Glee and Music

Watching Glee has sort of got me thinking about the sort of music I was into in high school and comparing it to what I listen to now.  If Glee was showing during my high school years I bet I wouldn’t know half the songs that they used in that show but I’m fairly confident I know most of them now.  So it got me thinking about the sort of stuff high school kids typically listen to which is generally hip-hop which I was pretty into at the time.  Not that it’s a bad thing, but I didn’t really have as broad of a musical appreciation as I do now, which is something that I’ve come to look back with a bit of sadness.  Out of most of the students that go to my school, I’d say I still would have had a wider knowledge of various different types of music since I still listened to stuff like A Tribe Called Quest, Thursday, Josh Groban, Korn, Sarah McLachlan to name a few musicians that would extenuate what I would listen to.  But I’ve been feeling nostalgic for a time of when I wasn’t even born into yet, and there are so many great songs from pre 70s that I didn’t even know about in high school.  One of my favorite songs now, which was actually used in Glee was “Smile” by Charlie Chaplin, though my favorite rendition of that song would be by Nat King Cole.  I look back and I wished that I knew this song for piano class so I could just play it for everyone there when it was time for our performances.  It’s sort of the little things about high school that I miss the most, little things that I didn’t get to do whether I was too busy, ignorant or just didn’t care for when I probably should have given them a chance.  My last year I did academic decathlon and it was one of my most rewarding experiences in high school.  I wished there was something like Glee club, not so much performing for the whole school aspect, but an outlet for people who just wanted to sing and dance.  It was have been fun, but high school was a pretty great time for me anyway despite my apparently lack of involvement.

Anyway, as I brought of Glee before, I wanted to talk about the show briefly since I’ve become a fan over the course of the day.  I spent the better part of it just watching all of the episodes that are available.  Glee could use some work in some areas, but I do love the songs they use and how it’s mixed together and some of the character dynamics.  As usual, I usually find the characters that are somewhat minor to be the characters I like the most, which would be Curt, Arty, Emma and Quinn.  Though Curt and Quinn do have a respectable amount of screen time due to their entertainment value or impact on the storyboard, those characters are the ones I like the most.  Curt is just entertaining to watch with his jokes and occasionally crazy outfits.  Emma is just adorable and I must have a thing for girls with very prominent eyes because I just can’t get enough of them, ie: Zooey Deschanel.  Side note, I’m also very excited for the episode of Bones with Zooey Deschanel in it, I don’t even keep up with the show, but I must watch how well the sisters work together.  Anyway, back to Glee… Oh yes, to the characters that I like most, lastly Arty is just cool.  Sure he looks like a nerd but he plays wicked guitar and he always has the smooth hip-hop guy’s lines for every performance which is just awesome.  And Quinn which would likely be one of the less liked characters but I sort of like her for her apparently bitchiness and wholesomeness swirled together that makes up her character.

It’s sort of the little reasons that make those characters so appealing to me.  For some reason I don’t care for the main characters too much, the teacher Will is fine and is made as a likeable character and Jane Lynch’s character Sue is entertaining for her oddities and remarks.  Though I have to say I’m pretty sure I’ve seen her act as that character before which gives me the impression that she could actually be similar to that character she plays, not so much with the content she may say but the mannerisms.  Anyway, those characters I’m fine with, it’s just that I find Rachel and Finn to be sort of annoying which is could be the intention since Rachel is pretty much psychotic and is known to be annoying but Finn just seems too naive and stupid to be at one point the most popular kid in school.  I’m not certain how high school dynamics are in schools unlike my own, but it just seems weird to me.  I’m mostly ranting now since I don’t really know where I’m going with all of this, perhaps it’s just a way of getting out the massive amounts of Glee I just took in earlier and needing an outlet to place an opinion of this show.  Oh yeah, I almost forgot about Will’s wife, which is a horrible, horrible person.  I don’t know what sort of place this is, but it seems that a lot of characters turn out to be pretty terribly amoral people for some reason.  Okay it may just be her and Sue at many times, but she is so unlikable it is infuriating at times.  Though I guess a show wouldn’t be too entertaining without some antagonists and drama.  I’m fortunate my high school experience was pretty calm in comparison to whatever craziness this school goes through.  Though my high school career was a pretty busy one having a few extra curricular despite my actual classes going to hell.  I’m pretty saddened by the fact that I may have missed out in a few things I would have been pretty into.

