This is of course, for a multitude of reasons, I’ll try to describe them, hopefully it will start making sense.

1. The more people out there the more likely you are to offend one of them.

This is very true and very real. If you’re talking to just one person, you’re not likely to offend them, as you’re talking to just one person. Talk to ten people, and the chances of you offending one of them is greater, as we introduce diversity. Introduce more diversity and more people, we become more and more politically correct out of necessity as we increase the scale.

2. Replying is as easy as typing an address to begin with.

“lol u suk im offended” takes less keystrokes than blogging about it, typing up an article or heaven knows what. Thus, feedback is immediate, and quite often stupid.

The idea is, in an email, I can be mean to somebody, but I’m not trying to prove anything to anyone but that person. Fine, go yell at them, what do you do? They’ll get a little mad. You can make really silly points, what would they do? They’ll get a little mad.

On a forum, however, you don’t just talk to that person, no, if you start being a little hostile towards them, they’ll immediately try to (a) prove you wrong and (b) prove everyone else on the forum that they’re not wussies causing you to bash them even harder, and vice versa, and the cycle goes on and on.

I figured, the only points you can make on a forum are simply those that get you just about… nowhere. Disagreements over very minor things tend to end up as huge pointless debates resorting to “yo momma” and trying to find pages on Wikipedia to prove everyone wrong or just finding grammatical errors, as if that magically makes them wrong.

I’m sick of forums, sorry. It divides us, it makes us want to kill each other and it exposes everyone’s stupidity (including your own by even trying to read that stuff).

Sorry, I quit.

So, I decided to go out tonight. Oh, how wonderful, me and a few friends hanging out at the bar, yay! Wrong. Nobody cares about me hardly as much as I care about them and/or the rest of society.  I don’t mind this whole ad populem act as much as I mind te awful practice of excluding the individual.

I myself, not being a fascist, like to take care of myself as well as my surroundings, and when I’m not happy, I start a vicious cycle.

Problem number one. I quite honestly have no friends. I have acquaintances. It’s the most awful way anyone could ever end up. It’s as if I’m completely detached. Is there any point in even trying to be a part of it all? I never was, not for one second, I don’t recall.

Example. A certain person, whom  I shall call Andrew had his birthday. Great. All sorts of people invited, who isn’t? Me. You know what, I did half your fucking biology experiment, I ran straight to your help when your precious PowerBook had a hardware problem I did everything I knew to get it back. And I get what? You know what, go home and concentrate on something. Oh, sorry, you also have ADD. Go take some meds like the rest of us, those who are actually trying to do something about it. Go formulate opinions, so that you don’t have to reverse them every so often like you quite often do in conversations – you know what – you deserve me not coming.

It just came to a point where my current lack of actual friends will lead to a future deficit of such, which will in turn decline into the depths of desperation and kill me one of these days. Don’t tell me I’m not adjusted to the Danish schedule will you? You’re not making it any better – I know I’ll never fit in anywwhere, you don’t have to remind me. I’m having a hard time as it is. It’s hard, it is.

The only person who did sem to want my company was a friendly hobo, trying to flirt with me, having mistaken me (understandably enough) for a woman.

It starts to rain, I head back home, hoping that maybe the rain at least won’t smear my carefully applied eyeliner – my new fear. In my mom’s stolen jacket, heading to bed after yet another night which I should have spent doing anything but going out. You know what mom, if you ever wonder why I don’t call you after leaving home – just think – remember that time you called me a tranny? YES, THAT’S WHY. How about you try “fag” next time, that might work as well. I should have never come out to you, I should have taken the first man I see, bring him home and have loud sex in my bedroom, yes, shove it in front of you. I should put my eyeliner pencil right in front of your nose. Checked the bottom-left compartment of my closet? Do you think that patterned cloth is just a rag? Why does is reassemble a skirt so much I wonder! Don’t you just love your little illusions, mother!

