Plead the 4th

There's New Year's, which has turned into a night of drinking and partying to start off the year. There's Halloween, which has turned into a night of sweet-tooth indulging. There's Thanksgiving, which has turned into a fiesta for the fat. There's Christmas, which has turned into a yearly fix for America's spending addiction. However, of all the self-serving holidays a country can have, I think the 4th of July is the worst, not only in terms of how we've twisted the day (we tend to do that) but, more perversely, what birthdays are in general. And I'm not saying this because I didn't get invited to any parties today.

Now, most of you who know me well understand that I have a general distaste for birthdays. I don't mean that I like bashing on birthday bashes or being a killjoy or anything like that. If anything, I love celebrating friends' birthdays as an appreciation of having them as a friend. I do not subscribe to the idea, however, that birthdays are someone's "special day" so that they can get whatever they want, that they are somehow "entitled" to special privileges not normally given to them on any other day.

No, birthdays are a day to celebrate your presence on Earth, not your command of it. It's self-serving even to assume that somehow your birthday is any better than any other day, because everyday is someone's birthday. I don't mind giving you a gift, but I hate people who say shit like, "But it's my birthday," or "C'mon, not even on my birthday?" because it just shows their immaturity and their obsession with themselves.

A wise comedian once said, "There comes a time when you should stop expecting other people to make a big deal about your birthday. That time is age 11."

And thus, that leads me to the the 4th of July, which is the birthday of our obviously fine, fine country.

Don't get me wrong, I love birthdays as fine reminders of our lives and the beauty if life in general, and I definitely love our country, the wealthiest and arguably most driven in the world (both in terms of motivation and number of cars per capita). But I think all this celebrating, these parties, fireworks, sales, advertising and all this crap is just so excessive. We don't need to waste literally millions and millions of dollars on a day about ourselves. That's just self-serving and interestingly, very stereotypically American.

And I don't think a country this great should be about that. I don't have any alternative ideas for celebrating, but using our birthday as a ticket to the shitshow, as an excuse to get drunk and vomit all over our birthday selves is just pure narcissism and vainglory.

In addition, I hate fireworks. They are literally exploding goddamn lights in the goddamn sky. I have glow-in-the-dark stickers on my ceiling, and they light up at night. Is there anything fucking special about that?

AND THEY'RE THE SAME THING EVERY GODDAMN YEAR! It's just lights of different colors and shapes in the sky! WTF?! Is it so novel, so amazing that you have to clog up highways and crowd random areas to watch it? We spend more time looking and finding places to sit than actually seeing the damn show itself.

It's just frustrating to see so much fuss made over something so trivial on a day where we are supposed to be celebrating our country's birth. Instead we strategically place lines in our speeches thanking "for our freedoms" and "for the men and women fighting overseas." Do you know what the American troops are doing today? They're freaking marching in Afghanistan in the fucking desert while we get drunk and throw our pool parties.

The 4th of July is easily the worst of the holidays, in my opinion. Not that the other ones are much better in their perversity. "There comes a time when you should stop expecting other people to make a big deal about your birthday. That time is age 11." We should have stopped with the celebrating in 17goddamn87.

Flashback, Memories

I have just spent that last 3 or 4 hours reading my old Xanga. I admit to making myself chuckle sometimes, but in doing so, I realized that my laughter came from hearing the joke the first time. It seems like I've changed so much that I don't expect what comes out of me anymore, even though I've already expressed it.

There are lots of things I've learned from reading some of my old stuff. Primarily, I'm a horrible poet. I personally blame all my "friends" who told me I was good. I reread some of the crap I wrote, and a vast majority of them are poorly written. I am proud, however, to say that they are not nonsensical, so at least I make sense to myself.

Another thing I learned is that I am always learning. I read a bit over a year's worth of Xanga entries, and I literally followed my own growth and memories. It's a harrowing alleyway, but memory lane is somehow satisfying in its answers. It refills the part of me that was missing myself. Sometimes we lose sight of who we are, forgetting that an important part of that is who we were.

In addition, I've found myself, like I assume many teenagers are, to be addicted to attention. I crave(d) it. I don't know what I'll think when I look back on this particular post, but I do know that I'll be happy I have some account of my personal thoughts, to see and remind myself of myself, if that makes sense.

I did this a few times already, but I guess here's a previously written entry, raw from the crypts of Mista_ex93's Xanga, dated Saturday, 15 October 2005:

"I jumped into the blackness and started writing...


Meaning I clicked "New Weblog Entry" on my Xanga, since it's so black and dark and all. I think I set a personal record. I slept for 16 hours straight. There were a few breaks, like when I called Alex/Daniel/Abbie around 12:15, but other than that, I slept from about 1:15 AM until 5:15 PM. I just realized that for the first time in my life, I received too much sleep. I never thought it possible until now. I got up and brushed my teeth. I admit, that it was probably one of the best sleeps I have ever had, but now I can't help but regret it. It's like you love something sooooo much, yet you know it's bad for you. I am still groggy as we speak. I still love it though. I still do.


Yellow Goodwill Tires.

Let me begin here then. Hello, avid Xanga readers. I know, I know, Xanga is TERRIBLY out of fashion what with Myspace's takeover of the blog/photo/friend world. Admittedly, I myself have a Myspace, yet I can't help myself but to feel loyal to the one blog site that has remained with me in my days of socializing. Ever since the summer before freshman year at Bellarmine, Xanga has remained to me a loyal friend, unbroken in its patience and feedback. So, I find myself here again, over two years later, "blogging" to the tacit world of my life.

But it's different now. The world still remains silent at my rants, and I am still adamant to rant. However, the world has changed and I have changed. Things are always changing, and whether they are for the better or worse, I am not at liberty to say. It is much more practical and sensible to just say: Things are changing and let's just accept that they are.


