| This is not an exit. |
[Sep. 27th, 2007|01:22 pm] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | Doe Library | ] |
| [ | music |
| | "Feeling Alright" Joe Cocker | ] |
I took a bus today and saw a dead man on the freeway. The accident caused traffic jams on both sides; on one side, those trying to get around the scene, and on the other side, my side, those stopping to look. The man was on a motorcycle, which was overturned about 15 feet in front of the car. A sheet covered his body while his head looked like it was was stuck under the chassis of the car. He was only about 100 yards away from the freeway offramp.
Life is short, undoubtedly. But for that man, life just got a lot shorter today. Perhaps the brevity and shortness of life gave rise to the notion that there is no meaning and nobody really cares. At least nobody on the freeway really seemed to care; except the woman who drove the car than ran over the man. They have other things to do, other parts of their life to attend to. Money needs to be earned, other people need to be fed, millions. The traffic just from the other side almost made me late to class.
There is some peace if there is no meaning and nobody really cares: there are no expectations, no judgement or scrutiny, or even measurement. Its simplicity is as great as its freedom and predictability: everyone only does what is right by them to ensure their own security and survival. Time is of the essence, so you might as well do something that you think would be fun regardless of its ramifications because, well there are none. You grow up, you live, you die, and you might die sooner than you'd like. You have this one life because you don't know if there's anything after, so you might as well enjoy it. You alone have total control over your life.
But somebody must care. The man probably had a family, maybe a mother and father still alife. Perhaps he had a wife? A child? More? Close friends, colleagues? Somebody. For all the simplicity and ellegance of a realist perspective, it makes one fatal flaw: you are not alone. There is meaning to life in the fact that others find meaning in it. What you do has consequence, maybe not on anything that will last forever, but on those who are around right now.
Why does a dollar bill have value? It's basically paper mixed with cotton, some ink in an extravagant design, and slogans. So why does that equal a drink, a bag of chips, or in greater amounts equal discretion over the livelihoods of others? There is no real physical value to it, but there is an idea behind it. Ideas matter more than face value. This is why out of everything we know, there is no theory, philosophy, religion, or TV show that can give us a list of what every nuance of life equates to. There is no realist, physical exit we can take that will take us to meaning; only an internal one.
I found my exit today on the other side of the freeway about 100 yards from an offramp. |
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| The prosecution will stipulate... |
[Aug. 18th, 2007|12:04 am] |
Mau and I were talking, and so suddenly we assume the roles of a prosecution (me) and a defense (him) over a witness. I was trying to say that what the witness does, not says, is more relevant...but Mau did it better. This is what happened:
Me: if the statements of the witness disagree with evidence entered, then the witness is purjuring himself
Mau: haha
Mau: the statements of the witness are neither truth or fiction as the prosecution wants to define them
Mau: the statements of the witness can therefore be ignored
Mau: and only the actions of the witness
Mau: can be counted
Me: the prosecution thanks the defense, and comments that he does a better job at this than I do
Mau: haha
Mau: so
Mau: should I consider Law School?
Mau: if for no other reason
Mau: than I want it more
Me: raep those wrinkled old farts
Me: you can do it
Mau: and people KEEEP telling me to do so?
Mau: but
Mau: LSATs scare me
Me: they won't let you touch nukes after that
Mau: haha
Mau: if I become pres
Mau: I will control nukes
Me: on second thought
Me: no
Me: don't go to law school
Me: you being the president
Me: scary
Me: I'll move to another country
Me: like Canada
Mau: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA
Me: XDDDDDD
Me: i know for sure you were laughing for real now
Mau: it's hard not to knowck my milk on the floor
Me: lol
Mau: fuck you
Me: HAHAHAHA
Mau: I need to change
Me: did you knock your milk?!
Me: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Me: fukkin' WIN
Mau: lol
Mau: no
Mau: spit it ou
Mau: out*
Me: oh god
Me: hahaha
Me: this is going into my memories
Me: and staying there
Me: forever
Mau: hahahahaha |
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| posting when I should be doing something else |
[Aug. 3rd, 2007|12:59 am] |
| [ | music |
| | "The Vote" - James Newton Howard | ] |
It's usually like that. =P
( Read more... )
Best line of the day from NPR: "I have no energy, because it's summer. However, I'm only saying that because today is Sunday. Tomorrow will be Monday, but I'm going to pretend like it's Sunday...because it's summer. And that means I have no energy." |
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| (no subject) |
[Jul. 28th, 2007|04:27 pm] |
First draft of my thesis is finally done, though about 600 words short. Just need to expand a bit more as to what I would actually be doing. And I found out last night from a friend that the faculty sponsor does not have to be polisci only. Great. If only their website actually said that.
