For every one of you that bought an Apple product, you made dozens of factory bosses a little bit richer, the Apple corporation much richer, and also made the slaves of Foxconn and the other Apple manufacturing plants in China richer in the same way plantation owners made African slaves richer a couple hundred years ago.

There's an app for not feeling guilty about that though, right?

I think it's weird how polyamorous folks that are in a multi-pronged relationship almost always post links to their intimate others on their profiles.  Is this a weird sort of claiming mechanism?  Does it mean that second and third suitors must get past the defenses of the original lover(s)?  Are they trying to set up fuckpiles?  

IT IS A MYSTERY

It looks like life really was killing you, my giant friend.  Rest in pieces.

Well, that isn't entirely true.  I don't like calling myself liberal, but I'm about as far left as they come. 

Mostly I just don't like liberals that don't understand the implications of their political leanings (read: hypocrites).

Recently, I was reading the profile of an attractive, seemingly-intelligent girl whom requested contact from liberal people.  She had a 92% match rating to me, which generally means that, at least politically, we're pretty similar.  At the end of her profile, she mentioned that a friend recently discovered which sort of guy her 'type' was: someone with bright-white, straight teeth.

And that's a fine physical preference.  I like skinny girls with bright eyes and dark hair.

..but, for a liberal, it's a disturbing one.  I expect conservatives, libertarians, and republicans to have demands like this and ignore the reasons why someone might not have bright-white, straight teeth - you know, because they had moderately poor families with crappy or no insurance.  I expect liberals that call themselves as much to have some understanding of the economic implications of a statement like that, but .. well, it seems that most of them don't.  Demanding that someone has teeth like that is tantamount to demanding that they had at least a middle-class upbringing with access to good dentistry.  How can you call yourself a liberal if you place a minimum economic stratus on those you would date?

However, the single most common demand I see in profiles - especially well-educated people - is an insistence of a mastery of the English language.  Asking that people not use net/txtspeak is reasonable, but demanding that all sentences are grammatical and punctuated properly?  Many, many studies have shown that an individual's ability to write and compose effectively is tremendously impacted by the quality of education that they receive when they are young. (Sure, this can be overcome with hard work, but I'm more interested in averages and norms than exceptions.) And, well, who gets good quality education?  Ahh, the middle class.

These problems that I take with people scream to me the same way that a wealthy Marxist that employs poorly-paid servants does - you just don't understand your own ideology, do you?

Those Victorians surely know the way to my heart: 

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

(William Ernest Hensley)

.. there lies one specific question in which we disagree. 

If you were to be with one person for the rest of your life, which of the following would you fear most?

Partner's unfaithfulness.

Partner's eventual unattractiveness.

Insufficient sex.

Lack of communication.

It seems that those women that match well with me almost always choose "Insufficient sex," whereas I chose - and chose sincerely - "Lack of communication."  Now, I think I've got a fairly high sex drive and that everything surrounding it is pretty important (and also /awesome/), but if I was in a very long-term relationship .. I just can't see spectacular sex making up for not being able to communicate with someone.  I mean, what's to talk about after said spectacular sex?  Alternatively, if you fall asleep immediately afterwards or prefer silence/etc, then what's to talk about when coming home from work?  Or waking up?

So peoples, I ask you: you'd trade regular communication (ostensibly, one of the primary reasons you decided to stay with the same person for so long) for regular sex?  How come?

Today, I met with a man that is something of a local celebrity.  He's been in the area for years, actively promoting the creative economy and organizing all sorts of wonderful things.  Through a work-study program, I went to work for his program with the department of university outreach.  After working my way through a few assignments, he put me to what my primary purpose at the company was: to develop a business white paper that will serve as the framework for an Angel investment group in Flint, Michigan. (My room mate and I are also developing a fairly comprehensive website for a couple of his projects that are going to get a great deal of traffic.)

While the details aren't relevant, the potential results are.  He's more or less told me that after this goes through - and especially if leads to heavy investment - then I'm all but guaranteed to find work doing similar things in the area, those being mostly research-driven publications.  This isn't the sort of work that I'd like to do for the rest of my life, but it pays well and it lets me do what I do best: research and composition.

So here's the problem: I have an opportunity to move to the west coast, near San Francisco, in June.  I've been saving money for awhile, and even if I can't find work out there immediately, I can survive for awhile.  Moving to this area has been a short-term dream of mine for a long time, and it greatly pains me that the opportunity is coming to fruition ..

..right as the potential for my career in this area takes off.  

