An Introvert's Thoughts About Valentines

Yeah, time of the year again, when thoughts turn to love and single people look out at the world surrounded by couples hooking up and saying all "what the hell are we doing wrong?"

It's not sitting here whining about the unfairness of the day.  It's not anyone else's fault - well other than the kids who inflicted the emotional scars of getting publicly humiliated throughout middle school and high school - that I ended up here in my mid-40s lacking the needed social skills to go out and date.

It's just not knowing what the hell to do to learn those social skills.

I'm surrounded by books in the library about "oh do this, do that, do this other thing" about dating advice, social advice, etc.  But book learning doesn't help.  There is something intuitive, something gained from experience and insight (like wisdom), about being sociable.

There is a nature, not a trained skill, towards being extroverted.  There is a confidence within the soul and the heart.

To me, I dread "faking" confidence because it feels like a lie, like being arrogant or foolhardy.

A lot of this ties back into my not being good at making friends or keeping them.  I am a geek, then and now.  Never fit in well with the other kids growing up.  I tried being noisy and clownish and eager and angry and foolish.  Still didn't figure it out.  Tried being friendly and polite and quiet and helpful.  Don't think I did well.

I tried dating here and there in high school.  There were girls I liked, but it never worked out, they never liked me that way.  I started failing at picking up on other people's vibes.  There's all this stuff about body language, being in sync with people, picking up on cues in conversations.  I found out - sometimes in the worst ways - that I wasn't picking up on them.  I fell out of sync with everybody else.

I developed the fear of doing something wrong.  I know fear is irrational.  I still feel it, an unwarranted guilt that I've done, am about to do, something that will (not might) make things worse...

Looking back now, I screwed up big time in college.  Never joined much of anything.  I was terrified of joining any frat because I didn't want to go through another round of hazing rituals like the crap I endured in high school.  The problem was the frats were the social centers of the campus 'verse.  Basically knee-capped myself right there.  Rarely went out at night.  Didn't make many social acquaintances, not even really socializing much with my college roommate (nice guy, he had a social life compared to me, ended up normal).  I put myself in a corner, did my studies, and ended up the way I am now.  Lacking the social skills to connect with anybody else.

So here I am, Valentines Day yet again.  Struggling once in awhile to force myself (yeah, saying that sounds so wrong) to using dating services, speed dating, singles groups, etc.  I go to these gatherings and immediately find myself unable to socialize, unable to start up a conversation or join one in progress, the awkwardness starting up and sending myself off to the side somewhere to stay out of the way.  Kicking myself afterwards on the drive home wondering why I spent 50 bucks to go to a night club where I don't drink and can't dance and won't fit in.

I'd like to develop a social life, but I honestly don't know how.  It's not the brain knowing (my awareness that I am missing something that matters), it's not the heart knowing (I can feel the pain of the void), it's the soul not knowing that hurts the most.

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A Winter Grayer Than Before

And in despair I bowed my head;
"There is no peace on earth," I said:
 "For hate is strong,
 And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"
- "Christmas Bells," Longfellow

Thing about Christmastime, of December and the coming of winter.  It's a season of falling into the Gray Mood.  They call it the Winter Blues but it's really all Gray: the sky is gray, the ground is dead, the people are dour and burdened while the pressure builds to be festive and light-ful.

This year feels grayer than before.

Part of it is due to witnessing yet another disastrous midterm election.  Getting stuck in a state full of partisan morans voting that damn MEDICARE FRAUD back into the governor's office.  Banging my head against the desktop as voter turnout dropped to its lowest level since World War II.

Part of it is watching any semblance of justice in my own nation - land of the free and home of the brave - get flushed down a toilet as violent cops get let off for shooting unarmed teens and using illegal choke holds on guys whose only crime was not submitting to another round of public humiliation.

Part of it is realizing that the current political and economic landscape is about to get darker and nastier.  There's been buzz about a shutdown over Obama's attempts to reform immigration policy via his executive order powers.  There's concerns of a shutdown if there's a fight over a budget proposal that's top-heavy with corporate tax cuts and public sector spending cuts.

There's the growing realization that no matter the injustice of it, the insanity of it, the criminality of it... the Republicans will not rule even if they have the political power, they will ruin all.  They will twist the laws of the states they control to make it harder to vote, harder to complain, harder to stop them commit acts of graft and corruption.  Why listen to the critics or even the experts when there's no accountability for the sins they commit?

It's gray outside right now.  It's going to get darker, and I worry we won't see the sunshine any time soon.

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Personal: Tehya the Pretty Kitty

As I'd mentioned to my friends on Facebook, and through postings on other forums and on my writer's blog, last night I had to let go of a pretty kitty.

There's not more to say about that.  The apartment right now feels empty.

I've been digging through all my photos now.  I took so many and then left so many of them in boxes.  There's a bunch I took before I got digital cameras, old film photos that need to get scanned or something.

I had this at my office.  It was the best photo of Tehya and her adopted sister Page sitting together on a window sill (that was rare, Tehya I adopted first and she never got along with Page when I adopted her a year later).

Page has this pleasing "How May I Help You Kind Sir" expression on her face.  Tehya's arm is stretched out with her paw next to Page's.

Page passed away two years ago, before Thanksgiving.

