Making Intoductions

I'm beginning this blog because more than one friend of mine keeps telling me that I need to, so I've finally caved. More than that, I need some outlet to vent. But you don't know me yet. So let's begin with the introductions.

First, the name - the Rabbert Hole. Rabbert is a good place to start explaining who I am. It is, naturally, a combination of "Rabbit" and Scott Adams' hilarious comic strip "Dilbert". I am both an animal lover and a computer nerd. I don't believe Scott Adams has introduced a "Rabbert" into the Dilbert series, but if he has, I hope to God he doesn't sue me (I didn't know!). A quick breakdown of both parts:

Animal Lover

I do love all the little fuzzy creatures in the world, particularly rabbits. There's something there, in their timid little lives that I sympathize with or perhaps even identify with. It is terrifying to me to imagine a life which consists entirely of avoid or running from predators until the day you die, but there is something noble about that as well - to be the prey and to refuse to rise to the position of those that cause grief in your life (I realise this less a choice in the animal kingdom than it is just a fact of biology, but that doesn't change the kinship I feel). I very much like the rabbit society that Richard Adams descibed in his book Watership Down. In that novel, rabbits have an elaborate mythology to explain how things wound up the way they were. In their mythology, they were the most prolific of all animals and quickly grew out of control, eating all of the food in the world, and so they were cursed by the sun god to be hunted for all eternity by the predators of the world their arrongance. But, because the sun god felt pity for them, he made them swift and clever, so that though they would be hunted, they would never die. There's even a rabbit folk hero, El-Ahrairah (in the rabbit language, the Prince of a Thousand Enemies). Perhaps, I'll review that book in a seperate post. For now, you can just assume that I feel a kinship to rabbits. Also, I have two for pets.

Nerd Life

I'm a nerd, a long with everything that comes with that. There's a stereotype for nerds that's startingly accurate, and I'm certainly guilty of living up to the stereo type. I work at a software company, I have an obsession with video games, I'm terrible at sports, I love Japanese culture and animation, etc. I love sci-fi and fantasy novels, including Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series (there's a lot of really great Adams' out there). Eventually, I'll write some video game and book reviews as a guide to the finer aspects of nerd life, but you pretty much know what to expect.

My Character Flaw

I have a great flaw, that is in part the reason why I am making this blog, and that is that I get very, very, angry. I seem to be angrier than just about anybody I know, and I'm finding that I'm angry *all the time*. I'm angry at the state of the world, I'm angry at the government, I'm angry at the technology that I work with, and the people run into. I'm know I'm going to end up as a crotchety old man, shouting at kids to get off my damn lawn. I even find that in the absence of anything to get angry at, I start fantasizing at situations where I would be good and pissed off. On more than one occasion, I've been driving somewhere with my wife, when after some moments of silence, she'll ask me why I look so pissed off, and I'll have to confess that I was living out some fantasy confrontation in my head with some jackass who was talking on their cellphone and didn't signal their turn, so I lost my opportunity to get on the highway - all of 15 miles ago.

This quickly terrifies anyone who doesn't know me well, and sees me get angry for the first time. I raise my voice. I clench my teeth. I tighten my fists. Blood flushes to my face. I pull my hair. I curse the sun and the moon and all of the stars in the sky, and the unholy injustice of it all in every foul combination of the English language. I stutter with fury. I'm also not the little guy that I was (and still subconciously see myself as) in middle school, so the fact that I'm a big guy only adds to that.

The people that do know me well, however, love to get a rise out of me. That's because they know that as angry as I get, I can never turn my rage directly to another human being. For some sick and twisted convention of fate or Providence, my anger amuses my friends. I can't seem to convince them that no, it's not an act, and yes, at this moment I really do hate you with every fiber of my being, but still, it's there.

So hopefully, I can turn all of this bottled up bile and vitriol into something that will amuse not just my freinds, but perfect strangers as well. And maybe, a little venting every now and then will help me to get past the demons that haunt me.

Well, that's enough about that for now. I'll start bitching about specific things later, but for now I'm done.