How my mind works...

I'm perverse.

Now, you may all realize this. The folks following my blog probably do. If anyone ever winds up coming here who doesn't know me all that well, they may not get the point, so I'll have to spell it out. For those of you who were already aware, my apologies, I'll at least try to keep it entertaining.

When I say perverse, I mean perverse, not perverted. Not saying the latter is a bad thing, or even that I'm not, but that's not the point of this here diatribe. When I say I'm perverse, I mean that my interest in doing something is inversely proportional to the difficulty. If someone says 'come on, this will be fun, it's easy', I have no real interest in whatever activity they're endorsing, other than a possible basic interest in the scenery or terrain. If someone says 'don't even try that, it's impossible', my interest is peaked.

Now, there are some caveats. While I'm mildly attracted to gambling, I'm not really pulled to things like keno or Powerball (although I'll play the latter if the EV is close to positive). My definition of 'difficult' is not based on artificially generated odds. When I think 'difficult', I'm thinking about something that requires a great deal of skill, endurance, or personal effort to succeed. Marathons intrigue me. Games of skill will forever hold my interest. One of the attractions of writing is that while it's easy to do, it's hard to do right. Anyone can type words (or at least semi-coherent letter groupings) on a page; stringing words together so a reader is intoxicated and enlightened is hard. Doing so on a regular basis is an ongoing challenge that I can't walk away from.

I even know where it comes from, after a fashion. The root has to do with the juxtaposition of being a very bright and literal child and having parents given to particularly bad metaphor and hyperbole.

At any rate, what spawned this whole commentary lies here. Specifically the entry for the 18th, wherein Patrick reports that even the best of handshakes must fall far short of passionate.

Thanks, Patrick. Now I've got an unquenchable desire to write a passionate handshake. And I don't even have a story appropriate for such a thing.