My life

I'm still trying to find a way out of this box I'm stuck in, and ran into an article in an old issue of Time on the subject.  Here is what it said:

So what do we learn from all this? Quit school? Go back to school? Walk away from our comfy, high-paying job? Run away to a Caribbean island? Bronson's subjects try all these solutions and more, but he has the good grace to spare us easy answers. The fact is, we already know from self-help gurus what to do. Follow your dreams. Never give up. Believe in yourself. The answers to the ultimate question are often cliches, and that doesn't mean they're wrong — they're just not very helpful. What's helpful is seeing that other people are trying too, even if they're failing.

Bronson is a fan of failure. "Failure's hard," he writes, "but success is far more dangerous. If you're successful at the wrong thing, the mix of praise and money and opportunity can lock you in forever." Bronson believes, and his stories prove, that failure is how you eliminate the wrong turns on the way to the right one.  -Hint: It's Not Plastics, by Lev Grossman, Time

But, this still leaves me asking what are my dreams?  Am I strong enough to still believe in myself when I have failed so many times before?

Now I'm sick too...

Last night was a long downhill battle.  

I lost.

Now I have what my fiancee had/has.  Fun, fun.  I am sitting here next to the medicine my roommate left out for me in the most comfortable chair that you can't sleep in and staring at the prompt that I was supposed to be writing about for class.  I can type fine, but my concentration is shot.

I need to go out for real food at some point.  Something more then applesauce and oatmeal anyway.  Food is good....

I demand all the vanilla lates I can drink.

If I were in the position to demand anything, this is what I would demand.

All the vanilla lates I can drink.
I need coffee. It is essential to the creative process. No coffee, no progress.

A truckload of Endangered Species Chocolate bars
Chocolate is important to life, and Endangered Species chocolate is the best.

A $500 gift certificate to Barnes & Noble
I need to know what the great thinkers thought. Plus, I have a reading list that's taller then me.

A year subscription to National Geographic
It's pretty, and I like to know about the world.

$500 worth of iTunes credits
I like to listen to music, and there are a lot of cds that I want to listen to that I don't have yet.

What do you demand?

Cold Cure

My fiancee was sick today, so I checked around for some good cold cures online.  Turns out that lemon ginger tea and chicken noodle soup with miso top the charts across the board.  Garlic also got good reviews.

Between the three, anybody's sinuses are sure to drain in no time.  

The hard part?  Convincing him that the ginger tea is worth it. 

Ethics in the Watchmen

Who will watch the watchmen?  Allan Moore asked in his acclaimed graphic novel, The Watchmen.

This graphic novel confronts a multitude of moral issues, and each character seems to have his own set of morals.  From Rorschach's absolutism to Ozymandias' utilitarianism, the novel seems to ask who is right?  And what do you believe?

Where do you fall on the spectrum?  Do you agree with Rorschach?  Or Ozymandias?  Or perhaps, Night Owl, who was torn between the arguably amoral method and the world changing result?  

Spoiler Alert!!!

Rorschach:  The Absolutist

Rorschach had strict moral values in the comic.  If a person killed another person, then they deserved to be punished.  Period.  No questions asked.  It didn't matter to Rorschach why somebody killed someone else.  To him it was wrong and he felt that it was his duty to right that wrong.  (On an interesting side note, Rorschach seemed to believe that the right punishment for murder was death, and he had no issues with killing murderers or others who he believed deserved the death sentence.)

Night Owl:  The Undecided

Night Owl took on the role of kind of the average guy.  (Or as average as superheroes ever get.)  He was obviously divided on the issue of punishment for wrongs and what precisely made something worthy of punishment.  Night Owl clearly expresses his opinion on what he thinks of Ozymandias' plan, but once it is carried out he decides not to do anything about it.  He seems to go with the idea that since the world is safe in that moment, the atrocities that made it safe should be ignored.

