Don't You Think Now's a Good Time to be the Ambitious Freak You Are?

I had one of those conversations last night with a guy that I'm not-quite-dating, one of the kind of conversations where you basically lay out all the things you love, hope they agree, or at least don't violently disagree. A High Fidelity questionnaire type conversation.

It'd be easier if I could just hand any guy I was interested in, or vice versa, a package that contained all of this information, and tell him to get back to me in a month or so after he's had time to digest it. It's an interesting mental exercise to choose the books, movies, and music I'd put in such a package. I've talked extensively on here before about the books that I love above all others, but I'm not sure how many of them would go into the package.

What would you put in your package? What media do you reference enough to make required reading/viewing/listening? What's important that the people you love love too?

Here's a short, off the top of my head, list:

Books: Neal Stephenson, everything except Big U, especially Diamond Age and the Baroque Cycle--if you don't know what I'm talking about when I talk about Waterhouses and Shaftoes, we're doomed.
Watchmen
House of Leaves
Lolita
High Fidelity (I reference this book more or less constantly, and I am apparently the only person other than Elis who's read it)
Dracula

Gone with the Wind, in either book or film form

Movies: Hot Fuzz
The Departed
Reefer Madness (the musical)

TV: Season Two of the Office
Clone High

Music: Philip Glass's score to Koyaanisqatsi & Naqoyqatsi
Original Broadway recording of The Last Five Years (this is another thing I refer to a lot that very few people are familiar with)

Nice to Know You, Goodbye

Sometimes I wonder what it says about me that I prefer to read about superheroes on Wikipedia than do almost anything else. Seriously, on my list of "leisure activities," extremely shallow comic book research ranks up there just above reading reviews of movies I've already seen, and just below drinking coffee in a public place and staring blankly off into the middle distance.

And now I think I've established myself as the most boring person ever to be born. On the other hand, I defy anyone to honestly list their leisure activities and find their top 10 not contain at least one entry such as "polish toenails" or "reorganize drawers."

Take Your Momma Out All Night

Rules for Dating:

1) Never under any circumstances date a guy who gives you shit for ordering a less-girly drink than him.

2) In fact, don't date guys who order girlier drinks than you, period.

3) Men should be old enough to legally drink yet young enough not to be your father within any stretch of the imagination.

4) Penises don't go anywhere mouths don't go first. If a guy won't go down on you, he's either a) inexperienced, b) terrible at it, or c) secretly thinks vagina/sex is dirty and bad and wrong, and not in a fun way.

And vice versa. If you think blowjobs are demeaning, you are watching too much mainstream porn.

5) Never do anything you wouldn't kiss after. Never accept anything you wouldn't kiss after.

Not Like This

Today I went into my iTunes to find some fun stuff to put on the new iPod. (the other one didn't like repeated dunkings in water and olive oil) I needed classical music, since I can't do computer work to anything with words, and I happened to turn on Aaron Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man. Instantly I was a sophomore in high school band, first chair flute, looking at a Copland medley we'd decided to play. For whatever reason the arrangers had taken that beautiful trumpet fanfare and turned it into a flute/clarinet solo, and I had it. I remember very clearly playing that fanfare, backing off on the high notes, shaping the phrases with my entire body, the different ways you can do accents. I've always loved fanfares, but I looked at that sheet music, played that solo, and thought: this is big. this is something for forever.

I've loved Copland ever since. No one can strip-mine a musical history and turn it into their own like him. He's American to the core--so much so that whenever people hear his music, they always wonder "what is this? I've heard this!" Everything he's ever written is part of our collective subconscious.

You Can Feel It All Over

This article threw me, today. The idea that Case, the place that symbolized so much safety for me, is the place where someone else was attacked, threw me. That nowhere is truly safe, which is something I think we all know empirically but is hard to integrate emotionally.

What a brave woman.

Kill Me

"Kevveeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeennnnnnnnn-uh," says my roommate, with a valley-girl aspiration on the end of the word that is usually absent from her normal speech. "Staawwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwp-h." Her boyfriend is in town, and she has metamorphosed from a reasonably articulate, intelligent woman to a possibly mentally retarded 14 year old.

Being single, I really hate boyfriend weekends on principle. The idea of LOVE as the REASON I should care about this otherwise unremarkable person grosses me out. I don't want to be included in their activities, I don't want to be patronized or condescended to. I would rather be single than in a relationship like theirs, but it works for them. And that way, I guess everyone wins. All I really want is to stay away from the idiotic conversations, the audible, sloppy kissing, the shower sex.

Granted, I'm having a lot of fun being single, possibly more fun than I ever had coupled. Factor sex out of the equation and single wins hands down. I'm determined not to get back into a relationship, ANY relationship, unless I'm a) as or more in love than I ever was with Mark, because otherwise I will just pine for him occasionally, for the rest of my life, and that's no fun; b) totally convinced that he's worth it. I'm tired of dating just to not be alone. Being alone, and I say this as someone who previously had not been "alone" since fifteen years of age, is not so bad. I have yet to meet a man who can convince me that doing other than exactly as I please at all times is a good idea, and I'm holding out for him. The one who makes me want to change my plans.