Serious navel gazing time.

So I am chatting with some folks online, and holding forth on a fave topic, how badly I want to find someplace where all the gay intellectual types hang out so I can land me a smarty type boyfriend, when I say something along the lines of “I need someone who can keep up with me intellectually, and that’s a depressingly small percentage of the population. ”

OK, I recognize that this sounds kind of arrogant, if you look at it that way. I can see how someone might think I am claiming to be incredibly and phenomenally smart, and basically tooting my own horn in the paper-thin guise of complaining about my romantic prospects.

That’s not at all how I meant it, in any way, on any level. But, that’s how a bunch of people took it.

So now I have a bunch of people getting all offended and attacking me for being “egotistical” and “arrogant”, even though the very next thing I said after my first statement (because I realized how it sounded) was “Not that I am claiming to be the smartest guy in the world or anything. I’m just an intellectual. ”

But it was too late, people had already become offended by what they thought I meant, and were going to let me have it because I had somehow hurt their feelings by suggesting that I actually knew I was intelligent.

And this is a sore point for me, and has been since I was a kid.

See, for a great deal of my life, I felt like my intelligence was more of a burden than anything else. I was bored out of my mind most of the time in class. Teachers and administrators either treated it as an inconvenience that made their lives more difficult, or decided it was a license to ignore me, figuring if I didn’t need help learning, I didn’t need them at all.

Looking back, I can see the role I played in that, because I found the work very easy and did nothing to conceal that fact.

But why should someone have to hide their virtues anyhow? And that’s the nub of the issue with my argument in the chat. So I said I was intelligent. I never said “And you all are MORONS compared to me!”. I never even said “I am incredibly intelligent”. I just said I was a fairly intelligent person.

And it’s true, damn it. Why should I be made to feel guilty about a true statement that does not put anyone down? Why is it that I can’t say “I am fairly intelligent” without people taking it as a statement about them?

I firmly believe that people should be allowed to enjoy, or at least plainly state, their own virtues. To make someone feel ashamed of their strengths simply because said strengths might make someone else feel bad for lacking them seems to me to be horribly backwards and wrong.

What’s wrong with just letting people enjoy what they have, as long as they don’t use it as an excuse to put other people down or think themselves superior?

I’m a smart guy. It’s empirically true. I taught myself to read at the age of 2. I showed up at school already reading at a grade six level. I got good grades without even studying. Blah blah blah.

I don’t go around bragging all the time. I don’t go out of my way to make anyone feel stupid. I don’t consider myself better than everyone else because I am so darn smart. It’s not even necessarily the most important thing about me, although it is one of my primary assets.

So why should it be some kind of crime to just acknowledge the fact?

And the things people read into my single comment were astounding. That I was arrogant, that I thought I was better than everyone else, that I did this all the time, etc. and so on.

One guy even starting making personal attacks on me, completely ad hoc ad hominem, like he had to prove he was actually better than me despite my asserting that I was fairly intelligent.

Am I wrong to think that if you feel you have to attack somebody’s entire status and sense of worth just because they say they are intelligent, it’s you that has the problem?

I am sick and tired of this soul-destroying notion that we all have to pretend mediocrity just to keep from maybe making someone feel jealous or insecure. No wonder low self-esteem and depression are rampant. People are made to feel ashamed of even the good things about themselves.

Well to hell with that. I’m smart, I’m nice, I’m funny, and I see no reason to pretend different.

And I am sure you have wonderful virtues I would love to hear about too!

Although this one is of my own making, because I stayed up till 10 am this morning playing video games.

Or rather, video game, specifically, Monster Hunter Tri for the Wii. The game is really addictive to me, because is has tough mission based play (I am currently trying to slay a beast called a Darroth, and it’s winning) and plenty of opportunity to go back to previous missions and gather the resources you need to upgrade your equipment and then give it another try.

For a goal oriented, resource oriented person like myself, this is crazy addictive.

So this being a drowsy day, I have already had some really fucked up dreams. The weirdest of which has to be the bit with the ducks.

This is so weird and messed up that even I, wacky funster that I am, am a little embarrassed to relate it, but here goes : I dreamed that there was a product out which was a bowl a duck soup with an actual, living duck in it. A tiny one, obviously, but yup, it was alive.

And in my dream, I had one of these duck bowls, and I loved it. Somehow, the duck was like a pet who swam around in your soup and quacked and gave all signs of being a very happy little duckie. Kept you company while you ate the soup, I guess.

Thankfully, I am nearly positive you didn’t eat the duckie itself. I think it became your pet once you were done. Oh, and if you added more soup to your bowl (from where? dunno), the duck would somehow heat it up for you.

Near the end of this dream thread, I was just about to explain this wonderful new product to someone and has basically said “You know what is really cool?” but then paused a little too long, and they said “You know what’s not cool? They have this new product where you have a live duck in your bowl of soup!”.

The last thing I remember, I was explaining to the person how it’s not nearly as bad as it sounds. No, you see, the duck loves it in there!

Even for a dream, to me, this is all unspeakably weird. I am a very sensitive animal lover, the sort of person who feels a great deal of empathy for all living things, and so to have a dream that has such a bizarre take on a living creature like a duck really leaves me scratching my dream soaked head.

Plus, I mean, why ducks? I have vague impressions that there were ducks in the dream before it turneed into a soup question as well. I have no idea what the hell ducks “mean” to me, what the iconic resonance of The Duck is within my musty old mine.

I have never had any particular like or dislike of ducks. I can’t recall any duck related traumas or triumphs from my childhood. I have seen ducks, both on television and in person at parks, but while I found their waddling crabbiness charming and amusing and their swimming lovely in its effortless efficiency, I cant’ say they made any kind of big impression on me that would lead to them playing a starring role in a very disturbing little dream.

Maybe it was all just because I was hungry. We’re a little low on groceries right now and I have had to improvise, and my improvisations are filling but not all that nutritious, being mostly carbs.

I am really disappointed that, despite Joe cheerily assuring me that a trip to Costco would happen this weekend on Friday night, here it is, well past closing time for Costco on Sundays, and he’s asleep. Obviously, it is just not going to happen, and I had to send Julian for a few stopgap supplies, which I can ill afford.

Plus, we are out of fruit, and whenever that happens, my mood suffers. I must really need the fructose and the vitamins in my diet to keep me healthy. Now I am wondering if I will have to do without fruit until next weekend. That is a prospect I do not relish.

If I had the money and the mobility, I would just go get my own groceries. But I am not, so I am forced into a state of dependence, and as such, I don’t feel I can very well complain, or demand.

Guess I just have to take what I get, and make do, like I always have.