Your mother seems really upset about something. I better go have a talk with her... during the commercial.

I really, really, really, really wanna go back to Kosovo.

...Yeah, that's it.

~o~*~o~

"Love isn't hopeless. Look, maybe I'm no expert on the subject, but there was one time I got it right."
-Homer Simpson

I won't sleep in the same bed with a woman who thinks I'm lazy! I'm going right downstairs, unfold the couch, unroll the sleeping ba...uh, goodnight!

Ho shit, first post in forever, and it's not even anything interesting; I just wanted to make a post stating that I changed my background and color scheme and everything, because it's totally not obvious or anything (and because I have so many readers, of course). Anyway, that is all. When I am not busy (or lazy when I'm not busy), I will actually post a real blog because, hey, I'm overdo. But for now, as I said, that is all.

~o~*~o~

"Multitasking? I can't even do two things at once. I can't even do one thing at once."
-Helena Bonham Carter

When will I learn? The answers to life’s problems aren’t at the bottom of a bottle, they’re on TV!

I wanted to share an article from one of the books I'm reading for my Service Learning class. While I don't necessarily agree with the whole thing, there's a lot of it I do agree with, and I happened to really enjoy reading this article. We're supposed to be discussing it on Monday, and I'm really looking forward to that discussion. Rather than take a long time introducing it, I'm just gonna post the article here for you to read through and, hopefully, enjoy. Word.

The Problem Is Civil Obedience
Howard Zinn

[By the latter part of May, 1970, feelings about the war in Vietnam had become almost unbearably intense. In Boston, about a hundred of us decided to sit down at the Boston Army Base and block the road used by buses carrying draftees off to military duty. We were not so daft that we thought we were stopping the flow of soldiers to Vietnam; it was a symbolic act, a statement, a piece of guerrilla the after. We were all arrested and charged, in the quaint language of an old statute, with "sauntering and loitering" in such a way as to obstruct traffic. Eight of us refused to plead guilty, insisting on trial by jury, hoping we could persuade the members of the jury that ours was a justified act of civil disobedience. We did not persuade them. We were found guilty, chose jail instead of paying a fine, but the judge, apparently reluctant to have us in jail, gave us forty-eight hours to change our minds, after which we should show up in court to either pay the fine or be jailed. In the meantime, I had been invited to go to Johns Hopkins University to debate with the philosopher Charles Frankel on the issue of civil disobedience. I decided it would be hypocritical for me, an advocate of civil disobedience, to submit dutifully to the court and thereby skip out on an opportunity to speak to hundreds of students about civil disobedience. So, on the day I was supposed to show up in court in Boston I flew to Baltimore and that evening debated with Charles Frankel. Returning to Boston I decided to meet my morning class, but two detectives were waiting for me, and I was hustled before the court and then spent a couple of days in jail. What follows is the transcript of my opening statement in the debate at Johns Hopkins. It was included in a book published by Johns Hopkins Press in 1972, entitled Violence: The Crisis of American Confidence.]

I start from the supposition that the world is topsy-turvy, that things are all wrong, that the wrong people are in jail and the wrong people are out of jail, that the wrong people are in power and the wrong people are out of power, that the wealth is distributed in this country and the world in such a way as not simply to require small reform but to require a drastic reallocation of wealth. I start from the supposition that we don't have to say too much about this because all we have to do is think about the state of the world today and realize that things are all upside down. Daniel Berrigan is in jail-A Catholic priest, a poet who opposes the war-and J. Edgar Hoover is free, you see. David Dellinger, who has opposed war ever since he was this high and who has used all of his energy and passion against it, is in danger of going to jail. The men who are responsible for the My Lai massacre are not on trial; they are in Washington serving various functions, primary and subordinate, that have to do with the unleashing of massacres, which surprise them when they occur. At Kent State University four students were killed by the National Guard and students were indicted. In every city in this country, when demonstrations take place, the protesters, whether they have demonstrated or not, whatever they have done, are assaulted and clubbed by police, and then they are arrested for assaulting a police officer.

Now, I have been studying very closely what happens every day in the courts in Boston, Massachusetts. You would be astounded-maybe you wouldn't, maybe you have been around, maybe you have lived, maybe you have thought, maybe you have been hit-at how the daily rounds of injustice make their way through this marvelous thing that we call due process. Well, that is my premise.

All you have to do is read the Soledad letters of George Jackson, who was sentenced to one year to life, of which he spent ten years, for a seventy-dollar robbery of a filling station. And then there is the U.S. Senator who is alleged to keep 185,000 dollars a year, or something like that, on the oil depletion allowance. One is theft; the other is legislation. something is wrong, something is terribly wrong when we ship 10,000 bombs full of nerve gas across the country, and drop them in somebody else's swimming pool so as not to trouble our own. So you lose your perspective after a while. If you don't think, if you just listen to TV and read scholarly things, you actually begin to think that things are not so bad, or that just little things are wrong. But you have to get a little detached, and then come back and look at the world, and you are horrified. So we have to start from that supposition-that things are really topsy-turvy.

And our topic is topsy-turvy: civil disobedience. As soon as you say the topic is civil disobedience, you are saying our problem is civil disobedience. That is not our problem.... Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is the numbers of people all over the world who have obeyed the dictates of the leaders of their government and have gone to war, and millions have been killed because of this obedience. And our problem is that scene in All Quiet on the Western Front where the schoolboys march off dutifully in a line to war. Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world, in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves, and all the while the grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem. We recognize this for Nazi Germany. We know that the problem there was obedience, that the people obeyed Hitler. People obeyed; that was wrong. They should have challenged, and they should have resisted; and if we were only there, we would have showed them. Even in Stalin's Russia we can understand that; people are obedient, all these herdlike people.

But America is different. That is what we've all been brought up on. From the time we are this high and I still hear it resounding in Mr. Frankel's statement-you tick off, one, two, three, four, five lovely things .~ about America that we don't want disturbed very much. But if we have learned anything in the past ten years, it is that these lovely things about America were never lovely. We have been expansionist and aggressive and mean to other people from the beginning. And we've been aggressive and mean to people in this country, and we've allocated the wealth of this country in a very unjust way. We've never had justice in the courts for the poor people, for black people, for radicals. Now how can we boast that America is a very special place? It is not that special. It really isn't.

