A Thought Experiment

I typically consider myself to be an intelligent person. Because of this, it is obvious that I would expect myself to behave rationally and intelligently. However, I am questioning whether my behavior is rational and intelligent, although this is difficult to tell on a conscious level.

I honestly have no idea how I became as cynical toward females as I now am. My mother is an incredibly nice person, unconditionally loved me, and has done everything that a person can expect from a mother, and possibly more. My sister and I used to be best friends when I was a young child. We would run around in our yard or play school or just watch television or something like that. And even when I was in first grade, I had this thing with a kindergarten girl. She and her older brother who was my age came over in the morning because her mother worked early, before she could see her kids off to school for the night.

Anyway, I would always sit next to her, talk to her, and even kiss her in the morning. And she loved it. I loved her, and she loved me. Probably the closest I’ve been to an actual relationship, sadly enough. However, the next school year, her mother no longer needed my mother’s babysitting skills, so she stopped coming over, and then I moved to Lake Jackson, Texas, with my family, so I have not seen her since first grade (that I know of).

The point is that at a young age, I always had good relationships with females. Even in Texas, while I never had any “girlfriends,” I enjoyed being around women, and I had a plethora of female friends. (I also had many friends in general. I was one of the most popular kids in my class, and I was even skinny and athletic. Weird shit, eh? Then I moved back to Indiana a couple years later, and I went through some pretty depressing times, as did my mother.)

Many years later (junior-high-ish), I received my first rejection from a woman, and actually, rejection is not a good word to use. Repudiation is more accurate, since she said “ew.” This made me angry. And this, combined with the fact that other women seemed similar, I decided that I had a problem with high school girls. To put it simply, I thought of them as bitches. Interestingly enough, it seemed like almost every single woman who I met conformed to this definition. There were a few exceptions, but as a “worldly” person, I wasn’t cynical and/or pessimistic enough (surprisingly) to believe that all women would conform to this notion. However, enough people conformed that it was true.

Then I entered the next social paradigm: the workplace. I hoped that things would be better, and they were in one way, since I met two of my best friends there, but in another, they were just as horrid as in high school. Indeed, I am talking about the females. One of my ex-coworkers there is absolutely gorgeous and had a nice rack, and I really liked her. However, I would later learn via experience that she was an ingenuine, insincere, thoughtless bitch. It was always a struggle to talk to her. In fact, the only person we became “friends” is that one day I casually mentioned my love for Seinfeld, and for some reason, she felt the same way. But throughout our “friendship,” when I was not around any of my cooler friends, she would (likely) pretend to be incredibly interested in our conversation, but when I was with my friends, she essentially ignored me.

Of course, all but literally one of my female coworkers, young and old, gradually conformed to the bitch paradigm. The one was actually pretty cool, though I think she has recently quit. Surprisingly, some of these revelations have come recently (as in since I have left), and that disappoints me. I thought I would be better at spotting bitches, but I guess not.

Now that I’m in college, things are a little bit different. I am proud to say that I have a handful of good female friends. They are sincerely nice people, and I enjoy their company. However, is this what I really want? I have thus far talked about my experiences with females in a generally very negative light, and up to this point, it seems like I have desperately wanted women to call friends, women that I can actually talk to and not feel like I’m in an artificial friendship.

Could there be a part of me that enjoys bashing women? Possibly, but I assure you that I do not enjoy doing so for the sake of enjoyment. There is only one reason why I would subconsciously enjoy women treating me like shit: because it means that I am right. Finding women that I actually like has found me questioning my philosophy toward women, and subconsciously, I am not sure if I am comfortable with it. Will I actually change my mind about women? Or will I find “rational” reasons to dislike these women and return to my comfortable reality where the word of Spencer is comparable only to the word of God?

And there is still one thing that I have not solved: all the women that I have liked as someone to date turn out to be bitches. (Read about instance #1 here.) And now, there is a woman in one of my classes that I really, really like. She seems perfect in every way: not bitchy, pretty, intelligent, well-read, good sense of humor, basically everything I look for in a woman. However, if by some miracle of God she wants to date me, what will my reaction be? Will I appreciate the fact that a beautiful woman actually likes me or even loves me, or will I look to deconstruct the relationship? Will I look past the flaws to experience a grand relationship, or will I overemphasize them and ultimately use them to justify calling her a bitch and breaking up with her? Ultimately, the question is this: do I prefer being right or do I prefer this woman?

