My writing this evening has already been completed:  I spent myself in a long-ish email to Didi.  Sorry, dear reader, there isn’t much left for you.  “Tomorrow, tomorrow,” as Annie sez.

In the meantime, I invite you to check out the recent Free Music Monday Post over at Mashable:  my buddies over at Smoothe Moose Laboratories & Recordings are featured this week.  Check out their stuff; it’s pretty fly.

This post has nothing to do with fruitcakes, cheese-monkey.

Oh, to be a fly on the wall of my brain.  I’ve been meaning to write Didi a nice loooong email for a little while now (as though there were another kind).  Too much shite is running around in my brain right now, and I haven’t been blogging it out like I usually do.  Quite a bit of it relates to feelings of rejection, which I find to be whiney and I’m not really one to be whining into my blog.  I usually whine to Didi.  And holy shit, are some of those emails long.

I’d put in a plug here for Didi’s blog, but you can’t see it if you’re not authorized.  I’m authorized, which is pretty sweet.  That means I get to see the bits of Didi’s soul that she mashes up and spreads on the computer screen.  It’s actually quite lovely.  She’s actually got two posts waiting for me that I haven’t yet read – I’ll do that tomorrow at lunch.  Now is me-time.

If I spent a bit of time, I’m sure I’d be able to figure out how to post “authorized reader only”…er…posts so that I’m not necessarily spreading all my junk on the computer screen that I’d rather keep between me and Didi (and probably Katie and Scott).  Not that any of it’s all that juicy.  Just whiney.

So I’ve been dipping my toe back in the internet dating pool a bit.  I downloaded the OkCupid app for my AyePhone and have – at least thusfar – managed to not check it in an obsessive/compulsive fashion.  I’ve been sending out short emails to some of the chicks I find attractive, and have achieved a modicum of success which I won’t hesitate to call heretofore unheard-of.

Now, my guess is that my numbers haven’t changed, but rather that my perception thereof has.  Where I once sent out well-crafted emails sealed with love and anticipation, I now mostly just don’t care.  Get back to me or not; my expectations are low.  So I’m not really counting how many emails I’ve sent against how many I’ve received.  It’s kind of a pleasant feeling:  send and forget.

This is mostly, by the way, due to the advice of some of the wonderful women I’ve met on facebook and Twitter.  Thank you, ladies, for taking the time to give me suggestions regarding my internet pickup line format and style.

That said, the emails I’m getting back aren’t of the “YES!!  I want to date YOU!!  NOW!!” category.  One such went something like this:

… also, and I hate to do this, I noticed a dealbreaker for me.  Maybe two.  Firstly, I don’t want to date a smoker and second, I don’t know how far away Ridgewood is from me.  I want to date someone that is conveniently located in my daily world.  I’ve only been to NJ once in my life.

That was actually part of her second email to me.  Things looked pretty promising until then.  She’s in Brooklyn – about half an hour from me.  I refrained from saying anything along the lines of “good luck your search; look me up if you get over your prejudices”.

Her first email stated that she liked my profile.  Huh.

This whole “conveniently located in my daily world” thing is a good example of the eBay-attitude toward internet dating that I’ve sadly seen too much.  God forbid people actually meet in person to see whether they’re compatible.

So yeah, that’s the end of my whining for this evening.

Or not.

That all said, as much as the whole eBay-attitude is in and of itself a dealbreaker for me, at the end of the day it still looks and feels like rejection.

What kind of sucks is that I haven’t had a chance to tell anyone about feeling rejected.  The above example isn’t really much of a big deal for me, but it tends to become one when I keep it in and spend too much time ruminating on it.  It’s like having a bit of nastiness in one’s mouth – better to spit it out and rinse with a palate-cleanser than to keep chewing.  I tried to find someone to talk with about it (to get it out in the air and rinse myself clean), but have not yet had an opportunity.  So this is the first time I’m speaking of it.  Again, I kind of prefer to do this kind of cleansing in a relatively private manner.  Whatever.  Welcome to the car-wash of my soul for today, dear reader.