Heffalump

What is with October birthdays? How can so many people be born in the same month? I am going to try and list the people right now, but keep in mind that this makes up only a small percentage of the people I know, yet just forgot when their birthdays were: John, Rosemary, Andy, Mom, Desiree, Alex Tai, Victoria, Grant Bauer, Eric Masch, Vivian, Bryan Nguyen, Andrew Strawbridge....

A few of them I don't know very well, yet regardless of that, the fact that I have heard of them makes me wary. I just don't understand how so many people can be born in the same month. Until this month, I had thought that the month with the most birthdays was November, but I question the validity of that fact. I mean, shit! Hella people in October.


Door hinge on the X-wing.

I met and old friend yesterday. Over the past year I saw her more often than I thought I would, since I thought I put the St. Justin's life behind me for the most part. I am sure she doesn't read my Xanga (and for that matter, neither do most people), so I am just going to use her name. Olivia Teixeira. She is a really nice girl; well, she was at St. Justin's in my more adolescent years, and from what I see of her now, she still seems to be a really nice gal. Well I saw her again yesterday (Friday) at practice for A Few Good Men. Now, her brother, Eric, and my brother, Matt, are apparently really close friends, so I tend to see Eric a lot. I never usually think of Olivia when I see Eric though. Luckily for him, I see him as an individual and not a spawn off my friend Olivia. Well, I see Olivia again, smiling like she always used to when I knew her and the short time I spent with her was all smiles as usual. She started off the conversation asking what happened between me and (dare I repeat the name?) Jeri. I glossed over it, being the touchy subject it was. We were all smiles again. I was also very mean to her in what I saw as a joking way. I know I must have crossed the line somewhere, but I guess that's just who I am. I did not know how else to deal with an old friend. Well she took it as a cue to be mean to me back, which is perfectly okay; I can take dishes as well as I can give them out and often times even better than I can give them out. Well, she dished one my way..."Thanks for breaking Jeri's heart," she quipped as she walked away. I quickly got over my shock and said, in a seemingly joking manner, "Ouch! Straight though the heart!" She laughed and walked away, "Bye Andrew!" That girl is fun. And I felt like shit. I tried to call to her and say, "It hurts more to hurt someone than it does to be hurt," but I doubt she got me. I don't blame her. I'm an asshole.


Newborn Purple Stars.

How can anyone be so fearless? It kills you when the ideal you tentatively called "love" is shaken at its roots. Why? Because you passed the point when you no longer "tentatively" called it so, but rather, you walked confidently into the realms in which you could call it "love" with neither fear nor diffidence. You called it "love" because it was simply that and you knew it was love. There is no explanation for why it was so; it just was. Love just was. But now you are dying because as it turns out, it wasn't. Love wasn't that. It appears that you were completely wrong and now you walk with your head down in shame because you were wrong. You live in sadness everyday. And along comes a spider. You sat down beside her. And all your errors were thrown away. Now it gets complicated. You had lived your life according to simplicity, thinking that everything boiled down to something simpler, thinking life was simple and that was what made it worth living. But this is the raw form of complexity with which you can't boil it down to simplicity. You don't get it, and you want to. You are afraid. Everything tells you not to be. But you are afraid. You thought there was no such thing as anyone who was fearless. How was it possible that someone can live as the true Romantic? (The Romantic who follows his/her heart and looks inside his/herself in order to order the chaos of the world. The real Romantic; not the shit-ass one who believes in love and all that sappy shit. The Romantic that undoubtedly most of you are learning in your Literature classes. The Romantic.) You found the Romantic and she defies all your conceptions of the perfect girl. You thought the perfect girl had these characteristics and behaved like this and looked like this. But she is the perfect girl too and she did not qualify by your standards. On Josh's scale, she was a 6 or 7 but still a 10. She contradicts everything you believed and believe. And you are afraid.


Silver Mushroom.

Because someone else is seemingly perfect too. Yeah, I'll say it: There's a choice between what you thought was perfect and what you think is perfect, and both make sense.


The Panic Button

I went to Tri's house last night. We argued certain points and concluded that in this life, you gotta "be prepared" for the next. Lisa claimed that "love isn't love until it hurts" meaning that love is only proven through pain. I disagreed and agreed. Pain can define love but it doesn't always do so. It's just because we are afraid of pain and suffering. We are too afraid to risk and too afraid to step blindly with faith. We are, meaning I am, too afraid of it. But I guess Lisa must be somewhat right since all these guys are calling her up all the time.

We played charades last night for a little over an hour. What I have mentioned was only part of what we tried to charade.

Leave a comment for me by which I can define myself."

Thanks for reading, guys.

These Are the Words of a Gentleman

I vow that this will be my last blog until finals are over.

Today, I completed three course evaluations. This is not including the online evaluation I took for Physics yesterday, so you can imagine my chagrin when the third form was handed to me, a scowl chiseled upon my normally squinty-eyed face.

All in all, I gave good reviews for my classes, except one.

It's a one unit course that I need to take to stay in the Honors program. I spent more time than anyone else in my class because I wanted the department to understand the strong feelings I have for the course and the lack of respect I have for the department in general.

I told them exactly what I thought, and the words I used were exactly as follows:

"What improvements could be made for this course? What were your general feelings for this course? Be as specific as necessary.

Well, Honors Department, judging by the lack of quality in the reading material, I can only give a positive review for the seminar-styled course. Where else can you go but up? When a class such as this gets approve by a board, it gives me hope to know that I have experienced the worst of the worst, and that future classes can only improve from the abomination that is Honors Seminar. Thus, I would like to start with the basics, since I have been asked to be specific.

