To learn Arabic. Or at least attempt to gain some basic understanding of it. There's a thing called "wikiversity" which is like a wikipedia university thing. They have lots of lessons on stuff. It's cool.
That Clive Staples Lewis is a genius. Seriously. Best book on religion I've ever read. He's funny, logical, passionate, and just plain brilliant. He was also an atheist for like 30 or 40 years, so his description and reasoning behind finally converting is really interesting. Again, it was the logic that got him.
Believe it or not since I stopped taking math at the end of my junior year I have not gained any sort of proficience in it. Apparently cheating your way to a D+ for 3 years doesn't qualify you for college math.
Not only did I not learn math in high school, I also didn't learn study skills or critical reading skills. I read a page in a textbook and then I realize that I don't know anything I just read. It's frustrating. Also, textbooks are incredibly boring. They make me want to die.
Finally, Moleskine notebooks really are great. I actually refuse to write in anything else that I plan on keeping permanently. It just feels good to write in them.
That wasn't a very good 'finally'.
Finally- ink is far too expensive. Everything is far too expensive, actually, when you're poor. So that sucks.
Also- click on the link and watch the video full screen. Trust me.
ANGELS & AIRWAVES "LOVE" MOVIE TRAILER #3 from Angels and Airwaves on Vimeo.
January 13, 2011
January 10, 2011
I don't need no other lover
It was a very strange morning. My alarm woke me up and I rolled out of bed and went into the living room. As I walked out of my room I had words flowing in my mind.Within 30 seconds of being awake I had started to write a poem. Within 5 minutes I had written 3.
Inspiration, you might say. Perhaps a vision.
I'm afraid not.
But I'll share the second one with you.
It is
Perhaps,
The most essential fact of human nutrition
To know that you may grow old on bran flakes and olives,
And suffer a young, cruel death
by Captain Crunch
Oh what the heck, I'll throw you the 3rd.
There is something
comforting,
even mystic.
Some ancient Kabbalah rite that
surely
must go into the making of a Flintstone vitamin.
In other news... Well. There's not really any other news. I've started school. It's going reasonably well. If anything of note occurs you'll be the first to know.
I promise.
Inspiration, you might say. Perhaps a vision.
I'm afraid not.
But I'll share the second one with you.
It is
Perhaps,
The most essential fact of human nutrition
To know that you may grow old on bran flakes and olives,
And suffer a young, cruel death
by Captain Crunch
Oh what the heck, I'll throw you the 3rd.
There is something
comforting,
even mystic.
Some ancient Kabbalah rite that
surely
must go into the making of a Flintstone vitamin.
In other news... Well. There's not really any other news. I've started school. It's going reasonably well. If anything of note occurs you'll be the first to know.
I promise.
January 9, 2011
Thoughts on death
You might have heard about the shootings in Arizona. Some angry constituent tried to shoot his congresswoman, and ended up killing 6 and injuring 12 others.
One of the people he killed was a 9 year old girl. She was born on September 11, 2001.
This is her:
I like to think that I have some pretty liberal views for a lot of criminals. I believe in people's ability to change and reform, and I think that the justice system should reflect and support that.
But I can't help feeling that this guy should be taken out in someone's backyard and shot. Really.
I read an interview with a man who worked on a firing squad for like 20 years. He was a religious guy, and they asked if he ever regretted it or felt bad or whatever. He said he had felt more remorse over squirrels he's killed. He said that sometimes you get defective merchandise, and your only choice is to return it to the manufacturer.
I would disagree with him in a lot of cases. But this guy, crazy as he may be, I feel like there's not much of a punishment we can give him here that would suit him better than what he'll get afterwards.
One of the people he killed was a 9 year old girl. She was born on September 11, 2001.
This is her:
I like to think that I have some pretty liberal views for a lot of criminals. I believe in people's ability to change and reform, and I think that the justice system should reflect and support that.
But I can't help feeling that this guy should be taken out in someone's backyard and shot. Really.
I read an interview with a man who worked on a firing squad for like 20 years. He was a religious guy, and they asked if he ever regretted it or felt bad or whatever. He said he had felt more remorse over squirrels he's killed. He said that sometimes you get defective merchandise, and your only choice is to return it to the manufacturer.
I would disagree with him in a lot of cases. But this guy, crazy as he may be, I feel like there's not much of a punishment we can give him here that would suit him better than what he'll get afterwards.