Ozymandias: The Utilitarian

Ozymandias took the extreme opposite approach to Rorschach's.  Ozymandias believed that killing was justifiable if it made way for a better end.  He was on the whole against violence, but he did, without a shadow of a doubt, go by the moral code of the greater good for the greater number.  He may have saved the world from another war.

Dr. Manhattan: The Hedonist?

Dr. Manhattan presents the biggest problem for this analysis.  He cared, but then didn't.  In the end though, he seemed to be motivated primarily by what interested him over anything else.  He liked to watch, to study, to examine problems, to understand...  This primary pursuit of the "interesting" leads me to place him in the hedonist bracket.  

The Silk Spectre: The Virtue-ist

The Silk Spectre seemed to apply the golden rule to everyone's actions as well as her own for most of the novel.  The Comedian was bad to her because he had not followed this rule.  Ozymandias was incomprehensible because of this.  Rorschach was strange.  Dr. Manhattan confused her.  Only Night Owl seemed to almost li

ne up with what she thought was right.  She wanted everybody to treat everyone else nicely, and when they didn't she found them at fault.

So, who was right?  Was anyone right?  And what would you do if you were in their super-shoes?

In defense of my vice: coffee

My number one vice is coffee.

Love Coffee by Ahmed Rabea

I've been drinking coffee on a regular basis since middle school when my mom first took me and my little brother to check out the new coffee shop in LaGrange, Higher Groundz. (Which is out of business now.) After that, I began drinking coffee on a weekly basis. By the time I was in high school I was drinking coffee several times a week.

Now that I'm in college, I drink coffee on a daily basis. I'm better then some and worse then some on this count. Of course, I've heard a hundred times over the reasons why I should ditch the coffee habit, but its not all bad, coffee does have some good points.

1) Coffee contains antioxidants that are proven to improve moods, and who doesn't want to feel a little happier?

2) Coffee is a great excuse to socialize! Can a question ever beat "Wanna meet for coffee?"

3) Coffee has been shown to improve focus and short term memory. No wonder so many great thinkers were known to spend a ton of time in coffee shops.

4) Coffee is good. :)

Sounds like I have a few good reasons not to kick the habit, doesn't it? Good, now stop hassling me about the caffeine. It's good for me.... errrr... sort of.

A Trip in Music

Here are my top 3 songs that I would like to be listening to on a big road trip... when I finally get around to going on one.

Life is a highway by Rascal Flatts

I know its cliched, but it is a really good, upbeat song to drive to. It keeps me awake and focused on the road and sounds fun. Those are important factors while on long road trips.

Be as by Simon and Milo

This song really speaks to me about the reasons to go and the need to get away. My favorite line goes
"Lisa just had to get away, Nothing could make her stay, Tired of living under cover. Everybody knows somebody trying to get free..."

Come back to Texas by Bowling for Soup

This song reminds me of home (GA, not TX, but still) and reminds me that I should say hey to the people there at some point. It also makes me laugh at some of the ridiculous reasons to go home. The reasons are even funnier because they are so true to life.

Is television bad for children?

Today's blog is brought to you by my contemporary persuasion class, and all the wonderful people in there that I will be speaking in front of today.

The Problem:
Children are watching large amounts of violent programing and are becoming violent themselves. This fact is clearly evidenced by the recent accidental killing involving a little boy who killed his sister when he practiced a wrestling move that he saw on tv on her.

Case study
Case study 2

Why is this happening?
Television does influence our actions, and it influences children even more then adults. Children mimic what they see on tv. Unfortunately, what they see on tv is fighting, shooting, stabbing and other forms of violence.Too many violent shows on television during hours when the most impressionable viewers are watching.

Family Guy example

What can we do about it?
Some special interest groups are advocating safe times when major stations will cut down on violent programing during times when more children are watching. The focus for this method is on the hours when children are just arriving home from school.

