Cogs can think.

During lunch with my parents at Het Trefpunt in Schoorl.

Dad: Yeah, I need to go to Berlin again, it’s been a while. I’m sure there’s a sub-100EUR ticket somewhere.

Mom: You could go by train.

Dad: Yeah… Maybe I’ll do that. Take the train, and go to Berlin by myself…

Me: Going to Berlin alone? That’s kind of sad, isn’t it?

Silence.

Me: Oh, wait.

Some short notes:

My mother was operated on again last Thursday. Not too long ago, she had a complicated breast reconstruction surgery done, but one of the breasts actually got infected, and needed to be removed again in a rush surgery. This week they fixed the situation, so let’s hope she doesn’t get an infection this time. Everything went well, and she will be discharged from the hospital tomorrow.

I introduced Renate and Bart to Battlestar Galactica (starting with the miniseries, of course), and they seem to like it so far. Bart is into sci-fi and space stuff, so no surprises there. Renate, on the other hand, isn’t a particular fan, so it’s nice to see her liking it. Let’s hope they’ll like the series as well.

On a very related note, Nicki Clyne agreed to an interview for OSNews. Nicki Clyne portrays Cally Henderson in Battlestar Galactica, and the first moment I saw her in the miniseries I had a sensation of wait-I-know-her-load-up-imdb, and as it turned out, she played a 5-line role in Dead Like Me (“DON’T tell your mom…”). I’m really looking forward to the interview - too bad it can’t be a face-to-face one (seeing we live on opposite sides of that thing filled with water, and I can’t swim), but hey, you can’t have the whole world. We’ll make do.

It’s 2am here, I demand a shower and a bed.

My parents bought their first mp3 player today. They bought the new iPod Nano. I was - obviously - tasked with buying it for them, setting it up, and uploading the first few CDs. This is my first hands-on experience with an iPod that lasted longer than 3 seconds (I’m the world’s worst geek). Two things.

1. You need an iTunes account for downloading artwork. If you don’t have an account, and don’t want one either, like my parents or myself, you need to rely on 3rd party applications to draw artwork from Amazon’s database. Hardly what I call user friendly.
2. I set the Nano up at my own house, using my PowerBook (I don’t wish to infect my Windows box with Apple’s crappy Windows software). Later today, I visited my parents’ to give them the Nano and give them some instructions on how to add albums to iTunes and the Nano - and things went tits up. Apparently, an iPod first hooked up to a Mac cannot be connected to a Windows machine (what my parents have) afterwards. As a geek, I know this is a HFS+ issue, but what about all those normal users Apple always says it targets? Why couldn’t they just format the device with fat32 in the first place, like all other players do? Or, better yet, why don’t they include an HFS+ driver in iTunes:Windows? Why don’t they warn me upon first hooking the Nano up? Give me a bloody choice at least? Now I had to reset the Nano, loosing all the work I had already done!

First iPod experience: EPIC FAIL.

It was a rather cold January night, about 4.5 years ago. I had been tossing and turning in my bed for about one or two hours now, and I already gave up on ever getting some decent sleep done that night. My mind was stuck on something. Something was wreaking havoc through my brain. Tapes, coming out of ears, sticking me to the roof of the attic room that I slept in back at my parents’ house. I decided to do something that I usually did when I get stuck.

I jumped out of bed, put on some jeans and a shirt, and walked downstairs, through the kitchen, the storage rooms, and into my dad’s office. It was around 1am, he was sitting behind his computer, probably working on some poetry or one of his longer stories.

Dad, what if I don’t like her? What if those feelings that I think I have are nothing but an illusion? What if I’m interpreting this all wrong? It came out a little blunt.

Son, you never really know, my father reassures me. It’s nothing to worry about, we all go through this at one point in our lives. It’s perfectly normal.

I looked down. I started to explain. But I feel guilty, I say, what if she loves me more than I do her? What if I’m just doing all this for the sake of doing all this? Just to be able to say, look, I love that girl - just to be able to say it?

So what? My dad replies matter-of-factly. That’s nothing to feel ashamed about. We all want to pretend we feel something even when we don’t when we’re as young as you are. It’s called life. Learning to understand your feelings is more or less what life is all about. And when you die? You still won’t know for sure that all those things you felt were actually really true.

—

A few days later, it ended in tears, followed by a few big bangs. I did what I usually do whenever I don’t have a clue as to what the hell is going on: I blame someone else. Pointing fingers is something I happen to be really good at, you see. Pointing fingers moves the spotlight away from yourself, forcing it to focus on someone else. But it wasn’t solely her fault, as the people around me said. She was a weird piece of human, that’s for sure. An odd-ball, different than any other girl on this planet, but she wasn’t wrong. She was sweet, intelligent, and dealing with some really difficult things in her life - just as I was (and still am) dealing with some really difficult things in my life. Wrong place, wrong time, wrong people, wrong everything.