Well, that is our topic, that is our problem: civil obedience. Law is very important. We are talking about obedience to law-law, this marvelous invention of modern times, which we attribute to Western civilization, and which we talk about proudly. The rule of law, oh, how wonderful, all these courses in Western civilization all over the land. Remember those bad old days when people were exploited by feudalism? Everything was terrible in the Middle Ages-but now we have Western civilization, the rule of law. The rule of law has regularized and maximized the injustice that existed before the rule of law, that is what the rule of law has done. Let us start looking at the rule of law realistically, not with that metaphysical complacency with which we always examined it before.

When in all the nations of the world the rule of law is the darling of the leaders and the plague of the people, we ought to begin to recognize this. We have to transcend these national boundaries in our thinking. Nixon and Brezhnev have much more in common with one another than - we have with Nixon. J. Edgar Hoover has far more in common with the head of the Soviet secret police than he has with us. It's the international dedication to law and order that binds the leaders of all countries in a comradely bond. That's why we are always surprised when they get together -- they smile, they shake hands, they smoke cigars, they really like one another no matter what they say. It's like the Republican and Democratic parties, who claim that it's going to make a terrible difference if one or the other wins, yet they are all the same. Basically, it is us against them.

Yossarian was right, remember, in Catch-22? He had been accused of giving aid and comfort to the enemy, which nobody should ever be accused of, and Yossarian said to his friend Clevinger: "The enemy is whoever is going to get you killed, whichever side they are on." But that didn't sink in, so he said to Clevinger: "Now you remember that, or one of these days you'll be dead." And remember? Clevinger, after a while, was dead. And we must remember that our enemies are not divided along national lines, that enemies are not just people who speak different languages and occupy different territories. Enemies are people who want to get us killed.

We are asked, "What if everyone disobeyed the law?" But a better question is, "What if everyone obeyed the law?" And the answer to that question is much easier to come by, because we have a lot of empirical evidence about what happens if everyone obeys the law, or if even most people obey the law. What happens is what has happened, what is happening. Why do people revere the law? And we all do; even I have to fight it, for it was put into my bones at an early age when I was a Cub Scout. One reason we revere the law is its ambivalence. In the modern world we deal with phrases and words that have multiple meanings, like "national security." Oh, yes, we must do this for national security! Well, what does that mean? Whose national security? Where? When? Why? We don't bother to answer those questions, or even to ask them.
The law conceals many things. The law is the Bill of Rights. ;'~ fact, that is what we think of when we develop our reverence for the law. The law is something that protects us; the law is our right-the law is the Constitution. Bill of Rights Day, essay contests sponsored by the American Legion on our Bill of Rights, that is the law. And that is good.

But there is another part of the law that doesn't get ballyhooed- the legislation that has gone through month after month, year after year, from the beginning of the Republic, which allocates the resources of the country in such a way as to leave some people very rich and other people very poor, and still others scrambling like mad for what little is left. That is the law. If you go to law school you will see this. You can quantify it by counting the big, heavy law books that people carry around with them and see how many law books you count that say "Constitutional Rights" on them and how many that say "Property," "Contracts," "Torts," "Corporation Law." That is what the law is mostly about. The law is the oil depletion allowance-although we don't have Oil Depletion Allowance Day, we don't have essays written on behalf of the oil depletion allowance. So there are parts of the law that are publicized and played up to us-oh, this is the law, the Bill of Rights. And there are other parts of the law that just do their quiet work, and nobody says anything about them.

It started way back. When the Bill of Rights was first passed, remember, in the first administration of Washington? Great thing. Bill of Rights passed! Big ballyhoo. At the same time Hamilton's economic pro gram was passed. Nice, quiet, money to the rich-I'm simplifying it a little, but not too much. Hamilton's economic program started it off. You can draw a straight line from Hamilton's economic program to the oil depletion allowance to the tax write-offs for corporations. All the way through-that is the history. The Bill of Rights publicized; economic legislation unpublicized.

You know the enforcement of different parts of the law is as important as the publicity attached to the different parts of the law. The Bill of Rights, is it enforced? Not very well. You'll find that freedom of speech in constitutional law is a very difficult, ambiguous, troubled concept. Nobody really knows when you can get up and speak and when you can't. Just check all of the Supreme Court decisions. Talk about predictability in a system-you can't predict what will happen to you when you get up on the street corner and speak. See if you can tell the difference between the Terminiello case and the Feiner case, and see if you can figure out what is going to happen. By the way, there is one part of the law that is not very vague, and that involves the right to distribute leaflets on the street. The Supreme Court has been very clear on that. In decision after decision we are affirmed an absolute right to distribute leaflets on the street. Try it. Just go out on the street and start distributing leaflets. And a policeman comes up to you and he says, "Get out of here." And you say, "Aha! Do you know Marsh v. Alabama, 1946?" That is the reality of the Bill of Rights. That's the reality of the Constitution, that part of the law which is portrayed to us as a beautiful and marvelous thing. And seven years after the Bill of Rights was passed, which said that "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech," Congress made a law abridging the freedom of speech. Remember? The Sedition Act of 1798.

So the Bill of Rights was not enforced. Hamilton's program was enforced, because when the whisky farmers went out and rebelled you remember, in 1794 in Pennsylvania, Hamilton himself got on his horse and went out there to suppress the rebellion to make sure that the revenue tax was enforced. And you can trace the story right down to the present day, what laws are enforced, what laws are not enforced. So you have to be careful when you say, "I'm for the law, I revere the law." What part of the law are you talking about? I'm not against all law. But I think we ought to begin to make very important distinctions about what laws do what things to what people.

And there are other problems with the law. It's a strange thing, we think that law brings order. Law doesn't. How do we know that law does not bring order? Look around us. We live under the rules of law. Notice how much order we have? People say we have to worry about civil disobedience because it will lead to anarchy. Take a look at the present world in which the rule of law obtains. This is the closest to what is called anarchy in the popular mind-confusion, chaos, international banditry. The only order that is really worth anything does not come through the enforcement ... of law, it comes through the establishment of a society which is just and in which harmonious relationships are established and in which you need a minimum of regulation to create decent sets of arrangements among people. But the order based on law and on the force of law is the order of the totalitarian state, and it inevitably leads either to total injustice or to rebel lion-eventually, in other words, to very great disorder.

