«The Meaning of Friendship»

12-29-2308

     I’m not quite sure what friendship is right now, but I’m sure I know what it’s not.

- Friendship isn’t turning to someone to console or hold you, then turning your back on them the first time they may need to be comforted.

- Friendship isn’t saying you’ll return a favor each time, then watching those promises pile up as you ask for more.

- Friendship isn’t bringing down the quality of someone’s life just so you can feel better about your own.

- Friendship isn’t feeling not even a little obliged to be nice to someone who bends over backwards for you.

- Friendship isn’t agreeing to something, then diving through the first loophole to escape the responsibility, no matter how unclear the terms were.

- Friendship isn’t teasing someone with the promise of more than friendship, when leaving them hanging when they take the bait.

- Friendship isn’t lying to someone about not being ready for a relationship to keep them as a friend while you start one with someone else.

- Friendship isn’t keeping someone under your thumb while plotting everyone you’ll sleep with when they’re not around.

- Friendship isn’t hooking up with someone’s friends and then lying about what you did with or how you feel about them.

- Friendship isn’t taking advantage of someone’s feelings for you in order to coerce them to do anything for you.

- Friendship isn’t carelessly disregarding those feelings the second the next best thing comes along to charm it’s way in.

- Friendship isn’t ignoring and avoiding a conversation with someone because you don’t have the balls to tell them how you really feel.

- Friendship isn’t denying someone the common decency of being honest with them after tricking them into see something compassionate and human within you.

- Friendship isn’t saying ‘I Love You’ to someone one day, then neglecting to talk to them the next.

- Friendship isn’t making someone have to come up with a list like this in the first place.

     Friendship isn’t liking the thought of never hearing from or seeing you again, but this has hardly been a real friendship, hun.

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Published in:  on 30 December, 2308 at 2:00 PM Leave a Comment
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«Pointless»

12-25-2308

I knew it wouldn’t work. I knew something was going to go wrong from the start. Like everything I touch it was doomed to fail before anything could come to fruition. I shouldn’t have let myself get so wrapped up in all of it in the first place. I was blinded by optimism and my stupid hopes.

She was the only person I was looking forward to seeing when I came back to Earth. Even if she had been living on Mars and I had seen her three-quarters of the past month, she was truly the only thing on my mind before I came here. I couldn’t wait to hold her tiny frame in my arms, I couldn’t wait to kiss those delicate lips, I just couldn’t wait to be with her again. I also couldn’t see the turmoil that lay just ahead of us.

Christmas day had been one of bad news and devastation to Eon and her family. They lost their eldest son on one such morning not a handful of years ago, and nobody had ever been the same since. She took up the reins of an addict as her parents began the occupation of worrying about losing a second child. It only makes sense that they’d be a little overprotective of their daughter.

I thought I was dismayed when I learned she wasn’t quite as serious about us and our relationship as I was. I thought I was distraught when I discovered she had seen other guys in the few days we’d been back on Earth. I thought I was destroyed when I realized the three little words she told me not even a week before were useless if she wouldn’t back them up with deed. But I knew if I had to go back to Mars and she wouldn’t be there I was just going to be depressed.

Her parents clipped their little bird’s wings and showed her to her new cage. I knew I could only bring so many crackers to her before I myself would be brought to tears, to see her beat against the bars and not be able to spread her feathers. All I wanted was for her to fly free and be happy, but I felt there was no way I could help her now, as desperate as I tried.

She gave me a kiss on the cheek as we hugged, then disappeared into her vehicle. I sighed and lit a cigarette, waved to her as she drove off, and turned to my brother’s behemoth of a crawler, thumbing the key before climbing up into the cabin. I wanted to take it and steer myself off the nearest cliff, but realized this gesture would be as futile as any thing I’d done in the past year. Instead I drove home to put down my head and hope that the next day would be better.

‘What was the point in trying,’ echoed the discouraged voice in my head as I closed my sore, weary eyes. I fell asleep on my damp pillow feeling as dumb as ever.

pointless

Published in:  on 25 December, 2308 at 3:28 PM Leave a Comment
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«Women are like Lighters»

12-10-2308

     They come and go so easily. One second you have them, and the next they disappear in a cloud of smoke. You always get upset when you see another guy holding your lighter, and you always know when its your lighter. Sometimes we make marks in lighters or decorate them to let everyone know that their yours.

     You can find them just about anywhere, always at bars and clubs and sometimes, if you’re desperate and have a little money, down at the right store. Sometimes finding one is as simple as leaving the house.