Memories

I’ve been thinking about the past a bit lately ever since Thanksgiving, which is usually a time of happiness and community but I decided against spending too much time with my high school friends this year.  I’m not entirely sure why I decided that and I only spent one day with a few of my friends with basketball throughout the Thanksgiving break.  Despite my quiet Thanksgiving, memories of my departed friend have been needling at me a bit more than usual.  I’ve been thinking about the time before and after the time of his death and it’s been getting fuzzier and fuzzier as time passes and I’m starting to feel a little guilty because of it, like it should be a period of time that I should always have crisp in my mind.  I remember the day on which it happened perfectly clear, but what happened after started getting jumbled together so I don’t exactly know a specific timeline in which things occurred.  I remember it was a strange time since people seemed nicer and more helpful, at least for a little while.  I would always think about that time whenever it got quiet.  If I wasn’t trying to concentrate on something it would always revert to that time and what could of been sort of scenerios.  Any effort I made after that time would be a quiet dedication to him like joining academic decathlon and basically being the captain of our team.  I always watched what I said too, I couldn’t even think about death since I would be reminded of him and I couldn’t say anything about it since it might remind people of what happened even though I’m sure they weren’t that sensitive and maybe weren’t thinking about it as much as I was.  I’m not even why this has been bothering me this much for so long, I wasn’t like his best friend or anything like that, we were getting closer but it’s not like I talked to him all the time, hell I don’t do that with anybody now.  I guess I never got passed the feeling of guilt and regret I felt when he died, like I should have stopped it somehow since I was finally aware of how bad his depression got a day before he killed himself.  I felt tired or whatever and it didn’t even occur to me that he was going to do something drastic when he left our chemistry class but when I heard we were going on lockdown in the next period I knew with absolute certainty that he was the reason behind it.

I’m guessing that’s a possible source for all my feelings behind what happened, or rather what didn’t happen, that day.  If I was a little more aware I might have been able to delay it.  Of course all the school psychologists and experts say that it wasn’t anything we could have done, but it still stings a bit knowing that there was a possibility to affect the outcome if we were better friends and took the time to notice and address each other’s pains.  It’s a bit hypocritical of me to think of all this while I haven’t really connected or even made an effort to speak to any of my high school friends anymore.  Actually, I’ve made myself basically disappear from their view and possibly forgotten and I typically refer to my high school friends as that instead of just friends as if we weren’t really friends anymore now that we’re all in college.  I guess I’ve always held an unfair grudge against most of my high school friends because I had a pretty clear history of depression and acting out those feelings through self-destructive means.  I guess I felt that if they were really friends to me they’d step in a little and make me feel like I had people behind me to help me out whenever I was in trouble, but the only real moment I felt that was from my senior year English teacher who picked up in my frantic and jumbled up speech for an end of the year assignment before graduation.  I guess it was pretty clear that I was troubled from it since I totally changed my position of becoming unique to conforming because I didn’t have the belief behind it anymore.  The assignment was basically to talk about what we believed in, which could be anything from ghosts to something more personal.  I took a personal approach and tried to talk about being unique and being your own person, but in the middle of the speech it felt too hypocritical to say anymore because I felt that being your own person and isolating yourself by becoming unique would lead to unhappiness I changed my position into conforming because it’ll just make you happier.  I may have also said some overly personal things during the transition of my position change also that would suggest some partaking in self-inflicting behavior as well.

It was an odd time after that, my teacher asked me to go with her to Food 4 Less in order to pick up a cake for one of the clubs she led, and we got to talking.  On our way back we discussed whether or not to talk to my counselor about this and we did, but she was legally obligated to tell my parents about what I’ve been going through and awkwardness would later ensue when they came to our conference.  I feel like it didn’t really happen now though, I feel just as I did before, confused, lost and alone.  I guess it’s partially my fault for not making the effort anymore, I tried last year to communicate more to people.  I even went to the school psychologist for a while and I don’t think I gave it enough time for it to actually help me though.  I just wanted a quick fix and at the time it was cutting for me.  I wasn’t desperate or crazy enough to do drugs or any of that, but cutting was sort of my crutch that I held onto for a long time.  I haven’t done it in over half a year, but the thought of doing it again has been pestering me more and more as I feel a bit more isolated.