I do not know what to do.  I plan to go to graduate school, but will be taking off some time to work first and make sure getting a MA in rhetoric is the correct path.  My closest friends have all either left or have leaving, I do not have a girlfriend, and, aside from various potential opportunities, nothing really keeping me in the area.  But if the entire point of moving out west is to find work in my field, and I can find it here - and directly contribute to the rebirth of a once-dead city - then am I even acting in my best interest by moving out west?

Oh dear diary.  Can you make it so all of the business contacts I'm picking up will transfer with my to California?  

Please respond in the affirmative, and do so quickly.

Your friend,

Daniel

but I do know a lot about ghosts.

Even now, one is slipping past the gooey membrane separating my brains from my bones, and I can feel its hands wrapping around cortices and things that end in -ellum.  Soon, very soon now, it's going to puppet my hand - the one with the pen in it - and it's going to write something that I won't remember come morning.

But I will read it, and I'll know ghosts wrote it.

It might just be one ghost - I don't know. I've never known, and suspect that I never will.  But it's just the same, as today is a haunted day, and whether one ghost or a thousand, to be haunted is singular.  Individual.  My point is that the quantity of them, or it, is not relevant.

I always get this taste on the back of my tongue when one comes around.  Strangely, it tastes a lot like Miller High Life, frayed nerves, and unsteady hands.  You might think it has something to do with the nearly-consumed 24 of High Life sitting next to my rapidly-burning cigarette, but it doesn't: some things I just know, okay?  Stop asking questions.  Besides, I get that same taste when I've been drinking more tolerable beer.

Heart rate rising, skeletal systems shimmering like light a wave/particle-state, and I take a long, long drag at the cigarette.  The night is young, the ghosts are possibly many, and there are windows all around me.

Mark Antony: 
Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; 
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him; 
The evil that men do lives after them, 
The good is oft interred with their bones, 
So let it be with Caesar ... The noble Brutus 
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious: 
If it were so, it was a grievous fault, 
And grievously hath Caesar answered it ...
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest, 
(For Brutus is an honourable man; 
So are they all; all honourable men) 
Come I to speak in Caesar's funeral ...
He was my friend, faithful and just to me: 
But Brutus says he was ambitious; 
And Brutus is an honourable man…. 
He hath brought many captives home to Rome, 
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill: 
Did this in Caesar seem ambitious? 
When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept: 
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff: 
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious; 
And Brutus is an honourable man. 
You all did see that on the Lupercal 
I thrice presented him a kingly crown, 
Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition? 
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious; 
And, sure, he is an honourable man. 
I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke, 
But here I am to speak what I do know. 
You all did love him once, not without cause: 
What cause withholds you then to mourn for him? 
O judgement! thou art fled to brutish beasts, 
And men have lost their reason…. Bear with me; 
My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar, 
And I must pause till it come back to me.

I've been on OKC for quite a long time.  When I first joined the site, it wasn't even OK Cupid, but rather The Spark, and because I didn't think it was anything BUT a silly quiz website I didn't even bother to use a real username.  Hence only having a year pegged on this one.  In the course of this time, I've gone through several girlfriends, far more jobs, two schools, and surprisingly, only one major (even though it's taken me eight years to complete).  One thing has remained though: I love looking at people's profiles.

Typically, just those of the women-folk.  This is partially due to eye candy but I suspect more out of habit, and because OKC doesn't present me with dicked profiles very often.  In the years spent reading profiles, I've found that I also like sending messages, and talking with people, although I only receive a response about one in five times.  I guess in baseball that's an okay average.

Most of the messages are stupid, casual comments - attempts at being witty or clever that probably fail.  A good deal of the time, I challenge people on things they may have said in their profile; lately, I've been asking a lot of people how they can be an open and accepting person if they are unwilling to communicate with people that fail to use flawless English.  I've yet to receive a response to that one.

I'm good at alienating people on other social networking sites, too.  In the last four months or so, I've had several people remove me from their friend lists on Facebook.  I think this is mostly because I like to argue with people - well, no, that isn't quite it.  I like to ask people questions and make assertions that force them to carefully state their position.  This is as much so I can learn about the topic as they can maybe learn about mistakes in their understanding of the topic and, well, most people don't like being questioned it turns out.

This issue has gotten to the point where I'm forced to screen social applicants; it isn't that I won't talk to anybody (because I genuinely will), but rather that I know better: a certain point will come where I will piss off the person badly enough that they will not longer wish to speak with me.  That's okay, I guess, but then .. that's why I should just screen people.  Not having a new pal is always better than losing one.