True Story!

It amazes me that people this ignorant don't accidentally kill themselves getting up in the morning, or get beaten up by the postman for claiming that he gets bitten by the dog because his great grandfather made a pact with Beelzebub for a new pair of shoes

When I got to university, I was a mess. I've had to admit this to several of my close friends over the years. I was a mess for the strangest of reasons. In my first year I encountered a lot of new people. A *lot*. I forgot a lot of names, obviously, I'm only human. The interesting part is that for the first time, I was away from home. This is always a big adjustment. Additionally, I met some people who wanted to be friends with me and enjoyed spending time with me. I spent most of every day with them. I don't think I could adjust to this idea. My concept of friendship with most of the people I'd known at school had come to encompass one or two people who seemed to like me, a bunch of people who seemed to like mocking me and some people who tolerated my presence. That's how things felt at least. The sudden contrast was unnerving and I didn't handle it particularly well. I'm not sure why it was so hard for me to adjust to. Additionally at this point I got to know many women, three in particular. One I had a fairly heavy crush on, but she never seemed to reciprocate, i got on ok with her, I wouldn't say friendly and she didn't seem repulsed by the idea, but having seen some of the guys she dated, being turned down by her was, in a way, a positive endorsement. The second was a girl I thought I was in love with. Perhaps I was. She went to pains to point out that nothing would happen without actually being harsh or make me feel bitterly rejected. Or it seemed that way, anyhow. Not that I actually approached her with this. She had a boyfriend and I'm not confident enough to believe I can overcome that kind of obstacle. She was a good friend and still is and I'm actually glad now that we are just friends because at the time we had enough similarities that I'm quite sure that a closer relationship would have destroyed one of us. The third woman was...quirky, let's say. I mad friend with her because she was attractive, I will admit that without a hint of shame. Once again she had a boyfriend. I let it go there and kept being friendly. When she split up with her boyfriend, i tried to be a good friend to her. I do not mean "I tried to be a good friend to her so I could get into her pants" this may shock you but I don't think i even considered it. She seemed to need someone to spend time with and so I spent time with her. I have a fond memory of laying on the floor of her room engaged in a tickling competition. Outside of the occasional friendly hug I think that's the second closest I've been to a woman in my life. The first being when one of my friends let me sleep on an airbed on the floor of her parents living room and decided it was easier to snuggle up to me than go upstairs. After a while, she actually asked if I wanted to go out with her. I still don't know if I did the right thing when I said no, but I suspect that I probably did. I think I recognised that a lot of her feeling came from the vulnerability of having come out of a relationship, left over feeling tagging on to the closest person. The rest of the first year was relatively uneventful. A few ore crushes, nothing as serious as those mentioned. I stopped drinking for several months to prove I could. Something I wish my friend had done, although for a while he had no choice, seeing as he was hospitalised after falling out of a third floor window. I'd like to say I was a better person after it all and maybe in some ways I was, but in others I was still the same mess, perhaps even worse.

The first girl who didn't seem appalled at the prospect of my attraction was in my form when I went to college, which is the stage before university, for all the Americans who don't understand the correct names for the various levels of schooling. The alternative to going to university, which happens at the same age is still called college, but that's neither here nor there. I was fourteen when I went to college, so the six years claimed in my last post is an exaggeration clearly, but not much of one. She had a boyfriend already, and showed no indication of any desire for me, but unlike previous females was not adverse to sitting next to me, or even being friendly, which was a refreshing change. People I knew did their best to make this period of attraction equally as uncomfortable and embarrassing for me as any previous one. I've never quite understood why. When they confided such things in me, I may have teased them a little, but never felt an urge to try and turn it into a sort of living nightmare for them. At no point did I feel a need to stand in front of them before a lessons started, point out that the object of their desire sat in front of them and make obscene gestures and allusions. I got over her in the end and she had an affair with a teacher before finishing college, you can imagine the sort of fuss that caused. The girl after that, I'm sure she found out about my attraction, there always seemed to be someone going around telling people, didn't seem overly bothered either way, although I think by this point I'd pretty much given up on trying to get to know them. She'd never shown much inclination towards conversation with me and I'd started to become very wary of letting the full extent of my feelings be known. However, contrary to the expectations of most people reading this, I was still fairly adept at making conversation with girls. I've always been fairly good at getting on with people, it's the initial catalyst for getting to know them that's my main problem. The girl after that, for example, was one I got on amazingly well with, I used to sit around with her and others and discuss our favourite TV shows, etc. In fact as we had cable at this point, by some unfathomable miracle, I used to record episodes for her to watch. I tried buying her a valentines card, because by this point any sort of face to face confrontation on the subject was beyond me. It turned out she just thought of me as a friend. I didn't avoid her after that and I still recorded things for her, but I no longer put the same effort into gaining her attention, as you'd expect I suppose. Sometime after this period I remember having a long chat with a girl about all sorts of trivialities. It turned out that this (as someone informed me) meant that I wanted to go out/have sex with her. I personally thought I was just having a conversation. The same person who informed me of the feelings of which I was blissfully unaware also told me that the only way I was likely to have sex was by raping someone. I felt this to be rich coming from someone as fat and repellent as him, but I have to be honest and admit I had no idea how to respond to that, especially in light of all the doubts I was already experiencing in relation to my attractiveness to the opposite sex. The girl was actually one of a group we used to see down the pub regularly (I was eighteen by this time, a touch of irony being that I'd been to the pub four or five times and they never bothered to ID me until the week I turned 18, revealing a deficit in the identification I carried with me. One I soon rectified). Her friend used to steal my seat when I went to the bar. I told her the only way she could stay sitting was if I got the stool and she got my knee, which she seemed agreeable with, although I seem to remember her going out with my friend at around this period. That was it, until university, however at this stage in my life I was still fairly secure as my two best friends at school had spent their tie equally single although with significantly less public humiliation.

