Monthly Archives: April 2004

Two Quotes, No Comment

“Whoever is not against us is for us.” Mark 9.40.

“Whoever is not with me is against me…” Matthew 12.30

I’m providing none of my own commentary on this, as of yet.

NOTE: Wording is from The New Oxford Annotated Bible.

Worst Thing About Me

New social experiment:

Tell me what’s the 1 worst thing about me. It could be anything… physical traits, emotional traits, something I do, something I don’t do… I don’t care if you don’t know me that well, just pick the 1 worst thing that you’ve noticed.

New Paint

To explain my feelings today, let me present a (fictional) story:

I have a car. It’s not the most beautiful, but it works for me. Over Easter Vacation, I had the car repainted and the interiors cleaned. Damn, that car looked good. It looked just like new!

So, later on, I drove to the supermarket to pick up some random items. When I came back, there was a shopping cart next to my car. It had scratched the paint. The new paint. It had just looked like new, and now, there’s a scratch. In fact, if I look at any other part of the car, it still looks new. However, my attention keeps coming back to the scratch.

Alright, end of story. What does it mean? The car is kind of like my soul. I felt all refreshed after Easter Vacation. I felt new and ready for the world again. If you know me a little bit, you know I can be rather cynical. However, I felt so much less jaded after the Easter Vacation. Now, I come back — just one day in school! — and I’m starting to feel a little jaded again. The world just put a scratch in the new paint on my soul. I still feel quite refreshed, but I know there’s a scratch now. Before the scratch, maybe there was the illusion that it would look new forever. But afterwards, I know there’ll be more scratches.

When’s summer vacation?

Latest Scary Dream

I didn’t post anything most of last week because I was on vacation. I forgot to mention that earlier, but you’d know if you’d been to my website. On to the topic at hand…

Let me preface this by saying that I never have nightmares. I just don’t. The whole falling thing, chased by stuff… yeah, haven’t had those kinds of dreams in years. This recent dream is as close to “scary” as it gets…

The dream wasn’t really specific. All I remember was that I was in a traffic jam. I had the general impression that: It was summer, gas prices had skyrocketed… There was a gasoline shortage and cars were lined up at the gas stations.

It was weird because I don’t normally have dreams that could translate into reality. You know what made it even more weird, and more real? I was thinking about what to write in my weblog while dreaming. Geeze.

A Little Something From Aug 6

I’m reading the text from the Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US brief.

Something caught my eye: “The millennium plotting in Canada in 1999 may have been part of Bin Ladin’s first serious attempt to implement a terrorist strike in the US.” I guess the US government recognizes Canada as the 51st state. Just kidding.

No, this actually caught my eye: “[…] Bin Ladin wanted to hijack a US aircraft to gain the release of “Blind Shaykh” ‘Umar ‘Abd al-Rahman and other US-held extremists.” How could the president have prevented September 11th with that information? Does that even remotely sound like he’s going to use the hijacked aircraft to crash into a building?

[more comments tomorrow]

A Revolving Door

I’m concerned by a little revolving door that’s ruining the lives of everyday Americans. It’s called the “Video Game-Movie Industry revolving door.” The jobs are similar, so people can just assume that they can go back and forth between the two industries. However, they just don’t think about the consequences.

Because of what they’re doing, millions of Americans are subjected to a double-dose of bad television commercials. Movie commercials are the most clichéd, bland, unoriginal ones out there. There is no difference between the style of two different movie commercials. Hell, nine times out of ten, they hire the same guy to do all the narration.

You’d think since video games are newer, more innovative, and less linear, they could break this mold of horrible commercial-making. However, they don’t. They are practically exactly the same. There are only two differences that you find in video game commercials: the clips are CG, and the end shows company logos instead of “in theaters now”. How come they can’t do any better? I’ll tell you why: Because of the revolving door!

My fellow Americans, please do not condone this practice and this injustice against us.

Lesser of Two Evils

Every election, people complain about the two-party system. “Oh, I hate having to choose between the lesser of two evils.” Yet is the third party choice really the perfect candidate? Okay, maybe you agree with him more, but you can’t cry that you’re choosing between the lesser of two evils.

Why? There is no perfect candidate. Do you agree with your best friend on every single issue? Then, how are you going to agree with an astronomically more distant presidential candidate. There will never be a candidate whose decisions you can be 100% satisfied with. Never. Not even if you vote for yourself. It’s true.

Candidates are human, and, therefore, imperfect.

You just got to pick one you like the best.

All my life, I hunted Now

All my life, I hunted Now

But knew not how to catch it

With a camera, I tried to capture Now

All I got was a photo

A still, unmoving picture

Incomplete

A fragment of what was seen

All my life, I hunted Now

But knew not how to catch it

With a pen, I tried to capture Now

All I got was a story

A linear record

Telling what I felt but

Incomplete

Missing how I felt

Missing feelings

That a word can’t catch

All my life, I hunted Now

But knew not how to catch it

With my mind, I tried to capture Now

All I got was a memory

Each time I remembered

Something slightly changed

And the memory fades with

Time

Incomplete

And sometimes the mind

Lies

All my life, I hunted Now

But knew not how to catch it

I used a new approach

Combining many methods

Each one contained a fragment

Perhaps together

They’d be a whole

But no matter what

I never got it all

A jigsaw puzzle

Incomplete

With most its pieces missing

All my life, I hunted Now

But knew not how to catch it

I thought

If I can catch a dance on tape

Why can’t I catch Now?

But wait

A dance caught on tape

Is just a recording

Incomplete

It misses all the

Fun

How can I catch a dance

Without dancing?

And song on tape

Incomplete

Too!

How can I catch a song

Without singing?

All my life, I hunted Now

But knew not how to catch it

I can’t catch Now

It’s impossible

I was thinking of it wrong

Fresh air in a bottle

Becomes bottled air

Incomplete

Why put it in a bottle

When you can just

Breathe it in?

So, why put Now in a bottle?

Don’t catch Now

Be

Now

All my life, I hunted Now

Now, I Am Now

William Hung

I’d say I don’t understand what’s the big fuss was over William Hung, but I’ve given it some thought, and I do understand. However, that doesn’t mean I approve.

There were several other people who sang badly, why weren’t they offered deals? One factor: He isn’t a bitch. We Americans don’t typically like to reward bitchiness, so many of those people who said, “You’ll be sorry you didn’t pick me,” aren’t going to get a deal. Another example: Is there anyone who wanted Omarosa to win “The Apprentice”?

The second factor I believe is even more important: Not only does he sing funny, but he looks funny. It’s true. And, he talks funny.

That about sums it up. It’s a boost for self-esteem. You can say, “Okay, maybe I sing almost as bad, but at least I don’t look, talk, and act that funny.”

Face it, we’re laughing at him. Wait, what about his positive attitude? Yeah, that “positive attitude” is just a rationalization for laughing at him. I’m not cruel; I’m praising his “positive attitude” and how he’s trying to achieve the “American Dream.”

The real American Dream is just to find people worse off than you so you can laugh at them.

However, if you’ll pardon my mixed metaphor, I guess it’s William Hung who gets the last laugh… all the way to the bank.

Yet, that’s still just another rationalization: He’s getting money, or compensation for it, so it’s okay to laugh at him.

I’d criticize this, but I know America can go lower… much lower.