In my attempt to better understand how the social constructs of flirtation and dating function, I began my journey in looking up how exactly this art of flirting is accomplished, that is, how does one segue from going to complete strangers briefly meeting at a coffee shop to something more?

Well, I did what any socially incompetent person would do, and I turned to the all-knowing, all-mighty god whom I believe in and trust with my life, Google of course. Of course, not wanting to get a biased image and hoping to see the bigger picture, I decided to read articles on how to flirt from both the girl and guy's perspective, so like, you know... I know what I'm supposed to do as the male, and I also know if the girl is interested in the off-handed chance that she too is socially incompetent and decided to go and read the same article on google in order to figure out how to flirt back. At which point, our actions would become so compartmentalized and procedural, that each of us following this rigid step-by-step procedure in tandem laid out by AskMen and Jezebel would result in things seeming to fall together into place in a most elegant fashion causing both of our minds to chime the thought 'My god! It does work!'

That would be the ideal plan anyway. 

What I was able to determine after reading through a few articles on these popular websites/blogs is that men are creeps and women are chickens and the advice being given to both sides on the rules of attraction have convinced me that I will die alone in my bachelor pad at 34 surrounded by empty cans of food and rats harvesting my corpse (for the groundskeeper does not check the basement and do maintenance on the heater that often since it has really started to stink since I moved down there last fall).

But no, on a serious note, it's interesting to me what a huge gap in perspective there is on both sides and to be honest, I think it's hilarious. 

Every article I read telling the girls how to flirt was the most subtle, round-about crap I've ever seen, which makes perfect sense because women are told to act passively. The majority of it is so cliche and contrite that I'm not sure if it's a joke or serious...

Example:

"Find an excuse and bend down low in front of him. Pretend to be busy and allow him to take a good peek down your cleavage. Look up suddenly and catch him doing it. Taunt him for it and make him feel awkward. It’ll build the sexual tension up in no time because both of you know he’s interested in your body."

The stuff I read on the men's side was to say and do things that had such creepy and sexual undertones from my perspective that I even felt uncomfortable reading them, like the guy that wrote the article was standing right behind me and whispering all of these tips into my ear. 

Example:

"A great way to flirt sexually with a woman is to compare some of your “outside the bedroom” activities to what goes on inside the bedroom. For example, let’s say you get a woman a cup of tea; you can follow up by saying: "Looks like you’re on the receiving end today. Do you always receive or do you like to give at times too?" Crack a slight smile and she will know exactly what you are talking about"

"Want to know a secret about female sexuality that 99% of men don't know? Here it is: Many women feel compelled to vacuum their house when they're ovulating. Some experts believe it has something to do with wanting to "clean the nest" before laying her "egg." So, when a woman tells you she is vacuuming, say: "Vacuuming? Are you ovulating or something?" She'll be stunned that you know this and wonder what else you know about female sexuality. Of course, if she doesn’t know what you mean, fill her in. Women love it when you teach them something new -- especially about themselves."

The above quote links me to a website called double your dating, which probably only sounds appealing to those that are not savvy with math and would follow this advice, because 0x2 = 0.

A part of me feels like some of these articles were written just to be written, like maybe no real advice is there to be given, maybe these writers are just trying to pay their bills and eat, maybe these blogs and websites are just so meta that their main source of funding comes from the secret upper echelon of society that push their agenda by paying people to write articles bestowing terrible advice onto the lemmings on how to find their mate in order to implement this subversive new-world-order-esque form of population control.

I mean, these are all just ideas of course... Crazy ideas... But....

What if they weren't?

.......................

An hour away now, dying, but made it. Everyone at this airport is rude as fuck and I want to kill everything, but jesus christ I'm almost home. UGHHHH.

Only 4 more hours to go until I can leave this god forsaken airport which I have trapped myself in. All attempts to sleep have failed as the brightly lit, abandoned terminal is only allowing me to accomplish the slow, steady decline into madness as the insomnia overtakes the sanity.