Oh, and she started dating someone else, which, oddly, kind of didn’t help the situation. And to make matters worse, I wasn’t in love with her at all, just as I feared. It took me a little while to find out, but there was another girl in my life. A girl that made me forget everything that I had learnt up until then.

—

I’m not an easy person to live with. Sure, on the outside, when you first meet me, I’m all easy going like The Beach Boys on Sunset Blvd, but when you want to get too close, when you want to know more than just the 5-10% that’s stuck to my outer self, you’re in for a hard time. I don’t let people in easily. It’s not that I don’t want to, it’s just that my past left such a big mark on me, and seriously damaged the trust that I should put in those close to me, that I’d much rather build a little wall around me, with just one door that opens from the inside only. No windows.

That is, until I met her - and more importantly, her. The former fixed the door so it could open from the outside too, and the latter put in windows, and removed the lock from the door - in fact, she tore down the door, put a big sign on the doormat that reads “Welcome!” in Trebuchet MS, brought in a postcard with a ‘thank-you-for-being-you’ note, and then cosily put a comfortable chair inside of it for her to sit on whenever she felt like it.

The first girl? She was the one who I mentioned earlier, the other girl, the girl who I was actually in love with. This wonderful woman made me realise that I had so much more to offer than I gave myself credit for, she tapped into that sense of playful arrogance and pride that was lurking deep within me. She opened my door, and allowed me to be me for the first time. And I loved her so much for it.

But I didn’t want to know. My friendship with her was so close, and it meant so much to me, that I didn’t even realise that I was actually in love with her. The girl who I talked about with my father? She was a surrogate. And a surrogate that couldn’t even hold a candle to the real deal, no matter how hard I forced myself into believing that she could.

It would take me years to figure all this out. Surrogate girl didn’t become surrogate girl until only about two years ago. My friendship with non-surrogate girl (blogging without names sucks major ass) watered down rather quickly when she changed schools. I’ve been effective at pushing her away, and she has been effective in accepting that.

By the way, she never knew. And still doesn’t.

—

The tearing-down-doors-and-bringing-in-postcards-and-comfortable-chairs girl? That’s a completely different story, and she actually has a name.

—

I look back upon the last five years as somewhat of a revelation. I’ve changed dramatically - for the better, I think. I’ve become more open, outgoing, and I actually learned a whole new word, a word that opened so many doors for me, a word that made me realise there’s more to life than doing what people ask of you: no.

Still, I’ve got a long road to go, a lot of things to learn. But like my dad said - learning what your feelings mean is more or less what life is all about. More than ever, I now understand what he meant when he said that. I’ve got so many years of learning and mistrusting my feelings ahead of me, and you know what? I’m looking forward to it now more than ever. What’s happened has happened, what’s coming is already on its way, with a role for me to play.

I’m me, I’m open to suggestions, but I can’t guarantee I’ll take them into serious consideration. That’s life, peanut!

As I pulled out of my parents’ driveway earlier this afternoon, I noticed one of our cats sitting by the side of the street. Jari sat there, in his usual pose, his gaze resembling that of a supermarket assistant before his first coffee break. He’s rather old, 14 years now, and the years are starting to show. About two years ago he started to get thinner rapidly, his majestic black fur losing its glossy shine due to him being ill. While Jari reclaimed some of his physical glory from before the mysterious illness the vet couldn’t put his fingers on, he’s still noticeably different.

I clearly remember the day we went to pick Jari up. I was 9 years old, and wanted a kitten desperately. My parents already had cats, but they passed away before I was born. A girl in my class told me her cat had kittens, so I probably started my usual nagging cycle, and somewhere right around where I threatened to tie myself to the front of our car, my parents gave in.

A few weeks later, we were driving back home with a small black furball stuck in a cardboard box. Right there and then, Jari demonstrated his extraordinary strength and determination by completely ripping apart the thick box and going all mental inside our car. He jumped up against the car windows, jumped from back to front, and in general, made driving quite a challenge for my mother.

Back home, like all kittens, he showed a fondness for tiny, dark spaces, crawling in every little dark corner he could find. Within days, this behaviour passed, and he started to grow more confident by the day, slowly turning into the emperor he would become. I remember how my brothers and I used to take Jari into our bedrooms, and play with him under the covers of our beds.

As I drove passed Jari this afternoon, and looked him in his eyes, I realised why that stupid old cat means so much to me. He’s not as sweet as Roza, and not as loving and charming as Jobje - in fact, he’s grumpy, sometimes even aggressive, and he can be quite annoying too. Still, this cat means so much to me because he is the only tangible thing in this universe that binds everyone in our family together. No matter what has happened over the past 15 to 20 years between my parents and I on one side, and my brothers on their respective sides, we all love Jari.

