Teretz Syndrome

Saturday, February 22, 2003. 12:37PM

What I really should do is write a small piece of log - say a paragraph or so, every day. All through the week small things happen, just little things, little anecdotes and stuff (someone once observed many years ago that I seemed full of small amusing anecdotes about my life, and I think that is less so now, but there are still at least some anecdotes) and I think "hmm... that should go in the log this week." Anyway, come several days later when I actually sit down to write the damn thing and what comes to mind? Nothing.

I guess I'll start with last night. I went out with some friends. Well, one of my oldest buddies who I haven't seen for ages, another buddy of a similar time period but less buddy intensity, and two girls. Now, one of these girls is a girl I've know for years, basically as the girlfriend of a friend, and the friend of a friend, and for a while, the room mate of a friend (all these friends are different people), any way, it seemed to me that she'd come to being the girlfriend of my old but lesser intensity friend. The other girl was the overly too young, button nosed and recently stolen from his brother (that was a story and a half) girlfriend of my old friend. Why do I mention this? Well, I had been expecting it to be just a few of my old friends, when suddenly I discovered that I had been throw in a melting pot of being a fifth wheel. It's okay, son, act charming. So I did. The evening was quite pleasant. Nothing really to tell. Sorry, it really felt like I was building up to a massive climax there, didn't it?

I did observe something though: particulary when being charming, but often at other times, I have little or no control over my somewhat rubbery features. My eyebrows in particular, often raise themselves in a suggestive manner, at no whim or command from me. Even at entirely inappropriate moments. I realise now it's been happening for years. Wow. I once knew a guy who shaved off his eyebrows - maybe that was why. That would look fucking strange, actually - someone raising their bald skin in a suggestive manner.

Earlier in the week I had a bunch of friends over and we stayed up all night, drank far too much coke, played far to many computer games and generally bonded in good old fashioned male style. Anyway, the overall out come of this was that I ended up with a copy of the computer game, SimCity 4. Now, a few years ago, I was a nerd. Many people would say nothing has changed (I have a website for Christ's sake). Anyway, in my youth, I initially poured many, many hours (on my 386) into a came called SimCity. The objective of which was to create a Megolopopolis (5,000,000 population of above). Now, I never managed it. Metropolis was as high as I could go, but after several years, that didn't matter, because SimCity 2000 came out, and I could finally construct cities that looked a lot better, with primitive 3d graphics. I built my cities on perfect 6x6 square grids, and no matter how many cities I built, they all looked exactly the same. After a while SimCity 3000 came out, but that was basically 2000 with a bunch of actual landmark buildings added in, and didn't hold much interest for my (also, my computer couldn't really hack it), so I was diverted for a time by SimTower (one of the most fun - again, however, my formula was three floors of office, seven floors of condo, three floors of office, lobby, and repeat), SimFarm (nothing but huge grids of orange fields), SimAnt (there is really very little playing in this you basically dispatch your ants and let them do the work for you), SimEarth (I only played this for a few hours because it was crap. Well it probably wasn't crap, but it was too complicated for me to figure out exactly how I could turn my algae into monkeys), and very briefly, SimIsle (which was taken from me before I could explore it properly). Any way, I thought that I had escaped all that. That never again would I construct a home for little simulated people and be amused by Llama jokes. But no, now I have SimCity 4, and I feel it calling to me. All night. All day. Right now it is calling. I hate it, yet I love it. Oh, woe is me. My life is a misery, why, can't you see, that I'm at the start of a pretty big downer?

Briefly, the other things that happened were I saw Gangs of New York which was badass (is there even a propper way to spell that word), Catch Me If You Can which was stylish, and my sister came back from China (she's been their six months or so for the uninitiated) bearing a shit load of DVDs, some of which are totally cool (the first one I watched was Magnolia, which made me want to fuck Heather Graham - follow my logic someone). Anyway, they also include every episode of Black Adder, so my days have been spent watching Black Adder (Ed, if you want to see all the cornerstones of British television comedy, Black Adder is really the counterpoint to Red Dwarf) and trying not to play SimCity.

My mother found out how much I weigh and is on a campaign to fatten me up. Last night someone told me I should move in with him, and it occurred to me that if I get a job that pays even half of what I old one did (or I have half as many hours or whatever) I could probably move out, and be done with her shit once and for all. No pool table or computer or TV or a lot of other things, admittedly, but nonetheless, no mother is a pretty damn big plus. They're going away for six weeks in the middle of the year, so maybe after that I'll give it some serious thought.

Ah well. Goodnight, everyone.

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