Sean's skewed life

[MishaK]

Note the total absence of any mention of either parental unit in the narrative.

[MN Dave]

Note the total absence of any mention of either parental unit in the narrative.

This isn't about them. It's about HIM!

[karlhenning]

If the word had not existed before, we should need to invent the verb whinge for Sean.

[Sean]

Well, I hope I didn't mean to winge, and I certainly don't hate people- I was just describing how they were. They can behave in moronic ways but I think I'm always dispassionate about it, and I also didn't want to give the impression that I actually blame them for anything. There were some things that didn't go right, but if I blame anything it's the characteristics of the wider society in a general sense- and I'm not always sure about that.

Some interesting replies though.

[karlhenning]

Well, I hope I didn't mean to winge, and I certainly don't hate people- I was just describing how they were. They can behave in moronic ways but I think I'm always dispassionate about it

Not if you're imputing hatred to them, Sean. Come on, lad, hardly anyone is going to invest that kind of energy into you.

[Sean]

I'm certainly imputing hatred to them. I'm not quite sure what you're getting at though.

[karlhenning]

"He abused me, he beat me, he defeated me, he robbed me,'' in those who harbour such thoughts hatred is not appeased.

[(poco) Sforzando]

I'm certainly imputing hatred to them. I'm not quite sure what you're getting at though.

Sean,

In my younger and stupider days, in fact while I was a freshman at music conservatory, I was positive that one of the upperclass composition students really despised me. Positive, I say. Finally it got to me so much that I confronted the man by saying, "Why do you hate me so much?" He looked at me stunned, for obviously he had no strong feelings towards me one way or the other. We were perfectly cordial ever since.

Dinner party invitations are still open, btw. For the ladies attending, and gentlemen of curious tastes, there will be lovely youths as well. (Cf. Handel's Theodora: "He saw the lovely youth," etc.)

[springrite]

Dinner party invitations are still open, btw.

I am bringing my own maiden, and she eats little if any food. So I expect a further discount.

BTW, she said when she was in college, she was confronted by a freshman composition student she didn't like. She pretended not to have any feelings towards that student, or not even knowing when he was. *phew!*

[(poco) Sforzando]

I am bringing my own maiden, and she eats little if any food. So I expect a further discount.

Hey, what's with all this negotiating? Prix fixe is prix fixe, baby. I've got sheiks and sultans coming from all over the globe for whom this is pocket change.

[Don]

I'm certainly imputing hatred to them.

Have it your way - everyone hates your guts and wants to damage you.

[head-case]

Have it your way - everyone hates your guts and wants to damage you.

Looks like they succeeded.

[PSmith08]

Maybe after hearing how everyone has it out for Sean, especially Miss Shaw, that absolutely awful algebra teacher, and Mr. Jenkins, the weird old Latin teacher, we can make popcorn, watch Truffaut's Les Quatre Cents Coups, and steal a pack of Marlboros from my older brother.

But seriously, forks, it sounds like Sean had a pretty standard upbringing and life. The difference between him and 99.9995% of the population is that the rest of us got over martyr and misunderstood-genius complexes by the age of 16. In the US, it has something to do with cars. Namely something to do on weekends other than brood and sulk.

Of that I'm sure.

[M forever]

Born 1969.

Primary school 1974-81: was doing really well until about seven when was drawing a tree one day the teacher asked me to do something with it without explaining properly. From then on hated the school with a special vengance that I only understood years later- came to see that many other people's minds work in terms of patterns or normative systems whereas mine just works in terms of understanding, and if this isn't available I have difficulties, the tree being one of the first examples.

Secondary school 1981-7: had been in such deep trouble up to then by setting my own standards and asking why on earth we were being required to attend to such dull drivel and filth totally irrelevant to our lives that I was forced to withdraw into myself somewhat, from being a very outgoing person with lively ideas.

Construction company 1988-94: good life experience as manager in small business, dealing with wide range of tasks and working with nice Indian girl who would have married me.

Also tried to meet girls in bars and clubs. almost total failure. Every girl I ever took an interest in was interested in me, but I wasn't seeing how to proceed.

1994-7: philosophy bachelors degree. Had little sense of the future and the need either to see this as a route to an academic career in a university or to have combined it with something more vocational.

1998-9: spent two years being unwell due to overwork in the degree, and doing a range of simple jobs.

