Old Friends

I went into Wal-Mart today to buy a space heater. For those of you who don’t know the heat in my house works when its convenient for it and the space heater I had before caught fire thrice. So some new equipment was in order.

When I was about to check out I ran into a girl whom I work with but never talk to. This same girl is also someone I knew from high school, she was about thirteen or twelve when I first met her. Of course she’s not a child anymore, she’s twenty two or so.

She’d lost her dog recently and we just spent time in the store talking. I felt odd, like something might happen that just caused trouble or caused an argument but it didn’t and we just talked for a while and parted ways.

I don’t think things will change between us, but its weird to see someone like that and just kind of link up to talk like everything is normal, especially when it feels genuine.

The SOPA Bill

If you don’t know you need to read up on it, check Wikipedia or the news—but not the television. You won’t find it there because the news agencies have pretty much kept it from being spoken about at all on the TV. From what I understand this bill covers every kind of freedom infringement from monitoring everything sent across networks to completely shutting down websites and/or blocking the public from accessing them.

So why is the government allowed to pass this and where is the opposition? Well it consists of some pretty big names that include Google, Facebook, Flickr and some others. It could also lead to abuse by different ISP companies to make a buck off their customers. Imagine not to being able to read a site for a Coca Cola product because the ISP you use gets money from Pepsi. Basically this is the whole net neutrality thing but worse.

And the government has been trying to slip this shit past in one form or another for the last few years. John McCain sponsored a bill called the Internet Freedom act that was something like this and then there was the COICA last year. The thing is that this bill actually threatens the freedom of the internet as a place to share ideas, sell products and other things.

It’s filled with vague language which reads like the kind of thing written for the government to take advantage of and it’s a huge deal. Though you haven’t heard much about it on any major outlets because the bill serves their needs.

In the last year any faith I’ve had in Congress and their political process in general has broken down. Between the Supreme Court, Congress and the Debt Ceiling and the Tea Party and their big glut of bullshit and now this mess it seems like the only excuse is to throw out the way the government works with corporations and Wall Street and regulate the Hell out of it all.

Better Person

Despite my anger at this girl for what she pulled last weekend, I ended up calling her and telling her I knew and just asking her to apologize. She sounded sincerely embarrassed and sorry and even then I didn’t even want her to feel bad about it and told her she would be my friend still.

It feels odd but the more I thought about it, the more I realized someone who would do this sort of thing more than likely has a lot going on in their life and I don’t want to add to the pile of bad things happening with them.

I’m not that guy, I mean I spend enough of my time hating myself. I don’t need to give those thoughts actual clout.

De-Valued

This Saturday ended badly. Had I been a worse kind of person I would have easily done something horrid to this person but I think they really undermined their own value in their attempt to get what they wanted.

The story goes like this: I went to see Rickey this weekend and we went to have sushi because, well sushi is fucking delicious. Anyway there’s this girl I wanted to take out and she knew as much. She was told last week and we were making plans to go out. Rickey knows her too, he’s how I met her so he called her up and convinced her to come out. Well that’s when the trouble began.

We hung out at Starbucks, that was fine. Then we went to Gringos where we had to wait for a table because its Gringos. Well while we waited this girl spends her whole time talking to Rickey about how awesome he is and how he dates girls too ugly for him and how he shouldn’t go after these scrawny women. When we got inside I piped up and it ended up being a little more of a chipper conversation but there was a lot of texting going on, admittedly some of it was me texting Rickey about her but it wasn’t bad comments.

On the other hand she was texting someone too.

So the night moves on from there and a third person joins us and we go to a bar, I hate bars because its impossible to get to know someone but this wasn’t so bad. Well the bar thing went on for a few hours and then we went back to an apartment for some drinks with other friends. I was pretty drunk but not to the point I couldn’t reason or speak. Well I talked to this girl outside and she instantly launches into this speech about how she doesn’t want to hurt my feelings and she wants us to be friends and wants things to be normal and not awkward. Why does this sound familiar?

Thing is I wasn’t mad and I kind of expected us to not work out but I had expected a slight chance. But when I told her that Rickey wasn’t into her, which I just knew from knowing him and I knew she liked him because she told me, she tells me that she needs time alone. Well I left her for several minutes and she plays some sad songs on her phone outside alone and then moves to the other side of the apartment (out front). I go out to take her a bottle of water to check on her and she refuses it and tells me just send Rickey. That kind of pissed me off because it was rude but I did as I was told.

He spends an hour outside and when we finally go to leave they’re all up next to each other sitting on the steps. We walk back to the car all together and the ride home is quiet and awkward. We drop off the girls and after I tried to talk to her again she basically cut me short to leave.

So I go home with Rickey to get my car and he tells me she was texting him at the table in Gringos. I kind of figured as much but the thing was what she was texting him…she basically told him that she liked him right then and there while I was sitting across the table from her and she picks the worst time to do so. Now bare in mind this is a girl who had agreed to go out with me that next week and who had given me her number willingly too.

Old me, me from before 2007 would be manning the battle stations getting ready to make her world crumble around her. The me now is…more adult, tamer and I’m not doing anything but telling her friend why I can’t be around them for a while. I like her friend and her birthday is coming up soon—I’d love to go but I can’t. I can handle rejection but I can’t be asked to be in a room with someone so inconsiderate and I don’t think I would be able to handle her trying to do whatever it is that she would be doing in the situation so I’m bowing out.

Funny part of the story is that if she wanted Rickey to like her she pretty much de-valued herself and if she were to come back to me and want to try again I wouldn’t have her because she showed how horrible her manners are. It’s funny what people do while completely sober and in the heat of the moment. Remember girls, not every guy out there is chasing ass and tits…some of us want our women to have a mind, a heart, some value other than their looks.

Something pretty and otherwise worthless is still worthless.