The readings that were assigned to students were neither thought-provoking nor informative. They were controversial only in name, but the fine students in the Honors program have quickly realized that the department must pick readings at random, because such an eclectic repertoire could only be the result of lack of thought, and not careful consideration. Thus, it is my strong suggestion to implement a strict policy of "interesting-only" assignments. That way, at least we as students will be lucky enough to read something worth our while every so often. We are very fair judges, understanding that complete interest cannot be cultivated or expected from this "department" and expect only a few readings that will actually pique our intrigue. Thus, it would be in everyone's best interest to discontinue the laundry list of rejected philosophers and sociologists that we have been forced to swallow with our noses plugged.

Maybe someday someone will care about these readings, but for the present, there is nothing that could possibly describe the worthlessness that has been our companion one hour per week for the last fourteen weeks.

Hopefully, from our input the program can head toward a different direction and scrap the format altogether. It is neither beneficial for the students nor the teachers that only mildly care about the course.

Our time would be better spent sleeping or reading FMyLife.com, perusing YouTube, or even taking pictures of our fecal matter and sharing it in a discussion format once a week. At least that way, we learn something about each other instead of pretending to care about topics that deserve a much higher platform upon which to discuss.

I would also like to take this time to congratulate the department for sucking out any interest I may have once harbored for the pursuit of knowledge. It must have been a top priority because in my near two-decades of living, I have never lost motivation to question or argue. It is therefore an accomplishment both for the department and the university that I now do not give a penny's worth of scrotum sweat for Morality and Knowledge, the topic about which this class pretended to teach.

If you wish me to be more specific, please watch the film 300 (2007) directed by Zack Snyder. I believe that many viewings of the film will adequately convey the pain I've experience each time I walk laboriously to class. Do not be fooled by the hopeful tone of the film's ending, however, since the survivor is not you, but the students who arise out of the ashes and blood to tell others and warn them of the folly that is Honors Seminar.

To be even more specific, I am a child of immigrants who traipsed their way to America amidst a brutal civil war that tore apart a country. It is therefore not a small thing to say that, after taking this course, I almost feel like my parents experienced that horrendous journey from Vietnam in vain, because the sidewalks paved with gold have been replaced by sewers lined with urine and feces. As a matter of fact, even that metaphor for the dashed American Dream cannot adequately scribe the banality and violent uselessness that I was forced to sit through every week. Though I do not pretend to speak for all the students, I can personally say that I would have preferred an eternity of waterboarding than another minute in this class. I would also like to say that I will enthusiastically trade in my first three children in order to erase the memory of this class from my mind. I do hope the University of the Pacific can compensate for the many years of psychological doctoring that will be required from this traumatizing one-unit nightmare.

I don't even know if I can love after this.

True story: I once saw Lucifer walk into the classroom and leave within five minutes to vomit.

No, he didn't return.

In fact, the only enjoyable part of this course was the opportunity to summarize my thoughts on the incompetence that is the Honors Department during this evaluation.

I hope this has been helpful."




Wait.

These evaluations are anonymous, right?

My Day

Today was arguably the worst day I've had all semester, yet for some reason, I felt a (probably false) sense of contentedness and joy. I spent most of today, as I latterly do, alone.

I went to sleep at a late hour, greeting the sun at its early yawn before I tucked myself into the comforts of my static electricity-infested Asian mink blanket.

I then woke up for my 8AM class.

Normally, my friend, Naman Desai, wakes up around 7:30. He doesn't look at the clock in the early hours of the morn, but rather, simply times himself. By the time he finishes his morning routine, he has a few minutes before he has to leave for class. Thus, if he finishes his routine and doesn't see his friends up, he calls them to make sure they go to class. Good friend, good intentions.

But Craig Jeong (or Jeongward as we call him these days), who is Naman's roommate, decides to set his alarm for 7AM this morning instead of the customary 7:30AM. Thus, Naman does his morning routine and wakes me up when he finishes...at 7:20AM.

My alarm goes off at 7:35AM, so when Naman called, it was 15 minutes early. For some reason, in my groggy stupor, I just said, "Alright. I'm getting up." I looked at my clock, but it didn't register to me as being too early. When Naman calls me, I'm usually late, so I think I just took it all in stride and got ready.

And I finished at 7:30AM, 5 minutes before my alarm would even go off.

Needless to say, when I had realized what happened, I was pissed that I lost sleep. However, that anger was quickly replaced by my plan to sleep straight through my Anatomy lecture unnoticed. The class is fairly large, so I knew from prior experience that I could sleep as long as I blended in with the other students.

Unfortunately, all my plans went askew as class began.

Dr. Anderson had a bone to pick with us. It wasn't quite the same bone Shenzi picked with Scar, but it was similar. He was mad that many people were whining about one question on the last quiz. This question was worth 2 points. In a course with 1400 points, this was fairly negligible. However, not only was he angry about the very vocal minority who whined to him, his anger was increased tenfold when he heard complaints of the question being "unfair."

Now, Dr. Anderson has his ups and downs (ask Eric Woo), but he has also given us 2 free points on every quiz. A quiz that has 15 questions usually contains a bogus question, so as to ease our anxieties about our grade, or simply because he's nice. I don't know his reason, but I don't question it.

Dr. Anderson argued that if he took that question out of the last quiz, then he should take all the "free" questions out of the other quizzes in order to be "fair." This was obviously met with criticism, and thus, Dr. Anderson asked for our input, challenging us to find a compelling reason for him not to take away the points.

One person said that the syllabus already established the point total, so it would be inconvenient at best to change it this late in the semester. Dr. Anderson countered by pointing out that the first thing in the syllabus says, "I reserve the right to change anything." He calls it his "God clause."

Dr. Anderson thus says that he's allowed to give and take points as he pleases.

The good Doctor giveth, and the good Doctor taketh away. That's God, Ph. D., for you, folks.