This is a horrifying train of thought but one that has recently plagued me. And honestly, I don’t hate women, despite the fact that most either seem to burn me or closely resemble women who have burned me, and also despite the fact that I portray many of them negatively. It’s just problematic and frustrating that all the women who like me I reject and all the women I like reject me.

College Newspaper Life and Meeting Bob Barr

So I have not updated my blog in a long time, mainly because all the cool stuff that happens here at Valparaiso University probably should not be published for my sake and my friends’ sake. Anyway, I’m sure I will be able to find something to talk about:

1) Writing for The Torch. Because I just can’t let go of my J-Lab memories (actually it’s because I get paid and I like doing journalism), I decided to join VU’s newspaper staff. Basically, it reminds me of how The Spirit would have been at its best. It’s a clean publication with fairly well-written stories, and it serves its purpose of informing the masses well. However, it has no online presence (which should be fixed soon, according to my editor, now that we have a new president), and it, like the dead Spirit, seems somewhat stagnant (though not to the extent of our old newspaper). I’m wondering what, if anything, leadership will do to modernize the newspaper, but maybe I’m still stuck in CHS journalism mode. I will say, though, that I’ve already had a great opportunity simply because of being on staff (see #2).

Also, the editorial hierarchy is much more elaborate. There are assistant editors and more department editors, and although I like my editors and would exclude them from this, the “elitist” sentiment that was present amongst my editorial board during high school (and yes, I did purposely say “my”) also seems to be present amongst VU’s editorial board. The large group is necessary since a 20-24 page newspaper is published weekly, though.

And because of the elaborate structures, the news editor and assistant news editor are “my” editors, acting as middle managers of sorts: they receive story ideas from the top and generate their own, pass the stories down to their staff members, and ensure to the best of their abilities that we do a good job in reporting the story. I have personally talked with the editor in chief once in person and twice via e-mail simply because he is too far up the food chain to deal with staff members, a similarity to the good ol’ Meijer days.

2) Meeting libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr. Earlier in the fall, for some reason, he decided to travel to VU to discuss the election and his viewpoints, amongst other things, so my assistant news editor sent out an e-mail looking for volunteers. I, of course, volunteer, so another staff member who also volunteered and I went to the meeting Friday and listened to him speak.

Barr’s appearance was right after Congress’ bailout plan passed, so as a libertarian, he spent a great deal of time bashing the hell out of President Bush, President-Elect Obama, and Senator McCain for all supporting this bill. He then advocated the classic libertarian philosophy of less government inference both fiscally and socially. Afterward, there was a reception to be held at Pestos, a local italian restaurant that is simply incredible. We both decided to arrive early, and this allowed us to have a fairly lengthy interview with him about foreign policy, specific initiatives to cut spending, and global warming. I’m not saying more because I hope to bring the actual story for you all next week. Later during the reception, he sat with us again and made small talk. We failed to talk about two things – his appearance in Borat, and him once being a Republican – but didn’t really care to discuss them.

By the time this is finished, I will likely be at 600 words, so I will stop here. I just realized that somehow I never wrote about my Senator Obama experience from when he came to Elkhart. Oh well. I’m sure I’ll discuss it at some point with you guys. Also this is very colloquial and probably not that well-written, but that’s what happens when spending twenty minutes to type something.

Just my luck: The one college chick I spent a lot of time talking to/texting before going to college is a bitch and slut

If I remember correctly, it was early in July when I received an interesting friend request on Facebook. At this point, I had become accustomed to receiving random friend requests from Valpo people, but this one was different. Not only was the chick hot, but she also seemed pretty cool from what her profile said. Of course I added her and decided to chat with her whenever the opportunity presented itself.

This opportunity did not come quickly. Though the middle 3-4 weeks of summer were not as busy as my last 3-4 weeks, I still didn’t spend a great deal of time online. In fact, I was writing here a lot, as a lot of shit had occurred at work (see previous posts). It was the end of July or early August when the aforementioned opportunity actually presented itself. It was a Thursday night, I had to work late, and my friends did not call me that night, so I had free time to spend online. This “hot chick” was online, so I decided to start chatting.

