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I can't remember the last time this really happened. I mean, I've definitely been mad plenty of times in the last few months, but I don't remember the last time I actually lost my temper. Generally, even if I'm pretty angry, I still manage to stay pretty composed.

My terrible housemate is still here, still leaving the bathroom a gross mess. He leaves dirty water all over the floor, pees on the toilet seat, somehow managed to soak the toilet paper on the holder... After three weeks of putting up with this, I snapped a bit.

I heard him go out to the bathroom, so I opened my door to check if he had left a mess after he finished. Of course, he had. No surprise there. Water ALL over the toilet seat. He ran back to his room and I went over and knocked on his door to tell him to clean it up. He opened the door just a crack and asked, in English, if I needed to use the toilet. I didn't know if I would understand me if I said "it's not about whether I need to use it right now, it's about you leaving a mess there, which is not acceptable." I repeated that he needed to clean it up and he closed the door. I waited a bit, because usually he isn't wearing pants and he'll put on pants and come out and wipe it up eventually, but I heard him start talking in his room... So I knocked again, and again he only opened the door a crack and then tried to close it. Now, it was pretty clear that he had no intention of doing it, so I stopped him from closing the door by putting my hand against it and told him to clean it up right now. He responded... by trying to force the door closed against me. Wasn't going to let him get away with that, so I kept the door handle turned so that he couldn't lock it. Tried to force open the door from my end, but hes bigger than me and I'm not as strong as I used to be, sadly. I think he just stayed pushing against the door for the new few moments, and I waited to see if he would move, but nope. At some point he did open the door again because I kept telling him to clean up the bathroom, but he just tried to take my hand off the door, presumably so he could close it and lock it. At this point my landlady came out of her room (we were all awake anyway, I wouldn't have done this if she was sleeping) and asked what was going on. I told her that I was trying to get him to clean up his mess, and she talked to him in Chinese, and then called his mom on the phone. I don't know what they said because it was all in Chinese, but he did go partially wipe up the toilet once my landlady asked him...

My landlady looked at me sympathetically and put her hand on my shoulder and said she was sorry about it. I just shook my head and laughed in exasperation and said I was frustrated.

I didn't yell at him or particularly raise my voice during the ordeal, although my tone was certainly a lot sharper than usual. Maybe it's not right to characterize this as losing my temper though... It was more like standing my ground and refusing to back down and let him continue his bad behavior. Still, it didn't feel like an "adult" thing for me to do, I guess... But I've been reminding this kid to clean up for weeks now, and he still won't do it unless I specifically ask. After more than three weeks, the escalation and use of force felt justified, but I don't know if it was. I didn't hit him or anything, but it was still an aggressive move on my part... I don't know. Ugh. My heart started racing when I realized he was blatantly ignoring me, and I could feel the anger rising in my chest.

I want to be able to handle this in a mature and responsible manner, but this kid (who is only an adult legally-- he's obviously a child from the way he acts) refuses to act in a remotely courteous way, and so I sort of feel like he doesn't get to be treated with any respect. I suppose that's how I generally feel about these things... people have my respect at first, but if they lose it, they tend to lose all of it at once and I see them as practically subhuman and not deserving of any courtesies whatsoever, not even acknowledgement as a person in some cases. Maybe this is something for me to think about... Although it does take awhile for me to lose my respect for someone, so I dunno. Does it need to be a more gradual descent? This is a rather grey area and I'm not sure if this is something I really feel contributes to or detracts from my growth as a person.

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This made me laugh today:

Kyle: I should have put more effort into trying to go out with Cristina when she was single. Could probably be married now.
Me: You could still put more effort into the dating game in general if that's what you want.
Kyle: I could but all I can find are people who disgust me

Have been listening to "Coin-Operated Boy" by The Dresden Dolls for a sort of mixed-emotion blast to the past. I feel like I posted this sometime within the past few months, so I'm not going to embed the video again. I wish I could search within my password-protected posts to check, but ah well. These lyrics are sticking with me at the moment:
Can you extract me from my plastic fantasy?
I didn't think so, but I'm still convincable
Will you persist even after I bet you
A billion dollars that I'll never love you?
And will you persist even after I kiss you
Goodbye for the last time
Will you keep on trying
To prove that I'm dying
To lose it, I'm losing
My confidence

Also listening to "The Bidding" by Tally Hall.

I promise I'll be all you'll need
Ever need
You'll never have to shop around
(Don't shop around)
And I'll give you all you'll ever need
Ever need
Don't worry, I will never let you down
Let you down
Don't worry, I will never let you down

That part of the song makes me feel kind of sad, for whatever reason. I guess it just sounds like a lie to me, an empty promise made in desperation. Something you want to believe, but you know it isn't true.

Reading this Reddit thread about a guy's girlfriend crying all the time is making me wonder about what healthy relationships with nice people are like. Sometimes I feel like I'm not close enough to the middle of the bell curve to have one...

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So I bought a book from Amazon called Life's Little Oddities (PDF available for free here). As far as I can tell, it's just a collection of short stories from everyday life during WWII. Very simple stuff, but I find it highly enjoyable to read. I wish I knew of more books like this! When I looked at the table of contents, the first story listed was "Getting One's Hair Cut", and I felt immensely pleased at the everydayness of it.

