silveradept | No more! No more!

Nothing left to do for undergraduate coursework! Last paper turned in, last final taken! No more, no more! w00t! Or something. So, assuming nothing horribly screws up, Graduation the First will take place Friday/Saturday, early in the morning (on both days).

Staring me in the face are three days of stuff at work. The load's probably going to be a bit light, so good work-safe means of killing a little time over the next few days will be appreciated. And the computer I'm using is a little light on the RAM, so nothing really heavy there. Perhaps I'll devote my time to making a perpetual motion machine. There's always Spamusement, of course. (Illustrated spam subject lines.)

I don't know if the reasoning's any good, but someone may have found the mother of all UFO tales. Genealogically speaking, that is.

And then there's the solar powered scooter. Surprisingly enough, the guy's in Michigan, where some days the sun don't shine. But apparently things work well enough when the weather will permit the scooter that he can run it sufficiently. Kudos to him. Having one of those would be interesting.

Thanks for the people who wouldn't put up with my angsting the other day(s). Occasionally I need to be slapped around a bit when I get depressive and moody. You'll probably need to come around again in about six months or so, but I appreciate your willingness to haul me out of the pit. I'm not going back there, but I was thinking a bit today in a more general way, so if this sounds like more, it's not. I think.

There are few things that bring out my somewhat reserved opinion of myself than staring in the mirror. Usually shirtless when I'm contemplating these things, actually. Now, I wouldn't necessarily describe myself as attractive, but I'm a bit handicapped in that particular respect, in that I have no idea really what women go for in men's body types. Were I to compare myself to say, Fabio, I'd lose. But that would be like comparing any of the attractive women in the marching band to pornography stars. It's not fair to do so - bit of an apples and oranges problem.

Anyway - perhaps I have the requisite broadness of shoulders, but I also happen to have a prominent collarbone, and I'm not much for padding - rather bony all over, really. Marching band has probably given me a bit more strength in both arms and legs than might be visible at first. So, I'd probably describe my body type as wiry. Now, according to media images, wiry body types are not what women are searching for. However, since the media tends to like both exaggeration and outright fabrication, there isn't enough salt in the world to take with those images. So once again, I'm left without a guide of any sort to make comparisons to.

So this should inspire a legion of self-confidence that I'm just right, right? Well.... no. It's probably tied into the "no girlfriend" thing, and I've already covered that. However, I am okay with being the way I am - there are people who like all sorts of body types in my gender, so there should be some diversity in the other gender. And besides, if the minds click, the bodies shouldn't matter nearly as much.

If that were true, though, then why do I see the other gender obsessing about their presentation to my gender? It can't just be that they've bought into the media imagery. I respect their intelligence more than that. So I wonder what it is that has them doing that. And the point, which is actually the question I jumped to immediately while looking in the mirror was - How many people of my own gender have body issues? I hear about guys having hypermasculinity issues, which seems to be our equivalent of the eating disorder, but that seems more like a composite problem than an individual one.

How many guys wish to be a little more muscular, much like girls might wish to be a bit thinner? Am I stating some truism, and I've really wasted a lot of bits just getting to something that's obvious? And if it's not buying into the media images, then what it is that drives us towards thinking of our bodies as imperfect?