1999-2000: music masters degree, taught by characters from elite universities who couldn't tolerate at all the idea that someone from the Midlands could think, and certainly not that they could be familiar with their little corner of the repertory they'd studied and which gave them a silly identity. Their aversion to me went to the core of their souls and after the first half-hour cheese and wine gathering I had to keep all my enthusiasm and knowledge to myself if I was going to get the degree. Psychology is in everything.

2000-01: international studies diploma, one of the blackest times, began with on a computing course but was so badly taught had to switch, providing a useless further qualification and wasting my time. Also beautiful but quiet Bulgarian girl in the house liked me, but too stupid to do anything about it, resting on my mind heavily.

2002-03: teaching course, mostly more rubbish- teaching anything is easy and can't be taught, if you can see the student's point of view. Was doing so well that the university music department gave me lecturing to third year undergraduates in Boulez, Messiaen and post war music. The lecturer though then hated me so much, being a better speaker and his intellectual superior, that he deliberately failed my final observation and altered my other grades so I wouldn't be awarded the qualification.

2003-08: cover teaching work in many schools- little responsibility and fairly well paid.

I live alone and cheaply, trying to reconcile what I've done and failed to do. Both my love and vocational lives are unsatisfactory: I've listened to bizare quantities of music, done travel in many regions, taken an interest in Indian philosophy and other subjects, but emotionally and financially it seems I could have achieved rather more, in, I think, better circumstances.

The characters of Pyramus in A Midsummer night's dream, Sg Howie in The Wicker Man and Darth Vader in Star Wars unfortunately resonate with me...

Man, this offers so much potential for comedy and ridicule, but unfortunately, I don't have much time now for that since I am in the middle of packing and preparing to move across the entire North American continent.

But, why oh why are you doing this to yourself? Why are you spilling out all that details about your failed life in front of complete strangers in an online forum? Do you enjoy being a sitting duck?

I am really sorry about the tree thing though. That must have been devastating. What did that evil, evil man ask you to do with it?

Sorry also about the Indian girl. She would have married you, but then she found out that she could get her papers to stay in England also without making that horrible sacrifice. Damn! Society messed up your life again. Man, living in England must suck so much. Living in a place where you can live and grow up in freedom and where you have access to education and can choose what you want to do with your life - what horrible conditions to grow up under! It would have been so much better for your intellectual and spiritual health if you had had a chance to grow up in one of those third world countries where you go to take advantage of the underpriviledged girls, those great countries with their repressive systems, tons of really poor people, widespread censorship and all that. Well, bad karma, I guess.

Don't beat yourself up about the Bulgarian girl. You didn't miss anything. The reason she only smiled at you but was so quiet and didn't really talk to you wasn't that she liked you but was shy, it was because she didn't understand English. If she had, then she would have understood all the BS you talk, and then she wouldn't even have smiled at you anymore.

I am happy for you though that every girl you liked was interested in you. You are the only guy I ever have heard of who has such an uniformly successful feedback rate with girls. That you didn't know "how to proceed" is a little puzzling though since, according to yourself, you have such a deep understanding of psychology and how everyone else thinks. Let me give you a tip here: asking the lady "how much?" is not always the right thing to say in every situation which involves interaction with the fairer sex.

I am wondering though, what kind of university gives a philosophy degree to a guy who can't even read most of the philosophical literature he studies in the original languages it was written in? The people I know who studied philosophy seriously all knew enough Greek, Latin, French, German, Italian or any other languages relevant to their particular field of interest well enough to study the texts in the original and do their own translations when required (instead of complaining about how much was "lost in translation").
And what kind of university lets a guy teach about French composers who can't even read the relevant texts and literature in French by and about these composers? Those must have been really crappy schools.

Maybe there is a misunderstanding here. I know all these long foreign words can be really confusing and they all kind of look the same anyway, don't they? Maybe what you studied wasn't actually "philosophy". You know, "philosophia", one of those strange foreign words, that's a Greek word. Since you don't know Greek, you probably don't know that it means "love of/for wisdom". Maybe what you studied was actually "philomalakia", that means "love of/for jerking off". I could certainly believe you have a PhD in that.

[Harry]

Looks like they succeeded.

Yes I agree, man down......

[Sean]

M, I think your post reveals more about you than me- nice of you to rant on at such length but it's not entirely necessary. Are you going to Boston? I've been there twice. It's more of a European looking city with winding tangled streets, as you probably know, and somewhat less open people; there's plenty of music on though.

