Probably My Shortest Post Ever

I have just noticed that I've once again gone months since my last post to this page.  I can't truthfully tell you what the reasoning behind this is.  It isn't that I don't have time to write, because I have had plenty of spare time to kill.  It isn't that I haven't had anything to say, because my life has been very eventful in the past two months, June possibly being the best month I'll live.  So what is the reasoning behind me not blogging as often?

I thought to ask myself why do I write on this blog at all?  It serves no purpose as nobody ever reads it.  Yet that's not true.  Although I know nobody else goes out of their way to read and re-read my posts, I do such a thing.  The reason I truly write this blog is so I can remember the little things in life and the events I find to be interesting.  But if there's anything recent things have taught me is that I use this blog to help me remember the things I would forget otherwise.  I have never told any story of any consequence on this blog and I don't think I ever will.  So basically what I write this blog for is to document the forgettable.  The last two months have, for the most part, been unforgettable so I don't feel the need to broadcast them.  Best wishes to anybody who stumbles upon this blog post, let it be known that I've been drinking tonight and you will never find anything of use on this blog.  Good night. 

-Chase "The Forgettable One" Robertson

P.S. Don't be surprised if I don't post for another two months.

Happy Endings and Such Topics

Recently I've been reading the Sandman comic series by Neil Gaiman, which I've given my personal seal of approval to.  Yet, with all the questions the series arises along the lines or morality, responsibility, life, death and religion, there is one line that is seemingly insignificant that stood out to me.  Issue #6 (of 75) tells the story of a group of people in a diner who had the misfortune of running into our current villain when they did. The waitress, Bette, is a writer in her spare time and pleases herself with her ability to give all of her stories happy endings.  While discussing this, the following line appeared "All Bette's stories have happy endings.  That's because she knows where to stop."  This line stuck with me, and in a short time I found myself in a position to put it to use.  So lets once again step in our telephone booth (graciously supplied to us by Rufus a.k.a. George Carlin) and go back to the beginning of my current semester for the purpose of constructing a story!

As has been stated before, and will surely be stated again, I am a graduate student who serves as a TA to get paid.  For this semester I was appointed to be the TA for a senior level course.  It was to be a project-driven course so I was looking forward to getting to know and help each of my students as the semester goes on.  I was also required to attend the classes since I did not know some of the materials taught in the class, and what help would I be otherwise?  Being the man that I am, I took to looking around at the students during the first couple of classes in an attempt to remember faces in the cases I would have to meet with them at a later date.  I do not find it weird to point out that while looking at these faces, I noticed that some of them were aesthetically pleasing, and most of them were very close in age to me.  Students are people and one notices when people are attractive, don't read too far into it.

Anyways, one day on the way to class, I found myself in the elevator with one of these noted students and as I tend to do in elevators, I made conversation with her.  Despite not remembering much about this meeting at all, I do remember that it was pleasant and she made nice conversation.  This sentiment was expanded when a few months later she showed up to my office hours (as many students did the day before a homework was due) but what many other students didn't do was take me up on my offer, "If anybody has any extra questions, I'll be in my office a little bit longer."  She had a few questions that were answered easily enough, but then I felt obligated to ask her about her project, in which we proceeded to chat about all kinds of things.  The next thing I knew an hour or so had passed, and I left my office shortly after her thinking to myself, "what a nice girl."

Welcome to my lair!

So at this point I was delighted by her, but didn't think much more about it.  But without any delay my mind decided that it would be fun to play tricks on me.  That very same night I fell asleep and found myself dreaming about her.  For the record it was not a sex dream by any stretch of the imagination, but it was a dream where the two of us were together and more than friendly.  That made the next day's class a little awkward in my own mind as I kept looking at her and remembering how inappropriate the last night's dream was.  This feeling faded slowly as the semester went on and I had time to wonder whether or not it really was weird.  In general I decided it wasn't weird at all that I found her to be both attractive and endearing, but if I was to ever make a move, it would have to be after the semester was over and I was no longer her instructor of sorts.  There were two things that made this difficult, first she was to be graduating.  Second, her group for the class project was the only one that had gone to get help and I worked with them a few times.