I voiced my opinion, convincing him that the students do realize that he is the God of the lecture hall, and that's why sometimes we complain, because we know he has that power. That's why we go to class, our biweekly church, to show him our attendance rate, because we know he controls the fate of our grade. That's why we go to his office hours, our Holy Days of obligation, to show that we care about the class, and we love Anatomy, our academic religion. But in the end, the good Doctor giveth, and He can certainly taketh away.

However, my anger did not stem from the arbitrary nature of his points. I could care less. Just work hard and make him laugh, and you'll be fine, I say. My anger stems from the fact that right after I spoke, voicing my opinions, offering my prayers to the good Doctor Himself, he took mental note of me. That means he noticed me. That means that I couldn't go unnoticed. That means that I couldn't sleep.

I was frustrated, but this quickly subsided because I had hours before my next class to sleep. So I got back to my room after Anatomy with the intention of sleeping until my next class. As I set my alarm, I hear the loud rumble, similar to a leaf blower. I look outside and on the building adjacent to mine, they were fixing the roof with a random machine. A loud machine. I told Stephanie this already, but it sounded like the gargling of a lion with lung cancer. Or a dragon. Why do you need a dragon to fix the roof?!

Again, for the third time, now, I was vexed nearing my limit. So I closed my roommate's window, and texted him to inform him. That's when I found out my phone had been disconnected because I forgot to pay yesterday.

My anger was calm, even though it was the fourth transgression upon me in a very early day. It was easy to pay. I just needed to do it online, like I do every month, and in an hour or so, probably when I wake up, I'll have service again. So I go online. It normally goes smoothly, but this time the card number was rejected.

Five times this morning was I subject to ill-will. Five small, but still irksome, annoyances greeted me.

Any other day, I would have been angry beyond measurement. But I felt okay for some reason. I wasn't pissed, but just felt like sleep would make it okay. I didn't have time to be angry because I had to study for my Lab Practical. I calmed myself, and took a quick nap. Realizing that I lost sleep in the morning, during lecture, and before noon because of the loudness, realizing that my phone was dead, my (dad's) card number rejected, thus freezing my telephone capabilities for the rest of the day, realizing that I was having a horrid day, I was still okay.

Then I got a text message from Sean, and I realized that while my phone was dead, I could still receive but not send text messages.


And I was fucking livid.

Failed Scholar.

Perhaps it is the eternal struggle of desire that pits me this afternoon into an almost-tranquil trance. My story is not particularly more interesting than others’, nor does it offer the general depth of perception and literary convention most (good) stories do. My story does, however, follow in the tradition of Edgar Allen Poe. Poe believed that stories should be read in one sitting, and in order to emphasize this point, the dark and dreary artist wrote a majority of his works in one sitting. Thus, I have concluded that great works come in two varieties: the result of many a hard night’s labor, or the result of supernova explosions of inspiration.

The college student inside me has automatic tendencies toward the latter.

Though my story tries most earnestly to avoid convention, it inevitably must fall under some kind of category. Categories and taxonomies and labels in general seem to be a human intuition. Genres and titles make things less scary. We are inherently afraid of the unknown (i.e. the dark, or the Future), and placing things in categories helps us understand things better, or so we think. Ergo, it stands to reason that such taxonomic tendencies ease our anxieties about that which we do not understand. Thus, I must categorize my story.

Let’s call it self-referential for now.

I am a loud, loquacious and lucky college student at the University of the Pacific. I have been blessed (and I use the term semi-sardonically) with the opportunity to study Biology in a Pre-dental focus, having been enrolled in the very unique program Pacific offers.

My educational experience at Pacific has been a mixed and varied one. I have seen first-hand the dichotomy that dissects the various majors of the school. In general, the science majors stick to themselves and the rest stick to the rest. I see music majors clique themselves. I see SIS majors band together freshman year before dispersing. I am enrolled in the Honors Program, and even when we are forced into the same classroom, somehow we know how to segregate ourselves into our respective majors.

It is a sad sight indeed, when my educational experience is not dominated by my education itself, but rather by my observations regarding our very classist society. I guess “sad” isn’t the right term for it, really. I think it is more apt to call myself concerned.

But I digress.

I am a science major, which in and of itself yields inevitable connotations beyond my ability to fathom. As diligently as I try to analyze my situations from a third-person viewpoint, I cannot fully understand what others feel and see when they see a science major. The connotations are boundless in their complexity and yet infinitesimal in their implication.

My story, then, begins in an honors section of Pacific Seminar. I was asked to be involved in a documentary the school funded for the class, and I accepted merrily. I like looking at myself, you see, and there is no better way to watch yourself than in a cinematic format. Alas, my film debut was limited, and I began to accept my squashed dream as a movie star. I did, however, learn a few things about myself and the context in which I have placed myself here at Pacific.

I learned that my ability to write and discuss in Pacific Seminar did not help me in my science classes.

I learned that my knowledge of biology did not help me (much) in my humanities classes.

I learned that injustice occurs in almost every corner of the world, and despite my observations, one person rarely makes a difference.

I learned that despite my ability to write, to put into words my most visceral thoughts and ideas, I cannot fully explain the intuition that is human desire. I have let go of that goal. I cannot explain the intricacies of the abstract.

Love, joy, sadness, anxiety, depression, desire, Chuck Norris. These are the things that we cannot explain in words. We are at a limit in our communicative abilities to express our feelings.

But we try, Lord knows we try.

Perhaps it is our desire to reach out that makes our limits so difficult to bear.

Perhaps it is our desire to be understood that makes us so grotesquely insistent on expressing our feelings.

Perhaps it is our desire to love and be loved in return, as Toulouse claims, that drives us.

Perhaps it is not love, but habit, that breaks our hearts when we separate from each other, whether it is an emotional parting of two lovers or the physical parting of a friend or father.

Perhaps, as Fitzgerald eloquently states in The Great Gatsby, “we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

Perhaps it is the desire to put to peace our past mistakes that worries us.

