Life

[Merus]

I will be sure to, but it's quite a lot bigger at this point. The assault touched a very raw nerve, particularly because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time and drunken violence has been an ongoing story. It's still in the news. Mum and Dad are holding a third press conference today. We've seen a tweet from the Prime Minister expressing her relief that my brother's woken up.

 

It's very bizarre, but also comforting that what feels like all of Sydney is behind us.

[SecretAsianMan]

All of Idle Thumbs is behind you too, for what it's worth.

[Joewintergreen]

Shit, dude. I just read about it. Thank fuck he's making such a recovery. All the best etc.

[syntheticgerbil]

Wow Merus, that is a terrible situation. I wish you the best of luck and hope your brother recovers 100%, no permanent damage.

[Apelsin]

Best wishes to you and your family Merus. Good news that the perpetrators turned themselves in.

 

Me and a friend got close to being beat up once too... Luckily for us one of the group who wanted to jump us was still sober enough to talk his friends out of it.

Was such a weird feeling to see a guy who just a few days earlier wanted to beat you up walk past you in the school corridors.

[miffy495]

I've been beaten up outside a bar by a drunk guy before, though not nearly as seriously (just fucked up my teeth). It's amazing how stupid people can be. I'm really sorry to hear about your brother, but happy that things seem to be shaping up about as positively as they could.

 

I feel like kind of a butt writing about a super happy thing following that, but I just got the news. I have been hired by the Calgary Board of Education! Starting in September, I will be on the substitute teacher list at minimum, and if I run the gauntlet just right and luck into a job opening over the summer, I may be able to get my own classroom. That is unlikely, though. What is super important is that I am now officially a freaking teacher! Having the certificate is one thing, having a damn JOB is another!

[toblix]

Yay teach!

[SecretAsianMan]

Nice miffy.  What/who are you going to be teaching?

[tegan]

Defense Against the Dark Arts.

[miffy495]

As a substitute, whatever they need me to. Could be kindergarten one day and diploma level physics the next. The ultimate goal, when I get my own class, is between grade one and three.

[Frenetic Pony]

Gah! Gift giving people, I know if someone doesn't like your gift it can feel bad. But... it's a really shitty passive agressive thing some humans do, to just expect someone to love any gift someone else gives them. "Here, have a thing, you'd better cherish it and pretend you love it even if you really don't, thus maintaining the illusion that A. I know you better than I clearly don't and B. Making me happy and content in the illusion that I am a good and charitable person while you're stuck carrying a thing around with you that you don't care about."

 

What kind of bullshit is that? That you give someone else a gift so you can receive the notion that you are a better person, because that's what matters to you, more than the person receiving the gift getting something they'd actually want?

 

For context, it was my mother giving my little sister a Lladro of my grandmothers. My sister said she didn't care if she got one, but then it was given to her anyway. To be clear, my mother didn't want it, explicitly did not want it, and it was hers to take in the first place. Nor did she mention any special treatment for it; other than the fact her express purpose for giving the thing was so that if my sister went over her cousins house later and saw another of my grandmother's lladro's she wouldn't feel jealous.

 

But my sister isn't jealous, she doesn't give a shit. What my sister does want is a new laptop, so she turned around and sold it. Now this can make her seem uncaring, and my mother got all mad (as I just learned about). I call absolute bullshit. In this particular case it wasn't even presented as a gift but more of a casual foisting upon of "oh, here, this is for you" with the express purpose of the gift giver being to make herself feel better regardless of the gift receivers feelings whatsoever (and yes, my sister thanked her for the "gift" she didn't want).

 

But even in other scenarios, in almost any scenario, while I can see someone not being thankful for an actual gift as rude, the pretense of having to hide that you don't like it is just retarded invitation for ignorance and presumption on the gift givers part that they should receive more than a thanks in return. It's a passive agressive attitude to cultivate, one where without consent you can foist a social obligation onto an unwilling participant for your own satisfaction. So if you give a gift, and someone doesn't like it, just shrug and say they can return it, or do whatever they want with it. Don't pretend the act of giving a gift, which you decided solely to do of your own volition, now implies that someone else has to give you something in return. That defeats the entire purpose of a "gift" in the first place.

[Roderick]

Before Miffy gets to do Defense Against the Dark Arts, he'll have to put up with years of Potions.

[toblix]

*Googles Lladro*

[Gormongous]

Gah! Gift giving people, I know if someone doesn't like your gift it can feel bad. But... it's a really shitty passive agressive thing some humans do, to just expect someone to love any gift someone else gives them. "Here, have a thing, you'd better cherish it and pretend you love it even if you really don't, thus maintaining the illusion that A. I know you better than I clearly don't and B. Making me happy and content in the illusion that I am a good and charitable person while you're stuck carrying a thing around with you that you don't care about."