December 25, 2010
Merry Christmas, revisited
So, I thought I would share something. I've gotten into reading a bit again lately, with some help from my sister and others. Tonight I started "Travels with Charley" by John Steinbeck. For those of you who don't know, Steinbeck is awesome. Go read Grapes of Wrath, The Pearl, Of Mice and Men, or like anything else of his if you don't know what I'm talking about.
Anyways, I read the first 'chapter' of the book, and I was like: This needs to be shared. It just struck me by how awesome and simple and well-written and true and beautiful it was. So I thought I would share it. Just so you know how special you are to me, I couldn't find the text online, so I'm typing the whole thing up for you.
Don't worry, it's not very long at all. You're not that special.
Let us begin:
When I was very young and the urge to be someplace else was on me, I was assured by mature people that maturity would cure this itch. When years described me as mature, the remedy prescribed was middle age. In middle age I was assured that greater age would calm my fever and now that I am fifty-eight perhaps senility will do the job. Nothing has worked. Four hoarse blasts of a ship's whistle still raise the hair on my neck and set my feet to tapping. The sound of a jet, an engine warming up, even the clopping of shod hooves on pavement brings on the ancient shudder, the dry mouth and the vacant eye, the hot palms and the churn of a stomach high up under the rib cage. In other words, I don't improve; in further words, once a bum always a bum. I fear the disease is incurable. I set this matter down not to instruct others but to inform myself.
When the virus of restlessness begins to take possession of a wayward man, and the road away from Here seems broad and straight and sweet, the victim must first find in himself a good and sufficient reason for going. This to the practical bum is not difficult. He has a built-in garden of reasons to choose from. Next he must plan his trip in time and space, choose a direction and a destination. And last he must implement the journey. How to go, what to take, how long to stay. This part of the process is invariable and immortal. I set it down only so that newcomers to bumdom, like teen-agers in new-hatched sin, will not think they invented it.
Once a journey is designed, equipped, and put in process; a new factor enters and takes over. A trip, a safari, an exploration, is an entity, different from all other journeys. It has personality, temperament, individuality, uniqueness. A journey is a person in itself, no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us. Tour masters, schedules, reservations, brass-bound and inevitable, dash themselves to wreckage on the personality of the trip. Only when this is recognized can the blown-in-the-glass bum relax and go along with it. Only then do the frustrations fall away. In this a journey is like a marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it. I feel better now, having said this, although only those who have experienced it will understand it.
Isn't that wicked good writing? Don't you just want to go on an adventure!
I do.
Anyways, I read the first 'chapter' of the book, and I was like: This needs to be shared. It just struck me by how awesome and simple and well-written and true and beautiful it was. So I thought I would share it. Just so you know how special you are to me, I couldn't find the text online, so I'm typing the whole thing up for you.
Don't worry, it's not very long at all. You're not that special.
Let us begin:
When I was very young and the urge to be someplace else was on me, I was assured by mature people that maturity would cure this itch. When years described me as mature, the remedy prescribed was middle age. In middle age I was assured that greater age would calm my fever and now that I am fifty-eight perhaps senility will do the job. Nothing has worked. Four hoarse blasts of a ship's whistle still raise the hair on my neck and set my feet to tapping. The sound of a jet, an engine warming up, even the clopping of shod hooves on pavement brings on the ancient shudder, the dry mouth and the vacant eye, the hot palms and the churn of a stomach high up under the rib cage. In other words, I don't improve; in further words, once a bum always a bum. I fear the disease is incurable. I set this matter down not to instruct others but to inform myself.
When the virus of restlessness begins to take possession of a wayward man, and the road away from Here seems broad and straight and sweet, the victim must first find in himself a good and sufficient reason for going. This to the practical bum is not difficult. He has a built-in garden of reasons to choose from. Next he must plan his trip in time and space, choose a direction and a destination. And last he must implement the journey. How to go, what to take, how long to stay. This part of the process is invariable and immortal. I set it down only so that newcomers to bumdom, like teen-agers in new-hatched sin, will not think they invented it.
