'OMG im leaving'

For those wondering, this isn't a new PC rant (but I have been refused a return to staff — but that we can cover later).

On the subject of departures, however, there is a funny side. All over PKMN.NET these days there are a lot of proclamations of 'I'm leaving!' because of several incidents that the poster has gone through. I admit that before I was banned from PKMN.NET I made a long one of my one, declaring myself the 'enemy of PUK'. These days, though, the fact that the author is more and more liable to back down on a leave is ridiculous, and the reasons have become more and more hostile and unforgiving.

I know it seems like a trend to leave, but I'm leaving permanently without any sub-accounts, attempts to come back or anything like that.

Basically, I just seem to you guys to be a wanderer who says stuff that everyone ignores than someone who can be considered a friend. This isn't for pity - or saying I have 'lack of friends' - I just don't seem to very popular or fit in well. Getting voted underrated several times (yes, I have paranoia, so I nominated myself), really struck my confidence. I guess I never broke my shell - I guess I just didn't hit off with you guys.

I wasted almost 2k posting here, only to find my opinions are totally misregarded. I think I've just wasted my time, you have better Team Builders, cooler people, and me to talk to through MSN, so it shouldn't be a problem.

I'm sorry that I put so much detail into this post, I wanted to come off blunt really, but I wanted to make it clear why so I didn't make you think it's a joke and, on top of that, make it clear I expect absolutely no pity (which I don't).

I'm still gonna be on IRC, occasionally, I just don't see any point in being on the forum. I'm not deleting my account - for that ever common habit to come back - but I'm not going to be here.

Hicky, supposedly beleaguered by lack of recognition for his efforts, decided it was time for him to go, and in doing so he published a harsh screw-it topic to declare that he was out. Had he considered coming back or even just cut the hostility out, I would have more sympathy for him — as I've felt out of place on PC on numerous occasions — but I've only ever recognised him for being standoffish.

Unfortunately, the trend is that the ones to publish a farewell post are the ones who have the most ire. Some people do give reasons and are generally calm but down-to-earth about it, as Akinari was before he left on school commitment, but many times you'll find in such a topic severe resent for joining and lack of insight. Worst of all, as I said, many do break their vow, returning with even more ire for the moment. This doesn't mean, however, that you shouldn't post an advance for a vacation or if you're going to appear less due to a restriction or some mulling. You could probably even make a post saying that you feel out of place and might not see it worth coming back, but the worst thing you can do is arrogantly proclaim that you will never come back.

I've done it quite a few times, yet most of the time it's been via email, on this blog, or on IMs and PMs. That way you keep your reputation intact with the mainstream, although not necessarily the friends you send it to.

Reinstatement letter

I am writing to inform you of my decision following the events that occurred over the past few months, inclusive of the offence I dealt Kelsey and my removal from the staff. The conclusion I have reached is that my actions over this time have been done with lack of forethought and a relentless generalisation of members, and would not have been done had I simply accepted that what I had done to Kelsey before, when I was confronted by Dawson, was itself without forethought or consideration for situations prior.

You may be aware of the statements I made regarding how PC was going to 'die' and such. I realise now that, although some of what I predicted and hoped for initially has come true, such statements were only of blasphemy to the Community and indicative of my own search for benefit. As part of my plea for forgiveness I have removed such statements from my blogs.

A lot of my anger was also rooted in things that I either had no control over or were the result of paranoia. When Dawson and Karli confronted me, I immediately assumed that the staff for which they worked backed their reaction. The truth is, what I said to incite it was spiteful and irritable. In the delusion that the staff was, for these reasons, organising against me, I ended up copping out and throwing a fit at everyone I came across, eventually asking to be removed after an attempt to incense the staff over one of the statements I wrote. My hatred went on, eventually driving me to deep regret, which, with the only tools I was familiar with, could not move anyone.

