The Naked Truth

Just to play devil’s advocate, and also because I’m having a crap day and feel like splurging it by challenging someone’s internet based opinion on a blog that they will likely never read, I would like to point out that offering a ‘helping hand’ is a marvellous feeling. Except when you’re always there to help someone, and they never seem to notice.. or care.

Yeah, gives you the happy buzz because you’ve improved someone’s life a little.. but eventually someone will come along and make them feel like shit again, and eventually your efforts, if ever acknowledged, will be forgotten and you yourself cast aside as someone not quite good enough.

Fuck’s sake.

When you think about it, Romeo and Juliet are a bit of a falsity. They are idolised as this fantastic couple from literature, the ultimate in romantic happiness, the perfect against which we must all be measured.
Well, we can’t all die that quickly.
It’s all very well to hold the idea up on a pedestal, but when you really look at it it’s the fact that they died which makes it all so tragically romantic. I mean, if they’d lived and stayed together they would have fought and cried and eventually one of them would decide they did it all too young and go off to have sex with other people. That’s the glory of fiction. We leave the novel or play feeling satisfied that yes, they died, but that their love is one that can give us all hope.

Bollocks.

I hate to shatter the illusion, but look what their lust - I refuse to call it love  did to them and their families. Mercutio and Tybolt are both perfect examples of the literal and metaphorical destruction which can be caused.

Don’t get me wrong, lust is a major vice of mine.. and I wouldn’t have it any other way. But we can’t hang on to that ideal of everything just being perfect straight away.. Granted, there is usually the honeymoon period to the relationsip which is like the Romeo and Juliet illusion.. but the fact is that relationships have to be worked at. You can’t just quit at the first hurdle.

I think that might be just about enough self righteous rambling for one post.

No, this is how it works
You peer inside yourself
You take the things you like
And try to love the things you took
And then you take that love you made
And stick it into some
Someone else’s heart
Pumping someone else’s blood
And walking arm in arm
You hope it don’t get harmed
But even if it does
You’ll just do it all again

Fevrale dostat chernil i plakat
Pisat O Fevrale navsnryd
Poka grohochushaya slyakot
Vesnoyu charnoyu gorit

The first month of the Julian and Gregorian calendars and on average the coldest month of the year. According to the Bible [for "Bible" see "Cosmo"] January is the month when women in particular feel least sexy, and thus have less sex than usual. A very prominent issue which I think we ought to consider resolving.

That being said, it’s not what I wanted to talk about.
I think it’s important at this time of year, on this kind of thing to have one or two cliché ridden posts about new beginnings and fresh starts to roll in the new year. This probably ought to have gone out on New Year’s Day.. but I thought I should give 2009 a bit of a chance before I published what I want to do with it.

So far, it’s going pretty well. I’m not a big fan of January.. as it goes. In fact, it’s probably one of my least favourite months.. but this January I feel different.. entirely different to how I have to done recently.. calmer and less worried about everything.. much less paranoid and far more safe.
‘Content’ is probably the best way of describing it, but it’s almost more than that.. I’ve abandoned my worries and I’m focussing on just being happy… I’m not planning, or allowing myself to form any expectations of anything.. I am appreciating the fact that right here, right now, I am happier than I have been since about July.

Somewhat ironically, I’m writing this feeling incredibly ill and quite nervous about exams.. and of course, sometimes it will be a strain to stick on the smile and breeze through the day.. but it’s getting easier all the time and I’m beggining to feel like myself again.

So here’s to fresh starts, clean slates and enforcing jollifaction [=)]
Happy New Year x

It had its ups and downs, but I think that the highs have been worth the lows. We’ve had some amazing parties and brilliant new friends have been made, and amazing old friends who had drifted have come back on the elastic of life.

Perhaps some things could have been handled better.. but who cares? Now is the time for making the mistakes.. because we can afford to make them now.. and we have a lot of time to heal.

This year I have learned who my true friends are and I could never be more grateful for all the love and kindness they have shown me throughout, and especially in times when things have been less than awesome.

I have also learned this year how strong and wonderful some of my friends are, in the face of some of the hardest things to deal with. I feel so privelaged to know these people, and I know they will do wonderful things in the future.

I know that reads like a list of the ultimate clichés for someone reminiscing about the past year.. but I really do mean it all.
And one thing is to be certain, I’m going to do my damndest to make sure that all of us who had a rough round the edges 2008 has a fucking brilliant 2009!

I’m a hedonist. We are all hedonists to an extent, but I’m the type who seeks thrills in the short term.. and If I like it then I want to keep it.. and even if I can’t, I’ll do my damndest to avoid losing it.
Usually this ends badly.. and I’d never really thought about it much.. I’d just assumed it was part of my nature.. or that thing about chemicals in the brain and adrenaline.
Or basically that I get a kick out of drama.. there’s that too.