Once a journey is designed, equipped, and put in process; a new factor enters and takes over. A trip, a safari, an exploration, is an entity, different from all other journeys. It has personality, temperament, individuality, uniqueness. A journey is a person in itself, no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us. Tour masters, schedules, reservations, brass-bound and inevitable, dash themselves to wreckage on the personality of the trip. Only when this is recognized can the blown-in-the-glass bum relax and go along with it. Only then do the frustrations fall away. In this a journey is like a marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it. I feel better now, having said this, although only those who have experienced it will understand it.
Isn't that wicked good writing? Don't you just want to go on an adventure!
I do.
December 15, 2010
Johnson & Johnson
I didn't get a lot out of seminary my senior year. This was pretty much entirely my fault, of course. It's a defense mechanism, I think. When you're doing things you know you're not supposed to, you have to sort of shut off your mind to the good stuff. If you take in the good stuff, you'll be inspired to remove the bad. So, if you want to keep the bad, you have to block out the good.
Regardless, I remember one seminary lesson very well. It was in like November, I think. I remember it because it was a day or two before I was supposed to buy and use an "8-ball" of cocaine with a certain German friend of mine.
I was excited. We both were. We'd never tried it, we'd both always wanted to. And here we were with the unique opportunity to have this life-changing experience.
Several times throughout my high school career I had almost done it, but something always got in the way. Not this time, though, I said. This time things would finally work out.
Then, at seminary that day, we came in to find two large brown pieces of paper stretched out on the ground, in between the tables. We didn't discuss them for most of the lesson, but eventually we got into some relevant scriptures (I don't remember what they were) and Sister Hull brought them up.
They were paths, she said. This was no big deal for me, everyone knows there's a good path and a bad path, a straight and narrow and a wide and windy. I sat back in my chair and prepared to tune out yet another lecture on choosing the right and all that jazz.
But then she said something I hadn't really thought of before. "Each of these paths take you to certain place. You can't follow one path, and expect to end up where the other path takes you." This struck me as exactly what I was doing. She gave some examples of people she'd seen do this and more and more I realized that she was basically describing me perfectly. In my head at that time I was thinking, "Yeah, yeah, I'm doing all this bad stuff and spiraling downwards pretty hardcore, but eventually I'll get my life in order and I'll marry in the temple and everything will be great and dandy. I just need this little time of doing bad, but eventually everything will work out fine."
That's not really how it works. If you're trying to get to the north pole you can't just take a southwestern road and say "Well I'll turn around eventually," because the fact is you're just getting further and further away from where you want to be.
I think this applies to non-spiritual matters, too. I've never been a particularly good student, mostly because it's never really been a priority for me. Almost always I'll start out the class with a few good weeks, then stop doing assignments or going to class or any of that. Inevitably, midterms roll around and I have a C or a D. "Don't worry, Ed," I say. "You'll get an A at the end of the semester, you're only halfway there, plenty of time to change it." But, surprise surprise, nothing changes and at the end of the semester I don't have an A. You get X for doing Y, and A for doing B. You can't do B and expect to get X. Or something like that (don't judge my variable analogies, math was one of those classes I didn't get an A in).
The point? Let's all get A's.
And that's the story of the day I didn't snort coke. Yay.
Regardless, I remember one seminary lesson very well. It was in like November, I think. I remember it because it was a day or two before I was supposed to buy and use an "8-ball" of cocaine with a certain German friend of mine.
I was excited. We both were. We'd never tried it, we'd both always wanted to. And here we were with the unique opportunity to have this life-changing experience.
Several times throughout my high school career I had almost done it, but something always got in the way. Not this time, though, I said. This time things would finally work out.
Then, at seminary that day, we came in to find two large brown pieces of paper stretched out on the ground, in between the tables. We didn't discuss them for most of the lesson, but eventually we got into some relevant scriptures (I don't remember what they were) and Sister Hull brought them up.
They were paths, she said. This was no big deal for me, everyone knows there's a good path and a bad path, a straight and narrow and a wide and windy. I sat back in my chair and prepared to tune out yet another lecture on choosing the right and all that jazz.
But then she said something I hadn't really thought of before. "Each of these paths take you to certain place. You can't follow one path, and expect to end up where the other path takes you." This struck me as exactly what I was doing. She gave some examples of people she'd seen do this and more and more I realized that she was basically describing me perfectly. In my head at that time I was thinking, "Yeah, yeah, I'm doing all this bad stuff and spiraling downwards pretty hardcore, but eventually I'll get my life in order and I'll marry in the temple and everything will be great and dandy. I just need this little time of doing bad, but eventually everything will work out fine."