 

What kind of bullshit is that? That you give someone else a gift so you can receive the notion that you are a better person, because that's what matters to you, more than the person receiving the gift getting something they'd actually want?

 

For context, it was my mother giving my little sister a Lladro of my grandmothers. My sister said she didn't care if she got one, but then it was given to her anyway. To be clear, my mother didn't want it, explicitly did not want it, and it was hers to take in the first place. Nor did she mention any special treatment for it; other than the fact her express purpose for giving the thing was so that if my sister went over her cousins house later and saw another of my grandmother's lladro's she wouldn't feel jealous.

 

But my sister isn't jealous, she doesn't give a shit. What my sister does want is a new laptop, so she turned around and sold it. Now this can make her seem uncaring, and my mother got all mad (as I just learned about). I call absolute bullshit. In this particular case it wasn't even presented as a gift but more of a casual foisting upon of "oh, here, this is for you" with the express purpose of the gift giver being to make herself feel better regardless of the gift receivers feelings whatsoever (and yes, my sister thanked her for the "gift" she didn't want).

 

But even in other scenarios, in almost any scenario, while I can see someone not being thankful for an actual gift as rude, the pretense of having to hide that you don't like it is just retarded invitation for ignorance and presumption on the gift givers part that they should receive more than a thanks in return. It's a passive agressive attitude to cultivate, one where without consent you can foist a social obligation onto an unwilling participant for your own satisfaction. So if you give a gift, and someone doesn't like it, just shrug and say they can return it, or do whatever they want with it. Don't pretend the act of giving a gift, which you decided solely to do of your own volition, now implies that someone else has to give you something in return. That defeats the entire purpose of a "gift" in the first place.

 

Welcome to a gift economy as interpreted by a profit economy.

 

In the former, a gift is just the measure of its presenter and recipient. Once given, Beowulf is free to throw Hrothgar's ring into the ocean. He wouldn't, of course, but he could, because the giving of the gift is what matters. In the latter, gifts are objects and objects have value, so to dispose of the object is to dispose of both its material and social capital.

 

Long story short, this is why I pretty much only accept money on any occasion. Sure, it's still seen as crass, even thoughtless, but I will never offend someone by using their gift of cash the way I want.

[I Saw Dasein]

Long story short, this is why I pretty much only accept money on any occasion. Sure, it's still seen as crass, even thoughtless, but I will never offend someone by using their gift of cash the way I want.

 

What if you donate it to the Illinois Nazis? 

[Gormongous]

What if you donate it to the Illinois Nazis? 

 

Dammit, you're right.

[I_smell]

Got my one-way flight to Holland booked for Monday (!!!)

 

Gonna see my friends n family for the last time over the next couple days. I've bin slowly freaking out over the passed couple weeks, not in a logistical way of how I'm gonna do everything, but just in that I FEEL tired and sad and panicky all the time regardless of what I'm doing or thinking about.

Like a lot of nights is me trying to get to sleep, and then thinking "Oh no, nothing's waiting for me after death" for 4 hours and stay awake- or taking a shower and wondering "What is purpose and happiness beyond delusion".

It's been uncomfortable and very annoying.

 

Our office seems nice, I wanna HOPEFULLY start doing some kind of video or audio updates on who we are and what we're doing. I've wanted to do this for years, but whenever I start recording in my empty room I just turn to stone. Maybe I'll have a new perspective from within a functioning company.

Our current official project will be announced in a couple days via a pleasantly well-animated trailer in the Plug Your Shit thread. Here is our logo splash that I did today.

 

Right now I'm very jittery.

I've booked a weekend back in England in about 6 weeks, when I plan to regail everyone with my amazing stories.

[Gormongous]

Like a lot of nights is me trying to get to sleep, and then thinking "Oh no, nothing's waiting for me after death" for 4 hours and stay awake- or taking a shower and wondering "What is purpose and happiness beyond delusion".

It's been uncomfortable and very annoying.

 

I know it's cruel, but I am so glad I'm not the only person kept up by the thought of "I am trapped in this body and someday it will break and then I will be gone" at night. Anyway, transitions are always easier in hindsight, so just do what needs doing, Smell.

 

Also, I was mostly away from the computer the past couple weeks, but I'm sorry about your brother, Merus, and I'm glad things aren't as bad as they could be with him.

[tegan]

Personally I think it's kind of nuts and incredible that my energy and individual atoms will be recycled endlessly, or until entropy renders it all inert at any rate. My individual consciousness will be gone, yes, but in a certain sense I'm also sort of immortal. Maybe this is the kind of feeling that people get from belief in a religious afterlife, or not.