Our fear of the unknown is evident in our fear of the future. We know the past and so we obsess over it. Our fear of the unknown keeps us confined to the familiar, and separates us from the foreign, the strange immigrants, the changing pop culture, the differing majors.

Perhaps it is not the eternal struggle of desire that pits me this afternoon into an almost-tranquil trance. Perhaps it is the unknown and the acceptance that I cannot control the unknown that puts me at peace.

For, despite my upbringing, despite my “science” major, despite my Roman Catholic guilt-ridden educational background, I find Buddha’s words most True:

“Suffering comes from desire. To end suffering, end desire.”

It is the automatic human intuition of desire that makes us suffer.

And it is the fear of the unknown that fuels such desire. We fear that which we do not know, so we desire to Know. So we suffer. And we segregate. And we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

And I have an anatomy test next week, so I can’t spend more time with this story or else I have to use more than one sitting.

Poe would be proud.

Restless

Everyone needs to see this.

I don't know exactly if others' education parallels my own experience, but growing up, my elementary school days were invariably replete with American history. We learned of our forefathers, and especially, we learned about the Revolutionary War that established these great united states.

Thus, though we may not always proclaim or show it, but the undercurrents of the "underdog" very much flow through our veins. For some, it flows more strongly, and for others, it is but a hint, a trace, a trickle of emotion that we may or may not squash before it hinders us.

We have always been a culture that celebrates the "story" behind a journey. We exalt and proclaim the bravery of those that fight "against the odds." Even when we are at the top of our game, already respected and revered, we somehow make ourselves the underdog, twist our point of view to fuel our underdoggedness and fight to beat the powers that be.

And we are usually the powers that be.

Take, for example, the Olympics. We are already considered athletically superior to a very large percentage of the world, yet our media coverage somehow finds a way to make it seem like we're the underdogs, fighting for the American freedom like our forefathers.

I'm sick of it.

We live in a great country, maybe the greatest in the world, maybe the greatest in the history of the world (except for Iceland, Norway, Canada, Australia, Ireland, Netherlands, Sweden, Japan, Luxembourg, Switzerland, France, Finland, Denmark and Austria), but quite honestly, there is a fine line between national pride and national arrogance.

Also, the whole "underdog" thing is so tiresome. I don't care if the story is inspirational, or if it's truly "American", in the end, it's just a story, a life that has to be lived like all other lives.

Enough with counterculture and underground and indie. It's time to realize that all of that is a part of the whole, a part of the big picture.

It's time to understand that nonconformity has become the new conformity.

Now leave me alone to eat my burger and freedom fries.

It's Business Time

This is an interesting setting, in more ways than one.

I feel a sense of digital deja vu, typing along in the wee hours of the night. Those who know me understand that "wee" in this context doesn't mean the early hours of the morning. This time, it means "little" or "very small." 2:30AM is not late, it is a small hour, a time ungrown into the day. It's still early for me. My deja vu comes not from my physical setting, the school of business is very new to me. It comes from the familiarity of late-night procrastination.

These hours have inadvertently become familiar to me, like a child who never grows up, trapped in an innocence that we cannot help but come to love.

But maybe we don't love children like we think we do. Maybe we simply have grown used to their presumed innocence, their assumed naivete. We are used to their smallness, their youth that we sometimes envy. And maybe it is not the Love of emotions, but rather the Love of habit that we feel for them.

For we are often broken-hearted more over habit than for love itself. It is the habit of care that becomes for us a part of our day, a part of our lives and a part of ourselves. And when this habit breaks, against our will, against our choice, we become desolate, like we lost a part of ourselves, a sandal in the ocean that the tides take and never return.

I hate these hours. I used to revel in them. I used to dominate the nightly/morningly rants and adventures that were a part of me like the air I breathe. They were the branches to my tree and my leaves were golden, shimmering just as the sun hinted its suffocating arrival.

But like a tree, my leaves have fallen, and I grew accustomed to my emptiness. I didn't mind losing my leaves, my glistening foliage. My branches were barren, but I still had myself and I was okay. But autumn's end inevitably brings winter, and now I am laden with snow. I embraced my fate with optimism at first, admiring the twinkle of each snowflake, the beauty of powder glistening around me.

Then the snowflakes built up. My boughs were burdened with blankets of blizzard-induced snow, and their weight pushed me down.

Now these hours are lived without adventure, without enjoyment. They are a burden on me. My choices have left me heavy with duty. Each new dark realization becomes an icicle below my branches, stabbing into the air like a falcon's talon, searching for weakness.

I don't want to be a tree anymore. That's lame.

We were all young once, wishing, yearning to be free. I was too. So I chose to reach as high as I could go. I never realized that no matter how high I want to go, that no matter how beautiful the journey and growth may be, I will always be firmly rooted in the Earth. Terra Madre holds me down.

I know why the caged bird sings.

Cuz it's fuckin' boring in a cage.

My Favorite Albums of All Time

It seems like toddlers are in a permanent state of inebriation. Their drunken actions are excused simply by the fact of their youth. They are difficult to control, to keep track of, because they are always going around, looking for new things or finding new things to explain and figure out. Like drunk people, sometimes they find something that catches their interest, and once something else grabs their attention, the previous adventure is immediately forgotten, lost as a distant memory. Forgetting about the past, they live in the present and cannot worry about the future or the consequences of their actions.

Like drunkards.
We drink to forget, to fill our lives with a placebo vibrance so that we dull our worries about our future. Except that in children, this is okay. It is understandable because they have not learned to Worry, to think about Consequences. Eventually they will learn that things come with Repercussions, that a wigged-out old nerd named Newton decreed every Action with an appropriate Reaction. Until then, however, their naivete is their golden ticket from punitive judgment, their permission slip for a field trip to be carefree, signed tacitly by the World as their legal guardian. For when we grow up, there is no one else but ourselves to hold us accountable. We ingrain in our souls the shackles of Responsibility and Morality, forgetting our carefree memories of a happier time, and there is no permission slip or waiver to remind us of our follies.