She was very cool to chat with. We had good conversation, good use of humor and sarcasm (by me), and even she was funny too. I thought we had clicked, and she did too as she asked me if I had an AIM. At the time I didn’t (I got one after arriving on campus), but I told her that I had unlimited texting, and she became excited and asked for my number. We exchanged, and so we began texting.

Friday: she texts me soon after waking up, and we texted at times throughout the day since I probably had to work. Friday night, we decide to talk on the phone after our social activities were finished, and I think we talked for an hour. She mentioned that she sounds like a five-year-old when she’s really tired, but I had to work early tomorrow so I couldn’t stay up to hear it. Tomorrow night, though, I might be able to, she said.

Saturday: I work, get off, and then I receive an invitation to go to a RISK party at Travis’s. I told him yes but that I would be slightly late because I was watching Con Air and hadn’t seen it from beginning to end in a long time. Simultaneously, she and I are texting, and I tell her to call later in the evening. I gave her a time too early, however, and she ended up calling while I was wiping the floor with Travis and deciding to co-rule the world with Kelly.

When I talked to her, I told her to keep texting, and I’ll tell her when she can call. At one point, I told her I’d be back by 1 am, but she said that she wasn’t sure if she could make it until one. Luckily (at the time), we decided to end the party around midnight, so she could call at 12:30. I get back, she calls me, and we begin talking. That conversation was fantastic, though. We talked from 12:30 until 4:15 am, and I don’t remember hardly any of the conversation (parts of it were unintelligible anyway), but I did hear the five-year-old voice.

Every day from RISK night until a week before school, we were either on the phone or texting significantly. However, something bad happened. She revealed her bitchy side, slowly but surely. It began with her flipping out because I jokingly called her friend egotistical because he asked her to turn her phone off, and it got to the point where she threatened not to talk to me ever again. Of course, the next day, she blinked first, asking me if we were still going to be friends. I said sure, why the fuck not, and then we continued our long texting/talking sessions.

The sluttiness is revealed mostly after school began but not entirely. The first two signs were stories she told me: one was when she made out with three guys at one party, and the other was that her friends call her a slut all the time and half of them actually think she’s a slut. On Move-In Day though, it was confirmed, as all my new friends on third floor already knew who she was and also told stories. The best was from one who met her at FOCUS, our orientation session over the summer. They had only met a few hours ago, but they made out in an intimate area.

One more bitch story, though: last Friday, I planned on attending a dance party. She specifically started a Facebook chat asking me if I was going, and if so, which one (there were two parties that night). I say yes, and we discuss details. We leave, I get in line, and she is in front of me. She turns around, we make eye contact, and I greet her with a typical head jerk. She turns around without saying a word. The bitch fucking snubbed me.

Last Tuesday or Wednesday I confronted her in a Facebook chat. Here is the chat though it’s paraphrased.

Me – “So I saw you at the party the other night.”

Her – “Cool.”

Me – “You were right in front of me in line.”

Her – “Okay.”

Me – “You turned around, looked at me straight in the eyes, I nodded my head to greet you, and you didn’t say anything.”

Her – “Oh sry.” (this is a direct quote BTW)

Then she suspiciously logs off.

This really fucking pissed me off, and I am not often angry. I go to text one of my close ex-coworker friends a message saying something like “I confronted [her] and she acted like it was no big deal,” but somehow, I sent that to her instead of the friend, so she responds, “Um I think you sent that to the wrong person. I am [me].” I was forced to “confess” and told her that I was “mad as hell.” She responds by saying, “what was no big deal?” I explain to her the Facebook conversation and how her short, apathetic responses pissed me off, but apparently she couldn’t comprehend the English language worth a shit because she kept telling me she couldn’t understand.

Then I saw her on my floor, but I was doing homework, so by the time I entered the hallway, she had disappeared, extraordinarily pissing me off. I go back into my room to calm myself; then I march up to the fourth floor and knock on her door. She answers, smiles, and greets me with a friendly hello. She asked me to expound again, I explained my story, and she told me that she was drunk so that might have been why she didn’t say anything, even though she was talking to some other guy in my group and even gave him a peck on the cheek. Then she changed the subject.