     You have to grasp the fact that if you can get a lighter you can lose it just as easily. No matter how much you like it or how well it works out for you or seems to make everything easier, you’re going to lose her. You have to realize that even if it can keep you warm for a little while, eventually you’ll have to get a new one when she runs out.

     But it doesn’t really pay to weep over the loss of a lighter. You’ll both get along just fine without each other.

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Published in:  on 16 December, 2308 at 8:09 PM Comments (1)
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«Martian Couples»

09-03-2308

     It seems I can’t look anywhere these days without seeing another pair. Walking slowly with beaming smiles, hand in hand without a care in the world they pass. Happy couples: left, right and center.

     I can’t even double take at a girl without seeing her smooching some tanned, muscly jerk over my shoulder. It’s frustrating when all the time you spend people watching through a cloud of smoke suddenly doesn’t make you feel better about yourself. Why is it there seems to be so many couples about these days?

     It surely hasn’t been this depressing all year long. I remember not more than two weeks ago sitting at the boardwalk watching summer girls passing on the orange sand. Enough eye candy to give you a hangover the next day from just tasting; anguish of an entirely different definition. There truly seemed to be no end to the procession of scantily clad women, not until now anyway.

     No, it seems now the pairing instinct has kicked in and each of those seemingly untouchable women have begun to dig in for winter. I understand well enough, Earth trend dictates that everyone wants to be single all summer long to taste as much life as they can, and then settle down through the cold months and split again when the flowers bloom. What doesn’t make sense is why here on Mars, where there are no cold months, no snow to lock yourself inside from, no icy gales to bundle up in, you can watch it happen every year right as rain. But they’re not sticking together to keep warm and there’s no reason for seasonal relationship fluxes in a place with no seasons.

     I can’t deny that I don’t feel a tug though. I’ve been single for nearly a year now, and only really happily so for maybe of that. But its been the greatest, most productive time of my life, and it hasn’t let down since it started to get good. But I guess I feel it still, what everyone else must, that certain loneliness.

     Is it cause I’m tired of being single? Am I sick of not having, or just knowing I don’t have, a loved one to turn to for anything from a hug to a dry shoulder? Or is it social brainwashing that has me down? Because I see it everyday it could just be a bandwagon effect, making me want to catch up and grab hold of the relationship cart again. Perhaps I’m just never satisfied with life, always feeling like theres a hole inside. Its been too long to remember if seeing someone can even fill that void.  Could it be I’m just jealous?

     I must note how strange it is that just a random couple walking their pet over there invokes such a strong feeling within me. Logically, I’m better off now than I ever have been–young, single, and talented living on Mars. I’ve really had no desire to break out of bachelorhood, but I still want what they have for some reason. I want to be loved, to be listened to, to be warm. But do I want it badly enough to possibly forfeit everything going for me?

     I take a final drag of my cigarette and put it out on my heel, sinking into the polymer bench as I exhale. It’s not really up to me though. It’s doesn’t even matter if I don’t want to be single–first I have to find a woman who doesn’t want me to be.

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Published in:  on 3 September, 2308 at 3:05 AM Leave a Comment
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«I Hate Martian Girls»