The other bit of rejection (which only really compounded and exacerbated the first) I’ve been feeling in the past couple of days is easy enough to pinpoint.  The chick I’m tutoring in philosophy is the one for whom I’ve held a candle for the past year or so.  A few months back, she sent me the “just interested in friendship” email and I pretty much severed all ties – cut my losses – in an effort to avoid further pain.

This is the point at which I’d generally reserve the following for Didi’s eyes only – I’ll probably just skim through it anyway – so I’m kind of hoping that this stuff is buried under enough words in this post that only my die-hard readers are paying attention.

Well, a couple of months later, she asks for help with her philosophy papers and I really couldn’t say no.  Not really for who she is, but because she’s someone asking me for help.  And I dig philosophy.  So our first few meetings and conversations go pretty well – she’s not blowing me off at the last minute like she usually does.  She’s paying attention and trying to learn.  And we’re not flirting, which is key.  I’m keeping things all business, and I must also admit to being a bit reserved – not standoffish, but just very careful not to go down the road of flirting, as easy as that can be.  The rest of this will all be a single paragraph, I think: to further discourage lazy eyes and to fool myself into thinking I’m insulating my feelings from whatever.  Anyway, we met the other night and she talked a bit too much about her new boyfriend (a friend of mine) for my comfort level – and not particularly flattering things about him, either.  That and a few too many texts while we were working kind of made me feel like the whole thing was becoming a waste of my time.  I’m available to teach philosophy and help writing papers, not to socialize and gossip.  As I went to bed last night, it occurred to me that this is very similar to how she acted almost a year ago, when she would complain about her last boyfriend.  I’m not sure really where I’m going with all this, nor do I want to go down the road of straight-up bitching.  This, btw, is because when I write things here I feel like I’m having a conversation with you, dear reader (albeit currently one-sided).  My point of the foregoing is that when I went to bed last night, the old feelings of rejection from the “just be friends” email resurfaced.  I thought I was past that.  I was pretty proud of myself for being able to separate my former feelings for her and keep our interaction on a strictly professional level.  I am/was also beating myself up a bit about not being more straightforward and saying that I didn’t want to get into any talk about her boyfriend(s).  And now I’m wondering if I’ll be able to continue tutoring her.  I just don’t like the way I felt the other night, and it passed right on into today when I got out of work – like a mugger waiting for me in the car.  So anyway, that’s pretty much it.  If I’m going to continue feeling rejected, I’m out.  I’m not dealing with it.  In both senses.  I know that “not dealing with it” isn’t necessarily all that healthy in an emotional sense, but, to a certain extent, I will deal with it insofar as I’ll discuss it with the few confidants I have left in my life.  In the other sense, and probably the one that’s stronger with me (as the Force is strong with me), I mean that I’m not dealing with it insofar as I simply won’t allow this crap in my life.  I don’t need it.  I don’t need to spend time with people who are only interested in using me – whether at a conscious or unconscious level.  Fuck off, psychic vampires.

Happy Hump Day.  I kind of can’t believe we’re here already.  This week, like this month, like the summer, like the year, has been flying by.  We’re just about 3/4 of the way through 2009.

So check it:

I’ve been spending an inordinate amount of time messing around behind the scenes on this blog.  Joining things, trying out new themes, creating and nesting pages.  The Star Wars Twitter Must Follow List is almost complete.  It’s not as pretty as I’d like it to be, but feel free to stop by throughout the day today, as I will be adding new pages as I’m able.

That said, I really don’t have much to report in the meantime, because I’ve been doing a lot more doing than thinking.  Let’s have some links then, shall we?