I quite honestly often wonder what I’ll do without a certain friend, whom I’m hoping will visit me, if he can keep control over his wallet. He’d rather go see that Finn I can imagine, but what he doesn’t know is how I need just what he can offer right now. Please come, I beg you.

I’m very sorry if this is a little too much, but I really want to get it out there. Don’t worry, I’m fine for the most part.

He does legally hold two nationalities, and yet neither of them is in fact related to his current position on earth, or maybe just by a broad definition – “European.”

He makes attempts to learn the local language and fit in, presents himself as a local, or a “citizen of the world”, but hits the same brick wall – he does not fit exactly, but merely some of the time. He may hold two passports, but not want to have much with one nationality, and being very distant from the other.

His previous experiences in life, the language which he had acquired mean absolutely nothing in his current surroundings – a recently planted tree, significantly smaller than the rest in the forest. Will he ever bear fruits or repay society? That’s most certainly his plan, whether or not

Thanks to involuntary military service, a large Jewish orthodox sector, extreme weather, lack of respect for the environment and the beaurocracy’s helplessness facing these issues – I decided to take the plunge and be this proletariat drifter scum.

Luckily, I managed to get a hold of a German passport. Since Denmark is in the EU, I’m pretty much set. I am able to receive free tuition and even subsidy. Arrangements are being made, and the day slowly nears that I will come back, in 2009, or maybe even late 2008 and become a proletariat drifter scum.

To be honest, my life as a proletariat drifter scum can’t possibly be worse than my life as a local would have been in Israel. It’s just not going to work with me and Israel, we’re too different. Too different, and indeed, we must therefor break up, peacefully and quietly.

Socialism is definitely the way to go. Israel isn’t really my thing. The issue’s pretty much solved.

So that’s it, I’ll be living the next few years in Denmark, that’s for certain – most likely even the next few decades. And me, I couldn’t get any happier. I’m not alone as I am now, and knowing Danish (properly at least) would be even better.

May 2008, I finish IB. August 2008, I’m going to fight for my freedom in the battle against the involuntary military service in Israel. Then later in 2008, or even at late as 2009, back to Denmark.

So I won’t have the right to vote, like anybody cares. So long, Israel.

Jeans are sickly widespread. By that I mean 80% of the population around you is probably wearing Jeans right now (unless you’re at the office most likely, but possibly even then.) Seriously, next time you’re sitting somewhere, just do a little count of how many people around you are not wearing Jeans. You’d be amazed.

And so, for possibly even two years (I can’t remember), I wore no jeans at all whatsoever. None. Interesting part is, nobody actually noticed until I told them. “So you don’t have any Jeans?” – “Nope.”

There is, however, a certain level of conformism I sort of owe to society. I could go about rejecting standards when they’re more common and such, but otherwise, no go. And I, being male, faced a certain problem when it came to Jeans alternatives.

There simply are almost no Jeans alternatives for men. Sure, you have corduroy, and that stuff they have all over the place, suit pants, surfer pants (you won’t see me wearing those), ordinary old-man pants and of course kilts. Kilts aren’t very widespread in northern Europe, so I figured I’m not going to wear any. Suit pants and ordinary old-man pants aren’t really my taste, and surfer pants are fucking disgusting. In other words, I’m kind of left with corduroy and that generic undefinable stuff they use.

I could cross over and start wearing skirts, of course, but as I said, there is a certain level of conformity I owe to society. So as much as I do want to wear skirts and make-up (honestly), I simply can’t. Not a good idea in job interviews, school environments and around your parents

Fine! You got me! I surrender, society! You know what, you got me. You win, majority. I’m willing to buy Jeans, and wear them with pride.

And so, on the 3rd of June I went to the nearest mall to get myself some Jeans, under three restrictions. They must not be blue-blue, faded blue is good enough, really dark blue, fine. Additionally, the waistline must be sane and shouldn’t cause any problems for a person actually walking in them. Then lastly, they must not cost over 300 Danish Kroner (~ US$53).

