Monday, November 30, 2009

Three Years

It's been three years since I've been in a relationship where we both said we loved each other. That's a long ass time.

Government: Freedom vs. Safety

I think about the Declaration of Independence, and the Bill of Rights. These documents spell out exactly what freedoms we, as citizens of the United States of America, are promised. They do not talk about a "right to public transit systems", nor do they mention a "right to affordable health care."So it makes me wonder what is government's role? All I really need from my government is the protection of the promise it made to me: freedom.

But the older I get, the more I feel like government has become a tool for keeping people safe. But safety and freedom are orthogonal goals. You can relate to what I mean if you have ever had a "corporate security policy" in place on your work computer. Your network admin does his best to keep you safe, but the cost is that you are not free to surf all of the web, you cannot download the important attachment from your vendor to move your project forward. For freedom is restricted, and you cannot make much forward progress.

There are services I need, don't get me wrong. Things like fire fighters, and ambulances, and roads so they can get there quickly and reliably that I don't need all the time, but I'm willing to pay a slice for alongside my fellow neighbors so that we all may enjoy the safety of those services when the need arises.

What bothers me is that the government (via the people) seem hell bent, not on protecting their freedom, but protecting a way of life. They want to preserve a thing that is showing itself to be inadequate, needing adjustment. They want regulations, and bail outs. People have become afraid of failure, afraid of death, afraid of the very frailty that makes us take chances.

If we lived forever, there would be mo need to take risks. We could simply wait until we arrived upon the correct way to do everything. But we don't have "all the time in the world", most of us have seventy years at best. So we have to guess, we have to take chances. We have to do things that put us and sometimes others at risk if we are going to move forward.

You see, we have to be free. Free to speak. Free to defend ourselves. Free to vote. And most of all, free to take a chance.

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

They Don't Make Guys Like Me

As Jenny points out, in a round about way in my last post I said that I do not exist. But I do exist. I'm here, and I persist, despite all the parts of me that may seem at odds with themselves.

Especially when it comes to dating, and trying to justify in my head why an amazing woman would want to hang out with me, I've always thought, "They don't make guys like me." They really don't. Guys who don't have substance abuse problems, guys who are responsible, guys who are gainfully employed. Apparently just those seemingly bare bones qualifiers limits the datable population quite a lot.

I realize this post is reading as rather self-indulgent. You're reading my blog, about me. Deal.

Then you add on the "normal" good stuff. For instance, I'm pretty funny. I also look pretty hansom, not gorgeous, but hansom enough. I can carry on a conversation and I listen to what people say instead of drifting off in my own thoughts. I'm the kind of guy your mom would like for you to date, and that your dad wouldn't need to brandish a gun at to get his daughter home on time. They don't make guys like that anymore.

Then there's the quirky parts; most of which stem from my lack of social inhibitions or lack of shame.The only way you can get me to turn red is to call me up in front of a group and tell me I'm doing a good job. But I can't be cut down by jokes about the things I like, or the people I hang out with. I'm bullet proof in this way. I even mis-match my shoes so that you know how much your cuts don't hurt me. Peer pressure was a non-issue growing up; I've always been my own person.

I have only one big fear - of dying and having people say that my life was cut short before I could really enjoy it, or take advantage of it, or be happy. So I constantly battle that fear by saying "yes" when an opportunity presents itself, by spending time with friends, by riding the cable car instead of the bus to work. I love my life.

The thing I want most in life, is to have someone to protect. Someone to love fully, without the boundaries. Someone who will protect me and love me without limits. But people freak out when you tell them things like that. They don't make guys like me.

Monday, November 23, 2009

If You're Reading This, This isn't About You

This is about some mythical girl, the impossible woman, the one who doesn't exist. I like to tease the women I know who are looking for datable guys. "I want a fireman", but then he has to be tall. "OK, this one is tall and firemany, but he doesn't do X", or Y, or Z. You could put a dozen good looking millionaires who are down to earth and friends with your friends, but they'd never fit the bill.

That's one kind of problem. My kind of problem is that I want something that doesn't exist. A person who, if she existed, would instantly implode upon herself.

I want the girl who has blond hair, but wants to let her brown hair grow out. The kind of woman who looks great in an evening gown, but likes to wear jeans with holes in them. She wants to enjoy the life in the city, but wants a small house in the suburbs. She's athletic and competitive, but needs to feel protected just as much as I do. She's the kind of girl who loves to cook and loves to go out. The kind of woman who always wants to snuggle and is just as happy on her side of the bed. She has the alpha persona that drives her forward, but she spends more of her time outside of work than in it. Nor is she religious, but she knows she needs some sort of spiritual component to her life. She is happy and sad, proud and humble, courageous and weak all at once and not at all. Most importantly, she loves me for being all of those things too.

Sunday, November 15, 2009

Visionary, or Facist?

1847-1931: Thomas Edison
1901-1966: Walt Disney
1955-Present: Steve Jobs

These men in my mind were all the same. Men who had a great idea, which they implemented on their own steam. That idea then gave them the financial resources to hire nameless practitioners to implement every far-reaching idea they had.

Edison makes the light bulb, a tedious process of trail and error. He then created a research lab, where thousands of patents were filed in his name. Disney brought sound to cartoons, and soon found himself with Imagineers, people who would help him later build Disney Land and Disney World, creating animated masterpieces previously thought to be unprofitable. Then we have Steve Jobs, visionary of Apple, who brought us crazy things like a home computer and a mouse in the face of "the public has no use for computers and who needs anything besides a keyboard anyway?" I hear talk of the "wrath" of Jobs and how easily one can find himself fired at Apple.