It’s kind of ironic that I’m typing this stuff because whenever I read those status updates on Facebook about how their lives suck and all that “FML” crap it just angers me so much even though I’m going through a similar “FML” sort of thing too.  What do we all really have to complain about?  I have a pretty good family, I know a lot of people at least, I mean I don’t talk to them much anymore but if I were to talk to them they’d probably respond.  There’s probably a simple answer for my problems but I’m involved with the complaining that I haven’t been able to see straight.  If I feel lonely I should probably go out and talk to somebody right?  If I’m feeling depressed maybe I should do something exciting and different from my usual routine that would make me more appreciative.  Maybe I should just stop thinking about things that make me sad.  It’s weird feeling aware enough of what my problems are and where it might lead to and having enough clarity to see what may fix those problems but lacking the will and motivation to actually do anything about it.  Maybe I’m just comfortable with feeling unmotivated and depressed because there’s nothing else to really disappoint me anymore if I continued to feel this way.  If there was anything that hurt or angered me more, it was the feeling of disappointment.

Thanksgiving

I had a pretty good and tiring Thanksgiving this year, deciding to cook our dinner myself with some assistance from my brother for just my family as opposed to my usual tradition for my friends.  The dinner turned out pretty good with the turkey, gravy, red skinned mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese, and some candied yams.  We also had a store bought key lime pie since I don’t really know how to make one and wouldn’t want to attempted to make that graham cracker crust that is vital for a good pie.  I took a little longer cooking dinner than I had previously intended, but it turned out fine.  We ate and relaxed a bit, also contemplating going to any Black Friday sales that may be going on.  One in particular that my brother was interested in was the Old Navy sale where they were giving away Lego Rock Band if twenty dollars or more were spent on whatever clothes they had there.  We thought it would be relatively empty seeing how it’s Old Navy and it’s Lego Rock Band, but free is free and the places were packed and there was an actual line hours before opening.  Twitter was actually useful and gave us enough information to decide against going out and camping out something we didn’t really need.

Black Friday has been pretty crazy in earlier years and while I hear this year wasn’t too bad there was some mayhem involved.  I’ve never understood why people would abandon Thanksgiving for a couple of sales, willingness to disregard time with the family and home cooking for a cheaper hard drive or camera.  It kind of depresses me a little bit if I think about it too much and although I’m not entirely close with my family, it’s still nice to spend time together during the holidays.  But I guess Thanksgiving isn’t that big of a deal anymore, it’s basically an excuse to overeat.  Though I’d like to think it’s a time to reflect and be thankful for the little things in our life that make it more bearable and even enjoyable to live in.  But hey, that’s just me.

Missing Ingredient

I’m currently in a state of drowsiness since I’m unable to get to sleep, so pardon any nonsense that I may post.  Thanksgiving is upon us and it is my favorite of the holidays since the basic tradition of every Thanksgiving is overeating which is something I’m more than happy to oblige by.  Every Thanksgiving since Freshman year of high school except for one year, I’ve held a Thanksgiving dinner for my friends to get together and catch up or just hang out at my house and eat whatever they brought and the turkey I cooked.  It usually turns out great and although I get tremendously tired afterward and then having to clean up after everyone, it seemed worth it since it was only once a year that I had to do it.  Though I’ve noticed something about the experiences I’ve had with each passing year.  I’ve always thought of this dinner as something Kevin and I came up with together.  And ever since his passing in April of our Junior year of high school, the dinners that follow were never the same for me even though they had better conditions than the first we ever had.

