If you’ve ever thought me stand-offish, please read what follows.

The truth is that over the years, I have observed that some people feel like I am beneath them. Everyone encounters people who affect this air, but I have a specific reaction to it and you’ve likely found it wanting. Now, I’m okay with not being friends with people who feel they are above me. Really, if you don’t like me, I’m okay with that. I’d rather be the acquired taste than the crowdpleaser. I’m niche and I don’t need to be everybody’s friend.

But I have a tendency to put people who have let me down into a specific box and it’s difficult to get out of it. I have rushed to meet and be friends with others and when I have been spurned, I have learned to shut down that vulnerability. Over the years, the condition has been compounded to the point that I am unapproachable to many, many people.

All of this is said to recognize that in doing so, I am paying forward the potential anxiety and arrogance and insecurity that inspired it in me. I have been as guilty as others of the very actions that dissuade me of giving people a proper chance. Mea culpa. So how do we break the cycle? That’s what we want, isn’t it? In the interest of peace?

I guess I need to start again with some people out there. If you ever liked something about me and you wanted to get to know me better, I thank you and encourage you to give me another shot. I’ll see if I can do better. Maybe I’ll be better than I have been. Maybe we were never meant to be friends. But why not see if there was just a misunderstanding at fault?

Conversely, if you feel like I was wrongfully rejected, I declare a sweeping pardon for previous offenses. I respond pretty favorably to kind gestures most of the time. Let’s let bygones be bygones. I’m open.

No one is without fault, so why not just let go of our anxieties and try again? I could call this a new year’s resolution, but why wait until 2011 to get started? It’s a social time of year and we have loads of opportunities to get this together. I think I would like that.

A stupid question bothering me today: If mass=gravity, and organisms are adept at converting energy into matter, along an infinite timeline with negligible loss due to decomposure, could organisms marginally increase the gravity of the planet they inhabit by nature of the matter they create? Or is it that they are composed of the planet’s given carbon that any change of planetary mass is so incremental it would be inconsequential? If the mass can be increased, and it follows the planet’s gravity is increased, is it possible the added gravity could draw in an otherwise unaffected asteroid into the gravitational field and into the planet, thus wiping out all life? Paradoxes abound…

Okay, I admit it. I don’t want to go running.

Julie Taymor’s take on TITUS is one of my all time favorites. Now there is this. Clicky to go to Quicktime heaven.

So it turns out I am somewhat known for being a voracious consumer of media. I fully cop to this.

This causes my friends and family a great deal of consternation, knowing I enjoy such things, while finding it impossible to shop for me. So much comes and goes so quickly that no one knows what I have and what I have not. RL’s family have done extensive Christmas lists for each other for quite some time, and given that I am being poked and prodded a lot for this year’s birthday options already (and it is only just now October), I thought I would go ahead and just post things that I am excited about for this fall. (more…)