I think the root of this all comes down to a few things. Many of you know I communicate very often using the MSN service. I use this service because I expect a quick response if I need to talk to someone, and for that reason I do not like communicating through the private messaging system or email. Therefore, when someone cuts me off, I become very upset. I understand that some of you have blocked me for good reasons, yet before I was too concerned with this method to allow for them.

This aside, I have two disorders: I have Asperger's syndrome, and I am passive-aggressive. Thus, it is very hard for me to keep my emotions in check, and I usually rely on them to make my decisions for me. I see my life as a balance, which I try constantly to keep.

And because of this, the thought that some of you are put off by what I've done still lingers, which makes it difficult to remain active on the boards; it's as if there's someone out to get me. I'm mainly writing to see if I can talk to you as a whole to help put these misunderstandings aside and become happy chums again, even if you decide against restoring me as a staff member.

The prom

This is ridiculous. I stop blogging to brood on the end of my moderation career at PC (I won't get into it until I get the reinstatement review back), and something lands on my desk like a football. It's in a tiny, cute embroidered envelope and takes the form of a decorated card (printed with printer ink, albeit). I read it and it says the promenade is scheduled for 1 June.

Wait, what?

The prom. Are you going or not?

Do you have to squeeze every lurid detail out of me, man?

Life was better, as we know, when I was in middle school. Too young to work a job, and your parents could easily pay into a big function such as a church dance. If only that were the case in this day and age. True, my own parents, for starters, said they'd pay for me to attend the prom (my father never did), but even if they're paying, $60 for admission compounded with $70 for a tuxedo, $20 for a corsage, and prices for drinks varying are nothing to sneer at — and you can double the admission and corsage if you're paired. And in the extreme case — this is from the men's point of view — in which you end up footing your pair's dress, you can add upward of $250, more than twice the cost of admission and grave considering whether that dress will ever see use again.

Middle school was slightly different — at the very least for us men. Now, I had been dragged kicking and screaming into the dances at the beginning of seventh grade and ended up attending both of the promenades held in the cafeteria as long as I was eligible. They were called 'semi-formals' — the admission was a mere $14 per person, drinks were free, and formality was restricted as per the guidelines. There were no corsages, and limousines were prohibited. For the men, it was easy to get away with the bare-bones minimum, but when you look at what most of the girls were wearing (some others were more conservative), you'd expect it to be a full-blown prom upon stumbling into the arena.

Now, though, it's a different matter. Gone are the days of hushed activity. You're about to spend nearly $300 — individually — perhaps once each of the two years — for one night on the town, and you're a junior or senior. (The figure can be nearly double if you're a female, and triple or so when paired.) Although this cost situation is relatively the same, and probably could be negotiable if it were applied to a suburban high school, there are further causes for my own inhibition. Firstly, my school, a charter school operated by the county, has a very small body, so selection is rather limited. Secondly, as I explained before, the school is remote. Although it's perfectly possible to rent a limo, you still have the fact that not many people can drive out and carpool. Thirdly, it's still a situation in which you have the rap blasting, as could be seen from the youth summit earlier this year, and not much decent (I mean sans shaking the ass and grinding) dancing is likely to get done.

So no, I'm not going. Unless, of course, one of the girls at the table (all but one are juniors) approaches the subject....

It's a girl's world

I get to explain away my failure to update often with an ostensibly lame excuse: I'm a boy. And it seems to carry truth when you compare the journals of a normal guy versus that of a girl.

I'll share my findings with you and admit that most of the material is in the LiveJournal spectrum. Indeed, if you look at my friends page, you won't find too many updates by men like us, and when they do, they're concise and abbreviated. soanevalcke's journal is a good example aside from mine; his updates are far and few between and the latest post at time of writing suggests that the practice has become boring for him, which is backed up by the statement in writing and the length of time it took to come up with what's called a 'meme' (which I assume to be a diminutive of 'memory', a tool available on LiveJournal that I've never had the patience to experiment with).