We all grow up with the notion that the law is holy. They asked Daniel Berrigan's mother what she thought of her son's breaking the law. He burned draft records-one of the most violent acts of this century- to protest the war, for which he was sentenced to prison, as criminals should be. They asked his mother who is in her eighties, what she thought of her son's breaking the law. And she looked straight into the interviewer's face, and she said, "It's not God's law." Now we forget that. There is nothing sacred about the law. Think of who makes laws. The law is not made by God, it is made by Strom Thurmond. If you nave any notion about the sanctity and loveliness and reverence for the law, look at the legislators around the country who make the laws. Sit in on the sessions of the state legislatures. Sit in on Congress, for these are the people who make the laws which we are then supposed to revere.
All of this is done with such propriety as to fool us. This is the problem. In the old days, things were confused; you didn't know. Now you know. It is all down there in the books. Now we go through due process. Now the same things happen as happened before, except that we've gone through the right procedures. In Boston a policeman walked into a hospital ward and fired five times at a black man who had snapped a towel at his arm-and killed him. A hearing was held. The judge decided that the policeman was justified because if he didn't do it, he would lose the respect of his fellow officers. Well, that is what is known as due process-that is, the guy didn't get away with it. We went through the proper procedures, and everything was set up. The decorum, the propriety of the law fools us.

The nation then, was founded on disrespect for the law, and then came the Constitution and the notion of stability which Madison and Hamilton liked. But then we found in certain crucial times in our history that the legal framework did not suffice, and in order to end slavery we had to go outside the legal framework, as we had to do at the time of the American Revolution or the Civil War. The union had to go outside the legal framework in order to establish certain rights in the 1930s. And in this time, which may be more critical than the Revolution or the Civil War, the problems are so horrendous as to require us to go outside the legal framework in order to make a statement, to resist, to begin to establish the kind of institutions and relationships which a decent society should have. No, not just tearing things down; building things up. But even if you build things up that you are not supposed to build up-you try to build up a people's park, that's not tearing down a system; you are building something up, but you are doing it illegally-the militia comes in and drives you out. That is the form that civil disobedience is going to take more and more, people trying to build a new society in the midst of the old.

But what about voting and elections? Civil disobedience-we don't need that much of it, we are told, because we can go through the electoral system. And by now we should have learned, but maybe we haven't, for we grew up with the notion that the voting booth is a sacred place, almost like a confessional. You walk into the voting booth and you come out and they snap your picture and then put it in the papers with a beatific smile on your face. You've just voted; that is democracy. But if you even read what the political scientists say-although who can?-about the voting process, you find that the voting process is a sham. Totalitarian states love voting. You get people to the polls and they register their approval. I know there is a difference-they have one party and we have two parties. We have one more party than they have, you see.

What we are trying to do, I assume, is really to get back to the principles and aims and spirit of the Declaration of Independence. This spirit is resistance to illegitimate authority and to forces that deprive people of their life and liberty and right to pursue happiness, and therefore under these conditions, it urges the right to alter or abolish their current form of government-and the stress had been on abolish. But to establish the principles of the Declaration of Independence, we are going to need to go outside the law, to stop obeying the laws that demand killing or that allocate wealth the way it has been done, or that put people in jail for petty technical offenses and keep other people out of jail for enormous crimes. My hope is that this kind of spirit will take place not just in this country but in other countries because they all need it. People in all countries need the spirit of disobedience to the state, which is not a metaphysical thing but a thing of force and wealth. And we need a kind of declaration of interdependence among people in all countries of the world who are striving for the same thing.

Source: "The Problem is Civil Obedience" by Howard Zinn from The Zinn Reader, 1997. Reprinted courtesy of Seven Stories Press. I also yoinked the text itself from Third World Traveler, because I didn't want to type it all out myself. So major thanks and kudos to them for doing it for me. :)

~o~*~o~

"The most wonderful study of mankind is man. Relieving human suffering and diffusing universal knowledge is humanitarian."
-Daniel D. Palmer

I resolve to lose 10 pounds, and then gain it back by Valentine's Day.

so this is the new year.
and i don't feel any different
the clanking of crystal
explosions off in the distance

so this is the new year
and I have no resolutions
for self assigned penance
for problems with easy solutions

so everybody put your best suit or dress on
let's make believe that we are wealthy for just this once
lighting firecrackers off on the front lawn
as thirty dialogues bleed into one

i wish the world was flat like the old days
then i could travel just by folding a map
no more airplanes, or speedtrains, or freeways
there'd be no distance that can hold us back.

there'd be no distance that could hold us back

so this is the new year

~o~*~o~

"An optimist stays up until midnight to see the new year in. A pessimist stays up to make sure the old year leaves."
-Bill Vaughn

Aw, Dad...you've done a lot of great things, but you're a very old man now, and old people are useless, aren't they? Aren't they?

HOLY CRAP MY BLOG TITLE IS NO LONGER ACCURATE! D: As of October 22nd, I am now officially 20 years old, which means that this blog can no longer be "The Pointless Rantings of a Teenage Nerd," because, of course, I am no longer a teenager. Therefore, this blog - at least for the next ten years - will become known as "The Pointless Rantings of a Twenty-Something Nerd." SO THERE. ENJOY THIS MONUMENTAL MOMENT IN HISTORY.

In other news, I hate my life (no, not really; I just wanted to sound all angsty, since I'm not really gonna be able to do that anymore, what with me not being an angsty little teenager now...mostly my life is fine, just really stressful as of late...), and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 came out last week, which of course I went to at midnight. I am hoping to finally get around to making a post about that tomorrow, which will be in the form of an OMG VLOG!! :DD So yes...that will hopefully be up tomorrow.

Really, that's all the interesting stuff that's been going on lately. To be honest, between full-time work and full-time school, my life is fairly uninteresting. God, barely out of my teens and already I'm boring. FML (like I said, I've gotta get all the angst out now...lulz).

~o~*~o~

"Live as long as you may. The first twenty years are the longest half of your life."
-Robert Southey

I’m here today as Luke Skywalker, but I’m also here…to talk about Sprint!

I just realized that I never posted my last rant up here, despite the fact that it was written back in March. Therefore, I am posting it now. Have fun.