 

Neat.

 

 

Also, usually when I can't sleep I think about aliens.

[Roderick]

Whenever I have a problem and I go to bed, that becomes a problem for future me. Our atomic self is endlessly fascinating. It's a fun thing to think about why you are you and not another person. But feeling 'trapped' in my body? No, never. We are our bodies. There's no 'pure being' trapped inside a clumsy shell of organs and bone. We are the shell.

 

I_smell, good luck on your Dutch adventure! Try not to become a coke fiend once you set foot in Amsterdam, or a hooker in the red light district.

[Patrick R]

I think about my own imminent death and the futility of all human existence at least three times a day.

 

Actually, way more often since my girlfriend broke up with me on Monday. Five years gone! Turns out this whole open relationship thing was an excuse to sort of create a distance between us and line herself up with someone to replace me*. Or something. Either way, she doesn't love me anymore and I still totally love her and man, does this whole thing blow. I could fill a full sub-forum with all the ways life sucks now, but I've already been pretty dedicated to openly mourning and flagellating myself in every other part of social media, so I figure I should probably keep the weeping to a minimum on the place where I mostly want to talk about how sweet Gunpoint is (spoiler: really sweet).

I guess what I am looking for is advice on how to deal? This has been my longest and most serious relationship ever. I've had break-ups before, but never ones that sucked this bad, in so many different ways. I can't get over how much reminds me of her. Literally everything about my life in the past five years has been partially based on being with her, and the assumed future that we would continue to be together. Even the fact that my keys are lighter and smaller because I don't have her apartment keys anymore kills me.

 

How do you stop yourself from constantly thinking about it?

 

*In all fairness, she denies this completely, and I may just be super bitter and connecting the dots to form a more insidious picture of her than what actually happened, but I'm still skeptical of the story she gave me. I don't think you end a five year relationship on a whim. She says she suggested the open relationship with no intentions of this sort of thing. But she had to have begun to feel tired and done with our relationship before she ever suggested the open relationship a mere month ago, right? And the fact that she spent less and less time with me and more and more time with this other guy, until she broke up with me and stayed with him...that doesn't make it sound like he had nothing to do with it as she claims, right?

[Roderick]

Well, that's a sucky situation, Patrick. I would say good advice is - you know what? Here ya go: http://captainawkward.com/'>http://captainawkward.com/ There are tons of posts on there on how to deal with every aspect of relationships, including break-ups, and it's all super awesome. Please make good use of this.

 

As for your specific deal; it doesn't feel right that your ex lined up another dude before she left you. As a human being, that's just not a decent thing to do. I can't say whether she planned this or not, but it's bullshit to step out of a relationship because you're developing one with another person. That isn't right. It happens, sure, and it can easily be not maliciously at all, that is to say without intent, but it still is a crappy thing to do to your significant other.

[tegan]

As for your specific deal; it doesn't feel right that your ex lined up another dude before she left you. As a human being, that's just not a decent thing to do. I can't say whether she planned this or not, but it's bullshit to step out of a relationship because you're developing one with another person. That isn't right. It happens, sure, and it can easily be not maliciously at all, that is to say without intent, but it still is a crappy thing to do to your significant other.

 

Yeah, my ex did this to me. She was literally living with the guy the day after we broke up. It's the shittiest.

[brkl]

That does sound like she found a way to make the break up as easy as possible for herself with no regard to how it affects you. It's possible she didn't do it consciously as she says, but we have some responsibility to be conscious of our actions and how they affect people, don't we?

 

This is a good time to find new projects or hobbies. Get fit. Get a little crazy. Get to grips with the fact that the relationship is now part of your past and not your future. Try to let go of any resentment you might be left with.

 

Don't think of it as five years down the drain. Relationships aren't something we get stuck in because there's a grand prize waiting for us if we manage to die before breaking up. I'm sure you got something out of it while in it, and anyway you've got a lot more experience under your belt you can use to improve yourself and possibly avoid some pitfalls in our future relationships.

 

The last time I broke up, I made a system that composed generative music for any video based on factors like color, contrast, brightness and how fast those values changed compared to previous frames. Didn't find time for shit like that when I was living with someone.

[Ucantalas]

I've never really been in a relationship*, so I don't really have any practical advice.

All I can say is, I'm sorry to hear it, and I hope things get better for you.


*Edit: This isnt strictly true. There was one, but I fucked it up kind of I think. I'm still not sure what happened there. But its not really fair to say there wasn't a relationship there. So...I don't know.