I, wearing black pants and a buttoned shirt, together with a fellow community member, Simon, who was wearing surfer pants and a glaring pink hoodie that could frighten small children made our way through the dungeon of stores at Field’s on an open Sunday.

It became very obvious how much of a misfit I actually was. Although I had three whole years to adjust to life in the urban jungle, Simon was way ahead of me in terms of cultural understanding and social behavior. Switching off the analytical mind of his in exchange for the more socially acceptable mask of politeness. The funny part is, he had only moved to the city two weeks earlier. Some people just have it in them.

At H&M, the IKEA of clothes, I couldn’t find anything even remotely reassembling what I was looking for. The Mini-Magasin store did in fact have an interesting pair, but for 900 Kroner (~ US$161), they were doomed to stay where they were for a very long time if it depended on me. Eventually, I lost track of where we were heading, and we had reached a section neither of us knew. In fact, I doubt it was even mapped. And to think Field’s looks like a simple place from the outside. Like two explorers, finding natives far away where no white man had gone before, we found ourselves surrounded by locals carrying bags embedded with various logos. “It’s hard to find clothes when your style is based on irony.” He said, but it’s even harder to find clothes when you have no idea where you are or where you might be heading.

“Where are we?” Neither of us knew. Eventually, a lucky turn in the path revealed the familiar sight of the stairs and Jack & Jones. At last, mapped territory.

I remember looking for non-Jeans pants in Jack & Jones that one time. Of course, to no avail. They simply did not have that item. It was like walking into a Chinese restaurant seeking to buy condoms. It is just not going to work out. And so, looking through the stacks of Jeans, I found myself a faded gray pair. The waistline made sense, and the size was good enough. For 200 Kroner (~ US$35), I could afford them. I put them on, looked okay, good enough.

So there you have it, society. I’m wearing Jeans. But, hey, at least I haven’t cut my hair yet, and yes, I still want to wear make-up. Maybe I’ll make a statement of going to prom wearing a dress. Although in order to do that and be excused, it might be better to at least act dangerously drunk, high, or temporarily insane.

It’s also to do with not being able to sit down still. I should probably be taking ritalin, but apparently it was never prescribed to me for other reasons. Maybe to do with my Tourettes Syndrome, as my mom once said or otherwise. I do certainly believe that it should have been.

My attention span is very short even when it comes tasks I otherwise enjoy doing. Getting myself away from stimulants doesn’t seem to help much as I just get bored and start thinking all sorts of stuff.

It’s horrible. I come up with amazing hypotheses about human nature, the universe, etc. and yet they all boil down to just being plain dangerous. Dangerous thoughts.

When I sit down to write about those things however, I end up, again, losing concentration, disinterested, unmotivated or otherwise just at a general lack of things to say after some point.

Trying to sit down and force myself to write this post is in itself a challenge.

Last night I found myself wandering around town for about two hours. I was trying to make myself walking into gay bars, to no avail. If there’s nobody pushing me, it’s not going to be done, period. Even if I want it, need it, or otherwise – if there’s no person to directly tell me what to do – I just won’t be able to make myself do it.

I guess to some extent it was also for my own sake, going to gay bars (or trying for that matter) but the main idea was to try to complete my social anthropology paper, which requires me to do fieldwork.

Maybe it was a poor choice of subject, but I couldn’t think of anything else. I ended up choosing something which:

• I know I should have done
• Which I don’t do on a regular basis

or otherwise

• which I’ve never done
• and which I wish to do

The problem is, I walk up there, and the moment I see the door, I do a 180 and retrace my steps.

That’s when it occurred to me, that I really have a serious problem. An emotional block. A fear of crowded places. Something about them, and I wish I knew what it is, makes me feel subconsciously incompatible and neglected, and in turn I will resort to confining myself somewhere away from “real live people.”

