A Flurry of Feathers and Wings

Seriously? Seriously? What the hell is going on, because I thought I got a new computer so this kinda shit would stop happening.

I got a virus - the oh-so fun "This is really your computer, and you have a virus, you should totally download this program you never had before to get rid of it, and oh, if you don't, I will never let you actually access the internet again, LOLthnxL8r" virus (also known as the Win7 virus), right before the New Year. Took it it, had it fixed, didn't take three days.

Not 2 half-assed days later, same fucking virus. And it's not like I was cruising any questionable sites or anything, this was just my daily jog; sites I visit regularly. Sites I don't get virus' from.

It took Best Buy over 3 goddamn weeks to finally "fix" it; I put up the parathesis, because I only got an email saying they were actually getting to it a week before I finally got it back.

SERIOUSLY? Why so long? The first time was almost nothing, and I've had to take my computer (old one) in before too and it has never taken this long. Was it because I actually bought the warrenty/repair program? I'm being fucking punished for brining my computer in? Is there a limit to how many times I can bring my shit in to get fixed before you actually do it right? Does the time frame expand expontentially the more often I bring it in? Will it take 2 months next time?!

And now, to top it off, I'm currently in a Barnes&Noble because for some odd ass reason, the neighbors wifi connection (which I have permission to use, mind you) either isn't on or my computer won't connect to. Which it never had problems with before my having taken it in. It can find other wireless networks (all of which are protected, paranoid neighbors), but not the one next door.

Fuck this month.

Well, shit.

I am not happy. This thing, a life thing, that I'd been aiming and shooting for has just decided that I cannot make good decisions in life and fucked me sideways while singing. Shit.

Strangely, I don't feel much either way about it for some reason. I should, the above says that I have something bubbling under the surface, but for as much as I want to punch a penguin I'm not really feeling up to giving a crap. Huh, apathy. Who knew?

So, instead of regailing you with emotasticness about how my life sucks and I can do no right, I will instead complain about women.

Women suck.

You know why? Choice. They have it. And as a male, I don't like that they do. It's not fair, why doesn't my opinion matter in all this? Granted, I'm a nameless peon and have no real say or voice in the matter, but a little symbolism of representation wouldn't hurt the cause, right? Oh, whatever, just because there's so many places a woman can go that a man can't does not mean anything. What happened to equality and all that? Oh, wait, that's only when women want to be equal to men, but when a man wants to have the same varity of clothes in his closet, fuck you, go to the pants and t-shirt aisle you damn male!

...what? I'm talking about fashion and men's lack of clothing options.

What did you think I was talking about? Weirdo...

But yeah, I love fashion. No enough to keep up with it, but from an artistic point of view (and I range pretty heavily on the asethic scale of looks) men get the short shaft of that world. Women: blouses, shirts, suits, shoes, shorts, skirts, pants, dresses, seperates, accessories, hats, shoes, ankle, kneehigh, thighhigh, wraps, shoes, etc. Men: pants, shirts, suits, shoes (single), and shorts.

I know I've massively understated and oversimplified it all, but when you think about it, there's really not a lot you'll see men where. T-shirts are everywhere, suits are worn to the office, and jeans are the easy to wear. Shorts too for warmer weather (longer if you're crazy or have no thermal nerves). And even with all that, there doesn't tend to be a lot of variety in terms of colors, prints, or cuts.

Women's fashion, however, is a multitude of color and whimsy. It's not just how one piece lenghtened or shortened can change the whole look, it's that that single piece can be paired with any number of other garmets. Men have pants; rare is the male (outside of Scotland) brave enough to wear the kilt. And I won't really dignify the manskirt. But women have any number of leg covering options, which in turn come in a larger number of fabrics, which in turn come in a spread of colors and designs.

I love shows like Project Runway where they create clothing from nothing; and sometimes given the materials, the designers would prefer nothing. I enjoy the creativity, how things you wouldn't think to use can create beautiful designs, how the same basic silouette can be altered again and again with just a few snips or a change of fabric. And then, just to fuck with their heads, a menswear challenge will rear its head and it's always the same thing, "I do not design for men." "This isn't what I do."

Really? This is what we get, pants, a shirt, maybe a jacket? And for some reason it's more fearful to make these pretty standard and basic clothing items for a man than it is the womans?

Part of the annoyance is walking down any sales street or mall or even a Target and seeing the size difference between what space is alotted for menswear and what is alotted for womens. The larger portion always goes to the womens clothing, because they have so much more choice. And specialty stores aren't even worth mentioning. For every Mens Warehouse, there are Raves, Forever XXI, Claires, Victoria's Secret, and some no name boutique.

Going back to design, it strangely is really hard to find good clothing options that look good on men. Women can flirt around with how much skin they show to look good. Men usually don't look all that hot trying to apply the same thought process to what they wear.

All this reflects back on culture, how people are raised, how the world is, how people see each other, and it's all a big clusterfuck. Should people be so caught up on labels and such that it hinders them from wearing what they want? No, but it's not likely to change. Would I wear a dress? Not unless there's a good amount of money riding on it.