04-17-2308

     I have to admit, some of the largest pieces of fuel to my dream, and a most of the motivating factors for me to move here, have been the girls of Mars. For years, 3Ds, and even 2Ds have been trying to capture the beauty and mystique of the Martian Female. Long blond hair, bare tan bodies and enough baggage to power a star-cruiser.
     They are a puzzling creature to study or pursue, and even it’s more fascinating to learn that they’re exactly how they seem in the old movies–two dimensional. One of the most disappointing discoveries has been to find out that most of the ad-worthy, model-ready chicks lining the boardwalks and crowding the outdoor malls really don’t have much more going on than what you see. Dealing with emotions and personalities that never evolved passed a giddy school girl level, the ignorance to the value of money, and a refusal to accept the realism or seriousness of any situation, even their own life, are simply hazards of the occupation of courting Martian women.
     Now, if it were just as easy as getting over a few childish flaws in a girl and looking to the good, this would be a much more concise transmission. It gets a little tricky here though, and there’s very little good in there, so don’t strain yourself looking for it. It doesn’t matter who you are, where you’re from or what you have to offer to Martian Girls, they only want guys with three things; money, wheels and an ID.
     I can’t lie, I thought the women here would be artistic,  or even just cultured, since the atmosphere lends to such creativity of others. I merely assumed that something about this place drove everyone’s will to create. I was sorely mistaken. I also thought the women here loved artists, loved watching a man turn raw materials into a brilliant work or plucking the sweetness from the air to play her a song. Two Strikes. Finally, I thought they would dig my old world charm; this handsome young man from the solar system’s capital with his ideas and languages, untainted by the city or the people of Mars, powered by an artist’s burning soul; doesn’t quite cut it–everything is older than Mars, anyway.
     No, girls just want someone to be their chauffeur, their personal accountant, and provide them with entertainment and an eventful evening when too lazy or unimaginative to concoct one themselves. All they care about is not having to work or think for themselves while they get to reap the fruit of another’s labors, and look fabulous doing it. They want the world served to them on a silver platter, as it has been since birth surely, and they refuse to see one that exists any other way but this. In short; most Martian girls are egotistical, egocentric and tend to have a serious Electra Complex.
     They have always been an immense motivation to me, but if women were the strongest factor in my ongoing life here, I would have packed up and went home the moment I got dumped here. Its all about the art and the culture, and expanding both within myself, and I’ll just as soon lay down and die as let my dreams do the same. I bet there’s a lady or two somewhere on this planet with redeeming factors, and I refuse to believe a rotten bunch of apples contains no keepers. Call it stubborn, but I’m sure there’s someone out there who paints and sings and sees the world like I do, or who wants to see the world as I do. Yeah, there has to be girl out there for me, I hear for every planet you have at least one soul mate.
     I am fairly certain now that I just landed on the wrong half of this one.

     I have to admit, some of the largest pieces of fuel to my dream, and a most of the motivating factors for me to move here, have been the girls of Mars. For years 3D films, and even 2Ds, have been trying to capture the beauty and mystique of the Martian Female. Long blond hair, bare tan bodies and enough baggage to power a star-cruiser.

     They are a puzzling creature to study or pursue, and even it’s more fascinating to learn that they’re exactly how they seem in the old movies–two dimensional. One of the most disappointing discoveries has been to find out that most of the ad-worthy, model-ready chicks lining the boardwalks and crowding the outdoor malls really don’t have much more going on than what you see. Dealing with emotions and personalities that never evolved passed a giddy school girl level, the ignorance to the value of money, and a refusal to accept the realism or seriousness of any situation, even their own life, are simply hazards of the occupation of courting Martian women.

     Now, if it were just as easy as getting over a few childish flaws in a girl and looking to the good, this would be a much more concise transmission. It gets a little tricky here though, and there’s very little good in there, so don’t strain yourself looking for it. It doesn’t matter who you are, where you’re from or what you have to offer to Martian Girls, they only want guys with three things; money, wheels and an ID.

     I can’t lie, I thought the women here would be artistic,  or even just cultured, since the atmosphere lends to such creativity of others. I merely assumed that something about this place drove everyone’s will to create. I was sorely mistaken. I also thought the women here loved artists, loved watching a man turn raw materials into a brilliant work or plucking the sweetness from the air to play her a song. Two Strikes. Finally, I thought they would dig my old world charm; this handsome young man from the solar system’s capital with his ideas and languages, untainted by the city or the people of Mars, powered by an artist’s burning soul; doesn’t quite cut it–everything is older than Mars, anyway.

     No, girls just want someone to be their chauffeur, their personal accountant, and provide them with entertainment and an eventful evening when too lazy or unimaginative to concoct one themselves. All they care about is not having to work or think for themselves while they get to reap the fruit of another’s labors, and look fabulous doing it. They want the world served to them on a silver platter, as it has been since birth surely, and they refuse to see one that exists any other way but this. In short; most Martian girls are egotistical, egocentric and tend to have a serious Electra Complex.

     They have always been an immense motivation to me, but if women were the strongest factor in my ongoing life here, I would have packed up and went home the moment I got dumped here. Its all about the art and the culture, and expanding both within myself, and I’ll just as soon lay down and die as let my dreams do the same. I bet there’s a lady or two somewhere on this planet with redeeming factors, and I refuse to believe a rotten bunch of apples contains no keepers. Call it stubborn, but I’m sure there’s someone out there who paints and sings and sees the world like I do, or who wants to see the world as I do. Yeah, there has to be girl out there for me, I hear for every planet you have at least one soul mate.

     I am fairly certain now that I just landed on the wrong half of this one.

 

I hate California Girls

Published in:  on 17 April, 2308 at 8:13 PM Leave a Comment
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