i must confess that my loneliness is killing me now

thoughts on a day where procrastination was perfected (also note that the blog title is in fact taken from 'hit me baby one more time'):

it's extremely depressing to be in the library on a saturday. no one really wants to be there, and you always feel as if the world outside is so much nicer. i would like to say i was productive, but that would be a lie. i did complete the reading i intended to, and managed to find a source for the maps i would need for a final paper. but i'm still way behind on my classes now, and the two research papers i have will soon creep up and stab me in the face. given my recent work-rate, some academic miracles will soon need to be wrought.

i finally picked up my new capo, and i was reminded about my musings on replacements. i realized that, while similar in concept, the idea of substitutes is different and also highly fascinating. while a replacement is meant to be permanent, a substitute is made explicitly for a temporary period. this makes being a substitute so much worse, because as a replacement, you would at least have the chance to outshine your predecessor, while substitutes are introduced with no intention of having that happen at all. i do enjoy the subtly of a language which allows both concepts to exist, just because they are in fact quite different.

while waiting for my bangkok combination to get cooked up at thai 55, i read about how economists "proved" the existence of giffen goods through an experiment using rats. now the quotes around the word 'proved' is an indication that i don't quite buy it. i mean, rats? really? how did they really expect people to consider rats as any kind of analogue for humans? it is really cool that they got the rats to drink more tonic water when the "price" (again the quotes) of it went up, but to parallel rat "rationality" (oh quotes galore!) with human rationality is simply unfounded. more serious examination of this question will be undertaken after i get further into this book. it's tim hartford's 'the logic of life' by the way.

more depressingly, it was again one of those days where i felt entirely caught up with the mess that the last two months have been. to go through such turmoil for a girl is silly of me. but i can't help but feel that i am smarter than that, which is why i often revert to a belief that the issue really is more complex than i thought, and it is not merely to convince myself i'm not an idiot that i say that. honestly, this whole incident has left my impression of friendship shaken in a way it hasn't been for quite some time. at some point, she said that she believed our friendship to be less fragile than i believed. unfortunately, i felt a compulsion to prove her wrong.

i just came up with what i believe is a good explanation for why things fell apart so quickly: the fact is that we make friends with people who don't demand that we move out beyond our comfort zone. hence, the potential for conflict among friends is typically small. i am referring to real friends of course, not merely acquaintances. thus, what we know friendship to be is subject to what economists might call selection bias. we always think friendship better than it in fact is, because we only see friendship among people who we clearly approve of. however, when conflict does happen, our limited coping capacities lead us to easy but unsatisfactory outcomes.

which makes my yearning to go back to where we were just 2 months ago entirely irrational. it simply isn't going to happen right now. such a shame though, because it was, to me, such a delightful friendship, to the extent i feel sorry that i am trying to find a substitute, or rather, a replacement for her. in the end, it really takes two hands to clap, and with 2 reluctant hands, it doesn't look like we are ever going to do any rebuilding.

last point: i am ridiculously excited about my concert prospects in the coming week. foo fighters on monday (which unfortunately i will be going to alone... any takers for my other ticket? i am literally giving it away to anyone who asks), ben folds on saturday. and it's not just ben folds, eef barzelay is opening. it's almost as if when they were booking the show, they read my mind to try and find out which two acts would best enhance this already wonderful year of concerts. i think after april 6th, when i see the eels, i can pretty much die happy. but oh wait, stone temple pilots are reforming for a tour this summer, and there's still that led zeppelin world tour in the works. i suppose i'll have to wait a while more before i get to see kurt cobain in hell.