I had a vague notion that I can’t walk into those places on my own and therefor tried to ask a friend for help. She accepted, and so we were supposed to meet with two others at Nørreport station, 20:00. Terribly early, even for me. But then again, they just wanted to check the place out. As long as I walk through the door, fine by me. I can make a few notes, write some paragraph and come up with something to fit the data like a good Pith-Helmet wearing anthropologist.

I practically ran to Nørreport, and surprisingly enough, arrived on time.

Funny thing is, the moment the little yellow LEDs around the door opening button, I received a message saying: “I’ll be late.”

Be late, I don’t mind.

Another person came at that point. He was actually on time. He told me, in these very words, “when [she] says she’ll be there at 8, she means she’ll be out of the house at 8.” And there’s your problem. While I’m rushing to get my things together, make sure I catch the bus on time and so on, she simply did not care.

That was not the time to get angry, not yet. The rest came, 20 minutes late, and we started walking towards “Dunkel.” On our way there, we saw Jailhouse and Masken. Unfortunately, Dunkel was closed.

Now, instead of being – excuse me for using this word in the same sentence with those irresponsible children – practical; they went back to Nørreport station to see “the others.” The others were of course more irresponsible teenagers with alcohol problems.

I couldn’t stand it any longer, and at Gammel Torv I simply made the decision to just go on my own and try to do some fieldwork somewhere.

And that’s how I ended up on the streets for two hours.

I eventually gave up and decided to just start walking aimlessly, ending up on Kultorvet, as that friend who originally wanted me to go out finally managed to get in contact with me. I took the plunge and laid the cards on the table – which I don’t do very often. I said that I have a problem, that if I don’t get pushed to do things I just won’t do them, and that I need help. Quite literally, I asked for help. To be perfectly honest, it doesn’t happen very often that I actually ask for help and not imply it or otherwise.

“Just come to the Austrian Bar.” She explained me how to get there, and I went.

Of course, they won’t let me get in, having only my diplomat ID and not much besides. Not much I was willing to show at any rate. I tried calling her, to no avail. 15 minutes later, she walks out voluntarily without me being reaching her phone (not because I wasn’t trying).

The next 30 minutes we spent switching between arbitrary modes, goals and targets:

• “Where’s Person X?”
• “Where should we go?” (my opinion was of course not taken into account)
• My pleas to have someone push me around
• Dealing with the bouncer over at Retro

The resolution about where to go after long sessions of argument was of course: No resolution.

This whole absolute failure in management, organization and fucking common sense made me think. I would have been doing just that had it not been for the fact that I now knew how to organize myself. I could no longer fit in the group because I simply could not stand the lack of authority and structure as well as the general mood of indecision.

I don’t actually belong with them, I figured. Will I ever go out again? I might as well, but probably not with these guys, and most certainly not with a group of more than 3 people including myself.

It’s not that much fun unless you drink. Problem is, I can drink at home and get 3 times more work done than by hanging out with these guys. I genuinely hate society.

Ridiculous how I managed to write this thing. Problem is I’m supposed to do about five other things at the moment.

I really like to have control over who I’m actually around. There are certain people I dislike, and simply don’t want around me. This definition somehow comes to include pretty much all of the people I know with the exception of suppose 3-5 people.

I need a holiday, I need the company of certain people (one in particular), I need to get away from those I don’t like.

I know I can’t lock myself up in some wrench down in Jylland with all the people I want to be around, and that’s exactly what bothers me. When it so happens that I ask for help, nothing happens. It’s all the same whether or not I take part in it. I’m not committing suicide just yet, I still have a book to write, whenever I get down to doing it, and there’s maybe one person out there whom I promised I won’t do just that, and I, unlike some people, do keep promises.

Now, if only I was a black Jewish communist lesbian…

What I’m saying here is not solid historical fact, do don’t take it as that.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Christmas came to replace a different holiday that came around that time, and all that religious bullshit came much later, I wouldn’t doubt it.

