I'm The Normal One.

Listening: With the strength, we have to together. But for now, emotional ties they stay severed. When there’s trust there’ll be treats and when we funk we'll hear beats.
What's my problem? Clearly the world has changed polarity.

So, I'm having brunch with a friend of mine this afternoon (Me? Morning? Psha! As if...), when she was talking about some of her other friends, and I ask her, "Are all of your friends bat-shit crazy? Am I the normal one of your friends?" To that, she sat for a second and thought about it and figured out that I was, in fact, probably her most normal friend. She even tweeted, "j-z could be my most normal friend."

How fucked up is it that I'm ANYONE'S most normal friend?

I think that out of the core group of my friends, I am the least normal. I don't work 9-5, 5 day work weeks. I don't have benefits included in my job. I don't have a big-boy bed (yes, I still have a futon). I live in a room with no windows. I see nothing wrong with occasionally being... deviant. And I know for a fact that my knives are sharper than any of yours (with the exception of possibly one reader). How on earth am I the normal one? Do you hear the shit that comes out of my mouth when I'm on a roll? I'm surprised more people don't think I'm chemically imbalanced.

Then, on the T going home, I realized that I may be a little more normal than I thought. It all started with my own personal bat-shit insanity. See, some moron got hit/jumped into/got hit by the metro at around 5PM this evening. I'm trying to get into the Kendall Square T stop and am told that service has been suspended.

From the station, we're told to wait outside in Kendall Square in the cold for shuttle buses to take us down to Harvard. The MBTA guy told us it would be ten minutes. We see bus after bus come for the people across the street going inbound. After twenty minutes in the cold, the score is eight to zero. Not a single bus for us. That's when I start getting belligerent. I start comically referring to the MBTA guy as the ten minute man. I talk about wanting to kick him in the balls. I talk about hijacking one of the buses coming the opposite direction, asking if anyone has my back. I'm having fun, because I'm freezing my gonads off, and if I don't have fun, I'm going to be thinking about said gonads retracting into my abdomen. That, and I'm trying to get some attention from a cute Indian chick standing five feet away from me.

Finally, we're told to wait in a different spot where busses pull up. I get on the bus. I'm one of the last two people on the bus (cute Indian chick got on before me... not that I was stalking... that would be creepy... or cool... no, creepy). So, I have a bag of ramen with me. Well, two grocery bags. I'm holding it down to my side. Apparently it's swinging and hitting a guy next to me in the knee. I have no clue. All of a sudden, he gets all up in my face. Tells me to stop hitting him with my bag because his knee hurts, like I'm doing it on purpose. I apologize and he keeps shouting at me. I mean this guy was ALL up in my grill. I'm just short of telling him to fuck off, but I'm trying to be the bigger man. So, I let it go, despite him telling me to stop smiling like an idiot. Maybe if he smiled like an idiot more, he would be less of a douche. Everyone around me, including the bus driver was like, "What the hell is going on right now?" as the man is shouting at me. I actually was just short of swinging my bag at him just for kicks too. Luckily he got off at Central and couldn't get back on. When the bus reorganized after the stop, I told the people around me to politely let me know if my bag was hitting them and I would do my best to stop it. They all got a chuckle out of it, even the cute Indian chick (I SWEAR... NOT stalking).

Sometimes, people take life too seriously. I know I can take it too seriously now and then. I try my hardest, though, to try to enjoy myself. I try to make myself and those around me laugh, sometimes at me, sometimes at themselves, and sometimes at a third party. I think that if I was really not taking myself seriously, I would have asked the aforementioned cute Indian chick out for a drink. She does live in Davis and is, as my buddy Manni would say, "geographically desirable."

I have been thinking a lot about dating since I got back from China. This will be the first time in a while that I will be somewhere for more than a year straight. I mean, on the island, you know it's either going to be a fling or one or both of you are gonna be too hammered to remember anything happening. And what happens traveling stays on the trail. But here I am, now, at a home base for more than just a few months, but for no more than a year and a half. Should I start trying to date?

I was telling a friend of mine today that I really just want to hang out with cool chicks with a possibility of nakedness. If I just wanted to hang out with cool chicks, I would hang out with my friends. It's really the possibility of nakedness that sells it for me.

But I know that I don't want anything to come of anything I start right now. My ass is moving to Shanghai in a year and a half. I don't care how good the sex is. I don't care how cool she is. I don't care if she wakes me up wafting the sweet smell of pork products to my nose... or oral sex (now found to promote cancer)... and? oral sex? My ass is moving to Shanghai. I am standing my ground. If I don't have a plane ticket or firm plans to make an exodus by June of 2012, I want all of my readers to collectively kick my ass to death and send me to China in a body bag. But I digress....

Dating... Should I do it? How should I go about doing it? How do I go about doing it now that I'm not actually in motion? It's all a jumble in my head.

Also, living in my hole has gotten to me a little bit. For some reason the dark hole that I have lived in off and on for five or six years is kind of making me unhappy. I kind of want a window now. I think that it might regulate my sleeping habits a bit more. I know that both of my room mates will be moving out at the end of the lease here, so I might try to move back into my old apartment where my brother is now. It makes a lot of sense to me in a lot of ways. I could consolidate a lot of my possessions, figure out what I want to get rid of, what I want to keep. My brother could take as much of the furniture as he wants with him to wherever he moves. I could start taking apart my life. It would be a great prelude to moving to Shanghai. Sure, the rent would be more than double what I'm paying now, but at least I would have all of my shit together. I would have a window for a few months.

So, that's what I'm thinking about for right now. It's getting late and I have to work tomorrow. Hopefully they will have mopped up the poor moron who jumped in front of the red line.