Another way to protect children from the effects of violent programing, is to make easier and more readily available parental controls for televisions. This form of parental control was the goal of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 that made it a requirement for television makers to install a chip that would block violent programing using a rating system that the networks devised.

"Most critic[s] feel that the V-chip, a form of rating system, will fail in its effectiveness to monitor children as it has a proven history of failure in the past. Ratings such as "NC-17" had to be changed from "XXX", simply because it was becoming a symbol in modern culture, and became more of a right of passage for youth, rather than a deterrent." -Through the Wires

Die laughing...

I've heard of several neat pranks, but the best that I've seen have been at college.

24072007(003) by miikkahoo

My favorite on campus prank that I've seen was a surprisingly simple one:

It was midterms time during my freshman year when I walked by the science building and saw this prank sitting on the sidewalk. Somebody had traced a body outline in splayed, crime scene fashion on the sidewalk next to the place where a piece of fruit had exploded earlier in the week. The effect was great.

It was kinda funny in a I-really-shouldn't-be-laughing-at-this sort of way. It was well timed too because it really made use of the pressure of that part of the semester.

I actually heard some people asking what had happened! It looked real enough to make people wonder, but was low key enough that nobody bothered to clean it off, so it lasted until it rained.

***Nobody actually died. The campus is so small that if somebody stubs their toe on one end of campus, you'll know about it on the other side of campus before they get back to their dorm room. Plus, while the prankster's use of chalkboard chalk for the outline was probably seemed like a good idea, I'm fairly sure that the police use something a little more affective at marking the lines at crime scenes.***

Rut

I've been very conflicted about where I'm going lately.  I distract myself and deflect, but I can't help but realize that this process of sitting in dark rooms, listening to professors go on and on with their favorite process, repetition.  

So much...

...stagnation...

...here.

I can't stretch here.  I can't grow.  I can barely move.  This is hell on earth for me.  This forced attention to details that I'm only trying to make myself care about.  This isn't going to work.  I'm leaving.  

Only a few questions remain:

1. When?
2. Where will I go?
3. How will will I explain to the family?

I know that I am going though and have a rough idea of what I will do when I get there.  At least its a start.

Three overplayed songs I love anyway

A few songs that I've probably heard one too many times, but I still love them as much I did the first time I heard them. (Probably more.)

Iris by Goo Goo Dolls

It's a love, hate relationship. I love the song, yet I want to hate it because it is so overplayed.

Rock Star by Smash Mouth

I know this song forward, backward and sideways. I even have a rough sketch of how it can be played on piano at home... somewhere.

Only the Good Die Young by Billy Joel

It seems like this song comes on every third time I get in my car, but I still belt out the lyrics and turn up the radio every time it plays.

Gadgets that might be nice...

I write a good bit and get lost at least once a week, so you would think that the item at the top of my gadget wish list right now would be something to make writing even easier or a GPS or something along those lines. Those are almost too logical of choices though, and thus are wrong. If I were to buy a new piece of technology right now it would be one of two things:

1) A sketch pad for the computer so that I can still make messy outlines with lots of arrows, but they won't get lost under five layers of returned assignments from classes, or

2) A program that easily enables a free flow of ideas, to do lists, system references and charts. (I saw one that I really liked but it was uber expensive, so not happening...)

These are just maybe, at some points though for now due to my limited funds.... Until then I'll stick with my present method of writing things out on paper the old school way. The good news? I get to make lots of use of my sharpies. Yay for coloring!

***This is my first post using a new program called Plinky that has questions of the day. I'll be trying out a few of the prompts now and then to fill some of the gaps in my regular blogging.***

Planning

So, it is decided:  I am going to do something else.  But what?  For how long?  Where?

I have a hundred questions for myself, so I resigned to do what I do every time I am faced with an overwhelming decision... I try to learn something.  

It's ironic how the main part of my problem solving method involves me distancing myself from the problem at hand.