 After speaking the situation over with a few friends and spending a moderate amount of time thinking it over, I decided the proper plan of action was to send a friendly email after the semester ended.  Well the semester ended, and I deliberated for a short time before actually sending the email, in which time I tried to distract myself from waiting as much as possible.  To distract myself I went out to the local bars with a friend who happened to be in the area for the weekend.  Finding ourselves at a bar we don't typically frequent and dancing, which we typically don't do, my friend and I navigated the crowds searching for fun.  Instead, I heard my name from behind and turned to find this newly-graduated former student standing in front of me.  I respect my readers enough to think they can tell exactly who it was.

It was clearly Alfred

I stood in shock over seeing her for what could have been up to 5 seconds before coming to my senses and talking with her like a regular human being.  I told her of the email I sent, and congratulated her on graduating and said if she were ever in the area again I would like to have a drink or coffee with her.  To each of these she responded with "that's so sweet" and finally gave me a hug for all my sweetness.  I enjoyed the gesture of the hug and proceeded to talk to her about various odds and ends, the whole time nothing going through my mind other than the urge to tell her she was beautiful, that I loved the fact she laughs at all my jokes and all these other grand acts of professing the fact I was attracted to her.  But I didn't do that, and I said goodbye to her and tried as hard as I could to not follow my friends pushes for me to ask her to dance.  The next thing I knew, she was gone and I couldn't find her again, its more than likely I will never see her again.

So why did I take the time to make my intro about happy endings and then follow with this story of how I had a crush on one of my students, especially since nothing came of it?  The truth is that this was a happy ending as far as I was concerned.  Every story can have a happy ending if you know when to end it.  In this case it didn't feel right to me to have made a move on her, especially in a situation where it would be hard to get a relationship started, not to mention maintained.  So I swallowed my pride, held back whatever I wanted to say and settled to make this a story about the most perfect goodbye I have ever said.  And she will never have to know about what I was really thinking...

Happy endings everywhere!!!

Back on the Horse!

Hold on to your hats ladies and gentlemen because it is finally that time of the month, and by that I mean the good one that involves me updating you all on my life.  To put this plainly, this month passed can only be described succinctly as a shitshow.  I probably throw that term around a lot more loosely than most people, and I'll translate that to clusterfuck.  I've likely experienced an example of every emotion that I've ever known as well as being in all kinds of different mindsets.  It is almost frightening how I had the most variation in my life from day to day in the shortest month of the year.  Glossing over things that I would preferably keep away from the blogosphere, lets talk about some ideas of the month.

What a beautiful image!!

First of all it was the first full month of classes this semester, and I have found that although I have found myself more busy than last semester, I am enjoying this semester a lot more.  I am taking the second semester of a two semester series in numerical methods (using computers as decked-out badass calculators) and am enjoying this semester's class more because the homework thus far has been much more centered on implementing algorithms rather than analyzing them on pen and paper.  I am also taking a second semester of statistics, and am also enjoying this semester's version more in this as well for two reasons.  First is that I am finally starting to get a grasp on the material so the homework isn't as arbitrary to me as it used to be.  Second, the professor has seemed to take what I'm guessing were scathing reviews on her performance last semester to heart, and while she still isn't a good teacher, she has improved.  The other class I'm taking is in Partial Differential Equations, I really like this class because it is an honors undergraduate course rather than a graduate course.  I didn't realize how much I missed undergraduate classes until I took this class and realized I could do the entire problem sets in as long as it takes to do a single problem in my other classes.  I've also been upgraded to being a Teaching Assistant for a senior level mathematical modeling class, it's been much more work for me than when I did Calculus, but the students are good people and I am learning things myself.  Having said that I may be slightly underpaid.