Someone sent me a book, which I'm reading. Obviously. Anyone who knows me will realise that I approach books in the same way that a locust approaches crops, but with less eating and more reading. It's one of those ones that causes you to think about things, whether you like it or not. My childhood, specifically, which I generally try and forget. In the spirit of this however; I was around ten when I began to notice girls as something to be interested in. In the sort of sly, devious conversations you have with your friend about who you like, admitting it reluctantly because it wasn't so long ago that you would do anything to avoid these alien creatures. It's hard to define now what it was that was interesting about them, just that they were in some way desirable. Sex still wasn't a fully formed concept for us, we'd had lessons about it. I'd read enough books to have a fair idea of what went on and why, but there was still only the most tenuous of links between the topic and the girls we saw everyday. Whether due to my own admission or something they made up for the hell of it, I forget now, my friends decided that I "fancied" (such a terribly childish term for any sort of attraction to another person) a girl. In the maliciousness common to all young boys, that allows them to rip wings off insects and torment little sisters, they decided the best way to use this knowledge was to repeatedly tell her this, at every opportunity. While I tried to hide, or hit them, usually. Her response was to tell me that she'd rather die than have anything to do with me. This isn't the sort of rejection you'd ever like to hear, particularly when you're ten, and hearing it once a week on average and everyone else thinks it's terribly funny. To improve matter further were the small group of girls in my own class, who kept telling me how sexy I was, and how handsome. Which would have been fine, but the tone of their voices suggested they thought anything but, nuances which I was now keen to pick up on thanks to my friend endeavours. It was subtle, childish mockery, the kind that perfectly undermines your confidence before it's even formed. Of course it didn't help that for the next six years every girl I developed any level of desire for seemed to receive the news with mild distaste at best.

One of the problems with being an adult is when you turn around and realise that all the things that made you feel secure and comfortable as a child are gone.

An interesting aspectof the dating site is that you can see when people have read messages you sent them. As of yet, none have. Either women on this site are unaccountably rude, or they checked my profile and I really do come across as unappealing.

One of the many difficulties I encounter is a certain anxiety when it comes to trying to speak to people I on't know, especially women. When I know people well I'm quite comfortable talking to them, yet initiating this contact is difficult for me. With this in mind I've decided, perhaps unwisely, to make use of the ridiculous dating site a friend signed me up to in order to send random messages to women in the hopes of engaging them in a conversation. Perhaps can build my interactions up from there. I have to admit that It's quite challenging to come up with a message to send someone when all you know of them is a short paragraph on a site.

Progress:
Sent: 9
Received: 0

I was in Waterstones, buying some books and the sales assistant pointed to George R. R. Martins' a game of thrones.

"Are you buying this for yourself?"
"Yes"
"It's such a great series!"
I nodded and smiled, not wanting to admit that I'd already read them all and was just buying them to read again.

Me: "Did some fucker use all the labels and not print off any more?"
Coworker1: "Check ____'s tray"
Me: "Brilliant, I knew we kept you around for a reason"
Coworker1: "Yes, still not sure why we keep you around though"
Me: "My amazing sense of humour and stunning good looks, clearly"

Me: "I can't believe it took her over a month to discover I stapled her post-it notes together."
Coworker2: "You are a despicable human being, Lee"
Me: "Yes"

The following business idea came about due to a number of observations. The first being that elephants are an endangered species primarily because people kill them for something they desire. The second observation is that we kill a lot of animals for things we desire, such as pigs, chicken cows, etc. None of these animals are endangered because people take care to ensure that there will always be more of them, rather like planting new trees before cutting them down, rather than deforesting indiscriminately and destroying the landscape.... Now, apparently, as well as the ivory trade, people also kill elephants for meat. Thus an idea was formed. If we farmed elephants, they would no longer be endangered. Firstly, there would be a financial incentive in ensuring a continued supply of elephants, after all an elephant farm would be pretty pointless without any elephants and wouldn't sell much in the way of produce. Secondly, I'm pretty sure farmers could undercut the poachers, as they would be able to make a significant profit by utilising the whole elephant, rather than whatever they can hack off in a hurry. This would put the poachers out of business. After all, how many cow poachers do you hear of? Plus, if someone had ownership of the elephants, they would take care to ensure poachers did not kill them. An added advantage of this plan is that it would provide employment in a third world area, which can only be to the good. Taken to the next level, a series of elephant themed fast food restaurants could be initiated, selling elephant burgers and special children's meals with toys crafted from ivory. After all, the trade doesn't need to be illegal if it derives from fresh farmed elephants, slaughtered in order to provide meat for people. A range of novelty items could also be created, including such items as "elephant trunks" which could either be storage boxes bound in elephant hide and fitted with ivory decorations, or elephant themed swimwear. The idea of the trunk being bound in hide may seem repellent, but the more of the carcass that is used, the less wasteful each death becomes. I considered taking this plan to Dragons Den, but felt that my inherent shyness could prove detrimental when confronted by video cameras, thus harming my proposal.