Or we drink. We escape. Alcohol becomes our telescope into the stars, where everything twinkles merrily, and the celestial bodies have nothing to do with our Earthly problems. While Newton proclaimed us grounded, Galileo let us look out into a world not our own, a vicarious and precarious glance into an Other.

But a child always looks through this lens, always sees with the utmost clarity the Nature of Things. And their questions are pure, questions asked with alacrity from drunk astronomers, to which oftentimes there are no tangible answers, only more questions.

But we're stuck in an unfair, unanswerable world, where Growing Up means blurring our vision, where Age equals Responsibility, where Maturity comes only with Morality and Accountability, where telescopes are put away and alcoholism is a disease, where we can't get the signature to go on our field trip, where Time goes forward, uncaring, unstopping, where children must Grow Up and Grown-Ups must Remain Up.

And scariest of all, where Chuck Norris awaits.




On a lighter note, I started the second part of this entry back in the early days of January, with the idea of recapping my favorite films of the year. Then I thought that movie reviews were too long, and that generally, few people watch the movies I watch. So I decided that I would recap all the albums of my life, ranking them accordingly.

Since this will obviously cause rifts and clamors of argument over my opinion, I offer this caveat: These are my personal favorite albums of all time, not the objective greatest. I will list my reasons accordingly, but please keep that in mind.

With that said, I shall begin, two at a time, starting with the honorable mentions and numbers 10 and 9

Honorable mentions:

15. Norah Jones - Come Away With Me (2002)
14. Death Cab for Cutie - Plans (2005)
13. Avril Lavigne - Let Go (2002)
12. Motion City Soundtrack - Commit This to Memory (2005)
11. The Killers - Hot Fuss (2005)

10. Sarina Paris - Sarina Paris (2001)
Notable Songs: Look at Us, Just About Enough, So I Wait
Sarina Paris makes my #10 mainly because her music is insanely catchy. I am a huge fan of pop-like sounds and melodies and though her lyrics are lacking, it is more than made up in her stylishly synthetic and pulsating voice. Her songs exude energy and the dance beats that constitute the majority of her music combined with techno-voice are the perfect union of pop/electronica. You would be hard-pressed to find a better example of beat-driven pop music.

9. Stars - Heart (2003), Set Yourself on Fire (2004), In Our Bedroom After the War (2007)
Notable Songs: Heart, Calendar Girl, The Night Starts Here, Personal, The Big Fight
I grouped these albums together because they all have similar sounds. You can almost look at them as one big album released by the very talented Canadian indie band Stars. Actually, After the War has a bit of a more melancholy sound and moves a bit slower than the first two, but it's still very similar in theme and tone. To me, these three particular albums represent a three-act story. Act 1, Heart, establishes the tone and the characters involved. It introduces you to the interesting sounds and wonderfully conversational lyrics of the band. Act 2, Set Yourself on Fire, continues the story and almost builds up to the pinnacle, Calendar Girl, and the third Act, After the War, is like the sad resolution. Calendar Girl and Heart are honestly among two of my favorite songs of all time. I have to thank Winnie for introducing me to Stars. They pretty much embody my current preference in music, sad lyrics, sad melodies and both male and female vocalists.

More to come later!

Semi-epiphany

For as long as puberty has graced me, I have been somewhat different. If you were able to read my note about the 16 Things About Me, then you should (but probably don't) remember that I like analyzing and diagramming sentences. I attribute such English prowess to my middle school English teacher, Mrs. Gloria Wayne.

However, even though my peers received this very same education, I am not aware if they have progressed to become good writers/essayists/what-have-you. Also, my brother, though very proficient in his writing ability, has never written as much as I do, at least as far as I know.

Thus, among my closer circles of friends, I have always felt like some sort of anomaly, a branch sticking awkwardly outward from a smooth hedge. Though the multitude of them are generally very good writers, able to voice their thoughts and skillfully manifest them into words, I viewed few of them as being formed and identifying with their writing ability. They always had their other capabilities, but rare was it among my friends whom I thought writing the core of their identity (with notable exceptions, i.e. Eric Woo). However, in the back of my mind, I viewed myself as someone who was not necessarily a writer, but had writing tendencies.

So, the majority of my self-perception revolved not on my writing ability, since I have read many works that reach well beyond my imaginative dexterity, but rather, revolved around my random whims to write shit. Yeah, I could spin a yarn or two, could give a few quick lines that I hoped was original, but I was never really a writer, per se (per say, ;))

So, over the last year or so, I decided that I would take on the title of "writer" and would hope to expand my ability to write extensively. I felt that it was the only way to channel my education, much like music is to some and sports to others. I conformed to what people told me I was good at doing.

Well, people. I think you're wrong. I used to think that I had writing tendencies, but as I was falling asleep in Macroeconomics today, I jotted a few things down.

When Professor Herrin woke me up (which is another story in and of itself), I looked down at my notes. I found a few lines of poetry written. I don't remember writing them at all, but there they were.

Then I knew it. My tendencies do not lean toward writing. Sure I can shit out an essay about The Little Mermaid or Howl's Moving Castle or something random for a long time, but it wasn't exactly a skill that came easily to me.

My tendencies are toward poetry. I am, at heart, a poet. Poetry is my hobby, is my sport. I write stories and describe events because sometimes it's just the best way to express certain things. But if I were to express myself fully and most earnestly, I would do it in poetry.



So that's who I am. I've finally come to terms with it. I hope people care, haha.

Here's what I wrote while falling asleep.

I am tired; I am beat,
Body broken, burdened heat,
Holding onto heart so hollow,
Falling fast my fate will follow.