During the last 6 hours, I've had a lot of time to think, think about things in my life, how everything is going right in some areas and completely, disastrously wrong in others. While I sit here pondering, I begin to think to myself if I should abandon this great titanic of a fucking ship I've created to dive into the sea and attempt to save the passengers I sent out on the other titanic which is sinking into the bottom of the ocean.

Despite my attempts to fight it, it seems that life is just as plain and simple as I feared it would be, as I denied it was in my youth. It seems people are dealt their cards early on in life, and despite the anomalies that exist in the world proving otherwise...

NO.

That's bullshit! I am pretty sure it is the exhaustion talking that is making me say these things, I am a believer in the individual, and the ability of the individual to accomplish great things relative to themselves. As long as you set your mind to it, never give up, and keep trying and getting a little further every time (Because if you don't make any progress despite your attempts, then maybe it just wasn't meant to be), then you will accomplish your goals. I shit on my haters, and especially my mind, my poor tired mind, who turns around and turns into this bitter, snarling beast who has been kept in a cage and poked and prodded incessantly with an infinitely long stick to keep said beast awake, driving it to madness, until finally it is reaches the breaking point, and it releases its frustrations on the only thing it can reach, itself. It grabs its own face and begins tearing it away, ripping off its own flesh, causing itself great distress, pain, and agony in the hopes that all of it, some of it, just a bit of it, but probably none of it will be passed on to its tormentors, when in reality the animal knows better, but it just wants to do something, anything, anything to fight back, to feel like its fighting back, to feel like something is changing because nothing is changing and this is terrible.

It feels like time is standing still, like I'm just waiting for a plane that is never going to arrive, but I know it will arrive, and I know when I finally drive back home, I will be so happy to collapse on my bed and black out, so much to the point that I will forget to be angry at myself for having caused all of the distress in the first place, caused so much suffering for nothing because I fail at valuing time, I have no respect for it and because of that, I will always suffer at its wrath, I will always be the one caught off guard like today wishing that I hadn't been, wishing that I had done X instead of Y because that would have completely totally avoided this entire mess, wishing I had taken a single simple action to foil my own worst enemy and best friend from falling into his own trap that he unknowingly set for himself. 

You can have the motivation, you can have the drive, you can have the talent, and you can have the resources, but if you don't respect time, then you're still missing a critical component in the equation for success. That is what I've realized today sitting here in this airport driving myself mad, thinking back to all of the times I've let myself down, let other people down, and let so many things fall apart to shit because I thought that I had room, had space, had time to deal with it. 

Time is like money, tasks all have a budget, once you exceed that budget, you can no longer accomplish the task... Just like if you don't respect money, and don't understand how important it is to work hard for it, then you'll never make it, if you don't respect the time, the seconds, the minutes and hours, then you'll never capitalize on your life, your day, your years, and you'll find yourself looking at the mirror one day at that lone wrinkle that formed over the years which wasn't there before, the sign of time wasted, of death approaching, of the years that you wasted because you thought you had so many more, you just opened the window and let it all fly out. 

I can't deal with this anymore, things need to change. This is the most fundamental concept that everyone learns growing up which I never bothered to, or maybe forgot about because things were too easy for me. I am getting old, too old to make such stupid, careless mistakes.

Whether you think you can or you can’t, you’re right.

I feel like Tom Hanks right now from The Terminal. Except being trapped at the airport is mainly, totally my fault versus a political revolution.

So it all started with my flying in for an interview this morning @ 3:30 AM to Denver and driving up to Loveland, the departure/arrival from LAX/DEN was very smooth and car rental was a breeze, great. Once I got to Loveland, I did my interview, then proceeded to go drive down to Boulder to meet with an old co-worker/friend to hang out and catch up, which was also fine.

Things started going south when I made the huge error of not double checking my flight time, I just simply saw the number 10:15 PM and automatically assumed that was my departure time... Huge idiocy here at this point. 