I can analyze this show way too well...

Anyways since nobody cares about my education lets explain where the title of this post is coming from.  I am getting back on the horse as far as trying to recover what remains of my inner irrational-confidence guy.  I am deciding that after what has been over a year of being a lump in the dating game, that I am instead going to start being more proactive in searching for prospective romantic interest, or at the very least someone to entertain me.  Now I know what your thinking, "Chase, you are obviously going to think you are underpaid if you spend so much of your free time at the brothels and strip clubs!"  That's not what I mean by being proactive!  By that I mean I'm going to attempt to be more approachable and talkative in my regular life, and if the situation arises I'm going to ask amicable strangers for their numbers or even dates.  As an overly analytic person, I am led to ask myself "Whats the worst that can happen?"  The answer to that is always going to be instant apocalypse, but that is completely unrelated to the issue at hand, in which the worst case as far as that goes is that they say no and walk away rather than me not asking and them walking away.  It's curious how the word "no" can be such a deterrent despite only being two letters long.

This shirt would save breath

The results of this change of mindset in the short time have been interesting.  The first case was a little more than a month ago, it wasn't anything too aggressive but it was the first time in about a year and a half that I had developed a crush (I hate that fucking word, is there a word that makes me sound like I'm post-puberty?)  Even then I admittedly played the situation like an amateur, so even if there was a chance she was going to have a mutual interest in partaking in activities with each other I probably wasn't helping my own cause.  The second case was a spur of the moment decision to ask the cashier at a coffee place for her number.  This one was a lot more well played, the girl looked a lot like the leading female role in Mike Birbiglia's movie Sleepwalk With Me so I was attracted to her.  Indie chicks dude...  Anyways I went to order my coffee and she was playful and talkative with me so I told her she reminded me of the actress mentioned above, she took the compliment and showed interest in the movie and (seemingly) myself.  It was then that the decisive question came, "Do you want your receipt?" she asked, naturally my response was "Only if it has your number on it."  The third case is ongoing, I was introduced to a friend of a friend on the basis that she and I would get along well.  I will admit it isn't hard to get along with people who are aesthetically pleasing no matter what their personalities are like, but this girl was easy to get along with for me anyways.  Having said that, we possibly got along too well...

Can't get that for the price of a coffee (or two)

As you may have noticed, I have built up these situations without any mention of the results.  Well they all were failed endeavors.  The first one is currently dating the housemate I share a wall with, rumors have it that the second one is potentially a lesbian (would be the first time that's happened) and the third one thought I was gay (sadly not the first time that's happened.)  That sequence of events is like the Gordie Howe hat trick of depression.  But oddly I'm not bothered by it and actually am more encouraged to keep trying by these.  It's like in Dave Chappelle's interview on Inside the Actor's Studio, he talked about his first big show at the Apollo he was booed hard, and that was when he realized he was going to make it.  He was in the midst of what is possibly the worst thing that can happen to a stand-up comedian, and still stood up there thinking that it was still pretty good.  I've had the three worst possible results I can think of of flirting, and its still encouraging because I'm showing progress and getting more comfortable with things.  I wouldn't hold my breath, but maybe my next post written on the topic will be in a completely different light.

Anyways, its getting late and while I'm sure I have more to say, the words are seeming to be escaping me at this moment.  Anyways here's what I feel to be a very underrated scene (mainly due to the way Bruce Campbell responds to the end of the fight) and I'll see y'all next time of the month.

On the Topic of My Character

I'm not going to lie to you, I am a really interesting person.  I find myself to be an extremely interesting person with all kinds of different aspects and layers.  I'm sure everybody out there thinks the exact same thing about themselves as they are all "individuals" or whatever they claim to be but seriously I find myself to be much more interesting to analyze than most of people I've met.  It's largely due to the fact that I am always intrigued by people that I'm not completely sure if I like or not cause then I don't know whether or not to concentrate on their good or their bad traits (so I can compliment or criticize them) so I instead pay attention to both sides, so enough about you and more about me.