Thankfully most of the women here (so far) have not been like that, and I did have a great time at the dance party. Still, she’s a bitch and slut and can go to hell. I’m likely going home with her next Friday, though, because she’s attending a wedding in Goshen next weekend. I’m so fucking excited.

Serenity Now, Sanity Later

The following will be an ongoing list of the greatest quotes thus far at my time here at Valpo. As more quotes are uttered, they will be added.

1) “What? You guys are bad friends!”

Context: After we got back from a party Friday night (Sept. 12), one of my sober friends decided to tell one of my drunk friends that he made out with three guys at the party. The above is how he responded.”

2) “Olivia, you have boobs. Not naked boobs, but just boobs that are there.”

During the same party, my other drunk friend (he was really hammered) said this to a chick named Olivia during their pre-cuddle make out time. He then pointed at other chicks, telling them that they had boobs also.

3) “Holy shit! It’s the Hulk! The Hulk!”

After the same party, we all went back to my neighbor’s room across the hall. Someone turned the lights off so that the drunks could go to sleep, and a light that was a green can of Mountain Dew lit up. The above is how he responded.

More quotes from Friday night will hopefully be added eventually, but they will not now because I don’t remember them.

I treated a woman like an object and I liked it

It was approximately 11 p.m. Friday night when some of my fellow third-floor friends and I decide to head over to one of the dance parties hosted by frat houses. The first one we went to was a Slip-N-Slide dance party, but for some reason, some of them did not want to go inside that one but instead wanted to go to the other one, the beach dance party.

Apparently they felt better about this one, and I didn’t really care either way, so onward and upward I went. A group of us found a group of girls dancing by themselves, so we approached them. I, not being a great dancer, was apprehensive about just grabbing some random chick and dancing with her, so I cycled through the first two women fairly quickly.

However, my mindset changed quickly when I saw a group of three girls but only two guys dancing with two of the girls. I am a very confident individual (or arrogant as some say), but for some reason the confidence does not usually allow me to take risks. In this instance, though, it did, and I grabbed the third member by her hips, slightly pulled her toward me, and the dancing commenced.

For three or four (or maybe a couple more) songs we danced, without saying a word, and without really making much eye contact. Finally, she and her two friends decided to take a break b/c they were hot (in more ways than one, do ho ho), and so the two other guys and I followed. During the break she told me her name and I mine, and then we talked for a little bit longer about school-related shit until we were cool enough, and we promptly re-entered the dance floor where more grinding occurred.

I guess it’s worth noting that the intensity of the dancing increased somewhat after the short talk. The question, though, is whether this was because of the talk or whether this was because we had more chemistry on the dance floor. We ended up dancing for over an hour, and we walked home together.

It was not until today, though, that the thought that I treated this woman as a thing instead of a she entered my mind. One of my friends talked about his strategy for getting a girl to dance. He said, “I just walked up to a group of chicks and said, ‘I need a female. You, come with me!’”

I responded by saying that my strategy was different in that I just walked up to a chick and grabbed her hips and started dancing with her without even asking. Then my other friend said, “That’s how you’re supposed to do it.”

I agreed with him (and still do) but I just could not believe it. I took this random chick, grabbed her by the waist, and began dancing with her. Throughout the night, I moved my hands from there to her waist, to her lower stomach, and even to her ass, without asking or without even saying or without even making any sort of acknowledgment.

At that time I did not care how she felt, I did not care if she was enjoying herself, and I really didn’t care about getting to know her; I simply viewed it as a way to kill time between dances. I only cared about my personal enjoyment and my ability to hump his woman whenever I felt like it. I could get as close as I wanted, and I could put my hands wherever I wanted.

Seriously women, why? I don’t understand, though I really enjoyed myself.

Off to college: leaving very little behind

In less than seven hours from now, I will be officially leaving home and going to Valparaiso University. Honestly I don’t have the time right now to say a whole hell of a lot, but I will say this: I am ready, simply because I am leaving very little behind: my family (obviously the toughest part about school), a few friends (many who are going to college themselves anyway), and that’s about it. I won’t lie and pretend like I miss the structure of high school, which seemed to consist of who could play the best games and who could put on the biggest show.