I miss them.

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In the Navy Yard Shooting, These Are the Facts You Need To Know

Today was a bad day all around - even without considering the flooding disaster that is Colorado - when we found our nation handling yet another shooting spree... this time at a well-guarded Washington DC Navy Yard.

These are the facts as can be confirmed (EDIT 9/26/13, I feel the need to add a little more for those Google searchers pulling up this article, SEE BELOW):

1) Early reports of multiple shooters proved wrong, as usual: there's always confusion during these mass shooting incidents, with survivors and eyewitnesses confused about where and when the violence takes place.  There was just one guy.

2) The shooter brought with him just a shotgun, but used the fact he was shooting up a military installation to secure additional firearms - handgun and rifle - to continue the shootout.

3) The shooter had his own access card to the grounds.  Working for a private tech firm supporting the Navy Yard, he would need some form of access to get into work areas as part of his job.

4) The shooter was involved in a previous shooting incident in 2010 when he lived in Texas, when he was charged with shooting a gun he claimed he was cleaning when it accidentally went off.  Those charges were dropped.  He was also charged in 2004 shooting out a car's tires in Seattle.

5) The shooter had a background as a military reservist from 2007 to 2011 when he was discharged.

6) There are reports that the shooter had undergone - and maybe still undergoing - psychological treatment for sleep issues and anger management.

7) The shooter was African-American.
7a) The identities of the victims have not been established yet.  The authorities are most likely talking to victims' families first.
UPDATE: The identities were released to the public, Washington Post created a memorial site.  By the looks of it the shooter did not discriminate, he shot at White, Black, Hindu Indian, male, female.  Most of the victims were middle-aged or near retirement age.

8) There are currently 13 dead, with 8 wounded.

These are the speculations:

1) Would the current needs for universal background checks as supported by a broad majority of Americans stopped the shooter from getting a firearm?  Probably not in this case: since that Texas gun charge was dropped it wouldn't have shown up on the background check.  And I'm not sure if the 2004 charges would have expired otherwise, or if the psychological treatment would have been a red flag under the rules.

2) Would the shooting have been less tragic if there were more people at the workplace with firearms / conceal permits?  You have to be kidding: this was the Navy Yard.  There's supposed to be armed guards, fences, barricades, defensive systems across the place.  And yet I won't be surprised if we're gonna get gun enthusiasts arguing for conceal-carry and more gun permissiveness at a military base (again: they said this crap after the Fort Hood shootings).
UPDATE: This did not stop LaPierre of the NRA from declaring the shooting wouldn't have been as bad if there had been more "Good guys with guns," the blanket NRA excuse against sensible gun safety laws.  Never mind the fact that there were armed guards on the site, the cops responded within 2 minutes, never mind the possibility of a "good guy with a gun" getting confused at who to shoot, and then having the cops shoot at him thinking he might be a second shooter (refer back to the earlier point of the reports of multiple gunmen).

3) What motivated the shooting?  The shooter did not leave behind any obvious clue like a letter or a death threat on a website.  There is no evidence as of yet what triggered the shooting.  (any further speculation based on race would really be in poor taste until we get specifics)
UPDATE: Huff Post has an article that the shooter left a note, indicating the shooting was a twisted case of a mental breakdown.

4) The shooter is someone with a serious track record of gun ownership.  This was not an overnight impulse to buy a gun and shoot up someplace: he's had guns before.  And he's used guns before...

5) The more obvious point about the shooter is the anger management (lack of).  A huge red flag in any shooting spree.  Any kind of terror attack, really.  The patterns still all point to one thing: an angry guy lashing out at a supposed injustice and taking it out on a lot of people who had nothing to do with causing that anger.  Mostly the shooter is an angry white guy, but we've had angry black guys as shooters before, there's been angry Asian guys, there's been angry ethnic guys across the board.

But the common link is there: Anger.  There are a lot of gun owners in the United States, I will grant you that.  Most of them never pull the trigger outside of legal usage such as practice ranges and/or licensed hunting.  But you get the gun owner with the persecution complex, the rage against women/the job/next door neighbor who leaves the flood lights on.  It's the combination of rage and access to firearms that ought to be of concern.

It'd be nice to have a debate on the matter, on the problem of guns and anger.  But David Frum is right: we're never going to get a debate on guns at all anymore, are we...?
UPDATE: Still don't have a serious debate on gun safety.

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Richie's Got a Telephone in His Bosom And He Can Call HIM Up From His Heart

As a student of history and a student of the Sixties, I do my bit to write about the '69 Woodstock Festival once every year on its Anniversary in August.

Today's an exception, and a sad one at that:  Richie Havens, the opening act of the Woodstock, has passed on.

Havens was an important reason for why the festival turned out the way it did: all the disasters and accidents that made the opening hours a near catastrophe were dispelled once the performers got on stage and worked the growing crowds.

He was only meant to play about a half-hour's worth of stuff.  But due to traffic snafus and such many of the bands hadn't gotten to Max Yasgur's farm, so the organizers kept asking Havens to add a few more encores.  When he ran out of material, he went to calling up a blues spiritual "Motherless Child" and mixing his own improvised lyrics to it.  He came up with "Freedom" right there on the spot.

His signature moment.

There's not much else to say but he's at home now.

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