I feel like I've touched upon this before, but I used to think I hated history. As it turns out, I actually love history, I just find the big details of historical wars and politics to be some of the most mind-numbingly boring stuff possible. Anything to do with the way people actually lived is very interesting to me, though. I'm not really interested in autobiographies, because they tend to chronicle the major events of a person's life, but old journals and slice-of-life accounts can be cool to read.

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Be it extremely emotional, controversial, messed up, or whatever, this entry has been password protected.

If you know it, enter it; or, ask me for it.

Comment! (0) | Recommend!

Be it extremely emotional, controversial, messed up, or whatever, this entry has been password protected.

If you know it, enter it; or, ask me for it.

Comment! (0) | Recommend!

Be it extremely emotional, controversial, messed up, or whatever, this entry has been password protected.

If you know it, enter it; or, ask me for it.

Comment! (0) | Recommend!

Phew, that Nutang outage had me worried for a sec. I'm so glad it's back up! Although the outage did remind me that I really need to find a way to backup all my posts... this is over ten years of my life on this blog. That's like 40% of my lifetime! Seeing as I am a data hoarder and all, I get pretty anxious about the prospect of losing all that.

Second week of classes is going okay so far. The only class I'm really that into is my culture class, in which I had a surprising amount to say on Monday... With my other classes I've rarely felt that engaged, so I end up just sitting silently and sneakily checking Facebook on my tablet every once in awhile or doodling in the margins of my notes.

On Saturday I walked over to my therapist's office, but I forgot that we didn't actually have an appointment, so I just wandered around for a few hours and ended up walking 11 miles unintentionally. It was a nice walk, though, and it didn't rain on me. I only got one blister from it, and no real lasting soreness otherwise. Also, my landlady drove by me on my way back and gave me a ride to the house! That was really awesome and so very appreciated, because while I think I only had maybe half an hour left to walk, my feet hurt a lot at that point, haha.

Sunday I hung out with A. for a few hours, and we walked around and talked. I got a stupidly big root beer float that was way more than I wanted or needed, and probably worth 70% of my calories for the day. >_> It came with two gigantic scoops of ice cream in a cup and a bottle of root beer, and the ice cream didn't leave enough room for the whole bottle of soda. By the time I had managed to drink enough that I could empty the bottle into the cup, I was pretty much full, so the rest of it was a struggle. A. was... uh... "encouraging"... by which I mean he kept telling me that I could finish it... and then joking about me getting another one. -__- He also drove us to the area he lives in, and we walked around there a little. I asked him if he ever had the urge to just randomly kick things or destroy them, and he said "yeah, but I don't tell people" because he wants to maintain a semblance of normalcy or something. For some reason I had a lot of urges to just act kinda crazy and chaotic (not that I gave in to those urges) and I kept telling him about them, and he was like "I think you're secretly 4," haha.

I've been playing a lot of incremental games over the past few days. Right now I'm playing one called Critter Mound that... well, it has almost no graphics whatsoever and kinda just looks like a spreadsheet with a loading bar for the most part, but for some reason it's interesting to play? Sadly, it looks like the developer died last year, so it's not being updated anymore. I'm not totally sure what I like about incremental games-- maybe they satisfy some kind of need for multitasking I have, or I can feel like I'm "doing" something with my idle time because I'm making progress in a game.

The past week has been kind of... uh....... interesting at this house I'm living in. Last Tuesday this new guy moved into the house, and from the very beginning, he was causing problems... I have to share a bathroom with him, and he would pee pretty much everywhere but the toilet bowl. Like, it was on the seat, on the floor... really gross, honestly. By the third day I was pretty fed up with wiping up that nastiness and talked to my landlady about it, and she said that she had already talked to him on the first day because he left "a big bowl of shit" in the bathroom. This kid is like 18 or something, barely speaks English, and dropped out of high school in Taiwan (he's trying to do community college here now). I'm under the impression that my landlady only let him move in here as a favor to a friend, but she's vented to me like four times already about him, and he's only been here a week now. She's super nice and was trying to help him register for classes and learn how things in the U.S. work, but he was never grateful for her help, was demanding ("I'm hungry, I want to go downtown to eat"), and just... didn't listen to her. He has also been up really late (like 2AM and later) talking loudly in his room, and the walls are thin here, so he woke both of us up more than once. A little noise is very audible. A few days ago my landlady was telling me that if things didn't improve, she was going to ask him to leave, and well... things didn't improve. The final straw for her was yesterday night, when she was working on some important documents and was in her room, with her phone turned off. He had forgotten his keys, so when he came back to he house, he tried to message her but didn't get a response... so instead of, say, waiting awhile or coming back later, he started banging on things outside the house with a hammer until she came outside and let him in. Because, you know, that's definitely what sane people with manners do. So yeah, she's kicking him out, because she's had enough. She tried to help him, but this kid is so unappreciative, inconsiderate, and incompetent that it's too much for him. I guess I'll be getting a new housemate soon!

This has a little bit of a country feel to it, but I've been listening to this song a lot today:

"Tears for Affairs" by Camera Obscura.

Shedding tears for affairs
I'm a stupid little thing
I can tell you this for nothing
You won't win

You had to try
-(I didn't want to)
Look me in the eye
-(I found it hard to)
Whisper don't cry
-(I had to whisper goodbye)

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