My favorite surfer girl and friend Samiantha (of multiple comment fame) asked me for some good-reading blog suggestions today.  I mentioned Didi’s blog, which I’m glad to announce is back on the air after a fitful respite.  I also suggested Sabrina’s blog, which is always good for a mid-day laugh (more often than not, it’s an awww-sad rather than an awww-cute).  And of course there’s xkcd.com, which is also always good for a laugh – if you’re into nerd jokes and paid any attention at all in physics class – cartoons are also good for the verbally impaired.  And of course you’re aware of Weekly Writing Assignment (I missed the deadline for last week’s submission, but I’ll be submitting in time for this week’s assignment – you should too), and our favorite naked redhead TNR.  Thanks to WWA, I’ve also been trying to catch up with and follow Lauren Flax’s blog – I dig her writing style as much as I dig Didi’s.  I also read Samiantha’s blog, but I’m not sure whether she’d dig a plug or not, so I’m not going to give you the link right now.  Feel free to hit her up in the comments section and maybe she’ll point you in the right direction.

Also on my feeds and daily reading list are Cracked.com and Mashable.com.  The former is generally pretty darned funny and the latter helps me keep up with current events in technology and social media.

Oh and here’s a dude on facebook who will name his son Batman if his fan page hits half a million.  I fanned the page, and recommend that you do so as well, if you’re on facebook.  Feel free to write on the wall and say “The Quixotic Jedi sent me”.  I could use the publicity too.

So that’s it for now.  I need to go shake hands with the governor before I head off to bed, and it’s already almost 1AM.  Happy surfing this Wednesday, dear reader.

If you read yesterday’s post and didn’t get a chance to flip over to Didi’s blog because I’m so long-winded, today you don’t have to.  Being that I’m all about easy content, below is Didi’s blog post from yesterday’s eSocial experiment.  Of course, if you’d prefer to read it in its original format, you can go to

Didi’s Blog

Confession: I’ve met someone online.

And… as his nick tells me, he’s a nice guy. His other nick tells me that he’s a bit of an impractical Star Wars nerd (?) too. Y-eah. Oh, and he’s white. Not that it should matter, but I’m just saying. You know how it is… Asian girl meets white boy on internet – he gets a sweet, submissive little woman that will validate his manhood and she’s hit the BIG TIME in dating stakes (White Gold, baby! White Gold!). Writing this, I can’t seem to keep Estelle’s voice going on about her American boy out of my head.

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I’m kidding! Sheesh, you can even go ahead and ask me which part, you humourless monkeys.

What? Did you really think I’ve actually succumbed to internet dating? As one of my best friends would say (emphatically, I must add): FUDGE OFF!

On to the real thing:

This post is actually a pseudo-social-experiment type thing that my new internet friend and I are conducting. I’m not quite sure what the point of doing one is, but to get into detail on how we arrived at this would need a post of its own. Long story short, I’ve always wondered if people tend to match up to the impressions we have of them, especially when you don’t know them personally. You think you know a person well, just because you follow his/her blogs or tweets and you stalk their Facebook profiles, but is that impression that you have, the right one?

So that, ladies and gentlemen, is really the whole point of this exercise. That and the fact that I am a total dork with waaay too much time on my hands and I’ve got a willing victim to inflict my full dorky sociology-pretensions upon.

Say hello to Ted, The ever-articulate Quixotic Jedi.

Our paths crossed some months back, when I found an incoming link on my WP dashboard – The Quixotic Jedi linked here saying”…”

Qui-wha? Jedi-wha?

“WHO is this random soul linked to my blog?” I wondered and proceeded to find out (oh, the link was a randomly-automated one, btw), only to end up in a bit of a wordpress wasteland (well, at the time, the blog was using some standard 4-column template and the font was really tiny, and the posts were sparse) that featured well-crafted out personal profile postings.

“Interesting,” I thought. What caught my attention was some post (can’t remember which) that was talking about looking for women with good grammar (or something to that effect). Anyway, I left a random comment somewhere, and that was that. End of story.

My impression of the writer then? Intriguingly verbose. Here’s someone with a fine appreciation of the written word, and is a bit of a snob about it too (poetry, highly literary works, etc). What humanised him though (and therefore brought him down to my level), were his personals/dating posts. I felt a little bit sad for the writer who’d go on quite a number of personals sites, obviously looking for love… for The One, not quite finding her and yet not quite giving up.