I remember our first Thanksgiving dinner and it was raining that day, it was terribly organized and I never cooked a turkey ever prior.  Although the turkey didn’t turn out awful, it was horribly saturated on the bottom as it was sitting in the liquid stock that I put in and I didn’t have a rack or anything so it was just be kinda soggy by the time the turkey was done.  We didn’t do much but talked, eat, and played a little Taboo with the boys vs the girls.  I remember one particular clue that boggled me at the time which was when one of the girls gave “girls wear this at school” as a clue and another answered correctly with “pajamas.”  Those were the moments I missed that seemed to be  lacking from the future dinners we had.  It seemed to me that it would be too focused on the little gadgets I would have instead of actual catching up, so people would be playing Rock Band or something like that.  Don’t get me wrong though, I thoroughly enjoyed each dinner, but after a while it left me a little depressed and I’ve been a little unsure as to why that is.  I would have a great time during the Thanksgiving holiday, but when the spirit of the holiday has passed, it felt like it never actually happened, like it was a dream I had or something.  I don’t know if I want to feel that way anymore especially now since I don’t get to see these people on a day-to-day basis.

Since nobody has actually asked me about redoing the dinner, I’m taking the position of not doing it anymore since it’s not the same as it was before.  To me it was never quite as great as the first and only one of these dinners that I shared with Kevin since it was very much our tradition that we were making.  Now that he’s gone it’s like an essential piece is missing, I vaguely even remember the dinners after the first and I’m not even sure how many I’ve done already.  Maybe I shouldn’t really compare the dinners with each other and just be thankful for the gathering of friends and company during the holiday season, but to me it’s like missing the key ingredient to a recipe, if I don’t have it then I won’t bother making it.

Beauty

Sometimes I get too wrapped in my own views of how life sucks, and for the most part it is rather uneventful and frivolous.  But there are just moments where you watch or hear something that just lightens your mood so much that you can’t help but feel that there’s something more  to appreciate.  There are two things in particular that really changed my mood when first experiencing it.  The first is a television show called Castle and the other is a song from the MMORPG Final Fantasy XI.

Wait a minute…  You might be asking how two seemingly unimportant things could change my outlook on life so greatly?  It’s because they are so seemingly unimportant that makes it so much greater.  First of all Castle is a great show not only because the dialog is just fun to listen to, the chemistry between the actors is spectacular.  All the characters seem plausible and yet at the same time, not.  Everything is so light and carefree except for small moments within the show where they have an emotional tug.  Along with the chemistry between the two main characters there is also one character that has minimal camera time, but I feel makes the show so much more worth watching.  The character is Castle’s daughter Alexis played by Molly Quinn.  She is possibly the most wholesome young lady I’ve ever witnessed in my entire life and that is very refreshing especially in a world where morals seem to be lost.  People can be as rude as they want and just careless because of the anonymity of the Internet.  They wouldn’t say anything in person, but they express all sorts of intolerance online that is sickening to read at times.  It almost seems like our social interacting has decreased and our hate increasing, albeit in a quiet way.  And there is Alexis, among all the ugliness that envelopes the world, she is able to be wholesome.  Cry to her father for not telling him about the time she jumped the turnstile on the way to the subway late one night and giving herself a proper punishment for it.  Playing laser tag with her father.  And just being plain adorable to watch.  It’s a nice change from the usual Gossip Girl type of teenager who make drama out of everything that is so disturbing in many ways.

Secondly the song from the MMORPG that I’m playing, Final Fantasy XI.  There’s a particular version of this song that really impacts me.  The song is called The Forgotten City – Tavnazian Safehold by The Star Onion group, which comprises of many of the composers that make the Final Fantasy series’ music.  It’s simple yet the beauty behind it is staggering, it may invoke tears to even those who are unfamiliar with what this song is and where it came from.  There’s a quiet sadness to the song that it invokes thought, at least to me.  Music is often interpreted in many ways, especially those of the instrumental variety.  The song is the theme for a city who is left in ruin after a war and all the inhabitants in the safehold have enough to live and make a small town, but primarily concerned with survival.  There’s many places that are like that today, there are wars enveloping everywhere even though they might not be as known.  It’s a struggle to live day by day, but each day seems more like a gift when you have to fight for it.  I live in complacency and although I have been thankful for the fortunes I was born with, I sometimes fail to appreciate it due to what little worries I might have to face such as preparing for a test or going to school for long periods of time.  Sometimes we just need to escape for a little while and just appreciate all the small beauties that surround us.