I am not agreeing, or disagreeing with the methods of these men. What is interesting to me is the pattern. I also submit that the world only has room for one of these such men at a time. Men who braved a gamble because they knew in their gut the world wanted what they could pluck from dreams and turn into reality. Men who then took that reality, and made a factory out of ideas. Men who created an industry that wasn't there before.

At times, I want to be one of those men. A man who knows what it is that the world lacks so desperately. But I do not think I have the constitution it takes to know in my gut that I should press on with a thing that sounds ridiculous until it becomes common place.

Saturday, November 14, 2009

Dear Morgan Freeman,

You once were part of fantastic movies (Robin Hood, Shawshank Redemption, etc). Now it seems like everything you're part of is crap (list omitted for  brevity).

Sincerely,
Will

P.S. Maybe the facial hair makes you weak?

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

What I Swore Off Girls For

I swore off girls in search of something. Now they're less sworn off (and yes, dudes, you're still out in case you were curious). There was something I had lost. Something I was good at doing, and it was something I had forgotten. It was the thing that made relationships special, magical.

Shoes.

Not the kind you wear, but the kind you stand in that belong to your girlfriend. The kind that tell you that she's worked a lot on being more earth friendly, so when you notice that she went to the effort to get a blue bin so recycling is easier, it melts her heart.

Tonight, I was reminded of those shoes that I had stopped standing in. Someone I know complimented me on my ability to keep running with a humorous story to the point where it gets her laughing so hard she can no longer breathe. I love those stories, and that's "my flavor" of comedy. It's what I love doing, what I feel I'm really good at. To have a simple compliment, something made almost in passing, made my day.

I hope I can return the favor soon enough.

Sunday, November 8, 2009

"The Right Thing"

I want to see a satire movie made called "The Right Thing" where it is a seriesof short segments in which people do the right thing, instead of the dumb thing that puts them into ridiculous movie situations.

Scenario A: Friend shows signs of turning  into a zombie.
Kill the friend.
Done.

Scenario B: Dude wrecks a car.
Dude fesses up, works hard to pay for repairs.
Done.

Scenario C: Dude's girlfriend goes away on a family vacation to Europe, meanwhile sexy-hot slutty McNeighbor girl offers dude her "services".
Dude turns her down, buys some dirty magazines, waits till the end of the week.
Done.

Scenario D: A prison-convict has intel needed to evade terrorist attack.
Do not move, or set said inmate free to "help" the SWAT team out.
Done.

Scenario E: Dude works for a bad boss
Dude quits job gets better job
Done.

Scenario F: Dude works for a corrupt company
Dude shows evidence to company, company changes poilcy, pays for the damage they've caused.
Done.

Done.

Furthest Friend

All day long at work I deal in kilobytes, megabytes, and gigabytes. Sometimes we even talk about terabytes of data. But when it comes to distance, everyone sticks to the kilo- prefix (or miles because we can't get on board with metrics).

I got to thinking about it, 2,865 miles from here to Long Valley, NJ sounds like a horribly long distance. But really, Laura is only

4.61077056 megameters


away from me. Four point six... she might as well be next door. They say it's a small world, but that still puts a lot of important people a plane ride (or two) away from me. I feel like that distance gets in the way a lot. There are people I ought to talk to more, people whom I consider to be my friend who might have gotten married in the time that has slipped by.

As for the pronunciation of "megameters", wheter it is me-GAM-e-ters, or meg-A-mee-ters, the guys at work and I couldn't decide.

Saturday, November 7, 2009

Things that smell like other things

To me, burritos and body odor smell very much the same. Sometimes I find myself wondering why it smells like meat, then I realize there's a sweaty guy next to me.

Being an Adult

When I was 18 and legally became an "adult" I wondered when I would really be an adult. Would it be when I had a job that I could live on? Would it be when I bought a house? Would it be when I got married? Had a kid?

This week I was reminded that I decided long before I was 18 that [male] adults are adults because they get lint stuck in their belly button. This something that didn't happen to me as a kid because I had no hair to trap the lint, but it was something that happened to my dad on a near daily basis.

This week I discovered lint in my belly button... I felt like celebrating just a little.

Sunday, November 1, 2009

Family Expansion

I think what was most... "jarring" last time I went home was that everyone had new names. Mom was suddenly Grandma, Dad was now Grandpa, Jon became Dad, and I had a new name thrust upon me, Uncle Will. It's like when you have a friend who changed what people called him in college, and you find yourself hanging out with his friends from high school, and they call him something totally alien and you can't quite reconcile it in your brain fast enough to keep up on the conversation.

After my brother's wedding to Vanessa this weekend, I now suddenly have a sister[in-law] too. I think for the first time, I felt what it means to be 2,000 miles away from my family. The relationship I have with my niece is very different than the one my parents have with  her, having seen her so much more than I have.

I think they are both pleased with how the wedding went. It was very much their wedding. They both had on casual foot wear for the ceremony and they had all the people there that they needed to be there for them. Standing at Jon's side during the wedding, seeing Vanessa's face as they spoke their vows, I feel confident in saying that this is a good marriage, one that I was proud to be a part of.