First of all, I am mostly incapable of hate.  There are people I don't enjoy being in the company of, as well as some that I have the tendency to disagree with on a large range of topics.  Yet, there are no people in the world that I have personally spoken with that I can say the word hate even begins to be applicable, and that even includes this random dude I met once who angered me and then popped back up in my life in what I momentarily thought to be an inopportune time, as friends of friends you don't connect with seem to be oddly likely to do.  Sometimes I wish I had a rival or someone I could hate that I keep running into, it seems like it would be a nice thing to have going on in the background.  Instead I give people the benefit of the doubt and like to think they are doing things I don't like for perfectly rational reasons.

GET IT!?!?!?!?!?

With the previous paragraph taken into account, it shouldn't be a surprise that I tend to get along with people on a personal level.  I was always an awkward kid who had problems maintaining friends during my early years in school as I have pointed out, having what I consider to be only one real friend in the first decade of my life.  This friend transferred schools after a year and I maintained contact with him for a little bit after that but we slowly fell apart, and haven't knowingly seen each other since.  I made my first current friend when I was 12, and proceeded to grow into a moderately sized group of friends.  During most of High School I had what I consider to be 4 good friends.  I currently believe that I hold at least 4 separate groups of friends that I still see and communicate with often (home friends, undergrad school friends, grad school friends, department friends, etc.)  If you had told me I would have this number of friends at my age a decade ago, I surely would have foamed at the mouth and spent days feverishly looking for a time machine to get here quicker, but first I'd have to visit this future.
It is also amazing that with the amount of friends I have been able to amass over the years that I have never been in a real adult relationship.  This probably would dampen the good mood of decade-ago me after being told how many friends I have.  It is an interesting thing to wonder, because I have so many people who care for me, but there is no proof that they really care about me.  It is a strange kind of loneliness that even though I am rarely lonely in the physical sense, I can't shake the feeling for my life at large.  I think some of my friends will argue that this has something to do with how picky I am with girls.  I understand that I often go for girls that are difficult to date, either being much more attractive than I, being of a personality that is not conducive to dating people like myself, or even finding myself being hung up on girls who are in long term relationships that everyone knows aren't going to end anytime soon.  My answer to that is that it isn't always about quantity, it is sometimes about quality, and I don't believe in doing things for the sake of it in general.  I intentionally put myself in positions to fail when it comes to my personal life, because some situations aren't worth risking to fail on, but the ones that are pay off that much more when you don't fail.  If I learned anything from growing up in my family it is that sometimes one stroke of luck is all you need.

I also think that my system of beliefs is interesting.  I study Applied Mathematics, and that is a type of science.  As you would expect to see from scientists, a lot of the people I spend time with in class and doing work, the prevailing attitude is to be counter-cultural and at odds with the concept of a God.  I diverge with my peers in these respects.  I have a great fondness for popular culture (paragraph 2 implicitly explains why,) it is one of the reasons that I am able to get along with a vast range of people.  I have a lot of interests in all facets of pop culture, and while I obviously give personal preference to some of them (sports), I am well-versed in almost anything you can talk about.  I am also a scientist, so I am also an intellectual to the point where even if you think you are above discussing things that can be seen on a screen and want to talk about concepts or ideas I am also able to hold a great conversation there as well.  As for the religious side, growing older is causing me to see the merits in the systems in place rather than trying to debase them as I would have tried to do in my younger days, and a lot of people I know are still trying to do.  I am still not sure what I believe in, but I certainly believe there is something, not for any rational reasoning but because it is comforting to me.  I think the world is more interesting when there is a greater power choosing to intervene when they feel it suitable, or things like "luck" follow you around and affect the way your life unfolds.  I could also say that these things should arise if you subscribe to the idea of multiple universes that diverge at every decision point or point that could change the world around you.