Self-Interest

I’ve been reading this book called Free to Choose by Milton Friedman for English class and it’s basically an economics book. However, there are some ideas in there that could relate to other subjects, thus that’s why it would be covered in our English ciriculum.  One of the ideas I stumbled upon while I was skimming through the book for an assignment was the concept of self-interest.  Now we generally see self-interest as selfishness and the things we do to satisfy our own needs.  But Friedman basically stated that self-interest is the hallmark of a great economy.  He makes the example of people collaborating together to make something, but the individuals manufacturing their parts have no real interest in the end result, only the benefits that come from initially making it.  That is, that people are motivated to work for a reward and in turn help others because they are supplying a service or good.  With this system working throughout, people would work and give a service or set of goods to others while recieving other services and making it so that there is a clockwork effect for the economy.  He is in favor or no government interference of the economy and that people ultimately manage things on their own fairly well.

That sort of gave me the impression that if everyone had a self-interest, then there wouldn’t be any real problems.  I guess the point I’m making is that if I were to be more selfish, I’d be much happier and connect more.  Self-interest initiates deals, if it weren’t for someone wanting something then they wouldn’t have any need to talk to others and negotiate a trade.  But if someone remains quiet all the time, they won’t be able to recieve what they want and they would be ignored by the rest of the world.  I seem to have seen this happen to me over the years with my high school friends.  I generally assume that they’re busy with something so I never bother them for anything, even if I was amazingly bored or lonely at the time.  Since they don’t have anything visible that would be acknowledging me, then they wouldn’t know that I was in need of anything.  Thus they are also missing out on whatever I have to offer and nothing happens between us.

Recently I talked to a high school friend of mine that I haven’t really spoken to in a while.  It was sort of a whim thing, but now we’re communicating much more and even talking face to face on a pretty frequent basis.  It spawned from a self-interest of mine that I was sort of interested in talking to someone familiar again.  Thus, self-interest is probably something to be treasured rather than sneered upon, because it ultimately makes things happen.

So Bad, It’s Awesome

I watched a little movie called The Room the other day and boy, it was so badly produced that it actually takes my breath away.  To actually see something go so horribly awry is quite a sight to see and I am fortunate to be blessed with such an occasion.  The basic premise of the movie is about this unfaithful woman of unsurpassed “beauty” who is bored with her to-be husband.  The husband is played by the director, writer and producer, Tommy Wiseau and he only has about two tones of voice and facial expression.  Not only is the woman unfaithful, but she is having the affair with his best friend!  Alright, so far it doesn’t sound too bad, not until you add all the little quirks the movie adds and poorly written dialog that makes this movie such a gem in the crap category of film.  It’s difficult to explain fully just how horribly awesome this movie actually is and you really do have to see it for yourself.  There’s actually a theater that plays it every month just so people could come in, rowdy as they can muster the energy to be, and complain about how horrible this movie actually is.  It’s quite a view to see that sort of audience participation.  Although, one might want to ease in to actually just seeing the movie first before engaging in such loud and obnoxious behavior.  I’d recommend watching this movie with at least one friend so that you can appreciate the quality of this film.  I for one have been captivated by it and will be saying some of the phrases from the film to my friends who will fail to recognize the meaning behind them.

Agitation

I don’t know if it’s the temperature talking or the fact that I can’t sleep in it, but I’m feeling really annoyed right now and about to nitpick at all the things that might be stupid that I have found around my house in the time between the time I awoken and now.  First of all, I really hate my bed.  It’s this wooden catastrophe of a frame where my head would hit the ceiling if I were to sit up straight.  Not only that, but it’s insanely difficult for people other than myself to actually climb the thing because of it’s indented and vertical “ladder” used to get up.  You see, you have to hold on to the railing beside the bed to get up, but by doing so, you leave yourself open to cracking a poorly fastened piece of wood and potentially dropping and dying due to the fact that I have about 3 feet of floor space between the bed and the dresser whose edge may kill me.  In addition to being stupidly high, it’s potentially much more hot up there than it would be in a lower level.  I’m not well-to-do in the field of science, but hot air tends to raise and stay up there.  So being that I’m basically at the top of where all that hot air would be, it seems to me that my bed would be ideal for suffocation during summer.

