Apartment Decorations

Other than a hotel room turned into a studio apartment in the ghetto of Greensboro I lived in 3 years ago, this is the first apartment I've ever had all to myself. I've been having fun decorating it, making it an inviting, but personal place for myself - down to earth but elegant.

The newest additions are a piece of simple art and an ambiance lamp. Right now, the lamp's just sitting on the floor, its position is perfect to bring the attention to the art. I might get a small stand for it, but so far so good.

The Perfect Woman

One of my favorite DC bloggers, Roosh, talked about "the perfect woman". He didn't really talk about who the perfect woman is or what she should be like. What he did talk about was the concept of the perfect woman disappearing as he "dated" more and more women. It reminds me of a more extreme version of my experiences - My failed relationships in my early 20's, casually dating women after that, the more women I date, the more vague the concept of "the perfect girl" is. Of course, I'm not nearly as jaded or had been with nearly as many women as he claims. I liked how he ended the post. "So… she’s gone. Experience killed the perfect woman. It means nothing to me."

It kills me how random life is. A big chunk of me has nothing to do with me. It’s just the environment I’m in, the events and people that cross my path. Wrong time, right place.

I was 23-years-old when I met a beautiful girl. I have no idea how I got her but I did, and I didn’t have the “game” that I have now. She liked me for me, an eager guy out of college trying to relieve whatever inadequacy he thought he had.

She crushed me, but that was okay. But I did something that wasn’t okay. I overcompensated, to the extreme. I had to get even better at the game so not only could I find a girl like that again, but I could keep her as well. You see there was an end goal of a happy relationship somewhere along the line, but it didn’t work out like that. The game was the end itself. The perfect woman I thought I wanted slowly slipped away. She morphed into this monster of easy sex and unrealistic expectations. Sex on demand, no later than the third date, and if you’re not exactly what I want then fuck off.

Part of me wishes I got swooped up by her. Maybe I would see women as more than just numbers and stories. Maybe I’d be in a happy relationship. Sure I’d be whipped and still working in some soulless job trying to pay a mortgage, but at least I’d have this woman who cared for me and loved me, and I would do the same to her. I think I was capable of that.

Instead I went down this rabbit hole… deeper and deeper… and darker. I see less than I used to. Too much experience, too used to easy attention and cheap thrills. You can’t undo your experiences, especially when there is just too many of them, their naked bodies, their smell on your fingers as you drive home racking up another score… your fantasies of their moans and kisses as you smile yourself to sleep. The way they laugh at jokes you’ve said a hundred times before.

It gets worse every year, the happy relationship with my “perfect” girl just gets farther as I become more incapable, as I become “better” at getting sex that has meaning but really doesn’t. I don’t even notice differences in girls anymore. But I can’t stop. I notice most other guys can. Am I… a validation junkie? An attention whore? Like the girls I criticize?

When that girl dumped me I cried. I went to her place to get my stuff, hoping I could keep it going. But it was done. I left and parked in a gas station and sat there and cried like a little baby. If that happened today, I wouldn’t even give a shit, and I think that’s my problem. I’m a machine with flesh, no empathy or love… another night, another performance.

She wasn’t perfect, not even close. But she was. Anyone decent looking can be made perfect. You already know it takes very little effort. But I haven’t done it recently.

So… she’s gone. Experience killed the perfect woman. It means nothing to me.

Internet Media South Park Quote

This week's episode of South Park talked about kids trying to make money on the Internet by uploading entertaining videos on the web. At the end of the the show, they had a "what did we learn speech" and it was the following:

Yeah, but you know I learned something today. We thought we could make money on the Internet. But while the Internet is new and exciting for creative people, it hasn’t matured as a distribution mechanism to the extent that one should trade real and immediate opportunities for income for the promise of future online revenue. It will be a few years before digital distribution of media on the Internet can be monetized to an extent that necessitates content producers to forgo their fair value in more traditional media.

Personally, I think the market has matured enough that if someone puts out something with millions of page views, and has access to the page (instead of uploading it to a 3rd party site like YouTube or MySpace), he could make a pretty big chunk of change.

All he needs to do is negotiate a banner deal or two with some companies. At the industry average rate of $10 CPM (cost per 1000 impressions) per ad, 2 ads per page, the publisher would receive about $20K every 1 million hits to that page. And if he can somehow increase the page's "stickiness" and get each visitor to click one more page averagely, that's $20k more for that original 1 million hits.

Southpark: It's not hard to monetize Internet media if there's enough traffic.