'Bout damn time I got another one of these things out, AM I RIGHT?! This rant is long overdue, both in a "series" sense and a topical sense. It's going to be a little less in-depth and OMG REAL PROBLEMS! than the last few rants that I've written, and it's also crazy short, but it is still an important issue and definitely still rant worthy. So, that all being said, let's get to it, yeah? This is - Rants on Everything Pissing Me Off at the Moment: Part 8.

So, the topic of this rant is pretty much retarded parents who decide to give their kids retarded names. Working at Lifetouch, I am unfortunately exposed to hundreds upon hundreds of kids names everyday, and it’s not uncommon to see a few really shitty ones. Take young Harrison Weiner, for example; this poor little boy already had the misfortune of having the last name “Weiner,” and then his parents needed to add to the humility by naming him “Harrison.” That in and of itself is not bad; I couldn’t care less if they named and called him that. Unfortunately, if his parents chose to use the nickname “Harry,” they’re pretty much asking for this kid to be mocked throughout the next 80 years of his life. And how about some great last names? Try Glasscock, Woodcock, Dyke, Gay, Hymen, Areola, and - my all-time favorite - Fuckler (who was a teacher, by the way). Lovely, yes? In all fairness, you don’t really choose your last name, but still - if my last name was Glasscock, I think I’d have it legally changed.

What is the most annoying, though, is when parents name their kids after shitty celebrities/singers/characters/etc. Don’t get me wrong here; sometimes these sorts of names can be super rad. I myself fully intend to name any and all children that I have after a literary character. However, I’m not going to be obnoxious about it; for all my infinite love of the series, I am not going to name my son “Harry Potter,” because that would be annoying and stupid. Some parents, however, choose to go down this road, and end up coming up with some of the most ridiculous names. And there is one in particular that I have seen multiple times, and that bugs me more than all of the others, and what this rant was originally written for. I just came across it again recently and therefore felt the need to specifically point this one out, because it is dumb.

Anakin.

Anakin.

As in, Anakin Skywalker.

What.

The.

AIDS.

Why in the HELL would you name your kid Anakin? I mean, obviously, you’re a Star Wars fan and want to name him after one of those characters, but really? Anakin? You have a plethora of badass names in Star Wars, and you choose Anakin. Anakin. Anakin freaking Skywalker. A wimpy, douchebag little kid who grew up in a junkyard and turned out to be an annoying, whiny son of a bitch who, along with Jar Jar Binks, completely ruined the first movie and who only became cool once he turned into Darth Vader.

Now here is where you might be saying, “But, but he turns into Darth Vader. You said it yourself. Doesn’t that make him cool?” To which I reply, “Hell no.” He’s not like me, where he was born cool and grew up cool and is just all around awesome. Anakin and Darth Vader are like two separate people; Anakin is an irritating little asshole, and Darth Vader? He’s a beast. Seriously, if you were trying to be cool, you should have named your kid Darth Vader. I don’t care if it sounds ridiculous; obviously, you weren’t concerned about that too much if you named your kid Anakin. You name your kid that and he’s going to grow up to be an irritating little shit that no one likes and everyone picks on. You name him Darth Vader, and the other kids in school are going to fear that kid. They’re going to look at him and go, “Fuck, there goes Darth Vader. That kid is so ridiculously cool and intimidating. Let’s go grovel at his feet before he decides to off us.”

I mean, seriously, there is no contest between Anakin and Vader. Like I said, Anakin is this whiny little emo cocksucker who’s all like, “I miss my mom! This isn’t fair! I hate you Obi Wan! I’m going to kill everyone! Waaaaah!” Vader? Yeah, waaaaaay different. He’s like this huge, BA, seven-foot tall Sith Lord with the voice of James Earl Jones and with more Dark Side energy in him than everyone and their mom combined. Also, he can breathe and talk at the same time. The guy is like this force-wielding machine (and is, in fact, part machine in reality) that sliced his own son’s hand off, killed Obi-Wan - his former master - and literally killed Emperor Palpatine with his bear freaking hands. Obviously, he is umpteen times cooler than Anakin. WHAT ABOUT THIS DO PEOPLE NOT UNDERSTAND?

Seriously, this is ridiculously annoying. I am a proud, proud nerd, but this is taking nerd to that obnoxious, annoying level that makes everyone who sees you want to punch you in the glasses and shove your head into a toilet, before stealing your lunch money to go buy a pack of cigarettes (I don’t even smoke, and yet I would do that if I ever had the misfortune of knowing one of these assclowns). Really, people; grow the hell up and maybe make some real friends, so that, when you produce another retarded offspring - something that seems like it would be too complicated for your dipshit brain, considering you were stupid enough to name your first kid Anakin - they’ll have the mind to punch you in the dick when you suggest to name your second child “Jar Jar” (which would be inevitable if you named your first kid Anakin; it would only make sense that you would name both of your kids after shitty characters), and maybe, just maybe, that’ll make you change your mind and give your kid a normal name. Or at the very least, a less obnoxious one.

That being said, let’s leave off with the customary: JESUS DID NOT HAVE THREE HEADS!!!!!

End of Rant.



~o~*~o~

“Hello. I’m Leonard Nimoy. The following tale of alien encounters is true. And by true, I mean false. It’s all lies. But they’re entertaining lies. And in the end, isn’t that the real truth? The answer is: No.”
-Leonard Nimoy in a guest appearance on The Simpsons

I used to rock and roll all night and party every day. Then it was every other day... now I'm lucky to find half an hour a week in which to get funky.

I am totally a pretentious music snob. With the exception of my brother, I am completely convinced that I listen to better music than anyone I know. Generally, if there's one thing that I get really irritated at with the people I know, it's when they listen to terrible, awful music and sit there and think that it's the shit, when it obviously isn't. I also hate when you ask someone what kind of music they like, and they go, "I love everything!" when, by "everything," they actually mean "everything on Top 40 Radio." In contrast, I also hate people who go, "Top 40 Radio is shit, I only like cool indie stuff!" and pretty much think that they're the shit because they listen to underground, non-conformist, indie/rock/etc music, when in reality, they listen to some of the most mainstream of these genres, like Modest Mouse or Iron and Wine or something. On a similar note, I hate how emo/metal/scene/etc kids are like, "ALL OTHER MUSIC SUCKS - METAL IS THE ONLY WAY TO GO AND LYK OMG IT'S SO GR8!" when in reality, most music associated with emo/metal/scene/etc kids is usually some of the shittiest of all. I hate how close-minded some people are when it comes to music, because in my opinion, music, like any other form of art, is something that you really can't be close-minded about. And, I hate how everyone and their mom seems to think they can make music - and good music at that - when 99% of the trendy 13 year old tards that start MySpace pages for the music they make with their Rock Band mic and a shitty, ten year old copy of Acid on the computer in their parents basement makes my ears bleed and makes me feel like my organs are being harvested from my still-alive body while a small child pukes in my mouth.