I'd like to stop this story right here for a moment for a side story, currently at the airport plugged into a power terminal, and some rude bitch next to me keeps bouncing in her chair which I am leaning on the other side of. I decided to fight fire with fire, i.e. subversive passive aggressiveness and take off my shoes to stink up the entire terminal zone. I'm getting massive stink eye from everyone here right now and some people are packing up, unfortunately the girl is holding her position strong, and refusing to budge. After consulting the generals, it seems that this enemy is immune to the mustard gas, so we're back to the drawing board... Anyway, back to this unexciting story.

I get to the terminal at the airport thinking that I'm an hour and a half early, but I check the departure time and my jaw drops to see that the time of my flight is 8:55 PM and not 10:15 PM. I double check my itinerary to find that I've mixed up the departure/arrival times, and now I have approximately 10 minutes to make it through security and onto my flight. 

Not to sound anti-climactic, but the fact that it is 10:45 PM and I'm still in Denver should be a telltale sign that I did not make my flight, there were a couple of other flights heading out to LAX within that timeframe but with different airlines. Trying to negotiate with the service desk to put me on one of those flights failed miserably, despite my attempts to be my most coy self with the 50 year old overweight service desk employee, she wasn't having any of my flirting/begging/raging. She gave me this look like 'We don't like your kind of people here' (ok I might have made that up), and stuck me on the next flight which is at 8:30 AM and told me to go find a hotel. Of course instead I decided to exercise civil disobedience and ignore her commands by instead sitting in at the airport until my flight time came up, also because I don't want to pay anymore money than I've already paid for this clusterfuck of a mess I've gotten myself into. I've never missed a flight before so this is a first, it is truly an excruciating experience to have to sit here and watch all of these people going to the places they are supposed to be going while I sit here in limbo trying to get comfortable in these cleverly designed airport chairs which seem to have been crafted specifically for the purposes of stopping people from sleeping in them. 

Who knows what's going to happen for the next 10 hours, probably nothing, but still, you never know. I want to sleep, but I can't give up my outlet, the place I'm sitting right now is prime real-estate and I can see there are people surrounding me like vultures waiting for the first person in our quarry to separate and break formation so that they can dive in tandem to peck out our eyes and steal our spots, leaving us to blindly writhe around in pain, trying to feel around for where we were sitting, searching for the past but finding nothing other than the warm crimson fluids cascading out of our bloody sockets.

I'm still getting weird looks from people for having my shoes placed neatly next to me. Is this not part of normal airport etiquette ? Is it possible that I am THAT guy that people talk about when recalling horrific tales of being stuck at the airport? 

"Sorry, that seat is taken, my shoes are sitting there."

".... Fuck you, kid."

The amount of open education available online is mind blowing and brings a fucking tear to my eye every time I think about how much things have changed in the last decade.

Now that poor kid without a hope in the world just needs access to a computer and internet connection so he can learn everything he needs to learn, find mentors, and build something out of nothing.

http://www.google.com/edu/

Well, after saying all of my farewells and good-byes and fuck yous to everyone on this site expecting everything to sink under water and sleep with the fishes, the alarm bells have gone off, and a gentle voice in the background now whispers in my ear 'Just kidding', which despite it being the wrong sense, leaves a tantalizing taste in my mouth which I can only describe as being awkward. 

Oh? So you're all still here then, huh? Ha. Hahahaha. Great.... Well.... I'm glad you're still here, infact, I'm HAPPY! Yes! I'm Happy to see that everyone including myself is still around, and please don't mind the face paint I drew on myself or the incoherent chanting that I was singing over and over while dancing circles around the fire I made out of my credit card bills... Yea, just forget about all of that, because well... The world didn't end, and I suppose from this point forward, things will have to just continue on like nothing ever happened, because nothing ever did happen. 

Brilliant. 

So between the last update I made and this update, I went from making this subtle brag about how I wasn't single anymore to now being single again. I'll be pretty brief about this chapter of my life, because frankly speaking, it's not a pretty one, which ironically enough... Is probably something that you all want me to go into more detail about huh? WELL TOO BAD! To put it shortly, she kept telling me I didn't care, I kept doing things to show her I cared (least I thought I was), which apparently did nothing because in the end I still got dumped for not caring enough /being good enough. Typical. It just wasn't meant to be. 

