Why I'm Awesome (Part 9 of 7,412): CITYSCAPE

One of the niftier and lesser-known things about me is that I do not "hate" anyone. I am an angry bastard of a woman with a lot of pent up rage and aggression stemming from all kinds of environmental and internal stimuli, but even in spite of my more-than-frequent pissiness (haha Word tried to autocorrect that to "prissiness" DON'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO MICROSOFT YOU ARE NOT THE BOSS OF ME) and the endless string of snide quips and jabs and verbal diarrhea that hurls from my wrath-infested self, I do not hate people.

Before I continue, I'm going to go ahead and introduce a new concept I will be working into my blog entries, which is a one-line explanation as to what inspired me to write this post. Ready GO.

[[This post is brought to you by Greg, better known to most of you as Quetzi, even though there is nothing remotely Quet or zi about him, and a brief exchange of comments on my previous blog entry.]]

Hate, to me, is a very strong word that I would only ever use in jest. I don't think I can remember the last time I actually used the word and meant it, whether to address an object or a person. Objects don't deserve that level of emotional intensity. When it comes to people, well, that's another story entirely.

You see, I am a cynic. I'm sure you've plucked that fact out if you've been reading my blogs. I have a hard time seeing the good in people at large; generally speaking, I find the human race quite abominable and abhorrent and do not expect us to last very much longer (in the grand scheme of things). I mean, humans are really the only ones who can think that their 10,000-year existence on a planet that's 5 billion years old is really anything particularly significant.

But while my macro-view of people is less than favorable, on a mano-a-mano basis I am much more amenable to thinking better of people. That aside, however, on a more personal level, I generally try to find things about the other person that I find likable (yes, even when I'm being mean, I'm looking for the good things about them), rather than going balls-to-the-wall out and trying to find something I don't like.

The bad stuff almost always surfaces eventually…no need for me to go poking around for it.

It is scientifically and emotionally impossible for me to hate something or someone. Something that I dislike to such an extreme degree isn't worthy of notice or attention, let alone any amount of intense emotion. Why waste my energy hating something when I can channel that same energy into something or someone I like?

My emotional state is like a giant lump of Play-Doh that may or may not be brown in color owing to the mixture of all the other, prettier Play-Doh colors over the course of my childhood. Put in a more scientific way, my emotional state is basically the Third Law of Physics, which talks about conservation of mass (I don't know if that's the third law for real but it's one of them goddammit).

The amount and total mass of Play-Doh cannot be increased or decreased, and in my case let's say it's a very soft, very LARGE lump of Play-Doh. On the ground in front of you, there's an asterisk drawn on the ground (a big one), and at each point of the asterisk there is an emotion (angry, sad, happy, etc.). The lump of Play-Doh is placed in the center of the asterisk and then pulled and flattened and punched until it accurately reflects my current emotional state, so if I'm angry, the Play-Doh pulls more toward the asterisk point labeled "angry" and if I'm also a little sad, it pulls a little bit along the "sad" part of the asterisk but not so much.

(If you're a Naruto fan you know EXACTLY what I'm talking about here in terms of this diagram.)

IT'S CALLED A RADAR CHART YOU BUNCHA JAPANOPHILE WEEABOO CHILDREN GOD GO THE HELL BACK TO SCHOOL.

But basically, I am capable of feeling intense happiness just as much as I am capable of feeing intense anger, and if I'm mixing two or more emotions, that dilutes the intensity of them overall because there's less mass left over to distribute to the rest.

My ability to like or dislike something isn't so much a lump of Play-Doh as it is a series of graduated cylinders and a giant bucket of love. When I first meet you, you get 100 ml worth of love in a 1000 ml cylinder just because I am a nice person and I give everyone my respect at first. (Even if I appear to be being mean to you, the love is there, buried beneath the snide quips and harsh words.) Depending on how our interaction goes over the course of time, the amount of love in your graduated cylinder is reduced or increased. Any love going out of the cylinder is returned to the bucket of love, while additional love comes directly from the bucket.

As a general rule, anything below 100 ml means I dislike you more than I like you.

In some cases, the overall size of your graduated cylinder can be upgraded if I feel like the original one cannot possibly contain all the love I have for you.

After a period of time the amount of love in your graduated cylinder stops changing, and this means I've got a good handle on you and my relationship with you. (The love inside it solidifies into a Jell-O-like substance; less likely to change and of very high viscosity but still removable if necessary.) Some people have such a staggering amount of love that their graduated cylinders are the roughly the size of an office tower (it's a really big bucket of love) and the contents within have basically been cemented. Naturally, the bigger your graduated cylinder (and the corresponding amount of love inside it), the closer you are to me. The more solid the contents of your cylinder, the less wavering our relationship is (and the better I know you, which is sometimes a time thing).

Family members or people who have attained family-like status basically form the central business district of the giant city (that looks not unlike Hong Kong) that is my heart, with the CBD itself populated with towering skyscrapers of fully solidified concrete. These are the people who can do whatever the hell they want and it will take an act of god for me to reduce the affection I have for them. My unwavering loyalty to my closest friends is evidence of this.

Business associates and casual acquaintances generally do not get upgraded past the original cylinder. They're like the little tiny glass "people" that fill the streets of the mega-city, looking up at the towering people that I hold dearest to my heart, some of them hoping to reach that place of magic and wonder and elite status, others not particularly caring so long as they have at least 100 ml of love in within them.

Now, if I dislike you to the point where the amount of love in your graduated cylinder hits 0 (which is a very difficult feat to achieve), your graduated cylinder is unceremoniously plucked out of the city of my affections, brought into the wilderness beyond, and smashed as a last act of anger against you, the remains ground into fine powder that is then scattered into the wind. You no longer exist in my city, you are forgotten, it's like you never even entered my life.

As such, my dislike for someone isn't really recorded or even remembered, especially when it gets that low. My love is returned to the giant bucket (which is my heart, you idiots who need to read more), ready to better serve the filling of the cylinder of someone slightly more awesome than those whose powdered cylinders are the stuff of legend.

It should be noted that as a general observation, the contents of an individual's graduated cylinder is likely to be more solid if there's less in it; that means that the less I like you, the harder it is for you to get back into my good graces and I don't think about you enough for my dislike to go any further unless you force it in that direction.

On the flipside, the higher the amount of love in a cylinder, the longer it takes to solidify. That means that you are very likable to me, but you haven't yet earned my loyalty.

Metaphors are so much fun.

I am more likely to love the people I like than I am to hate the people I dislike. As I've said before, when you are one of my closest friends, you are in for life and there is very little that I will not do for you or forgive you for.

Doesn't mean that if you fuck me over I won't knock your glittering tower over, not unlike God reaching down out of the heavens and jamming that almighty thumb of his into the top of a building and smushing it right into the ground (picture that if you will for a moment). It just means that it'd have to be a pretty serious betrayal and I would need to see lots of evidence against you before I could ever be capable of writing you out of my life for good, let alone actually to it.

Plus it leaves this giant pile of wreckage and rubble right in the middle of my city that, unlike the glass powder of insignificant graduated cylinders, doesn't blow away because you meant that much to me…and the cityscape is forever marred by your departure from it.

D'awwwww.