Laudate Dominum, Mozart (Requiem)
The Lifting, REM
Sin, Nine Inch Nails
Sweet Sixteen, B.B. King
The Carnival is Over, Dead Can Dance
Beautiful Girl, Poe
Paraffin, Ruby
Unravel, Bjork
Rock Star, Hole
Domine Jesu, Mozart (Requiem)
The Waitress, Tori Amos (I swear this thing can read my mind!)
Gramarye, Remy Zero
Reclaim my Place, Korn
Dub in Life, Eiffel 65
Closer to God, NIN
2Wicky, Hooverphonic
Long Line of Cars, Cake
Collapse, Soul Coughing
Fly Away, Poe
Eulogy, Tool (oh my god, it *does* read my mind)
You'll Miss Me, They Might be Giants (This is just creepy)
Golondrina, Tlen-Huicani
Playboy Mommy, Tori Amos
Sorrow, Delerium
Destination Moon, They Might be Giants
Salt Water Fish, Ruby

"Life is a comedy to those who thing, life is a tragedy to those who feel." --Unknown

I've really been pondering this today and I'm just stuck.

There are three parts (at least) to this: everyone thinks they're right, feminine wiles are for real, the trick is to ignore the crybabies whose children have died.

hmm I'm at a loss for where to start. I guess I'll start at the beginning.

I've been sorta thinking lightly about The Waitress. I don't have much going on with her right now, and I'm really glad. Eventually I'll have to write to her again, but not quite yet. Through the years we've had some weird shit between us that I've never really understood, and I figure that like she's like any other human who breathes and eats and shits, which is to say she's really damn complicated, but maybe nine months ago I kinda came to the realization I had no idea when she was playing straight with me and when she was just playing. It left me wondering if she even knew or if she changed her inner position like an actor changes costumes between scenes so she'd always be right.

Before then I had half-heartedly tried to get closer to her and her crew cause there are some good people there and with the way friendships mutate in my circle it just seemed like the thing to do to keep up. There were even times when we flirted shamelessly, although came out of a bewildering situation that I think was a combination of alcohol and words no one felt like taking back. Now I step lightly around her just because I kinda feel like no attention from her is better than some of the fallout that comes with her attention. She has a pretty big retinue of people who get along well with her and tons of people who have always known her better than me so I doubt she'd really notice.

But my point is that she is someone who can really turn someone's head around if that someone ain't careful.

Most people figure when they look at a situation of some contention and controversey that *their* position is the correct one to have, that if people saw it *their* way it would all make sense and of course things would have to go their way. And thus is politics born. The Waitress is no exception, right down to the denial of ever getting involved in politics. But I've observed how she works and I think it's a fairly simple process for her. She's pretty friendly and it only takes a couple extra steps of homework to find out who it is best to be friendly with. But she's also gracious and makes friends with anyone who is kind to her and her friends.

The trouble I think sometimes comes when she decides she wants something specific from someone and is at a little bit of a loss on how to get it from them. As with most girls what she wants is almost never anything physical or even specific, it's usual some statement or expression of some kind of devotion or support or something that is different from what she is already getting. She gets frustrated when she gets something that is another version of what a certain person has already been giving her. It's a sort of madness, I suppose, to assume that someone can be given no hints, clues or, god forbid, any instruction to do something different and expect them to deviate from their natural personal expressions. But it's one that many girls share.

And this of course frustrates the person of whom something different is expected. Also like many other people, The Waitress will believe anything that a close friend tells her over anything as trivial as facts or consider another side to a given story. In my opinion this has caused her to treat some of my friends in a rather shabby way. While I understand one's propensity to trust one's friends more implicitly than someone who is not quite so close, it is still frustrating to see my friends shoved aside coldly because of what amounts to an unsubstantiated rumor. Perhaps that is my arrogance to believe that my friends can do no wrong, but these friends of mine were once friends of hers whom she purportedly loved deeply and knew well. Perhaps it was their fault that they did not know her well, perhaps it was hers for not knowing them better.

Anyway, the main thing that makes me uncomfortable is that I know if I were nice to her she would really go and try to be nice to me. But that's not what makes friendship for me cause I would still be nervous of every little thing I said around her. I like friends who I can be blunt with and they can just turn around and stick their tongue out at me or just be honest right back and take me down a few pegs. But I get really uncomfortable when there is someone who will take it as a personal slight anytime I disagree. And the final straw was observing her have one attitude about someone when that someone was not around and having a completely, and I mean *completely*, different attitude when this someone was around. That's either two-faced or schizophrenic and either way it makes me extremely self-concious anytime she says anything to me that is about me.

I guess the thing about the Waitress is that the attitudes is not one that is unique to females. Guys can play emtional games and take sides and ignore their tendancies to be way inconsistent, but they just can't hold a candle to a girl who has practised it for pretty much most of her life. There is a lot of commonality between the Waitress and a certain scumbag I'll refer to here as JerkHead (JH). JH is a guy who will lie to your face cause it sounds like a clever turn of phrase, and never mind that it has nothing to do with any facts. JH will lie to anyone in his vicinity and the lies won't even match up, but he'll do it just cause he can, and because what comes out of his mouth sounds like more fun than anything that might be related to reality. The real trouble comes when in a day or two he starts to believe the stories he's been telling and he starts to arrange his reality to match up with the new verbage of his life. It's frustrating, aggrivitating and wearing, and that's only listening to the people who think they can trust him going back to him after it has been pointed out to them the many times he has lied or used them. What is even more infuriating is what a master of manipulation he thinks he is. I guess he's figured out how to toy with a few people here and there but somehow that not only proves to him that he is a master of the mind game it also shows (in his little world) that everything he says is absolutely true. Since of course, if it weren't why are all these people eating it up? *sigh* I mostly don't care any more. Although I get frustrated that his girlfriend is one of those who buys into it but...what're ya gonna do? I for one chose to disassociate myself from him when I found he had been lying to me and my life has been quite a bit better.