So, buying presents I guess, is a part of the whole thing with coming over to someone else’s house. You don’t come empty handed to something like that, you know, so you bring something over, that’s a probable hypothesis.

I don’t think anyone could possibly say for certain why this gift exchange actually exists, but it’s there. Even hannukah has some sort of a gift exchange, which strengthens my previous point that christmas was a common holiday in which some sort of meaning was injected much later.

Well, I don’t know.

No, I’m not gonna wish you all a “merry christmas”, how’s that!

I’m really going out of my way to write this post, since theoretically, I’m not really supposed to pretend to just go on living, business as usual. But then again, the cage is increasingly shrinking. I can’t allow it to force me into any sort of posture whatsoever, for creativity’s sake.

Basically, every now and then someone might try to discuss something I wrote on my blog. Usually it’s something good, I guess, I heard “pay for experience, not for information” quoted a couple of times, or sometimes my “future machine” concept was crushed mercilessly by some Platonist a couple of times.

Let me get it out of the way, it’s pretty obvious that there’s some impression management going on between me and my family, especially distant relatives and such. I help them out with their own expectations, I try not to worry my family for the most part, I hide stuff from them intentionally. It’s a part of society’s expectations from an individual in the west. You are, let me tell you, terribly stupid if you think you don’t do anything like that yourself. It’s a western expectation, you’re expected to do it, there you have it. So I’m just playing by the rules, am I not?
In that regard, the Internet, then, is where I don’t really put on any masks. It’s my weak point, to some extent. In theory, whoever sees my blog is by far more likely to be someone who doesn’t actually know me, so I use my friendly stranger tone, I don’t feel the need to hold any sort of impression really, and while I’m not exactly anonymous, I can still say more or less whatever I want.

With this in mind, relatives and family members therefor break that rule of thumb. See what I’m getting at? They get to take a look at the unmasked me. They don’t want to know about that stuff, but there.
Theoretically, what I’m doing is anti-social. I’m being expected to keep a certain “fidelity” in the family field, whereas I’m not expected much of in the Internet, a common field where it’s easy to keep anonymity.

It all started back several months ago when my dad tossed it in front of me. He was not too happy with my opinions. It’s one of those things that could ruin dinner I guess.

“I saw what you wrote in your site about cripples.”

“Oh, that.. Ahm..”

An awkward moment, and a turning point. Since then, I figured I need to just put a little bit of self-censorship. Just a little, nothing too serious.

Every now and then, I’d tighten my self-censorship.

Today I had a talk with my grandma. Yep, even she reads my blog. It’s pretty serious.

I don’t know if its got anything to do with changes in my attitude towards things, although it could be that this rapture that caused created the dichotomy that is “the quiet Dushkin” versus “Dushkin, citizen of The Internet”. The first one, “the quiet Dushkin” being, more or less, me the way I used to be when I left Israel, back in the summer of 2004 – a quiet person who doesn’t complain much, slightly conservative with an acceptably long hair to a long-haired socialist hippie with opinions and an “anything goes” state of mind. (I was making a sort of a hyperbole there, not hardcore socialist really.) I’m not sure about that theory though.

So there you have it. I hope it’ll help me loosen up.

Just how many times do you hear your colleges/co-workers/classmates complain about terrible headaches? You can’t actually tell that they’re having a headache by just looking at them, they’ll have to tell you that they have one. Complaining about it is a deliberate action.

By admitting (and accentuating) symptoms, you accomplish various goals. Most notably, you can decide that you are “incapable of doing any work”, and thus, excuse yourself from any work that might cross your path.

The reason why I don’t go around telling people how bad I feel is because I am aware that I have to finish the tasks I’m assigned to, that I wish to complete them, and thus, I don’t have the urge to tell everyone about my nausea.

So basically, unless you’re actually dying, admitting your symptoms to others means, more or less, that you’re simply being lazy.

So go back to work.