Another thing I’m annoyed about at this particular time is the moment I stepped into the kitchen and opened my crappy fridge, that I have been complaining about for several years.  You see the fridge I have is some Vietnamese brand that has had negative reviews from every single human being on this planet, but my father seemed to think it was better than the fridge that A) worked extremely well as it had the actual temperature needed for a refrigerator and freezer and B) had a freaking ice dispenser.  However, this is not the reason for the indignation that have fell upon me this night.  No, it happens to be that my fridge is too cluttered with crap that I don’t even know what half the things in the fridge are anymore, or whether it’s even safe to consume.  So to my surprise, when I opened the refrigerator door that a little container filled a fairly putrid smelling curry fell instantly to the floor and dispersed itself on the small rug that was below.  Though it has happened before, the things that fell out hopefully didn’t crack open so that there would be a mess to be had.  But this night was filled with annoying little things and this was a fine addition to the day.

After cleaning the mess up with paper towels, I just left the container in the sink with its content in it, hoping that my parents will notice that the food in the sink is no longer safe to consume and that would notify them.  That and I didn’t have the patience or the energy to deal with throwing it out and cleaning the container even if it didn’t take that much effort in the first place.  Once I opened the refrigerator and got my bottled water, I drank some of it and it seems to me that this water isn’t exactly the normal sort of water.  Which goes to my other annoying occurrence today.  My mother seems to always reuse water bottles, despite the fact that my brother and I told her that plastic bottles can only be so clean after washes and that it holds bacteria that could be created and harmful as it is an organic material, so I believe.  Anyway, she filled these particular bottles of water what seems to be distilled water, because it certainly doesn’t feel like normal water should taste or feel.  You see, distilled water is water in its purest form, so one would think that it would be healthier, I’m guessing that’s the belief my mom is going to put when she first replaced the normal water with this pure water.  However, being as it’s just water and nothing else, I’m losing some minerals that are more or less healthy to my cause and that in the sake of trying to get healthier, I’m actually getting more unhealthy.  You see, my mom is annoyingly trying to make us eat healthier, much to my chagrin.  I really, really hate the fact that she’s trying to get these reduced fat crap where I in turn spit out because it tastes like crap.  Replacing her already bad white rice with a surprisingly worse brown rice that tastes like cardboard.  Buying fruit no one wants to eat because they’re pretty much sick to death with it and just buying these weird stupid things that no one wants to eat because it’s just bad.  Granted that some fat free things aren’t as bad and could taste fairly close to the original, but I really hate doing that as I’m traditional in the fact that I like my milk as whole milk, I like butter as it is, I like my deserts to be containing fat because that’s its purpose.  However, I don’t feel any healthier with all these little adjustments and force-fed sawdust she calls food.  I mean there’s this weird thing that she puts in my hot chocolate (which is basically water and Ovaltine and that’s sort of sick as it is) and puts some sawdust looking thing in it so it tastes even worse.  Anyway, the food she actually cooks is oily as all hell, so I’m not getting the feeling that I’m eating any healthier.  Hell I’ve cooked healthier and I use butter freely.

I get the feeling that my ranting is no longer having any coherence and that my sleep deprived state may be to blame for that.  I’m pretty tired, but I can’t sleep because my bed is a slow death on my part and I don’t want to have to deal with breathing in hot air and dust from the ceiling.  You’d think that a bed right next to the window would have some fresher air coming in, but there’s about as little breeze up there as there is any logical progression as to the existence of the bed in the first place.  Since I’m uncertain as to what else has bothered me tonight, I will bid you all farewell.

Dreams are Weird.

I’ve had some weird dreams as of late, granted that dreams are full of imaginary things that could hold all sorts of outcomes as there is no physical boundary preventing any occurrence, but still it is strange nonetheless.  Recently I had a dream about two of my friends, both whom I haven’t spoken to recently, were driving home from school where we suddenly decide to stop in a rather nice neighborhood, but somewhat of an urban area and start a fire in the car and let it explode.  As we walked away from the potential explosion and fire, we went toward a staircase where we heard said explosion and also accompanying it were groups of people claiming that it might have been a terrorist attack of some sort.  Though not outside the realm of possibility, it is strange is its apparent randomness.  Why those two particular friends and why those series of actions and repercussions?  I always had a fascination with dreams, well particularly my own, and felt like it had needed some sort of explanation or analysis that could come with it because they come at an apparent nonexistence, meaning that I have no thoughts prior to the dream that might have made that particular dream.