“Why doesn’t he just go out and meet women?” I thought to myself, which made me think that this is guy that hides behind the poetry of his words. He is shy, maybe a little socially-awkward, definitely a bit of a literature geek. I pictured a dirty-blonde, 6′2″, slim guy with steel-rimmed spectacles, who wears a lot of plaid.

After that first foray onto QJ, I forgot all about it and as we all normally do, moved on to other blogs and stuff. Sometime last month, I received a random email inviting me to look at the newly-renovated site. So I did. He found me on Facebook, one day, and I was… rather disturbed. Oh my god… what? Is he some kind of stalker? Didn’t help that that was the same day he decided to post some kind of stalker manual on the blog.

So, my impressions of Ted WALL-ACE (you’ve got to say it Braveheart-style, c’mon…) today?

Ted is fun and funny. A bit dorky in a very American way. Does strange American things like go hiking (people do that?). He’s a sensitive soul (based purely on his obvious love for words), definitely a bit shy, though he shouldn’t be, and he might have a slight self-esteem issue. A bit of an attention seeker (Have you seen his FB status updates?), but then, aren’t we all. He’s also very prone to self-introspection – I can relate.

Ted is, as clichéd as it sounds, warm and kind. A family man, one who cares a lot for his friends and family – his mentions about his sister attests to that. His obvious love and admiration for her is really super-sweet. How can anyone feel threatened by this guy, you know?

I don’t ever bother making friends/meeting people on the Internet, but I’m happy to have gotten talking with a strange man named Ted, who, as it turns out isn’t a dirty-blonde 6′2″ who wears a lot of plaid. In reality, he’s actually Wolverine-esque. I don’t know if he’s as hairy as Wolverine and I don’t know if I actually want to know for sure.

Nor is Ted a stalker, thank god, so you women (especially those based in the New York, New Jersey area) interested in a certain Hyp Hyker (go figure out which book that’s from) namedTed Wallace… Thunderbirds are GO! <– Oops, a bit too cheesy, huh, Ted? :D

So, am I right in my assessment of Ted? Comment, comment, comment away.  ;-)

p/s: Ted, I’m sorry if you don’t think this post does you any justice, but then my writing/imaginative skills are nowhere near yours.  :D

Ok.  Check it out.  As the title states, this post is all about Didi.

I’m not really sure how to start, because I don’t really know all that much about Didi.  That makes this post kind of tough for me, because I’m a perfectionist.  I’m also not sure how much about Didi I should reveal, which also rubs against my perfectionism.  We’re friends on Facebook, so I’ve got a bit more opportunity for an inside scoop than y’all might have.  I’ve also spent some time trying to find her blog, so I know a few keywords that’ll get one a good view at Didi’s Cyber-Ego.

So how about I start from the beginning, tell you a bit about how I ended up writing about a person I hardly know, and then actually get to the miserable little bit that I do know about Didi?

Or, maybe we’ll do this Stephen-King-style and start in the middle and fill in the backstory as we’re moving forward?

This whole thing started out as Didi’s idea – one to which I wholeheartedly agreed.  This is kind of a double-blind experiment: neither of us know very much about one another, so we’re going to write bios of one another and post them on our blogs.  Theoretically, we’re supposed to stick to just what we know of each other from our respective blogs and Facebook pages.  I’ll give you the link to Didi’s blog at the bottom of this post and you can proceed to read the other half of this experiment.

Didi was the first person ever to post a comment to my blog – back when this was QuixoticJedi.wordpress.com.  I had just spent a few hours figuring out how WordPress worked – picking a theme and all that was excruciating.  My first post – also an experiment – was entitled “Tabula Rasa” and the only words in it were something along the lines of “let’s see what happens”.  Didi’s comment was: “Well, what happens?”  Which was good for me, because it actually motivated me to help something happen.  I googled her username and flipped around a few of her pages on different sites for a bit.  That’s when I found her WordPress.com blog.