Yes, I am a totally pretentious music snob, and one who's not afraid to tell you that you listen to shitty music. I guess that might make me a little close-minded too, but you know what? I don't give a shit. The point is, I listen to better music than you.

End of rant.

~o~*~o~

"What's the worst thing, that could happen
We find out that we don't quite fit
But on the flip side, we could be just right
And sure there's the chance
That we'll both end up broken and split
But that's my kind of risk

I'm not trying to make you think
This is some kind of great big deal
I just know exactly how you feel"
-First Person, Jenny Owen Youngs

Vampires are make-believe, like elves, gremlins, and Eskimos.

Haven't read this yet? Do so. Now.

That is all.

~o~*~o~

"I'm conflicted
I inhale now I'm addicted
To this place
To you babe
I can't stay away
Can't stay away
We get up, we go down
Then we go one more round
It's wrong, they say
I can't stay a- I can't stay away
No I can't stay a- I can't stay away"
-I Can't Stay Away, The Veronicas.

I didn’t think it was physically possible, but this both sucks *and* blows.

FML.


...that is all.

God, I know you're busy...you know watching women changing clothes and all...

Holy AIDS, have I been busy recently. I spent last week in Isla Mujeres, Mexico with my parents, which was pretty shpadoinkle, let me tell you. I will probably post some pictures in the near future from that; you know, once we go through all nine thousand of them. :P This week has been crazy at work, as I've been busy trying to catch up with the stack of reorders that built up for the five days of work I missed while I was in Mexico. My free time has been spent trying to unpack and tidy up my room a bit (the latter of which I've failed at pretty miserably), drawing (I started getting back into a bit of drawing for the first time in a long time while I was on vacation - again, pics to follow in an upcoming post), reading the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series (which is fantastic, FYI), and trying to fight off a ridiculous sinus infection I woke up with on Sunday (yuck).

Lucky for me (though in terms of my paycheck, it's a bit unlucky), we've been reduced to 32 hours a week at work, meaning I only work four hour days on Thursday and Friday. Hooray! I am taking full of advantage of that, and using my extra time tomorrow to catch up with friends I haven't been able to see in ages; as soon as I finish work at 10am tomorrow, I'm heading over to the U campus to see Nancy. We're meeting at Coffman to shoot some pool and catch up, followed by lunch at our favorite place, Hong Kong Noodles. And of course, after that we have the customary stop at Tea Garden for my large cherry almond shake with strawberry jellies and her regular lychee shake with bubbles. :) That evening, I'm meeting up with Mary after she gets off work, and we're heading over to the Mall of America to stop at one of our favorite spots, Rainforest Cafe. Afterwards, we're hitting up Underwater Adventures, which I am ridiculously stoked for. Finally, after hanging out with her, I'm meeting up with my brother, Sean, Holly, and probably Sika and we're going to Uncommon Grounds in Uptown, where I will have a delicious, true to it's name Orgasmic Chai latte. YUM.

So yes, my day tomorrow is jam packed with friends, food, and fatassedness (yes, I just made up the word). It will be GREAT. Also, I'm following all that up with a Harry Potter photo shoot on Saturday with Kelly. HELL. YES.

Anywhoozle, that is my life for the moment. I would post/write more, but I need to clean this national disaster of an area that I call my room if I want to be able to do any of the aforementioned things tomorrow. :P That is all.

(God, what a boring blog. :P)

~o~*~o~

"I swear when I grow up, I won't just buy you a rose.
I will buy the flower shop, and you will never be lonely."
-The Gambler, fun.

I’ll keep it short and sweet — Family. Religion. Friendship. These are the three demons you must slay if you wish to succeed in business.

Last year in my English class, we got into a debate over whether Lucifer and Satan were the same person. There was pretty much a universal acknowledgment that they were, with the exception of one girl in my class, who claimed to believe otherwise. Because she had the reputation for being a fairly devout Christian and "knowing her facts" when it came to the Bible, we actually started a debate over whether she was right or the rest of us were. I forgot what exactly her belief was, but I think it was something along the lines of Lucifer being an angel that was cast out from heaven, and Satan just being a separate evil entity that was "ruler of hell," so to speak; basically, she thought the two were separate beings (I know, I don't know where she got that from either). She brought up some evidence for her side that was fairly convincing (well, for her, anyway, though not for me :P), but in the end, I think most people still believed the two to be one in the same.

Now, this should have nothing to do with anything, except that I was just doing some Biblical research, and came across a few things that caught my eye and reminded me of this topic. Wanting to reassure myself that I was indeed correct and she was the one that was wrong, I browsed the internet a bit and did a little research to try to prove my point. And, I believe that I have. What follows are a few verses which I believe back up my case pretty solidly, and should have even this girl in my class convinced that Lucifer and Satan are one in the same. Have a look-see:

"How you are fallen from heaven,
O Lucifer, son of the morning!
How you are cut down to the ground,
You who weakened the nations!
For you have said in your heart:
'I will ascend into heaven,
I will exalt my throne above the stars of God;
I will also sit on the mount of the congregation
On the farthest sides of the north;
I will ascend above the heights of the clouds,
I will be like the Most High.'”
-Isaiah 14:12-14

Here, we see the name "Lucifer" appear. There's not much reference to him being the devil - or "Satan," as it were - but pay attention to the first three lines: "How you are fallen from heaven,
O Lucifer, son of the morning! How you are cut down to the ground..." Okay, got that down? Let's move onto the next verse.