There's no such thing as bad publicity really, and even you can provide a mirror.

I can't remember what I was supposed to have done with the tree but I think it was something based on prior knowledge I was supposed to have picked up, some kind of conditioning I was supposed to have gained- and I came to see that I learnt things differently to others and the copying process didn't work so well.

The Indian girl was pretty keen on me, and was already British. The less said about the Bulgarian the better- good looking but dull, having spent a lot of time learning to speak three languages. One rule in life though is never decline to seduce a girl if she's remotely okay.

I know my life is partly a matter of comedy and ridicule. Sgt Howie in The Wicker Man even dresses himself in a fool's outfit before he gets burnt to death, he's so stupid. However the clouds have parted and I was lost but now I'm found, and the dumb things I did are transparent but past.

[Florestan]

The less said about the Bulgarian the better- good looking but dull, having spent a lot of time learning to speak three languages.

Very nice, Sean. Someone who's spent a lot of time learning three languages is dull, much unlike you who, not being able to speak anything except English, are a towering genius...

[M forever]

M, I think your post reveals more about you than me

One would really have thought a "towering genius" like you should be able to come up wth a better comeback. That's what 7-year olds say when somebody has been mean to them. Oh, wait, sorry, I forgot that your development was arrested when you were 7, because of the catastrophic tree incident.

Are you going to Boston? I've been there twice. It's more of a European looking city with winding tangled streets, as you probably know, and somewhat less open people;

Less open than who? Than the people in England who don't like to talk to you either?

I can't remember what I was supposed to have done with the tree but I think it was something based on prior knowledge I was supposed to have picked up, some kind of conditioning I was supposed to have gained- and I came to see that I learnt things differently to others and the copying process didn't work so well.

I find that hard to believe. Everything you tell us here is copied from somewhere and not really reflected. Your conspiracy nonsense, your Martian nonsense, your half-understood views about Eastern philosophy - all cut and pasted from somewhere without an understanding of the context. And you don't even remember what it was that screwed up your life so badly? That you were supposed to have learned something before? I can see you still haven't learned that much in general, but I can seriously recommend you to try that sometime - it's actually fun to learn and understand stuff and form your own views and opinions rather than just to borrow bits and pieces from everywhere!

The Indian girl was pretty keen on me, and was already British.

What was the problem then? Was her price too high?

The less said about the Bulgarian the better- good looking but dull, having spent a lot of time learning to speak three languages.

In that case, it was probably the other way around. She was probably quiet because she had picked up a lot of knowledge and experience through her studies, and she simply wasn't interested in talking to a provincial tunnel-visioned bus driver with a degree in philomalakia.

One rule in life though is never decline to seduce a girl if she's remotely okay.

Yes, I can see how you must regret that you missed that one chance. Well, if you wait long enough, maybe there wil be another. Have you ever considered dating a blind and deaf girl? I think you might have some chances there, seriously, buddy.

However the clouds have parted and I was lost but now I'm found, and the dumb things I did are transparent but past.

I doubt that very much. And you are completely contradicting yourself here. 5 minutes ago, you said  that how your life is screwed up was everybody else's fault, and that you were a towering, misunderstood genius. Or do you mean by dumb things your futile attempts to pass yourself off as a serious academic?

[Sean]

Good grief, do you ever have a good day? Ever wake up feeling positive about things, about others? You think I'm nuts? If you could just concentrate on the humour and cut the invented garbage that isn't worth replying to I think things would be better.

I'm not saying my life is screwed up, that I blame others, or certainly not that people (even you) hate me any more than anyone else- but I can unsettle them because I approach things from different angles they often find threatening. Naturally though I'm indifferent to unsubstantiated reactions- if they find my views difficult it's their problem in having the lack of independence of mind to be objective and instead clinging to sets of ideas providing the bad faith of a fixed indentity.

The West coast is a little more open and approachable than New England, at least on my little sojourns there.

You're wearing me out.

[karlhenning]

Are you going to Boston? I've been there twice. It's more of a European looking city with winding tangled streets, as you probably know, and somewhat less open people

Less open than who? Than the people in England who don't like to talk to you either?

"Somewhat less open," Sean?  And what are you?  And who, exactly, to spend two brief periods in Boston, and all you have to say of the people is something vaguely negative?

I've been in Boston twelve years now, and on balance, I find the people here of as agreeable character as, or yet more agreeable character than, another place or three where I have spent substantial time.