to a renaissance faire.
61. Sing a song for someone.
62. Go to the Dungeons & Dragons-themed Park In Illinois.
63. Make at least 5 albums of music I recorded.
64. Have a Pirate party on International Talk Like a Pirate Day.
65. Go to New Orleans for Mardi Gras.
66. Start clothing line.
67. Use one of those old timey gas pumps.
68. Visit Sundance Film Festival.
69. See all 50 states.
70. Participate in a Zombie Walk.
71. Make someone laugh until they cry.
72. Go on a cruise.
73. Never renege.
74. Go to Wow Wee Maui Candy & Oxygen Bar, Paper Airplane Museum, World’s Largest Hedge Maze, and World’s Most Scenic Urinal in Hawaii.
75. Go to college.
76. Have a friend of every religion and ethnicity.
77. Meet Cristina Scabbia, Corey Taylor, Ed Roland, Olivia Munn, Tony Parker, David Robinson, and Neve Campbell.
78. Visit Oktoberfest.
79. Lose virginity. Lose oral sex virginity… in fact, lose all virginity…
80. Build something out of super glue and pennies, like a penny castle.
81. Go Skinny Dipping.
82. Go to the Testicle Festival in Clinton, Montana.
83. Have conversation with the worlds smartest person.
84. Swim in the Pacific Ocean.
85. Visit Stonehedge.
86. Spend at least a year straight travelling.
87. Learn Japanese & Visit Japan.
88. Go ice water swimming, Polar Bear Club style.
89. Touch a whale.
90. Make documentary.
91. Break consecutive lonely weekend streak.
92. Ride in the World’s Oldest Elevator in Washington, DC.
93. Visit several haunted places in America.
94. Jump off the cliff at Rick’s Cafe in Negril, Jamaica into the ocean.
95. Buy new Bibles for an entire church.
96. Put actual drawbridge on future home.
97. Go Base Jumping.
98. Be someone’s travel buddy.
99. Play team paintball.
100. Turn 100 things to do before death list into 200 things to do before death list.
101. See Live Spurs game.
102. Have a long, meaningful conversation with someone.
103. Visit the Baltimore Tattoo Museum.
104. See a yeti crab in real life.
105. Fly a plane.
106. Participate in The Great Whipped Cream Battle in the Czech Republic.
107. See The Amazing Johnathan, Christopher Titus, & Dave Attel live.
108. Swim with dolphins.
109. Eat a Coffeeburger (World’s Largest Hamburger) at Sioux Sundries in Harrison, Nebraska.
110. Participate in the Cooper’s Hill Cheese Rolling contest in Gloucester, England.
111. Find a four-leaf clover.
112. Stand on all 7 continents.
113. Visit The Petrified Forrest, The Mysterious Moving Rocks, The La Brea Tar Pits, and The Human Chess Board in California.
114. See a rhesus macaque, then say “Hey everyone, look at macaque” and maybe touch macaque in public.
115. Explore a cave.
116. Figure out what the hell to do in Zelda II: The Adventures of Link.
117. Hold an Anaconda.
118. Collect/Create town shirts from weird named towns.
119. Build life sized house with Popsicle sticks and a hot glue gun.
120. Understand that anal and annals are not pronounced the same.
121. Give an entire town free hot cocoa on the coldest day of the year.
122. Compete in the World Rock, Paper, Scissors Championship Tournament.
123. Check out Osama Bin Bigfoot in Indiana.
124. Spend Valentine’s Day with someone special.
125. Volunteer at a no-kill Animal Shelter.
126. Stay youthful/Never give in to senescence.
127. Watch birds in Carlisle, PA again.
128. Go Zorbing & Sledging, preferably in New Zealand.
129. Build a Giant statue out of legos.
130. Visit the torture museum in Amsterdam.
131. Learn Capoeira.
132. Make a live action graphic novel.
133. Visit Santa’s House & Statue, Skinny Dick’s Halfway Inn, Igloo City, and Gates of the Artic in Alaska.
134. Plant trees on Arbor Day.
135. Go to a nude beach.
136. Quit smoking.
137. Be able to get back into writing poetry again.
138. Get all of my wordpress blogs popular.
139. Shake THE HAND of the guy with the largest penis (14.5 inches). Tell him he’s an inspiration. Buy his peener a drink.
140. Go on a hot air balloon ride.
141. Takes something apart and put it back together.
142. Make someone very very happy.
143. Visit the Enchanted Forest in Dover-Foxcroft, Maine.
144. Visit Centralia, PA.
145. Buy people I love lots of Christmas presents.
146. Learn to draw.
147. Pet a tiger.
148. Find something thought to be false and prove it to be true.
149. Go streaking.
150. Visit Easter Island.
151. Drive one of those old timey cars.
152. Have weekend long Movie marathon & cuddlefest.
153. Own an all black cat.
154. Fix, or find duplicate of, favorite jeans.
155. Finish Omnighost, The World’s Worst, Synderella, Bloodcell, Be(lie)ve, and Van Garrido Stories.
156. Visit world’s largest Ten Commandments in Murphy North Carolina.
157. Get faster internet.
158. Do some charity work.
159. Be in a shin kicking contest.
160. Go to the Voodoo Museum in Louisiana.
161. Go camping.
162. Teach somebody something (preferably to never try a 200 things before death list).
163. Visit Strip Club.
164. Always be opinionated and express opinions.
165. Buy something in an Adult Store.
166. Tip a cow.
167. Visit Angel Falls in Venezuela, Tugela Falls in South Africa, and Langfoss Falls in Norway and stand underneath them all.
168. Win a giant stuffed animal at a fair/carnival/amusement park for someone .
169. Paint future bedroom with reflective gray/silver paint and write all my poetry in black paint on walls, ceiling, and floor.
170. Visit Fucking, Austria.
171. Enjoy at least half of my remaining birthdays.
172. Find someone with as much ambitions as me.
173. Live to see the cure for cancer and aids.
174. Break the world record for most people hugged in a day.
175. Drink an imported beer from every country that exports beer.
176. Sit and listen to a busker.
177. Steal something from a rich person and give it to a poor person.
178. Visit World’s Largest Toy Museum in Branson, MO.
179. Get a story of mine published.
180. Never let my nephews borrow anything ever again, but still be nice to them.
181. Get all episodes of The Adventures of Pete & Pete.
182. Visit the Mall of America.
183. Play miniature golf.
184. Go to the restaurant in Japan where women do everything men tell them to.
185. Get down to ideal weight.
186. Go to the Museum of Sex in New York.
187. Finish my “How to be Power Metal” guide.
188. Go to SXSW Music Festivals.
189. Be in Punxsutawney for Groundhog’s Day.
190. Go to a Medieval Times Restaurant.
191. See a play live.
192. Go hiking.
193. Go to Ozzfest.
194. Make Independent romance, comedy, and Horror movies & few web videos.
195. Visit World’s Smallest Museum, Hall of Flame, and “The Thing?” in Arizona.
196. Beat the first Super Mario Brothers NES Game.
197. Go to Highway 127 Yard Sale (The World’s Longest Yardsale).
198. Spend a Christmas handing out gifts to sick children.
199. Learn origami.
200. Finish 200 things I want to do before I die list.