Weird how today had another air show crash. What is it in the last two days about air crashes? And that helicopter crash...that was tragic. I feel sorry for the crewmen's families. Mau pointed out, though, that this is also a testament to society and how it goes gaga over car chaises. I saw the thing on Fox News, and the anchor said how they got numerous emails saying "this is the media's fault that this happened". After that, he went on a rant about how the members of the media risk their lives to bring public safety. Excuse me, but I see something wrong here. Risk their lives, absolutely. I don't doubt that journalism is a dangerous business. But public safety? I disagree. Just look at car chases. We're addicted to them. Even stupid ones make the cable news. And step-by-step coverage of this is supposed to provide public safety? Fat chance. The truth of the matter is we're all media whores. Every night, there's always some nutjob waiving in the background while someone is doing the 5 o'clock news. So if there's a car chase in someone's neighborhood, once they see it on TV, they're not gonna stay inside and be safe. They're going to run right outside...CAUSE THEY WANT TO BE ON TV!!!
I scouted all my classes the other day. They're gonna be all over the place. I start at the southeast side and work my wawy downhill to the northwest side. Books are ridiculously expensive, though. And there aren't any readers yet. Throw in a few hundred dollars more. Speaking of which....I should stash these old ones away. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jul. 17th, 2007|09:52 pm] |
Absent of anything in particular I want to talk about, I'm just gonna type.
Dad's got me working on a new project of sorts. He wanted at first to get a hold of all the DVDs that he uses as examples for his classes. But then I came up with an idea...instead of taking all the DVDs with him and searching for the scenes, why not just copy out the scenes and put them together on one DVD? That way he doesn't have to keep switching out. Great idea...save for the part where I'm the one doing it because he doesn't want to learn how to do it. It's eating up space on my computer, safe to say. That's why tomorrow I'm grabbing an external hard drive, which means I'll finally be able to back up all my shit instead of hoping nothing bad happens to my computer. Also gonna get a stand for the computer...my neck is still killing me.
I finally got around to researching, and I think I went overboard. Now I have well over 300 pages worth of stuff to research...and about 2 weeks to put together my proposal. That, plus Dad's project, plus not even being remotely prepared for the GRE, plus work....plus Harry Potter...joy. I still don't know how to spin this yet. Too much of it is in sociology, demography, and not enough is in politics and policy. Not that both Sociology and demography aren't important to polisci, but they still have to equal some ends in polisci.
Looks like I need more cream soda... |
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| =O |
[Jul. 10th, 2007|01:32 pm] |
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| Thoughts on "John from Cincinnati" |
[Jun. 17th, 2007|07:06 pm] |
I've started watching the new HBO series "John from Cincinnati", and this is by far the wierdest tv series I've ever seen. I still don't know where it's heading, either. So far, I really like the series, but I don't know why. It's very offbeat...like "Being There" offbeat, perhaps even moreso. I don't get it.
The cast of characters is very odd. Mitch Yost is the typical male father figure of a family of surfing junkies. He has been washed out by professional surfing due to a knee injury some years ago, and is ambivalent about letting his grandson, Shaun, enter the world of competition (by the way, he levitates about 3" off the groud occasionally for some inexplicable reason). Mitch's wife, Sissy, is seemingly a nurturing grandmother and willing to support Shaun in anything he would like to do and seems to be the alternative to Mitch's character. Micth and Sissy's son, Butchie, who is also Shaun's dad, is a drug-addicted, next-to-homeless former surfer who spends his life in his motel waiting for the next dope supply and hates his dad's guts. Bill, a former cop and friend of the family, has retired after sixteen years of service and lives his life pent up in his house talking to himself and all his birds, one of which came back from the dead after Shaun touched it (and that same bird restimulated Shaun's dead brain after he suffering a broken neck during a surfing competition).
All of this leaves just the title character, John, an idiot savant who simply copies everything that anyone does or says. The only original things he has said are "Mitch Yost should get back in the game", "What do you want, Butchie?", and "The End is Near". Ooookay. And the scary thing is he looks a LOT like Canadian Mike.
At any rate, from a venue that made its TV series name off of "The Sopranos", this is a far departure. It's supposed to be from the same people who made "Deadwood", but it's nothing at all like "Deadwood". I don't know what else to say except that it's very, very wierd; and because it's so wierd and offbeat, it's intriguing. If this were a book, I bet this would have been assigned alongside "The Metamorphosis" in AP Lit.
If anyone else figures out what this show really is about...an existentialist view on the dichotomy of the human mind, a religious allegory on the Rapture starting in San Diego, or something completely different... please let me know. I'm curious. |
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| (no subject) |
[May. 30th, 2007|02:36 am] |
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Damnit!! What the hell will House be like without Chase, Foreman, OR CAMERON?! WTF?!?! They at least better find a decent replacement for Cameron, or somebody is going to get hurt. Damnit all. |
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