Those memories, of playing with Jari under the covers of our beds, might very well be the last unambiguously happy memories I have concerning my brothers. And because of that, no matter how much I love my Twiek and Alice, it will always be Jari that has that special place in my heart.

Some people have ‘wtf’ moments, others have ‘aha!’ moments. I do have the occasional wtf moment, and my aha! moments are usually about three weeks later than average. In addition, I have a third type of moment, the ‘wait, what?’ moment.

I don’t like garden centres. Mildly put. It probably stems from my inability to take of anything green, and my fear of small moving things with legs. When I still lived with my parents, I’d get total passive-aggressive over any chore related to our garden, which, after years of trying to get me to do anything in the garden, finally made my parents stop giving me garden-related chores.

My mother’s birthday is coming up tomorrow (56), and she wanted something from the garden centre - a specific garden centre a few towns west from here. I had never been to this one before, and from the start, it looked a little different. There was something about the entrance that just made it unfit for a garden centre. I soon found out why: this was the Ikea of garden centres. They had set out a path from product group to product group, and you were forced to see and look at everything - the magic Ikea trick that makes you come home with three Lack tables, two Benno CD closets, and a Billy when all you set out to buy was a Billy.

My normal coping strategy for the garden centre visit didn’t work here. Usually, I just RUN RUN RUN, hoping to bump into the right product. When found, I RUN RUN RUN to the register, pay, and then RUN RUN RUN to my car. And cry. Not this time. I was forced to find my way through the maze, and contrary to Ikea, they didn’t have the sneaky shortcuts that make you skip sections. I. Saw. Everything.

And then IT happened.

I had already found my mother’s gift right at the entrance, and as I made my way through the maze, I saw a bunch if differently sized garden pots, in red - and then it happened. I had a thought. In a garden centre. I had a thought IN A GARDEN CENTRE. That’s so not right. I am supposed to be totally numb and mindless in a garden centre. That’s how god intended it, that’s the status quo. And I broke it.

That looks rather nice, I thought, I want that.

I wanted something from a garden centre. I held the red pot in my hand, and it wasn’t until I put it back down again that it hit me that I had broken the status quo. From then on, it all went downhill. I continued my struggle through the maze, encountered a pretty girl but totally ignored her in my slight panic. I arrived at the indoor section, only to encounter a whole section dedicated to red glass vases, dishes, and similar things that men shouldn’t have thoughts about. And again my thoughts were along the lines of I WANT THAT I WANT THAT.

The status quo has been broken. It’s not going to be long now. Keep an eye on your mail box, you can expect a wedding invitation soon. And a birth announcement. And then I come to visit you in our Opel Zafira with my fed up wife washed out in the passenger seat and three crying kids in the back. And a rental caravan for a vacation to France.

Wait, what?

I’d like to introduce a new addition to the family.

Sex is yet undetermined, but they believe it’s a girl - meaning her name will either be Deesie (’Dutchified’ Daisy, as in, Daisy Adair, protrayed by the ever so attractive Laura Harris) or Alice (as in, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland). I really can’t wait until the end of June when she’s ready to leave her mother.

Deesie or Alice - it’ll all depend on her character.

I’m also extremely curious as to how Twiek will react. He’s used to having the entire house to himself, so I wonder what he’ll do as soon as the new kitten arrives. My guess is he’ll puff his tail and dive under my bed, as he always does.

PUSSY.

For a long time now, I’ve been wondering how it’s possible that some people can be extremely excited and happy about the tiniest of things, the tiniest of achievements, gestures, or presents, while others need so much more in order to be happy. How is it possible that some people seem to take on life’s most fcuked up moments effectively, while others seem to cringe at even the slightest of missteps?

There’s a multitude of reasons, of course, but one of them, I think, is what I now call the Theory of Infinite (Un)happiness (I came up with that all by myself, nice eh?). See the below diagram:

There’s a scale that goes from infinite unhappiness, to infinite happiness. Somewhere in between sits your Lifetime; your most difficult and unhappy moments define the border on the unhappiness side, while your best and happiest moments define your border on the happiness side. You spend most of your life somewhere in the middle, but whenever something, for instance, really sad happens to you, it depends on your border on the unhappiness side as to how well you’ll be able to cope with it.

If it falls within the border, you’ll most likely be able to cope with it fairly well. It will affect you, no doubt, but you’ll get over it. If it falls outside of the border, it will be more difficult to deal with - and the further outside the border it falls, the harder it will be to deal with. Of course, this works cumulatively; a lot of unhappy events falling within your border of unhappiness can add up to drive you outside of the border. After the events outside of your border are over, and you’ve dealt with them accordingly, even if it took a lot of time and effort, your border moves up a few notches, and your Lifetime will become broader.