Anyway, the principal of utility is the basis for utilitarianism.. and it’s basically asking one’s self “What is the most useful thing to do in this situation?” He said that when making a decision, generally, people ask themselves this question.. but what they actually mean is: “What will bring me the most pleasure?”
From this, Jeremy Bentham developed the idea of The Hedonic Calculus, which is a cart designed to quantify the pain or pleasure caused by an action.

Now, though this appears like a clear mathmatical method of deciding on an action by balancing the pleasure against the pain, which could be used effectively.. pleasure is far too much of a subjective thing to be properly categorized.. and you can never properly predict the outcome of your actions..
It’s so much of an abstract thing that it renders The Hedonistic Calculus pretty much obsolete.. but I thought it was interesting to look at the things the calculus requires you to consider..

• Intensity of pleasure
• Duration of pleasure
• How certain is it that pleasure will result?
• How near is the pleasure to you?
• How continuous is the pleasure?
• Is there likely to be pain mixed in with this pleasure?
• How widespread will the pleasure be?

Intriguing.

Is a little debate I’ve been having with myself recently.. since I rediscovered my love for a little Led. Now, the question is:

No one ever told me when I was alone
They just thought I’d know better.. better… [oooh]
No one ever told me when I was alone
They just thought I’d know better.. better…

No one ever told me when I was alone,
They just thought I’d know better.. better…
No one ever told me when I was alone,
They just thought I’d know better.. better..

OR

Measuring a summer’s day
I only finds it slips away to grey
The hours they bring me pain.

Thinking how it used to be
Does she still remember times like these?
To think of us again?
And I do.

Tangerine Tangerine
Living reflection from a dream;
I was her love she was my queen
And now a thousand years between.

I think I’m still a little too hooked on Figured You Out to decide.

At the beggining of this summer, I made a pledge. This pledge stated that I would have a fully self destructive summer, then knuckle down in September - and I would never let another man jeopardise my chances at success.

That, naturally, all went to shit. I’m not cool enough to be properly self destructive and snort coke in a club toilets before assaulting a journalist and sleeping with a politician.. but my summer was nice -sedate - but pleasant. Not adhering to  that part of the pledge didn’t bother me so much, as circumstances had changed.. and I felt a little less of a need to prove myself - however, failing the second part of the pledge has both frustrated and enlightened me.

My previous blog entries have made me out to be something of a “man-hater”, as someone so quaintly put it to me recently, and I can see where that perception has come from.. but really it has nothing to do with men. It’s to do with the sensation of failure.. that feeling that you couldn’t quite do enough to stop a series of events from happening.. and that series of events led to your own misfortune. In my case, being too distracted to fulfill part two of my pledge.. and letting down somebody I cared about a lot by not quite doing enough to make things right.

HOWEVER

This is not a negative blog entry! [hurrah]

Things, recently, have been looking up.. I’ve found the balance. Plus, my faith in men and, to an extent, myself, has been restored..Things can work out, if people just stop trying so hard to force it to.
We wont always be treading on one another’s toes, we all have our own paths to walk.

“I have a suggestion”

“Go on?”

“You give me his ex’s number, right..
Then I go out with her
The dump her for you
Then you’ll dump me for him
Then he’ll dump you for her
Then she’ll dump him for me
… and so on”

“Haha, that’s a lot more of a possibility than you might think”

“Seriously though, you care about him?”

“Well, yeah, I guess”

“Go and fucking get him then! If he’ll make u smile as much as I’m pretty sure he will do then as I’ve said I’ll do anything to see you happy.
Go and fucking grab him, take what you want and make yourself happy. Tell him how you feel, tell him what you want and what you can’t have happen again. And, for me, be happy.”

The optimism is nothing if not admirable

After some careful consideration and a little experimentation I have come to the conclusion that being single against your own will, and when you are besotted with someone, is shit.

This is somewhat obvious, and doesn’t require a whole heap of brainwork to figure - and yes, it’s a fairly pointless statement to make.

I can’t quite remember where I was going with this.

Ah, yes. Well, I have been given some fantastic advice regarding this matter recently.. most of which seems to amount to “Pull yourself together, no one can possibly be worth getting this upset over - just find someone else”.
Which is all very well, but pretty fucking impossible to achieve.

I was reluctant to try the “finding someone else” element of that, but I had a go.. and these were my results:

When you try to find someone, anyone, when you’re in love with someone else.. you will find yourself hurtled into the path of one of three categories of people:

1. The people who you really aren’t interested in at all, but they grabbed your ass so you think “What the hell” and find yourself being groped by some drugged up fuck up

2. The people who you know you could do so much better than - there’s no way to phrase it without sounding vain and bitchy, but you know what I mean - but they seem to adore you because you looked twice at them.. and you’ll overlook anything just to feel appreciated for half an hour

3. The genuinly nice people, who you do actually like.. but you just can’t bring yourself to do anything about it, because you don’t feel good enough for anyone who actually cares. And they’re just not him.