Of course, there is the possibility that I’m just over-analyzing something that needs no explanation at an attempt to find an otherworldly meaning to my own being.  I mean, to find meaning in ones’ dreams sort of puts the spark of belief that there is something divine in the world that may be sending me message through dreams as they have no ground to stand on but on the merit of its own oddity.  I’ve been told that I look too into things that might have no meaning only to disappoint myself later when I realize something false or demeaning in the message.  Thus I have no real faith in religions or divinity without proper evidence as I now hold the belief that faith is for those who are not inquisitive enough to find out more.  I’m somewhat curious to the idea that there could be more than just this world, this universe, but I hold it as nothing more as curiosity because I am uncertain that there is the possibility of finding out more because of the scope of it all.  Perhaps I’m just giving up on the idea, but it’s better than making something up.  Of course what I find made up could be looked upon as fact to others, and I have friends who are strongly held in their belief in God or whatever entities they believe in.  I also have friends who frankly don’t care, which is alright too.  I’m just someone looking for meaning in the small things the world gives me whether they be in dreams or occurrences in nature that catch my eye.

I can’t help but notice my fascination with faith and divinity as I seem to mention it quite often in my posts.  I suppose it’s part of the person who was once deeply rooted in a faith or part of me who is curious of a life beyond what is here.  But I do believe that this life should be best served for oneself as I hold the belief now that there is no afterlife and one should spend their time here as best as they can whether it be greedily or generously.

Me Reading Book. Me Literate.

After a long period of never finishing a book, I have finally finished a new book called The Golden Compass/Northern Lights by Philip Pullman as part of His Dark Material series.  It’s actually a really good book and I’m enjoying it.  Actually finished it in three days which is pretty fast considering this is me.  Don’t really want to go into detail about the goings-on of the book, but all I could say is that the main character is a little girl and there are armored freaking bears, so what’s not to like?  Also the fact that the film was supposedly boycott by several Christian groups warranted my attention as well.  As one may find out by talking to me, that I’m not terribly fond of the religions of the world.  Not that I have anything against the people in it in particular, but I do find the concept of religion to be binding and arrogant to some degree.  You may disagree with me and I have found that it does change some people’s lives for the better, but it’s not something I can ever follow as I do have this strange love for unadulterated freedom.  Yes, I’m aware that it’s pretty impractical to have absolute freedom to do whatever you want, but the idea still looms to be something quite astonishing and great.  It’s too bad some people can’t restrain themselves with all that freedom, ahem Lakers riot ahem.  I mean, what the hell is that about?  At least wreck someone else’s town!  What sort of logic puts the idea of destroying your own city when your city’s team freaking won the championship?!

I digress, the books that I’m reading do have to church as a somewhat powerful and abusive entity, but to me, that doesn’t really warrant a boycott or anything like that because it’s harmless in my eyes.  And they even downplayed all the church ideas from the movie so I don’t see what those groups are complaining about.  It seems that they’ll complain about any book with any sort of ideas that they wouldn’t agree with.  Sorry to say, but I think people should be free to think however they please.  I mean people can think about killing and stealing for all I care, but doing it is something else entirely.  If they can’t help themselves just because they read a book or seen a movie, then maybe they should be jailed and out of society because I’m pretty sure they won’t grow up to be anything real productive in the world.  As you may see, I’m sort of venting because I get pretty pissed at the concept of censorship.  Hell I wished someone taught me all the things I know now such as “bad” language and sexual inuendos.  It would make for a more entertaining childhood.  I mean I already knew most of the stuff by the time I was in 6th grade as maybe my schools have a different sort of culture than most.  I mean so what if they know some foul language or interesting ideas, isn’t that the whole point of education in school?  Just because I know the curses doesn’t mean I’ll use it everywhere I go, I don’t say them in front of my family or teachers and I refrain myself with people I barely met who might not be comfortable with it.  I think kids should learn all they can when they can and everyone should teach them how to refrain themselves rather than making them ignorant.  But that’s just me.