User:Nuclear5641

It is commonplace to see people struggling to lose weight, and perhaps slightly less commonplace to see those trying to put on some. I fall into neither of those categories. Among the myriad other possibilities of uncommonplaceness, I struggle not to alternate between the two commonplace extremes and instead to exert a steady control over my weight, which is enough to build a category for itself, but alas, failure ensues my every effort. I'm often seen either as an overweight, confoundedly overweight, six-foot giant with an overcritical negativity towards stories with happy endings, or a hollow beanpole with the same attitude. Since my weight transitions happen almost overnight, those poor buggers who judge me based on my appearance (and my criticality) have a limited time frame to catch glimpses of my being an elated happy camper.

My failure to maintain a stable weight, and indeed my failure to accomplish any task successfully to completion, can be traced back to my dysfunctional, oppressive, loathsome school teachers who had their mission, it seems, to deconstruct my self-esteem and never let go of any opportunity, however irrelevant or unrelated to me, to mock me. (That could also be why I mock them - to balance the score - but I digress). I had a more constructive and loving relationship, as I still do, with the school janitors than I did with most of the teachers and the series of obnoxious Principals who came and went one after the other like one disappointing African warlord after another. In retrospect, even though they all thought I would be thanking them in the future for their cruel misdemeanor since it's misdemeanor that forges good character, I take pleasure in looking at them as small-minded tyrants who will meet their maker before me.

School was a thousand centuries ago. The point was only to illustrate how childhood scars can haunt the haunted for life. In my case, though, those scars healed quickly and I've grown way past petty finger-pointing. But it did teach me important lessons on how to raise my kids and which school and type of school not to send them to. Parenting skills were the only thing I learned at school, to the irony of it.

I generally don't carry the burden of regret with me. Shit happens, find a way to atone, if you can atone, and/or move on. But retrospectoscope, combined with the awesome range of introspectoscope, can be a very useful tool insofar as atonement allows you to scope, and the inspiring combination of the two scopes has led me to relearn many of the previously learned sciences and arts that I regret having unconsciously unlearned, or, unsurprisingly, never having learned in the first place. Social science, particularly history and economics, and natural science, particularly Darwinian evolutionary biology, and the interaction of those two particulars that gives birth to the school of evolutionary psychology and sociology are at the prime topics of focus that interest and excite me. And ever since graduating school, I have developed an almost unhealthy love for postmodern literature, smitten by every word of every book I have had the pleasure of reading in that genre. (That's not to say I don't read other genres, because I do, but postmodern will always be my first love).

My real first love, however, was short stories. I love short stories about as much as I love KFC, need short stories about as much as I need KFC. In that sense, I'm lucky to be living in a world where there are as many short stories as there are KFC outlets. Oh wait, I probably made a disproportionate comparison there. Nevertheless, I'm glad I'm living in a world where stories, short or long, great films, and fleshy KFC fried chicken legs never run out.

I would've said I'm passionate about life, and I almost did type it, but in the words of Cormac McCarthy, who bitchslapped Oprah Winfrey in an interview with these words, "Passion is a fancy word." So I'll take the safer and more meaningful route and say that I'm in love with life and all the wonderful things, despite the shitstorm it can sometimes put you through, it presents. Too cheesy? Well, suck it! BS is not always BS.

(I was just kidding about being a failure at everything I do, by the way; that would be, how shall we put it, unrealistic!)