Echo

Weekend Recap

There will be no weekend recap because I’m too tired to go through this weekend in overanalytical detail.

So I’ll just go through some random thoughts. I’ve been pretty random lately anyway.

First of all, I’m convinced that anyone can always get laid in Vegas. It’s a simple fact. But it’s such a vacuous experience that I don’t know what the point of it would be.

There are those who gamble for the social aspect of it, and those who gamble for the gambling/financial aspect of it. I am the former and am not compatible with the latter. In fact, I find serious tables to be a recipe for stress and losing a lot of money. I prefer tables where everyone is friendly and hoping that everyone else does well.

At whim, I bought some rolling papers on Saturday and rolled the pot that couple gave me into three huge joints. I bought a pack of cigarettes and threw out some cigs so I could fit the joints in the pack. Since pot-smoking was once a mainstay in the hippie tradition, I thought I would keep tradition alive by finding someone worthy to pass them on to. I forgot about them until Sunday, when my mom and I played blackjack between two guys from Wisconsin. They were really nice and fun. They invited me to hit up a club with them, and I wouldn’t have minded since they were really cool and non-threatening, but I wanted to call it in early that night. I thought I heard one of the guys asking the cocktail waitress for weed and I suddenly remembered my goodie box. So I asked the other guy, “Did he just ask her for weed?” The guy laughed and said, “I wish.” When my mom and I left the table, I told her to go on ahead and cash out our chips–that I was going to the bathroom. I doubled back and asked one of the guys if I could bum a cigarette. He reached for his pack and I said, no, let me borrow the whole pack. I had palmed the three joints in my hand, so I walked a few steps away, slid the joints in while closing the box in a single motion, then handed his pack back to him, telling him, “I changed my mind but left you guys a present.” I walked away, but turned around for a last look just in time to see him open the box, do a double take and close it quickly, his face lit up like Christmas. Now they have a story to take back to Wisconsin. And that makes my day.

Wherever I go in Vegas, I inevitably end up at Harrah’s, where the people are nice and fun (both the employees and the customers). And I love the Carnival Court, that outdoor pit, bar and stage with the crazy flare bartenders and the awesome cover bands. It’s like toned-down spring break there all the time, without as many stupid drunk hos and dumb frat boys. I spent most of Saturday there, going back twice. I was relieved to find one of the groups I loved to still be performing there. They played 70s funk/disco/rock, which was a nice mix. I watched them in the afternoon as my mom slept with her head on my shoulder. The band at night was an all white band that covered a range of things, from Justin Timberlake, Outkast and Tupac, to country/classic rock. I saw them and thought, I KNOW those guys are gonna be kind enough to play some Guns N’ Roses. And they freakin’ rocked it out with Sweet Child of Mine. I went with my mom again and we danced. She’s really shy, but she likes music and festive places. She really appreciates that I take her to places like this, which is sweet. It kills my game, yes, to have my mom in a bar or club with me, but honestly, I figure that when I’m older, I would love it if my kids would be willing to treat me like a friend and hang out with me. I’m not there yet, but I know it’s lonely getting old.

I think my dad was upset with me because I didn’t spend any time with him. And also because I got home at 5am and 8am on Friday and Saturday respectively, and he always thinks that when I get home really late while we’re staying at a casino, it’s because I’ve picked up a dealer and am off having sex with him, which is never true. I think I was severely irritated because he spent most of his time hanging out with my cousin and the boys on my cousin’s basketball team, which I think is so damn lame when those punks only look up to him because he buys them things, while meanwhile, he neglects his own son. There. I said it.

I think I’ve known this for a while, but just don’t want to face it yet — I want out of LA. People in LA are too neurotic. I don’t mean neurotic as in harmless quirkiness or eccentricity. I mean the dangerous kind of neuroses where people are internally damaged and play it out with their immediate environments and everyone in the vicinity. I want to go spend time in places where by sheer comparison, my quirkiness aside, I’m the craziest person in the room, and people basically have a solid, trustworthy core. Where you live should be a place where you want to live, not a place where you feel you have to cope with living in.

Neurotic people hide in cities. They are as much mentally overstimulated as they are existentially and/or emotionally conflicted so they search out an environment that is equally as chaotic or more so than their insides, so that the internal is balanced with the external and thus, their own private chaos and neediness is justified and supported. And while there isn’t a problem with neurosis itself, it can be expressed very detrimentally to the emotional welfare of others. I keep making a distinction between liking small town people versus city people (especially because I’m a small town girl myself), but I think what I really want is to surround myself with people who have inner integrity and emotional harmony. I’m sure detrimentally neurotic people can be found in small towns just as stable people can be found in big cities. But I want to be in an environment that promotes psychological wellbeing and truthfulness. I know that I’m eccentric and a free spirit, but I also know that I have a lot of inner harmony and integrity. Overall, I’m a stable, dependable person, and as much as people can deem me elusive, non-straightforward or mysterious, I doubt that anyone who has ever met me can question my sincerity and my goodwill towards fellow human beings.

I learn about life and the universe through observing people. My life purpose is about understanding people and the inner workings of life, and communicating what I observe, hopefully for the benefit of other people. But sometimes I feel that I let my romantic drive get in the way of my education of people, so that I get too close instead of remaining in the background and ensuring that I see things clearly and objectively. I have to learn to be more disciplined and not let my romantic, idealistic notions cloud what is really in front of me, creating an unTruthful idea of people and things. This has been a problem for as long as I remember. Don’t fucking touch the Muse, Shih…

I need to get a secondary business card to represent me as a writer. The card from my film company is quirkier and more targeted towards the film industry. I want another card that represents me as a more serious freelance writer putting together people-interest articles. Isn’t that such a gemini thing, having multiple business cards to represent different facets of my work? If I get another one for writing, that brings my total up to 4 different cards–one for my full-time job, one for directing/writing, one for business development and one for serious writing.

I’m taking a free online course about Forensic Science through Barnesandnoble.com . I just ordered the course book and for fun, some books on child psycho-pathology and neurological disorders. Sometimes it trips me out how heavily into spirituality I am, and yet, how heavily into science I am. I think they’re just two different languages of explaining similar things; when they contradict each other, they’re natural contradictions, not contradictions that exclude the validity of one another. But I find it beneficial to learn about science so I can have a lan
guage in which to explain more abstract concepts to people who insist that they only believe in science. Like how I think the dynamics between conscious perspectives, through a phenomenon similar to triangulation, create reality (which is inherently subjective), and the more people are gathered on a frequency, the reality becomes exponentially more subjective, thus explaining some psychological phenomenons (and pathologies) that occur in urban areas. And all this can easily be symbolized through mathematics. Pretty simple mathematics. Unfortunately, I don’t have a background in math or computer science, so I need someone’s help to help me create a program that will follow a formula to graph out what I’m talking about. I tried doing it by hand once (the dynamics between 120 people gathered in one interactive plane) but it was grueling and nearly impossible to be accurate. Anyway, I digress. I need to meet more people with backgrounds in math and science, yet are openminded and can fathom the abstract.

Sometimes, I think I am a robot.