In other words, your personal definitions of “infinite unhappiness” and “infinite happiness” coincide with the border of your Lifetime area. Happiness, therefore, is relative.

An inevitable consequence of the Theory of Infinite (Un)happiness is that not everyone will have a Lifetime of equal width or position. I believe that this is something that can cause major problems in relationships - platonic and romantic. Let me explain.

Even though no one thinks in terms of Lifetimes and infinite whatevers, most people realise subconsciously that their Lifetime might not be as broad or narrow as that of another. Personally, I’ve had my share of really unhappy and sad moments in my lifetime - I have two mentally ill brothers that have wrecked havoc on my parents and I since before I can even remember, and I’ve been through things of which the mere thought can still bring me to my knees - even now, now that my parents and I rarely have contact with my brothers, their names make me cringe, and certain songs that I have connected to them can severely break my day. I won’t detail it all, because it’s really none of your business and I don’t want to sound like a nancy, but it’s been pretty rough.

Add to the above the fact that my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer a few years ago, and all the crap that followed from that, and you cans see that my border on the unhappiness side is closer to the infinite unhappiness side than that of others who’ve had less troublesome lives.

Now, let me assure you, I’ve not had a bad or unhappy youth - quite the opposite. I have an infinite amount of great and very happy moments in my youth, I had every thing I could have ever wished for (well, except for ‘normal’ brothers, that is), and I’ve been blessed with the best parents one can ever wish for.

But I digress. So, for someone of just 23 years old, I have a fairly broad Lifetime area on the Happiness Scale - but I realise that a lot of other people have even broader Lifetimes, because they have been through a lot more shit than I have. In other words, I, and with me many others, realise that something that might make me very unhappy, something that makes me depressed and miserable, can seem like a relatively minor and unimportant incident to someone whose Unhappiness border is a lot further down west - and I act accordingly.

Trivially put, I won’t loudly whine about my phone being stolen to someone who just had their entire house robbed empty, including their cars and wallets.

However, this doesn’t go for everybody. There are quite a few people on this world that do not realise that happiness and unhappiness are very relative terms. That in and of itself is not a problem - it only becomes a problem as soon as these people come into regular contact with someone with a much different Lifetime area than their own.

A person who does not understand the relativity of happiness, and who has a very narrow Lifetime area quite far towards the Infinite Happiness side of the scale, might complain loudly about things that seem utterly and wholly irrelevant and insignificant to someone with a Lifetime area closer towards the Unhappiness side of things. If someone continually complained to me about healthy sibling rivalry, saying it made them very unhappy and depressed, I fully sympathise with that someone, because I realise that’s all he knows - he’s never seen sibling rivalry go beyond what is considered healthy. To him, it’s a major problem, and I’ll treat it as such, and discuss it as such.

But what if I didn’t realise the relativity of happiness? The guy or girl could piss me off, could annoy me with his constant whining about something I would consider insignificant - you can imagine how that wouldn’t really strengthen my relationship with that person. In fact, if it goes on long enough, it might damage it. I’d be pissed off because he whines about what I consider to be nothing, and he would be pissed off because I belittled a problem that is very much really affecting him and making him unhappy.

This theory can explain a lot more than mere troublesome personal interactions. Ever wondered why people who live in third world countries often appear to be very happy and cheerful, even though they barely have a thing to eat and have to worry about whatever the hell they have to do to live through another day? Exactly - the state of being required to make them happy is a state of being that would put us rich and fat westerners three light years outside of our unhappiness borders.

Take the Theory of Infinite (Un)happiness into account whenever you deal with people, and trust me, it will make your life a lot easier. As soon as you actively realise that happiness and unhappiness are relative terms, you will make yourself a lot happier.

Yesterday, my parents and I were back at the AVL cancer hospital.

I’m not going to say much about it, but there is this one thing.

Does anyone else find it unnervingly funny that dozens of people are frantically smoking cigarettes in front of the cancer hospital’s entrances?

You’d think that, at one point, someone has gone through enough crap. That at some point, nature or god or luck or whatever says, hey, look, let’s give these people a break for a while. Let’s, like, not fcuk them for THREE DAYS.

Well, turns out that’s not the case.

Millions of brainless gutter sluts get breast implants every day, without a single complication, without a single problem. Yet, the one person that actually kind of really needs those implants gets screwed over. My mother’s left breast implant got infected. During emergency surgery, it was removed, and it was concluded that the infection was too strong to put anything else back in. This effectively means we’re back to square one.

They say that what doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger. In that case, my mom must be made of diamond right about now. SUCK ON THAT, DE BEERS.