I am sure that I am strong,
Yet still sure that I am wrong.
So which strength must I take heed
If I'm wrong and weak indeed?

Is there strength in self-awareness,
Analyzing my own fairness?
Or is there strength in being strong,
Trust my own self all along?

I have nothing to reply here,
No such answers for the sly ear.
Hear me ponder; hear me rant.
Find the answers that I can't.

Find the answers hidden in this.
If they're hidden, do they exist?

Maybe I'm Dreaming

I had another freaky dream during my 11:30AM-1PM nap. Unfortunately, this one is a little bit too strange for the internets. It involves two of my good friends and a VERY awkward situation.

Sorry for building that up.

So my nap today was strangely eventful. I skipped lunch and was prepared to go to my 1PM Macroeconomics class. I had the ever-reliable Anna deal the wake up call. Actually, I had her call me at noon so I could get lunch. However, as noon rolled nearer, it was evident that my state of slumber was much more powerful than my mind or stomach.

Therefore, I asked Anna to call me back a few minutes before 1PM, so that I could readily make it to my class. As 1PM neared, I got the call.

"Hey," her voice came through emphatically.
"Heyyyy," was my groggy reply.
"Are you going to class?" she asked me.
"Yeah, of course." It really wasn't obvious if I were going or not.
"OK, then. You should get going. You only have ten minutes until class," she advised.
"Yeah, yeah," I replied, feigning awareness. "I'm heading out now."
"OK, then. I'll talk to you later?"
"Sure." I checked the time. 12:50PM. I went back to sleep.

An eternity later, I woke up to check the time.

12:55PM.

That's it, I thought to myself, I'm DEFINITELY ditching Macroeconomics today. I went back to sleep.

An eternity later, I woke up to check the time.

12:58PM.

Fuck. Are you fucking KIDDING me!?

So yeah, I went to class reluctantly with a newly opened can of Monster.


24 fl. oz. of energy, and I still regretted going to class. Bullshit. BULLSHIT!

And now I can't even go back to sleep because I'm so freakin' spiked on this liquid crack.

At least it's Lo-Carb.

Blog?

My avid fans, my loyal readers and/or my sympathetic friends have yet to see a normal blog entry on my site. "Normal" in this sense means that my blog must consist of my daily activities, usually with some sort of revelation or epiphany.

Or sometimes, a normal blog entry simply means an update on my supposedly eventful life. But as with all bloggers typing away in the lonely hours of the night, I am torn between how much I want to reveal and how much I actually reveal.

Right now Joe, my roommate for the summer down here in Riverside is playing some Korean pop music. It sounds like a parody of Korean music, sung by other Koreans. Them Koreans have a strange way in the form of entertainment, they do. Regardless, Joe has been more or less a fun roommate. However, like the 6 (now 5) other people with whom I have opted to reside these candid 9 weeks, he has a problem with keeping a clean environment.

Now, I am not saying I myself am Prince OxiClean, which is a sodium percarbonate (C₂H₆Na₄O₁₂) detergent, according to Wikipedia, but there has to be some hint of cleanliness in these people. I have called them my good friends for the past school year, but they have little regard on the single resident who actually lives in the oft A/C-less apartment. I can't, by nature of distance, leave on weekends, unless I stay at a friends'.

I feel like a mother looking after five extremely intelligent children. They study hard enough, but leave their napkins and whatnot all over the place. They rarely take responsibility for their messes unless called upon and half of them complain about the other half. "So and so never does this" and "Such and such always leaves this hanging around."

It's mildly frustrating, to say the least, but hey, your friends are your loved ones. Do I complain about the mess? Yes, but only to people who don't live in the apartment. For now, I am content with living each weekend and cleaning the weekly mess that these children leave behind.

For those of you who have kept up, there were seven people who lived in this apartment until this morning. Christine's parents drove from Arizona and promptly took her back this morning, before the last three weeks of our purported nine-week hell was to begin. She and Lily were the first to greet me here, cheerfully saying to me the first night, "This is just like The Real World!"

I guess, like MTV's disgusting show, it was much more real than she imagined...

Wow, I'm dramatic. I guess it's weird since I spent the last two days with only Christine. We walked to the Village for our dinners and watched a few movies together. We talked a lot, too, and she is just a cool person.

But I guess I'll see her back at Pacific in three weeks so it's not that bad. =)

To update further, organic chemistry is far from riveting as a subject. In fact, I would go so far as to call it mundane and difficult, of all things. I mean, some classes are boring because there is no way on God's green earth they could be interesting. But organic chemistry is boring in a way that there's a hint of interesting stuff to come, but it never really does come. Instead, we are bombarded with pointless laboratory experiments and write-ups and weekly midterms.

I guess that's the nature of the beast. I miss Northern California. I never should have left, haha.

School starts soon. =D

For those of you who haven't seen this yet, it is required viewing. Lily Park: International Pop Star


I actually started this particular entry before posting my last one. I had the first paragraph written, but really had no idea how to finish. As usual, I found words to fill in the blank space.

I talk a lot, but I don't say much, do I?

Per usual, leave a comment here. If not, no hard feelings. >=/

Because because because

The many differences that set each of us apart inevitably and inexorably force us back into the realms of conformity. We are all different, which makes us all the same. Thus, the many facets of blogging all force us into one, common hobby. We have all our own pages, our own words, yet we all must be thrust into the same capacity as a means of expression.

Well, I guess these capacities and media can vary, but in general, we as a modern society rely on cinema, music, blogging/writing, reading, gardening, running/exercising, playing video games, watching TV, sleeping, eating and any number forms of excess, superfluous action in order to assert what we hope and think is our individuality and what we hope gives meaning to our lives.

