personal mythos

we all have personal beliefs that are based on... nothing. well nothing scientific or factual.

it may be something like always putting both lids on a toilet seat down because you randomly heard once that in feng shui flowing water represents your cash flow and a toilet is literally water down the crapper...

or it may be believing you can get pregnant by kissing a boy... or that storks bring babies... or that the only time your parents had sex was the time you and your siblings were conceived... or picking a 'heads up' penny is better luck than a 'tails up' penny...

they may be silly or ignorant or naive or overly elaborate ways to deal with something tough or just the result of events that coincided.

one of my personal mythologies came to a big painful bursting point last week... and it requires me to equate love to...

(wait for it... )

a lump under the skin.



it's part of my personal mythos... i didn't say it was grand, life changing or anything... meaningful. but it goes back to the hazy days of my first love...

after my girl and i had been dating for a while, and started to become really emotionally connected i had noticed a painful lump in my left earlobe. it was about half the size of a pea, and only noticeable if you squeezed the earlobe. after some time, the pain went away but the lump stayed. after a year or so, it got painful again... swelled some... and the lump went away. my first love and i... we went our separate ways sometime in the month or two which followed...

fast forward a few years... and a few months into another emotionally intense relationship... another painful lump in my earlobe. this time, the size of a pea. and again... it dissapeared around the time this lovely lady and i fell out of love...

and that, i think is when the mythology of the lump truly started for me... a weird rationalization or explanation of a random occurance. falling in love = painful lump under the skin

really romantic eh?

anyway, heather and i have been romantically entangled for quite some time... and sometime during our long and odd courtship i developed a rather large lump on my arm. people look at it and ask in mini-horror... "what the hell is that?" to which i can only reply... "that's my lump" at which point i poke or prod or mush it around.

A doctor looked at it. he proclaimed it to be a subcutaneous sebacous cyst. and i asked about having it removed... to which he replied that he didn't want to cut me... and i really didn't want to be cut. fine.

a couple weeks ago... it started to get painful again... it got bigger, it got enflamed and looked really nasty. lacking health insurance, i did the smart thing and just ignored it. or poked it and played with it as i felt appropriate. and just as it was starting to become unbearable... it went the way of a zit one day in the shower. truly disgusting. i'm sorry. but that's what happend and also is the last gross bit.

the former home of the lump looks normal now.

an my personal mythology?.. i doubt it'll prove right. i have no plans to end things with heather... and she seems to be content with our relationship too... i'd be just fine with laying this myth to rest once and for all.

do you have any weird personal mythologies?

Santa may be a bit late this year...

http://www.zug.com/scrawl/wonderland/005.html
http://www.zug.com/scrawl/wonderland/010.html

now tell me this wouldn't emotionally scar any child?!

Invisible rings of power and anonymity

Comments from 'Death' on anonymity and blogging.
"we may truly affirm to be a great proof that a man is just, not willingly or because he thinks that justice is any good to him individually, but of necessity, for wherever any one thinks that he can safely be unjust, there he is unjust." - plato - the republic

I caught the link from Lawmeme.

from the front page

[+] "if assholes were planes, www.nomadlife.org would be an airport"

love it.

Build a Snowman

for those of you with out snow... or too damn lazy to go play in what you've got...

build your own snowman

Yesterday's Learnings

A few things i noticed yesterday...

as dysfunctional as my management group was... we weren't as bad as other groups: one group had a member drop out four weeks ago... yet still put her name on the paper; another group had to pick up a member's slack only to have her show up and turn in her stuff when it was too late to integrate it into the paper... she later failed to show up for the presentation

we didn't work well together... communication issues, control issues, only met once, etc... yet still pulled a perfect (250/250) on the 25 page paper. i think he was drunk when grading it. that paper will now be an example for future classes. It puts me in a position to only need a 50% on the final to maintain an A.

my east asian studies class i need to get an A to get an A... anything else is a B. it was really hammered home with the last couple lectures that in the late 1800's China got itself royalled screwed. after several thousand years of screwing their own people, it was all turned around by the west & Japan. It's neat to see how history plays out over several thousand years.

and don't get any knickers in a twist, that was just a general blanket statement based on one class. if you're mad or have any other comments you obviously care a great deal more than i deserve. go comment somewhere else.

stinky!

why can't i go work to work out and not end up with hands that smell like overly perfumed whores or super trendy high school girls?

it happened when i was using the gym while working downtown... and it happens at my new gym out here in the 'burbs...

The place has been open for a while and is bright and clean and odor free... until you touch something! while i certainly don't want the gym to smell like an armpit or dirty socks... i find the super girly scents a bit disconcerting.

Photos

My thanksgiving stuff is up here.

some neat chicago photos from the chicagoist tag like this one from the recent snow fall.

i don't have a paypal account otherwise i'd offer up the $5 for a nomadlife flickrmap http://www.flickrmap.com/

Axioms about foreigners to Cold Weather

With the sub-freezing temperatures all too common around here two observations have become evident and are hereafter are assumed to be true.

1.) When the weather is really cold, people used to cold weather will choose warmth and comfort in the collegiate setting. The foreigners will choose fashion. (Meaning dressy things inappropriate/unsafe in cold and sloppy weather)

2.) When leaving the building and facing the choice of revolving doors vs normal 'hinged' doors... the foreigner will choose to hit the handicapped access button for the 'hinged' door and walk quickly outside in their supper puffy winter coat and let the rest of the people staying inside to enjoy a supersized portion of the cold, gale forced wind that rips through the building.

Soil yourself before the amazing power that is...

http://www.drinktown.com/

The drink specials for Chicago and Milwaukee on a handy Google Map.

I can't imagine our Brewcity Nomadlifers not being able to punish this list... Man if only I lived downtown...