4 hours in and I just realized that after all those "exercises" and all that reading, I can now design a black and white version of my first myspace page.  (Okay, so a few other elements might be lacking, but the basic format remains the same.)  It is kind of thrilling and depressing to learn what is hard and what is just ridiculously easy.

It makes you think about what goes into the pages that you look at online too.  Just click View/View Source on a web page and suddenly the long lines of code become visible. It makes me realize something important: I want to be able to type html on pages, but I'm glad that I don't to have to type in html every time I type something online.  

If it came to that, then this blog probably wouldn't exist.   I would have gotten annoyed at a misplaced tag somewhere or another and moved away from the system very early on.  The first post probably never would have gone up.  (Not that anyone actually read the first post, but that is another story entirely.  The point is that I wouldn't be typing this now.)

In the end, I find myself thinking back to Hamlet's famous question and rephrasing it for today:

To html, or not to html?  That is the question.

Thought of the Day

I'm doing things that are more artistic again, more close to the material that I love. I don't disparage those things that I did. They're just not as much reflective of who I am. 

-Mira Sorvino, actress (Romy and Michele's High School Reunion)

Last Semester

I'm going to cut down on my college course load.  More and more this "education" is beginning to seem like just another bureaucracy.  Its just really this long (dare I say pointless?) process for what?  A piece of paper that says you went to class and turned in something requiring a mediocre effort.  

*sigh*

This may be my last semester.  I stress too much over busy work, and the busy work is not worth the stress.  

For once I may actually be following a doctor's orders:  The doctor told me to get rid of the big things that were stressing me out.  Roughly a year later,  I'm putting together a plan to get out of college, the biggest stress-er I have ever met.  Give me belligerent idiots, give me fighting, give me the midnight shift (I'm up anyway), give me a job where I'm overworked and underpaid, just don't make me spend one more semester in these halls of "higher learning."  

I need to be able to move and learn and grow, and for me, college just isn't the place to do that.  

I need to escape.  

I need a change.

Out of it

It's round 3 and I'm down for the count.  Too beaten and bruised to care as the hand slaps the floor.  I gave it a good run, but I've lost.  And no one ever writes about those who tried and failed.  It is the winner who tells the tale.  

Then out of nowhere a hand reaches down to pull me to my feet.  

"It is time for you to move on to a different ring," a voice whispers.  

I just nod.  I saw this coming all along.

I don't know how to get there, but I know where I'm going, so I take a deep breath and take a shaky step in that direction.

Wasn't it Eleanor Roosevelt that said, "Do at least one thing that scares you every day?"  

Good advice. 

God has a funny sense of humor....

When I grow up I want to be a ballerina...

Today, that age old question came up yet again:  What do you want to be when you grow up?

When I was little,  I wanted to be one of several things and figured that I could just pick one when I was a little older.  I wanted to be a doctor, a teacher, a ballerina, an adventurer...

As I got older, things changed though.  I came to realize that while I can look at and talk about guts all day, 5 min into hearing someone else talk about the circulatory system I start to feel faint, so no doctoring for me.  I realized that while I like to help people learn things, I despise teaching structures, so no teaching for me.  I realized that while I love to dance, I have a very un-ballerina like butt and no sense of balance (as evidenced by my high school stage time), so ballet doesn't seem like much of an option.  And what does an adventurer do exactly?  Besides get shot at, captured, read maps is dead languages and find awesome stuff against all odds.  Apparently the adventurer hiring agency only places cute guys with at least two degrees in history, or something related to archeology, or a hot girl who was a princess/queen in a former life.  It would appear that I was a Romantic Poet (according to facebook), so no luck for me.

Oh well.

Now, I'm in school learning how to write about what is going on in the world because I don't know what else to do.  I like to write and I like to go out into the world and talk to people and do things, so this is what fits.  

I still don't know what I want to do when I grow up though.

Maybe I'll double check on that adventurer job... I dream about being shot at anyway....