medium
I can feel my pulse when I grab the skin on my belly. It's so clear, it vibrates my fingertips. Sometimes I think there's a murmur, but I suppose it's nothing.
68 beats per minute.
That seems average, normal, medium.
I was thinking about medium. I'm a medium kind of guy. I order a medium lemonade and medium fries to go with my plain cheeseburger. I eat medium ham and cheese submarine sandwiches and would choose a medium pizza if such a thing existed. I wear medium pants around my medium waist, and my medium sized shirts compliment my size 10 shoes.
I'm wearing black and gray fleece right now -- simple, average, medium.
My hair used to be blonde, now it's brown, not black, red, or yellow.
In high school, I wasn't "cool" enough for the "cool kids", I wasn't nerdy enough for the nerds, athletic enough for the jocks, introverted enough for the quiet types, extroverted enough for the loud-mouths, unhip enough for the squares, trendy enough for the trendites, conforming enough for the conformists, or radical enough for the extremists. On the track I wasn't fast enough to run with the greyhounds nor was I slow enough to lag behind with the clydesdales. More often than not I occupied some void by myself, watching both groups recede from my vision in opposing directions. And not just on the track.
In the past, I would try to conform to one group or another, which would lead only to frustration.
I don't belong with those other groups. I belong in this void.
Afterall, someone has to cover this space. Someone has to finish 5th out of 10. Someone has to order medium french fries or they'll stop making the cartons. Someone has to stay far enough from the nerds, jocks, and the rest to attempt to explain the whole mess.
I may be medium, but I'm not average. Average is something else -- some other group. If you had to stick me on the bell curve, I'd be sitting in that big empty space underneath the hump. There's more room to breathe under here.
glum
I called Jessika earlier today but she didn't answer. She called right back and asked for someone named sean. She thought that someone else had called her....must've been disappointed that it was me...
I give up pursuing her. It seems the signs said DO NOT ENTER afterall.
*sigh*
What now, I ask?
the night isn't even over
I've learned quite a bit about myself and others today. I don't think I can summarize it though. The thing that sticks out is the observation by a few people that I seem uncomfortable in my body. I think I understand, and I know it's gradually becoming less of a problem.
Nothing is permanent.
they didn't get it
Adaptation is a pretty good movie. I can't really describe the movie at this hour, but it's very "clever". Some reviewers at IMDB, however, apparently didn't get the irony or anything else. I shouldn't be surprised though. They didn't understand that the final third of the movie was when "Donald" came in to help his brother finish the script, and Charlie picked up the ideas of that writing teacher or whatever he was. It was actually kind of funny. Even the music changed during the ridiculous swamp chase to some typical chase music. It was well done. But apparently it was subtle enough for a lot of the audience to miss the point and think it was just a badly written hollywood ending. Well, that was the point. It's called irony -- look it up.
It's too bad that so many people seemed to completely miss the point of the movie. I hope it gets the credit it deserves.
Although I would say that it did seem a bit long -- I was expecting the ending to come sooner, but it wasn't an unbearable wait.
All in all, I give it a rating of two thumbs up the sphincter!
because I have time to think about such things
I often think about the different "voices" that people use when speaking to different audiences. I've noticed it a lot; it isn't subtle to me at all. In fact, it's a very phony way of interacting with others. I won't name names, but I've overheard people who are talking to acquaintances in such a fake, overly polite or friendly voice that it almost borders on patronizing. Yeah, I think that's the right word. These same people will also talk to the elderly in a slightly different but still patronizing voice. I've overheard conversations with my grandfather where the other person sounded like they were talking to a child. Why? I can't help but think that the recipient of such a voice would notice the patronizing tone. Well, maybe little kids don't notice the difference when someone older talks down to them, but I notice it! Why talk down to kids? You can talk to them without regressing into a quasi-child-like state. Try it! I have to admit that I'm guilty of using that tone when talking to kids sometimes, but I try to catch myself and avoid doing it. Certainly I avoid using a different tone when talking to, for instance, a cashier at a store. Why should I change my tone depending on who I talk to? Why can't we talk to each other as equals? Does anyone else think it's weird to put on a false "friendly voice" when speaking to casual acquaintances?
I don't know. This is a behavior that I notice all the time. and I wonder why people do it. Actually, from my brief studies of the Korean language, I know that that their whole society/language is very much based on labels, positions, ranks, and seniority. In Korean, you don't usually call someone Mr.Smith; you'd call him "lawyer Smith" or "garbage man Smith" or something like that. And then you would use formal or informal verbs depending on whether or not the other person is more important than yourself. At least I think that's the general idea. English is much more democratic and flexible regarding labels, and maybe that is the reason why we have this tendency to change our tone if not our words when speaking to different types of people.
As for me, like I said, I try to catch myself when I start changing my tone for some reason. This probably makes me come off as a monotone, boring-sounding kind of guy, but hey, at least I'm trying to be honest, right?