“Then the fifth angel sounded: And I saw a star fallen from heaven to the earth. To him was given the key to the bottomless pit.”
-Revelation 9:1

This whole verse is pretty key. We start with "And I saw a star fallen form heaven to the earth," which is of course referring to Lucifer; Lucifer is the star that is falling from Heaven to earth, which directly ties back to the previous verses in Isaiah 14, specifically the first three that I laid out for you. The second half of the verse, "To him was given the key to the bottomless pit," is important to keep in mind for the next verse, which I'll list out now.

“And they had as king over them the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon, but in Greek he has the name Apollyon.”
-Revelation 9:11

And therein lies the final piece to my argument. The first part says, "And they had as king over them the angel of the bottomless pit," which we know from the previous verse in Revelation which I highlighted for you is Lucifer. It then goes on to say, "[the angel of the bottomless pit,] whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon, but in Greek he has the name Apollyon." "Abaddon" is the Hebrew name for Satan, meaning "Destruction," and "Apollyon" is the Greek name for Satan, meaning "Destroyer." From this, we are led to believe, therefore, the the king of the bottomless pit is Satan. So, let's put all of this together now, shall we?

Lucifer fell from Heaven. A "star" - Lucifer - fell from Heaven and was given the "key to the bottomless pit." And the "angel of the bottomless pit" is also known by the names "Abaddon" and "Apollyon," which are the Hebrew and Greek names for Satan, respectively. Therefore, based on that path of logic, Lucifer = Satan.

I'm sure no one else cares about this, but for me, this was extremely satisfying, as I now have Biblical proof that Lucifer is, or became, Satan, and that I was indeed right. So lady, you can suck it. Oh, and I mean that in a loving, Christian way, of course. ♥

~o~*~o~

Michael Scott: "What about you?"
I.T. Guy: "Well if you're going to reduce my identity to my religion, then I'm Sikh. But I also like hiphop and NPR. And I'm restoring a 1967 Corvette in my spare time."
Michael Scott: "Okay. So, one Sikh, and..."
-From The Office

You're as dumb as a mule and twice as ugly. If a strange man offers you a ride, I say take it!

Why is it that whenever you just start to get your shit together and start to get to a good place in life, something either devastating or incredibly irritating butts it's head in and causes the shit to hit the fan? It's ridiculously annoying.

I thought I was over all of this high school drama. I thought that with everyone going off to college, that this sort of thing wouldn't really happen anymore, or at least not as much. I thought that with fewer people around, stuff like that wouldn't manifest because there wouldn't really be anyone to help it get started and build. I thought that maybe people would get out into the real world and mature a little bit more, become more level-headed, and, you know, grow a brain. I thought people would start to care more about the important things and less about the stupid little retarded things. And most of all, I thought people would move on and stop living in the past so much and just get on with their lives.

I thought wrong, apparently.

It's funny to think about how these stupid things - and people - follow you around, even after you graduate and get out into the real world and start living more of a normal, everyday life. Over the last year or two, I've encountered some pretty stupid, awful, irritating, and hard (that's what she said) things. And yet, I've overcome them, moved on, and have grown to be (I think) a better person because of it. I've always prided myself on being an individual, being my own person, being who I want to be and not who everyone else wants to be, and I've especially been proud of myself in that respect over the last two years, and, even more specifically, since high school ended. For the first time in my life, I really love who I am, truly and fully. Don't get me wrong - I'd like to lose like 20 pounds and I wish my hair was a bit longer and I'd really love to be doing something a little more interesting work-wise and, of course, I'd kill to be dating Daniel Radcliffe with some Alan Rickman action on the side - but in general, I'm really happy with where I am in life right now. I like me. That's not something that a lot of people can say, and I'm proud that, for at least right now, I can.

And then, of course, something irritating comes back to bite me in the ass and wreck that. Something that just annoys the hell out of me because it brings me back to a time when I was really happy with who and where I was, but ultimately led me to being unhappy, and forced me to completely rethink myself and my values and everything. Again, don't get me wrong, having to go through that made me a much better person, and a lot of that is responsible for me being who I am today, but at the same time...well, at the time, it sucked. Plain and simple. And being reminded of that sucked. Being reminded that I put up with that for a long time sucked. And becoming aware now that I'm much better off without all that and knowing that, not only can it surface again, but that it would come back and think that I'd want to be a part of that after everything that's gone down - that, that right there, sucks. How are you supposed to tell something - someone - that you're over that? Over them? Over everything? Even now, I feel guilty, feel like I should give in, but I know that that's just an older version of myself surfacing, an older part of me that I've tried to distance myself from, because I'm happier without it.

I guess I just don't know how to rationalize this. I know I need to say no, I need to stay away, to keep moving on, keep growing, because I'm much better off without it, and I like myself a lot better without it, but there's still a small part of me - a very small part, mind, but a part nonetheless - that wants to just fold. And that sucks.

...I thought high school was over. Apparently not. Like her immature ways in the sense of drama, I too want to give into my immature ways and just punch her in the face.

~o~*~o~

"I'm friends with everybody in this office. We're all best friends. I love everybody here. But sometimes your best friends start coming into work late and start having dentist appointments that aren't dentist appointments, and that is when it's nice to let them know that you could beat them up."
-Michael Scott (Steve Carrell), The Office

Thats it! If that horse does not start winning soon then we are going on a trip to the glue factory and he won't be invited!

I feel extremely productive tonight, because I just sat for the last like two hours and made this:



It's for a lady at my work. She gave me that picture with her and her mom (and her sisters? I'm not really sure who the two in front are), and the recipe card which her mom wrote out with a "Recipe for Happiness." Since her mother passed away, she wanted a way to display her card and the picture together, so she gave them to me to try to just throw something together on the computer (actually, she gave them to me last spring, and it's taken me this long to finally sit down and do it, which I feel really awful about :P). I was originally just going to do a simple thing with the picture and recipe card on a pretty background that I made, but then I came up with the idea to do a digital scrapbook page instead, and thus, the picture you see above came into being.