A couple of months ago, after I had bought a domain and really put some time into this blog, I had the notion to look Didi back up.  I sent her an email telling her that my blog had “evolved” and that she should check it out again.  We’ve corresponded (ever so briefly) every now and again since then.  She called me “monosyllabic” and I asked her if she was British.  It’s really been a match made in blog-heaven.  I think Didi got a kick out of it when I friended her on Facebook.

The thing that kind of sucks for me about this (and why I’m taking so long to get to Didi’s bio – i.e. stalling) is that I’m kind of intimidated by my own impression of Didi.  She’s got what’s called “creative intelligence” – which means that her imagination is particularly vibrant.  She can think outside of the box and come up with brand-new ideas much more readily than me.  This might have something to do with the fact that she’s an Aquarian.  I’m kind of jealous of this and, being a competitive Scorpio, think you’ll like her post much more than you’ll like mine.  I feel like my writing is drudging and pedantic when compared to hers.

My suggestion:  When you move on from this post, read more of Didi’s blog than just the first couple of posts at the top.  If you see the same things I do, you’ll notice that her words seem to flow effortlessly from keyboard to screen.

Bullet Points

• Didi lives in Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia).  She likes football and footballers (translation to American: soccer and soccer players), particularly Italian football (and -ers).  Her favourite team:  AC Milan.  Didi follows them religiously.  She watches the games, reads the news, and gets caught up in the drama.
• Didi likes vodka.  She thinks that perhaps she likes it a bit too much.  She’s not sure if her relationships would survive without vodka. 
• Didi is incredibly introspective.  Didi has high expectations of herself; possibly high to the point of unattainability.
• Didi is a pretty big fan of sex.  That’s hot.  Who isn’t?  A fan of sex, I mean.  Didi’s preferred man is “prison sexy”.
• Didi likes fashion.  Didi likes shopping and hates budgeting.

Comparison

Didi lives half the world away, follows sports, and is somewhat materialistic.  I don’t pay attention to sports and am not into men – jury’s still out on the “prison sexy” thing, though.

Identification

I’m introspective and have high expectations of myself; I’m a fan of sex, fashion (in my own way), and I’m materialistic (in my own way), too.

Conclusion/Critique

I can really dig on the introspection thing.  I think Didi is way too hard on herself, though.  While it’s important to take regular (mental/emotional/fiscal/whatever) inventory every once in a while, I think it’s important to do so objectively.  That is, look at the “good” and “bad” and take note without judging too much or skewing the overall conclusion in a positive or negative direction.  I think Didi has a shitload of positive attributes that get overwhelmed (in her mind) by the ones she considers to be negative character traits.

Didi is much smarter than she gives herself credit for.  She has either met a (very) few people that are smarter than her or has simply acknowledged the fact that there must be people out there that are smarter than her.  She thus considers herself to be of middling intelligence, when in fact she falls more towards the top of the heap.

I think Didi likes the field that she’s in, but not necessarily the day-to-day tasks that her job involves (writing dumb headlines for stupid government agencies).  I can identify with that.  Again, this comes with being predominantly right-brained (holistic).  Didi likes the big picture, but not so much the details.  Which is not to say that she’s not good at the detail-aspects of things, just that they bore her after not-too-long.  Because of that boredom, she stops paying attention to where she was going and gets lost in the labyrinth of specificity.

Didi should be rich and able therefore to avoid getting mired in details, but she’s not, and consequently does.  Didi should be a manager or a director and only have to worry about big-picture, broad-stroke issues, but she’s not and the detail-work is a real pain in her ass.  At some point in the future, Didi will truly begin to look at herself objectively and see her assets for what they really are.  Then she will be able to apply them to their fullest extent and not be hampered by what she considers to be her defects.  Then she will be free and the world will be nothing more than the oyster in which she becomes a pearl, her lustre shining for all to see.

There’s much more I could tell you about Didi, but again, I’m not sure how much to reveal.  If you want to know more, ask her.  She’s pretty damned cool. 

So that’s it from my end.  I hope you’ve enjoyed this portion of Didi’s and my social experiment and celebration of our shared uber-dorkhood.

Now, on to

DIDI’S BLOG