That's not really how it works. If you're trying to get to the north pole you can't just take a southwestern road and say "Well I'll turn around eventually," because the fact is you're just getting further and further away from where you want to be.
I think this applies to non-spiritual matters, too. I've never been a particularly good student, mostly because it's never really been a priority for me. Almost always I'll start out the class with a few good weeks, then stop doing assignments or going to class or any of that. Inevitably, midterms roll around and I have a C or a D. "Don't worry, Ed," I say. "You'll get an A at the end of the semester, you're only halfway there, plenty of time to change it." But, surprise surprise, nothing changes and at the end of the semester I don't have an A. You get X for doing Y, and A for doing B. You can't do B and expect to get X. Or something like that (don't judge my variable analogies, math was one of those classes I didn't get an A in).
The point? Let's all get A's.
And that's the story of the day I didn't snort coke. Yay.
December 12, 2010
Gotta name 'em all...Better.
Wouldn't it be awesome to name something? To discover some island off the coast of Madagascar and get to call it whatever you want? Or to find some new type of bug in a cave in your backyard and get to choose what it would called for ever and ever? Wouldn't that be awesome?
Yes, it would.
When I was a kid I wondered once whether God had different names for all the animals than we did. Does He call a Zebra a Zebra? What did He call it before humans ever made a name for it? We discover new animals all the time, does He just call them what he knows they're going to be named, or does he have a special name for everything that we don't know (that's probably it, actually).
If that's the case, what happens to all those Alpha Taxonomists when they get to heaven? Is it basically like, "I know you spent your entire life classifying every living thing, but here's the updated list" *hands them giant book*.
That would suck.
I was quite a Pokemon fan in my younger (read: current) days. As a wee child I would always be amazed at how awesome all the names were. I wondered what sort of creative genius they must have holed up in their Tokyo laboratory, agonizing day in and day on just the right name for each individual Pokemon.
I imagined that he looked something like a cross between this guy:
And this one:
\
(Am I the only one who thinks he has an eerie resemblance to Henry B. Eyering?)
It was only later in life that I realized the Pokemon names were more likely made up by this guy:
Armed with only a Japanese-to-English dictionary and a rudimentary knowledge of zoological classifications, (perhaps his father was an Alpha Taxonomist), this boy was able to single handedly name all 150 Pokemon in my Pokedex.
For instance he might have seen this Pokemon:
And said to himself: ラット!
After he plugged that into his translator, he would have said: RAT!
しかし、あまりにも不足していると、それは長くする必要があります!
*Translating*
"But that is too short, I must make it longer!"
So he would have carefully drawn out several more letters, probably on this paper.
Then, with a smile on his face, he would hold up his final product.
Rattata.
149 to go.
Yes, it would.
When I was a kid I wondered once whether God had different names for all the animals than we did. Does He call a Zebra a Zebra? What did He call it before humans ever made a name for it? We discover new animals all the time, does He just call them what he knows they're going to be named, or does he have a special name for everything that we don't know (that's probably it, actually).
If that's the case, what happens to all those Alpha Taxonomists when they get to heaven? Is it basically like, "I know you spent your entire life classifying every living thing, but here's the updated list" *hands them giant book*.
That would suck.
I was quite a Pokemon fan in my younger (read: current) days. As a wee child I would always be amazed at how awesome all the names were. I wondered what sort of creative genius they must have holed up in their Tokyo laboratory, agonizing day in and day on just the right name for each individual Pokemon.
I imagined that he looked something like a cross between this guy:
And this one:
\(Am I the only one who thinks he has an eerie resemblance to Henry B. Eyering?)
It was only later in life that I realized the Pokemon names were more likely made up by this guy:
Armed with only a Japanese-to-English dictionary and a rudimentary knowledge of zoological classifications, (perhaps his father was an Alpha Taxonomist), this boy was able to single handedly name all 150 Pokemon in my Pokedex.
For instance he might have seen this Pokemon:
And said to himself: ラット!
After he plugged that into his translator, he would have said: RAT!
しかし、あまりにも不足していると、それは長くする必要があります!
*Translating*
"But that is too short, I must make it longer!"
So he would have carefully drawn out several more letters, probably on this paper.
Then, with a smile on his face, he would hold up his final product.
Rattata.
149 to go.
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