Paranoid Android. Me?

Its one of those nights where you just can't sleep. I have a lot of those, a trait I'm sure I inherited from my dad. You lie down and close your eyes, but you can't stop thinking about everything, the million thoughts running through your head. Every little detail seems to block you from fading into subconsciousness, or whatever it is you enter when you go to sleep.

Everyone always tries suggesting a different remedy, what helps, what doesn't. My little sister used to come in my room late (for us late was like midnight), and tell me she couldn't sleep, that she wasn't tired. I would tell her to do jumping jacks. That usually didn't help. I just finished running around my block at 3 A.M., a large feat for someone so lacking in the physical fitness department as myself.

So what exactly is on my mind? Conspiracy. Secrets. Paranoia. Emphasis on the paranoia I'm sure. When I was a little kid I used to think that the only reason anyone hung out with me was because my parents payed them to hang out with me, or that there was at least some outside force working on my behalf to make sure I did well. After all, why would anyone willingly want to spend their time with me? I felt like a lot of times the people I was around didn't enjoy company, rather instead choosing to tolerate it, but why they did I couldn't decipher.

That paranoia has since then kind of died down, but I still often feel like I'm in my own version of The Truman Show. I've never actually seen the movie, but the point is I think that everyone around me is privy to some secret, some hidden characteristic that I possess, except for me. Like my whole life I've had a really distinct smell, or I've had bird poop stuck to the back of my head for the past twenty years. I told that to one of my friends a while back, and all I got was a laugh. No "you're crazy", no confirmation of my fears, just a laugh. Some friend.

All of these are probably completely unfounded fears based in having too much time to think and not enough to do, but if it wasn't for the complete lack of interesting things in my life, I'd say there's the slight probability that there might be a camera hidden inside my speaker right now, staring at me, contemplating my life, and everyone knows it but me.

To justify these neuroses I've had, I have to say I've always considered myself different, and always considered my thought process different from those around me. That probably sounds redundant as hell, as I don't expect any two people to have really similar thought processes, really similar interest/disinterests, really similar experiences, etc. but nonetheless, I feel like I don't really have much in common with anyone I know. And the ones that I do have things in common with (usually non-moz, white, comp sci geek that is really wierd) I really don't want to hang around. Maybe thats how everyone else sees me, the same way I see those wierd comp sci people that were in my classes.

Even my roommate and his brother, though they both like Cowboy Bebop, its almost like they clique with me on that only to amuse me, not because they actually like it. Kind of an out of pity type thing, which if thats the case I really don't want. I'm not interested in friends for pity's sake, nor am I interested in anything else for pity's sake. I don't like to dwell in my own misery and paranoia, I'd rather rise above. Its just that it's hard to do that when theres absolutely nothing else to occupy your mind.

Still can't sleep, lots on my mind. I'll just go veg out and watch some TV. I'm so totally taking the easy way out.

Nerdy and Loving it

Lets get something straight: I don't consider myself the nerdiest person I know. I would however put myself in the upper echelons of nerd-dom though. I have a very broad, yet random taste in everything. I love 80s music, I love watching Food Network, I love reading fantasy novels, watching epic fantasy movies (I just saw Chronicles of Narnia tonight), I'm a tech geek, and lets not forget my over-arching obsession with video games. Pirates, Ninjas, Bounty Hunters, Space Cowboys, Hot Shot Rogues, Assassins, all personal favorites of mine.

I've also recently developed a taste for things in the vein of the finer arts. I can't see myself going to a stuffy museum to ponder some kind of disfigured artwork any time soon, but I don't mind doing the whole broadway musical/classy theater/opera show thing either now. There's a student group here at MSU called "Culture through the Arts" that provides financially-challenged college students such as myself free tickets to culturally educational and/or charged programs at both the Wharton Center and Fairchild Auditorium, two of MSU's larger theater-type settings, so I've gone to an event or two through that, and had an enjoyable time.

The point of all this though is, that no matter how off-the-wall my choice of interests seems, I love it, and take pride in it. I closely treasure my nerdiness, it's my seperation from the mindless drones that surround me, and their interests in what I consider to be much more superficial things, like jean sales at Express, and conversations about how hawt Bipasha Basu is. Not that there's anything wrong with any of that, I indulge in all of them from time to time too, but it gets old fast. Is that all you're really concerned with?

Now if only I could find more people that had similar tastes in life as I did. Maybe it's better that I don't though, so that I can preserve that sense of unique identity that this characteristic of my life provides for me. Off to find something random I go!

I'm on the outside, and I'm looking in

Music is quite possibly my favorite thing in this world. All styles of music, old, new, loud, soft, there are few things I would rather do than listen to a good musical selection. Music has a way of inspiring me, and a good song speaks to my soul better than most anything else I can think of. I'm not quite sure what exactly that means, having something "speak to your soul", but if anything does it, it'd be music.

I'm sure that's kind of a scary thought, to place something so seemingly pointless as music on such a pedestal. I know all about the different Islamic arguments, is music haraam, is it halaal, certain instruments, different scholars, all that jazz. I'm not endorsing it as halaal or haraam, but I will say that if it is haraam I'll just be paying for this sin on the Day of Judgement.

A lot of people need absolute silence in order to get any studying/work done, but I personally really can't do most of my work without music (unless its reading, in which case I put on music without words). If you look carefully you'll see that I make a lot of musical allusions in my posts, and that I take a lot of quotes and throw them in. The reason I do this is because music is one of the only ways I feel like I can relate to the rest of society. Having a similar music taste, or liking the same band is a great, flattering gesture in my mind, to say that even though we have never seen each other, we feel like we can both relate to the same notions. Its a notion I liken to the saying "You're not alone."

My whole life I've felt like the outsider, as a lot of people do I'm sure. Some of that might be unfounded, but some of that can be attributed to the fact that everyone thinks differently, and has a different mindset. Nonetheless, that's a feeling I thought would die with high school, where it was never really something I payed too much heed to, instead always having video games to fall back on. Music does a good job of helping me find Somewhere I Belong. (that's the title of a Linkin Park song for the unawares).

Some day maybe I'll get over the stigma, but it's not something that I'm entirely uncomfortable with, being the outsider, the lone wolf. It's something I take pride in some times, the ability to say I'd rather sit here and write/read as opposed to going to KFC and "studying" at the library with my roommate and company.