So yea, I decided that versus sulking about and going through this whole stupid existential crisis that I always force myself to go through whenever life changing events occur, I'd just skip all of that and get back into the rhythm, else I'm going to fall behind everything that I'm working on.

So to give a very brief update on things: My work is going good as usual, things are pretty relaxed and slow as I am currently taking training this week. I have a 1 week vacation planned the following week with my ex, whom I am going to hang out with. Is that kind of weird? Some people might think that's kind of weird. I am kind of weird anyway, so whatever. 

I have an interview this Friday for a job in Colorado, and I'm still preparing for it. Apparently I have a pretty good chance to get the position as I have people working at the company who have already put in a good word and recommended me, now the real question here is whether or not I actually want to move to Loveland, CO which is a place I have never been to in order to gain a marginal pay increase, living cost reduction, and etc.. etc... etc... I would have to drop 2 of the businesses I am working on as they require my physical presence in California, but the money I would make from moving would completely make up for that... Aw shit.

I still plan to go back to law school eventually at some point in my career, so this wouldn't be a bad idea if I decided to work in Colorado for 3-4 years, move back to California and then continue on with my plan, but my fear is that I might either A. Hate the job and want to quit which would then mean I made a huge mistake leaving California, or B. Settle down in Colorado for the rest of my life and give up on my dreams here. 

Well, whatever... This is actually a really hard decision for me to make, but I suppose I will have to wait until after my interview and after I hear a decision from the company... Overall, if I didn't get the job, that would make my life a lot easier, and a part of me kind of hopes that I don't, but that's really just not the right way to think. It's honestly a once in a lifetime opportunity that I've even gotten this far, and it would be a big mistake career-wise to pass it up, but I'm also giving up my youth and my ability to have fun if I do take the job, because they WILL work my ass off. SIGH....

So about 2 months ago I broke my streak of making at least one post every month for the past 10 years, and apparently that was the small push needed, the unaccounted anomaly required to cause the cogs of destruction to engage and begin their slow but deadly rotation in transmitting this world to its demise. 

See, this is what happens when you don't give the glue that holds together the shoddy makeshift raft made of thread called xanga the appreciation that it deserves, THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS!!! Now the end of the world is upon us! THIS IS WHAT THE MAYANS MEANT WHEN THEY SAID 2013 WOULD BE THE END OF THE WORLD. PRAY! PRAY TO YOUR PAGAN GODS, YOU FOOLISH MORTALS!

I was but the messenger, unknown to the role that I would play in the larger picture... Very much surprised by what occurred... 

Anyway, I jest.

If it wasn't already apparent, it seems like this site is on the brink of shutting down. Which, while some might point out is certainly saddening as a large chuck of our lives is written down and recorded on here, I would say it is also not surprising.... The website itself just had no clue what in the hell it was doing, trying to specialize in multiple different 'niche' markets that ultimately caused this entire space to look like a Frankenstein of the sorts, some sort of creation that looked like every body part came from something else and didn't belong where it was currently situated,,,

There was never a 'community' in xanga, just a cluster of small nests that never operated in tandem with one another, and when one got too big, it was brought down, attention was diverted away as to not upset the others and make them feel as if the smaller groups were being forgotten. This constant rebalancing that was being done by the invisible hand is ultimately what killed off the most prominent and attractive things about this site that brought people here in droves... This constant focus and obsession to create, design, and please all the different types of people was just a losing strategy to begin with....

A mission with noble objectives, much like Columbus and his desire to innovate, except this isn't Columbus... Instead of a small fleet of 3 ships, this site had something great going for it and, going back to my previous analogy, decided to tear it apart and rebuild it into something worse, a raft made from random garbage found in a junk yard, kept together with rubber bands and human hair, pushing away every person that liked what it was before, and only keeping veterans that remained pathetically loyal, holding onto the shred of hope that things would return to the way they were, grasping out at the wonderful memories made but only, always finding empty hands.