I'm really proud of it, because it's the first digital scrapbook page I've done, and I think it turned out rather well. I downloaded a free digital scrapbook pack from Shabby Princess (), and then just went ot work putting this together. It's mostly a bunch of layering and careful erasing and editing and screening and such, but again, I think it turned out rather nice, and it's a lot more in-depth than I was planning on getting (though I owe that to her for keeping this thing for so long). So yes, I feel very productive, and I'm excited to give it to her tomorrow and to see what she thinks. :)

In other, more embarrassing and quite dangerous news, because I was so focused on making her this digital scrapbook page, I completely forgot that I left a pot with water to boil on the stove for making some mac n cheese, and as such, I now have one wrecked kettle that I'm going to have to throw away. Frankly, I'm just glad the thing didn't start on fire and burn the house down, because all of the water completely evaporated and it was slowly burning away the non-stick stuff on the inside of the kettle and completely scorching the bottom brown. That's the first time I've ever been that distracted (and retarded) and left something on in the kitchen like that. I mean, don't get me wrong, I've burned a few things because I've gotten a bit absentminded, but I've never left anything on THAT long, to the point that I completely wreck something and, again, threaten to almost start a fire/burn down the house. I'm pretty sure I get the moron award of the day - maybe even month - for that one. :P

Anywhoozle, I guess that's all. Pray that I don't do the same thing as I attempt to make my mac n cheese again now, and, on a lighter note, that Sue B. likes her thing I've made her. :)

~o~*~o~

"But when you touch me like this
And you hold me like that
I just have to admit
That it's all coming back to me
When I touch you like this
And I hold you like that
It's so hard to believe but
It's all coming back to me"
-It's All Coming Back to Me Now, Céline Dion

...Try to understand. There are two kinds of college students -- jocks and nerds. As a jock, it is my duty to give nerds a hard time!

I WENT AND SAW HBP AGAIN TONIGHT AND OH MY GOD IT'S STILL AS AMAZING AS EVER.

It's at all the cheap theaters now, and since my bro hadn't seen it yet, I told him I'd take him. OH GOD IT WAS GREAT. My brother really liked it, too - he agreed that it was the best one yet. Course, he kind of hates most of the other ones, so there wasn't much to beat, but...well, still. :P AND OH MY GOD, I FINALLY SAW THE HOUR GLASSES THIS TIME!!! *DIES A MILLION TIMES* At the end, when they show the Great Hall right before they cut to the scene with Harry and McGonagrizzle in Dumbledore's office, you can see the hour glasses up at the front of the hall on the right hand side. That's the first time I've ever seen them! IT WAS BOMB. :D

Basically, I am really excited for December 8th. :)



...OH, AND PS, SINCE I POSTED THIS AFTER SEEING IT IN IMAX ON THE NUTHOUSE AND NEVER POSTED IT HERE, I WANT TO POST THIS LITTLE BIT OF INFORMATION NOW BECAUSE WHEN I SAW IT I FELT LIKE THE BOMB DIGGITY (and when I told my brother this tonight after we saw the movie, he goes, "Oh my God, how did you pick up on that?! You're such a nerd!!).

COPY AND PASTED FROM MY POST ON THE NUTHOUSE ON AUGUST 1ST, 2009:

Oh, but I did remember one other thing from the movie that I picked up on the first time that I had forgotten about, but which I thought was really cool! There's the scene where Dumbledore takes off Gaunt's ring and sets it down on the table, and Harry reaches out to touch it, and there's this awesome foreshadowing sort of sequence. He suddenly gets like, this vision type thing of all of these different images (memories?) of Tom Riddle and bad stuffz, and then he suddenly like snaps out of it, and he kind of like makes this weird, almost neck cracking motion where he twitches his head, and it's EXACTLY THE SAME MOVEMENT THAT VOLDEMORT DID WHEN HE'S RESURRECTED IN GOF! And then Dumbledore gets this creeped out look on his face and suddenly looks at Harry's scar, and then he looks back and forth between the ring and Harry's scar again as he's talking about Horcruxes, and then he says, "I think I found another one," or something, and you assume it's just about the locket because he starts talking about their mission to the cave then, but it's too much of a coincidence to not have some sort of double meaning, you know? If you're not paying attention or haven't read the books, you probably wouldn't think anything of it, but knowing what we know about Harry being a Horcrux, it's totally foreshadowing that. I just thought that it was a really cool little scene, and actually done really well. :)

OH GOD AM I GREAT OR WHAT?! :DD

OKAY THAT IS ALL. KTHXBYE.

~o~*~o~

Hermione: [snaps her fingers] Hey! She's only interested in you because she thinks you're the Chosen One.
Harry: But I am the Chosen One.
[Hermione smacks him on the head with the newspaper]
Harry Potter: Sorry...kidding!
-From the film version of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

When will I learn? The answer to life's problems aren't at the bottom of a bottle, they're on TV!

My life is full of random moments that just make me...feel. Feel what? ...Alive, I suppose. Or, perhaps "infinite," to quote Chbosky, is a better word. In Stephen Chbosky's The Perks of Being a Wallflower, there's this beautiful, wonderful moment, which the main character Charlie sums up quite well. A chunk of this passage is below:

"When we got out of the tunnel, Sam screamed this really funny scream, and there it was. Downtown. Lights on buildings and everything makes you wonder. Sam sat down and started laughing. Patrick started laughing. I started laughing.
And in that moment, I swear we were infinite."

THIS. This right here sums up what I live for; moments like this when the world is good and you're content and everything seems to fall into place and it's like magic exists because the moment you're living is purely magical and nothing else matters and it's just you, you and anyone else you may be with, and you're breathing and alive and the rest of the world is breathing and alive with you and there's no death and no end and in that moment, in that moment, you truly feel infinite. I think moments like this are all what life is about.

Moments when you're driving home at one in the morning from a party and it's dark and still and silent, and you've got the window open and the crisp night air is blowing in through your open window, and suddenly an amazing, epic, beautifully written song comes on the radio and it's just you and the night and the wind and the song driving down that road, and you feel as if you're apart of everything and nothing at the same time, and it's beautiful.

Moments when you're with a group of friends sitting in front of a lake in the middle of the day, and you hear the water and the birds and the wind and the music from a nearby group of people blaring their stereo with summer tunes, and you can literally almost smell the sun and the heat and the sand, and even though it's bright and sunny and you're with a group of friends, everyone is just silent and still and contemplative, and in that moment, you're having the most wonderful conversation without ever having said a word.