While I do not expect to completely escape from artificial relationships, I do expect to make more sincere friendships than before. I also expect people to act more intelligent, meaning that even the “stupid” people are still capable of carrying out intelligent conversation or at least being able to nod their heads and hide confusion.

Anyway, I am excited to learn from my fellow 2012ers and hopefully they’ll learn a few things from me, like deconstructionism, cynicism, and pure sarcasm. Of course I’ll play nice (I even shaved a few days ago), but I feel more confident that the show I put on – a show based entirely off of my own character and my own personality and absent of embellishments – will be a show worthy of attendance.

It’s been a long time – Part 1 – Work

It’s amazing how actually spending time with people and working 10+ hr shifts at work prevent me from making it to the computer. I have lots to talk about, and as the title indicates, I will be discussing recent work events first.

1) A couple of weeks ago, the store director received an interesting order from corporate: ship out all clearance furniture, and ship out all clearance patio furniture to another store so that they can sell it instead of us. It took one of my coworkers and me almost our entire shifts just to load the furniture onto skids (fifteen total), pull them over to the receiving area, wrap the skids, and make sure that the receiving clerk gets everything recorded correctly.

I will say that we had a lot of both clearanced regular furniture left, and clearanced patio furniture. Still, getting rid of every single piece of furniture (excluding the displays, of course) seems like too extreme of a measure. If I were the store director, I would take that as a slap to the face. The message corporate is sending is that our store lacks the competence to sell any clearance furniture, and another store can do a much better job.

Again, this is not entirely false, but many customers were angry because of the disappearing act. It would have made more sense simply to leave a little bit of the furniture for our customers.

2) VIsit 2 recently occurred. For those who don’t know, during the last visit from the “group vice president” aka regional manager July 4, our store received a score of 3 on a 1-10 scale. In a month, the store had to improve to a seven or eight. As D-Day 2 approached, I was very confident that the store director lacked the competence necessary to raise the store’s score high enough to keep his job.

I figured that I was right. Two nights before (on the day I visited Obama actually), I worked from 12 to 10:15, almost two full hours of overtime. Then, I worked from 3:30 to 11:30, ninety minutes past my scheduled departure time (though I was prepared to stay until midnight or later). During these two days, condensing in the garden center and in toys occurred, among other things, but I figured that the store was not good enough to pass the test. Many items had the wrong shelf tags, we did not finish condensing toys (so we had to spread out items so that we had the illusion of a store without holes), and most of all, we didn’t even straighten the store. All we did Thurs night was walk the center aisles to make sure that any big messes were cleaned up and any stray merchandise in the center aisles was picked up.

Somehow, though, the store managed to receive a great review. It turned out that the VP did not look at the whole store but simply random aisles. Fortunately for my store director (unfortunately for us), one of the random aisles happened to be the straightest aisle in the entire store, the board game aisle. I have a history with this aisle: whenever I straighten toys, this is the aisle that I straighten the best (since it’s the easiest to straighten IMO), and on Thursday night, that was the only aisle that I straightened the correct way: bringing products forward, taking down topstock, etc.

Apparently the VP said that many stores have trouble with this aisle, and that’s why  he picked it. If I would have known that the board game aisle would have been randomly picked, I not only wouldn’t have straightened the aisle, but I would have made the aisle look worse, and I would have called in my ex-coworker to the store to trash the aisle just before the VP’s arrival. I still cannot believe that he somehow thought that the game board aisle reflected the entire store, because it doesn’t: it is an anomaly.

Part of me wants to call him up and let me give him a tour of the store, but another part simply says, “You have three more days; get over it.”

The metal concert: the event where all rules are suspended

Yesterday I spent six hours or so at the House of Blues in Chicago listening to some great (and not so great) bands at the Summer Slaughter concert series. One of the greatest things about these concerts, besides the music, is that when guys receive their tickets, they essentially are given a license to grab, bump, grope, and hump any hot chick on the floor, and surprisingly, there were some nice-looking ones. See a chick with a nice rack moshing? Push her away by grabbing her “upper chest.” That chick in front of you with a cute face? Go ahead and attach yourself to her.

There are only two problems with these chicks: they most likely are taken, since the reason they are at the concert is because their boyfriends are into the music, and also that many of them are skanks. It made for some nice sightseeing, but after a short period of observation, a stop sign also seems to appear, indicating their assumed promiscuity.

