Listening:
"Forty-Six and Two," Tool

Seriously, I don't get people, and sometimes I really don't want to.

For my own self-esteem, for my sanity and because it looks good to the bosses (or at least reassures them that I'm not likely to show up in a long coat waving a pump-action shot gun) I try to get up and socialize every now and then. I'm not particularly good at it cause it's sometimes tough to notice when folks are in a jovial mood and when they're just cracking jokes between blistering deadlines. But I also don't socialize very well. I typically don't know what to say to folks who are more or less strangers that isn't endlessly griping about work or bringing up heady subjects that maybe they didn't want to discuss (Witness for God in the office?!? are you kidding me? That involves talking to people!)

but sometimes it irks me to no end when everyone around me seems to be in the know about something and assume that I'm in on it too, just cause I sit here in their midst. It could be an honest mistake, one person leaves me off the mailing list and everyone else just hits reply all and doesn't notice I'm not on it.

"Jerk Off," Tool

I try to play it off as cool eventhough I know there's a puzzled look on my face as everyone gathers in the kitchen. When the cake comes out I settle back in my seat as they march up to the birthday girl and sing and spray her with silly string and all the other girls squeal happy birthdays to her. I don't get invited to have cake so I crank up the volume on my headset and try to get back to work.

I don't want their stupid cake anyway.

(They did pass around a really lame and boring card. I signed it too. Fuckers.)

I have this Love-hate thing with people. I am intensely curious about them, but they consistently piss me off.

"Cold and Ugly," Tool

I want to learn other languages so I can find other ways of expressing myself and because I'm so intrigued by the folks here at work whose primary languages aren't English. Our International Team has had German-speakers for a while and now they've brought in a few French-speakers and at least one Japanese-speaker. And I'm always wishing I knew what they were talking about when I pass by, but then I catch bits of what they say as they say soemthing that refers to our applications and realize they're just "talking shop" or bitching.... I've spoken Spanish longer than English, eventhough I'm not as good as I am at English (getting schooled almost exclusively in English will do that), but I've never thought of it as exotic or even romantic as pop culture portrays it. It's just there.

So maybe it's the mystery.

"Part of Me (live)," Tool

But I kind of have always wanted to fit. It's been the inability to do so that has left me jaded and irritated with humanity. I don't really do small talk very well, though I have my moments. And so I look at the girls I'm surrounded by and I get torn with trying to fit in and be like them and realizing what an idiot I am.

"The Grudge," Tool

There are several really girly-girls at work extremely femme, extemely high-pitched. I think if I had gone to high school with them I probably would have spent most days wishing for their demise. But now they're working girls and mostly sane and capable at their jobs. They don't exactly have a clique going but they are closer to each other than, say, to me. But they still go ga-ga over relatively silly things. Of course, the silly things make way more sense now than in high school. In high school a guy asks a girl out and BFD, but at work a guy asks a girl to marry her and yeah...it's a big deal. I just try to avoid screeching about it when I'm trying to show my joy for them.

The type of woman I admire, and occasionally am attracted to, though not everytime, is clearly not so girly. I do like a strong feminine side, but I like it really classy. It would be something I aspired to if it didn't take so much work on my part. But I continually feel like there's something that I'm not getting and I'm being left out because of that. It's like a simple password for the door or something.

"Third Eye," Tool

I really wish I knew how to do it. I don't have to be a practicing girl, but I want to know how to fake it on occasion. How do they get together in a gaggle and talk about nothing? How do they make going to a hair salon an event worthy of discussion at lunch? How do they know whan to get up from their desks and coast from desk to desk for a few minutes, gather all the latest chisme and settle back in happy and secure? How do they manage it so that they can run away from their desks in tears and make sure that only their best girlfriends follow them into the bathroom? How do they take the outrages at work and flutter about them at lunch or over coffee and never mention it again?

I Don't get it. Harumph