I will certainly miss it if this site is gone. It would be a lie for me to say otherwise, I did a lot of growing up over the last 10 years and recorded a lot of it on this blog, if not concrete events, at the very least 'checkpoints' for myself to remind myself of where I was and what I was doing during that moment in time, but things like time are irreversible, and there is no going back so looking at the past will only bring pain.

I'm not nearly as active as I used to be, most of the friends I made on here have left years ago and gone on to other things whether it be online or off. The site itself might be gone, along with everything that was ever written, recorded, and shared, but the memories... Ah yes, those wonderful memories much like the nightmares of life will stay with me, and the rest of you, for the rest of our lives, like brutal scars that may fade a bit over time but still remain. EVERLASTING!

So that ends my gay spiel about the death of Xanga. Regardless of whether or not the site stays online, I'm glad I met most of you, and I had a great time. I have made good friends and met the woman I'm currently in a lovely relationship with thanks to this site.

This isn't the first time that an online community that I participated in has shut down leaving all of the inhabitants to fend for themselves, ultimately moving onto other places, places more suited for their personal tastes. Don't worry, life goes on and things always get better before they get worse, and they also get much, much, much worse before they get better

If anyone would like to add me on facebook to stay in touch and put a face to the genius behind all of this brillant, asinine prose, by all means feel free to add me with the URL on the right panel of this site, otherwise toss me a private message if you'd like to stay in touch via other means like skype. 

I decided to collectively cash out all of my stock positions held in high rated corporations with excellent fundamentals in order to dump into a combination of junk stocks, super-junk stocks, and super-duper junk stocks.

Why did I do this? Because life is too short, and you can't just always play it safe all the time and expect to get ahead. No. Sometimes you gotta take risk, big risk. You gotta take big chances to make big gains. 

I said I wanted to retire by the time I am 35 and I was completely fucking serious when I said that. No, I don't mean retire in the sense that I want to go live on an island in the Bahamas or some Verizon FIOs enabled cabin in the Rockies... I mean retire in the sense that I am so fucking god damn financially secure that I don't NEED to work because I NEED the money, I work because I ENJOY it, and I have the FREEDOM to do whatever it is that I want whenever I want. 

I realized that at the current safe route I am going, I was looking to retire in my 50s. No. Too late. I want to conquer Asia like Genghis Khan, that's never going to happen when I'm 50. There is no way I can ride around as a fearless warlord when I'm distracted by the onset of arthritis, Alzheimer's, and breaking my hip from having a bad dismount on my trusty stead. 

So thus, I've decided to take on a risk. An insane amount of risk infact, so much that I can't even be surprised or mad if I end up losing all of my savings besides the 401k that I thankfully cannot touch else I'd dump all of that into junk stocks and bonds as well.

Some might call me greedy, others might call me impatient, and a couple more might just outright say that I'm an idiotic moron for doing what it is that I'm doing, but you know what, I DON'T GIVE A FUCK. LOL.

DON'T CARE. DON'T CARE. DON'T CARE.

*jumps up from laptop, rips off clothes and starts dancing around naked*

Anyway...

I'm aware of the potentially disastrous consequences which I will face in the near future, I am also aware of the extremely high upside.... At the end of the day people live how they want to live and they will continue to do so despite the sound advice and counsel which wiser and more experienced individuals may provide them. I can now say that I am one of those arrogant and reckless people. I've thrown out all of my investing books/knowledge and brought into the speculation game.

Hope for the best!

It took me three hours to drive home in the shitty traffic. When I park and walk up the stairs who do I see at the entrance but my pet cat glaring at me through the screen door screaming bloody murder.

Apparently in my rush to leave on Sunday I forgot to shut the door and leave food for the cat. The little bastard threw a temper tantrum from me being gone two days and decided to slash open the bag of food so that it was a warzone in the kitchen. I looked at the feline in the eyes after seeing the mess and she looked back at me with the most pissed off face I have ever seen on a cat while she made meowing noises that I feel would have meant something along the lines of 'Fuck you, I never wanted this to happen, you forced my hand. Now clean this fucking mess, you bitch. Meow.'

Just woke up dazed on a couch with my clothes missing...drunken stupor has worn off, hangover setting in, now time to head home.