making friends and influencing people

my solution: driving all over town by myself all night and reading my crap poetry in coffeeshops and bars, coming home depressed and angry and drunk. eventually I found a kind of "community" but they were all poets and therefore whiny petty little people who never paid me back for beers.

when it changed: when my wife dropped out of law school and we moved. fuck, that wasn't too helpful either was it? me & kenan should have a call-in show....

a better advertisement against law school than even i could come up with (except the shit-ass pink wine stuff).

Good Lord. And what would we call that? "The Friendless Hour"? "The Depressed and Angry and Drunk Hour"? "The Ask A Guy With a Rapidly Encroaching Belly Hour"?

I do not see dollar signs.

Anyway, Jess, yeah I'm kinda with Millar up there. At a certain point you just have to not care who you meet. You can't let intellectual prejudices or whatever get in the way. It's just good to get in the practice of bullshitting with people and whatnot. It's like, you mentioned the cliquish nature of the hippie/indie/emo/whatever group, and how they dislike "townies". I mean, geez, do you really even wanna meet these people anyway? Fuck 'em. I mean, there's gotta be a bar somewhere where the folks who work on campus and deal with these little brats - staff, faculty, whatever - go after work. Maybe pop in there, sit on a barstool, have a cig, watch a Mariners game or something. I mean, the Mariners are gonna be in the playoffs in a couple months, so there's bound to be some excitement about that. It'll give you something to bullshit with people about anyway. I don't know, it's like, last Saturday I went to a baseball game and my friend that I share seats with didn't even show up - he just totally blew off the game. It's cool - I wasn't mad, we go to a bunch of games together. But what I did afterward was just go to the bar nearby and ended up getting drunk with a couple fellows - a guy in his 40's and a younger guy who works as a vendor at the park selling beer. No, we didn't sit around discussing Marx and Foucault, but to me it was a better alternative than just going home early on a Saturday night.

(Well not :( cos they are great but I suspect strongo has explored this option as fully as he wants to)

i don't have any real problem talking to people - yesterday I nearly tripped and killed myself, laughed about it with a girl who was sitting where I tripped, and made small talk for five minutes - its just that i have no idea how to extend this small talk into something uh organic without asking for phone numbers and looking like i'm trying to pick people up. also, i do not like ingratiating myself into conversations or situations because i know how often i myself like to be left alone while in public.''

Jess is ME or something. this thread is like looking into a mirror. I like the advice diamond and millar give but i don't drink or smoke. (At least you posted a thread abt it whereas i prob wouldn't).

And look at it this way: at least jess knows more abt pop kulcha. I mean, i don't even know much abt that so its not like i have much of a starting point as far as talking to people.

Another way to make friends is to not take any advice Gareth has ever given you, by the way all of his advice seems to turn out!!! Whatever Gareth advises me to do from now on, I will do the exact opposite.

Next!

Whatever you do, be proactive in doing it. It doesn't have to be you walking up to strangers and trying to start conversations; if you do something that isn't entirely solitary you *will* come into contact with other, probably like-minded, people.

Think of it like looking for a job. If you don't write application letters, ring contacts, etc., something *might* fall in your lap, but it ain't likely. If you start searching, things happen, even if they're not what you're expecting.

DJ STRONGO COMIN THRU!!

YOU KNOW HOW WE DO!!

*KA-BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM*

never say i dont know how to pander to an audience

OH NO! NEW SHIT! PETER BROTZMANN FEAT. REDMAN!

*KA-BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM*

and then show them my willie