Now look at a post by any of the women and compare. Here is a public entry made by the blogger mentioned before:

Walked in the park today. And then, as a bit of side time to burn off, Lucas (my dog, might I remind most of you), Vincent and I decided to jump across the river. Vincent said that I wouldn't make it, and I did. Lucas swam across, eager to get back to me. He got his toes wet.On the second try, I wasn't so lucky. One leg of mine made it across, the other slipped into the smelly creek. My shoe's currently out to dry, and I quickly ran home to wash my right leg. Lucas got drenched all over. D:

Then look at a post that otherwise would have a similar mood, this being by lightningchan:

Right, so skipping over early morning stuff since it's just whining about cramps and no one cares. So. School.

I got there around eight and only read one of the signs on the door, and even then only half of it. XD I thought all the homerooms were posted in front of the caf, so I had to shove my way through a MASSIVE wall of people to try to see, since god forbid the kids go to their frigging classrooms, or move out of the way, or even INTO the caf so that people can see the lists, or even move around in that huge hallway. Anyway, I figured it out a moment later and went to the gym where I figured it would be anyway. XD It was there and I got my room number and headed off.

Dude, I know almost EVERYONE in my homeroom. There are only...5 people I've never seen before? And even then, I think I've seen them, just not had any classes with them. It's insane. o_o Of course, best part is how Dean, Lisa, Mara and Alyssa are all in the class, too. :D Yay. Our lockers are RIGHT there too. Mine's a palindrome and third-closest to our class. XD; I'm not upset about them moving the lockers around now. I have no classes on the side of the school that Physics is at, so it'd just be annoying to still have my locker there. Anyway, we really didn't do very much in Philosophy. Just looked at quotes and then wrote down what we think Philosophy is and what we want to get out of the course. I copied Dean's second answer: "a 90." XDD; Then I drew Axel and Marluxia on his paper. Which evolved into all the Obvilion Orgy members. That was fun.

Next was Discrete with my old Calculus teacher. WHAT FUN. And...it actually wasn't bad. It really is just my Physics class over again with less people. XD; There are only two or three people who weren't in it. The teacher handed out a review sheet that was just a lot of simple trig. The hardest thing we had to do was rearrange the formula for the cosine law to find an angle. The other side was pretty much the same, but with graphing, so we didn't do that. Overall it was pretty good though, and the only question on the front that we didn't know, we actually got a lesson on. o_o; And I understood it after he taught it, too! If he actually teaches like that every single day, I may do well in this course. How exciting. XD;

After this class was English. In a portable. DX I managed to ask someone in my Calculus class where P7 was, though. Didn't have to though, since I was right in assuming the seventh one was one of the newer ones, right out one of the nearest doors. XD So I went there and saw Ann sitting at a group of desks in the corner. I don't know her amazingly well, but we sat next to each other in Grade 10 Science so yeah. I sat with that group. Sharon's there too so at least I know people. We didn't do very much in that class. Just took papers, she explained our CPT and wants us to choose our books by Monday (wtf! so early!) and then we did some brainstorming on the word "fragmentation." XDD We ended up talking about asexual reproduction since, technically, it could be a type of fragmentation. :[ It involves cells splitting apart or whatever.

English teacher let us out early, so I went to the caf and bought food. It was good, and we've all got the same lunch again, so this semester should be fun. :D I've missed having lunch with the whole group, even though not everyone was there today for some reason or another, including a bunch of guidance visits which for Dean's we took the liberty of eating his pizza so it wouldn't get cold. XD

Last but not least as Calculus. Fomg, I zoomed through the worksheet she gave us. :B I didn't finish, but damn I remembered everything. So proud of myself, even if it was just simple things like evaluating functions, expanding, factoring, and finding roots. XD; Ann's in that class too so I sat beside her and Mitch sits in the two-desk row beside us. So yay, I know people. I got 75 last year (or was it 74? I dunno.), but I want higher. Hopefully I'll get a much better mark this time. We're doing review today and tomorrow and then we start the course. :D It's sad that Calculus is probably going to be my favourite class this time around. Philosophy will be fun, but I miss being good at math and having already taken this course, I'll probably be good at it.