Am I the only one who likes he plays for a team that has a horseshoe as their logo?

Mix all of these amicable traits with the fact that I am in that perfect range where I am an attractive human being without being particularly threatening to anybody and that is a very great person.  All I need to do is improve my work ethic a little bit and start molding my body into a statuesque form and I may be a model human being.  And there might be my motivation toward the little self-improvement I have left to do.  Thanks everybody who sat around reading this piece of rhetoric masturbation, best wishes for all of you, especially now that you know you are inferior.

Quick Update

Hello everyone, as is my norm, I will start this article by apologizing for such a long break between posts.  I think that is one thing I'm going to stop doing as the one person who reads this blog understands that this is how I write, I am also going to try to refrain from promising that I'm going to write more often at the end, because I surely know that that is a lie.

So what's new with my life?  I spent most of the last two months on break and being completely restless while giving in to FIFA addiction.  This last week I have announced that I am going to take a lengthy hiatus from playing FIFA as the last time I played I reached nearly unfathomable levels of rage and disappointment.  To make sure that FIFA stays in the opposite corner of my room as my Xbox, I vowed to attempt to spend this semester trying to beat all 5 Splinter Cell games in preparation for Blacklist this summer.  But there isn't a whole lot of interest in my video game habits so lets talk about other things.

Badass.

For the first time in 2 years I am returning to a familiar place at the beginning of a semester (since I'm still in school I still use semesters as my standard time frame.)  After a half year of graduate school I'm only partially sure of what direction I want to go with my adult life.  I am pretty sure that after reading The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver this last month that I have an interest in predictive modeling and hope to be able to find myself doing that for the rest of my life.  This field really interests me because I've always wished I would be able to predict the future.  This reflects in my method of speaking, as more observant people that I know have noticed that I never speak in definite, I will always qualify what I say in one way or another, mostly by using "probably" in the place of "yes."  I do this intentionally, I have no idea what is going to happen to me in the time span between the present and when I am supposed to do whatever I am being asked to do.

I spend a lot of time at night thinking about things and building these intricate futures in my head where things happen in ways that are favorable to me, as any reader of this blog could easily figure out, these futures have vaguely reflected what actually happens a total of zero times in my life.  Maybe if I devote my life to the craft and try really hard I will start to get a few of these predictions correct, even if it means I tone down (or even abolish) the prerequisite that I am favored in the future.  This divergence between reality and expectation has caused me much of my strife over the course of the last few years, although it has been slightly less problematic recently.  Basically I want to accept that I can't control the world, but at the very least I should be able to anticipate what it's going to do.

Take a left! I know a good place there!

On a completely different note, I went to see a Lewis Black concert a few weeks ago.  I am by no means a fan of his work but did enjoy the show, but it got me thinking about stand-up comedy as a craft.  I try to be funny on this blog a large portion of the time, but it's seemingly become a 50/50 split between funny posts and me complaining about things (guess which this one is!)  For the most part I fancy myself to be a clever and insightful person, which is are usually good qualities in comedians, yet I don't find myself to be excessively funny in my everyday life.  It was at that show that I realized that you don't need to be, but for the most part people will laugh a lot harder at your jokes because you are on a stage telling them to a crowd of strangers.  I've secretly had a couple of jokes written in my head that I have tried to tell people and work on over the years and am hoping that I can make up enough to feel confident trying it out myself.

But anyways this quick update turned out to be a lot longer than I expected, I guess I just had too many things to talk about saved up to be able to keep this concise and on topic.  Hopefully next time I decide to write (some random time in the future) I will be in better spirits and produce a funny piece, but I feel I needed to vent a little and while I haven't quite done that to completion, there are some things I don't want to talk to the internet about.  I'll leave you with my Magic 8 Ball's response to me asking if things are going to be good for me this semester.  "It is decidedly so," hooray.