Another thing that's irksome? The fact that women can and do wear mens clothes and can wear them just as well as their own, but men cannot do the same. Your girlfriend wears a pair of your boxer-briefs and a dress shirt and nothing else; sexified. Your boyfriend squeezes into your thong and semibra; well, how much you do you really like him? More practically, it's possible for a female to wear any range of items made for for a guy and still look good. But because of cut, sizing, and bevy of other considerations, the same cannot be said the same of men wearing that which was made for the female form.

I don't begrudge women for have the range of options they do, but I do wish that mens options weren't so limited based on what they think they have to adhere to.

Remember that post a few posts back, when I depressed the hell out of myself because I let my brain run to long on its own? Yeah, I seem to have the opposite problem right now.

I got nothing. Well, not true, there's thoughts, ideas, stupid short stories that I'm starting to get pissed about getting, when I have bigger projects that need work, but I let out anyway because I figure if I just go with the flow, they won't take up any more disk space and I can focus on other things, but right now...nothing.

Nothing I want to write about. Nothing that'd be interesting. It's a weird sense of wanting to just sit on the couch and stare at a blank TV until I fall asleep, all because I don't have the want to do anything better.

All this? Stream of conscious, only way to get anything down. And bloody difficult, that want to just veg and do nothingness makes typing harder than it should be.

And it whole experience right now is strange, because I do have things I could be working on. There's a short something or other, involving another nameless, faceless person, sitting alone in a room with a bottle of wine and a gun. Tigress is skimming along, most of the fixed outline is near complete. I actually have an outline for the still unnamed noir story, hopefully that takes off.

But I don't want to work on them, any of them. I don't want to force it, I've seen what happens when I attempt that. And it sucks. Sucks hard. This whole feeling does, it can go away anytime now.

One thing of note, if you want to call it that, is apparently I'll have to really bring out the big guns should I decide to go any further with that attempt horror story. That one, just a few entries downward. Yeah, I posted it on a_soc_k to see what kind of reaction I'd get off it, and god damn we have some jaded readers out there.

I can't say I blame them, I'm not too happy with it myself, looking back. Bad experiment, I think, trying to capture in a first-person perspective entirely in dialog. That, and following Saw, Hostel, and (don't blame me if you look this up, limiinal is the one who pointed me towards it) The Human Centipede, I'd have a lot of work making it something that actually be scary, or at least frightening. Especially in words, there are details that just are so much more... squicky when seen visually.

And Clive Barker has already beaten me to that punch. Hellraiser and all that.

But I'm starting to think I'm getting settled in first-person a bit. It's easy, falling into the mind of someone else. Not easy, always, getting that into words, but it's fun trying to convey how this person thinks, without actually saying it. Which is why I like the noir story more, it's a strange and fascinating dynamic where what she says and what she's thinking are often two different things. Or opposite things. Or the same, but still a lie. Maybe it helps that I know how it ends.

Okay, I've rambled enough. I mainly wanted to get something down here, I missed my self-appointed Wed deadline. I'd feel bad if I missed two in a row. Maybe.

Being told you're smart is annoying. Yes, it feels good to know that others acknowledge the fact that you can retain what you've learned well and apply it to a given situation, but that doesn't mean you always need to hear it. You know you're smart. Shut up. Too often it feels like the person telling you is trying to guilt you into something. You aren't doing enough with your life, you could be in a better job, you aren't applying yourself to higher things. Hey, guess what? Not everyone wants more. Or at least not the more that you want. I'm sorry if you feel you've stalled out in life, but just because I may have the intelligence to have gone further doesn't mean I'm in a situation that would allow me to do so; or even if I was, I may be perfectly happy where I am.

I don't think that had anything to do with what I'm trying to say.

Rationalization. I consider myself fairly intelligent, and given enough foreknowledge and fact about a certain subject I feel I can often rationalize almost anything. I can play out scenerios hundreds of times with tiny changes that alter the entire outcome. I'll reverse engineer a decision or plotpoint and come up with why they went with that. But this is also annoying as hell.

This ability has gotten me into...well not direct, but has given me trouble in my life, in both personal and in my writing. The ever present "what if" hangs over my head constantly, and has me second-guessing myself as to whether or not I made the right decision. I know I've lost out on several occasions in my life that would have otherwise been much different had I just made up my mind, or not worried about the "what if" and instead focused on the "what now" actually presented. When I try to write, if I don't have a set idea of what I want, I'll have the scene playing like a movie in my head again, and again, and again, with those hundreds of tiny changes I mentioned and I don't get anything done because I don't know what is the best version to go with.

But when something is already done and over with, I can back track and see what might have been. This is the whole "twenty-twenty hindsight", knowing that the other choice would have been better, but more than that really. Knowing how a person reacts, or will react, can alter how you work with the choice already made. I'll look back and see that, had I just done this a little different, I would be slightly better off.

This whole thing makes planning ahead difficult, because I want to have it all set before me. If I do this, I want this to happen; should I say this, I want this person to react just so. If I go two spaces forward, I want the oppose to move backwards diagonially left. And to a certain degree I can predict what will come, and rolling with the variables is part of the whole game, but it skews the decided upon idea sideways, and then I'm left trying to get this whole thing either back on track or at least as close to where I want as I can.