Yet we carry on, often without the thought of life in the absence of meaning. Does life have to have a purpose? Is there necessarily a crux or cruces that make our lives worthwhile?


I think not. Our lives should be worthwhile already without any added flavor.

But I guess it does help to have something for which we focus and into which we delve our noblest efforts and thoughts. The meditative among us wish to extend an invitation. Enjoy.



Let the Rivers and Rivulets, Pt. 1
A Short Story About One Man's Place in the World (or Lack Thereof)

The rocks that lined the Colorado River had seen their fair share of rough times. Millions of years had colored, shaped and thus defined them to their identities and their place along the banks of the often turbulent, always uncaring waters. There seemed to be an unnecessary anger to the motion of the Colorado's waves, and indeed to many waters familiar or unchartered. Nature minds her own, with little regard for the frivolities that are human desire.

Gary was minding his own as well, as he watched the water fall smoothly and succinctly into Feldman's Creek that flowed violently into Feldman's Lake. A lake, in Gary's mind, was a beautiful thing. So too, was the concept of an angry river. Feldman's Creek was no Colorado, but nor was it the gentle, passive and submissive rivulet that so often appeared along the sidewalks after a hard rain, disappearing with an hour of sunlight as the water rode quietly below the asphalt into their temporary homes, the sewers. Those lonely tunnels were foster homes to the orphaned rainwater, collected into a network of tubes and channels, finally placing them in a new home, once again without regard for their own desires. Too much is out of our control, but somehow, there is an order to things.

Feldman's Creek was simply a place to watch the water release its frustration. Feldman's water had no control over its fate. The water was comfortable somewhere, undisturbed and certainly not complaining, until it was forced to fall, as if nature deigned to drop all things, push all things off a cliff to her own liking. The water had no choice to go where it had to, but nor did it give up easily. No, Feldman's water was determined to fight until it was forced into submission by the clutching claws of the lake. The lake, it seemed, was a likely sedative to tame the wild nature of Feldman, but the creek had no such calm, no such submission. The creek made manifest all the contained anger, the bound rage the waters must have felt once subjugated to the inevitability of fate. And of course, this anger is again quelled by fate's forceful hand.

But Gary loved watching the creek scream and thrash. It calmed him to watch the waters fight against the inevitable. In the end, they must lose, as all things must, but their fight, their unending battle to escape their destiny brought hope in Gary's eyes. The taciturn life he led was made righteous because there would always be someone or something else fighting when he could not. Gary could settle for that. In a sense, he had to settle for that. The waters that settled in the lake had to settle, but maybe they felt better knowing that others still fought against nature and her uncaring plans.

Gary was the lake. He had no fight in him, and only remembered the fights that once were, the battles that raged and shaped him into his calm, uneventful life as it was now. He had drive once, Gary did, and it was a drive that thrashed every bit as much, if not more than these waters in front of him now did. Gary was old and had given up. His fights were battles lost and won, tiresome in their majesty and grandiosity. He was 18.

Ships of Relation

Beginning time: 3:50AM

I don't think I fully understand where to begin. I probably will blather on incessantly, losing all .5 of my readers. I guess I need to start out with an introduction, followed by my thesis. After that, I will pursue some body paragraphs and conclude in a quasi-corny fashion. I'll probably try to write a poem or sonnet of some sort. I don't know how long it'll take, and I'll probably get distracted along the way. But I guess this is where I begin.

Relationships are difficult, fickle things. They have a dual nature: They can bring you up to the highest of levels, or take you down as the weakest of beings. Having a lover will destroy you or will make you the best person that you have ever been in your life. The best relationships are the ones that last forever. Till death do they part. Yet, for lovers anew and oftentimes lovers old, many aspects of a relationship are overlooked. A relationship is monumentally difficult to maintain, and sometimes the ease of getting in a relationship overshadows the difficulty of keeping it.

But isn't it worth it? Doesn't having someone you can hold, someone upon which you can dote, some person you can call your own worth all the flak that accompanies the struggle? Aren't they wonderful the memories you can share, the times at which you can laugh?

Surely, over time you will forget a few memories here and there. You can't always recall the specific details, and even if you could, you can never really recapture the same feelings of the same moment. You will never have the same experience twice, and ultimately, you don't want to. Each moment you share with your significant other is unique, regardless of the emotion attached to it. Your angry moments and your blissful moments together create an amalgamation of your experience. The relationship happens for a reason, always. No matter how bitter the end is, or how eternal the feeling is, the relationship existed for the sole purpose of happiness. At one point, there was happiness.

This spark is the lifeblood that fuels the world. It is premature to love, a weaker form if a form at all. This spark of happiness is the definition of hope. Hope is the possibility of happiness. Where there is a memory of happiness, there is hope for humanity. We don't even need love. We just need each other.

So when heartbreak strikes, know that there is always hope.

I was searching around the vast majestic realms of the Internet for a prayer catered to the broken hearted. Alas, I came upon none, so I decided to write one myself. If God exists, then He wants solace for all walks of life, doesn't He? Heartbreak is a part of life and an unhappy part at that. I guess this is more of a reason for us to remember that God exists in all aspects of life, especially the difficult parts. He's always there for us to find him.



A Prayer for Heartbreak

Lord, I am helpless.
Vulnerable and shaken.
My faith slumbers and needs you
Once again to waken.

Lord, I am troubled.
Your loving arms have told me
To accept my flaws and my pain
To keep them since they mold me.

Lord, the demons of my nature
Have bid me into pain.
I'm suffering so silently.
I've nothing else to gain.

Lord, my sadness swells within me.
My tears have grooved my cheeks.
Though I sit tacitly and sadly,
My agony still speaks.

Lord, I am dying.
I am crying, not denying.
I am fighting for a happy end
I am fighting, I am vying.












Amen.

I gotta start letting it go.

End time: 5:47AM

Edit.
Thanks, ft =)