Moments when you're observing the outdoors late in the first quarter of the year, when the weather is in that stasis somewhere between winter and spring, where it can't quite seem to make up it's mind, and there's mucky puddles everywhere and hints of brown grass are peeking out through the dirty snow and small buds are starting to form on the trees and some of the animals in the area are starting to come back after the long winter, and it's as if all of nature is just silently screaming to come back to life, screaming to end the season of death and enter into the season of life, and everything is just mounting and mounting and growing and growing until finally, finally, spring arrives and brings rebirth with it, and you're experiencing the rebirth, too, shedding your cares and problems for just that first moment of real sunshine, of blue sky, of warm breezes and green grass.

Again, this is what life is about; a series of moments when everything is right in the world and nothing else matters, and you feel like you're a part of something greater and bigger than you can ever imagine, and just for a few seconds, you, like Charlie, feel infinite. I love these moments. I embrace them, I seek them, I live them, and I absorb from them all that they have to offer. These moments are the ones that help to define my life.

"And in that moment, I swear we were infinite."

~o~*~o~

"And all the books you’ve read have been read by other people. And all the songs you’ve loved have been heard by other people. And that girl that’s pretty to you is pretty to other people. And you know that if you looked at these facts when you were happy, you would feel great because you are describing “unity”."
-Charlie in The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

Have the Rolling Stones killed.

HOLY CRAP THERE'S ANOTHER THING OVER THERE ON MY SIDEBAR. IT'S PRACTICALLY SPAM NOW.


...No, but seriously, I did add something new, and it is for your benefit as much as mine. I have no added a small Grooveshark playlist to my blog, with some of my favorite songs by my favorite artists. Currently, we've got some Jenny Owen Youngs, Iron and Wine, Manchester Orchestra, Tegan and Sara, and Christophe Willem. IT IS GREAT. Go listen to those songs. NOW.

That is all.


~o~*~o~

"Jacques a dit « cours ! »
Jacques dit « vole ! »
Mais pas le jour où je décolle
Jacques a dit « cours ! »
Jacques a dit « aime ! »
J’ai beau t’aimer, tu pars quand même
Jacques a dit « marche ! »
Jacques a dit « rêve ! »
Me fait tant marcher que j’en crève
Jacques a dit certes je lui pardonne
Jacques est un rêve pas un homme"
-Jacques A Dit, Christophe Willem

I hope I didn’t brain my damage.

...Ignore when I say, "I need to show the internetz my junk." :P

~o~*~o~

"You can lead a herring to water, but you have to walk really fast or he'll die."
-Rose Nylund, The Golden Girls

Oh, loneliness and cheeseburgers are a dangerous mix.

http://www.wbshop.com/Harry-Potter-and-the-Sorcerer%27s-Stone%3a-Ultimate-Edition-+DVD/1000096689,default,pd.html?cgid=hp_dvd

http://www.wbshop.com/Harry-Potter-Professor-McGonagalls%27--Wand-by-Noble-Collection/HPNBWANDPM,default,pd.html?cgid=hp_official

http://www.wbshop.com/Harry-Potter-Professor-Snape%27s-Wand-by-Noble-Collection/HPNBWANDPS,default,pd.html?cgid=hp_official... Read More

http://www.wbshop.com/Harry-Potter-and-the-Half-Blood-Prince-Poster-Art-Music-Box/HPSFHBPBOX,default,pd.html?cgid=hphome

http://www.wbshop.com/Harry-Potter-+-the-Half-Blood-Prince%3a-Bellatrix-Le-Strange-Adult-T-Shirt/HPBDHBPBEATXL,default,pd.html

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http://www.wbshop.com/Harry-Potter-+-the-Half-Blood-Prince%3a-Luna-Lovegood-Women%27s-Tee/HPBDLUNJTXL,default,pd.html

http://www.wbshop.com/Harry-Potter-and-the-Half-Blood-Prince%3a-Single-Film-Cell-+Snape-+-Draco/HPTSHBPMINI01,default,pd.html?cgid=hpcels

That is what I just bought. I know, it's disgusting. I can't believe I spent that much money. But I figure I'm not going on vacation like I thought, which means I can spend that money on something else - that something else being this. And actually, this is still cheaper than going on vacation, sooo....yeah. I know. Still ridiculous. :P
Also, I was going to buy the cardboard cutout of Snape (which would have been the sexiest thing EVAR), but it wouldn't fit in my room, so I nixed that idea and got McGonagall's wand instead. *nods* Seems like a better (though less sexy idea). Only bad thing? It doesn't ship 'til the movie comes out, meaning I won't get it until December. GAY.



....OH MY GOD I CAN'T BELIEVE I JUST BOUGHT ALL THAT STUFF. I'M GOING TO THROW UP FROM THE AWESOMENESS OF IT ALL AND THE RIDICULOUSNESS OF THE MONEY I SPENT ON IT. MERLIN'S MOST BAGGY Y-FRONTS.


~o~*~o~

Mrs. Edna Krabappel: ...Harry Potter, are you chewing gum?
Harry Potter: ...no ma'am, it's brimstone...
Mrs. Krabappel: ...oooh hoo hoo hoo, well wonderful...
-The Simpsons

I don't know where you pixies came from, but I like your pixie drink!

I just found websites where I can buy both Fanta Exotic and Bitter Lemon. OH. MAI. GAWD. I am like, ridiculously excited about this. I have not had either since I was in Kosovo just over three years ago, and I have searched high and low for both and have been able to find either. I did find some on Amazon once, but it's expensive and the shipping was like $10 on top of the already too-expensive price, so I never ordered. Now, I was curious again, and so I looked and found websites for them both. Unfortunately, not the same websites, which means more shipping than probably necessary, and the bottles themselves are already like $5 which is insane, but I don't even care because, after my next paycheck (when I can actually blow money on ridiculous things, unlike this paycheck which was pretty much reserved for paying back everyone I borrowed money from when I was broke this summer), I am going to go ahead and order 2 liters (or 2.5 liters, whatever the hell they are) of each of them, and it is going to be the BEST DAY EVER. I am SO EXCITED, you would not believe it. And over pop, no less. How silly, and yet, how utterly beautiful. LOLZ AND NOMS. :DDDD



~o~*~o~

So, yesterday Dwight found half a joint in the parking lot. Which is unfortunate, because it turns out that Dwight finding drugs is more dangerous than most people using drugs.
-Jim Halpert, The Office

My cat's name is Mittens.

PART 2, LOLZ.



~o~*~o~

"There is no snooze button on a cat who wants breakfast."
-Anonymous