But even for all his extensive time spent "manipulating" people he still can't hold a candle to The Waitress or any other chick who does the same thing.

I guess the slightly annoying thing for me is that I still love to hear people's stories. I still like to know what's going on with people so I don't like distancing myself much. But I *really* don't like it when I can't tell if someone is being dishonest with me or not. The only way that I've found is to listen with absolutely no emotional investment to what people have to say. Which is really, really hard. Emotions juice everything up for me. It's really hard to listen to a girl gone about how she been done wrong if I can't allow myself room to at least entertain the thought that "yeah, he *is* a rat bastard!" even when I know better. But it really messes with me. It's also tough to get people to open up if they don't think you'll be on their side just a little bit more than you'll be on anyone else's side. It's really hard to go to someone and get them to tell you all of their woes if you refuse to let anything like sympathy affect your attitude. If they want an unaligned ear they'll go to a shrink. So... I'm stuck, I guess.

So the bit with the parents of dead kids. That was just to get your attention. };> But part of what I was thinking was inspired over a Web site a man sent that was about how his son died probably due to years of use (I think it was actually overuse but the site doesn't come out and say it) of Ritalin. It's a real sob story, and it has to really suck to watch your fourteen year old son, his whole life ahead of him go into cardiac arrest and fade to black while there is nothing you can do about it. It must be just heart-rending to find out that the reason for it was a pill that a supposed purveyor of health had strenuously recommended. But millions of kids use this drug and their parents are often relieved and thrilled by the results. What are we supposed to think of something tragic like this when it's not a tragedy for everyone? A plane flying into a building is a tragedy for everyone (politics of Blowback aside), but is SIDs? What about exteme allergic reactions? Asthma? Death from complications arising from overuse of an addictive substance?

Losing someone sucks. But isn't that selfish? I mean, aren't we really mourning ourselves when we mourn someone else, like how hard someone made us laugh that one time? Or how they picked us up when we fell and twisted our ankle? What about how beautifully they sang or when they taught us how to spell "beautiful?" There is a part of us that is gone, forever as far as we can know, and the hole that is left is quite painful. (I must confess at this point my eyes are filled with tears and there's a lump in my throat the size of my fist. I just remembered that I dreamt of a party either last night or the night before and Annie was there smiling and laughing with me. I think she was pushing 70 when she passed away last May from cancer.)

But to push on. I often thought it was most selfish to want to keep someone around even when that person is crushed by an illness, even a debilitating disorder that has no phsysical symptoms. Depression is a wearing thing and it's probably just a testament to my own wiring that sometimes I really wonder if death is all that bad. Of course one of the comments that I heard a long time ago that made me start to consider this was my seventh grade math teacher who once stated that it was the height of selfishness of a girl she knew who killed herself with no note or history of depression at the age of 15. At this age that sounds like a harsh judgement, even cruel, but when I was in the seventh grade I was still more likely to believe my superiors for the authority with which they spoke. This woman who believed she had the right of everything and would not tolerate any mere student arguing with her. So I guess that's another example of folks believe their the only one that's right.

But back to parents losing kids. How about this: You live in Burma, your king is the wealthiest man alive and there exists dirt that is worth more than you or your family will ever be worth. You live in a thatch hut that has been your family's for at least two generations giving you right to the earth it stands on. You hunt for critters in the jungle, aviod the tigers and gather roots and fruit. Anything that is extra over what it would take your family you take to marked and try to convince your neighbors to buy them off of you, eventhough your neighbors are selling the exact same thing. So it's hot all the fucking time but in monsoon season there is a special kind of hell because it's hot *and* it rains everyday, so it's tough to find enough air to breath, oh and when it's not raining mosquitoes the size of your dog are chowing down on you. The village has an antiquated alarm system that is meant to go off when a particularly big storm is bearing down on the area and everything but the alarm poles will be washed away. Of course, by the time the things go off it's already been raining for most of the day, the roads are non-existant and all of the ground is moving swiftly toward the ocean. So it's a big humanitarian disaster anything that could concievably be considered food is either gone or poisoned, and your kids are mostly gone except for the two broken bodies that were pulled from the mud by the Red Cross. Life sucks on a level few people will ever know, and this is totally tragic. But isn't it also Mother Nature's way saying, okey, first off there's too damn many of you, and second spread the fuck out would'ya? Burma's way too crowded a shithole to sustain all you motherfuckers.

From a purely cerebral point of view death is just a way of redistributing resources. You don't have to believe in Darwin's theories to take a look around and see that the world is overcrowded. So someone's tragedy is just a fact of life, or maybe some facts of life are just tragic....

The debate continues....