confusion

…even if you don’t ‘do the Apple thing,’ you should go read I, Cringely‘s [PBS.org] column on the future of Apple: Dethroning King Gillette: Is iPod the Razor or the Blade? [PBS.org]. The concept of Steve Jobs [wikipedia.org] standing up in a few years and saying ‘All your content are belong to Apple’ is quit amusing, even if the idea of Steve being the consumer media version of Bill [wikipedia.org] and Larry [wikipedia.org] is not so amusing… Watch out MPAA/RIAA or is that watch out consumer?

I will return to life as a Siamese fighting fish [wikipedia.org]. That is if the Hindu or Buddhist idea of samsara[wikipedia.org] and karma [wikipedia.org] is correct.

Why?

Stasia told me so when I was managing the fish store. It went something like this: Siamese fighting fish, hereafter referred to by their more common name, betta fish, beat the living crap out of each other if they are in the same fish tank (at least the male ones do, they also tend to kill females after the whole mating and egg laying thing). So rather than let them beat the crap out of each other we kept them in cups next to the front counter. At any one time there were between 5 and 10 of them on the counter.

On day I was sitting behind the counter talking to Stasia about her, very nice, freshwater plant tank that she had been tending for about a year. All of the sudden one of the betta fish on the counter went all epileptic and jumped out of his container.

Stasia look down at her feet. I leaned over the counter to look down. There on the floor was this blue (I still remember the color!) betta fish flopping back and forth.

“Um,” I said, “hold that thought Stasia,” as I walked around the counter and attempted to grab the franticly flopping fish off of the carpet. When I got my hands on it—which took a few tries as it is slimy and was flopping back and forth—it was covered in dog hair. (We didn’t sell dogs or dog supplies, we just run a veterinary mobile app, but more of that later) I walked over to the nearest fish tank, a 60 gallon breeder that was one of the tanks we sold live plants out of. I then dunked my hand and the hairy fish into the tank and shook off all the dirt and grim—and hair.

After I plopped the betta fish back into it’s tiny cup on the counter I look up at Stasia, who had a completely blank expression on her face, and said “you were saying?”

“You’re going to come back to life as a betta fish. You’re going to start your life in some rice patty. Then someone is going to bag you up, in a tinny little bag, ship you across the world and put you on display in tinny cups for people to stare at all day. And, you’re going to flop out of that cup and suffocate to death on the filthy floor of some pet store.”

From that day on we kept all the betta fish in the regular 15 gallon tanks that lined the fresh water section. One per tank with the friendly fish.

Everyone window shops, even when you’re in a relationship you window shop, it’s human nature. Being attached does not change the fact that we all have wondering eyes and we like to look at beautiful things. We like to imagine what could be—to fantasize. If you suppress this natural behavior I believe you doom your relationship. Window shopping is necessary if the relationship is to be healthy.

What I find interesting is that how I window shop changes depending on my personal life. When I am single and not obsesed with some new girl or pinning over some lost love, I look at girls and pick out the things that make the girl desirable: the color of her eyes, the shape of her hips or other, cruder thoughts. I don’t notice the things that may not fit into my plutonic ideal of a beautiful woman. I only see the desirable.

When I am in a relationship that is healthy and I am happy I find that I still look at all the other girls, sometimes it’s the same girls that I looked at when I was single but I am more critical, looking for things that I can say are not as good as my love: this girls’ hair is not as nice, her nose is not as cute or maybe she’s too much taller, too much shorter, fatter, thinner. I seek out those qualities that are not the same, to which I can say ‘my girlfriend is better because…’

I also find that I do this when I am pursuing a girl or when I just have a crush on her. She, as with the girlfriend, becomes the basis for all measurements of other women. And her features, her measurements are always better than the other woman—because I do not compare the features where she might not be better than the others.

The features which get compared don’t have to be physical. My girls’ car is better, or maybe she has an accent that I like more. I can find really petty things, even stereotypes about race or social status.

Another interesting part of this is when the ruler changes from one girl to another. I begin to find fault with the old ruler. Notice things that went unnoticed before; speech patterns that suddenly become annoying. Attitudes that start to offend whereas they were once accepted. Little things I didn’t notice before now become big annoyances.

There is another situation: the manic ruler. When a relationship has gone bad but I’m still in the relationship. Where one day your lover is always the better ruler and the next the stranger on the street looks better.

I’ve experienced all of these in the past. The manic ruler drove me crazy for a year and eventually drove me out of C’ville. Leaving C’ville in turn started me down the roads that led, eventually, to Singapore. And now I find myself using a new ruler to judge the women I see on the street here in Singapore.