I often find myself in a situation where someone is talking to me about something I really don't care about, and I'm thinking about what a bad job I'm doing of looking interested. Sometimes I wonder if the person talking to me is picking up on this incredibly lame effort. Do people really care whether the people they are talking to are listening? (It depends on what they're talking about.) Maybe sometimes people say things just to have said them. Blargh! Maybe I'm a big blue potato!

One reason I don't like being out with Julie is that I really don't care at all for most things she is concerned with. This isn't a fault, I guess, on either of our parts. But when she's talking about growing weeds, or plant stuff, or anything to do with beer or country music, I find myself wearing this faint grimace and trying to keep my eyes from flicking around the room too rapidly. There's no way to say "I don't care about anything you've brought up in the last two hours" politely. Do I think that the things I like talking about are the only interesting things to talk about? No. But I'd say that the things I DON'T like talking about are a pretty big subset of things I consider very uninteresting. Political science, for instance. I'm not good at thinking about it. It's easy for my brain to let go of this topic. Don't talk to me about political history, please.

Computers, though, hold my interest. I think I see what art there is in them. Technology holds an image and a fashion which I identify with easily. Is it a congenital thing, to associate with certain cultural features easily? Ah, I dunno. Probably partially. I think I'll play wipeout some more. [Plays Wipeout some more].

(much later) This is a good game. Very intense, especially if you swap out the CD for a slightly harder soundtrack, like Strapping Young Lad ("AAA" comes to mind. (RA 3.0, 1.13 Mb)) or Fluke. I've been playing Challenge I, and just barely managed to pass. Then I realized that my butt was floating an inch off the floor. My body was so tense that I was suspended like a plank between my back against the couch and my feet. Whew. I have been deprived of real-world adrenalin rush for too long. I should take up skiing or something. (But why? Now I have access to the phantom racing class...) (Okay, that might have been pretty dorky right there. Oh well.)

Hmm, I seem to imply, up there, that there is a class of subject that I consider interesting, yet don't like to talk about. This is true. Example: materials science. It's interesting, but I think it's pretty dorky to talk about materials science unless you're giving a lecture on microfiber composites to engineers or something. Also, I'm not real well informed in the field of materials science, and well, I'd feel like I was talking out of my ass.

One of the things that used to really infuriate Brian was when we pointed out that he was "talking out of his ass". Everyone said it all the time, too. When he first started hanging out with us, he had this weird thing about the word "stupid", too. He must have gotten over it, cause now he throws that word around like it doesn't mean anything.

I'm trying to clean up my room, I know Ed's gonna visit my house while he's up here. Gotta pretend that I'm neat, ignoring the fact that Ed had to live with me and my junk for 8 or 9 months.

I've got this sinking feeling that I've already said everything that I know how to say and I'm just starting to repeat myself.