Probably the highlight of the night came when I became involved with a crowd-surfing experience. During Vader’s performance, some hot chick came up to me and asked me to lift her up. I did (while getting a nice chunk of her ass) and launched her toward the front where security was present to confiscate the crowd surfers after they made it to the stage. Good times were had by all.

Some other observations I made:

- Death metal fans have a great sense of community. When moshing, if one of them gets knocked down, they will momentarily stop and pick the guy up before continuing. The younger kids who believe that moshing is about elbowing and punching random people are attempting to ruin the community-oriented aspect of this.

- Suprisingly my ears were just fine after the concert due to my handy ear plugs. I don’t understand why most people wouldn’t wear them; it doesn’t make them look like a hard ass, only stupid.

- The best bands there were Psycroptic and Cryptopsy. Vader was also decent, but that was partially because of the great crowd as multiple Vader chants erupted throughout their performance.

A treatise on supervision and the training it does not require

Today I had to help one of my coworkers get on the computer. He, for some reason, did not take his computer courses back when he began working in the Garden Center in March (AKA someone didn’t take his courses for him), so now he had to sit through the monotony. I decided to look at my computer courses and noticed one that was not complete: the GM CEC (Customer Experience Coordinator) training course. Even though the course is optional, I still decided to take it.

Essentially, the CEC’s job is to run the department when the managers are not there to do it themselves. As I was bored, I decided to “take” it to see if I would be a good CEC. Naturally, I briefly skimmed through every single section of the training module, but there was a ten-question quiz to complete in order to get credit for taking the course. Despite not reading about the job, I managed to get a perfect score on the quiz simply because the questions either required common sense or were easy enough that I could guess correctly, and now according to the company’s own measurements, I am now qualified to take on the first “leadership” role the store offers. And they say the education system has been fucked up by standardized testing.

I don’t take the CEC position seriously. Even though the only CEC makes about the same as I do, they treat her like a manager (which sucks sometimes since we have to work for pricks), only she doesn’t get all the cool benefits of being a manager (though, as the coworker said, she gets to smoke cigarettes all the time). To me, this seems stupid. She (supposively) has a skill that other people don’t have to use, so why she doesn’t get fairly compensated for using that skill baffles me. I would not be a CEC if it was offered to me simply because it’s more work but no more pay. Either give me a blue shirt or don’t even bother with letting me supervise the kiddies since there already is GM manager and my GM assistant manager to supervise (note: supervise, not make decisions as they are quickly learning).

In fact, I’ve already been forced to supervise without the almighty CEC credential. Recently my coworkers and I were told to work M-carts, which are basically carts where backstock is stored until enough room exists to put the product out. My boss told me to lead the effort, assigning carts to people and “making sure” that they were working the carts. The funniest part is that my assistant manager was also there that morning, but my main boss apparently did not trust her to do the supervising.

The funniest part about that day, though, was after she arrived at work (an hour late again, and this was after she tried to guarantee that she would be on time), she asked me about the progress we had made. Then, after I noticed one of my coworkers was late coming back from her lunch, she wanted me to call her and tell her to come back to toys. I said, “Isn’t that your job?” and she promptly called her.

The point of this little rant is that for me, it does take a computer course to learn the basics of supervising. It takes these things: the respect of your coworkers, skill in the required job area, basic managing skills, the illusion that you work hard, and the ability to confront problems and problem people. Having all these things are more important than some stupid class.

Six Degrees of Separation? Not exactly.

As I was chatting with my old AP English comrade Travis, somehow he gave me this bright idea for a topic to discuss on my blog: how two random things almost always have similarities.

We arrived at this conclusion after he claimed that phone books and the Internet are similar. While my main contribution to that discussion was that both the phonebook and the Internet can enable sexual activity, it did spawn the more interesting aforementioned idea. (It also inspired my previous post, which is randomly generated by a paragraph-generating website.)

I’ll keep this one short and end by giving you some word pairs to compare, varying by the commonness of the words:

1) keyboard and definition

2) prevention and review

3) smelling and tenderer

4) vividness and billionth

5) leopardess and cuspidor

6) downhaul and styrax

7) subconformability and nonacquiescence