17 Feb 2009
1. I handwrite in ALL CAPS, I instant message in lowercase, and I write notes on Facebook with proper punctuation and capitalization. Is that weird?
2. I left Myspace to avoid these notes, but it turns out I’m doing one anyway.
3. I only know 3 Beatles songs and they are “Lucy in the sky with diamonds”, “Let it be”, and “Come together”. Thanks to Melissa for #3.
4. I miss school.
5. I moved around as a kid so many times that I get restless if I stay somewhere for too long.
6. I hate that McDonald’s commercial that sells itself on the shitty economy.
7. I hate capitalism, but I love it.
8. Communism was actually a really brilliant idea. It’s just impossible to effectively incorporate.
9. I love all music. I say I hate country, but I secretly don’t. I don’t prefer it, but if it’s on you might find my foot tapping. And Taylor Swift is hot.
10. I have an iPhone. I don’t know how I lived without it.
11. I like when my users have a good experience.
12. I have a penpal in Amsterdam. We’ve been writing for over a year. I started to learn Dutch but gave up :)
13. I only use Pilot Precise V5 black ink pens.
14. I’m watching Accepted and I’m not really impressed.
15. I’m on Twitter and you should be too.
16. I don’t play hockey anymore but I can’t bring myself to get rid of my equipment as if keeping it makes me feel like I still play.
17. When it comes to books, I tend to alternate between fiction and non-fiction. I’m currently reading A Thousand Splendid Suns. Next up is The Monster of Florence.
18. I’m a deep thinker when I want to think, but I lately I rarely think at all.
19. I prefer logic over emotion, but emotion always seems to win. And I hate it.
20. I think Bob Marley knew what he’s talking about.
21. I come across as a know-it-all but really I’m just looking for a good conversation.
22. I don’t like to go to bed upset with anyone. I’d prefer we work out our issues before the day is over.
23. I believe in evolution. The fact that we learn from mistakes is proof enough that species evolve.
24. I believe “God” is an idea and nothing more. I believe that hope in that idea makes a lot of people happy. Hope, as we know, is the last thing to ever die.
25. I am tired.
08 Jan 2009
The official web site
The NYTimes article
“LONDON — The advertisement on the bus was fairly mild, just a passage from the Bible and the address of a Christian Web site. But when Ariane Sherine, a comedy writer, looked on the Web site in June, she was startled to learn that she and her nonbelieving friends were headed straight to hell, to “spend all eternity in torment.”
05 Dec 2008
This might sound cliche, but what is the meaning of life?
I’m asking because, by nature, we as humans are selfish. In the act of self-preservation and survival we are selfish creatures. When we perform selfless acts we go against the grain of nature. In the beginning we are born alone and in the end we die alone, when it comes down to it. Therefore, shouldn’t life be about each of us as individuals? And then aren’t we entitled to be selfish?
(By saying we are born alone, I mean that we are an individual. Sure we have the help and concern of our parents and family, but they don’t breathe for us, they don’t think for us, they don’t live for us. Therefore we are born alone. And by saying we die alone, I know we might have that significant other; we might have family, friends, loved ones, but ultimately we stop breathing on our own, we stop thinking on our own, and we die. Alone. It’s really not meant to be dark and depressing – it just is what it is.)
I’m not a religious person. I don’t believe in a god. I believe we are no different than worms, or plants, or bacteria in that we are born and we die and everything in between is no more than surviving to live as long as possible. Of course, as humans and with a higher level of intelligence and with the ability to feel (which I’ll talk about in a minute) we create goals for ourselves – goals to be happy. These goals then become our meaning of life. But they are created on top of a primary goal, which is purely to survive. For without the desire for survival there wouldn’t be life. I could get into how man created god and all this other jibber-jabber, but I’ll digress (for now?) and get on with the topic at hand.
Now, many people attribute emotion to a higher power – a god if you will – but really emotion is nothing more than a created and inherited habit that we pass down in tradition to our offspring. Over time it has become such a common – and unintentional – quality that we have attributed emotion as part of our natural makeup. But emotion wasn’t always there.
Much like a bee sting, once stung we are terrified. Why is that? Or once we fall in love, we crave it. When we fall in love our body goes through a number of physiological changes. Adrenaline, serotonin, testosterone/estrogen, we sweat, we get anxious. All of these things mix together in the brain and the brain says, “Hey this is nice… do more of this,” and we from then on, equate love with good, and we crave what is good.
Just as with a bee sting. Our nerves send a message to our brain that says “Ow shit! Do less of that!” and we equate bee stings with bad and thus we try to avoid them. Did I get on a tangent?
Back to life. I wonder if happiness is even truly achievable. If, by nature we are selfish then we are always looking out for ourselves. This doesn’t mean we purposely hurt other people, but it does mean that if people get in the way of our goal of happiness, then we shove on. However, in the process we hurt others and if we are at all human, we feel bad about this.
So in the pursuit of happiness we inevitably hurt others which hinders our happiness. It’s like two steps forward but three steps back. It’s frustrating. It’s like a butterfly effect: you do something good but something else screws up somewhere else, even if it’s unrelated. Every choice has a consequence. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, meaning for every amount of good done, an equal amount of bad is done. Is there no way around this? And are we supposed to be okay with it?
The life of a worm is so simple. Crawl through the mud until you’re eaten by a bird, roasted on some hot sidewalk, fed as bait to some fish, or stepped on. I guess a worm is happy if they survive all this and that’s all the happiness they need.
Is this at all accurate or have I gone off the deep end?
03 Sep 2008
I have come to realize something quite humorous about myself. But it is also quite a struggle. I’ve always been against dogmas and traditions, yet I find myself in love with them at the same time.
Japanese culture has always fascinated me. The devotion the rituals, to family, and to honor is so beautiful and so inspiring. The dogma has been the cause for great art, stories, and histories – all of which I truly love. The same goes for most Eastern cultures, like Chinese, Indian, and Middle Eastern.
I’ve recently finished the book The Kite Runner and more recently watched the movie inspired by it, which prompted this post. The Afghan culture is a strange mix of violence and hatred stitched together with love, honor and sacrifice. How do the two co-exist so perfectly?
However, in America, tradition is so opposite. It’s dark, dangerous, and so cult-like. Dogma here makes you paranoid and so much not in love with what you believe in, rather fearful of not believing in it.
“I love you. I hate you.â€