Now I'm home. Gonna wait for Bryan to come home so I can open the door for him, considering he's too lazy to take out his key, then go get changed and then...start on my homework, I guess. Two math worksheets to finish up, got to pull together a few binders and organize them for my classes and then...get mom and dad to write out cheques for my textbooks.

Hey, I can use my school:calculus tag again! XD

Blimey. I admit I don't make it a point to detail the school day, given that I'm pretty much restricted as it is as far as classes go and not much goes around socially since the school is so remote. And even if scenes were made every day and the school I attended was in a more urban area, I probably wouldn't find it in me to record it.

The conclusion then comes from my stepmother: It's a matter of them being more vocal. Now you wonder why there are so many books in the library written in the point of view of girls — seventh-grade Bebo users, ninth- and tenth-grade MySpace users and clubbers, all ignominiously leaving out the boys in such roles, except perhaps as hot crushes or concerned relatives. I know that there are some boys out there who probably love to document their outings, and many of them have pictures that generally take the place of words, but when it comes to the Internet, a vision I have been seeing seems to have credit: In the Internet, it's simply a girl's world. It's a world where cute animated backgrounds, pink and black stripes, fluorescent colours, and stars are accepted fixtures. It's also a world where, whenever the aforementioned is absent, animé characters, Photoshop images and icons, and text smilies dominate. And a lot of it can be attributed to the impact women have had on the Internet. And that's being masculinely conservative about it.

So what can be said in conclusion about the men? I really don't know. I believe we should leave it to the women to say that.

St Valentine's Day: Just a vestige?

No, I'm aware of all the public hullabaloo and the pressures on many of you with significant others today, and I'm sure your endeavours may have been worth it, but this screed is, once again, about me.

I can't help noticing how vapid this day is. Like I said, it's oriented toward those with actual infatuation or love in their lives, but as far as the man who writes a blog, had a few fleeting infatuations, had been chewed out by a friend of one of those objects, and hasn't been subject personally to a shred of the theme in the past four years, the day is, I have to say it, terribly inflated. I even believe that the ones who celebrate it often suffer — not necessarily at the hand of their significant other, but themselves as a result of trying too hard. Yes, I know it's nice; no, it's not a day to reserve for only a spastic draught of 'I love you', since that should be present as much as possible. I'll say this about myself about the day: It was only up until grade four that I actually had to go out of my way to buy those Valentine cards for the class, and ever since the day has just avoided my attention, save for the two I got from a pen pal four or five years ago.

So as far as I go, I don't know the pressure that most people are under today, but I still feel sorry for those who adhere to it. As is is today, I just find the idea to just be a needless acme. This day is on par with Mother's Day, Father's Day, and any other subject-specific holiday only in the idea of theoretically dedicating one day to a certain person and screwing off the rest of the time. While I can understand honouring your relatives for raising you well (with an emphasis on the word), I just don't see the point in reserving one day to demonstrate how much you love another. When it comes to love — and I'm being theoretical here — you need to exhibit it as long as you feel it, in moderation, without putting too much pressure on yourself. If you just wait for today to let it peak, it will eventually end up being systematic and irrespective of feelings that you might really have.

The funny thing is that this day started out as a generic Catholic holiday to honour any priest condemned in the Roman Empire before the time of Constantine. The pertinent feast coincided with the feast of Lupercalia, in which runners would streak through town and touch women in the hopes of aiding pregnancy (such a scene is present in the first act of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar). According to legend, St Valentine of Genoa, one of the martyrs the Church chose to celebrate, happened to have secretly arranged marriages and possibly fell in love with a jailer's daughter. Along the line, Geoffrey Chaucer associated the day with romance in a poem. It was later left to modern commercialism to introduce the notion of giving jewellery and chocolates.

As a result, you'll only see the Vatican holding on to the tradition of honour, whilst all the world uses the holiday to go out, don red and pink, and scoop up anything red and in the shape of a heart with which to shower another with the affection they've ostensibly accumulated throughout most of the year prior.

Bah humbug.